Robin Cook - Vector

Jack looked at Lou. “What do you want to do?”

“Go home and shoot myself,” Lou said.

“You want company?” Jack asked.

The two men sank into their chairs. Jack felt shell-shocked. Laurie’s getting married was worse than her going away. Instead of moving to the West Coast, it was more like her going to Venus. The episode startled him into realizing how much he’d been avoiding thoughts about the future. Guilt about his family still made it difficult for him to justify future happiness. That’s why he found making a commitment so difficult.

Lou cradled his head in his hands. He was the picture of dejection. “I’ve worried about Laurie getting married,” he said. “Especially to you.”

“To me?” Jack questioned with surprise. “I actually worried she’d get married to you. I know you two dated before I came on the scene.”

“You shouldn’t have worried,” Lou said. “It wasn’t to be. It never would have worked. During the brief time we went out on a regular basis, I screwed it up. Every time there was the slightest blip, I thought she was breaking up with me, and I acted like an ass. It drove both of us batty, and we ended up having a long talk about it. Tonight when she mentioned about ‘confidence’ being an important personality characteristic for her, she was referring to me.”

“The part about the ability to make a commitment was directed at me,” Jack said.

“Was that the problem between you two?” Lou asked. “I never could figure out what happened. You guys seemed natural for each other. You know, similar backgrounds, fancy schools, and all the rest of that bullshit.”

“It was part of it,” Jack said. “But I’m so screwed up I don’t even know all the reasons.”

“It’s a tragedy!” Lou complained. “For you and for me. At least if she tied the knot with you, I could stay friends with both of you. When she marries this twerp, I’m out the door. I mean, I fantasized about Laurie and me staying friends even when they married. But tonight when I saw that rock on her finger, I instantly knew staying the kind of friends I envisioned was out of the question.”

“I guess I was unrealistically hoping the present would never change,” Jack said.

Lou nodded and thought for a moment before asking, “What did you think of this guy?”

“A snake in the grass,” Jack said without hesitation. “But I don’t know how objective I can be. I’m obviously jealous. It bugged me how they kept touching each other.”

“It rubbed me the wrong way as well,” Lou said with another nod. “Like puppy love. It was disgusting. But I question my objectivity, too. Yet it all seems too quick to me, like the guy’s after her money even though she doesn’t have any. Of course that can be the cynical detective talking.”

Jack shook his head dejectedly. “We can sit here and say nasty things about him, but the fact is, he’s a lot more spontaneous than we are, and he’s got a lot more bucks. I mean, going to Paris for the weekend! There’s no way I could do that. Worrying about how much it was costing would drive me bananas, and I’d be miserable to be with.”

“It makes me mad to think that there are people that can do that sort of thing,” Lou said. “What with my alimony payments and raising two kids, I’m lucky to have two nickels to scrape together.”

“Envious might be a better word than mad,” Jack said.

Lou scraped back his chair and stood up. “I got to get home to bed before I get too depressed. I’ve been up for two straight days.”

“I’m with you,” Jack said.

The two men wormed their way out of the restaurant feeling all the more depressed in light of the festive atmosphere.

Monday, October 18

10:15 p.m.

After Curt and Steve left, Yuri had gone down to his beloved lab. The first thing he did was repair the damage Connie had caused when she’d pried off the padlocks. To be on the safe side he bolted the hasps to the door rather than replace the screws. With that setup, an intruder would most likely need something more powerful than a crowbar to pull them loose.

While he worked, he thought about Curt and Steve’s disturbing visit. He was taken aback by their anger, particularly their anger about his stopping by the firehouse. The explanation that he was a security risk because he was a foreigner with a Russian accent didn’t ring true. New York was much too cosmopolitan a city. Every other person had an accent.

Yuri thought there had to be another reason why they didn’t want him seen there. Although he couldn’t think of what it might have been, it made him feel uncomfortable. For the first time Yuri began to question where he stood with Curt and Steve. He knew they were strong on prejudice, so the thought passed through his mind they might be prejudiced against him, and if that was the case they certainly weren’t the friends he imagined.

The other source of their anger — that Connie was black — was equally mysterious. It wasn’t so much the prejudice itself that surprised Yuri. He was well aware of Curt and Steve’s racial bigotry. What got him was the amount of anger involved. It was so out of proportion, and the pseudo-religious explanation Steve had given seemed contrived. Neither Curt nor Steve had ever said anything to suggest they were at all religious.

And finally, there was the issue of the pest control truck and aerosolizer. Yuri couldn’t understand why they’d not obtained it yet. That was an important part of the agreement. Without it, Yuri would not be able to carry out his part of the operation. He needed a sprayer, and he needed it to be mobile. A point source was not anywhere near as effective.

In order to fix the inner door, Yuri suited up in the hazmat suit and opened the valve on the compressed air cylinder. The regulator wasn’t the demand variety used for scuba diving. Instead it kept a constant flow of air into the suit as a means of keeping any particles from the environment from gaining entry.

It was much harder to work in the suit and it was very hot, but Yuri didn’t mind. He knew the risk he’d be taking if he didn’t wear it. But it did slow him down.

After the door was fixed, Yuri turned his attention to the fermenter with the Clostridium botulinum. He tested the bacterial concentration and was again disappointed. He could not figure out why the culture continued to grow so slowly. As far as he knew he’d followed the culture conditions carefully that had been used so successfully in the Soviet Union when he’d worked with the organism a decade previously. The conditions had been determined to produce maximum culture growth and maximum toxin production.

The only thing Yuri could imagine was that air was getting into the fermenter. Clostridium botulinum was a bacteria that grew without oxygen. Consequently, Yuri had used carbon dioxide gas instead of air over the culture. Perhaps there was something wrong with the cylinder of carbon dioxide Curt’s troops had obtained for him. Unfortunately, Yuri didn’t have any way to analyze it, and requesting a new cylinder would take too long.

Yuri stood up from where he’d been bending down to check the internal fermenter temperature. It was a few degrees cooler than optimum, so he adjusted his jury-rigged waterbath thermostat. Having the temperature off certainly didn’t help, but it was not an adequate explanation for the slow growth.

He thought about Curt’s suggestion to switch production in the Clostridium fermenter to anthrax so that both units would be producing the anthrax spores. There was a lot to be said for that idea. It was the only way he’d be able to produce enough material for both laydowns within the time frame they’d discussed. The trouble was that breaking down the fermenter was a big job and at the moment he had another worry: Connie.