True Evil

CHAPTER 44

"Describe her to me," said Dr. Tarver.

Edward Biddle pursed his lips and looked around the spartan office. Dr. Tarver knew Biddle was wondering if this was the place were the "groundbreaking" research had been done. "About five-eight," Biddle said. "Dark hair, pretty, scars on the right side of her face. Almost like shrapnel scars."

Dr. Tarver tried to keep his face impassive, but Biddle could not be deceived.

"Who is she, Eldon? Another of your obsessions?"

Dr. Tarver had almost forgotten what it was like to be in the company of someone who knew his private predilections. "She's an FBI agent. She's working alone, though, no support from the Bureau."

He expected to see anxiety in Biddle's eyes, but he saw only displeasure. "An FBI agent?"

"She's not a problem, Edward. That's an unrelated matter. Is your car still out there?"

Biddle waved his hand as though making the car vanish with his gesture. "Let's get down to brass tacks. What have you got?"

Five minutes ago, Dr. Tarver had been pumped and ready to make his pitch; then Alexandra Morse had walked through the front door. "I need to take care of something first. Give me just one minute."

Biddle wasn't accustomed to waiting, but he raised his hand in assent.

Eldon left the office and walked into his private restroom down the hall. The door said PHLEBOTOMIST. He wasn't about to share a toilet seat with the scuzziest 5 percent of the population of Jackson, Mississippi. Even excluding the viruses he had given them, many of the clinic's patients carried most of the nastiest bugs resident in the American population. He closed the door and leaned back against it, his heart thudding in his chest.

A few minutes ago he had been focused on the terms of his negotiation with Biddle. Now Alex Morse had put the whole deal in jeopardy. If she weren't so goddamned observant, her visit might have meant little. But she was. If Morse could look at a photo of this clinic for a few seconds and make the connection to Pullo's restaurant, then she would eventually realize that the army major in the VCP photo she had noticed in his office was the same man she had seen walking into the clinic this afternoon. Thirty years had passed since their VCP days, but Biddle looked essentially the same. His hair was gray now, but he still had his hair, the son of a bitch. And not only had Morse seen Biddle enter the clinic-she had exchanged words with him. Yes, she would remember him, all right. And once she did, she would quickly uncover the true nature of the VCP. And that would allow her to track Eldon Tarver from his old life to his new one.

Eldon couldn't take that chance. He could not take on his new identity until Alex Morse was dead.

He was lucky that Pearson had called to warn him that Morse might show up. She made a big deal about the restaurant, Eldon, and she's the type to come down and make a nuisance of herself. I probably said too much, but Chris Shepard is a highly reputable internist from Natchez. I just wanted you to know, so you wouldn't be blindsided by the girl.

"Blindsided," Dr. Tarver murmured. "FUBAB, more like."

Killing an FBI agent was risky. If you did that, you were asking to be hounded to the ends of the earth for as long as you lived. In the carport he had acted on instinct. He would have to give it careful thought. Right now he had business to take care of: the biggest deal of his life. He flushed the toilet for cover, then walked back into his office, sat behind his desk, and folded his hands Buddha-style over his stomach.

"You want to know what I've got, Edward?"

Biddle's pale blue eyes were those of a man who had handled many critical negotiations. Bullshit did not fly in the rooms he worked. "You know me, Eldon. Straight to business."

Dr. Tarver leaned back in his chair. "I've got exactly what you were looking for all those years ago."

"Which is?"

"The Holy Grail."

Biddle just stared.

"The perfect weapon."

"Perfect is a mighty big word, Eldon."

Dr. Tarver smiled. He doubted they ever said "mighty big" at Yale, which was where Biddle had gone to college. He must have picked it up at Detrick.

"How about a weapon that is one hundred percent lethal, yet which no one could ever prove was a weapon at all? It makes BW agents like anthrax or even smallpox relics of the Dark Ages. Wasn't it you who spoke of the Holy Grail at Detrick, Edward? A weapon that couldn't be perceived as a weapon?"

"Yes. But every scientist who ever worked for me helped prove that it was impossible."

"Oh, it's possible. It already exists." Eldon opened his desk drawer and took out a small vial filled with brownish liquid. "Here it is."

"What is it?"

"A retrovirus."

Biddle sniffed. "Source?"

"Simian, of course, as we always suspected. And as AIDS proved viable."

"What do you call it?"

Dr. Tarver smiled. "Kryptonite."

Biddle wasn't laughing. "Are you serious?"

"It's just a working name. The actual viral pedigree must remain my proprietary secret, for now. But if you decide to-"

"Buy it?"

"Just so. If you decide to buy it, then you can look behind the curtain and you can call it whatever you wish."

Biddle rubbed his hands together with a dry, grainy sound. "Tell me what else makes this Kryptonite a perfect weapon."

"First, it has a long incubation period. Ten to twelve months right now, with death following in an average of sixteen months."

"Death from what?"

"Cancer."

Biddle tilted his head to one side. "Our old friend."

"Yes."

"The retrovirus induces it directly? Or is there immune breakdown first?"

"Selective breakdown. Only the necessary steps. It switches off the cellular death mechanism, granting immortality. It disguises itself from killer T cells. It begins producing its own growth factor. All the best viral strategies."

Biddle was already thinking about the larger implications. "Eldon, the indiscriminate nature of that kind of weapon renders it unusable on a large scale. You know that."

Tarver leaned forward. "I've solved that problem."

"How?"

"I've already created a vaccine. I grow it in horses."

Biddle pursed his lips. "So we'd have to vaccinate all our forces prior to using the weapon."

"Yes, yes, but we already do that. You could do it under cover of any other immunization."

Biddle was frowning now, suspicious that his time was being wasted. "But what about the general population? If we vaccinated the general population, it would set off all sorts of alarms. And don't tell me we could do it under the guise of avian flu vaccine or something. You could never keep it a secret-not in this day and age."

Eldon could hardly contain himself. "I can also sabotage the virus after infection, during the early stages of replication. Before oncogenesis occurs."

Biddle's poker face finally slipped. "You can kill the virus after infection?"

"I can wipe it out."

"No one can kill a virus once it's established in the body."

Dr. Tarver settled back in his chair, his confidence unshakable. "I created this virus, Edward. And I can destroy it."

Biddle was shaking his head, but Eldon saw the excitement in his eyes.

"After about three weeks," Eldon went on, "there's no stopping the cascade. But during that window, I can short-circuit the infection."

"So what you're telling me is-"

"I have your weapon for China."

Biddle's lips parted. He had the look of a man whose mind has just been read, and read accurately.

"I know you, Edward," Tarver said with a sly smile. "I know that's why you're here. I see what's happening in the world. I know the limits of oil reserves and strategic metals. I know where those reserves are flowing, where the heavy manufacturing is going. I'm no geopolitician, but I see the tide turning. The new cold war can't be more than twenty years off. Maybe less."

Biddle chose not to comment.

"I know the capabilities of Chinese nuclear submarines," Tarver went on. "I know about their missile program. And even high school students know the size of their standing army. Almost three million strong, and growing. The real strength of that number lies in the fact that life is cheap there, Edward. Casualties mean nothing-unlike the country we happen to be sitting in."

Biddle shifted in his seat and spoke softly. "Your point being?"

"The Chinese aren't the Russians. You won't be able to spend them into oblivion. They already keep our economy afloat. If they decide to pull the plug now, we'll only have one option. Going nuclear."

Biddle nodded almost imperceptibly.

"And we won't do that," Tarver asserted. "You know we won't, because we won't be able to. The yellow men can afford to lose half a billion people. We can't. More important, they're willing to lose them. And we're not."

Biddle's eyes were half-closed. He was probably put off by the amateur strategizing, but Eldon knew he had made his point, however clumsily.

"Is this Kryptonite sexually transmissible?" Biddle asked quietly.

"One variant is, and one is not."

A tight smile. "That's convenient."

"You won't believe what I've accomplished, Edward. You want deniable political assassination? Give me one tube of blood from your target. I'll induce cancer in vitro, then you can reinject the blood into him. He'll be dead of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma eighteen months later."

Biddle's smile broadened. "I always said you were my most promising egghead, Eldon."

Dr. Tarver laughed out loud.

"So you're telling me," said Biddle, "that we could set this virus loose in a slum in Shanghai, and-"

"By the time the first cases started dying, they'd have fifteen months of exponential infection. It would be in every major Chinese city. They'd see a host of different cancers, not just one. The chaos would be unimaginable."

"It would also have leaped the oceans," Biddle observed.

Eldon's smile vanished. "Yes. We'd have to accept some casualties. But only for a while. With the example of AIDS, most countries would initiate crash programs to find a vaccine. Your company could take the lead in the U.S."

"And you could head it up," said Biddle. "Is that what you're thinking?"

"I shouldn't lead it. But I should be part of it. And after a reasonable amount of time-before the death toll climbs too high over here-we'll come forward with an experimental vaccine."

"The rest of the world would demand access to it."

"Over the objections of their medical establishments. You know the ego battles involved in this kind of research. Look at Gallo and the French. Also, no one but us could be sure that our vaccine worked. The delays could last years, but our population would be protected the entire time."

"How difficult would it be for someone else to develop a vaccine?"

"Without knowing what I know? Twenty years is optimistic. We're talking about a retrovirus. Look at HIV as a model. It's been around since 1978, and-"

"Longer," Biddle corrected quietly.

Tarver raised an eyebrow. "In any case, we still don't have an AIDS vaccine. We're not even close."

"Nevertheless, with China's population, this wouldn't be a decisive weapon, but rather a destabilizing one."

"You want apocalypse? I can give you that."

"How?"

Eldon held up his hands and drew them apart. "Simply lengthen the incubation period. I could stretch it to the scale of something like multiple myeloma. Twenty-five to thirty years."

Amazement now. "Could you really?"

"Of course. I've purposefully shortened the incubation in my work."

"Why?"

"To be able to carry out my research in a measurable time frame. Lengthen the incubation to twenty years, and I'd be dead before I saw my first results."

Biddle wet his lips with his pale tongue. "With a five-year incubation period, seventy percent of the population over fifteen could be infected before anyone got sick. Even if they had an effective vaccine, it would be too late. They'd already be battling total social breakdown."

"Yes." Eldon lowered his voice. "I'll tell you something else. I think I can make these viruses race-specific."

Biddle blinked in disbelief. "This is Herman Kahn territory. Thinking about the unthinkable."

"Somebody has to do it. Or all our ancestors will have lived and died for nothing. The world will be inherited by-"

"Don't even say it," said Biddle. "In whatever discussions we may have in future-with whatever people-don't mention that side of it. The Darwinian side."

"Why not?"

"You don't have to. The right people will understand the implications."

Eldon leaned forward again. "I trust your instincts. So…now that you know what I'm offering, I'd like to hear how interested you are."

And what I'm willing to pay, said Biddle's eyes. But his mouth said, "Obviously, I'm interested. But just as obviously, there are some issues."

"Such as?"

Biddle gave him a knowing smile, a shared look between equals. "You're ahead of your time, Eldon. You always were. You know that."

Tarver nodded but said nothing.

"But," Biddle went on, a note of optimism in his voice, "not nearly so far ahead as you once were. The regulatory climate has been hell since the Clinton years, but things are loosening up. Everyone's ramping up their primate-breeding capacity. They've finally realized that you can only go so far in the lower species."

"And of course China's far ahead of everyone else in that, too."

Biddle conceded this with a nod. "So far ahead that we're already doing some of our primate research there."

Eldon shook his head in disgust.

Biddle shifted in his seat. "Of course, when the other shoe drops-politically speaking-all those projects will be nationalized, and you'll be Cassandra vindicated. You'll look like the Messiah, Eldon."

"How long before that shoe drops?"

"No way to know. But that's not critical to our arrangement. As for getting you a new identity, I can take care of that in a few days. If you want money, real money-"

"I want what this technology is worth."

A look of slight surprise. "That will take longer."

"How much longer?"

"Hmm…three years? Maybe five?"

Anger and bitterness rose from Tarver's gut.

"It could be sooner," Biddle added, "depending on a score of factors. But I don't want you to be under any illusions. And after all, money was never your primary motivation, was it?"

"I'm fifty-nine, Edward. The world looks different than it did in 1970."

Biddle nodded. "You don't have to tell me. But think about this. You'll be going to work for a company that understands your particular needs. I'll be your sole liaison, if you like. You'll have a free hand with research."

"Can you promise that? No one looking over my shoulder?"

"Guaranteed. My concern, old friend, is the risk of waiting even one minute to move to the next phase. I want you to come with me now. Today. This minute."

Tarver drew back, his palms tingling with foreboding. "Why?"

"I don't want to risk anything happening to you before my people see your research. I want your data today, Eldon. All of it."

"We haven't agreed to anything yet."

Biddle looked hard into his eyes. When the TransGene man spoke, it was with the gravity of a soldier, not a corporate officer. His voice was edged with steel and brimming with heartfelt emotion. "Listen to me, Eldon. The money will come. Recognition will come, too, from the proper quarters. But what's most important is what you'll be doing for your country. You know what's coming. The fucking dragon is getting stronger by the day. He's already eating out of our bowl, and pretty soon-" A look of self-disgust twisted Biddle's mouth. "Shit, I'm not even saying we deserve to survive, given the way most Americans have pissed away their birthright. But those of us who remember what makes us great…it's up to us to insure our national survival. I've bled for this country, Eldon. You have, too, in your way. But you don't resent it, do you? I think you feel the same obligation I do."

Dr. Tarver looked down at his desk. There had never been any question of refusing, of course. He had merely hoped that the more tangible symbols of appreciation would come his way more quickly. But that was all right. With Andrew Rusk's diamonds added to what remained of his own, he would be comfortable for as long as it took TransGene or the government to compensate him fairly.

"All right, Edward. I'm on board."

Biddle's face split in an expansive smile. Then he wrung his hands together and said, "Let's talk timing. I'm serious about expediting this. I want to move you out of here today."

Eldon held up his hands. "We haven't seen each other for two years. I'm not going to step in front of a bus before tomorrow."

"You don't know that. A drunk could run you over. A punk could knock you on the head. Lightning could strike you-"

"Or I could find a richer bidder?" Eldon said bluntly.

His words hit Biddle like a sucker punch to the throat. "Are you looking for one?" he asked quietly.

"No. But I need a day, Edward. One day."

Suspicion clouded Biddle's eyes. "What kind of loose ends could possibly justify waiting?"

For a moment Eldon considered asking his old colleague to take care of Alex Morse for him. The TransGene director undoubtedly had military or intelligence contacts who could take her out and make it look like an accident. But if Biddle and the TransGene board perceived Eldon Tarver as a risk to the company, a man who had left a trail that could one day lead the authorities to their darkest secrets, they might decide to eliminate him as soon as they possessed the virus and its documentation. No, he needed to enter his new life clean, an unblemished hero to Biddle and his breed. Fucking Lancelot, for once in his life.

"You have to trust me, Edward," he said. "Tomorrow I'm yours."

Biddle looked far from satisfied, but he didn't argue further.

"How are you going to get me out?"

"Here's what I'm thinking," said Biddle. "TransGene is owned by the same parent company as the firm that's building the nuclear plant between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. If we-"

"I've wondered about that," Eldon cut in. "New Orleans already has one of the largest nuclear plants in the country."

Biddle smiled. "The power produced by the new plant will be routed across Louisiana to Texas. It's a lot easier to build a nuclear plant in Louisiana than Texas. There are laws, of course, but there's no organized resistance. Hell, there's nothing but blacks, white trash, Cajuns, and chemical plants on that whole stretch of river."

"Cancer Alley," said Tarver. "But how does that relate to me?"

"Your new identity papers will take two or three days to be processed. I'm going to airlift you to the plant construction site while we wait. Shouldn't take more than a couple of days, and you'll be very comfortable. You'll have your own trailer, like a Hollywood actor."

Tarver gave him a wry smile. "Who handles the new identity?"

Biddle answered equivocally, "It's a bit like the Witness Protection Program, only it's handled by the Pentagon."

Tarver chuckled. "It's good to be dealing with professionals again. I've felt pretty damn alone out here in the wilderness."

Biddle stood and shot his cuffs. "Speaking of that, how the hell have you managed to accomplish what you have?"

Feeling fully secure once again, Dr. Tarver finally let some of his pride show through, for inside he was as proud as Lucifer. "I'll tell you, it's more a matter of will than anything else. I could have done what I have twice as fast at a major research center, or at Fort Detrick. But the reality is, no one would have let me."

Biddle thought about this. "You're right. I just thank heaven we still have men like you working in the trenches."

Dr. Tarver basked in the glow of Biddle's praise; he knew from experience that it was not easily won.

"I assume we have some logistics to take care of?" Biddle said. "What do you need to bring out besides data? Special equipment? Biologicals?"

"No machinery. Too much risk involved in moving it out."

"Check. Biologicals?"

"I can bring the agents I need out in a single Pelican case, and my critical files can fit in a backpack."

"Excellent. The only question that remains is timing."

"Tomorrow, as I said. But I'd like you to be on call beginning now."

Biddle stared at him for a while. "Is there anything more I need to know, Eldon?"

Tarver dodged the meaning behind the question. "I'd like you to fly the helicopter. When I call, you come, and wherever I say."

Biddle scratched his chin. "Any risk of a hot extraction?"

Eldon smiled. He'd always loved intelligence jargon. "I don't anticipate that."

"I'd prefer not to even have an observed extraction. We don't want to put the company in a difficult position."

"Again, I don't foresee a problem."

"All right, then." Biddle grinned. "Hell, I'd love to fly this mission. I need to keep my hours up."

Biddle offered his hand, and Eldon took it. The old soldier's handshake was stiff, like a formal salute.

"Until tomorrow," said the doctor.

Biddle walked to the door, then turned back, his face grave. "Is it worth sticking around to handle unfinished business when you have an FBI agent poking around?"

Tarver regretted revealing Morse's true identity. "I'm afraid she's involved with that business."

Biddle's face darkened, but his cold blue eyes remained steady. "As long as you're clean as regards our business."

"Absolutely."