The King of Plagues

Chapter Thirty-four

Fair Isle Research Endeavor

The Hot Room

December 18, 3:10 P.M. GMT

“Are you him???? It was the same question his son had asked me. “I told them to send someone from Homeland Security.”

“Then I’m him,” I said.

“Where’s Mikey?”

“You know where he is, asshole.”

Tears ran down his cheeks. “Was it fast?”

“What do you think?”

“God.” He licked his lips. “It’s important that you understand. I need to make you believe me when I say that I loved my son.”

“Save it for Saint Peter. He likes a good bullshit story,” I snapped. “Right now I need to know why you’re doing all of this.”

He wiped his streaming eyes and nose with a forearm. I reached out with a foot and pushed the pistol out of his reach.

Grey flinched and clutched the beaker to his chest as if that might protect him from my anger.

“Why don’t you put that beaker down?”

“You’ll kill me if I do.”

“I’m already talking to a dead man.” I showed him the BAMS unit. “Ebola’s all over this place. Besides, after what happened to your kid, I’m not sure I’d do you the favor of giving you a quick way out. You should feel what he felt.”

“Yes.”His eyes were bleak but steady. “I should. I gave Mikey a little morphine first. But … not for me.”

“If you’re looking for admiration for your sacrifice, too bad. Now … put the beaker down.”

“No. I need something to make you stay with me until I get it all out.”

I tapped the chest of my HAMMER suit. “Sorry, but scary as that Ebola shit is, I’m covered.”

He shook his head. “That suit has polycarbonate components. This is filled with a rapid-action strain of pseudomonas bacteria. It eats oil. They use it for cleaning up oil spills, but this strain was designed for bioweapons use. It would dissolve the seals in your suit before you reached the first air lock.”

“Well, kiss my ass,” I said. “You’ve really thought this through, Doc. You earn the merit badge for Mad Scientist of the Week. It’ll look great in your obituary.”

I was calculating how fast vapors would spread if he dropped the beaker compared to how fast I could get my ass the hell out of here.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t buy much sympathy these days. This is your play, Doc, so … talk.”

He did.

I expected it to be about politics. But that wasn’t it at all. Instead Dr. Charles Grey told me a horror story. There were no ghosts or vampires in it, but it was scary as hell.

He and his family lived in a cottage on the other side of the island. A few weeks ago, while Mikey and his mom were preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for the American staff at FIRE, Grey walked into his study, felt a sudden burn on the back of his neck, and then woke up five minutes later tied to a chair with a hood over his head. There was at least one man in the room with him. A frightening, invisible figure who spoke politely but told of dreadful things that would be done to Grey’s wife and son if the doctor did not do exactly what the man wanted. The man stood behind Grey and pulled off the hood. Then he reached past Grey and began placing photographs on the table in front of him. Photos of women who bore a strong physical resemblance to his wife. And little boys who looked like Mikey.

“The pictures they showed me … the things that were done to those other children. And to the women. Inhuman things. It was unbearable to think that someone could do that to another human being. To innocent children. To women. Then … he placed pictures of Mikey and Alicia next to the others. He had pictures of my wife shopping, of her in the bathtub, of us making love. The thought that they had stolen our privacy, that they were somehow watching us all this time …”

“Your boy, too?”

“Yes. Pictures of Mikey sleeping. One of him using the toilet at school. God!” He gagged and I didn’t know if it was the first touch of the Ebola or the sheer horror of what he was remembering.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” I demanded.

“They warned me not to. He showed me a picture of a little boy … I mean I think it was a boy. Had been a little boy. The man said that this was the result of someone else notifying the authorities. He said that if I told anyone, even my wife, then this would happen to my son. To Mikey. Even if they had to wait a month, or a year, or ten years. One day my son would vanish and if we ever found him at all there would be only pieces left to bury. He said if that happened, I would receive an e-mail with a video file showing everything that had been done to Mikey, and that the last thing the boy would be told before he died was that this was all my fault. He made me believe that there were worse things than death. Even the way Mikey died—” A sob tore its way out of his chest. “Even the way he died wouldn’t be a millionth as bad as what they would have done to him. And if I did this and let my family live, I’d go to jail and they would still be out there. How could I trust that they would leave my family alone? They might … they might …” He shook his head.

“There’s witness protection—,” I said, but he cut me off.

“Witness against whom? I never saw his face. He wore a black mask. All I could tell was that he was a male and had a Spanish accent.”

The Spaniard. The mysterious figure who was the liaison between the Chosen, the Kingsmen, and the Seven Kings. Son of a bitch.

Grey glared at me. “So … do you want to tell me that the police, or even the military, would protect me from someone I couldn’t identify? Besides,” he said, his mouth a taut and bitter line, “he said that they had people in the police, in the military, in the government. He said that they had people everywhere.”

“And you believed him?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

I thought, Yeah, I probably would.

“And,” Grey went on, “he said that he would occasionally reach out to me through other means to prove what he said. He wasn’t lying. I found notes in my locked car. Voice mails in five different voices on my phone. Notes on my desk.” He swallowed. “Even a folded note in my lab coat here in the Hot Room. They were everywhere. I thought about running, but if they are everywhere, where could I run?”

Grey sobbed so hard that he almost dropped the beaker. My heart was in my throat. When he wiped his nose it left twin red smears on the forearm of his hazmat suit.

“I gave them both morphine. This strain of Ebola works very fast. I thought it would hurt less than a gun. I … I’m not good with guns.”

“Why not overdose them with morphine?”

Fresh tears welled in his eyes. The tears were pink with blood. “I didn’t think you would believe me unless you had no choice. Seeing Mikey would convince you.”

I wanted to take my gun and pistol-whip the shit out of him. I wasn’t a doctor and even I could have figured fifty ways to do it better than he’d done it.

“What about the rest of the staff?” I said. “Why hold them hostage?”