With his key Quentin let himself into the restricted area set off behind a thick steel mesh. Against the back wall was the dark vault of specialized compounds.
He checked behind the vault and the various shelves. Nothing. He also opened the vault to be certain nothing was missing. In the rear he removed a small brown jar containing tubarine chloride. He looked at it, thinking of Ross and that bastard Bacon.
Clink.
Quentin froze in place, the tubarine clutched in hand.
Clink. Clink.
Quentin turned.
There was somebody behind him, on the other side of the steel grating. A man wearing a black Minuteman Security uniform.
"You startled the hell out of me," Quentin said. "H-how did you get in here?"
The man did not answer, and his face was shadowed by the brim of his cap.
"I asked you how you got inside the building."
Clink.
"I'm the president of this company. I hired you people. Will you please answer me?"
Clink. Snap.
"What are you doing?"
The man had padlocked shut the door with his own lock.
Quentin crossed to the grating. "What are you doing? Take that off. Let me out of here."
The man said nothing.
Quentin closed his fingers through the steel mesh and shook the gate. It was fastened shut. "Let me out of here. I own this place. This is my company. Who do you think you are?"
The man raised his head so that the security light caught his face.
A familiar face.
A television face.
"You're going to hell, sinner."
Reverend Colonel Lamar Fisk.
It was his people who had camped out on the grounds outside for the last week. The fanatics with the signs calling for Armageddon.
"Who the hell do you think you are coming in here like this?"
"Who?" Fisk's eyes were perfect orbs. "A soldier of the Lord is who. You've bitten into His forbidden fruit for the last time."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Quentin shook the door again. "Let me out of here. Let me out of here."
Fisk did not respond but glared at him with such an intensity that Quentin backed away.
He then shot to an emergency phone on the wall near the vault. He raised it to punch 911 but could not get a dial tone. The line was dead.
Fisk raised his hand. "And I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth,'" he shouted. The veins of his neck stood out like thick cords of rope.
From behind Fisk half a dozen others in black uniforms appeared. One held a torch in his hands.
No, not a torch. A Molotov cocktail.
"What do you think you're doing?"
But Fisk moved back to the others. The man with the torch passed the flaming bottle to him. Then in a booming voice that reverberated in the steel chamber, Fisk raised his torch hand high and bellowed forth:
"'And I saw the beast was taken and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him with which he had deceived them that had received the mark of the beast and them that worshipped his image. And they were both cast alive into a lake of fire.'"
Then he threw the torch toward Quentin. With a shattering whoosh, the floor erupted in a spreading pool of orange flame.
In the light Quentin saw two men rush into the interior of the building, to the labs and offices. A moment later he heard loud explosions.
It was then the remaining men let fly incendiary grenades into all corners of the storage chamber and down each of the aisles.
Quentin screamed as if his throat were shattering.
But he was drowned out by the sound of the grenades and exploding chemicals, the rage of flames, and the wailing alarms.
In mere moments, the place was a thick vortex of smoke and fire. All along the shelves containers of chemicals blew up, spreading more flames and noxious fumes until the chamber was a roaring toxic inferno.
Inside the security cage Quentin shook the gate and howled until the smoke choked his lungs and filled his eyes with killing heat, and he fell to the floor, his fingers still clutching the small brown jar of tubarine.
37
According to the thermometer outside the kitchen window the temperature was 30 degrees the next morning. Fresh snow covered the yard. The lake remained unfrozen, however the water in the old fountain was iced over and pillowed in white.
But a warming trend was in the forecast. In a few hours the world would be green again. In a few hours the place would also be swarming with police and media people with vans surmounted by radio dishes. And by early afternoon it would be all over, Laura told herself. There was a strange roundness to it all. The saga had been born in the wilderness half a world away, and it would end in the wilderness of her old backyard.
Laura had gotten up before Roger and Brett. She made some coffee to get her heart going. She felt lousy and she looked it in the mirror. The skin of her face was a loose gray dough and her eyes were puffy. She had slept soundly until about four o'clock when she woke up with a bolt of panic at the bargain Roger had cut with the president.
It had crossed her mind yesterday, but she was so wracked with horror and grief that the realization had not registered. But two hours ago it hit her. In the effort to save her and Brett, Roger had signed his own death warrant.
He came down a little before seven.
Laura gave him a mug of coffee. On the television in the living room the "Elixir Unrest" story continued. Over the last few days it had become so prominent and widespread that CNN created its own graphics and crash chords.
Laura sat next to Roger and took his hand.
The news was worse than last night. Another rash of bombings of American corporations in foreign countries. More cries for a holy war. "An Elixir Jihad," someone had called it.
What particularly shocked them was the story of the torching of Darby Pharms and the death of its president. Some lunatic fundamentalist group had claimed responsibility. The same group that proclaimed Christopher Bacon a false prophet attempting to conjure the devil.
Meanwhile, a huge rally was scheduled in Washington that day at noon in protest of the government coverup. All efforts by the White House to downplay Elixir had failed miserably. A whirlwind of madness was whipping across the world, and it had Roger's name on it.
Laura turned off the set. "What's going to happen to you when you turn it over?"
"I guess I'll be given a regular supply to keep me going. Probably administered by some medical clinic wherever we end up."
She knew that even without the notebook protocol, the compound could be broken down into its molecular constituents which meant that it could be duplicated. All one needed was a lab and good organic chemists. "You won't be safe."
"Why not?"
"People will be after you as long as you live."
He had used the compound as a bargaining chip, but she knew it meant more anxiety. As long as he was on the stuff, they would remain forever prey to every maniac wanting a sample. Just as bad, he would be the number-one infidel on top of every religious crazy's hit list.
She squeezed his hand. "It scares me."
"But we'll have federal protection."
His answer was too pat and resolve was missing in his voice. It would be the first time the compound was out of their hands. The agreement was for Public Citizen to assume full responsibility for the compound. But who knew where that could lead? If some got out, it could be like one of those renegade nukes from the old USSR floating around on the black market.
"I pray we're not making a mistake."
"We're not," he said.
But she didn't believe him.
About seven-thirty Laura woke Brett. While he got dressed, Roger put the call to the White House.