Chapter 25
Inside the Clínica de Salud Pública,
visiting hours were over. The gymnasium lights had been turned
out. Pierre Cloucharde was fast asleep.
He did not see the figure hunched
over him. The needle of a stolen
syringe glinted in the dark. Then it disappeared into the IV tube just above
Cloucharde’s wrist. The hypodermic contained 30 cc of cleaning fluid stolen from a janitor’s
cart. With great force, a strong thumb rammed the plunger down and forced the bluish liquid into the old man’s
veins.
Cloucharde was awake only for a few seconds. He might have screamed in pain had a strong hand not been clamped
across his mouth. He lay trapped on his cot, pinned beneath a seemingly immovable weight. He could feel the pocket of fire searing its way up his arm. There was an excruciating
pain traveling through his armpit, his chest,
and
then, like a million
shattering pieces of glass, it hit his brain. Cloucharde saw a brilliant
flash of light… and then nothing.
The visitor released his grip and peered through the darkness
at the name on the medical chart.
Then he slipped silently out.
On the street, the man in wire-rim
glasses reached to a tiny device attached to his belt. The rectangular pack was about
the size of a credit card. It was a prototype of the new Monocle
computer. Developed by the U.S. Navy to help technicians record battery
voltages in cramped quarters on submarines, the miniature
computer packed a cellular modem and the newest advances
in micro technology. Its visual monitor was a transparent liquid crystal display,
mounted in the left lens of
a pair of eyeglasses. The Monocle reflected a whole new age in personal computing;
the user could now look through his data
and still interact with
the world around him.
The Monocle’s
real coup, though,
was not its miniature display
but rather its data entry
system. A user entered information via tiny contacts fixed to his fingertips; touching the contacts
together in sequence
mimicked a shorthand
similar to court stenography. The computer would then translate the shorthand into English.
The killer pressed a tiny switch, and his glasses
flickered to life. His hands inconspicuously at his sides, he began touching
different fingertips together in rapid succession. A message appeared before
his eyes.
SUBJECT: P.
CLOUCHARDE–TERMINATED
He smiled.
Transmitting notification of kills was part of his assignment. But
including
victim’s names… that, to the man in the wire-rim glasses, was elegance.
His fingers flashed again, and
his cellular modem activated.
MESSAGE
SENT
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