“You think you can fuck with me?” the enraged Pasha screamed into his left ear. “Who will protect you now? The Americans and British have killed all your Iraqi friends, your playmates Ouday and Qusay! Pulled your glorious benefactor Saddam out of one rathole and tossed him into another! And sent the rest crawling under rocks! The Saudis, the Iranians, even your own countrymen have disowned you. Even the bloody Pakis hate your guts! Now, you tell me that everything is in readiness or I’ll kill you right here!”
“Let me go! I can’t breathe! I will talk!”
Snay hurled him back into his corner like a sack of chicken bones. The little masochist. The problem was, he liked it. It was one of the great secrets of his success and long life. Since you couldn’t hurt the man, you were at his mercy. The threat of the dragons was another matter.
“You’ve got thirty seconds before we arrive at the Komodos, you ugly little wog. Start talking.”
The doctor had his hands at his throat, massaging his cruelly bruised flesh.
“Patience? Allow me to finish? My God, you are a madman. You are now a personage of great responsibility. You must learn to control these murderous impulses. Why, the Emir himself was saying to me just the other day that—”
Bin Wazir felt hot beads of perspiration popping out at the corners of his eyes at the mere mention of the Emir. Failure now was unthinkable. Unacceptable. “Tell me what I want to hear. Or I’m feeding you to the dragons.”
“It’s the bombs are the problem. Well. Who would believe it? Not the bombs, but the fissile matter inside. The design is flawless. Feel free to call me a genius, everyone does. But! But, but, but—and here is the problem. There was unfortunately this last-minute problem with the fissile material. It was not the specific grade I paid for and—”
“Fuck! You’re dead. Tippu! Pull over!”
“Wait! Wait! Let me finish! I am not stupid, you know. I had a much better idea, you see! Ready-made. No delays. No problems. Simpler. Keep driving, I beg you, let me explain.”
Tippu braked the big car on the verge opposite the dragon cage, got out and stamped around the side. He opened the doctor’s door, reached in and grabbed his ponytail, lifting him a foot off the seat. The African looked at his master, waiting for instruction. “Ar kill him?”
“Please!” the man screeched, “Let me show you, Pasha! In the big suitcase! Open it!”
“What is in the suitcase, you miserable worm?” Snay had assumed the two polished black metal cases contained the doctor’s personal effects for the flight across the Pacific.
“The perfect weapon, dear boy! Genetically altered smallpox,” the doctor cried. “Designed it myself, I did. Impervious to the American vaccine! Nothing can stop it! Let me go and I’ll show you.”
“Bugs. Fucking bugs, I knew it.” Snay said. “Where are the bombs? I want to know now! One hundred million dollars worth of suitcase nuclear bombs, bought and paid for. Now where fucking are they?”
“You have them! They are yours! They are all stored down in your catacombs, Pasha. Inside the Blue Palace! When I return, I will make certain adjustments to make them more stable and—”
Snay could not listen to one more word, such was his fury. He nodded at Tippu and the African whipped the man out of the open door and started through the underbrush toward the cage.
“I paid a hundred million for some fucking bugs?” bin Wazir said, trotting alongside Tippu Tip, leaning down and shouting in Soong’s ear as he was being bounced along like a desperate puppet. His feet were dragging through the grass, clawing for purchase.
“A plague! A pox!” Soong cried out. “An infinite plague. Much, much deadlier than the Pigskin! The bombs, they would only kill a million perhaps. But this—NO!”
They came to the cage. The dragons were hurling themselves against the bars, thrusting glistening tongues through the bars; long and black, darting. Tippu pulled a heavy ring of keys from his robes and handed them to bin Wazir.
“I’m going to open the cage, now, Pundit,” he said, his words barely audible over the voracious roars of the Komodo dragons. They were snapping in anticipation at the steel cage rods with their viciously curved incisors. A few bones were scattered in the dirt, the remains of the British MI6 agent.
“Pasha,” the doctor said in a strangled voice, “If you kill me, you are finished. You must know this! It is over. Everything. The Emir has told me many times that if we fail in this, we both will wish we were dead long before our heads roll. Please. I beg you.”
Snay bin Wazir looked at the wizened little elf in disgust. Finally, realizing the incontrovertible truth of what the man was saying, he told Tippu to release him. As fervently as he wished to rip off this disgusting weasel’s head and toss it into the cage, the fact was, he had no choice at all. In order to make tomorrow’s absolutely critical deadline 35,000 feet above the Pacific, Snay’s newly refurbished 747 had to be wheels up before sunrise. Three hours from now.
Tippu dropped the man into the weeds like a soiled tissue. “Ar don lak this one.” he said, “He stink.”
“Good, good,” the doctor said, gasping for breath, crawling on all fours away from the cage and the enraged Komodos. “Very good.”
“Talk,” bin Wazir said, lowering his great bulk to the ground beside the shaking creature. The man was hugging his knees to his chest and rocking, thrilled to be alive. Snay lit up a Baghdaddie while Tippu hovered, throwing a fistful of betel nuts into his mouth and pulverizing them, the red juice leaking out the corners of his mouth. They waited until the doctor regained his ability to speak.
“So. You know Mr. Kim, naturally? Friend and ally of our most revered Emir?”
“In Pyongang. Yes, yes. Go on.”
“Yes. So, I have been doing some, how do you call it, freelance work for his North Korean government. Division 39, they call it. Top-secret fund. I am helping him to process spent fuel rods from his Yongbyon nuclear complex. We are making plutonium units the size of baseballs! Plus a ballistic missile which will reach the heart of Tokyo! But, sadly, North Korea is under the American microscope, you know. But, ha, good for me because Mr. Kim always has me looking for alternatives to plutonium. Lucky me, I recently found him a very, very good one.”
“Biological.”
“Correct. I have created a genetically altered v-virus,” the doctor said. “Like smallpox, a derivative, only better. There is no prevention. Oh, the Americans have stockpiled something called vaccinia immune globulin, VIG, but it is useless against my hybrid smallpox virus.”
“Smallpox.”
“Yes. The very best bio-terror weapon on earth. It, it is transmitted by expulsion of minute droplets from the nose and mouth from person to person. Through the air. Thoroughly human-tested on political prisoners by Mr. Kim’s Division 39 scientists. One hundred per cent success rate. Cha-ching!”
“Go on.”
“So you see? We’re ready to go! No delays. Unlike the Pigskin bombs, my I-Virus, the Koreans are nicely calling it the I-Virus in my honor, it has no radioactive half-life. Once the carriers are infected—”
“Carriers? What fucking carriers?”
“Ah. The Barbie Doll terrorists, who else? Tee-hee. Four hundred perfect walking time bombs.” The doctor had recovered rapidly. He saw he once again had bin Wazir where he liked to keep him, wholly dependent. Harmless.
“You mean—”
“Yes, yes! Your lovelies will all be infected with the I-Virus during the flight over the Pacific! The first dosage they got when I ‘vaccinated’ them at the hotel. Ease your mind! They’re not being infectious until the second massive exposure they will receive once airborne. I will explain it all at the hangar, Pasha. May we remove ourselves from these beasts? I cannot possibly hear myself think.”
Thwarted, the two ravenous lizards were now visiting their frustration upon each other. And what little was left of Owen Nash.
Soong smiled quietly to himself. He’d already been paid handsomely by the North Korean dictator. The second, smaller, suitcase on the floor was full to bursting with dollars. Now, it appeared, he’d live long enough to also dine extravagantly at the Emir’s bottomless trough.
The Daimler exploded fitfully into life. Resuming the short trip to the airstrip, Dr. Soong carefully explained why the I-Virus concealed in titanium canisters inside his black case was vastly more lethal than even one hundred small nuclear devices.
