Rules of Re-engagement Page 7

  Her hand shot to her mouth. “Oh my God! What is this?”

  “That’s four days after initial infection.”

  Olivia felt the blood drain from her head. “Why are they attacking each other like that?”

  “The pathogen eats into their brains, causing rapid dementia and triggering a violent aggression in its host. It’s the way the disease spreads itself, through blood, saliva and other bodily fluids.”

  The next image to fill her screen was of men and women, eyes rolled back into their heads, cut, scratched, bitten, bleeding from every orifice, twitching and writhing in what looked like excruciating pain. They were shackled to the cots with leather belts and canvas straps.

  “That’s after six days.”

  A strange noise escaped her chest.

  In the next clip men in black hazmat suits were rolling bodies into a massive pit dug out of the red soil. They then poured what looked like lime over the corpses. The final clip was the entire camp being razed by fire, black smoke boiling into the jungle air.

  Her eyes shot to his in horror.

  “Seven days from start to finish,” he said. “Very violent, very painful, and very, very frightening.”

  “What is this, Jack? What is that disease?”

  “That—” he pointed to the screen “—is what’ll happen in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in six days or less. That, Olivia, is the digital footage that was sent to President Elliot, showing him what will happen right here in the United States if he does not step down and relinquish his leadership by midnight, October 13.”

  “Where was this! Where did this happen?”

  “Near Ishonga, in Congo-Brazzaville.”

  “Up near the Shilongwe River?”

  “Not far from the Gabonese border. You’re familiar with the area?”

  “Yes, I am. Civil war is rife in that region. There have been allegations of genocide. The place is a complete mess. No one really knows what goes on in there.”

  “The perfect place for illegal clinical trials of a genetically engineered pathogen, given under the guise of a vaccine program, wouldn’t you say?”

  She narrowed her eyes at the screen. Her brain was working in overdrive now. Her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe. Injustices like this drove her wild. It was the reason she worked for the UN, why she did what she did for a living. “How do you know it’s the Ishonga region?”

  “We didn’t, not initially. But see here—” he clicked the mouse, took the footage back to the initial frame where vaccines were being given. He froze the image, enlarged it several times and pointed. “We digitally enhanced the footage. See in that far corner? See that maroon beret, and that glimpse of an armband there? That’s the uniform of People’s Militia. It pointed us straight to the Congo-Brazzaville region.”

  She glanced at the silver cuff on her wrist, at the pale gold capsule in the window. Panic licked at her. “Is…is the same disease in this capsule?”

  He hesitated.

  She lurched to her feet. “Is it the same, Jack!”

  “It has a small genetic variation, but yes, basically it is the same.”

  She stared at him in sheer horror. He might be Jack Sauer, but this man was a complete stranger to her.

  “Olivia—” he reached to touch her arm “—I’m sorry.”

  She jerked away. “You bastard,” she whispered. “How could you?”

  He got to his feet slowly. “If you want to blame someone for that disease, Olivia—” his eyes drilled into hers “—blame your father, not me.”

  Chapter 6

  07:40 Romeo. Olivia Killinger’s apartment.

  Manhattan. Wednesday, October 8.

  “Oh no.” She shook her head. “You’re not saying that—”

  “That he created that monster? That he orchestrated those trials on innocent villagers? That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “He couldn’t!”

  “Not personally, Olivia, but he pulled all the strings. He had the pathogen isolated and genetically modified at Nexus—a highly secretive offshore lab indirectly owned by one of his subsidiaries and operated in the Sultanate of Hamān—specifically to avoid U.S. oversight. The scientist who did the work is Dr. Paige Sterling. She isolated the causative agent of a previously unknown prion disease peculiar to a rare troop of pygmy chimps found exclusively in the Blacklands region of the Congo. She made a breakthrough that defies current scientific thinking. Her work has enabled the creation of a whole new generation of prion illnesses.”

  He paused. “We have Dr. Sterling now. We brought her out of Hamān three days ago. She’s helping manufacture antidote in a level-four lab we’ve set up on São Diogo.”

  “She’s helping you?”

  “She didn’t know how her work was being used to this end, Olivia. Paige Sterling and her parents were basically owned and manipulated by Venturion organizations, namely Science Reach International and the Nexus Research and Development Group.”

  Dismay clouded her eyes. She slowly sat again.

  “We don’t yet know how your father plans to deliver this bioweapon, Olivia, but we suspect it has been made airborne and packed into some form of explosive device. Dr. Sterling showed us it can be done.”

  She stared blankly at the screen, her focus distant.

  “Can you imagine what you saw on this screen happening right here in New York? It will be pure terror, and only a matter of time before it becomes a pandemic. This is not a virus, Olivia, and it’s not a bacteria. Doctors around the world will not be able to stop this without access to Dr. Sterling’s work or the antidote.”

  “Why, Jack, why would my father be involved in something like this? It doesn’t make sense. What good would a pandemic do him?” she asked without looking at him.

  “BioMed Pharmaceutical will market the antidote. BioMed will hold the patent.”

  “And BioMed is a Venturion subsidiary?” she said quietly.

  “Yes, Venturion stands to gain financially, and the Cabal will be able to coordinate, manipulate and contain the outbreak, to a degree. But there will still be vast loss of life. We’ve located some of the antidote stockpiles offshore, but we haven’t moved in on them yet, because we cannot tip our hand without tipping off your father. That alone would trigger the release of the pathogen. In the meantime, we are manufacturing as much antidote as we can on São Diogo under Dr. Sterling’s direction.”

  She looked up at him. “How did you get samples of the disease? From Dr. Sterling?”

  She was thinking the logic through. This was good. He was making progress. But he wasn’t going to tell her all of it yet. There was only so much she was going to be able to absorb in one day.

  “We got the pathogen from a nurse who fled Ishonga with tissue samples from infected villagers. The disease managed to escape the trial group and ended up at a small mission clinic. Cabal-controlled militia moved in to destroy the mission compound and everything in it, but the nurse got away. We intercepted her distress call. We were monitoring communications in that region after seeing this footage. Hunter McBride brought her out.”

  She swallowed, looking as if she might faint.

  “Can I get you some water, Olivia, or something else to drink?’

  She shook her head, stood up, went to the window, looked down into the street. He noticed she was twisting the bracelet round and round and round her wrist.

  He came to her side. “I’ll bet my life that those guys down there are carrying the antidote with them, just in case your father is forced to release the bombs. They probably have orders and the means to get you out of the country ASAP if things go sideways.”

  She said nothing.

  He cupped her jaw, turned her face, making her look at him. “Your father wants you to be safe, Olivia. He loves you, and that’s why he’s tailing you.”

  “And this?” She held out her arm with the cuff. “Do they have the antidote to this variation?”

  He hesitated. “No. Your fat
her’s antidote will not work on that.”

  A small shudder ran through her body. She moved away from him and covered her stomach with her arms. The hurt of betrayal in her eyes was profound, and it tore at his gut.

  “You say this thing is going to happen in six days, if the president doesn’t stand down?”

  “If you don’t help us stop it.”

  She stood silent for several minutes, staring into the street.

  “And if the president does stand down?”

  She wasn’t ready to learn that it wouldn’t end there, that it would just be the beginning.

  “He won’t, Olivia. We have to stop your father.” He touched her shoulder. She tensed, moved away.

  “I don’t buy it,” she said. “Why do you need me? If my father is this…this ogre you say he is, why don’t you just go get him yourselves?”

  “We can’t. His security is excellent. If he gets so much as a whiff that we are on to him, those bombs will blow.” Jack paused. “And if we try and take him down and he gets killed, those bombs could be programmed to go off anyway. He would have built in some kind of insurance policy for himself. He alone has to stop this. You have to get me close to him, Olivia. You have to get me into that inner sanctum of his, and together we must make him pull the plug.”

  She bit her bottom lip.

  “It’s the only way, Olivia…unless you want me to use the bracelet.”

  Her eyes flashed hotly to his. “How does the bracelet work?”

  He considered her carefully, decided to play it straight. He took hold of her wrist, turned it over. “See that—” he pointed to a fine join in the silver “—the hinge is in there. The cuff locks at the underside here,” he said turning her arm. “If you open it without the deactivation key, it will create pressure on that hinge, and that in turn will fire an impulse—a microscopic explosion—which will force a needle into your arm and feed the solution from the capsule directly into your system.”

  Still holding her hand in his, he looked into her eyes. “You’ll start to bleed internally almost immediately. Death will take a while longer.”

  Her skin went sheet white. “And if you cut through the metal, without putting pressure on the hinge?”

  “There’s an electronic thread that runs through the core of the metal. If severed, it will trigger the same impulse. Same result.”

  She withdrew her hand slowly, a look of hatred and disbelief leaking into her golden eyes.

  “Olivia,” he said slowly, “I want to trust you. And more than anything in this world I want you to trust me.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she peered deep and hard into his. “Jack,” her voice was flat, strangely devoid of emotion, “I would never condone anything like you’ve shown me in that footage. It goes against everything I am, everything I’ve worked for. If any of this is true, which I’m having trouble accepting right now, then I will do what is in my power to stop it.”

  “Then, Olivia, I must prove to you it is true.” He watched her eyes. “And you must prove to me that you will take my word over your father’s. You must show me that your belief in justice runs thicker than your blood.”

  A teensy stress muscle began to pulse at the corner of her eye. He ached to place his fingers over it, to tell her it would be all right, if she just trusted him. But she turned her back on him, walked smoothly, calmly to the bedroom and shut the door softly behind her.

  Once again Jack heard the twist of the lock, and he felt his heart twist with it.

  Olivia double-checked the door was locked. Then she went into the bathroom, shut that door and locked it, too. She sat on the edge of the tub clutching her cell phone in her hands and she tried to think. But she couldn’t. Her mind had gone blank. And when she looked at her watch again she was shocked to see how long she’d been sitting there totally numb. It was almost nine in the morning and she’d be expected at the office any minute. Her heart quickened. She had to do something.

  Olivia glanced at the bathroom door, half expecting him to break two sets of locks and barge right in. He’d managed to walk into her apartment, back into her life and right back into her soul. She wouldn’t put anything past him right now.

  She hit the quick-dial to her office, tension prickling over her scalp as the phone rang and rang at the other end. Her assistant finally picked up.

  “Hi, Pria.” Olivia forced lightness into her voice. “I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be coming into the office for the next few days.”

  “Olivia? Are you okay? Anything wrong?”

  She laughed lightly, falsely, hand tight on the phone. “No, no, everything’s fine,” she lied. “It’s just that I’ve had some…personal matters come up that need to be dealt with right away.” Like national security. Like a dead fiancé coming back to life. Like my father being accused of trying to overthrow the country. She felt herself wobble at the enormity of what lay in front of her. She took a deep breath, controlled her voice. “I am going to be doing some work from home, however, and I was hoping you could patch me through to Harvey? He should be in the building today.”

  Harvey was a Brit of Asian descent, a techno-geek genius who worked on several systems at UN headquarters. He was also a friend, someone she’d helped out when his parents had run into serious immigration problems. It was time to call in the favor.

  Pria had Harvey on the line within minutes.

  “Hey, Olivia, what’s up?”

  Perspiration began to bead on her forehead. She eyed the door again, lowered her voice. “I need a favor, Harv, a big one. I’ll compensate you for your time.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Where are you, I can barely hear you?”

  She glanced at the door again. “Just bad reception. I…I’ll speak up.”

  “That’s better. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m working on…on a case. It’s convoluted, highly sensitive. I’d prefer not to have to go through regular channels, not yet, if you know what I mean?”

  He chuckled heartily. “You mean you need some under-the-radar cyber investigation done?”

  “Yes.”

  His tone turned serious. “What is it that you need checked?”

  “Background on a couple of companies. Got a pen?”

  He grunted. “Fire away.”

  “The Nexus Research and Development Group, Science Reach International, and BioMed Pharmaceutical. I need to know who owns what, I mean behind-the-scenes, Harv, behind the shells and holding companies. I want to know whether they’re ultimately U.S.-based, and if they are linked in any way.” She paused. “And I want to know if there are any anomalies with the major shareholders, any unusual patterns, that kind of thing. How long will that take you?”

  “That’s real broad, Olivia. Could take a while, maybe a few days—”

  “I don’t have a few days, Harv. It’s urgent.”

  He was silent for a while. “Are you okay? Is there something more I should know about?”

  She blinked back the sudden burn in her eyes. “I…just need this done. Soon.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll move it to the top of my agenda. Total priority.”

  Relief swooped through her. “I love you, Harv.”

  “I wish.”

  She tried to smile.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, there is. The FDS—Force du Sable. It’s a private military company. I want to know exactly when it was founded, who founded it, who runs it, who the key players are, where the organization is registered, where they do their banking, and who hires them. Anything and everything. A photo of their main man would be good.”

  “That would be the PMC that’s been lobbying the UN for some kind of international security commission.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Shouldn’t be too tough to dig up stuff on them. They’d have had to put a lot of cards on their table to make their case for legitimacy. Anything else?”

  “Not yet. Oh, wait, if you can find anything on a Dr. Pa
ige Sterling and her work it would very much appreciated. I believe she’s affiliated with an offshore lab in Hamān.” She didn’t want to give Harvey more. If the links were there, he would find them.

  “Hamān? Where the uprising is—the one that’s thrown the entire Middle East into chaos?”

  “Yes, that Hamān.”

  Silence. “Olivia…if there’s anything else you need, you call me, you understand? Any time of day or night. I don’t know what you’re into here, but…I’m behind you, okay?”

  “Thanks, Harv.” She hung up before emotion choked her throat. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, tried to gather herself, and then she made another quick call, this one to her father’s personal assistant. She asked him if her father would be in the office this morning. His assistant said he would. Olivia told her she’d be in to see him around 11 a.m.

  She flipped her phone shut, brushed her teeth, fixed her hair and put on some makeup. Olivia studied her reflection, thinking. She looked vaguely normal and felt anything but.

  As she turned to go, the glimmer of diamonds on the basin edge caught her attention. She stopped, stared at Grayson’s ring, then quickly scooped it up and slipped it into her purse along with her phone.

  Olivia walked softly over the carpet to the bedroom door, opened it just a crack and peeked through. The door to the study was closed. She listened. She could hear him in there, talking on the phone.

  Her heart began to race. She tiptoed carefully over the wooden floor. Almost breathless with nerves, she opened her front door and fled from her own apartment.

  Olivia stepped into the streets of Manhattan, heart thudding.

  The light was bright and the air crisp. The storm clouds had cleared and the sky between the tops of buildings was eggshell blue. It all looked so normal—people rushing to work, going about their business, cars honking, taxis jostling.

  She glanced over the road. The silver sedan was still there, but she couldn’t see behind the tinted windows. She took a quick look to the left, then turned and walked down the street in the opposite direction, making for the subway that would take her south toward Venturion Tower in Manhattan’s financial district.