The 731 Legacy (17 page)

they entered his office.

Ted hung her topcoat on the rack next to his before shutting the door and taking his seat behind the desk. "Still got to be warmer than the mountains of Moldova."

"That's an understatement." She sat in a chair facing him. "I've never been so cold in my life, especially on the cliff ledge looking up at Dracula's Castle in the middle of the night. There were gale-force winds and driving snow trying to blow me into a thousand-foot-deep chasm. Made my walk to work this morning feel like a summer stroll." She noticed his coffeepot was half empty and a drained mug sat on his desk. "You must have come in early."

"I get a lot done when nobody is around." He lifted a brown envelope with her name written on it. "Fame follows you like a puppy."

"Everybody gets their fifteen minutes."

"I think you exceeded your fifteen minutes a long time ago, kiddo. Every talk show wants an interview—Leno, Letterman, even Oprah's people called." He handed her the envelope.

Cotten glanced inside at a collection of message slips. "I'm much more comfortable as the interviewer."

"I know. Just roll with it." Then he slid a document across his desk. "I put together an initial report on the Amazon death."

Cotten scanned it. "You figure this anthropologist, Pierre Charles, has something of value?"

"Could be. He mentioned the same symptoms as Calderon. Plus, just like here, nobody else got sick. Might be a long shot, but I think it's worth looking into."

Cotten skimmed the report again. "Doesn't say much."

"I know, but you're good at digging."

She glanced to confirm that his office door was closed. "Ted, there are some things that I didn't tell you on the phone. When I was in the castle's dungeon, I overheard Burns and General Borodin talking. They said that the whole kidnapping and ransom thing was a diversion meant to pull me off this investigation. They also referred to a Korean connection and a woman scientist who is involved in some secret experiment. They said that she had health problems and didn't have a lot of time left to finish whatever she is doing. So it sounds like we may be on a short fuse here."

"And you think she's tied to the deaths?"

"Not sure, yet. But I haven't told you everything."

"There's more?"

"Ted, you're one of the only people on earth that knows about my... legacy."

"Are you going to tell me that this is connected to The Fallen?"

"Burns is Nephilim. I couldn't confirm it, but I suspect that General Borodin was, too."

Ted leaned back. His brow furrowed as he rubbed his face. "If that's the

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case, then you need to talk to the anthropologist as soon as possible."

"Exactly. No phone interview. I want to fly down there and meet him face to face. Let me see if I can book a flight."

"I'll do you one better. The brass upstairs owes you a big one for all the PR you did for us in Moldova. I'll get authorization for you to fly to Gainesville in the corporate Gulfstream. How soon can you leave?"

"Just need to grab a few things from my office."

Ted picked up the phone and buzzed his assistant. "I need one of the Town Cars brought around to the front for Cotten Stone." He glanced up at her.

"You still here?"

***

Cotten pulled up in front of the Gator Lofts apartments and parked her rental. It was located two blocks behind "The Swamp," the nickname for the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, home to the University of Florida Gators. The apartment wasn't much on the outside, but then again, college students lived on a shoestring budget.

She climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on the door to Pierre Charles' apartment. A moment later, the door swung open.

"Ms. Stone?"

"Yes," she said.

"Come in. Sorry the place is a bit of a mess. I've been trying to get back in grad school mode this past week." The anthropologist wore flip-flops, a pair of Gator orange sweats, and a T-shirt with a picture of the starshipEnterprise on the front. He had dark eyes and an unruly mop of hair, but a warm smile.

Looking around, Cotten felt the apartment seemed tidy. Nothing forBetter Homes and Gardens, but certainly a classic example of functional beauty. In a college student tradition that spanned decades, bookshelves were made from CBS concrete blocks with slabs of unfinished one-by-eight pine shelving. The floors were real wood but needed refinishing. To his credit they were clean. Furniture was sparse and simple.

"Mr. Charles, I appreciate you agreeing to meet with me." Even with his delightful French accent, Cotten found that his English was perfect.

"Please," the young man said. "Call me Pierre. And it's an honor, Ms. Stone. I have seen you on television many times and followed your amazing adventures. Didn't some writer recently call you a female Indiana Jones with a press pass?"

"I do have a press pass," she said with a chuckle, "but I'm afraid the rest is fiction."

"Nevertheless, you certainly have a way of capturing the headlines. So, please have a seat." With a hand gesture he indicated a boxy sofa with a blue slipcover.

Cotten sat and took out her miniature digital recorder. "Do you mind if I

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record our interview? I have a terrible memory."

"It's fine with me."

"All right then, Pierre, would you tell me about the mysterious death you witnessed in the Amazon. Start at the beginning. I know you've already spoken to someone at SNN. But I'd like to have the entire story myself. Okay?"

"Yes."

"Just start when you're ready." Cotten turned on the recorder.

Pierre cleared his throat. "I was in the Yanomamo village for more than two years. During that time, I had never seen much sickness. Not even common colds. These people are so pure, so unaffected by the rest of the world." Pierre rubbed his knees. "I hate to think what this report might bring on them. They should be protected."

"Unfortunately, the word is already getting out. I'm just trying to find the source of the sickness, I suppose like everybody else. The case you cited isn't the only one of its kind, and that's why so many people are already concerned."

"I understand." He closed his eyes and shook his head as if the memory was vibrant. "It was a terrible thing.Catastrophique."

"Tell me what happened. How old was the victim and how long had she been ill?"

"She was maybe in her mid-thirties, maybe a little younger. It is hard to say. She had been feeling poorly for several days and the village shaman tended to her. First she had a fever, headache, chills, and general myalgia. Then she developed a rash on the trunk of her body. But still she did not appear morbidly ill. I didn't pay much attention after that, but was told later that she had experienced vomiting and delirium. And at the end, that is when I saw her, saw the horror of it." Pierre wiped his face with his hands. "It was the worst death. She bled from her nose, her ears and eyes, bloody diarrhea, every orifice seeped blood. Horrible. Horrible."

Pierre visibly shuddered at the recollection and stared in the distance.

"You know their mortuary practice is to cremate their dead, then crush and pulverize the bones and make a drink of it. They believe it keeps their loved ones with them forever." He looked at Cotten. "I couldn't bring myself to take part, even though I was extended an invitation."

"No, I suppose not. And you say no one else in the village had been sick or became sick that you know of?"

He shook his head. "Not even the shaman who was in such close contact with her. He had breathed her breath and put his mouth to her nostrils and mouth. He didn't become ill, nor did anyone else. It took me a few days to get out of there. Scared the shit out of me. But nobody else showed any symptoms. The shaman blamed me, not me personally, but said it came from my world, meaning the outside culture that had infiltrated his remote village."

"Had anything unusual happened in the village prior to this woman getting sick?"

"No, nothing."

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There was a pause in the conversation.This is looking like a dead end. Cotten realized that Pierre had no more answers than she did. He was only a witness to the dreadfulness of whatever this disease was, just like she had been.

"Anything else you can remember?" she asked.

"Nothing. I am sorry."

"Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. And I have to say, I appreciate your passion for caring so much for these people and trying to keep them protected. Man does so much damage in the name of research and progress."

"You're right. I had that exact conversation with an anthropologist who passed through the village just a week or so before all this happened. Dong-yul agreed with me. We had quite a discussion on the topic."

"Dong-yul?" A spike of adrenalin shot through her. "That's an interesting name."

"It's Korean. Said his name meant Eastern Passion."

LUTHER

"And finally, in a follow-up story," the SNN Headline News anchor said,

"you may recall an incident that recently occurred right here at our New York studios."

A graphically bloody photograph appeared electronically over her shoulder.

"This man, identified as former pharmaceutical salesman, Jeff Calderon, collapsed in the SNN lobby and later died of what appeared to be the last stages of a mysterious, extremely lethal infection. The subsequent disappearance of his body before authorities could perform an autopsy is still under investigation by the New York City police and health departments and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Because of the severity of Mr. Calderon's symptoms, authorities are understandably concerned for the safety of the public. Until recently, no other cases had surfaced. For a special report on this we go to senior investigative correspondent, Cotten Stone."

***

Luther Sutton sat in the threadbare La-Z-Boy recliner and drained the last drops of Miller beer from the can. He was dog tired and his back had flared up again. Shoveling snow, chopping wood, many of his routine chores aggravated his lower back. And the West Virginia wind made his arthritis agonizing. Some of the teenage grandkids would have to start coming over and help him out. But since they buried Big Thelma, no one came around much anymore. Big Thelma's

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sickness had caused a rift in the family that Luther didn't see any hope for being repaired.

He started to get up and shuffle into the kitchen for another Miller but paused when something caught his eye on the Sylvania. A reporter woman was yapping away about some native person down in South America that had died from an awful disease. He recognized the reporter. Stone was her name. He'd seen her on TV before.

"So the only connection we have so far," Cotten was saying, "is the unusually severe symptoms exhibited by Mr. Calderon and the Yanomamo native. Anthropologist Pierre Charles described it as the worst death he had ever witnessed. He said that she bled from her nose, her ears and eyes, bloody diarrhea, every orifice seeped blood. Experts from the CDC are asking for the public's help in trying to determine if anyone knows of other cases. If so, please contact the Centers for Disease Control at the number on your screen or visit ww-w-dot-satellite-news-dot-org for additional information."

Luther let out a grunt as he pushed his heels and lower calves against the footrest of the recliner, bringing it upright. Slowly, he braced his tired hands on the arms of the chair and stood. His dusty boots scraped across the well-worn wooden floor as he moved toward the kitchen. He opened the old Frigidaire and wrapped his skeleton fingers around another can of beer, snapped the top open, and downed half.

"They might want to dig her up," he said to himself. "Rest of the family won't allow it." He stood in the dark by the Formica-top dinette and drank the rest of the beer. Nobody but he and his baby brother, Ellis, had seen her at the end. The rest didn't understand how bad it was. They didn't know about the devil's death.

Placing the can on the table, he went to the rotary dial wall phone and lifted the receiver.

DEAD IN THE WATER

The next morning, Cotten was in her office going over her facts and suspicions of the investigation. After the Gainesville interview with Pierre Charles, there was no doubt that the Calderon and Yanomamo deaths, T-Kup, Black Needles, and North Korea were all connected. The big question was: how?

She turned to her desktop computer and Googled hemorrhagic virus. The first link on the list was Ebola.

Ebola is one of the deadliest groups of viral hemorrhagic fevers that begins with fever and muscle aches and progresses to where the patient becomes very ill, suffers from breathing difficulties, severe bleeding, and organ failure. The source of the virus remains unknown. It is transmissible by direct

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contact with infected blood, body fluids, and semen.

Cotten bounced her pencil eraser on the desk before clicking the browser's back button. She followed links to other hemorrhagic viruses like Marburg and Omsk. Marburg was transmitted like Ebola. Omsk, however, couldn't be passed from human to human. Transmission of Omsk was by the bite of an infective tick, but there was also the possibility of direct transmission by musk-rats and contaminated water. It wasn't as deadly as Ebola or Marburg, and was pretty much limited to Russia.

She read about others, but none quite fit. The thing most perplexing about Calderon and the Amazon woman was that nobody around them got sick. The cases were isolated to those two individuals. Calderon was probably sexually active, and a nearly penniless addict, therefore sharing needles was likely. So where were the sick sexual partners or fellow junkies? He could have been infected by a tick, but others would have been also. And the woman in the Amazon—Pierre had said he thought she was in her thirties, so she most likely had a sexual partner, and the shaman's treatment would have certainly put him at risk of contracting the disease. Cotten assumed there were ticks in the Amazon, but why would the woman be the only one contracting the disease?

And what was Black Needles? Was it the name of the disease? Or were those words just the ramblings of a dying man? As far as she knew, there were no documented cases of multiple infections that matched the symptoms—