dinner table in helpless panic as a swarm of cadaverous marauders closed ranks around them?
Where, indeed, to rest the eye?
The painting had been remarkable. Absorbed in its sweeping infernal beauty, Siegfried Kuhl might have believed its creator had reached a hand across the centuries and tapped deep into his mind for inspiration. His umbilical connection to it had been overwhelming. It had at once seemed to draw its energy from him and infuse him with its own.
Until that unforgettable experience, Kuhl had never been moved by a work of art. He had gone to the museum out of curiosity and nothing more, compelled by Harlan DeVane’s remark that he might find it of interest. Six months ago, it had been. After the debacle in Kazakhstan, where only a chance diversion had allowed him to break away from the Sword operative with whom he’d grappled in the launch center’s cargo-processing facility.
The man’s features were framed in his mind in photographic detail. Whenever he pictured the sharply angular jut of his cheekbones, the set of his mouth, he would feel the restless desire for vengeance slide coldly through his intestines. As he felt it now, six months later and a continent away, sitting at a window table in a brasserie called
Kuhl’s failure at the Cosmodrome had been a severe blow. Driven underground, wishing to get far ahead of his pursuers, he had altered his appearance, obtaining colored contact lenses, darkening his hair, filling out his lips with collagen injections, even growing a short beard. Then, in his global migrations, he had found himself in Spain for a time, and he realized it was no accident that brought him there.
DeVane had understood how it would be for him to see Brueghel’s masterpiece, reflecting, as it did, the grim sensibility of an age when the Black Death had raged across continents, an indiscriminate scourge exempting no man or authority, no civilized institution, from being laid to waste. An age when none knew whether to blame Heaven or Hell for their miseries.
What power a man who let neither hold sway over his conscience, a man of iron and will, could have seized amid such upheaval. In violent action Kuhl was calm. In chaos he was whole. In the storm amid cries of turmoil he was strongest. And in strength he achieved fulfillment.
DeVane had understood, yes. And it seemed in retrospect that his comments had been as revealing as they were insightful — most probably by design. He found it amusing to lay out enigmatic, far-winding paths for others to untangle.
At any rate, his Sleeper Project must have been well along at that point. Kuhl was not a scientist, but he had sufficient knowledge of the basics of genetic engineering to be certain it would have taken years to produce a pathogenic agent of the type generated at the Ontario facility. The procurement of recombinant DNA technology and raw biological materials would have been a difficult, expensive undertaking. As would the search for top experts in the field from around the world. And preliminary challenges of that sort would have paled to insignificance before those that emerged in the later developmental stages.
The complexities of manipulating a viral organism’s genetic blueprint were manifold. Given the additional requirement that its infectiousness be keyed to a particular genetic trait — blue eyes, left-handedness, familial diabetes, ethnic and racial characteristics, the possibilities were endless — the difficulty of the task became even more considerable. Still, the techniques needed to create such a microbe had been the focus of widespread experimentation in both private and government laboratories in the most advanced nations. And DeVane had gone several steps beyond. His criteria had been that the Sleeper pathogen respond to an unlimited range of inherited human characteristics
In effect, he had overseen the successful creation of a microscopic time bomb. It could be customized to order, residing harmlessly in one host, hatching explosive malignancy in another. It could be as precise as an assassin’s bullet or as widespread in its capacity for devastation as the Plague itself.
It was, Kuhl thought now, nothing less than the ultimate biological weapon.
He looked out the window and saw her emerge from the park, his lovely pale rider, punctual as always, crossing the Grande Allee to the brasserie, her blonde hair tossing in the wind, the collar of her dark, knee-length coat pulled up around her neck against the inclement weather. Though still a month off by the calendar, winter had made an early intrusion into the region, and spits of snow were blowing from a dark gray sky over the bare, rolling fields and ragged trees west of the Citadel.
Kuhl was glad of this. In the long spread of park fringing the cliffs above the Saint Lawrence River, the armies of France and Britain had fought their climactic battle for domination of the region. Yet in the warm seasons, flowers bedecked the soil where the blood of generals had been spilled, and strollers sniffed the perfumed air in the smothering tameness of landscaped gardens.
Those floral blankets scattered to the wind now, the harsh contours of nature were uncovered, appealing to something in the stony fastness of Kuhl’s heart.
She spotted him from outside on the sidewalk, their eyes making contact through the window, a smile tracing at her lips. She entered the restaurant and strode directly toward his table, walking ahead of the punctilious maitre d’ who approached her at the door, motioning to indicate she’d already found her party. Kuhl rose to greet her, touching his lips to the soft white skin below her ear as he came around and helped her out of her coat, she lightly touching the back of his hand with her fingertips, he allowing his kiss to linger on her neck a moment before turning to give the coat to the maitre d’.
They sat. Kuhl had been drinking mineral water, and he waved for the waiter, a quick snap of his hand. She ordered wine, an American Pinot Noir. The waiter hovered beside the table as she tasted it and nodded her approval to him, then hurried off, noticing the impatience in Kuhl’s glance, giving them their privacy.
“Did you have a pleasant trip?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And your lodging?” he said.
“It’s fine,” she said, her English bearing the faint, indeterminate accent characteristic of those who have lived in various parts of the world. “I’ve missed you.”
He nodded silently.
“Will you be joining me at the hotel tonight?” she asked. Turning her wineglass in her hands.
He leaned slightly forward over the table.
“I would like nothing better,” he said. “But we have other dictates.”
“Which can’t be postponed, even for a short while?”
“I leave Quebec before sundown,” he said. “And your flight to the States is scheduled for early tomorrow morning.”
“There have been so many flights lately.” She hesitated. “I’m tired.”
He met her gaze. She was a receptive sexual partner, and he enjoyed her more than any of his other women. Exploring and penetrating her body was like opening a series of catches, one after another after another, unlocking progressively greater measures of her passion until she was his fully and without inhibition. There was exquisite power in reaching to the core of such lust. In being able to control its tornadic outpouring. And power was ever a temptation.
“We will be together. Very soon,” he said. “But…”
“Dictates.” She fell silent, lowering her eyes to her glass. After a few seconds she looked back up at him. “I understand.”
Kuhl nodded and reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat, producing a black enameled gift box of the sort that might hold a bracelet, along with a small card envelope. He held both out to her across the table.
“I’ve gotten you something very unique,” he said. “The rarest of items.”
Anyone happening by the table would have seen her smile as she took them from him, their fingers making the briefest contact.
“Thank you,” she said.
He leaned his face closer to hers, dropped his voice to a near whisper.
“In San Diego you will be meeting with someone named Enrique Quiros,” he said, his lips scarcely moving at all. “The note I’ve written in the card will tell you the rest.”
