Calypso Directive (30 page)

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ASHEN-FACED, JULIE HUNG
up her phone and turned to Will.

“What was that all about?”

“I'll explain later. Right now, we need to get the hell out of here.” She darted to her closet, grabbed a backpack, and began stuffing it with essentials.

“Talk to me, Julie. Who was that on the phone?”

“Vyrogen. They know you're with me. It's only a matter of time before they come here.”

The look in her eyes was all the motivation he needed. He swiped her mobile phone from her hand and powered it off. “They can track us with this,” he said, handing it back to her. “Keep it turned off.” Then, he grabbed the computer printouts off the desk and began stuffing them into the bag.

“Shhhh—quiet,” she whispered.

Will froze. In the stillness, they heard the deadbolt click open on the apartment door.

“Shit, they've found us!”

W
ILL DUCKED BEHIND
the half-closed door to Julie's bedroom. She handed him a pair of scissors from her desk, which he turned point downward and gripped like a knife. Her Viennese city apartment was small and bereft of hiding places. Their only hope was for Julie to distract the intruder momentarily so that he would have the element of surprise for an attack.

“Ask who's there,” he whispered to her.

“Hello? Who is there?” Julie yelled out in German, still standing inside her bedroom behind the threshold.

Silence.

Her legs begin to quiver. Maybe they had been mistaken and it was not her front door that they had heard, but the tenant arriving home in the apartment above. If an intruder had entered, he would have had to break down the door. Unless, the intruder had picked the lock. Or, what if he had killed the building superintendent and taken her key. She could hear footsteps in the hall. She felt her courage wane, and her feet began to backpedal. She looked at Will, who put his index finger to his lips, and raised his hand holding the scissors in a striking position next to his temple.

A woman screamed.

Julie's roommate, Isabella, stood in the doorway, her hand pressed against her chest. She exhaled with pursed lips and pulled a pair of white ear buds from her ears.

“Oh my God, you scared the hell out of me, Julie! I didn't think anyone was home. I was walking by your room, on the way to mine, and out of the corner of my eye I saw someone standing in the doorway,” Isabella stammered in English flavored with an Italian accent.

“You scared me too! I thought someone had broken into the apartment. Did you not hear me call out?” Julie asked.

Isabella pointed to her iPod, peaking out of her front right jeans pocket. Will silently lowered the scissors from the ready position and set them down on the carpet. He shook his head to signal to Julie not to reveal his presence, but she was not looking at him.

“I thought you and Peter weren't returning from Greece until tomorrow night?”

“Peter's boss called him and said that he needed him to come in because the head chef had taken ill, so we had to fly back early,” Isabella explained. “Speaking of being home early, shouldn't you be at the lab?”

“Yes, but an old friend called me unexpectedly. He is in Vienna on business, so I agreed to meet with him.”

“Have I met him before? Is it that hot guy from Milano?”

Julie blushed, embarrassed and glanced back at Will. “Well, no, but . . .” She extended her hand toward the half-closed bedroom door. “Isabella, meet . . . Bob. Bob, meet my roommate, Isabella.”

Will stepped out from behind the door and raised his hand in an awkward half-wave. “Hello, I'm Bob . . . not from Milano. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Um . . . very nice to meet you, Bob,” Isabella stammered.

An awkward silence filled the bedroom as they all stood looking at one another.

“We had better get going, Bob, if we want to make our appointment,” Julie said, grabbing Will's sleeve and tugging.

“I agree. Look at the time. It was nice to meet you, Isabella.”

Isabella shook Will's hand. “Very nice to meet you too. Maybe we'll see each other again.”

Julie quickly gathered her computer, her wallet, sunglasses, and the remainder of the printouts from the lab and stuffed them into the backpack; she gave Will a gentle push toward the door. He walked past Isabella and smiled at her.

Isabella raised her eyebrows at Julie and silently mouthed, “What is going on?”

Julie shrugged and gave her friend a devilish grin.

“Will you be back before dinner? Maybe the three of us can go out tonight, for dinner and dancing?” Isabella called after her.

“I wouldn't count on it tonight. Let's plan on dinner tomorrow night instead. Okay?”

“Great, then Peter can join us,” Isabella added. “Where are you headed off to now?”

“Just going to grab a coffee,” Julie replied. She then took a step backward and whispered into Isabella's ear.

“If anyone comes by the flat looking for me, tell them you haven't seen me or talked to me recently okay?”

“Ummm, okay?”

“And don't say anything about Bob.”

“Julie, what's going on?”

“Nothing. Bob and I just need some alone time.”

Isabella eyed Will suspiciously and then grabbed Julie by the shoulders. “Are you sure you're okay? You know I'm here for you if you need me. You can tell me anything.”

“I know. Really, everything is fine. But we need to go.”

“Okay, then. Ciao,” Isabella said as she gave her friend a hug.

“Ciao.”

“
S
HE SAID HER
name was Meredith Morley and that she worked for Vyrogen. She knew you were with me,” Julie said, as she whipped her Opel Astra around a corner so fast that the tires squealed. Her eyes darted right and left, combing the avenue ahead for an open parking spot. An instant later, she slammed on the brakes and jerked steering wheel to the right, bringing the little sedan to an abrupt halt in an open, angled slip. She turned the car off and immediately dropped her face into her hands.

“That name is not familiar. What else did she say?” Will asked.

“She said I needed to make a choice, between you and my career.”

“What? I don't understand. How did she find us?”

“Isn't it obvious? Bart Bennett at my lab must have contacted her. He was acting really strange after Jon brought me the test results. Never in a million years would I have thought he was connected to all this.”

“Awfully convenient to be a coincidence,” Will said, eyeing her.

She looked up at him. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I'm just saying, what are the odds that you're helping me
and
your buddy Bart happens to be collaborating with Vyrogen.”

“I didn't rat you out Will,” she said with heat. “I'm offended you'd even go there.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, before Julie confessed in a quiet voice, “There's something I need to tell you . . . Vyrogen owns Wien Bioscience.”

Will choked on his own saliva. Coughing, he said, “Excuse me?”

“I didn't know that Leighton-Harris was owned by Vyrogen—not until I ran the Internet search back at the apartment. I swear. I didn't tell you then because I didn't want to plant a seed of doubt in your mind that would grow and fester the longer we were together. Things were going so smooth between us, I didn't want to poison the well with something that is outside our control. You've been through so much, Will. Emotionally, physically, psychologically. I made the unilateral decision at that moment that I would carry this burden for both of us, and that I would tell you when the time was right, and so I'm telling you now.”

He flashed with anger. Was there no one he could trust? How far would he have to run to escape Vyrogen's reach? He looked at Julie. Unflinching, she met his gaze. Vyrogen had given her an ultimatum, and she had made her choice. She'd picked him. His anger ebbed and was replaced by something else: respect, gratitude . . . adoration?

He took a deep breath and grabbed her hand. “What next?”

“We need a safe, local hideaway with Internet access, where we can regroup.”

“How about the Vienna Public Library?”

“After what happened in Prague, I'd prefer to stay away from obvious hotspots like libraries and Internet cafés. I have different place in mind called the Four Bells—it's a neighborhood Irish pub.” She glanced at her watch: 2:14 PM. “It should be completely deserted at this time of day, and I've known the owners and the waitstaff for years. We can trust them.”

Julie led Will inside the pub and after exchanging pleasantries with the lone waiter/bartender, they slid into a semicircular booth against the wall in the otherwise unoccupied pub.

She opened a browser window on her laptop and logged into the Four Bells free Wi-Fi. Then she turned to Will. “We know
who
is responsible, but we still don't know the
why
. Is there anything else you haven't told me yet? Anything at all?”

“Yes,” he said in a low, solemn voice. “The night of my escape, I stole a glass vial filled with a substance they had injected me with during the most recent round of experiments.”

“Do you know what that substance was?”

“Can I see that list of disease antibodies you showed me back in the apartment?”

She retrieved the printouts from the backpack and handed them to him. He leafed through the pages until he found it.

“This is it,” he said, pointing to the name on the list.

“
Yersinia pestis
? You think Vyrogen intentionally injected you with live plague cultures?”

“I know that they did.”

Julie's mind started spinning. She had joked about the antibody test results, because she had made the logical assumption that Will had been inoculated with vaccines for each of the bugs on the list. Never in a million years would she have imagined the antibodies were from exposure to the live organisms.

“What you're saying defies logic. You would be dead if you were injected with every pathogen on that list.”

“You said if I had the antibody for the bug, then that meant I had been exposed to the bug.”

“Exposed, as in vaccinated. That's what vaccines do—they safely expose your immune system to a specific pathogen so that your immune system can develop antibodies against it. But the pathogen is weakened, dead, or altered in such a way that it is rendered benign. I didn't mean to suggest that you were exposed to the actual live pathogens on this list.”

“But I was.”

“Are you sure that the vial you stole wasn't a
Yersinia pestis
vaccine? The label you read was probably the vaccine label.”

“I know it wasn't a vaccine because the vial accidentally broke when I was in Prague. I told you that during our IM chat. Remember the two college kids from the youth hostel that I said were sick?”

“Honestly, no I don't, Will. I'm working off of only two hours sleep and my mind is mush right now. Besides, at the time, I thought you were delusional.”

“I don't want to go into the whole story, but the vial of
Yersinia pestis
smashed on the floor and contaminated two kids who were staying in the same room as me. Twelve hours later, they looked like they were on their deathbeds. I don't know what happened to them though because I had to run when some guys showed up at the hostel looking for me.”

Julie entered a new Google search: “Plague + Prague + youth hostel.” The search list populated, and to her astonishment, she saw several relevant hits. She clicked on one with English subtext.

“Two American tourists died in a Prague area hospital after contracting a virulent strain of bubonic plague. A local woman, who was also exposed, is in critical but stable condition and expected to survive. Czech Health Administration officials released a statement that the infection resulted from exposure to improperly disposed medical waste and that this isolated incident in no way threatens public safety . . .”