Greg Iles - True Evil

"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."