Second Chance (25 page)

Because you can't know. Not until it happens to you." He gave a nod to Gresham, and they left the room.

They went down several short hallways, then descended in a service elevator. Keith estimated that they were four stories beneath ground level when the doors opened. They stepped out, and Keith followed as Gresham pushed Charles Goncourt down a wide hall, which ended at a cement block wall. Gresham took a small remote control from his jacket pocket, pointed it toward a spot on the wall ten feet up, and pressed a button. The wall slid aside. Keith had noticed the indentation, but expressed surprise nevertheless.

"Secret panels," he said admiringly. "Pretty neat."

"This is only the beginning," said Gresham proudly. They went through the opening, and the wall closed behind them.

As they approached a wide double-door, Goncourt spoke again. "Did you ever kill anyone while you were in Vietnam?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir. Never close up enough that I knew it."

The doors opened to some unseen electric eye, and they entered near the front of what Keith took to be a small lecture hall. To his left was a small curtained stage, and to his right were half a dozen rows of seats with ten seats per row. Over half the seats were filled with people in white lab coats, and Keith saw Bob Hastings, Al Freeman, and Ted Horst in the third row. Hastings grinned at him, but the other two men showed no recognition. There were a few other men Keith had seen at Red's Tavern, but had never met.

Gresham turned Goncourt's chair toward the assembled men. "Good morning, gentlemen," Goncourt said. "Thank you for interrupting your important work to welcome a new candidate who wishes to assist us in our research. Every one of you knows that in order to work in our secret facility, a man must be more than talented, more than skilled, more than brilliant. He must be
dedicated
. Dedicated to a cause which others might find reprehensible. But those of us here know that there is only one way for the white Christian race to survive, and here we are struggling to develop the means to that end. Thanks to your
dedication
, we are approaching that goal.

"And now here is a man, Peter Sullivan, who would join us, and who we feel is qualified. He has the mind, he has the desire." Goncourt turned his cold eyes on Keith. "But does he have the dedication? Does he have the loyalty? Does he have the
will
? There is one final test to take before joining us, Mr. Sullivan. Every man here took it, and every man here passed. And every man who passed watches every new man—witnesses, you might say. There is no ceremony, no oath to swear. Simply one act. One simple act which binds us together forever."

He nodded to Gresham, who stepped up onto the small stage and drew back the curtain. Behind it was Harrison, the black man Keith had beaten at Red's two weeks before. He was tied securely to a chair, and his mouth was gagged. His eyes were open, however, and looked at the men, at Goncourt, at Keith, with terror, as if he knew that, no matter what else happened, he would die very soon.

"I believe you know this nigger."

Keith turned and looked at Goncourt. The old man was grinning, and a thin trickle of saliva touched a chalky corner of his mouth. Keith surmised that this was as close to sexual excitement as Goncourt ever got.

"We've met, but we ain't
howdied
," Keith said.

Goncourt gave a gargle of phlegm that seemed intended as a laugh. "Well, you can howdy now. And then you can say goodbye. Steve?"

A man in the first row got up, took a Colt .38 revolver from a holster, and held it out to Keith, who looked at it but didn't take it.

"Go ahead, Mr. Sullivan," said Goncourt. "There's one bullet in it, just one. But that's all you'll need. You cock the pistol, it'll come under the hammer."

"You want me to kill this man?"

"Mr. Sullivan, if we're successful in doing what we want to do here, niggers will fall like sprayed fruit flies, and it won't be an easy death. You don't shoot him, all you do is make it tougher on him down the road."

Keith nodded. "All right," he said. "All right."

It was the easiest thing in the world. What was difficult was making it look hard. Keith took the gun, stepped up onto the stage, and stood at Harrison's right side. The black man turned his head so that he looked at Keith. His eyes, so tough in the bar, even after he had been beaten, were soft now, like a doe's, yielding, pleading.

"In the temple, if you please," said Goncourt, his voice shaking. "Toward the other side. We wouldn't want to get anyone messy."

Keith cocked the gun, tried to look like a man trying hard to look firm, took a deep breath. Harrison winced at the sound of the hammer cocking, and shook his head at Keith, little sharp, quick shakes. Of course Keith felt sorry for him, wished he didn't have to pull the trigger. He would much rather have turned the pistol on Goncourt and blown a hole in the old man's withered stomach. But it had to be done. And what was one more life? Harrison had sealed his own fate when he walked into Red's that night.

Keith raised the revolver to Harrison's right temple. The man stopped shaking his head, and instead pushed against the muzzle as though he could keep the bullet inside if he pushed hard enough. Keith pushed too, until Harrison faced the other men, his eyes squeezed shut with his futile effort to hold back the bullet.

"Sorry," Keith whispered. "Nothing personal."

If Keith had been able to hold the pistol even a short distance away, Harrison would have died far less bloodily. As it was, the contact of muzzle to flesh made the bullet enter raggedly, the muzzle blast charring the skin and hair. The exit wound was far worse, and sodden tissue splashed the floor eight feet on the other side of Keith.

In the few seconds after the pistol's explosion, Keith realized that he was being too professional. The firmness he had cultivated over years of assassinations had come back now to allow him to tolerate the taking of human life, and he felt the steel in his eyes, the set of his lips, the rigidity of his face that permitted no quavering, no room for remorse or guilt or pity to make his features tremble and melt.

But he had to let it tremble, had to show them that he was what he seemed to be—a scientist, unused to killing, a man to whom such slaughter was something new and terrible. So he dropped his mental shield enough for his hand to shake, his lip to quiver, enough for his gorge to rise at the ruined head, the debris on the floor, the droplets of red and gray that spattered his arm. He turned and retched, panted, took deep breaths with his eyes closed.

The sound made him open them. It was the rain-like patter of polite applause, as though he had just made a speech that his audience had approved of, and they were discreetly showing their endorsement.

"Well done, Mr. Sullivan," Goncourt said, when the applause died down. Keith looked at the old man and saw that his eyes were sparkling. "Quick and efficient. The same kind of efficiency I'm sure you'll put to good use here at Goncourt in our . . . special section. You're one of us now. You've drawn blood. You're a soldier in the army of Christ and white survival, and we welcome you."

Goncourt held out his bony hand, and Keith shakily stepped off the stage and grasped it. The strength of the grip startled him for only as long as he could be startled. Then someone closed the curtain, someone else took his gun, and the others got out of their seats and came up to him, smiling, congratulating, welcoming.

"I knew you had it in you," said Bob Hastings, pumping Keith's hand. "I been
talkin
' you up here ever since I found out you were in bioengineering.
Goddam
, I knew right off you were prime material." He slapped Keith on the shoulder. "What's the matter,
pardner
? You just joined the club! Look happy about it!"

Keith put on a sickly smile. "I'm happy about it, Bob. I just didn't get up this morning expecting to bag me a nigger."

Bob and the men who overheard laughed, and Keith joined in with a chuckle.

"That's all right, son," said Goncourt. "There's nothing wrong with having a little respect for the sanctity of human life . . ." He gave the obligatory two beats before his punch line. "Even a
jigaboo's
." He laughed and the men laughed with him. "Now," he went on, "you go with Don and get all those forms filled out. Then you go home and get packed up. Come on back here when you're through, Bob here can give you the tour, and you can start your first tour of duty tomorrow."

Beside the forms, there was a picture to be taken for a pass, but the process went quickly, and within an hour Keith was driving back to his apartment in Bone. He called Sally and told her he had gotten a job at Goncourt, and wouldn't be able to see her before he went in for his shift. She told him she was glad for him, and said she couldn't wait to see him when he got out, and he promised he would call her as soon as he did.

Then he packed and returned to Goncourt Laboratories, carrying only several changes of clothes, his book of the mind, and universally deadly intent.

Chapter 22

July 18, 1993
:

This time the joke is on me. At least it seems that way from what I've seen here so far.

I expected much more. It started out all right, what with the secret door and the execution/initiation scenario. But I had in mind the dreams of paranoid sci-fi fantasies, of great conspiracies backed by the great fortunes of great but misguided men. I envisioned a sprawling subterranean complex, like something out of Jules Verne. I saw a legion of scientist/ racist/scholars determined to wipe out every group that was dissimilar to their own. I saw the inventors of AIDS, gifted with the talent to create things far worse.

That was the
rumor
, damn it, and I bought into it with all sincerity. It seems, however, that the best gift I could bring to the world from this place would be to blow up Goncourt Labs, along with everyone in it.

They are indeed the kind of minds that have brought us to our current dilemma. Bigots. Shortsighted fools. The trashiest of white trash. The legitimate business does nearly seventeen million in sales a year, and nets Goncourt in the neighborhood of four million, most of which goes into the lab. They save even more money by—naturally—cutting corners on hazardous waste disposal. The typical small-plant-small-mind mentality, almost a cliché of itself. Unfortunately the cliché doesn't extend to the secret lab.

There are more delusions of grandeur here than grandeur itself. I had pictured hundreds of scientists, but instead there are only thirty-five or so, and that includes those who work on the legitimate end. Ten are pure research, theorists, and the rest of us are technicians. The only thing that can be said for the place is that it is truly secret, sixty feet beneath the ground, and accessible only by two service elevators that require a special key to take you below. At least that much of my fantasy remains true.

But what I've seen of it so far is pretty dull. The facility itself is off either side of a long
hall
. On the right is the living area, with sleep cubicles, cooking facilities (we do our own cooking, and it looks as though I'll be called upon to make my famous chili), and a
rec
room, with TV, a video library (Stallone, Eastwood, and Steven
Seagal
films are favorites), and a pool table, as well as a Nautilus and some other exercise equipment. The sleep rooms are private, but that's all that can be said for them. Room for a bed and a suitcase, and little more. Still, it was quiet, and I slept well last night.

On the other side of the hall are the labs. There are five of them, small, spare rooms without any decoration. One of the rooms is used for pure research, lined with chalkboards and bookshelves, while ranks of computers occupy the floor space. Another is culture storage, while the remaining three are used for the lab work. That's what I'll be doing. Thank God they didn't throw me into the theoretical side of it. It would have exposed me right away. But I know enough to clone genes if somebody gives me genes to clone. Freeman will be setting up the experiments, and I'll be performing them along with Hastings. I have, however, been told that I may feel free to make any suggestions I want. That's hardly likely. There's also a large storage area where they also keep the experimental animals, but I haven't seen that yet.

If what I'm looking for is really here, I'm going to be very, very surprised.

~*~

"You finished?" Bob Hastings asked, and Keith nodded. "Christ, Pete, I don't know how a little yogurt and a bran muffin can make a guy ready for the day." Hastings picked up what remained of his third slice of toast and wiped the egg yolk off his plate. He popped the sodden morsel into his mouth and chewed. "First thing this morning," he said with a full mouth, "I'll show you the storage area." He grinned, showing a gray clump of chewed toast stuck to an incisor. "And the lab rats. And then
Freeman'll
fill you in on what exactly the hell we're doing here."

In a few minutes Keith and Hastings were standing outside a wide door next to the service elevator. "Storage. Some of the most amazing drugs in the world are in here," Hastings said with mock solemnity, then opened the door.

"And it's not locked?"

"What's to lock? Everybody here trusts each other. We're all on the same side, aren't we? Besides, we do inventory every so often. A few years back we found something missing, and then we found the guy who took it. Tried to make a little deal on his own, you know? Took him two weeks to die, and he screamed most of the time. Come on."