Last Gasp

said, 'Go and fetch them. Now. Hurry.'

When he returned with the two suitcases, breathing heavily, Nina was in the hallway. She didn't utter a word as he helped her into her coat and then put his arms around her.

'No time for that,' the man snapped, opening the vestibule door and beckoning his colleague. He tapped one of the suitcases with his shoe. 'In the car.' He nodded brusquely to the landlady as they all went out, and she came to the front door and stood watching, her face hard, devoid of expression.

The car pulled away. Boris and Nina were in the back, the young unshaven man in the passenger seat, his colleague driving. It was a bright sunny day with hardly a cloud, though for Boris the outside world hardly existed. He stared straight ahead, defeated in spirit, sunk fathoms deep in his own thoughts. What a farce . . . they hadn't even made it to the border.

He came back to the present with a start, blinking. The man in the trench coat was offering a pack of cigarettes. Boris shook his head. He felt confused. What was this? The man lit two and passed one to his colleague. He loosened his trench coat and Boris glimpsed a grimy shirt collar.

'No introductions,' the man said, smoke trailing from his nostrils. 'It's safer that way. We're taking you to Pavilosta, a small town on the coast about two hundred kilometers west of here. At eight o'clock tonight you'll board a fishing vessel and at midnight you'll be transferred to a motor launch. That's the tricky bit. Then it's a fast run to an island called Bornholm. Ever hear of it?'

Boris shook his head dumbly.

'Belongs to Denmark. We have a contact there. She will arrange passage to the mainland.' He glanced quickly over his shoulder and smiled. 'All being well you should be in Copenhagen this time tomorrow.'

Boris found his voice. It sounded strange.

'What was all that about? Back there at the boardinghouse? We thought--'

'A necessary precaution. We have to make sure about these things. Your reaction was more than convincing.'

'And the landlady?'

'Yes, she's good, isn't she?' The young man grinned, shaking his head. ' 'I only wish to serve the state as best I can.' ' He laughed out loud. 'Yes, I like that.'

In a side ward of the annex that housed the Diagnostic Research Unit of the Reagan Memorial Hospital, Denver, Dr. Ruth Patton watched a ten-year-old boy die in agony. His face was a mass of suppurating sores, obscuring his eyes and turning his mouth into a fat raw blister. She felt angry, helpless, and near to tears.

The child had been admitted four days ago complaining of chest and abdominal pains, vomiting green bile, and with hard shiny growths on his arms and legs. Unlike the other, earlier patients who had had to undergo a long process of clinical investigation before their condition could be identified, the boy had been immediately tested for dioxin poisoning, and the pathology lab had confirmed it within twelve hours.

Not that rapid and accurate diagnosis made a blind bit of difference, she told herself bitterly. Once it had infiltrated the body, dioxin caused irrevocable genetic damage, primarily to the nervous system. Depending on the concentration of the dose and the length of time the patient had been exposed to it, the outcome was slow agonizing death or, at best, permanent crippling of body and brain. There was nothing she, or anyone, could do.

Leaving the ward, she took off her mask and gown and dropped them into the sterilization chute. Her eyes were dry, her face pale but composed. She smiled briefly at one of the nurses as she went back to her office.

There she wrote out her notes and closed the file.

Case number nine. The third--and youngest--to die. Two others, a man in his mid-thirties, and an elderly woman, were still on the danger list. The remaining four had been moved to another ward now that their condition had stabilized. Would there be more? An epidemic? She shied away from the dreadful possibility.

Ruth turned her eyes, as she found herself doing countless times a day, to the map of Colorado on the wall, with its nine colored pins. The pins were sprinkled in an arc to the south and west of Colorado Springs, itself a few miles south of the Martin Marietta Space Center. The prevailing wind was from the northeast.

She looked at the map and thought again of what Gavin Chase had said, that evening at the Inchcapes'. Or rather, as she reminded herself, not so much what he had said as the questions he had asked, the doubts he had raised. Those questions and doubts filled her with a sickly foreboding that grew with each passing day and every new victim. And she was powerless to do anything about it.

'Isn't that why he gave you the dossier?' Elizabeth Lucas said, bringing the coffeepot to the table. She was wearing a quilted housecoat, her face unmade-up but her tinted brown hair neatly brushed from its center parting. She couldn't bear to be seen with untidy hair, even in front of her husband at breakfast. 'Poor Mr. Lebasse.'

'I know, Liz, but what the hell can I do?' Gene Lucas shook pepper over his scrambled eggs and picked up his fork. Gray shadows encircled his eyes. He put the fork down, squinting painfully against the reflecting laminated surfaces and the rack of glinting kitchen utensils. 'If Lebasse couldn't trust his own people in the Defense Department, how can I? Somebody somewhere must have found out what he was doing. They must have.'

'How do you know that?' his wife asked sensibly, pouring his coffee.

She returned the pot to the stove and sat down opposite him. 'Did he tell you that in so many words?'

'Tell me what?' Lucas asked irritably.

'That he didn't trust them?'

Lucas sighed and absently tugged at his moustache. Liz didn't understand. She still had a touching faith in authority, still believed that for people to have achieved high office they must, by definition, be steadfast, loyal and true. Boy scout mentality; or in this case, girl scout.

He shook more pepper over his eggs and Liz said sharply, 'Gene, you're spoiling it!'

Seeing what he had done he forked the pepper into the eggs. There was no doubt in his mind. Lebasse had been murdered. And if they (whoever 'they' were) could get rid of the secretary of defense, they could certainly get rid of him.

He laid his fork down. He had to talk about this to somebody. He said, 'This concerns a secret military project called DEPARTMENT STORE, devised by a special Pentagon agency by the name of Advanced Strategic Projects, which is planning to put this thing into operation--they could even be developing it right this minute for all I know.'

'Yes, dear,' Liz nodded, buttering a piece of toast. 'You explained it to me before. Eat your eggs before they go cold.'

'Elizabeth, do you understand what I'm talking about?' Lucas tapped the table in time with the words. 'They are deliberately and cold-bloodedly going to alter the ecological balance of this planet. They intend to fill a huge fleet of supertankers with herbicides and wipe out all the phytoplankton in the oceans. They plan to replace missile warheads with payloads of herbicides and drop them into equatorial forests, killing off all the trees and plants. By destroying all the green plants in the oceans and on land they mean to upset the oxygen balance of the atmosphere. It's all part of some insane strategy to protect this country. They're crazy, mad as hatters, the whole bunch of them!'

'Is it possible to do that?' Liz asked, scooping up a forkful of scrambled eggs. She chewed and swallowed. 'Could they affect the oxygen in that way?'

Lucas nodded wearily. 'Yes.' Was she being obtuse or had he failed to explain it properly? 'Yes, they can do it. Given sufficient quantities of herbicides over a period of time. Months or years, it's hard to know for sure how long it would take.' He leaned over the table, a lock of graying hair falling across his puffy eyelids. 'Liz, we depend on the plants and once they're gone our supply of oxygen is gone too--forever. Without oxygen we're finished, and every other living creature with us. Not just in one country or on one continent but everywhere, all over the world.'

The motion of her jaws slowed, became mechanical. 'But that would be committing suicide.'

'That's exactly what it is!'

'You mean they're really planning to do that?'

Lucas sipped his coffee and looked at her over the rim of the cup, haunted. 'They can do it--and will--now that Lebasse is out of the way.'

Liz swallowed and dabbed her lips. 'What do you mean, out of the way?' she said slowly.

Lucas put his cup down very gently. 'Lebasse stood in the way of DEPARTMENT STORE. He wanted it