A War of Shadows

TWENTY-THREE

The phone in Braden’s den rang. Alton got it, talked for a few minutes, then called the self-exiled security man.

“Yes, sir?” he said crisply.

“The Edelman team is on to you,” The Man told him. “They raided Martha’s Lake and have everybody out. They know the whole story. It will only be a matter of time before they’re there now. I had hoped for six more days, but we can live with this. Give O’Connell the treatment, get her out, then you get out, fast.”

Braden nodded absently, fear creating a knot in his stomach. “Yes, sir. At once.” Suddenly he heard a whirring of rotor blades and panic rose. “I hear a chopper now. Do you suppose…?”

“That’s for O’Connell, from me,” The Man assured him. “You get out by boat. Time is short. Move!”

Braden hung up the phone and went out to the dining room. Alton was waiting with two of the other men, Gurney and Stone.

“I talked to him before you did,” Alton reminded him. “Gurney and Stone know where to take her, and the bird’s down and waiting. Shall we?”

He nodded, and the four of them mounted the stairs. The other agents were also busy around, destroying anything that might be of use to the inevitable raiders, shredding and incinerating papers and the like. One of the women was hauling out the firebombs and checking their clocks and fuses.

Sandra O’Connell was in her room, relaxing listening to a Cleveland radio station. She was really depressed; after so much rapid progress over the few days after her escape, she hadn’t improved at all in the past week or more she’d been here. She was beginning to fear that her condition was now at its best state, and the somewhat clumsy attempts to cheer her up by Braden and the staff hadn’t helped but just made her dwell more and more on the drug and its effects. What good was a forty-two-year-old illiterate doctor to anybody?

The four men hurriedly entering the room surprised and startled her. She looked puzzled. “What is it?” she asked apprehensively. She’d heard the helicopter, too.

Alton took a briefcase and opened it on a nightstand next to her bed. Gurney and Stone, looking grim, went over to her and held her down.

“Masquerade’s over, Dr. O’Connell,” Braden told her. “I’m afraid you’ve been had. You see, I was the director at the hospital where you were kept. I was the one who drugged you.”

The shock was almost too much for her. She struggled and started to scream, but a gag was inserted in her mouth and securely tied. Then handcuffs bound her arms behind her back, and despite frenzied attempts to keep them off, a pair of handcuff-like leg irons were attached to her ankles.

“We’d hoped to be able to spare you,” Braden told her, “because you knew so much about biochemical matters. However, that is no longer possible. We could just kill you, of course, but you’ve put us to so much trouble for so long that it would seem a shame to do so without you performing some last service.”

Her eyes showed horror.

Braden reached over to the open briefcase and pulled out a small pump-spray bottle of sealed plastic. There was some sort of wax seal and a tiny gauge on top of it.

“This is what the newspapers so romantically call the Wilderness Organism,” he told her. “As you no doubt know, it is a synthesized bacteria. During its active stage, about twenty-four hours after exposure to air, it is highly contagious. Anyone even remotely in the area will catch it, and it’ll happily live in the air, on walls, floors, anyplace an infected person touches. Of course, after that period its own little disease, the bacteriophage, or antibacterial virus, has at it, and it’s all over for the poor germ. Except that, since it is a catalyst, the damage has already been done to and programmed into the victim’s brain. Three days after exposure, give or take a few hours, and you come down with the nasty symptoms.”

She shrank in terror from the bottle he so playfully held and about which he so casually talked.

“What we do, you see, is infect somebody, then turn them loose in a crowd to spread it,” he continued, obviously enjoying her horror and comprehension.

“Yes, my dear, we’d like you to spread it,” he said. “And you will have a unique honor. So far it’s only been small towns. You will be turned loose in a major city.”

She was obviously trying to say something, and Braden was giving her the full treatment. “Lower the gag for a minute,” he told the others calmly. They looked puzzled, but complied.

“You monster!” she spat at him. “You’ll rot in Hell for this!”

“If such a place exists it will be infinitely preferable to a place with naive little saints like yourself.”

“You can’t make me spread it!” she told him.

“That’s true, normally,” he admitted. He put the bottle back in the briefcase and brought up another, smaller one filled with a reddish liquid and a syringe. “Know what this is?”

She shook her head, waiting for the next terror. “It’s mitoricine,” he informed her.

She gasped. “No, no, you wouldn’t…”

“A big, big dose,” he said with relish. “We’re going to give you a nice chemical lobotomy, then turn you loose in the big city just sprayed filthy with the Wilderness Organism. But—don’t worry. The mitoricine contains a vaccine for this particular strain. You won’t catch it. You’ll go on and on and on… as a mitoricine retard.” He looked at the others, his expression and tone all business again. “Put the gag back and hold her!”

She tried to shrink from it, tried to get away, but she couldn’t move, and she felt that horrible needle penetrate her arm, saw the massive amount of red liquid being pushed into her, and was helpless.

In less than a minute she was out.

Braden looked at Gurney and Stone. “Okay, it’s all yours now. Don’t forget the note and the knife.”

They nodded. “Don’t worry,” Stone said. “We know our job.”

They picked her up, carried her downstairs and out the door to the waiting helicopter. Braden and Alton stayed in her room, wordless, until they heard it take off. Both men breathed a sigh of relief.

“That’s that,” Braden told the other man. “Hope it works. Let’s set the firebombs and get out of here.” He turned for the door.

“One more thing, Braden.” Alton’s voice came from behind him. “A loose end to attend to.”

Braden stopped and turned, puzzled. He saw the pistol in Alton’s hand and froze.

“What the hell?”

Alton smiled. “The Man’s orders. You’re the only one they know about in this end of the operation. Sorry.” He shot Braden twice in the stomach. The agent cried out, was pushed back by the force of the shots although doubled over, and then lay still on the floor in an increasing pool of blood.

Alton, satisfied, holstered his pistol and ran down the stairs. One of the women ran in the front door, practically screaming, and spotted him. “Mr. Alton! My god! It’s too late! The whole goddamn United States Coast Guard’s out there! It looks like an invasion!”

From the direction of the den there was a loud explosion as a special telephone, triggered by remote circuits, blew itself to hell.