The Messenger Read Online Free PDF Page B

you can see what’s happening. If the timing was better, if it were not so important, we could have allowed you to make a farewell message. But, unfortunately …”For a moment she sees her mother, her face laced with wrinkles, eyes always on the floor, never talking, lost inside herself after her sons had been murdered. Her husband gone somewhere, and her never knowing …
    “It doesn’t matter. They know I love them.”
    “I’m sure.” He looks at her for a long moment. “Daria, no one is forcing you, but our friend has told me that you are very strong and true to your word. You volunteered, yes? Of your own free will?”
    “Yes.”
    “You are a beautiful young woman. Any man would be proud to make you his wife. You have your whole life before you.”
    “I know what I am doing.”
    “Fine. Good.” He nods. For a moment his gray eyes stare at her. “Then … this is how we do it now. We try to make our effectiveness last. This is why we are using germs. Not bombs.”
    “Germs?”
    He takes a breath, almost a sigh. Glances toward the television. Is it to see the time? “You understand, Daria, that it is better if you don’t know some things?”
    “Yes. Yes, of course,” she says, a little embarrassed. “How it happens, it doesn’t matter to me,” she says, but actually she has never imagined anything other than an explosive ending to her life. Never.
    “It is a very special pathogen we have made. It is an old disease, Daria. A disease that everyone thinks has gone away. They used to immunize everyone for this disease … myself as a child, but now, not for many years. It is smallpox, have you heard of it?”
    “Yes …” Now the taxi across Rome makes sense. She remembers the word “smallpox” in the same way she remembers “chlorophyll.” It’s just a science term. It has no relevance to her life.
    “Smallpox comes in different varieties. The old kind could kill one in three, eh?” He holds up fingers for her to count. “The only samples of smallpox in existence are hidden away in very secret government laboratories. Obtaining a sample was extremely expensive.And then we had to modify it, we had to make it into a weapon, something we could use, you see?”
    He sits back against the headboard, adjusts the pillows piled behind the small of his back. “It was easily done, once we had the equipment.” He shrugs.
    “Now the virus is …” He searches the television again. “… like an athlete on steroids, a technological feat we can be proud of. That
you
can be proud of,” he tells her.
    She nods her head. “Fine, then.”
    He reaches out as if to pat her on the shoulder, but stops himself at the last second. “To take this step … it has always been a problem. After all, to spread a plague, something that could even come back and hurt your own people, this always has been a last resort, otherwise someone would have already used it, yes?”
    “I would think so, yes.”
    “So, the time has come. This is the last resort.” The man stops. Waits. Seems to be getting his breath. Is he sick?
    “You are to be a carrier, Daria. You are an arrow. You are going straight to the heart.” He uses his fist to rap at his own chest.
    Almost without her noticing, the young man crouches beside her, a syringe in his hands. He swabs her shoulder and gives her an injection. Painless.
    “Without this you would surely die and then your usefulness would be over. Everything, of course, is untested. We are not a drug company.” The older man smiles at his little joke. “All I can guarantee is that this will slow it down. You may have a few more weeks, or you may live to be a grandmother,” he says. He’s not smiling now. Looking at her sadly, she thinks.
    After that it is simple. Go into the adjoining room. There is luggage and new clothing for you. Take off everything you are wearing and put it in the garbage bag. On the table there is a bottle; it contains the virus. It is just like a bottle