Page 62 of Jacob

Yeah. She’d worried herself to death over him, had moved heaven and earth, had movedBlack Inc., to come to his rescue and had been—what? gassed?—for her troubles. What was she doing here? Oh, yes, stopping him from maybe infecting the world.

She took in a very deep breath. “Your call came from here, Elias. And I knew that Zalny had a lab researching bioweapons when it was part of the Soviet Union. Even though it was supposedly decommissioned after the Soviet Union fell.” She took a chance and moved her head to take as much of the lab in as possible. “Doesn’t look decommissioned to me. It even has an HPLC system and those go for?—”

“About two million dollars,” a deep voice said behind her. “But worth every cent.”

She and Elias turned as a tall man walked into her field of vision. He was very erect, fit. Steel-gray hair and a military bearing. Thin face, cold light-gray eyes, almost transparent.

“Who are you?” she asked as she watched Elias shrink back. Elias knew who he was. “Wait.” She remembered the information the Queens provided. “Colonel Topolev, I presume.”

“Yes indeed. Brava. How clever of you. I am Colonel Ilya Topolev,” he said, head cocked. “I’d say at your service but actually, Doctor Hethering, I want you to be at my service. We need your expertise as Doctor Field, here, has been noticeably lacking. He has been stringing us along and we’re on a bit of a timeline here.”

“Timeline?” Oh, God. Did that mean he was ready to move? In which direction?

“Indeed. As the song says, places to go and things to do. But we are behind and we are going to need you to help pick up the slack.”

She felt bile come back up her throat but refused to vomit. This man looked like he would enjoy seeing that. He was tall, whippet-lean with the coldest gray eyes she had ever seen. There was no discernable human emotion in his face.

“Pick up the slack. That’s a euphemism if I ever heard one.” She drew in a deep breath. “You want to create a weaponized smallpox virus.” Her voice was flat, monotone, working hard to keep emotion out of it.

He nodded. “Yes. A very powerful weapon, I think you’ll agree.”

Alex drew in another deep breath. She wanted nothing more than to rush at him and claw his eyes out. But she couldn’t move. And he looked really fit and strong. He could fell her with one blow.

But he needed her. That was a weapon in her favor. It was like having a gun. Something she could wield.

“Weaponized smallpox could kill off humanity, you know that, don’t you, Colonel? Certainly end civilization. Why would anyone want that? It’s insane. We spent years and billions of dollars and millions of man hours eradicating smallpox. Bringing it back is…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “It would be as bad as sparking off a nuclear war.”

The Colonel shook his head. “Ah, ah, Dr. Hethering. That is where you are wrong. A nuclear war would indeed be a disaster. Complete destruction of the industrial base and the housing stock and agricultural land. Radioactivity for generations. Unthinkable. We’d probably have to live underground for generations.

“However, deadly disease is like the neutron bomb. It kills off people leaving everything else intact.”

She stared at him. Who talked like that? Who thought like that?

“I see you are surprised. Have you never heard of the concept of a bioweapon? And yet you are a virologist. One of the best, from what I understand. As good as Dr. Field here, who has proved to be very disappointing. He was… recruited… for a very specific reason and has been unable to fulfill his function.”

Alex risked a slanting glance at Elias, who was staring in fury at the Colonel. Elias was indeed a very good scientist, one of the best. If he didn’t do what the Colonel wanted, it wasn’t out of incompetence. No, he refused.

The Colonel hitched a pant leg up and perched on the corner of a table.

“I see you are not showing any curiosity about what Dr. Field was recruited to do. And what, I imagine you are starting to understand, we want you to do in his stead.”

She kept her voice steady. “Whatever it is, I won’t do it.”

The man gave a chilling half smile. “I suspect you will. We can be very persuasive.” He pulled a gun from a holster she hadn’t even noticed before. “I could, for example, shoot Dr. Field in the knee. This would cause excruciating pain. It would shatter the kneecap, turning the solid bone into fragments, leading to severe swelling and bleeding. As you know, since you had to study human anatomy for your degree, the knee is a complex joint which is absolutely critical for walking. The knee would be irreparably damaged, severing tendons and ligaments. If lucky, the result is a permanent limp. If unlucky, amputation.

During the exposition, his voice was steady and emotionless, as if discussing the weather. Elias had gone gray, sweat dripping off his face.

“This is craziness.” Alex raised her voice and grimaced at the pain in her head. “If you’ve done any research at all, you know that smallpox is a massive killer. You would start an epidemic that could kill billions. What would you possibly have to gain? You could kill off your own people. You’re Russian, aren’t you? Russia stopped vaccinating in the mid-seventies. Russians, like everywhere else, do not have immunity. Any epidemic you set off will fly around the world, certainly to Russia. You’d perhaps die yourself, your family would die. And for what?”

He idly swung his leg and regarded her with cold gray eyes. “To take things in order, no, I would not die. For that matter, neither would you. I have been inoculated and so have you.”

Startled, Alex looked at her left arm. It was sore, and a small band aid had been applied to the biceps. She hadn’t noticed it until now. The spot hurt, but she hadn’t really focused on it until now since more or less everything hurt.

“And so has Dr. Field.”

“That is not how vaccinations work. It takes weeks…” She stopped when he lifted his hand to strike. No one was immune to a disease when they’d just been inoculated. The immune system had to be activated. It could take weeks. At least a week. Certainly not hours. But the Colonel was not listening.

“You are still not seeing the big picture,” Alex said. She had no hope of changing the man’s mind. He was clearly a psychopath. But she was trying to gain time, hoping Jacob could somehow find her. There was no guarantee she was in the refurbished Zalny lab, but she suspected she was. Even if he knew where she was, how could he find her? She could be a thousand feet underground. But Jacob would find her. She was sure of it. She only had to give him time. As fast as a man could come to her, that was how fast he was coming. “What you’re trying to do will slip from your hands and become a worldwide epidemic. With horrible consequences.”

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