Текст книги "What Lies Behind"
Автор книги: J. T. Ellison
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 25 страниц)
Chapter 29
FLETCHER WAS TRYING, and failing, to make sense of the information from the SD card. He stared at the screen, watched Sam scroll through the data. He had to take her word he was looking at vaccination schedules.
“Why would they do that?” he asked. “Why would they take the chance? This can’t be quiet over there, people talk. Look at the massive Ebola outbreak last year—that was on every television station and in every paper around the world. How are they keeping this quiet?”
Sam was more pragmatic about things. She had a strange way of being able to separate herself from the case, to see it objectively. It was a skill that was turning her into an investigator, one he used to think he had, until his world blew up this morning.
“I think they’re using the Ebola outbreak from last year as cover. The symptoms of Ebola hemorrhagic fever and this new bug are very similar. And as a result of the outbreak last year, the CDC and WHO fast-tracked human trials for an Ebola vaccine, too. They got desperate, and were given permission for compassionate use on the drugs they had that weren’t fully tested. ZMapp, for example. It worked in several severe cases, boosting the immune systems, effectively curing them of the disease. So they sped things up, trying to find a way out of the epidemic.”
“Could someone be trying to create their own vaccine? Using human trials?”
Sam shook her head. “There are always people who will offer up a cure. And there are always people who will be desperate enough to take them at their word. No, Fletcher, this is purposeful. I think Girabaldi is correct—this is the testing ground for a biological attack.”
“Are you sure?”
She turned to face him and shrugged. “Until we find all of Amanda’s notes, I don’t think we’ll know anything for sure. But we have to prepare as if an attack is coming.”
Daniels was messing with the computer, scrolling through the pages. “There’s something else that could be going on.”
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“It could be one hell of a money-making scheme. If they have tainted vaccines, and they had engineered a cure, they could be slipping the illness into other inoculations or medicine, then selling their lifesaving medicine.”
“True, it would be a boon to the bottom line of a company who was first to market with an all-encompassing vaccine. But this? All these deaths? It’s catastrophic. If I were approaching this as a scientist, to me it looks like there is a completely new bug being given in the standard vaccines. I think Amanda was probably onto something. A mysterious man in the African bush, hundreds dead and the lead investigator and her pet doctor murdered? I think we’re dealing with someone who’s trying to cover their tracks.”
They let that sink in.
“Fletcher, should we call Girabaldi? Tell her what we’ve found?” Sam said.
Fletcher shook his head. “Hell, no. This is the information she’s after, I’m sure of it. This is why she sent us off to investigate the case, hoping we’d uncover something, then she’ll swoop in and wrap it into her little cover-up.”
Sam sat back in her chair and regarded him thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Fletch. If what Amanda brought in does contain live viruses, we could have a major problem. Some infected with hemorrhagic fevers take up to twenty, twenty-five days to become symptomatic. People could be exposed and moving around the country, the world, and not know it. That could be the attack plan.”
Daniels looked completely terrified. “You mean they could be bringing this new hemorrhagic fever into the country, and we wouldn’t know?”
“Sure. It happens more than you’d think, sick people coming in from infected areas around the world, but we have such superior medical facilities and health standards that a full-blown outbreak here is extremely unlikely. But if someone’s passing around a new disease without knowing it? That’s a potential problem, sure.” She turned to Fletcher. “Do you think Girabaldi’s in on this? That she knows what’s happening and condones it? And is trying to make sure the information doesn’t leak?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. She had the Africa desk at the meeting this morning—clearly he’s in on it. What’s the guy’s name...Kronen?”
“Kruger,” Sam said absently. “The on-site HAZMAT folks said the vials of viruses we found at Cattafi’s place were simple vaccines, and so did State. What if... Let me see the computer again, Daniels.”
He handed it over, and she looked through the pages of material, reading slowly this time, trying to make sense of the numbers and letters she was seeing. There was a medical shorthand here that she was thankfully familiar with. She looked for the pages that would have the behavioral risk factors, which could indicate how the disease might be spreading after the vaccine inoculations. She didn’t see anything strange or out of place there. She went on to the reporting schedules. The files were far from perfect; self-reporting of this infection was practically nonexistent outside of the major population centers due to the ultraquick mortality, so the numbers were skewed to a representative sample of subjects vaccinated at a specific station in Uganda. But from what she could tell, ninety percent of those inoculated died within the first week. These entries were all labeled HR—high risk.
She scrolled faster, and at the very end of the file was rewarded with a small statement that made the blood leave her head.
Her voice was pitched higher than normal; she could hear the lingering fear in the question. “Fletcher, where are the vaccination vials we found at Cattafi’s place?”
Fletcher raised an eyebrow at Sam. “What is it? What did you find?”
“Are you familiar with the concept of grafting?”
“Skin grafting?” Fletcher asked.
Daniels spoke up. “No, you mean the grafting done with wine, or roses. Creating new species by mixing two distinctly separate breeds.” Sam and Fletcher both looked at him. He shrugged. “My mom is a gardener. She specializes in hybrids.”
“Well, that’s helpful knowledge, because that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Diseases can act in the same way. You have a host disease, and you can graft a secondary disease onto it. It’s a bit more complicated than wine or roses, but the disease can be made weaker, or create a hysteric response that allows it to be conquered. Or it could grow stronger, and become a superbug. Usually it happens by accident, but it looks to me like that’s what they were doing. Trying to perfect a superbug that can be spread by casual contact, even making it airborne. It’s one hell of a sophisticated weapon.”
“And it could already be here on our shores,” Fletcher said.
She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Sam, tell me there’s a list of names and companies so we can start shutting them down.”
“There isn’t,” Sam said, closing the laptop. “Amanda may have found out what they’re up to, but she hadn’t identified where the drugs are coming from. Fletch, we need those vaccines secured. If she’s brought in samples of the actual superbug, we could all be in danger.”
Agent Daniels pushed his plate away, appetite lost. “Sir, ma’am, there’s no way we can keep this information quiet. There are too many lives at stake.”
Sam nodded. “I agree with you, Agent Daniels. Amanda Souleyret was killed for this information, but I’m not inclined to hand it over to the very person who’s asking for it. Not until we know she can be trusted. We need to keep this close hold for the time being, until we know who we can share it with. Are you okay with that?”
“If you say so, ma’am.” He didn’t look convinced.
Fletcher gave her a speculative look, then grabbed his phone and dialed. He put it on speaker.
“Hart here.”
“Lonnie, where is the material taken from Cattafi’s apartment?”
“Off the top of my head? I don’t know, but I assume it’s been taken into evidence by the crime scene unit.”
“Get on the phone to Mel Robertson, have the bags pulled and waiting.” He glanced at Sam. “We’re going to, uh, get an outside, independent review of the material. Okay?”
“Okay. But what prompted this?”
“Too much to explain right now,” Fletcher said darkly. “Just go do it, and I’ll fill you in shortly.”
“Will do,” Hart said, and rang off. He called back within a minute.
Fletcher answered with a brusque, “You got ’em?”
“Fletcher, we have a problem. I’ve got Mel on the line.”
“What’s the problem?”
Robertson had a deep voice, and he sounded seriously pissed off. “HAZMAT took them. Claimed we were incapable of proper storage.”
Sam felt her heart race. “Do you know who at HAZMAT took them?”
“I do, and I called them, but they’ve already handed them over to the CDC. Those vaccines are halfway to a field lab, or Atlanta.”
“Son of a bitch.” Fletcher slammed his hand on the table.
“Lieutenant, what aren’t you telling me?”
“Those vials just became the most important piece of evidence we have. Mel, I don’t want you to panic, but they may not have been safe, after all. I need you to find out exactly where they are, who has them and have them call me immediately. But no one outside, and I mean no one, can know about this. You read me?”
“Loud and clear. But when you say they aren’t safe, what the hell do you mean?”
“Those vials might be carrying a live disease, Mel. One that could be used against us.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from both men on the other side of the line. Robertson spoke first. “Jesus. Are we in danger? We were all exposed, even with the precautions we took. Everyone at the crime scene, you and Dr. Owens, too. And anyone who might come into contact with the courier. If this is airborne, we—”
Fletcher interrupted him. “I know. Find them, Mel. I don’t care what you have to do. Just make sure this stays internal. We can’t have the media up our asses about it. Not until we know for sure what we’re dealing with.” He hung up. “Great. That’s just great.”
Sam ran a hand along his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Fletch. From what I’m seeing, they haven’t managed to make this airborne. I’m pretty sure we’d need to be injected, or come into contact with the blood or vomit or other bodily fluids of an infected body. Can they be engineered if they fall into the wrong hands? Yes. But these hemorrhagic fevers aren’t airborne. I do think we’re safe. If I didn’t, I’d be jumping up and down right now, insisting you pull out all the stops on a public health alert.”
He was still white. “I hope you’re right, Sam. We need to go double-time into this investigation. We need to find Bromley and talk to him. Find out exactly what he and Cattafi had stirred up.”
“I’ll call his office.”
Sam used her phone to find the GW website and looked up the number. A young woman’s voice came through the line. “The Office of International Medicine Programs, how may I direct your call?”
“My name is Dr. Samantha Owens with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I need to speak with David Bromley immediately.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, but Dr. Bromley isn’t in the country. Can I take a message? He’s been checking in, but I haven’t heard from him today.”
“I know he’s not. Where is he exactly?”
“Let me see...” There was tapping; she was looking it up on the computer. “Cape Town, South Africa. He’s doing something for the Infectious Diseases Research Training Program. I don’t know when he’s expected back, but I do see he has office hours next week. Should I put you down for an appointment?”
“Do you know a student of his named Thomas Cattafi?”
“Sorry, ma’am, no, I don’t.”
“All right. This is an extremely urgent matter. Can you reach Dr. Bromley for me?”
“It’s hit or miss with the time changes, but I can try.”
“If you could reach out to him, that would be a huge help. Please ask him to return my call immediately. Thank you.” She rattled off her name and information and hung up. Shook her head at Fletcher.
“We’re out of luck, for the time being, anyway. They’re going to try and track him down.”
Fletcher ran a hand along his chin. “Should we try on our own? Send someone to him?”
“Let’s give her an hour, see if she can get through.”
“We just can’t win, can we?” She saw him thinking, deciding what they should do. After a minute he said, “We’re going to have to share the information about the vaccines soon enough. They want us to investigate these murders—that’s what we’re going to do. Let’s go to Souleyret’s house, see if there’s anything to be seen, then I’d like to check in on Cattafi. And where the hell is this mythical sister, huh?”
“We need to let Baldwin know what we’ve found. Him, I trust. He can help us decide what to do with this information, and maybe help us get a contact at the CDC to do an independent assessment of the vials from Cattafi’s place. And he’ll have an idea of whether Girabaldi is on our side, or her own.”
“Call him, then, but from the road.” He stood, put out a hand to Daniels. “Marcos, you can head back to Quantico now. Keep your mouth shut, you hear me? We’ll take it from here. Thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it.”
Sam saw the kid was disappointed to be dismissed. He was having fun, despite the horror of the information they’d just discovered. “Yes, sir. But I’m happy to hang around in case you need anything else.”
“Fletcher, maybe Agent Daniels could start looking for Souleyret’s sister for us. Save us some time? Since he’s already here.”
Daniels gave her a small smile. “I can find her.”
Fletcher ran a hand through his dark hair. Sam saw the gray at his temples had spread, and felt a small shock. He’d aged in the time she’d known him, which wasn’t very long, all things considered. A few months, really, cherry blossoms to autumn leaves.
And in that time, she’d never seen him as rattled as he was right now.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. That’s a good idea. Since you’re already in this, Marcos, let’s get you in all the way. You can work from here—you’ll have everything you need, especially privacy. Do you need to call your boss? Tell her we need you?”
“She’s already given me the day, sir. I’m yours. Do you have any information on the sister?”
Sam slid him the thin file State had given them, and the one from the FBI. “Here’s everything we have on her. The sister’s name is Robin. Robin Souleyret. Find her, and I’ll buy you a drink.”
He gave her a smile. He had a nice smile. It made him look even younger than he was.
“How old are you, Agent Daniels?”
“Twenty-eight yesterday, ma’am. Today’s my first day working for NCAVC.”
Chapter 30
Georgetown
XANDER SLAMMED THE phone down and unplugged it from the wall. How the media had found him so quickly was astonishing. No one was parked outside yet, and he hoped that wouldn’t happen, but he wasn’t at all convinced he could avoid it. Sam would be upset with their life being played out on the news again. And so would he.
He joined Chalk at the kitchen table, where they’d been sipping water and booting up their respective computers. Xander had eschewed the idea of them having an office, much preferring to work out of the town house in Georgetown, but now, he was rethinking that decision.
“I don’t know if we’re secure here. That was CNN. This isn’t good.”
“I’ll fight them off for you, cupcake. Just point me at the nearest news van with my grenades and they won’t bother you anymore.”
Xander clutched his hands to his chest and batted his eyelashes. “Chalk, you’re my hero.”
Chalk flipped him the bird and started typing.
The smile left Xander’s face. He wasn’t kidding; he didn’t feel secure here. Not with a professional contract hitter down by his hand, a client/target taking a nap on his living room couch and three possible suspects having Diet Cokes in the backyard under Thor’s watchful eye.
Xander had come across a professional assassin once, been assigned to cover his ingress into a hot zone outside of Kandahar to take out a brutal Taliban leader, an executive order kept so quiet the press had no idea it was happening, back when the greater good was actually a point of sale in the war. The ride had been a long one—at night, overland in dangerous territory, scooting around known IED hotbeds, making sure they weren’t seen. They talked. It was the natural thing to do to pass the time.
The assassin had his own code. He wasn’t a believer, wasn’t attached to any sort of dogma. If the job paid, he went, simple as that. But he’d felt it was his duty. There were too many lives being lost fighting unjust wars unnecessarily. He felt the best way to end a conflict was to take out the leadership, do it quickly and brutally, and watch the rebellion fall apart.
Xander had seen enough rebellions pop up after a leader’s death to think this wasn’t exactly accurate. He told the man—his code name had been Atlas—that he felt like they were fighting a hydra. The insurgents were true believers, and cutting off the head in this neck of the woods simply created five hundred more heads, all desperate for power, and the desire to crush the West.
Atlas had laughed and told him it didn’t matter. There would always be another leader to eliminate. That was what made the world go around. One rebellion quashed, another rising from its ashes. More money for him. He was just the trigger. And in keeping with his pragmatic philosophy, he pointed out there were plenty more where he came from, too.
Xander supposed he was the same as the assassin, albeit with a slightly different code. He only killed under orders, too. He dragged himself back to the present, to his current crisis.
Beloved by many, Denon was still despised by a few, and they were clearly the ones behind the assassination attempt. The old axiom was true: powerful men and women drew powerful enemies. Xander had no illusions on that point. It was the thesis that would keep him and Chalk in business, long into their careers in close protection.
More importantly, if Xander could find who was funding the hit on Denon, they’d be able to stop the contract.
And he had no illusions on what that meant, either.
He was about to go hunting.
He knew he’d done the right thing protecting his principal. But now he’d brought down a world of hurt on himself and everyone around him. He couldn’t stand the idea of putting Sam in danger. She managed to get herself in enough trouble without him adding to the mix.
Xander pulled up a file on his laptop. Maybe someone from Denon’s past had a beef they’d missed, and was using his private staff to get close.
In the manner of all great—and rich—men, Denon had his fingers in a number of lucrative pies. The biggest entity by far was his interests in Britain’s oil and gas. Twenty years earlier, as a young driller on an ocean platform, he’d seen a way to make their jobs more efficient, and his work resulted in a new method for getting the oil from the ocean’s floor, one that had been adopted by every oil company in the world. Which made him a multibillionaire.
It was complicated stuff, and since he couldn’t find any links from the past to support the current issues, it had no bearing to Xander’s thoughts. He closed the backgrounder and moved into more recent information.
The specialized software Chalk had developed for their use was taking forever to run. Xander’s internet connection was overloaded by the five laptops connected to the router. It was taking quite a bit of effort not to rip the house apart in frustration.
“Anything yet?”
Chalk shook his head. “Patience, grasshopper.”
Chalk was more tolerant than Xander, always had been, which was what made them a good team. He was quiet, tapping industriously into the program he’d designed, waiting for it to work. The software could search the netherworlds of contract hits, looking for any moves by the known hitters. Assassination was primarily a word-of-mouth business, but there were still people who used their computers and email to ask for “help,” and Chalk was a genius when it came to programming. He’d written a software program that looked for the lingo special to the field. When it found a match to the usual buzzwords, it made a note, downloaded a piece of ingenious tracking software.
Some would call that hacking, but he didn’t use the information he collected for his own personal gain, he simply fed it into his program to identify the threat. So white-hat hacking, definitely. The program followed everything from the computer of the person who’d initiated the contact, especially funds transfers. It was a handy tool to gauge where in the process certain plans were. Talk was one thing. When money started changing hands, it was clear matters had gotten more serious.
It was only one tool, and helpful or not, now they knew it was fallible. The program had picked up nothing of interest relating to James Denon before their detail began.
Chalk cracked his knuckles, drawing Xander’s attention. “We’re going to have to invest in a better wireless connection for you, my friend. I think I’ve got it finally.” He clicked his mouse a few times. “Yeah, we’re up.” He read for a few seconds, shaking his head. “I see nothing here—no warnings, no threats. No contracts on Denon. No mutterings at all, in fact. I’ve been scoping conversations from the past two weeks—I did this before, too, and saw nothing, figured we must have missed something—but I’m coming up blank.”
“So the program doesn’t work perfectly. You can keep working on it, refine it.”
“No, it works. Unlike some, I believe in my abilities.” He grinned at Xander. “Seriously, maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe Denon wasn’t the target.”
Xander came around to the back of Chalk’s chair. “Let me have a go.”
Chalk got up, fetched himself a Coke from the refrigerator. Xander took his spot, running through the program, searching for anything that might stand out. After ten minutes, he had to admit Chalk was right. There was nothing out of place, nothing that looked even remotely suspicious.
Xander leaned back in the chair and stretched. He needed fuel—caffeine, food, sleep. He grabbed himself a Coke and started making sandwiches for the crew. Chalk watched quietly, letting him think. After years together as Rangers, living in all corners of the world, there was no unnecessary chatter.
Finally, Xander turned, set a plate of sandwiches on the table, motioning for Chalk to dig in. He delivered a plate to the pool, left another on the table by Denon. Then he grabbed one for himself and in between bites ran through things with Chalk. “So if Denon wasn’t the target of the hit, who was? Or did we just stop a madman from going all bell tower on that tarmac?”
“We need to run Denon’s people through the system. None of them pulled a contract. Ergo, maybe one of them was the real target.”
“Let’s do that.”
Chalk smiled. “Already am. Program’s been running since you sat down. Should be about ready now. Of course, now that our target pool has expanded exponentially, we may find this has nothing to do with Denon at all.”
Xander thought of the bloodstain spreading down the concrete wall. “Don’t say that.”
Chalk had green eyes with yellow centers that made him look like a raptor. He trained those hawklike eyes on Xander now. “Xander, man, you did right. Don’t worry. You saved a life today, no matter what. Even if it wasn’t our principal, you saved a life.”
“We’ll see about that. Where’s this Senza guy from? Is there anything on him?”
Chalk sat back at the computer, pulled up a fresh screen. “He is Spanish, actually. Was. Worked under several names, so I don’t know which one is real, but his history says he was a product of their spec ops. GOE—Grupos de Operaciones Especiales. Mean motherfuckers. Remember that guy, Pablo somebody, who came through Herat with those LAG 40 grenade launchers? He was GOE.”
“I remember. He was posing as a translator. He was nuts. I didn’t know if he was transporting those weapons or was setting up to shoot them at us.” Another chunk of the sandwich disappeared. “So Senza had all the same training as we do.”
“Yeah. His mandatory was up, they cut him loose in early 2000 and he went private.”
“That’s a nice long career for a private hitter. Any paper on who he’d been working for? Did he discriminate?”
“Not really. He’d taken ten jobs in four countries in the past two years. That’s steady work, at a decent clip, too. You know how some of these guys are—they’ll disappear for years, only come out if the target is huge, meaningful. And some of them will take the smaller jobs to keep in practice. Senza fell into that category.”
“Someone like Denon is pretty meaningful.”
“He is. But let’s see who else might be of interest to the forces of evil.”
He tapped on the keyboard, and a list popped up—the names of Denon’s small group that traveled with him to the US on his secret trip. “I’ve put in all the names of everyone in Denon’s top echelons, from the staffers who traveled with him to the company’s C-suite, and I’ve got nothing. Bebbington, Everson and Heedles are clean.”
“Show me the files.”
Xander ran through them. “Well, there’s a ton more people in his company who could be a target.”
“But it doesn’t make sense, Mutant. We have to limit the target list to the people who knew about the trip. He kept it off the radar entirely. We should look at all the people he met with here in the States, too.”
Xander agreed. “Get the itinerary, let’s start marking off names, and see where we stand. I’m going to start at the beginning of the job and run through every contact made, from the pilots to the hotels, service and limos, everything external where there were strangers. You start running backgrounds on the people he was slated to see while he was here. Let’s run them down, and see who Denon’s doing business with who might be doing naughty things.”
“Roger that. On it.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Xander found what he was looking for. Or rather, an anomaly, which was enough to set his instincts on fire.
He was running the surveillance tapes from Teterboro, the first hour of the job, looking for anyone who might have been paying special attention to their principal’s landing. Denon had specifically requested to meet them as he exited the terminal, not a moment before.
They’d been running the perimeter. He distinctly remembered casing the warehouse, looking for unseen threats, just as he’d done when Denon was leaving. Xander hadn’t been looking at the plane. He’d had his back to it. Chalk had been inside the terminal scanning for problems there.
They’d missed it. Son of a bitch, they’d missed it.
On the tape, two females came down the steps of the private Gulfstream at Teterboro Friday night. Maureen Heedles, and a blonde he didn’t recognize. She looked neither right, nor left, but marched directly into the terminal, and out of sight of the camera Xander had on his shoulder.
She wasn’t listed on the manifest for the flight to London today. And she hadn’t been on the flight that left this morning. That he was one hundred percent sure about.
Denon had brought a woman into the country, and left her behind.
