Scott Nicholson - Liquid fear

“It won’t hurt her none, will it?” The jock was making an effort to be concerned, but compassion was a few too many rungs up the IQ ladder.

“Would your government do anything to harm one of its citizens?”

The jock shook his head, visibly stiffening as if looking for a flag to salute. He struggled to stuff the bills into the pocket of his too-tight jeans.

“What about…you know, the other stuff?”

“Of course.”

Kleingarten handed over the vial of anabolic steroids. “This should be good for six extra touchdowns and moving up a couple of rounds in the draft.”

“Sweet. You know how hard it is to get this stuff these days?”

“Hey, there’s always the Canadian Football League.”

The guy didn’t catch the humor. “Yeah, sure. So, are we done here?”

“That’s it. Easy as pie, just like I promised.”

A couple of students passed, and Kleingarten gave an exaggerated slap to the jock’s arm and guffawed for their benefit. “You kick State’s ass for us, okay?”

The jock nodded. “If Coach gives me the ball more.”

Kleingarten winked as the students moved on past to join the human stream. “Take enough of that, and he will. Now, how about that needle?”

“Right,” the guy said, as if he’d forgotten. He reached into the pocket of his letter jacket. “Ouch. Fuck.”

He pulled the needle out and looked at the little pinprick on the side of his thumb. “You sure this stuff is okay?”

“Safe as mother’s milk, my friend. And, remember, it’s a secret.”

“A matter of national security,” the jock recited, those magical words that allowed people the world over to get away with murder.

“Now get out of here and forget you ever saw me.”

The jock hunkered away and Kleingarten pretended to check the locks on the doors. Someone might be watching. These eggheads lived in their own oblivious little fantasy land, though, and considered their island immune from the ills of the real world.

They were worried about people taking the word “nigger” out of books and how many goddamned butterflies were dying in the rain forest. That stuff was too important for anyone to notice an anonymous rent-a-cop.

A cute coed walked by and gave him the once-over, and Kleingarten resisted the temptation to open the door for her. Instead, he just touched the bill of his cap in greeting. He didn’t smile too broadly or she might remember him.

As she entered, he followed, using his foot to hold the door open. He retrieved the backpack he’d tucked behind an air unit, and then went to the private faculty restroom that was little more than a closet. Those with extra college degrees couldn’t just shit in a stall like the rest of the crowd.

Kleingarten removed the uniform shirt and now wore only a “Go Heels” T-shirt featuring the horned head of a ram, the school mascot. He never could figure out why a school nicknamed “Tar Heels” used a ram, but he supposed you couldn’t just walk around at halftime holding up a black, splotchy Styrofoam foot.

He crammed the cop hat and blue shirt into the backpack and changed into scuffed loafers. He was mussing his hair when someone tried the handle and then knocked.

“Just a sec,” Kleingarten said, and then cut a fart so the room would smell authentic.

He flushed and exited, and a preppy dude in a sweater vest stood there tapping his foot like he had diarrhea. “All yours,” Kleingarten offered.

He went down the secluded hall with the backpack slung over his shoulder, just another middle-aged, nontraditional student working hard to improve his lot in life.

There was a chance the jock would talk, but it would have to be before he took his first injection. A 90 percent solution of calcium gluconate in the steroids would stress his heart to the bursting point.

And there was a chance a brilliant, astute medical examiner would detect the elevated calcium levels, assuming he or she had any reason to suspect anything but a case of steroid toxicity.

Kleingarten had already filed an anonymous tip that the star fullback was using illegal performance-enhancing substances. While the letter mailed to the UNC athletics department would likely be buried fast, and the one mailed to the NCAA would sit idle for months while policymakers figured out how to spin it, UNC’s conference rivals would probably wave their copies of the letter from the tops of their ivory towers and scream their self-righteous bullshit about fairness, as if anyone expected the world to be fair.

The jock might get his touchdowns first, and the autopsy might even raise suspicion.

But it was all part of the game.

And this game wasn’t fair.

Kleingarten exited the building and headed across the sidewalk, so nonchalant that he almost forgot to fake it.

Mark Morgan’s flight landed ten minutes behind schedule at Raleigh-Durham International. As the jet taxied to the terminal, the man in the seat beside Mark powered up his laptop computer and, despite the pilot’s admonition against using wireless devices, connected to the Internet.

As the man punched up his Yahoo home page, Mark found himself straining to browse the news headlines. Senator Burchfield’s national profile had been heating up, both on the rumors of a presidential run and his hard-line stance on defense spending. Of course, those two could be intimately entwined.

“Stock market’s down thirty points,” his seatmate said. “I thought the damned Democrats were supposed to turn things around.”

“Money’s bigger than politics,” Mark replied, though in his own experience the wealthy and the powerful fed side by side like hogs sucking at a bottomless trough.

Mark hadn’t been fully forthcoming with the senator and Wallace Forsyth. Though Briggs had indeed been engaged in unsupervised research without federal approval, he hadn’t confined his diabolic dabbling to memory suppression. Briggs’s fear drug had rolled through CRO’s internal rumor mill, but because such a drug wasn’t deemed commercially useful, no resources had been directed toward it. That didn’t mean Briggs didn’t have an intention for it. Mark didn’t trust Briggs any more than he trusted Burchfield. But for the time being, they all needed each other.

The cabin began emptying, and Mark waited a few minutes before retrieving his carry-on luggage. He was inside the terminal, heading for the front entrance and his ride, when two airport security guards flanked him.

In the era of shoe bombers and hijackers and TSA Nazis, Mark had given up his reasonable expectation of privacy, but most surprise searches occurred while passengers were boarding planes, not while debarking.

Both guards wore blue uniforms, stripped to short sleeves despite the air-conditioning. The taller one was armed, and Mark, who had traveled to many countries as a CRO executive, had seen his share of airport militia.

The shorter guard increased his pace and moved alongside Mark. The terminal was filled with the food-court odors of fried onion rings, hot dogs, and hazelnut coffee. The public-address system boomed a change of gate numbers, and a baby was crying in a waiting area.

Mark took a detour toward the restroom, though his bladder was tight and dry. Hopefully it would be crowded and he could blend in and escape scrutiny, or at least have witnesses for any shakedown. The guards continued toward the front exits, the taller one still trailing.

Mark stood at a urinal and unzipped, the suitcase propped behind him. Even with Burchfield on his side, other federal agents might have an interest both in Halcyon and Mark’s involvement in the health subcommittee’s deliberations. He didn’t think a public kidnapping was likely, but Burchfield’s political opponents might apply a little extra surveillance and pressure to flush out any subterfuge.