Michael Palmer - Extreme Measures

Still, it was something.

The lot was just ahead. It was cut into a tree- and brush-covered slope that paralleled the roadway, and was dimly lit only by a streetlamp diagonally across the road near the dock area. Eric crouched low and made his way to the edge of the trees. Through the persistent, driving rain, he could make out the two — decker hulks, propped up on railroad ties at the farside of the lot. Otherwise, the place appeared deserted.

Cursing the situation, and trying to sort out what his next move should be, Eric slogged through the muddy puddles to the waers. One had only a faded shield and the letters D amp; E painted on the side. The other, at least at one time, had been the property of the Aphrodite Moving and Storage Company. Both the trailers were rusted well beyond any practical use other than storage, perhaps.

The rear doors were gone from the D amp; E trailer, and its wooden floorboards were splintered and decaying. Even from several feet away and through the rain, Eric could smell the odor of stale urine coming from inside. The Aphrodite trailer, which was intact and in much better shape, was secured with a bulky padlock.

Eric halted the surprisingly heavy hardware in his hand as he weighed the possibility that he was in the wrong place against the likelihood that he had somehow beaten Laura and Subarsky to the spot.

There was, of course, a third option-that the two of them had already been and gone, but he refused to allow himself to consider that.

He checked beneath the trailer, searching for some sort of trapdoor, and was walking around to the front end when twin spears of headlight swung into the lot and stopped not twenty feet behind the trailer.

Eric flattened himself against the side and inched along to his right until he was concealed from view.

Even through the gloom he could discern the distinctive silhouette of a Saab 900 Mirbo-Subarsky's car.

Eric had been in the Saab, a year-dd convertible, any number of times.

Why had he never even wondered what a man constantly scrambling for research grants was doing with such elegant transportation?

He slipped around the railroad tie supports and ducked under the trailer. From that vantage, on his knees and elbows in the mud, he could make out only the lower half of the Saab. He wondered if Laura was inside. Five minutes passed with no movement from the car, and no sound other than the steady rumble of rain on the metal roof. Eric began to shiver from the inactivity. He grasped the neck of the whiskey bottle and was trying to formulate some sort of plan when the car door opened and closed. A man in a knee-length poncho stepped out into the downpour and approached the trailer. From his walk and the size of his boots, Eric could tell it was Dave.

Eric edged to his left, and was nearly out from beneath the trailer when he was transfixed by the beam of a powerful flashlight.

"Hey, amigo," Subarsky called out down the full length of the trailer,

"how nice of you to be here to welcome us."

Eric shielded his eyes against the glare.

"Is Laura with you?" he shouted back.

"She is, yes. But when I caught sight of you scampering around as we pulled in, I decided that perhaps I might do well to truss her up a bit.

I assume you know by now that you weren't really supposed to be in any condition to get here."

"Wheeler's dead."

"So your beautiful friend here told me. Nice going, buddy. Damn fine work. I told him outthinking you wasn't going to be that easy, but he's always been an arrogant son of a bitch. He was arrogant when he busted me for dealing at M.I.T And then he was arrogant enough to suggest he become my business partner. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts he died arrogant too. "Give it up, Dave," Eric said.

"now that I don't even have to split the profits with supercop?

You can't be serious. I wish I could consider taking you on in his place. Caduceus and the Charity Project could still use a guy with your panache. But now I fear I just wouldn't ever be able to trust you."

"What's the Charity Project?"

The beam of light went off. In the seconds it took for Eric's eyes to adjust, it was shining on his face once again-this time from just a few feet away.

"It's the key to the kingdom, that's what," Subarsky said.

"DS-Nineteen-the drug that time and the fops in Washington forgot."

"The DNA-bound antibiotic? I thought you gave up on that"

"Oh, no, my friend. The shortsighted pawers-that be did. I always knew they were wrong, so I just stepped back and retooled. Put me together a quality team with vision, and set about making DS-Nineteen a reality.

Now then, why don't you just wriggle on out here and we'll find someplace a little drier to continue our basic science seminar?"

Without hesitating, Eric swung the bottle as hard as he could.

The glass exploded against the flash, shattering its lens and bulb and sending it flying out of Subarsky's hand.

"Hey, race move!" Subarsky cried. "But I thought you wanted to hear about my antibiotic."

Eric had already spun around and scrambled out from under the trailer on the other side, He splashed back to the Saab. Laura, her mouth sealed beneath a broad piece of adhesive tape, stared out at him helplessly.

She was lashed by her wrists to the steering wheel, and a single piece of rope across her throat pinned her back against the headrest. Eric was trying to kick in the passenger window when Subarsky stepped up beside him.

"Please," he said, "don't do that. Don't do that. I have a five-hundred-dollar deductible that doesn't coven" Eric took a roundhouse swing at his face. Subarsky blocked it with his forearm, then cahnly shoved Eric backward at least ten feet and down into the mud.

"I'm sorry this is happening, old friend," he said.

"If I hadn't had to go back to my apartment to get these magic keys to use on that he-man lock over there, you would have missed us, and you wouldn't be nearly so muddy."

Eric pushed himself to his feet. Subarsky circled around and cut him off it-from the road, but Eric knew he needn't have bothered. As long as Laura Enders remained the man's prisoner, he was never going to run.

One way or the other, it was going to end right here.

"Dave," he said, trying to stall until some idea, some flicker of an advantage came to him, "how can you hurt so many people just to develop a goddam drug?"

"Hey, watch your tongue, fella. Use any delaviniz tactic you want. I like that, and I'd expect nothing less from you. But don't stoop to calling DS-Nineteen names. We're talking about a living antibiotic herean antibiotic that kills viruses and keeps killing them because it mutates as fast as they do."

"It didn't work. That's why no agency would fund its development."

"Didn't work in a test tube or a culture bottle," Subarsky corrected.

"But tinker with it, tighten a nut here, a bolt there, and stick it into a living infected person, and whainmo! The field is suddenly bloody with little teeny virus corpses, including-we are about to — prove-the one that causes you-know-what.

Impressed?"

Eric squinted across at him and, in spite of himself, realized that he was impressed. The government grant agencies had clearly underestimated the man's genius. Faced with possibly the most lethal epidemic the world has ever known, they had blithely cast off one of the few scientists equal to the challenge "So," Eric said, "the tetrodotoxin was your tool for diverting no-next-of-kin patients to your place in Utah.

Get 'em pronounced dead, and then get 'em out of town."

I wish it were that simple. I tried using that doggone toxin in every way, shape, and form I could, but in the mind, only the houngans could do it right.

Can you believe it? A PhD. in biochemistry from M.I.T, and I've had to imrort my stuff from a bunch of witch doctors."