Fight the Future (6 page)

The Cigarette-Smoking Man waited before replying. "No," he said at last. "No… we need to try out the vaccine on it."

"And if it's unsuccessful?"

"Burn it. Like the others."

Dr. Bronschweig frowned. "This man's fam-ily will want to see the body laid to rest."

The Cigarette-Smoking Man made a dis-missive gesture. "Tell them he was trying to save the young boy's life. That he died hero-ically, like the other firemen."

"Of what?"

"They seemed to buy our story about the Hanta virus." The Cigarette-Smoking Man pursed his lips and stared meditatively at the figure before him, as though seeing past it to the man it had once been.

"You'll make sure the families are taken care of financially, along with a sizable donation to the community."

He continued to gaze at the fireman. Finally he said, "Maybe a small roadside memo-rial." Then he turned, and without another word left the chamber.

CHAPTER 6

BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL BETHESDA, MARYLAND

Inside Walter Reed it smelled like any other hospital, disinfectant and chemical lemon, alcohol swabs and air-conditioning. But the few people Mulder and Scully passed wore navy uni-forms, not standard-issue scrubs, and the shad-owy figure eating at the end of the hallway was not a nurse but a very young man in uniform, his head bent over the
Washington Post
. At the sound of their footsteps he looked up, alert as though it were not 3:30 in the morning.

"ID and floor you're visiting?" he said.

They flashed him their FBI IDs. "We're going down to the morgue," Mulder explained.

The guard shook his head. "That area is currently off limits to anyone other than authorized medical personnel."

Mulder eyed him coldly. "On whose orders?"

"General McAddie's."

Mulder didn't miss a beat. "General Mc-Addie is who requested our coming here. We were awakened at three A.M. and told to get down here immediately."

"I don't know anything about that." The young naval guard frowned, glancing at the clipboard on his desk.

"Well, call General McAddie." Mulder stared impatiently down the corridor.

"I don't have his number."

"They can patch you in through the switchboard."

Next to Mulder, Scully stood and gazed dis-tractedly into space. The guard bit his lip and nervously checked his watch, then picked up the phone and began flipping through a huge directory. Mulder registered outraged disbelief.

"You don't know the switchboard number?"

"I'm calling my
CO.—"

With a stabbing motion, Mulder reached over and pressed his finger against the phone, disconnecting it. He glared at the guard.

"Listen, son, we don't have time to dick around here, watching you demonstrate your ignorance in the chain of command. The order came direct from General McAddie. Call
him
. We'll conduct our business while you confirm authorization."

Without looking back, Mulder steered Scully past the security desk. Behind them the fresh-faced young guard tentatively picked up the phone again.

"Why don't you go on ahead down, and I'll confirm authorization," he called after them.

Mulder nodded curtly. "Thank you."

They walked briskly down the corridor, only relaxing their pose when they'd turned the corner into another, more dimly lit hall-way.

"Why is a morgue suddenly off limits on orders of a general?"

"Guess we'll find out," Scully replied, and pointed to the entrance to the morgue.

Inside they were met by a blast of frigid air and the dank sour odors of formaldehyde and disinfectant.

In the cold room, row after row of gurneys stretched in ominous formation, each holding the familiar alpine landscape of a body beneath a white sheet. Scully made her way quickly down first one row and then another, glancing at IDs and dangling clipboards until she found what they had come here to find.

"This is one of the firemen who died in Dallas?" she asked, undoing the cat's cradle of roping that bound the still form on the gurney.

Mulder nodded. "According to this tag."

"And you're looking for?"

"Cause of death."

Scully gave him a long-suffering look. "I can tell you that without even looking at him. Concussive organ failure due to proximal expo-sure to source and flying debris—"

She dropped the roping and pulled out the autopsy chart that she found on the gurney. "This body has already been autopsied, Mulder," she explained patiently. "You can tell from the way it's been wrapped and dressed."

Undeterred, Mulder worked to remove the sheet from the body. The first thing they saw was that it was still clad in its fireman's uni-form. One sleeve lay empty alongside the torso, and where the chest had been the uniform sank until it grazed the bottom of the gurney.

"Does this fit the description you just read me, Scully?" Mulder asked softly, as his partner circled the gurney to join him.

"Oh my god. This man's tissue—" She reached into her pocket, withdrew a pair of latex gloves, and quickly slid them on. Then she leaned and with one latex-clad finger gently pal-pated the man's chest.

"It's—it's like
jelly
."

She moved to gingerly touch the man's face and neck, carefully unbuttoning his uniform. "There's some kind of cellular breakdown. It's completely edematous."

Her hands expertly checked for lesions, burns, anything she might normally have found on the victim of a bombing. She peeled aside the man's shirt, shaking her head. "Mulder, there's been no autopsy performed. There's no Y incision here, no internal exam."

Mulder picked up the autopsy report and shook it. "You're telling me the cause of death on this report is false. That this man
didn't
die from an explosion, or from flying debris."

She took a step back from the gurney. "I don't know
what
killed this man. I'm not sure if anybody else could claim to, either."

"I want to bring him into the lab. I'd like for you to examine him more closely, Scully."

She stared at the body, then at Mulder. After a moment she nodded. Together they pushed the gurney out of the freezer, and through the swinging doors that opened onto the pathology lab. Mulder pushed the gurney over to the wall. Scully flipped the lights on, taking in the familiar array of equipment, dis-secting tools, and refrigerators for storing sam-ples, glittering hemostats and neat stacks of freshly laundered sheets, boxes and boxes full of latex gloves, surgical masks, aprons, scrubs— all the tools of her trade. Finally she walked over to where Mulder waited alongside the gur-ney.

"You knew this man didn't die at the bomb site before we got here."

Mulder gave her a noncommittal look. "I'd been told as much."

"You're saying the bombing was a cover-up. Of what?"

"I don't know. But I have a hunch that what you're going to find here isn't anything that can be categorized or easily referenced."

Scully waited to hear if there was going to be more in the way of an explanation—or apology. When there wasn't, she tugged at one latex glove and sighed, shaking her head. "Mulder, this is going to take some time, and
somebody's
going to figure out soon enough that we're not even sup-posed to
be
here."

She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and said, "I'm in serious violation of medical ethics."

Mulder pointed at the body on the gurney. "We're being
blamed
for these deaths, Scully. I want to know what this man died of. Don't you?"

She stared at him, then back down at the body. His words hung in the air between them, something between a challenge and an entreaty. Finally she turned to the tray table set up on the wall behind them, the rows of sterilized scalpels and scissors and tweezers and knives that lay there, waiting. In silence she began gathering what she would need to do her job.

• • •

D-UPONT CIRCLE WASHINGTON, D.C.

Connecticut Avenue was nearly empty when Mulder crossed it, stepping up onto the sidewalk and winding between stacks of plastic garbage bags heaped onto the curb, waiting for collec-tion. His cab pulled away behind him, joining a meager parade of vehicles: garbage truck, another Yellow Cab, police cruiser. Mulder scarcely noticed the latter, until he started down R Street and saw two other cruisers pulled up in front of a brick row house. He glanced at the address scrawled on the paper in his hand, then started up the walk. Cheerless gray light spilled onto the front stairs; the door to the row house was open. Mulder slowed his steps, hesitating at the entrance, then went inside.

It was a typical Dupont Circle apartment. A lot of money bought you a little space and a nice address, and that was about it. An unmade futon bed occupied one corner of the room; a kitchenette still held the remains of breakfast. In the main room several uniformed officers milled about, examining a stack of videotapes in black plastic slipcovers, rifling through desk drawers, peering into the disk drive of a com-puter. A small office had been set up in what was intended to be a bedroom. Here a police detective contemplated stacks of what ap-peared to be OB/GYN journals. He looked up as Mulder's shadow fell across the doorway.

"Is this Dr. Kurtzweil's residence?"

The detective eyed him suspiciously. "You got some kind of business with him?"

"I'm looking for him." Mulder's tone was noncommittal.

"Looking for him for what?"

Mulder pulled out his ID and flashed it at him. The detective glanced at it, then looked up and called to his partners in the next room, "Hey, the Feds are looking for him, too." He turned back to Mulder.

"Real nice business he's got, huh?"

Mulder frowned slightly. "What's that?"

"Selling naked pictures of little kids over his computer."

Mulder nodded, trying not to show his sur-prise. He stepped into the middle of the small office, staring at the bookshelf by the detective. On each lurid dust jacket the same name appeared in big, gold-embossed letters.

DR. ALVIN KURTZWEIL

Mulder slipped alongside the detective and withdrew one of the books. Surprisingly light for such a big volume—five hundred pages, at least—printed on cheap paper that was already yellowing. He flipped through it, then read the cover.

THE FOUR HORSEMAN OF THE GLOBAL DOMI-NATION CONSPIRACY

Mulder glanced over as the detective appeared at his elbow. "You looking for him for some other reason?'

"Yeah." He replaced the book and gazed at the detective through narrowed eyes. "I had an appointment for a pelvic examination."

The detective and other policemen stared at him with undisguised repugnance. When Mulder smiled they suddenly broke into rau-cous laughter.

"You want a call if we turn up Kurtzweil?"

Mulder turned and started back for the door. "No. Don't bother."

Outside the sky had its customary livid, near-dawn glow: yellow crime lights, lavender exhaust, the city's inescapable humidity all conspiring to give the landscape a bruised look. Mulder exited the apartment building, hoping it wouldn't take too long to find a cab, then he noticed a lanky silhouette gesturing furtively at him a few yards away. Mulder looked over his shoulder, then back at the fig-ure. It was Kurtzweil, standing with obvious unease in front of a narrow gap between two row houses. When he saw that Mulder had noticed him he nodded, then stepped back and disappeared into the darkness.

Mulder hurried after him.

He found Kurtzweil halfway down a dank alley that smelled of urine and spilled beer. Broken bottles and crack vials crunched under-foot—not Dupont Circle looking its best. Kurtzweil huddled up against the brick wall and shook his head furiously.

"See this bullshit?" he said contemptuously. "Cloak and dagger stuff… Somebody knows I'm talking to you."

Mulder shrugged. "Not according to the men in blue."

"What is it this time? Kiddie porn again? Sexual battery of a patient?" Kurtzweil spat. "I've had my license taken away in three states."

Mulder nodded. "They want to discredit you—for what?"

"For what?" Kurtzweil threw his head back and stared at the liverish sky far overhead. "Because I'm a dangerous man! Because I know too much about the truth…"

"You mean that end-of-the-world, apocalyp-tic garbage you write?"

A spark flared in Kurtzweil's eyes. "You know my work?" he asked hopefully.

Mulder took a deep breath. "Dr. Kurtzweil, I'm not interested in bigoted ideas about race or genocide. I don't believe in the Elders of Zion, the Knights Templar, the Bilderburg Group,
or
in a one-world Jew-run government—"

Kurtzweil grinned. "I don't either, but it sure sells books."

Disgusted, Mulder spun on his heel and headed out. Before he reached the sidewalk Kurtzweil collared him.

"I was right about Dallas, wasn't I, Agent Mulder?"

Mulder sighed and stared at him. "How?" he demanded.

"I picked up the historical document of the venality and hypocrisy of the American govern-ment. The daily newspaper."

Impatience flickered across Mulder's face.

"You said the firemen and the boy were found in the temporary offices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Why?"

Kurtzweil pulled his raincoat tight about his chest and glanced nervously down the alley. "According to the newspaper, FEMA had been called out to manage an outbreak of the Hanta virus. Are you familiar with the Hanta virus, Agent Mulder?"

"It was a deadly virus spread by deer mice in the Southwest U.S. several years ago."

"And are you familiar with FEMA? What the Federal Emergency Management Agency's
real
power is?"

Mulder raised his eyebrows, waiting to hear how this was all going to fit. Kurtzweil went on quickly,

"FEMA allows the White House to suspend constitutional government upon dec-laration of a national emergency. It allows the creation of a non-elected government. Think about that, Agent Mulder."

Mulder thought. Kurtzweil's voice rose slightly, knowing he finally had an audience. "What is an agency with such broad sweeping power doing managing a small viral outbreak in suburban Texas?"