Final Epidemic (35 page)

“I am the Russian here, Beck. It is I who should make such enigmatic statements.”

Beck laughed softly in turn.

“Forgive me, Alexi. I guess I’m not being a good host. This is the first chance I’ve had to think clearly since all this began. Maybe longer.”

“It is understandable. And what have you been thinking, my friend?”

“For one thing, how easy it was to assign the guilt,” Beck said. “I’m supposed to be the expert on terrorism, and all of us ‘experts’ have been warning that extremist groups were the biggest threat we faced these days. Particularly when it comes to biological terrorism. It was inevitable, we said. One day, some cult would use a bioweapon to attack a major power.”

“It is a logical assessment.” Alexi shrugged. “I do not think one need be a prophet to predict this.”

“My point exactly.” Beck nodded. “And the Aum—well, you couldn’t invent a better villain. Of
course
they were responsible; of
course
they did it because they were religious fanatics. How easy it was to accept: the Aum had an end-of-the-world mind-set, as well as the charismatic leader who believed he was a god.”

“Do not forget, my friend—they also had the demonstrated ability to wage biological warfare. These zealots have previously acted on their murderous fantasies.”

Incongruously, Alexi chucked. “To act as a god—for some, perhaps this is the same as to
be
God.” He peered closely at Beck’s expression. “Ah. You do not think so.”

“The majority of the Aum are followers,” Beck said. “Follow the leader: that’s the nature of such groups. That’s why it was so simple to get them to commit mass murder. And, later, mass suicide. Asahara is in prison, awaiting execution. So what ‘god’ were the rank and file taking orders from?”

“They had their sensei,” Alexi said. “Their so-called teachers, who led them to these acts.”

“Teachers, or teacher?” Beck asked. “In Japanese, the word means both singular and plural.”

“Yes.” Alexi’s voice had become impatient. “And if any Aum still lived, we could ask them. Perhaps this man Ilya is a sensei, or the Sensei. Or perhaps he too is a follower, and these teachers died by their own hands. What is the point, Beck? They are all dead.”

“Nicely put, Alexi. You see, that’s part of my problem. The Aum are dead. The man they used in your country—Davidovich, I mean; the same person our CIA had employed as a Russian agent—he’s dead, too. All these people, the ones who might be able to provide answers of their own—they all seem to be dead, Alexi.”

“Less than three hundred kilometers from us, many more people are dead, or soon will be.” Alexi flushed. “My apologies—I do not mean that your daughter—”

“It’s all right, Alexi. But I can’t think about Katie right now. Not if I want to think clearly. You understand that, I believe.”

Alexi nodded. His eyes watched the other man closely, though whether in concern or something else, Beck could not tell.

“Today, April O’Connor died. Just as I would have, if you hadn’t entered at that very moment. And pulled me away.”

“You were quite fortunate, but I am no hero,” Alexi said, his tone trying to lighten the mood. “It was too late for me to go back outside. Had you opened the inner door to your friend, the gas would have killed me too.”

“I certainly understand enlightened self-interest, Alexi,” Beck said. “Bottom line, then. The Aum created a doomsday virus. They passed some of it along to militias in America, possibly in Russia. Then they killed themselves.”

“It is quite a simple story, my friend.”

“You’ve told me that before,” Beck said agreeably. “Just as you recently reminded me not to look for logic in an illogical act. I forgot that. I let myself be carried along by the
events, the story as it unfolded. I didn’t look for anything else.”

“You saw what existed. There was nothing else to see.”

Beck rubbed his eyes. “So you say. Just as you said that Davidovich was Aum. Just as you said that this Ilya is also Aum. You told me that the virus was brought into Russia by a mysterious Japanese man. And earlier today, after April died, you were certainly quick to conclude that Ilya was responsible. You see, it never even occurred to me to wonder how he knew we were here—let alone how Ilya knew April O’Connor’s name. It was printed on the package, you know.”

Beck looked up, and saw Alexi Malenkov watching him with eyes that were carefully hooded.

“Yes,” the Russian agreed. “That is a mystery, is it not?”

“I just . . . went along with what you were saying. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, haven’t I?”

Beck smiled at Alexi politely. “You have certainly become a central person in this story, Alexi. As I sat here, tonight, it occurred to me: most of what I know about any of this has come from
you
. Were I a less trusting person, I might start to worry about that.”

Alexi reached forward, patting Beck on his knee as an adult might placate a child. Then he stood and stretched. “You are tired, my friend. And worried about your daughter. In such a state, it is too easy to see conspiracies everywhere. It is a very human reaction.”

“Right on all counts, Alexi. You see, once again you have framed everything for me, quite logically. Accept the premise, and the conclusion is inescapable. You have convinced me that only one conclusion is possible.”

Alexi looked genuinely puzzled. “And what is that, Beck?”

“That you are the one the Aum called Sensei,” Beck said.

Montgomery, Alabama
July 23

There was a moment when neither man moved, nor made a sound. Then a slow smile spread over the Russian’s features, finally culminating in what to Beck looked like a guileless grin.

“What am I to do now, my friend?” Alexi asked genially. “Am I to gasp in shock and fear—or to produce a pistol and demand from you how you learned this? I will do one or the other, of course, if you insist. I have always had a weakness for bad theater.”

“No need,” Beck said. “Just tell me why.”

Alexi nodded sagely.

“Ah—you wish the denouement, the melodramatic confession of the guilty party. You make an irrational accusation, Beck; perhaps you do not even recognize how absurd it sounds. Why should I humor you in this foolishness?”

“It’s just the two of us here, Alexi. Who else is there to tell? Besides, didn’t you come in here to kill me anyway?”

Alexi studied him for a moment, as if considering what expression to paint on his own face. Then he threw back his head and laughed, delighted.

“Ah—
this
is the Beck Casey I knew from before. So
quiet, but such brilliant leaps of insight! I wish I had your gift. Tell me truly: had you really left the CIA?”

“I had, before this—before
you
—brought me back.”

Alexi chuckled, a rueful sound. “Beck, Beck. It seems I have worked very hard to accomplish the exact opposite of what I intended. Perhaps you have earned the right to know
my
truth.”

He reached into his side pocket and withdrew a knife, its naked blade serrated and similar in length to the one that another Russian had plunged into Beck’s thigh. He casually placed it on the table near the champagne bottle, within easy reach.

“I have worried about you, my friend. Forgive me, but you had become quite a boring companion. You were so . . .
compliant.
Malleable.”

“Yes,” Beck said. “Deborah said the same thing. She said I had become passive—a spectator.” He spread his hands amiably. “So tell me a story, Alexi. Tell me
this
story.”

“Very well. Where shall I start?”

“The virus. You lied to me. It was Russian-made.”

Alexi shook his head. “No. In that, I was quite forthright. This doomsday virus was the product of a man named Anji Suzuki. He was a biogeneticist and a member of the Aum, though his recruitment into the group was somewhat . . . brutish. May I smoke?”

Beck nodded, and watched as Alexi produced the flat package of Russian cigarettes and lit one with a battered Ronson lighter. He blew the plume of bluish smoke skyward in obvious satisfaction.

“Ah. Anji Suzuki. The psychoactive drugs you received when you were a guest of our
Mafiya
—do you remember them? I doubt Dr. Suzuki did; his treatment was weighted much more heavily toward electrotherapy, which I understand creates a significant detriment to short-term memory.”

Beck frowned. “He was kidnapped? Brainwashed?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Alexi said. “He had needed
skills and no close family. It is not difficult, as you know. The Aum are—
were
—quite adept at eliciting what they called an Enlightenment. The trick, as I understand the matter, is to alter the personality—the part of the mind that contains all the small quirks that makes one an individual—without destroying the mind itself.”

Alexi pursed his lips mock sadly. “A pity, Beck. Suzuki was quite a talented geneticist. Afterward, I arranged for him to receive an intensive—let us call it a tutorial—at my country’s bioweapon development center in Omutninsk. This instruction allowed him to stand on the shoulders of giants in the field of biological weaponry, and greatly simplified his own work on the influenza virus.”

“He’s dead, I assume.”

Alexi shrugged, a casual gesture.

“How did you get the virus to America, Alexi? Did your Aum create another zombie for that, too?”

Alexi smiled, pleased.

“Such a colorful term. No, Anji volunteered for that task. A quite dedicated person, Beck—a zealot. He disappeared shortly after he arrived in your country on his last visit. It seems likely that he was killed by our mutual acquaintance, Ilya. He succeeded only in spreading the infection to Florida.”

“Katie is in Florida,” Beck said. “My daughter, Alexi.”

“In truth, Beck, the outbreak in Florida was a surprise to me. The plan called for poor Anji to fly across your country—disembarking, of course, in selected cities along the way. The hub cities of your major airlines.”

Alexi waved his hand, a dismissive gesture.

“It is of no matter, really. Except to Anji, of course. He was a true believer, and would have been very disappointed to know that he performed so poorly on his last glorious mission.”

“At your orders, he was to release mass murder,” Beck said. His voice was not quite right—hoarse and distant, the
voice of a man who was trying to understand the incomprehensible. “You knew it was a virus with the ability to kill . . .
billions
.”

“Of course,” the man who had been called Sensei replied. “I would not have thought it could turn out otherwise. Surely you understand that. My friend, perhaps you recall the birth of a female child in the Balkans a few years ago? It was touted as a major symbolic event: the population of our little planet reaching six billion people. There was already a plague under way—a plague of people, voracious as any microbe. We can certainly spare a few billion of them, Beck.”

“That’s a rather coldblooded philosophy, Alexi.”

“I do not agree. Consider every problem facing the world today; the root cause behind it is the same. Famine? Too many people. Poverty? Too many people. War?” The Russian laughed, and shook his head ruefully. “Well, people will always fight with one another, is it not so? But when people seek the resources owned by their neighbors, it is almost always because the very scarcity of those resources has made them valuable—perhaps even essential to survival. What creates this scarcity? Again, it is overpopulation. I do the world a service, you see.”

“Alexi,” Beck said, “I find it hard to believe you’ve done all this because you have become a humanitarian.”

Alexi Malenkov threw back his head and laughed explosively.

“You are right to be skeptical, Beck,” he said, the mirth still in his tones. “Forgive me. I love too much the rhetorical discussion, the debate. In truth, I do not care how many people live on this world, as long as I am one of them. Living, of course, substantially more comfortably than most.”

“You are not an Aum, Alexi.”

Malenkov looked surprised, then offended.

“Certainly not. To worship the words of a half-witted madman—no, this is not for me, thank you. But this is not to say that I do not recognize a useful tool when it is handed
to me. They have much energy, these fanatics. And they are not without resources, of course.

“After their Tokyo farce with the poison gas, I was ordered to eradicate the cult’s Russian membership. Beck, I was appalled at the waste! Thirty thousand Russian Aum—all of them already proven quite as gullible as they were energetic. Several thousand more in Japan, even more industrious and vastly more prosperous.”

Alexi, still smiling, spread his hands in a what-could-I-do? gesture. “Well. Clearly, this was a valuable resource—one that had been shorn of its previous leadership and was, metaphorically, wandering aimlessly in the desert. I found it unconscionable to cast away such an asset.”

“So you spent the past few years assimilating the Aum,” Beck said. “I can understand how you could do it in Russia, Alexi. But I’m very impressed you were able to take in the Japanese Aum too.”

“Really, it was not difficult to position myself advantageously with the Japanese cultists,” Alexi said. “I was their cohort from Russia, a fellow Truthseeker as devastated as any of them at the plight of the divine God Asahara.” He snorted, though in derision or amusement Beck could not tell. “And I confess, I rather liked the title of Sensei. I am a teacher, of a sort.”

“Is that where you found Davidovich? Among the Aum?”

“Davidovich? I doubt if he even knew what an Aum was,” Alexi said with scorn. “He was merely a scribbler who sought to supplement his income by selling unimportant information to foreigners. A convenient—what is the word? Dupe? Stooge? One might almost feel sorry for such a creature.”

“Why go to the trouble of pretending an interrogation?” Beck pressed. “Why was it necessary to torture him, Alexi?”

Alexi stitched a mock apologetic expression on his face.

“Ah, my friend—that was for your benefit. Do not look
so shocked; accept it as a compliment. I have a great respect for your intellect, you see.”