His breathing was coming quick now. He swiveled slightly in his chair and said, “Who’s there?”
The figure didn’t move. “Wes Connors?” was all he said.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“Put your hands on your desk and keep them there.”
Connors complied. “I don’t have any money here. This is just my office. Any cash I have is either at home or in the bank.”
“I don’t want your money.”
Connors stared at the figure, camouflaged by the shadows and lack of light. He didn’t recognize the voice, but it could be a pissed-off husband from one of his marital surveillances. Some dumbass he’d caught with a young bimbo in a hotel room, their cars parked out front in plain sight, the blinds not properly closed. Maybe he’d shot them with his 35-mm through the shades, maybe a few nights of finding the two cars together, license plates front and center. Who knew how he’d nailed the guy, but that was probably it.
“Look, buddy, whatever happened with your marriage or your life, it’s not my fault. If I caught you doing something and your wife was paying me, then it’s just business. You okay with that?”
“I don’t cheat on my wife,” the man said, leaning forward slightly. “Never have, never will.”
Connors could see the man’s face now: Caucasian, about forty with slightly receding brown hair. He didn’t recognize him. This was not someone he’d followed and photographed. He never forgot one of those faces. Sometimes they wanted to beat the crap out of him for catching them, and he wanted the upper hand in such a situation. That meant remembering who these guys were. And if this guy wasn’t some jerk who let his dick do the thinking for him, who was he?
“What do you want?” Connors asked. He was sweating now, his armpits and forehead wet with perspiration.
“I want you to stop screwing up my kid’s chance at having a normal life.”
“What?” Connors said. “Man, you got the wrong guy. I’ve never done anything in my life to hurt a child.”
“You ever heard of Veritas Pharmaceutical?”
“I was hired to look into the death of one of their employees.”
“Who?”
“Albert Rousseau.”
“Bullshit.”
The comment was not at all what Wes Connors expected. He stared at the man. “It’s not bullshit, it’s the truth. Somebody hired me to find out if Rousseau was expecting a payoff of some sort. I don’t know the why or what of the whole thing, just that Rousseau had recently looked at an expensive car and some prime real estate.”
“That’s it?” the man asked, leaning forward even farther. The unmistakable outline of a silenced pistol was clearly visible.
“That’s it,” Connors said.
“That’s enough,” the man said, pulling the trigger. The first bullet caught Connors in the throat, the second in the head as he slumped forward. They were 9-mm slugs with hollow points, designed to cause maximum damage on exiting the victim. What were two small holes in the front of Connors’s neck and forehead were six-inch gaping holes in the rear. The second bullet stopped his forward progress and threw him back, brains and blood spattering the wall and carpet. He crashed to the floor, dead instantly.
Evan Ziegler rose and stood over the man. It had played out exactly as Bruce Andrews had said it would. Connors was trying to discredit Veritas by pinning Rousseau’s murder on someone inside the company. And a scandal of that magnitude would surely result in all research work grinding to a halt. With the Phase I trials for the brain chips slated to begin in less than two months, way ahead of schedule, that would spell disaster. And his son Ben was at the top of the list for one of the experimental chips. No goddamn way some piece of crap like this was going to keep his boy in that wheelchair.
He unscrewed the silencer and replaced the pistol in his shoulder holster. One more glance at the corpse and he was gone, wiping the door handle clean of all fingerprints on his way out. It was late, and he encountered no one on his way out of the building or on the street as he walked to his car. He put the windshield wipers on intermittent and pulled away from the curb with one thought on his mind.
Two more months until the tests were to begin. Ben was almost out of the chair.
35
“Gentlemen, we have a real problem this time,” J. D. Rothery said. He paced the carpeted floor of his office while he spoke. Present were Jim Allenby, Tony Warner, and Craig Simms. The task force against America’s latest terrorist threat was assembled and listening as the head of the scientific arm of the Department of Homeland Security brought them up to date on the latest viral outbreak.
“A group of Boy Scouts was having a picnic in Franklin Park in Boston. Five of them are sick. We’ve isolated the cause of the infection to the Pepsi cans they were drinking from. Five of the nine boys drank Pepsi, and they’re the ones contaminated. We quarantined the remainder of the cans and found traces of the virus on the metal rim next to the pop-up tab. Plus someone had written a message on the inside of the cardboard case.”
“What was the message?” Warner asked.
“
“Where did the Pepsi come from?” Allenby asked.
“One of the parents bought it at a corner store close to their home in Roxbury. It’s a suburb just south of Boston, and most of the kids in the Scout troop live there.”
“What’s the status of the kids? How bad are they?”
“All five are going to die, probably sometime today. They ingested the pop five days ago, on September fourth. But we’ve got problems with their families this time. Two of the kids have infected their parents, and one sibling is showing symptoms. The press is all over this. Two of the kids were admitted to the hospital, so we’ve got our work cut out for us just trying to contain the virus from spreading.”
“Any signs the virus is loose in the hospital?” Warner asked. The NSA man was working on his computer, calculating the collateral damage.
“Not yet,” Rothery said, “but we’re monitoring the situation hour by hour.”
Warner hit a button and glanced up. “If two kids are in the hospital for two full days, they encountered six shifts, each with three nurses and attendants in direct contact. If the two days hit on the end of a workweek for the staff, then we have thirty-six health care professionals at risk. And they would have been in close contact to at least three or four people in triage and emergency.
“Then there are the cloths and towels from the kid’s rooms. They’ve been mixed in with the laundry from other wards. And at least a couple of workers would have been in contact with the dirty sheets and towels before they went in for sterilization. All told, the peripheral contact, just in the hospital alone, is over fifty people. And each of those individuals has now had time to go home, kiss their spouse, share a fork over a piece of pie, hug their kids, and sneeze on the clerk at the 7-Eleven. Let’s assume each of the fifty has been in close contact with six other people. That’s three hundred. And the more time that passes, the more cases of intimate contact those three hundred will have with others.”
“We’ve got to get this contained, and fast,” Rothery said. He turned to Allenby. “What resources can the FBI contribute, Jim?”
“Whatever you need. We can free up an agent or two from field offices across the country. That would give us up to two hundred agents we could place in Boston within twelve hours. Each of our agents is well trained in this exact scenario-they know how to interview the victims and potential victims, and how to trace the disease as it moves through the population.”
