Red Snow Page 6

  “Bring out your dead,” Mephisto had said then, gazing down at them as the bitter, dying virologist puffed on a Lucky Strike and blew out smoke rings.

  “Bring out your dead!” The cry had echoed through the burghs of fourteenth-century Europe as street carts gathered up the twenty-five million victims of the Black Death.

  Mephisto envisioned streets of panic.

  Streets red with blood.

  “What you have here,” Grof said, tapping the box on the table, “is a plague of biblical proportions. The 1918 flu wiped out one percent of the human population. This will annihilate ninety times that, or nine of every ten people.”

  Mephisto did the math.

  It took a million years to populate the earth with a billion people:

  1 billion around 1800;

  2 billion around 1930;

  3 billion around 1960;

  4 billion around 1975;

  5 billion around 1987;

  6 billion around 1999.

  Seven billion were projected for 2011, the year following the Whistler Olympics.

  A 90 percent cull rate would cut that to seven hundred million, or a global population about double that of the United States. Instead of a planet in peril from melting polar ice caps, receding glaciers, rising sea levels, freak weather patterns, vanishing species, food shortages, and mobs of climate refugees, we’d be left with the fallout of a biological killer unlike anything the world had ever seen, a weapon conceived to eliminate urban populations but save infrastructures. Gone would be the overwhelming pressures on the environment, energy sources, natural resources, food, water, and housing. Every survivor would have his choice of home from those already built, meaning slums could be demolished to recover green space. The last time the earth had had a population of seven hundred million was 1700.

  Wouldn’t that be El Dorado?

  The elusive City of Gold.

  Especially for the Gilded Man, who was immune to this plague, and thereby free to speculate for his self-interest.

  Me, thought Mephisto.

  The savior of humankind.

  The only man with the balls to do what had to be done, while lesser men talked and talked at useless gabfests that accomplished nothing, staging silly Earth Hours and self-aggrandizing rock concerts, obviously afraid to deal with the real threat: too many people pumping too many people out of their loins.

  “Bring out your dead!”

  “Pandora’s box,” said Grof, caressing the lid of the oblong case in front of him. “The hard work is done. All you do now is release the monster in here—” he raised the lid to expose three cans of freeze-dried horror and a vaccination kit—“at a meeting of people about to fan out around the globe, and they will carry the incubating plague home with them. Six to seven days later, the world will be bleeding, and the blood won’t clot. By day nine, most of the population will be dead. Fate will determine who lives and dies.”

  Grof tapped the vials and syringes.

  “The Ebola genes are inside the smallpox shell, so all you need to protect yourself are smallpox antibodies. Smallpox vaccinations stopped in 1971, and the world was declared smallpox free in 1979. Because a smallpox vaccination lasts for ten years, no one alive today—with the exception of those who inoculate themselves with what is in this kit—is immune to this virus.”

  Mephisto’s original plan had called for the simultaneous release of the supervirus in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Had DeClercq not found his hideout on Ebbtide Island and cleaved the boat on which he tried to flee, sinking Pandora’s box to the bottom of the strait, he’d have succeeded. It had taken precious years for Mephisto’s secret salvage operation to recover the box. And in those years, the U.S. military had launched a smallpox vaccination campaign among its forces, so the world was not quite as unprepared as it had once been. Still, the supervirus would wipe out most of the human population, in a world ill-equipped for the double whammy of the smallpox-Ebola time bomb.

  “Time for bed,” Mephisto said. “A big day tomorrow.”

  “When do I get to see what’s in the box?” asked Scarlett.

  “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Meow,” she purred.

  “I guess it won’t hurt to give you a peek, since you’ll be the one to let loose the monster.”

  With Scarlett watching, Mephisto eased Pandora’s box out of its watertight case.

  Pausing for suspense, he raised the lid.

  “Do you grasp the irony?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “What’s the second most recognizable logo in the world?”

  “McDonald’s Golden Arches?”

  He shook his head. “The scarlet uniform of the RCMP. Canada’s the only country with a cop as its national symbol. The image is trademarked.”

  “So?”

  “What’s the most recognizable logo in the world?”

  Scarlett clapped her hands.

  “Wicked!” she said.

  Mephisto smirked.

  “Wicked indeed,” he concurred.

  Blue Murder

  The next day

  Whistler awoke to a sky full of snow and the need to rethink plans. Only diehard skiers and boarders would spend the day on the slopes. Olympic hopefuls would give it a try—after all, that’s why they were here—but if the forecast delivered, most would forsake the whiteout for indoors. And the El Dorado Resort would mine even more gold than expected. Eureka!

  “Good morning,” Jenny answered the phone in her perkiest voice. “Hospitality.”

  “Give me the manager.”

  “I’m sorry. Mr. Hawksworth is currently engaged.”

  “Interrupt him,” snapped the female caller.

  “Perhaps I can be of assistance,” Jenny countered, deflecting rudeness with patience, as she’d been taught.

  “There’s a dead man in your hotel. Do I get to speak to your boss now? Or would you rather I grab his attention by screaming blue murder in the lobby?”

  “One moment, please,” Jenny said, just as lively as before. Then she got up from her desk, knocked on Hawksworth’s door, and barged in to alert the hospitality czar.

  “Impeccable” was the best word to describe Niles Hawksworth. He was a spiffy-looking gent in an elegant Armani suit, whose clean-shaven scalp emphasized his handsome face, as if hair was a distraction used to hide flaws. No detail was too small for the hawk-like eyes, and no function too big for the military tactician in his soul. In short, Hawksworth was a consummate hotelier.

  “Not now, Jenny. I’m not to be disturbed. Didn’t I make that clear to you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hawksworth, but—”

  “No buts about it. The Olympics are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for any hotel. If ‘Going for the Gold’ is a success tonight, the El Dorado will be the place to be come February. A reputation like that will draw the elite for decades.”

  “But, Mr. Hawksworth, there’s a dead man in the resort!”

  The hospitality manager blinked.

  “Who says?” he asked.

  “The pushy woman on line one. She insists on speaking with you.”

  “A dead man! Good Lord. We can’t have Olympians spreading that news at ‘Going for the Gold.’”

  Handing Jenny pen and pad to record what was said, he punched on the speakerphone.

  “Niles Hawksworth, hospitality manager.”

  “There’s a dead cop in room 807,” mumbled the caller. “Have Special X figure it out.”

  * * *

  Scarlett slammed down the receiver and smiled to herself. With a gloved finger, she emptied her mouth of the gauze pads she’d used to muffle her voice.

  Let the games begin, she thought as she opened the door to the confining phone booth.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the clock ticked on …

  About seventy miles south, in the heart of Vancouver, the Omega Countdown Clock ticked off the seconds remaining until the Winter Games began, on February 12. Back when that tower
ing piece of wood, metal, glass, and Swiss electronics had its official kickoff, protestors had stormed the podium to shout what sounded like “4Q—2010!” into the microphone. Scruffy-looking people wearing bandanas booed, jeered, and waved placards stating “Stop the Clock!” “Bread, Not Circuses!” and “Smash the Wrecking Balls of Gentrification!” The officers sent to suppress that mini-riot were pelted with balloons filled with paint and papier-mâché balls stuffed with rocks. To thwart vandals from wrecking the clock, security cameras watched it night and day over the next three years. Because the cops in the Special X office in Whistler Village faced the same deadline, a digital image of the Countdown Clock was beamed via satellite to a screen mounted on the wall above Sergeant Dane Winter’s head.

  “It’s freaking me out,” said Corporal Jackie Hett.

  “What is?” Dane asked, glancing up from his half of their partners’ desk.

  “The Countdown Clock. I chose the wrong side of the desk. Every time I look up, I see seconds slipping away. And the shrinking numbers remind me of the odds against.”

  “Against what?”

  “Doomsday,” she said frankly. “I can’t shake the feeling that something wicked this way comes.”

  “By the picking of my thumbs,” Dane said, crossing himself. “I’m partnered with a witch.”

  Actually, Dane was the envy of every male cop in Special X. Who wouldn’t want to be teamed with this Amazon? With her flaming red hair, hypnotic green eyes, and statuesque figure, Jackie was a fantasy female right out of Greek myth. Like the legendary warriors, she was also armed to the teeth. A blue Kevlar vest protected her chest, and the belt buckled around her waist held an armory: a nine-mill on one hip, a Taser on the other, and the whole thing backed up by pepper spray, extra magazines, a portable radio, an extendable baton, and a set of handcuffs. Unlike the Amazons, she hadn’t cut off her right breast so she could shoot a bow more freely. But that was okay with the men of Special X.

  Ooh-la-la.

  As far as Dane was concerned, Jackie could slap her cuffs on him any day of the week.

  All of which stayed unexpressed, since he was her boss.

  But dreams are free.

  * * *

  Jackie Hett had a crush on her boss. As likely as not, when she glanced up from her work, it wasn’t to look at the Countdown Clock but to feast her eyes on Dane.

  But for the chevron on his shoulder—three stripes, plus crown, not her two—they were dressed like twins. Sandy-haired and cobalt-eyed, he stood just over six feet. Beneath the blue vest and long-sleeved gray shirt with blue tie, Dane was athletically slim. Basketball or soccer—not hockey or football—would be his game. The sexual balance at Whistler tilted Jackie’s way. At 53.6 percent male, the town was the most testosterone-charged in B.C. Boy toys came up for a few years to ski and have fun, making it a woman’s hunting ground. So why was Jackie attracted to the one guy she couldn’t bag?

  No sex, please, we’re Mounties.

  She was one Mountie who wouldn’t get her man.

  Sex with your boss was a snake, not a ladder.

  “It’s like playing with alphabet soup,” Jackie complained.

  “What is?” asked Dane.

  “The number of acronyms in VISU,” she said, waving the security report in her hand. “We’ve got CSIS and CSOR and JTF-2, and Christ knows how many more. Acronyms within acronyms fill every document. When I’m commissioner, we’ll go back to labels with meaning. Scotland Yard, flying patrol—that sort of thing. When I was a girl, at least I could rearrange letters to spell words.”

  “In your alphabet soup?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you?”

  “Spoon around for letters to make words?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “To what?”

  “The obvious question.”

  Dane shrugged. “Obviously, the obvious question isn’t so obvious to me.”

  “A, B, C, D,” Jackie said. “That’s a clue.”

  “It is?”

  “E, F, G, H. That’s another.”

  “Beats me.”

  “Tsk-tsk,” Jackie clucked. “And you call yourself a detective? The obvious question for any kid is, Does every can of alphabet soup contain all twenty-six letters?”

  “Does it?”

  “Now that would be cheating. You know it’s a sin to blab the end of a mystery.”

  The phone on Dane’s half of the desk rang.

  “Sergeant Winter,” he answered while jotting “Buy alphabet soup” on his notepad.

  “Niles Hawksworth, hospitality manager at the El Dorado Resort. It may be a hoax, but we just received a call to say there’s a dead officer in room 807.”

  * * *

  VISU had the staggering task of building an impenetrable shield against terrorist attacks during the Olympics. From its operations base in the old Motorola building, a huge office complex near the Fraser River, the unit was gearing up to protect more than one hundred venues. Its territory spread from the airport near the U.S. border to the mountain slopes, and included countless smuggling coves on the world’s most indented coastline.

  No event presents a better target for terrorists and political zealots than the Olympics. The massacre of eleven Israeli competitors by Palestinian gunmen at the 1972 Munich games had proved that. The threat was palpably real—the rise in militant extremism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bombs going off in London, Madrid, and elsewhere—and there were gaps in the shield. Security, by its nature, is never 100 percent foolproof. You can secure an Olympic village or an isolated venue, but you can’t secure an entire city and a hundred-mile swath around it, unless you turn the area into a police state.

  A Stalag behind barbed wire.

  And even a stronghold can be breached.

  VISU was assigned to protect 5,000 athletes and officials, 10,000 media, 25,000 volunteers, and 250,000 visitors from hazards ranging from fire to a hail of manmade junk plunging from outer space. The nightmare scenario was a dirty bomb, a radiation device offloaded from a ship at sea and smuggled ashore by a motorboat putting in to one of the coves.

  Come February, air force fighters would patrol restricted skies, and navy destroyers would guard the waterfront. CSOR—the Canadian Special Operations Regiment—would defend against biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. JTF-2 commandos, the 350 best counter-terrorists, would act as snipers and bodyguards.

  Regular policing would fall to an army of cops with bomb-sniffing dogs, as well as to hostage negotiators and riot squads. There would be miles of fencing delineating safe zones with limited access points. Everything would be watched by surveillance cameras, and biometric software would identify known terrorists by measuring their facial features and analyzing their walks.

  Special X was but a cog in that giant machine.

  The Special External Section of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police predated the world’s current obsession with acronyms. If not, it would now be known as SES or—with a little fudging of the abbreviation—SEX. Imagine the jokes that would spawn!

  Tied to Interpol—the International Criminal Police Organization—Special X investigated crimes committed in Canada but with links outside the borders. It kept tabs on violent troublemakers and would hunt down any killer if a murder took place at the Olympics. With the countdown on and time running out, the last thing the officers stationed at Whistler needed was the death of one of their own.

  Though it was a short trudge from the Special X detachment to the El Dorado Resort, Dane and Jackie were white with snow by the time they pushed through the revolving door. Bundled up in fur hats with earflaps, storm parkas, scarves, mitts, and boots, they brushed themselves off. Their plumes of breath evaporated as they entered the hotel, but their cheeks stayed flushed from the chill outside.

  A fretting Niles Hawksworth met them in the lobby.

  “This is most inconvenient,” fumed the manager. “No doubt it�
��s a hoax perpetrated by one of our competitors to undermine tonight’s event. It’s a cutthroat business, trying to go for the gold.”

  “You’ve touched nothing?” Dane asked.

  “Of course not,” Hawksworth replied, offended that anyone would think he didn’t do things just so.

  The three rode an elevator to the eighth floor and angled along a hallway wide enough to allow drunks to wobble shouldered skis. Even so, the wallpaper had scars. The door to room 807 was blocked by a security guard with a pair of bolt cutters.

  The sergeant rapped on the wood.

  “Police,” Dane announced.

  Three times he knocked, and three times got no reply.

  “Who rents the room?”

  “A company called Ecuador Exploration,” Hawksworth stated. “They’re new to us.”

  “How does the door work?”

  “Three locks. Combination keycard and deadbolt, and a swing-bar door guard. I have a master key to override the first two. Ken here has bolt cutters for the bar.”

  “Allow me,” Dane said, holding out his hand. “Fingerprints,” he added.

  Hawksworth passed him the master key, and the Mountie stuck it in the slot. That popped the electronic lock and automatically twisted the deadbolt. Cautiously, Dane used his gloved hand to depress the handle, careful not to smudge any prints. The door swung open about an inch before the knob caught in the swing bar.

  “There,” he said, indicating where the guard should cut.

  Ken eased the bolt cutters through the gap between the door and its frame to snip the metal.

  Crunch!

  The knob fell to the floor and the door swung wide.

  “Jesus Christ!” Jackie gasped, staring at the bed.