Robin Cook - Vector

Tim reacted swiftly. He stepped over to his partner for the evening and slapped him hard. Tim then swore at the pain and shook his hand as if it were wet.

Curt recoiled and for a moment he saw red. He touched his stinging face, then glanced at his fingers as if he expected to see blood. He glared at Tim.

“I’m right here, tough guy,” Tim jeered. He gestured with his tingling hand for Curt to come and try to hit him back.

Curt stared off into the black night. He didn’t want to fight with Tim because now that he’d had a moment to think, he knew why Tim had hit him.

“You were going soft on me,” Tim explained.

Curt nodded. It was true.

“Listen,” Tim said. “Let me tell you something you don’t know about me. I was ordained just this year as a minister in the True Believers Christian Church, which happens to be a local branch of the much bigger Christian Identity Church. You ever hear of that?”

Curt shook his head.

“It’s a church that has used the Bible to prove that we white Anglo-Saxons are the true descendants of the lost tribe of Israel. All the other races are, spawns of Satan or mud people, like these spics here.” Tim nudged one of the Mexicans with his black boot. “That’s why we have white skin and they have black, brown, yellow or whatever you want to call it.”

“You’re a minister?” Curt asked incredulously. The man had so many different sides it made Curt’s head spin.

“Full-fledged,” Tim said. “So I know what I’m talking about. The key thing is that God’s word in the Bible says that the means to bring about divine judgment is not limited to actions of the body politic. It means that violence is not only okay, but it’s necessary. The fact of the matter is that you’ve done God’s work tonight, soldier.”

“I’ve never heard anything about all this,” Curt admitted.

“That’s not surprising,” Tim said. “Nor is it your fault. The Zionist Occupied Government doesn’t want you to know about it. They keep it out of the schools, out of the newspapers, and off the TV, all of which they control. The reason is that they want to neutralize us by diluting us genetically. It’s just like in The Turner Diaries . Remember?”

“I’m not sure,” Curt said. He was impressed with Tim’s vehemence as much as his erudition.

“It was part of the Cohen Act,” Tim said. “It stipulated that the human relations councils it set up were to force Aryan whites to marry mud people. That kind of marriage is called miscegenation. Have you ever heard of that term?”

“No,” Curt said.

“Then you get my point,” Tim said. “It’s a ZOG conspiracy. They don’t even want kids to learn the term because encouraging miscegenation is the most insidious sin of all that ZOG is guilty of, And to God it’s an abomination. It’s Satan’s attempt to do away with God’s chosen people. It’s the Holocaust in reverse.”

“All right!” Curt spat, returning from his brief reverie. “It’s time we put the cards on the table.” He looked at Steve. Steve nodded in agreement. Curt looked at Yuri.

“What cards are you talking about?” Yuri questioned. He could tell that his guests were livid, particularly Curt.

Curt rolled his eyes in frustration. “It’s an expression, for crissake. It means explaining everything to everybody so there are no surprises.”

“Okay,” Yuri said agreeably.

“I mean like you’ve shocked us tonight,” Curt snapped. “Not only are you married, but you’re married to a nigger woman. Calling that a surprise is putting it mildly.”

“I needed a green card,” Yuri explained.

“But you should not have married a black woman!” Steve barked.

“What difference does it make?” Yuri asked, although he thought he knew the answer. Over the four years he’d lived in the United States he’d become well aware of social prejudices.

Curt held his tongue despite the foolishness of Yuri’s question. He thought for a moment of explaining the whole issue to Yuri the way Tim Melcher had explained it to him some twenty years earlier. But he decided against it, because looking at Yuri with a more critical eye, Curt couldn’t decide if he was Aryan or not.

“Marrying between the races, particularly when one member is white, is against God’s word,” Steve said.

“I’d never heard that,” Yuri said.

“What’s done is done,” Curt said with a wave of his hand. “More important at the moment is the question of what we are going to do now. Your wife knows you are screwing around with bacteria downstairs and she knows that you worked in the Soviet bioweapons industry. Chances are she knows you’re making a bioweapon.”

“She doesn’t concern herself with what I’m doing,” Yuri said. “Trust me.”

“But she could suddenly change her mind,” Curt said. “And that would be very bad.”

“She could say something to her family,” Steve suggested.

“She doesn’t talk with her family,” Yuri said. “Except for her brother. He’s the only one who cares about her.”

“So, suppose she says something revealing to her brother,” Curt said. “One way or the other, we can’t take the risk. Like we mentioned earlier she might have to go. Do you have a problem with that?”

Yuri shook his head and took a healthy swallow from his tumbler of vodka.

“Okay,” Curt said. “At least we agree on that. The problem is how do we do it without calling attention. I assume she’d be missed if she were just to disappear.”

“She’d be missed at work,” Yuri agreed. “She’s a taxi dispatcher.”

“The key point is that we have to do it so that the police are not involved,” Curt said. “Does she have any medical problems?”

“Something besides obesity,” Steve added.

Yuri shook his head. “She’s pretty healthy.”

“Hey, maybe we could use her obesity,” Steve offered. “As fat as she is, no one would question it if she had a heart attack.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Curt said. “But how do we make her have a heart attack?”

The three men looked at each other. No one had a clue how to simulate a heart attack.

“I could make her die of respiratory failure,” Yuri suggested.

Both Curt and Steve raised their eyebrows.

“A lot of overweight people die of respiratory failure,” Yuri said. “I could say she had asthma when we got to the hospital.”

“How would you do it?” Curt asked.

“I’d use a large dose of my botulinum toxin,” Yuri said. “Hell, I need to test it anyway. Why not on Connie? This way I can be sure of the dose.”

“But wouldn’t the doctors figure it out?” Curt asked.

“No,” Yuri said. “Once someone is dead and you don’t know the initial symptoms, there’s no way to suspect it. And you have to suspect it, otherwise it’s not thought of. There are too many other things that cause respiratory failure.”

“Are you sure?” Curt asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” Yuri said. “I was involved with a lot of the testing of the toxin back in the Soviet Union. With a big dose the person just stops breathing and turns blue. The KGB was very interested in it for covert assassinations because what constitutes a big dose is actually a very, very small amount.”

“I like it,” Curt said. “There’s a certain poetic justice to it. After all, Connie is threatening the security of Operation Wolverine. When could you do it?”

“Tonight,” Yuri said with a shrug. “One thing I never have trouble getting her to do is eat. Later on, after she calms down, I’ll just call in some pizza and that will be that.”

“Well,” Curt declared while allowing his first smile of the evening. “With that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, let’s go on to greener pastures. What’s the good news you have for us?”