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

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Adrian Cheval was still awake despite the late hour. He sat upon a stool in the kitchen, staring blurry-eyed and unblinking at the laptop computer screen in front of him, his fingers typing away frenetically.

He paused long enough to hear Claudette padding softly down the carpeted stairs from the loft in her bare feet. Their flat in Marseille was small but cozy, an end unit on a quiet street a short five-minute walk from the sea.

A moment later her slight frame and fiery hair appeared in his periphery. She put her hands on his shoulders, sliding them up and around, down his chest, her head coming to rest upon his upper back. “Mon chéri,” she purred. “My love. I cannot sleep.”

“Neither can I,” he replied softly in French. “There is too much to be done.”

She bit him gently on the earlobe. “Tell me.”

Adrian pointed at his screen, displayed on which was the cyclical double-stranded RNA structure of variola major—the virus known to most as smallpox. “This strain from Siberia is… it is incredible. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. By my calculations, the virulence of it would be staggering. I am convinced that the only thing that might have stopped it from eradicating early humanity thousands of years ago was the glacial period.”

“A new Deluge.” Claudette moaned a soft sigh in his ear. “How long until it is ready?”

“I must mutate the strain, while still maintaining the stability and virility,” he explained. “No simple task, but a necessary one. The WHO obtained samples of this same virus five months ago; there is no doubt that a vaccine is being developed, if one hasn’t been already. Our strain must be unique enough that their vaccines will be ineffective.” The process was known as lethal mutagenesis, manipulating the RNA of the samples he had acquired in Siberia to increase virulence and reduce the incubation period. At his calculations, Adrian suspected the mortality rate of the mutated variola major virus could reach as high as seventy-eight percent—nearly three times that of the naturally occurring smallpox that had been eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980.

Upon returning from Siberia, Adrian had first visited Stockholm and used the deceased student Renault’s ID to access their facilities, where he ensured that the samples were inactive while he worked. But he could not linger under someone else’s identity, so he stole the necessary equipment and returned to Marseille. He set up his laboratory in the unused basement of a tailor’s shop three blocks from their flat; the kindly old tailor believed that Adrian was a geneticist, researching human DNA and nothing more, and Adrian kept the door secured with a padlock when he was not present.

“Imam Khalil will be pleased,” Claudette breathed in his ear.

“Yes,” Adrian agreed quietly. “He will be pleased.”

Most women would likely not be terribly keen to find their significant other working with a substance as volatile as a highly virulent strain of smallpox—but Claudette was not most women. She was petite, standing only five-foot-four to Adrian’s six-foot figure. Her hair was a fiery red and her eyes as deep green as the densest jungle, suggesting a certain irascibility.

They had met only the year prior, when Adrian was at his lowest. He had just been expelled from Stockholm University for attempting to obtain samples of a rare enterovirus; the same virus that had taken his mother’s life only weeks earlier. At the time, Adrian had been determined to develop a cure—obsessed, even—so that no one else would suffer as she did. But he was discovered by university faculty and summarily dismissed.

Claudette found him in an alley, lying in a puddle of his own desolation and vomit, half-unconscious from drink. She took him home, cleaned him up, and fed him water. The next morning Adrian had awoken to find a beautiful woman sitting at his bedside, smiling upon him as she said, “I know exactly what you need.”

He swiveled on his kitchen stool to face her and ran his hands up and down her back. Even sitting he was nearly her height. “It is interesting you mention the Deluge,” he noted. “You know, there are scholars who say that if the Great Flood truly did occur, it would have been approximately seven to eight thousand years ago… nearly the same epoch as this strain. Perhaps the Flood was a metaphor, and it was this virus that cleansed the world of its wicked.”

Claudette laughed at him. “Your constant endeavors to blend science and spirituality are not lost on me.” She took his face gently in her hands and kissed his forehead. “But you still do not understand that sometimes faith is all you need.”

Faith is all you need. That was what she had prescribed to him the year before, when he awoke from his drunken stupor. She had taken him in and allowed him to stay in her flat, the very same one that they occupied still. Adrian was not a believer in love at first sight before Claudette, but she came to hold many influences on his way of thinking. Over the course of some months, she introduced him to the tenets of Imam Khalil, an Islamic holy man from Syria. Khalil considered himself neither Sunni nor Shiite, but simply a devotee of God—even to the point that he allowed his fairly small sect of followers to call Him by whatever name they chose, for Khalil believed that each individual’s relationship with their creator was strictly personal. For Khalil, that god’s name was Allah.

“I want you to come to bed,” Claudette told him, stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. “You need your rest. But first… do you have the sample prepared?”

“The sample.” Adrian nodded. “Yes. I have it.”

There was but a single, tiny vial, barely larger than a thumbnail, of the active virus, hermetically sealed in glass and nestled between two cubes of foam, those inside a stainless steel biohazard container. The box itself was sitting, quite conspicuously, on the countertop of their kitchen.

“Good,” Claudette purred. “Because we are expecting visitors.”

“Tonight?” Adrian’s hands fell away from the small of her back. He hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. “At this hour?” It was nearly two o’clock in the morning.

“Any moment,” she said. “We made a promise, my love, and we must keep it.”

“Yes,” Adrian murmured. She was right, as always. Vows must not be broken. “Of course.”

A brusque, heavy rapping on the door of their flat startled them both.

Claudette padded quickly to the door, leaving the chain lock on and opening it only two inches. Adrian followed, peering over her shoulder to see the pair of men on the other side. Neither looked friendly. He did not know their names, and had come to think of them only as “the Arabs”—though, for all he knew, they could have been Kurds or even Turkmen.

One of them spoke quickly to Claudette in Arabic. Adrian did not understand; his Arabic was rudimentary at best, limited to a handful of phrases that Claudette had taught him, but she nodded once, slid the chain aside, and granted them entry.

Both were fairly young, their mid-thirties or so, and sported short black beards over their mocha-tinted cheeks. They wore European clothing, jeans and T-shirts and light jackets against the chilly night air; Imam Khalil did not require any religious garb or coverings of his followers. In fact, ever since their displacement from Syria, he preferred that his people blend in whenever possible—for reasons that were obvious to Adrian, considering what the two men were there to procure.

“Cheval.” One of the Syrian men nodded to Adrian, almost reverently. “Forward? Tell us.” He spoke in extremely broken French.

“Forward?” Adrian repeated, confused.

“He means to ask for your progress,” Claudette said gently.

Adrian smirked. “His French is terrible.”

“So is your Arabic,” Claudette retorted.

Fair point, Adrian thought. “Tell him that the process takes time. It is meticulous, and requires patience. But the work is going well.”

Claudette relayed the message in Arabic, and the pair of Arabs nodded their approval.

“Small piece?” the second man asked. It seemed they were intent to practice their French on him.

“They’ve come for the sample,” Claudette told Adrian, though he had gathered that much from context. “Will you retrieve it?” It was clear to him that Claudette had no interest in touching the biohazard container, sealed or not.

Adrian nodded, but he did not move. “Ask them why Khalil did not come himself.”

Claudette bit her lip and touched him gently on the arm. “Darling,” she said quietly, “I am sure he is busy elsewhere—”

“What could be more important than this?” Adrian insisted. He had fully expected the Imam to show up.

Claudette asked the question in Arabic. The pair of Syrians frowned and glanced at each other before responding.

“They tell me that he is visiting the infirm tonight,” Claudette told Adrian in French, “praying for their release from this physical world.”

Adrian’s mind flashed to a memory of his mother, only days before her death, lying on the bed with her eyes open but unaware. She was barely conscious from the medication; without it she would have been in constant torment, yet with it she was practically comatose. In the weeks leading up to her departure, she had no concept of the world around her. He had prayed often for her recovery, there at her bedside, though as she neared the end his prayers changed and he found himself wishing her only a quick, painless death.

“What will he do with it?” Adrian asked. “The sample.”

“He will ensure that your mutation works,” Claudette said simply. “You know this.”

“Yes, but…” Adrian paused. He knew it was not his place to question the Imam’s intent, but suddenly he had a powerful urge to know. “Will he test it privately? Somewhere remote? It is important not to show our hand too soon. The rest of the batch is not ready…”

Claudette said something quickly to the pair of Syrian men, and then she took Adrian by the hand and led him to the kitchen. “My love,” she said quietly, “you are having doubts. Tell me.”

Adrian sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “This is only a very tiny sample, not quite as stable as the others will be. What if it does not work?”

“It will.” Claudette wrapped her arms around him. “I have every confidence in you, as does Imam Khalil. You have been gifted this opportunity. You are blessed, Adrian.”

You are blessed. Those were the same words Khalil had used when they met. Three months earlier, Claudette had taken Adrian on a trip to Greece. Khalil, like so many Syrians, was a refugee—but not a political one, nor a byproduct of the war-torn nation. He was a religious refugee, chased out by Sunnis and Shiites alike for his idealistic notions. Khalil’s brand of spirituality was an amalgamation of Islamic tenets and some of the esoteric philosophical influences from Druze, such as truthfulness and transmigration of the soul.

Adrian had met the holy man in a hotel in Athens. Imam Khalil was a gentle man with a pleasant smile, wearing a brown suit with his dark hair and beard combed and neat. The young Frenchman was mildly taken aback when, upon meeting for the first time, the Imam asked Adrian to pray with him. Together they sat upon a carpet, facing Mecca, and prayed silently. There was a calmness that hung in the air around the Imam like an aura, a placidity that Adrian had not experienced since being a young boy in his then-healthy mother’s arms.

After prayer, the two men smoked from a glass hookah and drank tea while Khalil spoke of his ideology. They discussed the importance of being true to oneself; Khalil believed that the only way for humanity to absolve their sins was absolute truthfulness, which would allow the soul to reincarnate as a pure being. He asked many questions of Adrian, about science and spirituality alike. He asked about Adrian’s mother, and promised him that somewhere on this earth she had been born anew, pure and beautiful and healthy. The young Frenchman took great solace in it.

Khalil then spoke of Imam Mahdi, the Redeemer and the last of the Imam, the holy men. Mahdi would be the one who would bring about the Day of Judgment and rid the world of evil. Khalil believed that this would occur very soon, and after the Mahdi’s redemption would come utopia; every being in the universe would be flawless, genuine, and untainted.

For several hours the two men sat together, well into the night, and when Adrian’s head was as foggy as the thick, smoky air that swirled around them he finally asked the question that had been on his mind.

“Is it you, Khalil?” he asked the holy man. “Are you the Mahdi?”

Imam Kahlil had smiled wide at that. He took Adrian’s hand in his own and said gently, “No, my son. You are. You are blessed. I can see it as clearly as I see your face.”

I am blessed. In the kitchen of their Marseille flat, Adrian pressed his lips to Claudette’s forehead. She was right; they had made a promise to Khalil and it must be kept. He retrieved the steel biohazard box from the countertop and carried it to the waiting Arabs. He unclasped the lid and lifted the top half of the foam cube to show them the tiny, hermetically sealed glass vial nestled inside.

There did not appear to be anything in the vial—which was part of the nature of it being one of the most dangerous substances the world over.

“Darling,” Adrian said as he replaced the foam and clasped the lid firmly again. “I need you to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that under no circumstances whatsoever should they touch this vial. It must be handled with the utmost care.”

Claudette relayed the message in Arabic. Suddenly the Syrian man holding the box appeared far less comfortable than a moment earlier. The other man nodded his thanks to Adrian and murmured a phrase in Arabic, one that Adrian understood—“Allah is with you, peace be upon you”—and without another word, the two men left the flat.

Once they were gone, Claudette twisted the deadbolt and put the chain back on, and then turned to her lover with a dreamy, satisfied expression on her lips.

Adrian, however, stood rooted to the spot, his face dour.

“My love?” she said cautiously.

“What have I just done?” he murmured. He already knew the answer; he had put a deadly virus in the hands of not Imam Khalil, but two strangers. “What if they do not deliver it? What if they drop it, or open it, or—”

“My love.” Claudette slid her arms around his waist and pressed her head to his chest. “They are followers of the Imam. They will exercise caution and get it to where it needs to be. Have faith. You have taken the first step towards changing the world for the better. You are the Mahdi. Do not forget that.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Of course. You are right, as always. And I must finish.” If his mutation did not work as it should, or if he did not produce the completed batch, he had no doubt that he would be a failure not only in the eyes of Khalil, but in Claudette’s as well. Without her he would crumble. He needed her as he needed air, food, or sunlight.

Even so, he could not help but wonder what they would do with the sample—if Imam Khalil would test it privately, at a remote location, or if it would be released publicly.

But he would find out soon enough.