Age of Voodoo (30 page)

“So I disapproved,” said Seidelmann, “but couldn’t forbid it. In general I could have been firmer with him, but he continued to be helpful, if only intermittently, and he had already contributed so much to the project that I couldn’t begrudge him slacking off a little now. To be honest, I hadn’t even expected him to demonstrate anything like as much of a work ethic as he did in the initial days, given—again—certain cultural dispensations.”

Now Albertine actively bristled. “I could shrivel his balls to the size of raisins,” she hissed.

“I think they already are,” said Lex.

Seidelmann continued his narrative, blithe to any offence he might be causing. “At the same time Deslorges appeared to be developing an obsession.”

“With what?” asked Buckler.

Seidelmann waved a hand. “With here. This installation. Anger Reef. He kept asking people about it: when was it built, how, why. He badgered everyone, even menials like the kitchen staff, but in particular Colonel Gonzalez. He wanted to know the structural specifications of the place, to see plans and blueprints if there were any. No one could help him there. I thought he was just bored and needed something to occupy his mind, a hobby. In a way I was gratified he was showing such an intellectual curiosity about his surroundings. So I suggested he go online, do some searches, see if he could unearth anything. I even let him use my own computer workstation for the purpose. Meanwhile I was busy prepping the first group of human volunteers to try out V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. on.”

“Volunteers,” said Buckler. “Don’t tell me—convicts and such. Death row inmates looking to get their sentences commuted. People with nothing to lose.”

“No, lieutenant. An interesting supposition, but in fact I drew on a pool of your own brethren.” Seidelmann said this with such a smug, sly air that Lex, already inclined to dislike the man, felt a spike of actual loathing for him.

“Forces guys?”

“Why not? The Pentagon sourced me a half-dozen individuals who were willing to do more for their mother country than strap on a rifle and march in line. To be fair, they were also a half-dozen individuals each of whom was facing a court-martial and the very real possibility of a stint in the stockade at Fort Leavenworth.”

“Ah. Scumbags, then.”

“I prefer to think of them as those not temperamentally cut out for a life of military discipline,” said Seidelmann. “Among them was a young private who had left another so badly injured and traumatised after a hazing ritual that the second private is now on antidepressants and cannot walk unaided. There was also an MPC specialist who conducted cruel and unusual abuse of terrorist suspects in captivity—guilty not so much for what he did as for being photographed doing it. Once the pictures were leaked onto the internet, his superiors realised they had no alternative but to make an example of him. All in all, these were six of the less pleasant members of your profession, who were given the choice of being guinea pigs for me, and receiving an other-than-honourable discharge and full pension, or jail time and a dishonourable discharge, with no subsequent veterans’ benefits at all. In their own interest and that of their dependants, they elected to take the former. Who can fault them for that?”

“Yeah,” grumbled Tartaglione. “Goody for them.”

“Regular saints,” Sampson added.

“Shortly before we were due to begin the human trials, I came across Deslorges prowling the corridors of Sublevel Three, the lowest floor here, where most of the labs are. He was searching for something, it seemed. He kept pausing and listening out. He placed a hand on the walls, on the floor, as though trying to feel through them to detect something on the other side. I watched him a while, puzzled, until finally he became aware of me. First thing he said was, ‘Hear that?’ I couldn’t hear anything apart from the hum of the striplights. ‘He’s calling,’ Deslorges said. ‘Who is?’ I asked, but he wouldn’t specify. He just said, ‘He’s calling to me. Taunting me. Challenging me.’ Again I asked him who and he didn’t answer. All I got was this look—this look of wild-eyed anger that I still can’t account for. The whites of Deslorges’s eyes were glassy and pink. His pupils were markedly dilated. He reeked of marijuana smoke. I wondered if he was having some kind of psychotic episode, the kind that can be triggered by cannabinoids, especially when ingested in excessive quantities. However, he didn’t appear altered or maladaptive in any way. On the contrary, he looked and sounded perfectly cogent and normal. Sane. And that, I’m not afraid to admit, alarmed me somewhat.”

“You’re saying you were scared?” said Lex.

“Is that an English accent I detect?” said Seidelmann. “My, what a motley assortment you lot are.”

“Just get on with it, prof,” said Buckler.

“To answer your question, me old china,” Seidelmann said to Lex, “I think it did scare me. Gave me a chill, at least. I was forced to ask myself what sort of man I’d allied myself with, whether I’d misjudged him, been a little optimistic in my assessment of him. But I was preoccupied. My work was coming to a head. I couldn’t let myself be distracted by relatively minor concerns. Tomorrow was D-day, crunch time, the moment when I found out whether nearly a year’s worth of effort was going to bear fruit or be in vain. That was my principal focus.”

Seidelmann heaved a deep, bleak sigh.

“And that was when the horrors began.”

A
FTER A SHORT
break to compose himself, Professor Seidelmann carried on.

“They filed into the main lab, our six volunteers,” he said. “They looked anxious, and who can blame them? They knew nothing about what they were letting themselves in for. They joked and joshed with one another, but beneath the bravado you could sense the trepidation. We lay them down on gurneys, my assistants and I. We strapped them in. We inserted cannulas. We got everything ready. I went to the refrigerator to retrieve the phials of V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. I’d prepared a goodly number of doses of the formula. I knew something was awry the moment I took out the tray. A phial was missing.

“Immediately I quizzed all the assistants. They denied guilt. They swore, to a man, that they hadn’t been in the lab since yesterday evening, when I’d last checked the trays. Knowing them as I did, I believed them. None of them had stolen the phial. Who, then? Who was the culprit? The only other person who had unfettered access to the lab, who owned a pass card and knew the entry code, was Deslorges.

“He hadn’t turned up at the lab that morning, which had surprised me, as I’d thought he would be keen to see V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. used on humans for the first time—the payoff, as it were, for our months of collaborative effort. My suspicions were aroused. Deslorges had taken the phial. It had to be him. Why, though?

“I sent someone off to fetch him. When that person didn’t return after twenty minutes, I sent someone else off. Meanwhile the volunteers were getting restive, starting to grumble and fret. I went ahead and administered each of them with twenty-five millilitres per hour of Propofol via a volumetric IV pump to induce conscious sedation, as I’d been planning to do anyway. That shut them up. Soon they were drifting off, happy in their own headspace.

“Finally, after nearly an hour had passed, I went looking for Deslorges myself.

“I was about to take the elevator up to Sublevel One when I heard a commotion. I turned to see one of my assistants, the second one I’d sent off, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, man by the name of Vijay Kanetkar, haring along the corridor towards me. From the flop sweat and panic on his face I could tell he was running for his life. Then a shot rang out. Dr Kanetkar fell at my feet, stone dead.

“I was in complete shock. I could only stare down at poor Kanetkar, uncomprehending. Then I saw Colonel Gonzalez heading my way, arm outstretched, gun in hand.

“I spluttered, asking him what the matter was, what had Dr Kanetkar done, why had he had to die. Gonzalez didn’t answer. Gonzalez didn’t look like Gonzalez any more. His face was expressionless, blank in a way I had never seen before, as though all the life had departed from it. Which, though I didn’t know it at the time, it had.

“Gonzalez stopped in front of me and aimed his gun at me. I now know what it means when people say they were paralysed with terror. I was. I couldn’t for the life of me move. I stared down at the barrel of that pistol and heard some small, stupid voice in my mind insisting that it was okay to stand stock still because this wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be, I must be hallucinating or the victim of a practical joke or something, I simply couldn’t be about to die.

“Then a voice—a real voice—cried out, ‘Stop!’ It was Deslorges. ‘Don’t shoot. I need him.’

“Gonzalez froze. He didn’t lower the gun. He just became a statue. I think that was the moment when I realised he wasn’t breathing. His immobility was absolute, as though he were cast in bronze.

“Deslorges strode up. ‘Change of plan, professor,’ he said. ‘Change of boss. I’m in charge now. There’s something that needs to be done, and I’m the man to do it. With some help from you.’

“I didn’t quibble or cavil. When you have a gun pointing at you and have just witnessed the cold-blooded murder of a colleague, you simply nod and do as asked.”

“And what did Deslorges ask?” Buckler wanted to know.

“He demanded my full and unstinting co-operation. He said he had a use for V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T.—a personal project he wished to see through. It was half his formula, he said. He had a right to it. It was as much his property as mine or the US government’s.

“‘And I’m ahead of you,’ he told me. ‘I’ve already tried it out on a human being, and you know what? It works. Brilliantly. Only difference is, I tried it out not on someone who’s alive but someone who’s already dead.’

“He could only have been referring to Colonel Gonzalez.

“‘This here is my zuvembie,’ he said, patting Gonzalez the way you’d pat a sports car or a new set of golf clubs. ‘My servant. Loyal to me like no living person could ever be. I poisoned him last night.

“It turned out that they had been upstairs, outdoors, sharing a smoke. Gonzalez had a taste for the weed, which I didn’t know. Deslorges said they had been indulging together every now and then. Gonzalez was busy taking a good long drag, distracted, and Deslorges puffed some of his Triple Cross Powder into his face, and he was, in Deslorges’s own words, gone, gone, gone. Dead in seconds. And then Deslorges gave him a shot of V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T., straight in the neck, and a couple of minutes later he was back.

“‘But... how?’ I asked. Alarmed as I was, I couldn’t contain my curiosity, my ardour for accuracy. ‘How can the formula work after death? There’s no heartbeat to propel it around the bloodstream. It won’t perfuse into the tissues.’

“Deslorges just smiled. ‘
Vodou
,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. At the same time, I couldn’t deny the evidence of my own eyes. What else would explain the bizarre, unliving condition Gonzalez was in? Not only that, I
wanted
to believe it. The scientist in me wanted to believe that I had helped create a biochemical substance so potent, so fit for purpose, it could actually raise the dead.

“‘And now,’ said Delsorges, ‘you and me,
mon ami
, we’re going to do the same to many more people. Everyone in this installation, in fact. Starting with those fellows in the lab.’”

“A
ND YOU DID
?” Buckler prompted.

Seidelmann gave a nod that spoke of a despair so abject, it hurt to recall it. “I did. What choice was there? I had a gun to my head, literally. I—I went along with everything Deslorges told me to.”

“You could have resisted,” said Tartaglione. “Or maybe run away.”

“And go where?” Seidelmann snapped back. “How far do you think I would have got? I’m a scientist, a civilian. I don’t fight. I don’t
resist
. I’m as keen to live as the next man. So don’t give me any of your hairy-chested, damn-the-torpedoes bullshit. It won’t wash.”

“Deslorges killed everyone in the lab?” said Buckler. “Was that how it went down?”

“Not all of them himself. Gonzalez killed some too, at his master’s behest. The assistants first. It was awful. Them running around, screaming. Gonzalez picking them off, shot after shot, emotionlessly, unerringly. Then Deslorges dealt with the sedated volunteers. That powder of his.”

“Triple Cross,” said Albertine coldly. “A lethal
poudre
. Brewed at midnight with the foulest of ingredients, and infused with the power of Baron Samedi.”

“They choked, writhed, strained at their restraints, perished,” said Seidelmann. “And then Deslorges started resurrecting them, one by one, with shots of V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. Chanting over them as they re-emerged from the sleep of death. Wafting incense sticks up and down their bodies. Telling them he was their master now, his the only voice they could hear, his the will they must obey. He, Papa Couleuvre, was their new father.

“I was beyond terror by this point. I was in a place inside myself that felt like the eye of a hurricane. What Deslorges was doing was impossible—unnatural in every sense. And somehow I was responsible for it too. My formula. My work. My science. Deslorges had perverted it but had also unlocked its true potential.

“Only then did something occur to me. I had thought I was the one leading the way, making all the decisions, the senior partner in our working relationship. But what if I’d got that wrong? Perhaps, after all, I hadn’t been exploiting Deslorges for what I could get from him. He had been exploiting
me
. Science and the occult had met and wrestled, and the occult, through chicanery and sleight of hand, had come out on top.