Target Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #2)

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was half past midnight before Adrian returned to the flat. He had been working tirelessly the entire day on completing the RNA restructuring to prepare the rest of the variola major samples, and now he shuffled through the door, his feet dragging. The batch was nearly ready, but exhaustion and hunger had set in. He assured himself he would finish tomorrow.

Claudette was not yet home; she worked at a local bar, often late into the night. Adrian casually flicked on the television and then went into the kitchen to pour a glass of wine.

He heard the news report before he saw it. The mere mention of a deadly outbreak sent him dashing back into the living room, nearly stumbling, and skidding to a halt on the carpet in his socks.

He held his breath as he watched the Spanish broadcast, dubbed in French for the network. On the screen, a reporter in a respirator mask stood outside an enormous yellow tent as WHO workers behind him, each looking identical in yellow decontamination suits, wheeled patients in on gurneys.

A viral outbreak in Barcelona had claimed more than fifty-five lives in the course of a single day. One hundred ninety-five more were in critical condition.

The Imam had released the sample of the virus publicly.

As he watched, the reporter crept closer to the tent, the camera aimed into the makeshift hospital. Rows upon rows of bodies were lying upon cots, some spasming, coughing, bleeding from their lips. Others were not moving at all.

Near the entrance to the WHO hospital was a child, no more than eight or nine years old, lying prostrate on her back. She was unmoving, but her eyes were wide open.

“Mon Dieu,” Adrian said breathlessly. My God. Sheer horror gripped him tight as a closed fist. He clamped a hand over his mouth and took deep breaths through his nose, stifling the urge to vomit.

This was not what was supposed to happen. In all his fervor to complete the virus, he had never once considered that children might be among its targets. Of course that was naïve of him; a virus was indiscriminate, unwavering, and unselective. Yet the Imam had filled his head with notions of the demons of the West, those driven only by greed and cupidity.

Furthermore, Barcelona was not one of the intended targets that Khalil had shared. It was a mere five hundred kilometers from his own home, for God’s sake.

This was a nightmare. And he, Adrian Cheval, had created it.

He was out the door an instant later, leaving it wide open as he tore down the sidewalk in just his socks. The tailor’s basement, from which he had just come, was not far. The exhaustion and hunger from only moments earlier had melted away, replaced by panic, fear, and resolution.

The entrance to the tailor’s basement faced a rear alley, an ancient wooden door recessed in a concrete stairwell that led down to the earthy-smelling cellar where he kept the stolen equipment, decontamination suit, and smallpox samples. He fumbled with the keys and nearly dropped them as he unlocked the steel padlock, his fingers trembling. Finally, mercifully, the lock sprang open.

As he tugged it free, a soft feminine voice reached his ears. “My love.”

He spun quickly, nearly panting, to find Claudette standing in the alley behind him. She wore a black shirt and still had a white apron tied around her waist over a denim skirt; she must have come directly from the bar. Her fiery red hair was pulled up into a messy bun. Yet she had never been a more welcome sight.

He ran into her arms, holding her for a long moment. She returned the embrace, her fingers gently caressing the back of his neck, giving him a moment to compose himself. His shoulders heaved with the threat of a sob, yet he held it back.

“To say I’ve made a grave error is the understatement of my lifetime,” he said at long last. He spoke quietly, barely above a whisper.

“Darling, no.” Claudette pressed her head into the crook of his neck. “No, you’ve done wonderfully.”

He recoiled, pushing away from her, his face a mask of confusion and dread. “How can you say that? Claudette, I have made a mistake somewhere in the RNA sequencing, a mistake that should have rendered the virus useless but by some infinitesimal coincidence it… it made it worse.” The words broke free from him like a burst dam. “The lethality is higher than it should be, and the virulence, it’s off the charts. The incubation period is mere hours…” He was trembling by the time he finished. “If you saw what I just witnessed, you would understand.”

Claudette bit her lip. She appeared to be sympathetic to his plight as she stroked the side of his face, but her words suggested otherwise. “Darling,” she said softly, “you’ve done exactly what you were supposed to do.”

He pushed her hand away. How could he get her to comprehend? “Children, Claudette! There were children infected. They are innocent—”

“Innocent!” Claudette scoffed. “Adrian, do you not see? None are innocent! Not you, not me, not even the Imam. We are all sinners.”

He frowned and blinked several times, utterly confused. “What are you saying? Khalil had his targets in the West, that’s what he said. But he released the sample in Barcelona. If it cannot be contained, it will spread like wildfire. It will reach France, it will reach here…”

She nodded slowly, like a patient teacher prodding a student to an epiphany. “Yes, Adrian. Of course it will.”

He took a step back, his heart threatening to leap from his chest. His love, his Claudette, was scaring him. He had let himself be manipulated by the Imam—no, that was not right. He had only accepted Khalil’s teachings because he had allowed himself to be manipulated by her. She had taken him in when he had no one, and he had allowed himself to be molded to her liking.

“Adrian,” she said gently, “please do not look at me like that. I love you. And you are the Mahdi, the Redeemer, and in order to redeem—”

“To hell with the Mahdi!” he growled scornfully. This time she took a step back, as shocked as if he had slapped her. “Khalil lied to me. He has used me, Claudette. Can you not see? This is not a jihad! This is… this is g******e!”

She narrowed her eyes. “I understand your emotions have the better of you. You don’t know what you are saying. But Allah is listening, Adrian. And it is too late for a sudden change of heart—”

“You’re wrong about that.” He spun angrily and pulled the padlock from the door. “I cannot undo what has been done, and God willing, the WHO will contain it. But I must fix what I have broken.” He tugged on the old wooden door. Sometimes it would stick in the jamb, having warped over years of disuse, but on this night it was being particularly stubborn.

“Adrian! What will you do?”

“Destroy it,” he said simply. He tugged on the door again, harder, but it would not pull free. “And then we will leave, tonight, and never look back. There will be no more Imam, no more jihad, no more virus, and I will spend the rest of my life atoning for what I have done—oomph!”

Adrian stumbled backward, nearly falling over as the door finally pulled free. As he recovered, he felt a hand on his shoulder, tugging him, and when he turned to face her Claudette slapped him with an open palm across his mouth.

He gasped in shock. His lips stung from the blow and when he touched them his fingers were smeared with blood.

“How dare you.” Her voice was dangerously quiet. “You would forsake all we have worked for here? This is not about you or me or even the Imam. This is about higher purpose! This is about the betterment of the world!”

Adrian licked his bloody lip as he shook his head. He did not know what to say that could make her see. “Claudette, I love you more than you know. More than life, more than the air I breathe. But you must see that this is not the way.”

In response, she folded her arms and pushed out her chest in defiance, a scowl on her lips. “Destroy it, Adrian, and you will never see me again,” she warned. “I will leave tonight. I promise you, this is not a bluff.”

He stared at the dirty alley beneath their feet. He did not know who he was anymore without Claudette. He did not believe he could survive without her. But what she was asking of him was more than he was capable of. He thought again of the tiny girl on the cot from the news broadcast. Unmoving, her eyes wide open. No older than his own niece, Alice, living in Bordeaux with his older sister. What if it was Alice on that cot?

“Then leave,” he told Claudette quietly, barely above a whisper. “I will do what must be done…”

The roar of an engine interrupted the moment. They both glanced up instinctively to see a dark SUV rumble past the nearby mouth of the alley. Then, an instant later, brakes screeched and the SUV came back, in reverse. It turned at the alley and the two of them were awash in bright halogen headlights.

It was too late. They had come. Even if Adrian ignored the decontamination suit and made a run for the samples, he would risk not getting to them before the Arabs caught up to him—or worse, he could risk accidentally releasing the virus on Marseille.

The headlights died and two men climbed out of the black SUV. The driver was familiar, one of the two Syrians who had visited his flat to obtain the sample. But instead of his usual comrade, he had with him a lean-faced man, wiry and wearing a perpetual scowl.

The two Arabs nodded at Adrian, thin smirks upon their lips. He recognized it as a nod of validation. My god, he thought. These monsters approve of what has been done.

The wiry Syrian held out a cell phone. “Patron,” he said in French. Boss.

Adrian took the phone and put it on speaker. “Khalil?”

“Adrian.” The older man’s smooth, quiet voice came through the phone, singsong. “You have done superb work, my brilliant young friend.” The Imam’s French was nearly flawless.

“Why Spain?” he demanded. “You had your targets, you promised me—”

“We had to ensure that your virus would work,” Khalil said simply. “And releasing it upon our true targets would tip our hand. Barcelona was merely a testing ground, Adrian.”

“Children, Khalil.” Adrian nearly choked on the words. “Children have perished…”

“And many more will before this is done.” The Imam spoke dispassionately, as if he was discussing the slaughter of ants and not human beings. “Do not fret. They are with Allah now, in the glorious hereafter.”

Adrian swallowed the lump in his throat. Even before he made his plea he already knew all too well there would be no changing the Imam’s mind. “Please, listen to me carefully,” he said slowly. “I made a mistake. The virus is too fast. The incubation period is far too short. There is the possibility of instability and further mutation. This cannot stand—”

“A mistake?” Khalil said. “Adrian, what you have done here has exceeded my expectations! You, Monsieur Cheval, are an artist, and this is your masterpiece.”

“Masterpiece!” Adrian scoffed. “What I have created is an incomprehensible horror! Khalil, if this was to get beyond WHO containment, the fallout would be catastrophic. We would be facing an endemic the likes of which has never been seen…”

“Yes, yes, Adrian, I’m aware.” He could not believe his ears; Khalil almost sounded bored by the conversation. “It is precisely what I had hoped of you.”

A wave of panic washed over him. He had to destroy it. There was no other option. His own life was not worth the potential of what he had accidentally created.

Khalil sighed through the phone. “Have you lost the faith, Adrian?”

Adrian looked at Claudette. Her eyes were large in the moonlight, hopeful that his answer would be what both the Imam—and she—wanted to hear.

“I’m not sure I ever fully had it,” he admitted quietly. “I had love, and in my desperation I clung to it. I allowed myself to be influenced. But this… this is too far, Khalil. I cannot allow it. I cannot be your Mahdi.”

“I was afraid something like this might happen,” said the Imam. “You see, Adrian, in faith, as in life, things are rarely black and white. Sometimes, in order to accomplish our goals, we must do that which seems the moral antithesis to what we should. To wit…” He snapped an order in Arabic. The Syrian driver surged forward suddenly and clamped a hand around Claudette’s bicep. The fingers of his other hand grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back.

She shrieked. Adrian stepped forward in her defense, but the wiry Arab produced a silver pistol and shoved it into the young Frenchman’s face, pressing the barrel against his nose. Adrian dropped the phone as he put both hands up in surrender. It clattered to the alley, but Khalil’s voice still came through.

“You must uphold your end of the promise, Adrian. Claudette will stay with one of my people. The other will follow you into your basement lab. I assume you have a second suit for him.” Khalil chuckled. “If you attempt to destroy the samples, or tamper with them in a way that diminishes their efficacy, my people will kill Claudette in front of you. The man holding a gun to you currently? I brought him in because he is something of a specialist. He likes to start with the eyes. It’s quite horrible.”

Claudette squirmed in the Syrian’s grip, her neck at an odd, painful angle. Adrian held his gaze on hers, his eyes wide and terrified. He could not bear it if they did anything to her. Even with her zealotry, her insistence, her blind faith, he still loved her deeply. He was vaguely aware that the Imam had continued speaking, but he heard none of it. He was petrified at the thought of them killing her before his eyes.

“Adrian? Have I made myself clear?”

“Help me,” Claudette implored him, her voice a whimper. “Please, Adrian.”

Adrian chewed his lip for a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. “You are clear. I will do what you ask.” I will find a way out of this, he told himself desperately. But at the moment he had no choice but to comply with the Imam’s demand. He was deflated, defeated, unable to accept a fate for Claudette so long as he had the power to change it.

“Thank you,” said Khalil gently. “How long?”

“I will have to work through the night,” Adrian told him.

“Get it done.” Imam Khalil ended the call.

The Syrian tugged Claudette’s hair. She cried out in pain as he dragged her toward the dark SUV. The wiry thug shoved the barrel of his silver pistol in Adrian’s face and barked, “Go!” in French.

The last thing he saw before being forced down into the darkness of the basement was her forlorn expression as the other Syrian pulled her toward the car. “I will free you,” he promised. “I will make this right.” He would conceive of a way, any possible way, to avoid putting the active virus into the maniacal Imam’s hands and save Claudette, even if it meant his own death.

*

As soon as the basement door of the tailor’s shop was closed tightly again, Claudette shook out her hair and winced. “That hurt,” she scolded sharply in Arabic.

“I’m sorry.” The Syrian man, Abad, appeared genuinely remorseful. “Do you think he believed it?”

“Yes,” she told him. “I am quite certain he will do whatever is necessary to keep me from harm.” She had had the feeling Adrian would lose the faith when he saw the effects of the virus. He was too soft, not fully indoctrinated; his infatuation was far more with her than with the Imam’s teachings. That was why she made the call to Khalil and had his men threaten them both.

Although, she thought, perhaps Adrian was right to lose the faith. After all, Imam Khalil had told her himself: Adrian was not the Mahdi. It was she who would bring redemption to the world.