Biofire, page 7
“Upset me?” The big man leaned forward and flattened his beefy palms on the desktop. “If you’d upset me, I’d give you a call on the phone. If you’d upset me, we’d get together and have a little talk.” His smile became a sneer as he shouted, “If you’d just upset me, I wouldn’t wanna fucking kill you, would I?”
Raising his eyebrows high, Shaw reached down, opened a small wooden box on his desk, removed a cigarette from it, and lit up. “I take it I’ve done…what?” He took a long drag, then exhaled smoke slowly through his nose and mouth as he smiled again. “I don’t understand, Leo. We’re friends, right? I mean, hell, we vacationed together once, remember? And aside from that, I’ve got something I think you’ll be very interested”—
“You’re a fucking wife-beater.”
Shaw stumbled over his words and his smile became crippled. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, you’re a fucking wife-beater. I saw the bruise. She told me. She told me everything.”
“Emma?”
“How many wives you got?”
“I-I-I…I don’t understand, Leo. You say Emma told you something about…well, see, I’m trying to figure out what kind of conversation you could possibly have with my wife that would lead to such a spurious—”
“We’ve been having an affair, Landon. For months now.”
Wearing a curious frown, Shaw lowered himself back into his chair. The fact that his wife had been fucking Leo bothered him not in the least. The fact that she had so effectively turned Leo against him was unbelievably infuriating, and even though he did not like to admit it, not even to himself, it was terrifying. He would have to handle this situation with extraordinary care. Later, he could decide how to deal with Emma. But she would be dealt with, and severely.
Shaw said, “You mean to tell me you’re going to allow my private and personal life with my wife come between our business relationship? Our friendship? Is that it?”
Leo leaned forward even further, until it looked like he was going to fall flat on the desk. Saliva glistened in the corners of his mouth as he said in his wet, muttering way, “You’re a cancer, Landon Shaw, a fucking cancer. Men like you, you’re a disease that your fucking lab couldn’t even begin to cure. Even if curing diseases was what your fucking lab did in the first place, which we both know is bullshit.”
“So, you’ve…come here to kill me. I’m curious, Leo. How are you doing to do it?”
Leo slid his big hands off the desktop, stood up straight, and glared down at Shaw. “Normally, I wouldn’t even be here. I pay people to do this sort of thing for me while I’m someplace else. But I wanted to be here for this because see, Shaw, just like they say in the movies…it’s personal. See, I…well, this sounds crazy, even to me, because I’m just not the type, but…I love your wife, Landon. I swear to God, I love her like I was…a kid in school having his first crush. She’s made me feel like a young man. I’ve never met a woman like her in my life. And I’ve had the best of ’em, let me tell ya.”
Shaw smirked while his stomach burned. “Leo, are you going to stand there and write a love letter to my wife, or are you going to tell me how you plan to kill me?”
“You’re gonna write a short little note. Then you’re going out the window.”
“Out the window?” Shaw glanced over his shoulder at the glass. “These windows don’t even open. Do you know how thick the glass is? What, you expect me to just write a note and then throw myself through the glass to die on the street below just because you say so? You’re crazy, Leo,” Shaw said with a laugh.
“I’ve got two gigantic fellows outside that door who will come in here and prove I’m not crazy by throwing your smug ass through the fucking window after you write your little note.”
Leo was not alone after all. It was no surprise.
Shaw leaned back in his chair, trying to relax, while his mind screamed with activity, searching for an out, a foothold, for some way to—
“Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to do it this way, Leo?” he said.
Leo frowned. “Had to do what? What way? What the hell’re you talking about?”
Shaw leaned forward and folded his arms on the desk, looking up at the big man. “I wasn’t lying, Leo, when I said I was thinking of you when you came through that door,” he lied again. “I’ve got a new project. It’s already underway. Project Biofire, Leo. You like the sound of that?” He allowed his eyes to smile, but his mouth remained expressionless. He did not want to go too far too fast.
Leo’s eyes narrowed to black, bloodless slits in his fat face, but he said nothing.
Shaw found his silence encouraging. “I’m talking about something completely unlike anything OdysseyCorp has ever done before, Leo. Something ground-breaking. And something I think would be especially suited to you. Perfect for you and your work. How would you like it, Leo, if you didn’t have to—”
“Shut the fuck up before I start slappin’ the shit outta you like the bitch you are,” Leo said. He spoke quietly, but the words carried the weight of a shout, and Shaw’s mouth snapped shut with an audible clacking of teeth.
As hard as he tried to control it, Shaw felt his rage burning in his face for Leo to see. He took a drag on his cigarette, placed it on the edge of the large ashtray, then exhaled smoke as he leaned back in his chair, away from the desk, from Leo, his body relaxed, his insides bubbling with anger. And cold with fear.
“I’m surprised at you, Leo. Even disappointed. This isn’t like you at all.”
A grin peeled back slowly over Leo’s disturbing teeth. “I can almost hear your thoughts,” he said. “You’re so cocky, so fucking confident you’re gonna get by me on this, you’re already thinking ahead to what you’re gonna do to her for telling me this, aren’t you? Yeah.” He nodded once. “You’re already punishing her in your head. Bet you got a fuckin’ hard-on right now, don’t you? Just thinking about it probably charms your snake, you sick fuck.”
“It’s not like you to let something like this interfere with business, Leo.”
“I told you, it’s personal, this’s got nothing to do with business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Shaw spoke more quickly now, but still quietly, with a hint of urgency, importance, but not even a shade of fear. “Killing me now, for whatever reason, would set you and your business so far back in the Stone Age, you’d be wiped out before the wheel was discovered. You’d be left wide open to your competitors, Leo. You’d probably be dead within a year after this new item goes up for auction. And no one would ever suspect you’d been murdered.”
Leo’s right eye narrowed. “The fuck’re you talking about?”
Inside, Shaw smiled.
“As long as I’m alive,” he continued, “this project will proceed exactly as I’ve planned, and the product will be made available to you, Leo. You’re getting first heads-up on this. But if I’m killed…well, then it will be out of my hands.”
“What project?” Leo’s tone was low, but impatient.
“It’s already underway, and it will be completed. But who knows what will be done with it? It’ll go to the government because they commissioned it. But who else? Maybe you, of course. Maybe. But if not, then you would be in big trouble. Out in the cold. You wouldn’t know what hit you. And neither would anyone else.”
Leo came around the desk quickly, his intense stare never for a moment loosening its iron grip on Shaw’s eyes. He slapped a big hand onto Shaw’s chest, closed it tightly on his shirt, tie, and one lapel, jerked him with ease from his seat, and pressed his back against the thick glass pane of one of the windows behind the desk.
“You’re pissing me off, Landon,” Leo growled wetly through his small, clenched teeth. “I’m startin’ to think maybe I oughtta kill you right now, myself, with my bare hands. If you know something I should know, you’d better tell me now, goddammit, or you’re gonna wish you had gone out the fucking window.”
Shaw fought for control of the storm raging inside him, tried not to think thoughts of lashing out at Leo, roaring in his fleshy face, pushing his thumbs into the man’s pig-like eyes until they punched through bone and sunk into gelatinous brain tissue. But Shaw’s voice was completely level when he spoke.
“If you’re going to kill me, Leo, then do it. I’m not especially afraid of dying, and I’m not afraid of you at all. But. If you want to hear what I have to say, remove your hand from my chest and take a step back.”
The moment froze then and stretched out interminably, and Shaw became vividly aware of everything around him: his office—where he was most powerful and confident—the night outside the windows, the city lights, the smell of cigar smoke, and of Leo’s garlicky breath.
There was indecision in Leo’s eyes. Shaw could tell that he wanted very much to know what he had been talking about, and under normal circumstances, he knew Leo would have let go of him by now. But those eyes also told Shaw that Leo wanted very much to kill him as well. The man was agonizing over his situation, and that meant, to Shaw, that Leo had been quite serious earlier; he really was in love with Emma. As far as Shaw was concerned, that made Leo the human equivalent of a rabid dog.
Then, when it seemed neither of them would never move again, Leo slowly released his hold and stepped back, gradually lowering his arm to the side, never taking his eyes from Shaw’s.
“What did you mean?” Leo said. “Earlier. About me being out in the cold. Not knowing what hit me.”
Shaw smiled just a little and started to step around Leo, saying, “Let me make you a drink and we can—”
Leo slapped a hand to Shaw’s shoulder and stopped him cold. “I’ll make my own fucking drink, thanks. You stay in your chair.”
Shaw nodded once, turned and lowered himself back into the chair.
“You bought yourself a little time, but you’re not off the hook,” Leo said as he walked crab-like to the liquor cabinet, keeping an eye on Shaw. He smirked as he poured scotch into a glass and said, “I’m still looking forward to seeing what color your insides are when you hit the sidewalk.” He pushed a leather-upholstered chair closer to Shaw’s desk and made himself comfortable in it with a long, breathy sigh. “I just think it’s sad you won’t be feeling it,” he went on. “You sure as hell deserve to. Beating up on a woman. Threatening to kill her if she tries to defend herself or leave you. That’s pretty low. Low as you can get in my book. Hell, even cocksuckers don’t bite off each other’s cocks, if you know what I mean. Beating your wife. That’s low.” He removed a cigar from beneath his coat, unwrapped it, and lit up, all with his right hand while holding the drink in his left. “Now. What’s this project you were talking about, Landon? And don’t jerk me off, here, okay? I don’t have all night.”
Shaw eyed his cigarette. It had burned down to the filter and a long tube of ash curved downward into the bowl like a skeletal finger.
“Mind if I have a cigar?” Shaw said.
“Long as you don’t make any quick moves doing it.” Leo smiled, cigar clutched between his teeth. He reached into his coat, removed another, and handed it to Shaw. “Have one of mine. They’re better.” He leaned back in the chair, plucked the cigar from his mouth and gestured with it toward the dead cigarette. “You know, you really oughtta knock off those things. They’ll kill ya.” Then his eyes squinted and his hillock of a belly rocked with quiet laughter.
Shaw took his time lighting his cigar, puffing it, watching the smoke rise slowly. But inside, his mind was racing. He had no doubt Leo was serious about killing him. He could make no mistakes. He would have only one chance to change Leo’s mind by convincing him that he, Shaw, was more valuable alive. It meant spilling the beans about the project much sooner than he had planned, but he had no choice. If he could not convince Leo that Project Biofire was more important than his feelings for Emma, there would be no Project Biofire, contrary to what he had just told Leo.
“About eight months ago,” Shaw began, “I was commissioned by the Pentagon to revive a project they’d killed about six years back. Actually, the project wasn’t killed, it simply wasn’t going anywhere. We were attempting to isolate the specific source of telekinesis in the human brain so we could”—
“Tele what?”
“Telekinesis. The ability to move objects with nothing more than the mind, the power of thought.”
Leo took a thoughtful sip of his drink, then smirked. “Like that horror movie with the teenage girl?”
The rapid activity in Shaw’s mind stumbled a moment as he tried to figure out what Leo was referring to. An instant later, he had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. “You mean Carrie. Yes. Like that. We were trying to learn exactly what caused it so we could control it. Even instigate it in people. But it never quite got off the ground. From the very beginning, nothing clicked and we ran into one dead end after another. It was finally abandoned by the Pentagon. With a little more time to re-staff the project, we might’ve gotten somewhere, but they wanted something from nothing and they wanted it yesterday. So far, that’s the only time a project was not carried out successfully by OdysseyCorp, and I intend it to be the last. Anyway…”
Shaw leaned back in his chair, choosing his words carefully, controlling the level of his voice, relaxing as he watched Leo closely, noticing the most minute changes in his eyes, the smallest twitch of his lips, anything that might give him a sense of what was going on behind that fat face.
“After the Berlin Wall went down and the exchange of information began between America and the former Soviet Union,” Shaw continued, “the Pentagon was stunned by the amount of work the Soviets had been doing not only in the field of telekinesis, but in telepathy, pyrokinesis, precognition, all forms of psychic warfare. Even spiritualism, for God’s sake. Communicating with the dead, can you believe that? U.S. intelligence always knew they had an interest, but we had no idea just how extensive it was, or how much money and time they were willing to spend on it. They did a good job of concealing that.”
Still wearing the shadow of a smirk, just a slight curl of the left end of his mouth, Leo narrowed his eyes. “Like I said earlier, Landon. I don’t have all night.”
“The Russians had made much more progress in telekinesis than we had, but just like we did, they hit a dead end. They reached a sort of plateau, couldn’t get any further. The government shut them down. But the woman heading up the project, Antonina Barikov, tried to talk them out of it. She claimed the work they’d done in telekinesis had opened some very interesting doors in a related but different field, and she tried to convince them to keep the project open, rename it, redefine its goals. They suffered from tunnel vision, though. They weren’t interested in any tangential discoveries she might have made. Her records were filed, though. Her writings were kept, put away. Apparently, so was she. She…retired from government service in 1990 and was killed in a car accident a few months later. Even if the Soviet government had been interested in pursuing her findings, the wall fell and everything changed before they had the chance.”
Leo smiled. “And your Pentagon friends got hold of her work later, right? Liked what they saw?”
“About ten months ago, yes. Once they looked over her writings, they suddenly lost all interest in telekinesis. They’d found something more useful, more powerful. Of course, they feigned disinterest, agreed with the Soviets that it was a good try, but a failed project. And then they brought it to me.”
“Okay, Landon, I’ll bite,” Leo said quietly, still smirking. “What was it? What’d this woman stumble on?”
After a long moment of staring directly into Leo’s eyes, Shaw smiled and tilted his head in a friendly, curious way.
“Tell me, Leo. How many people do you employ to do the kind of work you came here to do tonight?”
“That’s none of your fucking business, Landon, you know that.”
Shaw nodded, almost apologetically. “Okay, okay, don’t answer. But we’re friends, right, Leo? We’ve known each other for how many years? So let’s not pretend. I know what you do, you know what I do. I’m just being up front, that’s all. Okay, forget I asked the question. Let’s just use a hypothetical number. Let’s say you’ve got, oh, ten employees to do your wet work for you. Of course, I’m sure it’s more than that. After all, you’re a very powerful businessman with connections all over the world, Leo, you probably have many more killers than that working for you.” He saw Leo’s face darken a bit, saw the man’s chest puff up as he took in a breath to speak, and Shaw’s words began to come faster so Leo would not have a chance to interrupt. “But let’s settle on ten for now, and let’s say that every time one of those ten assassins does a job, he has to spread a little money around, grease some palms, maybe call in some favors from a few people in your debt in order to pull off the hit, to make sure nobody’s in his way and the target’s where he’s supposed to be when he’s supposed to be there. Now, all of those expenses come out of your pocket. And all the risks, too, you could call those expenses, as well. And on top of all that, you have to pay the killer his fee, am I right, Leo? All that money, all that trouble, the potential exposure, the danger of your man being caught, of the hit being traced back to you—how would you like to get rid of all that? How would you like it, Leo, if you could trade in those ten killers for one and eliminate all that risk? All of it, Leo.”
Shaw could almost hear the nasty, wet sound of the hook lodging in Leo’s throat. The man was leaning forward in the chair now, clenching his cigar tightly between his teeth, rubbing the tip of his thumb hard against the edge of the glass he held.
“There would be no chance of a competitor’s fatal accident ever being uncovered as a murder. No chance, I mean no chance in hell of your name ever being involved. Wouldn’t that be nice, Leo? Wouldn’t that save you a lot of money and put your mind at ease?”
When Leo spoke, his words were slurred around the cigar in his mouth, his lips hardly moved, and his voice was a throaty rasp. “The hell you talking about, Landon?”
Still smiling, Shaw placed both hands flat on the desktop, speaking in a tone that was almost warm, the tone of someone sharing a happy, intimate secret with a friend.
