Warren Murphy: Killer Chromosomes

After putting all those forces to work, Smith sat in his office to wait He spun his chair around, looking out at the waters of Long Island Sound. He was not too confident because government was like the water at which he stared. The water's action could be predicted, because its ebb and flow was on its own schedule and its own clock. But control it?

It was that way with government. Sometimes you could predict its flow but only a fool believed he could control it. Just as the waters of the Sound. They had come and gone for hundreds and thousands of years. Hundreds and thousands of years from now, someone else would be sitting in Smith's chair, looking out at the waters. They would still be moving in their own rhythm, in their own time.

The telephone rang. It was the wrong phone and wasn't the call for which Smith had hoped. "Yes, Mr President," he said

"I didn't think I'd be making any more calls to you," the President said, "but just what the hell is going on?"

"What do you mean, sir?" Smith asked.

"I'm getting reports. It seems like this whole peckerheaded government has gone on some kind of alert. Are you responsible for that?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

"Why, when you're supposed to be doing something about that Boston mess?"

"This is part of that Boston mess, as you put it," said Smith.

"I thought your secret weapon would have resolved all that by now anyway." There was sarcasm in the President's soft, honey-coated voice.

"That secret weapon has been injured and captured, sir," Smith said. "It is important that he be found before-"

"Before he talks?" the President interrupted.

"Yes. Or before he is killed."

The President sighed. "If he talks, he brings down the government. Not just my administration, but the entire concept of constitutional government. I guess you know that."

"I know that, sir."

"How can we stop him from talking?"

"By locating him."

"And then what?"

"If there is any danger of his revealing what he should not, I will handle it," Smith said.

"How?" asked the President.

"I don't think you'd want to know the answer to that, Mr. President," said Smith.

The President, who understood full well that he had just heard a man promise to kill another if it became necessary for the country's best interests, said softly, "Oh. I'll leave it with you."

"That would be best. We have destroyed some of the Boston creatures. That should reduce the death toll there."

"Cutting back is small consolation. I don't think the American people are going to be comforted if I tell them we've managed to cut the murder rate from mutated people by sixty-seven percent. From six a day to two a day."

"No, sir, I guess not. We are continuing to work on it," Smith said.

"Good night," the President said, "When this is all over, assuming we survive, I think I would like to meet you."

"Good night, sir," Smith said noncommittally.

The next call was the one Smith wanted. A Coast Guard official, who thought he was talking to an FBI agent for Westchester County, reported a helicopter had found a twenty-nine-foot Silverton. It was empty and drifting through the Sound without lights. There was no one aboard.

The owner was a New Jersey dentist who said he had sold the boat only eight hours earlier for twenty-seven thousand dollars. Cash. The buyer was a young man who wore a gold sunburst medallion around his neck.

Smith thanked the man and hung up.

That was that. A dead end. The man with the sunburst medallion had been one of the tiger people. Smith had shot him in the upstairs hallway outside Remo's room. That trail was cold and dead.

Smith waited at his telephone for the rest of the night but it did not ring again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was still night when the small jet landed on a bumpy runway. After the plane had come to a full stop, Remo felt his cage being dragged to the cargo door, then dumped five feet to the ground.

"Hey, goddammit, that hurt," Remo yelled. His voice echoed inside the cage, rebounding off the heavy black drapes.

Then all was still until he heard the plane's motors start up again. The sound seemed to be right above his ears. At one time he had been able to block out noises, closing his ears the way other persons could close their eyes, but he could not do it now.

The screeching wail of the engines continued, reverberating over his head, setting his teeth on edge, growing ever louder. Then, mercifully, he could hear the plane move away, lurching along the runway, its motors burned to full power. Remo could hear the plane taking off, vanishing in the distance.

The night was still, except for the creaking of insects, who sounded as if they were holding a quorum call of all the bugs that ever lived.

Remo wished he had a cigarette. The side curtain was lifted and tossed on top of the cage. Sheila Feinberg stood there, outside the bars, wearing shorts that barely covered her crotch and a matching khaki top stretched taut over her enormous breasts.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"Fine," Remo said through the bars. "Time really flies when you're having fun."

"Do you want to get out of there?"

"Either that or send me maid service. Whatever makes you happy."

Sheila leaned on the bars of the cage.

"Look. I think you know by now I can take you. If you remember that and don't mess around trying to escape, I'll let you out. But if you're going to be difficult you can stay in the cage. Your choice."

"Let me out," Remo said.

"All right. That's better all around," Sheila said.

She fished a key from the pocket of her shorts, which Remo thought were too tight to allow the intromission of anything, and unlocked the padlock on the cage.

Remo crawled onto the chipped and broken blacktop of the runway, rose to his feet, and stretched. "That feels good," he said.

"All right. Let's go," Sheila said. She led the way to a jeep that was parked alongside the runway. Remo got into the passenger's side as she started the motor.

"One thing," Remo said. "You are Sheila Feinberg, aren't you?"

"That's right."

"Your photographs don't do you justice," he said.

"My pictures are of what I used to look like. That was a long time ago."

Remo nodded. "And where are we?"

"Dominican Republic. Eighteen miles outside of Santo Domingo."

"You've brought me a long way just to kill me."

"Who's going to kill you?" asked Sheila. I've got other plans for you." She turned to Remo and smiled, a smile full of teeth that did not make Remo feel at all good.

"What plans?" Remo asked.

"You're going into stud service," she said, and laughed aloud as she drove away from the runway onto a narrow dirt road, leading toward rolling hills a half-dozen miles away.

Remo sat back to enjoy the ride, if he could. He still wished he had a cigarette.

They stopped at a white farmhouse on the edge of a sugar cane field, the size of four, square, city blocks. The sugar had long ago been harvested. Most of the cane was cut and gone.

Only little patches remained, sitting in the field like random tufts of hair on a bald man. The cut husks were dry. When Remo stepped on one, it crackled under his foot as if he had jumped into a pail of cellophane.

The house was clean and well provisioned. A noisy gasoline generator outside provided electricity to run the lights and the refrigerator. The first thing Remo looked for and found were cigarettes in a cupboard in the kitchen. He lit one quickly and savored the taste of smoke rolling over his tongue, depositing droplets of tar onto his teeth, gums, and tongue on its poisonous way into his lungs.

The second thing he looked for and found was a package of Twinkies in the refrigerator. He ripped open the cellophane with his teeth and shoved the cake into his mouth. Two of life's great pleasures, he thought. A cigarette and a chocolate-flavored lump of refined sugar.