Bio-Strike

He turned, strode toward the door.

“Siegfried.”

Kuhl looked over his shoulder. DeVane’s eyes were still steady on him.

“You now know much about me,” he said.

“Yes.”

“As much as anyone living ever will.”

“Yes.”

DeVane looked at him another moment, then nodded.

Kuhl reached for the doorknob and let himself out of the office.

* * *

Sick.

He felt so sick.

Palardy crouched with his head over the john, the bathroom tiles hard against his knees. The taste of acid and nails filled his mouth, and his stomach felt twisted inside out from the repeated vomiting. He’d been at it since Sunday night, losing his half-digested dinner in painful wracking fits. And it had only gotten worse when his stomach was emptied of its solid contents, his spasms going on through the morning, the digestive juices spurting sour and rancid into his throat. And worse still when there was no more bile left in him, when he’d started to dry heave.

Maybe three o’clock in the morning he’d thrown on some clothes, gone down to the twenty-four-hour convenience store for some ginger ale, hoping that might settle him. Twice, three times during the short walk over he’d had to stop, reel toward the curb, and hug a lamppost to keep from losing his feet. But his stomach cramps had been unbearable. And there was the dizziness, the sidewalk seeming to lurch underneath him with every step. It had taken a big piece of forever to get to the store, find the soda, and pay for it, the clerk looking at him like he was a drunkard or a drug addict come to rob the place. Palardy was certain he’d had his hand on something under the counter — an alarm button, a gun, who could tell? — as he’d rung up the sale.

And then the agonizing return to his apartment building. Another small eternity. He’d sat back on his sofa and drunk the soda warm. Taking small sips, figuring his system could tolerate a little at a time.

Palardy supposed that was when he’d first noticed his sore throat. Could be it had been developing gradually throughout the night. Maybe he’d have felt it sooner if his stomach hadn’t been in constant throes. But it was pretty inflamed, and he doubted it could have gotten that bad all at once. His tonsils felt as big as thumbs, and he had trouble swallowing. And he’d felt these lumps on either side of his neck; he guessed they were swollen glands.

Drinking that soda had itself been an ordeal. And ultimately, it was for nothing. The trip to the deli, his slow, careful sipping, for nothing. The ginger ale had jetted from him in a fountain before he could make it to the bathroom, spilling over his hands, onto the upholstery, onto the carpet. Bubbles of soda mixed with spit and phlegm.

After that, Palardy hadn’t tried to swallow anything, liquid or solid.

Sick, he was so god-awful sick. A few minutes ago, he’d thought his guts would tear themselves apart, come squeezing out of him in bloody nuggets. Those dry, ratcheting heaves, his whole body hurt from them. His back and sides as much as his stomach. Jesus. And the way his heart was beating right now, slamming against his ribs, rapid and erratic. Jesus Christ, it was horrible.

Palardy hung over the toilet, gasping, clutching his middle. Waiting to see if his latest attack had really passed or if another round of spasms would sneak up on him.

After a while, he decided he’d gotten a temporary reprieve and rose to his feet, holding the sink to steady himself. He reached for the tap, splashed cold water on his face, swished some in his mouth, and spat into the basin. The horrid taste didn’t leave him. He hadn’t expected it would.

Palardy staggered out the bathroom door, his head heavy. He was cold and trembling. In the hallway he got a flannel blanket from the closet and tossed it over his shoulders. Then he made his way back to the living room and dropped onto the couch.

What was happening? What was the matter with him?

He sat there wrapped in the blanket, trying to get warm. Wishing he could relax. But a terrible thought kept asserting itself in his mind. If not from the onset of the sickness, then soon after, he’d started to wonder whether it could be connected to what was in that hypodermic case Enrique Quiros had given him, to what had been in the ampule. Only a gullible fool could have neglected to consider the possibility. It had occurred to him the night he’d met Quiros at the harbor that anybody who would risk ordering someone as important as Roger Gordian to be hurt or killed would be capable of doing whatever it took to cover his tracks. Of doing away with anybody who might increase his chances of being tied to the act. In the car, Quiros had seemed uneasy about his own involvement. Eager to be through with it. Palardy couldn’t remember the exact words he’d used, but they had hinted that he had no personal interest in harming Gordian and was having his strings pulled by someone higher up the line. That he was looking out for himself the same as Palardy.

It had been a jarring revelation. Palardy never thought of himself as a criminal, couldn’t have felt more different from Quiros. And to realize they had that in common, realize they would go to equal lengths to protect themselves…

Jarring as hell.

Palardy was aware he was the only link between Enrique Quiros and Roger Gordian. Eliminate him, and the trail would be cut. This had come to him right there in the cruise ship terminal parking lot. Before parting ways with Quiros, he’d raised his fears indirectly and asked how he was supposed to know that exposure to the contents of the ampule wouldn’t have some terrible effect on him. And Quiros had spent several minutes explaining that the liquid was harmless in itself, the final ingredient of a biological recipe unique to the individual being dosed. Without every one of the other precise ingredients in your makeup, there was nothing to fear. You could consume a gallon of the stuff, and it wouldn’t have any effect.

Palardy had no trouble grasping the general concept. He’d followed developments in genetic research in the news, read plenty of magazine articles. Moreover, UpLink International had owned one of the major gene-tech firms until its downsizing maybe a year ago, still retaining a stake in the company, and Palardy had been chummy with some of the people who worked there. So he was knowledgeable enough about their research to understand that Quiros’s reassurances had been worthless. Because the recipe was only as unique as the person brewing it up chose for it to be. Imagine he wanted to get rid of everybody with brown hair, or some other feature shared by an untold number of people. What would that do to the mortality rate of those exposed to his “final ingredient”? Wouldn’t that make it more of a final solution?

And there was another part of Quiros’s explanation that Palardy had sensed was intentionally misleading. If he wanted to talk about the agent being tailored to a person’s inherited traits, fine. But how was Palardy to be sure Quiros hadn’t had somebody get hold of his genetic diagram for that very purpose? Pluck a few hairs from his comb, some dead skin from his shower floor?

Sneak into his apartment and contaminate his orange juice, bottled water, or cold cuts with a few millimeters of a trigger formulated especially for the genetic cake mix called Don Palardy? How was he to be sure?

Palardy sank back against the sofa cushions and listened to the sound of his own labored breathing. This morning, when he’d phoned in sick to work, his intention had been to call the doctor next. But the thoughts swirling around his brain had made him decide against it. Made him petrified of doing it, in fact. If he’d caught an ordinary bug, it would eventually run its course. Yet if his symptoms were being caused by a virus or bacteria invented in a laboratory, some microbe the doctors couldn’t identify, his sole hope of staying alive would be to reveal what he knew about it. And even assuming he could figure out some way to withhold how he knew what he did, when his disease was found to be the same one Roger Gordian had contracted, it would inevitably lead to questions he’d be unable to slip. Then he’d be implicated in a murder, the first of its kind, his name up there somewhere in infamy with Lee Harvey Oswald. And he’d be as dead as Oswald, too.

His face pale and sweaty, his body aching, Palardy closed his eyes. There had to be something he could arrange. Something he could do to get back at Quiros in case he’d been duped. Used and discarded. Maybe he was getting carried away with himself, and everything would turn out okay. But just in case, just in case, there had to be something…

And then, suddenly, it crossed his mind that there was.