The Web (30 page)

Craving confession for years, wanting some sort of
absolution from me.

But not trusting me enough to go all the way. Instead,
he’d used me the way a defensive patient uses a brand-new
therapist: dropping hints, exploiting nuance and symbol,
embedding facts in layers of deceit.

“I suppose,” he said, sounding puzzled, “I was hoping
this moment would arrive eventually. That you’d be someone I
could .   .   . communicate with.”

His eyes begged for acceptance.

My tongue felt frozen.

“I’m sorry for lying to you, son, but I’d
do it all over again if it meant getting to this point.
Everything in its time—everything has a time and place.
Life may seem random, but patterns emanate. Like a child
tossing stones in a pond. The waves form predictably.
Something sets off events, they acquire a rhythm of their
own. .   .   . Time is like a dog chasing its
tail—more finite than we can imagine, yet infinite.”

He wiped his eyes and bit back more tears.

I took Robin’s hand. “After the
other illnesses did you go back to Hoffman?”

“Of course. And I expected him to become alarmed, take
some action. Instead, he
smiled.
Thirty years old but
he had an evil old man’s smile. A
filthy
little smile.
Sipping a martini. I said, “Perhaps you don’t understand,
Nick: something we did to these people is making them deathly
ill
—killing
them.’ He patted me on the back, told
me not to worry, people got sick all the time.”

He gave a sudden, hateful look.

“A baby without a brain,” he said. “A toddler with
end-stage cancer, that poor sailor with an old person’s
disease, but he could have been dismissing a case of the
sniffles. He said he was sure it had nothing to do with the
vaccines, they’d been tested comprehensively. Then he smiled
again. The same smile he gave when he cheated at cards and
thought he was getting away with it. Wanting me to understand
that he’d
known
all along.

“I’d planned to conduct an autopsy on the baby the next
day, decided to do it right then. But when I got to the
base mortuary, the body was gone. All the records were gone,
too, and the sailor who’d been my assistant had been replaced by
a new man—from Hoffman’s staff. I stormed back to Hoffman
and demanded to know what was going on. He said the baby’s
parents had requested a quick burial, so he’d granted
compassionate leave and flown them to Guam the previous
night. I went over to the flight tower to see if any planes
had left. None had for seventy-two hours. When I
got back to my office, Hoffman was there. He took me for a
walk around the base and began talking about the estate. It
seemed all of a sudden some other buyers had surfaced, but
he’d managed to keep my name at the top of the list
and
to
lower the price. It was all I could do not to rip out his
throat.”

He put on his glasses.

“Instead,” he said. The word tapered off. He put a
hand on his chest and inhaled several times. “
Instead,
I
thanked him and smiled back. Invited the bastard and his
wife to my quarters the next night for bridge. Now that I
knew what he was capable of, I felt I needed to protect
Barbara. And Pam—she was only a baby herself. But on the
sly, I began checking the others who’d been injected. Most
looked fine, but a few of the adults weren’t feeling well—vague
malaise, low-grade fevers. Then some of the children
began spiking
high
fevers.”

He dug a nail into his temple. “There I was, the kindly
doctor, reassuring them. Dispensing analgesics and ordering
them to drink as much as they could in the hope some of the
toxins would be flushed out. But unable to tell them the
truth—
what good would it have done? What curse is
worse than knowing your own death is near? Then
another
child died
suddenly of a brain seizure. Another family supposedly flown
out overnight, and this time Hoffman informed me my
involvement with the paradise needle was terminated, I was to
attend to all base personnel
except
the vaccinated families.
New
doctors had arrived for them, three whitecoats from
Washington. When I protested, Hoffman ordered me to begin a
new project: reviewing twenty years of medical files and
writing a detailed report. Busywork.”

“Sounds familiar.”

He smiled weakly. “Yes, I’m a horrid sneak; being
direct has always been difficult for me. I used to
rationalize it as the result of growing up an only child in a
very big house. One wanders about alone, acquires a taste
for games and intrigue. But perhaps it’s just a character
flaw.”

“What happened to the rest of the vaccinated patients?”
said Robin.

“More were growing ill, and rumors had finally gotten out
on the base about some kind of mysterious epidemic. Too much
to keep secret, so the doctors from Washington issued an
official memo: an unknown island organism had infiltrated
Stanton, and strict quarantine was imposed. The sick people were all
isolated in the infirmary, and quarantine signs were nailed to the
doors. Understandably, everyone gave the place a wide berth. Then I
heard a rumor that all the vaccinated families would be
shipped back to the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington for
evaluation and treatment. I had a pretty good idea what that
meant.”

He pulled down on his cheeks.

“I sneaked over to the infirmary one night after midnight. One
attendant was on guard at the front door, smoking, not taking
the job seriously. Which was typical of the base. Nothing
ever happened here. Everyone had a slipshod attitude.
I managed to sneak in through a rear
door, using a skeleton key I’d lifted from Hoffman’s office.
The smug bastard hadn’t even bothered to put on a new
lock.”

Reaching out, he grabbed the grapefruit, clawing so hard
juice flowed through his fingers.

“Some of them,” he said softly, “were already
dead. Lying in cots .   .   . unconscious, rotting. Others
were on the verge of losing consciousness. Sloughed skin was
everywhere .   .   . limbs .   .   . the room
stank of gangrene.”

He began crying, tried to stop, then to hide it. It
took a while before he resumed, and then, in a whisper.

“Bed after bed, crammed together like open
coffins. .   .   . I could still recognize a few of their
faces. No attempt was being made to treat them—no food or
medication or IV lines. They were being
stored.”

The grapefruit, a mess of pulp and rind.

“The last ward was the worst: dozens of dead children.
Then, a miracle: some of the babies were still alive and
looking relatively healthy. Dermal lesions, malnutrition,
but conscious and breathing well—their little eyes
followed
me as I stood over their
cribs. .   .   . I counted. Nine.”

He stood again and circled the room unsteadily.

“I still don’t understand it. Perhaps the relatively
low dosage had protected them, or something in their newborn
immune systems. Or maybe there is a God.”

Wringing his hands, he walked to the refrigerators and
faced a copper-colored Kenmore.

“Sometimes it’s good to be a sneak. I got them out.
Four the first time, five the second. Swaddled in
blankets so their cries would be muffled, but it wasn’t
necessary. They
couldn’t
cry. All that came out was
croaking.”

Facing us.

“The vaccine, you see, had burned their vocal cords.”

He picked up his pace, stalking an invisible victim.

“I had no place to take them but the forest. Thank God
it was winter. Winter here is kind, warm temperatures, dry.
I’d discovered the caves hiking. Had always liked caves.”
Smile. “Secretive places. Used to spelunk when I was at
Stanford, did a senior thesis on bats. .   .   . I didn’t
think anyone else knew of them, and there was nowhere else to
go.”

“What about the land mines?” I said.

He smiled. “The Japanese had plans to lay mines, but they
never quite got around to it.”

“The night of the knives?”

He nodded.

“You spread the rumor?” I said.

“I planted the seed. When it comes to rumors, there’s
never a shortage of gardeners. .   .   . Where was
I? .   .   . I placed them in a cave. Not this one, I
didn’t know about this one. Or the tunnel. Once they were secreted, I
checked them over, cleaned them up, gave them water and electrolytes, returned to
the infirmary, disassembled their cribs, scattering the parts
in the hope they wouldn’t be missed. And they weren’t. The entire
place was a charnel house, corpses and dying people had slid onto
the floor, lying on top of one another, body fluids dripping. I’ll
never forget the sound. Even now, when it
drizzles   .   .   .”

His face took on that absent look and for a moment I
thought he’d slip somewhere else. But he started talking
again, louder:

“Then, a complication: one of the adults had survived,
too. A man. As I was finishing with the layettes he came in, reaching
for me,
falling
on me. I nearly died of fright—he
was .   .   . putrid. I knew who he was. Aircraft
mechanic, huge fellow, enormously strong. Perhaps that’s why
the symptoms hadn’t taken him over as rapidly. Which isn’t to
say he wasn’t gravely ill. His skin was pure white—as if
bleached, one arm gone, no teeth, no hair. But able to
stagger. He hadn’t been a good man. A bully, really, with a
vicious temper. I’d patched up men he’d beaten. I was
worried he’d have enough strength to somehow set off an alarm,
so I dragged him out too. It nearly killed me. Even
starved, he must have weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. It took
so long to get him across the base. I was sure some sentry
would see me. But I finally made it.

“I put him in another cave, away from the babies, and
tended to him as best I could. He was shaking with chills,
skin starting to slough. Trying to talk and growing enraged
at his inability. .   .   . He kept looking at the stump
where his arm had been and screaming—a silent scream.
Rabid
anger. His eyes were wild. Even in that condition,
he frightened me. But I calculated it would only be hours.”

Lurching toward a chair, he sat.

“I was wrong. He lasted five days, fluctuating between
stupor and agitation. He’d actually get up and lurch around
the cave, injuring himself horribly but remaining on his
feet. His premorbid strength must have been superhuman. It
was on the fifth day that he managed to escape. I’d been at
the base, got back that night and he wasn’t there. At first
I panicked, thinking someone had discovered everything, but
the babies were still in their cave. I finally found him
lying under one of the banyans, semiconscious. I dragged
him back. He died two hours later.”

“But not before Joseph Cristobal saw him,” I said.

He nodded. “The next day, Gladys came to my office and
told me about Joe. One of the other workers at the estate
had told her Joe had a fit, claimed to have seen some kind of
forest devil.”

“A Tutalo.”

“No.” He smiled. “I made that up, too.
Tootali
is
the old word for “grub,’ but there’s no myth.”

“Planting the seed,” I said. “So Joe’s story wasn’t
taken seriously?”

“Joe had always been odd. Withdrawn, talked to himself,
especially when he drank. What concerned me were his chest
pains. They sounded suspiciously like angina, but with
anxiety, it was hard to know. As it turned out, his arteries
were
in terrible shape. There was nothing I could have
done.”

“You’re saying the sighting had nothing to do with his death?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “his condition was complicated by
fright.”

“Did you let him go on believing there
were
monsters?”

He blinked. “When I tried to discuss it with him, he
covered his ears. Very stubborn man. Very rigid ideation—not
schizophrenic, but perhaps schizoid?”

I didn’t answer.

“What should I have done, son? Told him he’d really seen
something and endanger the babies?
They
were my priority.
Every spare moment was spent with them. Checking on them,
bringing blankets, food, medicine. Holding them in my
arms.   .   .   . Despite everything I did, two of them got
progressively worse. But every night that passed without one
of them dying was a victory. Barbara kept asking me what was
wrong. Each night I left her .   .   . a light dose of
sleeping medicine in her bedside water
helped .   .   . shuttling back and forth, never knowing
what I’d find when I got there. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, “but all these years, they haven’t come
aboveground?”

“Not unsupervised they haven’t. They need to stay out
of the sunlight—extreme photosensitivity. Similar to what
you see in some porphyric patients, but they have no
porphyria and I’ve never been able to diagnose, never been
able to find out what they were gi—where was I?”

Looking baffled.

“Shuttling back and forth,” said Robin.

“Ah, yes—after a week or so it finally got to me. I
fell asleep at my desk, only to be shaken awake by a loud
roar. I knew the sound well: a large plane taking off.
Seconds later, there was a tremendous explosion. A Navy
transport had gone down over the ocean. Something about the
fuel tanks.”

The 1963 crash. Hoffman ordering Gladys to prepare coquilles
St. Jacques that night. Celebrating   .   .   .

“With the quarantined patients on board,” I said.
“Eliminating any witnesses.”

“The doctors from Washington, as well,” said Moreland.
“Plus three sailors who’d guarded the infirmary assigned as
flight attendants, and two medics.”

“My God,” said Robin.

“The patients would have died anyway,” said Moreland.
“Most probably
were
dead when they loaded them on—an
airborne hearse. But the doctors and the medics and the
flight crew were sacrifices—all in the name of God and
country, eh?”