True Evil (51 page)

"The car door?"

"U.S. GOVERNMENT. Printed in black."

"What the hell?"

Will drove down the block and turned toward the spot where Alex's Corolla was parked. "They sure as shit ain't the IRS."

"Who are they?"

Will grinned. "I've got that same feeling you were talking about before."

Alex was thinking about the electric bill. "You ever hear of a vet named Noel Traver?"

"A military vet?"

"No, a veterinarian."

"Can't say I have. But
Traver
is pretty damn close to
Tarver,
ain't it?"

Alex pictured the notepad in her mind, substituting letters—"Shit! It's an anagram."

"Eldon Tarver and Noel Traver?"

"Noel
D.
Traver, I should have said. There was a note on a desk in there about a late electric bill."

"Now we're getting somewhere." Will's eyes flashed. "A cancer doctor with an alias. That make sense to you?"

"Not unless he's married to two women," Alex thought aloud. "Something like that."

"Or tax evasion," Will suggested with a laugh. "Maybe those guys
were
with the IRS."

"I think it's time to find out."

He grinned. "You want to go back and see how long that guy stays inside the clinic?"

"Yeah. Make the block. I wish I had my computer."

"If he's still there, maybe Tarver is inside with him."

Will hit the gas and made the block, not even stopping for a red light. The instant they turned back onto Jefferson Street, Alex saw that the dark sedan was gone.

"If I had to guess," said Will, "I'd say he's headed for the interstate."

"Let me out here. I'll jog to my car."

Will slammed on the brakes, and Alex jumped onto the pavement. When the detective floored it, the door slammed shut by itself.

CHAPTER 44

"Describe her to me," said Dr. Tarver.

Edward Biddle pursed his lips and looked around the spartan office. Dr. Tarver knew Biddle was wondering if this was the place were the "groundbreaking" research had been done. "About five-eight," Biddle said. "Dark hair, pretty, scars on the right side of her face. Almost like shrapnel scars."

Dr. Tarver tried to keep his face impassive, but Biddle could not be deceived.

"Who is she, Eldon? Another of your obsessions?"

Dr. Tarver had almost forgotten what it was like to be in the company of someone who knew his private predilections. "She's an FBI agent. She's working alone, though, no support from the Bureau."

He expected to see anxiety in Biddle's eyes, but he saw only displeasure. "An FBI agent?"

"She's not a problem, Edward. That's an unrelated matter. Is your car still out there?"

Biddle waved his hand as though making the car vanish with his gesture. "Let's get down to brass tacks. What have you got?"

Five minutes ago, Dr. Tarver had been pumped and ready to make his pitch; then Alexandra Morse had walked through the front door. "I need to take care of something first. Give me just one minute."

Biddle wasn't accustomed to waiting, but he raised his hand in assent.

Eldon left the office and walked into his private restroom down the hall. The door said PHLEBOTOMIST. He wasn't about to share a toilet seat with the scuzziest 5 percent of the population of Jackson, Mississippi. Even excluding the viruses he had given them, many of the clinic's patients carried most of the nastiest bugs resident in the American population. He closed the door and leaned back against it, his heart thudding in his chest.

A few minutes ago he had been focused on the terms of his negotiation with Biddle. Now Alex Morse had put the whole deal in jeopardy. If she weren't so goddamned observant, her visit might have meant little. But she
was.
If Morse could look at a photo of this clinic for a few seconds and make the connection to Pullo's restaurant, then she would eventually realize that the army major in the VCP photo she had noticed in his office was the same man she had seen walking into the clinic this afternoon. Thirty years had passed since their VCP days, but Biddle looked essentially the same. His hair was gray now, but he still
had
his hair, the son of a bitch. And not only had Morse seen Biddle enter the clinic—she had exchanged words with him. Yes, she would remember him, all right. And once she did, she would quickly uncover the true nature of the VCP. And
that
would allow her to track Eldon Tarver from his old life to his new one.

Eldon couldn't take that chance. He could not take on his new identity until Alex Morse was dead.

He was lucky that Pearson had called to warn him that Morse might show up.
She made a big deal about the restaurant, Eldon, and she's the type to come down and make a nuisance of herself. I probably said too much, but Chris Shepard is a highly reputable internist from Natchez. I just wanted you to know, so you wouldn't be blindsided by the girl.

"Blindsided," Dr. Tarver murmured. "FUBAB, more like."

Killing an FBI agent was risky. If you did that, you were asking to be hounded to the ends of the earth for as long as you lived. In the carport he had acted on instinct. He would have to give it careful thought. Right now he had business to take care of: the biggest deal of his life. He flushed the toilet for cover, then walked back into his office, sat behind his desk, and folded his hands Buddha-style over his stomach.

"You want to know what I've got, Edward?"

Biddle's pale blue eyes were those of a man who had handled many critical negotiations. Bullshit did not fly in the rooms he worked. "You know me, Eldon. Straight to business."

Dr. Tarver leaned back in his chair. "I've got exactly what you were looking for all those years ago."

"Which is?"

"The Holy Grail."

Biddle just stared.

"The perfect weapon."

"
Perfect
is a mighty big word, Eldon."

Dr. Tarver smiled. He doubted they ever said "mighty big" at Yale, which was where Biddle had gone to college. He must have picked it up at Detrick.

"How about a weapon that is one hundred percent lethal, yet which no one could ever prove was a weapon at all? It makes BW agents like anthrax or even smallpox relics of the Dark Ages. Wasn't it you who spoke of the Holy Grail at Detrick, Edward? A weapon that couldn't be perceived as a weapon?"

"Yes. But every scientist who ever worked for me helped prove that it was impossible."

"Oh, it's possible. It already exists." Eldon opened his desk drawer and took out a small vial filled with brownish liquid. "Here it is."

"What is it?"

"A retrovirus."

Biddle sniffed. "Source?"

"Simian, of course, as we always suspected. And as AIDS proved viable."

"What do you call it?"

Dr. Tarver smiled. "Kryptonite."

Biddle wasn't laughing. "Are you serious?"

"It's just a working name. The actual viral pedigree must remain my proprietary secret, for now. But if you decide to—"

"Buy it?"

"Just so. If you decide to buy it, then you can look behind the curtain and you can call it whatever you wish."

Biddle rubbed his hands together with a dry, grainy sound. "Tell me what else makes this Kryptonite a perfect weapon."

"First, it has a long incubation period. Ten to twelve months right now, with death following in an average of sixteen months."

"Death from what?"

"Cancer."

Biddle tilted his head to one side. "Our old friend."

"Yes."

"The retrovirus induces it directly? Or is there immune breakdown first?"

"Selective breakdown. Only the necessary steps. It switches off the cellular death mechanism, granting immortality. It disguises itself from killer T cells. It begins producing its own growth factor. All the best viral strategies."

Biddle was already thinking about the larger implications. "Eldon, the indiscriminate nature of that kind of weapon renders it unusable on a large scale. You know that."

Tarver leaned forward. "I've solved that problem."

"How?"

"I've already created a vaccine. I grow it in horses."

Biddle pursed his lips. "So we'd have to vaccinate all our forces prior to using the weapon."

"Yes, yes, but we already do that. You could do it under cover of any other immunization."

Biddle was frowning now, suspicious that his time was being wasted. "But what about the general population? If we vaccinated the general population, it would set off all sorts of alarms. And don't tell me we could do it under the guise of avian flu vaccine or something. You could never keep it a secret—not in this day and age."

Eldon could hardly contain himself. "I can also sabotage the virus
after
infection, during the early stages of replication. Before oncogenesis occurs."

Biddle's poker face finally slipped. "You can kill the virus
after
infection?"

"I can wipe it out."

"No one can kill a virus once it's established in the body."

Dr. Tarver settled back in his chair, his confidence unshakable. "I created this virus, Edward. And I can destroy it."

Biddle was shaking his head, but Eldon saw the excitement in his eyes.

"After about three weeks," Eldon went on, "there's no stopping the cascade. But during that window, I can short-circuit the infection."

"So what you're telling me is—"

"I have your weapon for China."

Biddle's lips parted. He had the look of a man whose mind has just been read, and read accurately.

"I know you, Edward," Tarver said with a sly smile. "I know that's why you're here. I see what's happening in the world. I know the limits of oil reserves and strategic metals. I know where those reserves are flowing, where the heavy manufacturing is going. I'm no geopolitician, but I see the tide turning. The new cold war can't be more than twenty years off. Maybe less."

Biddle chose not to comment.

"I know the capabilities of Chinese nuclear submarines," Tarver went on. "I know about their missile program. And even high school students know the size of their standing army. Almost three million strong, and growing. The real strength of that number lies in the fact that life is cheap there, Edward. Casualties mean nothing—unlike the country we happen to be sitting in."

Biddle shifted in his seat and spoke softly. "Your point being?"

"The Chinese aren't the Russians. You won't be able to spend them into oblivion. They already keep our economy afloat. If they decide to pull the plug now, we'll only have one option. Going nuclear."

Biddle nodded almost imperceptibly.

"And we won't do that," Tarver asserted. "You know we won't, because we won't be able to. The yellow men can afford to lose half a billion people. We can't. More important, they're
willing
to lose them. And we're not."

Biddle's eyes were half-closed. He was probably put off by the amateur strategizing, but Eldon knew he had made his point, however clumsily.

"Is this Kryptonite sexually transmissible?" Biddle asked quietly.

"One variant is, and one is not."

A tight smile. "That's convenient."

"You won't believe what I've accomplished, Edward. You want deniable political assassination? Give me one tube of blood from your target. I'll induce cancer in vitro, then you can reinject the blood into him. He'll be dead of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma eighteen months later."

Biddle's smile broadened. "I always said you were my most promising egghead, Eldon."

Dr. Tarver laughed out loud.

"So you're telling me," said Biddle, "that we could set this virus loose in a slum in Shanghai, and—"

"By the time the first cases started dying, they'd have fifteen months of exponential infection. It would be in every major Chinese city. They'd see a host of different cancers, not just one. The chaos would be unimaginable."

"It would also have leaped the oceans," Biddle observed.

Eldon's smile vanished. "Yes. We'd have to accept some casualties. But only for a while. With the example of AIDS, most countries would initiate crash programs to find a vaccine. Your company could take the lead in the U.S."

"And you could head it up," said Biddle. "Is that what you're thinking?"

"I shouldn't lead it. But I should be part of it. And after a reasonable amount of time—before the death toll climbs too high over here—we'll come forward with an experimental vaccine."

"The rest of the world would demand access to it."

"Over the objections of their medical establishments. You know the ego battles involved in this kind of research. Look at Gallo and the French. Also, no one but us could be sure that our vaccine worked. The delays could last years, but our population would be protected the entire time."

"How difficult would it be for someone else to develop a vaccine?"

"Without knowing what I know? Twenty years is optimistic. We're talking about a retrovirus. Look at HIV as a model. It's been around since 1978, and—"

"Longer," Biddle corrected quietly.

Tarver raised an eyebrow. "In any case, we still don't have an AIDS vaccine. We're not even close."

"Nevertheless, with China's population, this wouldn't be a decisive weapon, but rather a destabilizing one."

"You want apocalypse? I can give you that."

"How?"

Eldon held up his hands and drew them apart. "Simply lengthen the incubation period. I could stretch it to the scale of something like multiple myeloma. Twenty-five to thirty years."

Amazement now. "Could you really?"

"Of course. I've purposefully shortened the incubation in my work."

"Why?"

"To be able to carry out my research in a measurable time frame. Lengthen the incubation to twenty years, and I'd be dead before I saw my first results."

Biddle wet his lips with his pale tongue. "With a five-year incubation period, seventy percent of the population over fifteen could be infected before anyone got sick. Even if they had an effective vaccine, it would be too late. They'd already be battling total social breakdown."