And who were the “government doctors” who had called Phyllis Anderson before anyone outside the CDC and Fort Detrick was even aware that there was a new virus?
8:22 P.M.
Lake Magua, New York
Congressman Benjamin Sloat mopped his balding head and took another gulp of Victor Tremont’s single malt. He and Tremont were sitting in the dark sunroom that looked out over the nighttime deck and grassy lawn. While they had been talking, a large-eyed doe had strolled across the deck as if she owned it, and Victor Tremont had merely smiled. Congressman Sloat had decided long ago he would never understand Tremont, but then he did not need to. Tremont meant contacts and campaign contributions and a big chunk of Blanchard Pharmaceuticals stock, an unbeatable combination in this high-priced political age.
The congressman grumbled, “Dammit, Victor, why didn’t you clue me in earlier? I could’ve headed this Smith off. Got him and the woman shipped overseas. We wouldn’t have a murder to cover up and a damned snooper nosing in the closet.”
From his armchair, Tremont gestured with his cigar. “Her call was such a shock all I could think of was getting rid of her. It’s only now that we know how close she and Smith were.”
Sloat drank moodily. “Can we just ignore him? Hell, the woman’ll be buried and forgotten soon, and it sure looks like Smith doesn’t know much yet. Maybe it’ll blow over.”
“You want to take that chance?” Tremont studied the sweating chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “All hell’s going to break loose around the world soon, and we’ll be the white knights to the rescue. Unless someone stumbles onto something incriminating and blows the whistle on us.”
Half-hidden in the flickering shadows of the farthest corner of the sunroom, Nadal al-Hassan warned, “Dr. Smith is at Fort Irwin at this moment. He may hear of our ‘government doctors.’”
Tremont contemplated the thick ash of his cigar. “Smith’s come a long way already. Not far enough to hurt us, but enough to get our attention. If he gets too close, Nadal will eliminate him without drawing attention to us or the death of Sophia Russell. Something very different. A tragic accident. Isn’t that right, Nadal?”
“Suicide,” the Arab offered from the shadows. “He is obviously distraught over Dr. Russell’s death.”
“That could be good, if you can make it airtight,” Tremont agreed. “Meanwhile, Congressman, block his investigation. Keep him in the lab. Get him reassigned. Anything.”
“I’ll call General Salonen. He’ll know the right man,” Sloat decided. “We’ll need to keep the virus under wraps. Extreme sensitivity. Smith’s only a doctor, an amateur, and this is a job for the pros.”
“That sounds about right.”
Sloat finished his single malt, smacked his lips, nodded in appreciation, and stood. “I’ll call Salonen right away. But not from here. Better to use a pay phone in the village.”
After the congressman left, Tremont continued to smoke. He spoke without looking at Nadal al-Hassan. “We should’ve eliminated Smith. You were right. Griffin was wrong.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps, in his view, he was quite right.”
Tremont turned. “How so?”
“I have wondered how Dr. Smith appeared to be so alert for our initial attacks. Why was he in that park so late, so far from his home in Thurmont? Why was he so ready to suspect murder?”
Tremont studied the Arab. “You think Griffin warned him. Why? Griffin stands to lose as much as the rest of us if we’re exposed.” He paused thoughtfully. “Unless he’s still working for the FBI?”
“No, I checked that. Griffin is independent, I am sure. But perhaps he and Dr. Smith had some association in the past. My people are investigating.”
Victor Tremont had been frowning. Now he suddenly smiled. He told al-Hassan, “There’s a solution. An elegant solution. Keep checking the pasts of the two men, but at the same time tell your associate, Mr. Griffin, that I have changed my mind. I want him to personally find Smith … and eliminate him. Yes, kill him quickly.” He nodded coldly and smiled again. “This way we’ll discover where Mr. Griffin’s loyalties actually lie.”
Chapter Thirteen
9:14 A.M., Thursday, October 16
Fort Detrick, Maryland
The rest of his interviews at Fort Irwin yesterday had added nothing more to what he had learned from Phyllis Anderson. After the last interview, Smith had flown all night from Victorville, sleeping fitfully most of the way. From Andrews, he drove straight to Fort Detrick, seeing no suspicious vehicles either following him or waiting at Detrick. The reports from the other family and associates interviews were in. They told him the homeless victim in Boston and the late father of the dead girl in Atlanta had also been in the army during the Gulf War. He searched the service records of all three soldiers.
Sgt. Harold Pickett had been in 1-502 Infantry Battalion, Second Brigade, 101st Air Assault Division in Desert Storm. He had been wounded and treated at 167th MASH. Specialist Four Mario Dublin had been an orderly at the 167th MASH. There was no record of the then-lieutenant Keith Anderson having been treated at the 167th, but units of the Third Armored had been at the Iraq-Kuwait border near the 167th.
The results made Smith reach once more for the telephone. He dialed Atlanta.
“Mrs. Pickett? Sorry to call you so early. I’m Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases. May I ask you a few questions?”
The woman at the other end was close to hysterics. “No more. Please, Colonel. Haven’t you people—”
Smith pressed on. “I know it’s terribly difficult for you, Mrs. Pickett, but we’re trying to prevent more girls like your daughter from dying the way she did.”
“Please—”
“Two questions.”
As the silence stretched, he thought she might have just walked away from the phone. Then her voice sounded again, low and dull. “Go ahead.”
“Was your daughter ever injured badly enough to need a blood transfusion, and did your husband donate the blood?”
Now the silence radiated fear. “How … how did you know?”
“It had to be something like that. One last question: Did government doctors call you on Saturday to ask questions about her death?”
He could almost hear her nod. “They certainly did. I was shocked. They were like ghouls. I hung up on them.”
“No identification beyond just ‘government doctors’?”
“No, and I hope you fire them all.”
The line went dead, but he had what he needed.
All three soldiers had almost certainly been inoculated against “possible bacteriological warfare agent contamination” at the same MASH unit in Iraq-Kuwait ten years ago.
Smith dialed Brigadier General Kielburger’s extension to tell him about the interviews.
“Desert Storm?” Kielburger almost squeaked in alarm. “Are you sure, Smith? Really sure?”
“As sure as I am of anything right now.”
“Damn! That’ll explode the Pentagon after all the medical headaches and lawsuits about Gulf War syndrome. Don’t talk to anyone until I’ve checked this with the Pentagon. Not a word. You understand?”
Smith hung up in disgust. Politics!
He went to lunch to think and decided the next thing to do was to locate the “government doctors.” Someone had ordered them to make those calls, but who?
Four long, wasted hours later, it was Smith who was ready to explode as he repeated into the telephone receiver, “ … Yes, doctors who called Fort Irwin, California, Atlanta, and probably Boston. They asked nasty questions about the virus victims’ deaths. The families are steamed, and I’m getting damn mad, too!”
“I’m just doing my job, Dr. Smith.” The woman on the other end of the line was testy. “Our director was killed in a hit-and-run accident yesterday, and we’re shorthanded. Now tell me your name and your company again.”
He took a long breath. “Smith, Lieutenant Colonel J
onathan. From U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.”
There was silence. She seemed to be writing down his name and “company.” She came back on. “Hold, please.”
He fumed. He had been running into the same bureaucratic red tape for the past four hours. Only the CDC had confirmed that they had not called the families. The surgeon general’s office told him to put his request in writing. The various possible institutes at NIH referred him to general information, and the man there said they had been ordered to not discuss anything to do with those deaths. No matter how much he had explained that he was a government researcher already working on those deaths, he had gotten nowhere.
By the time he was turned away by the departments of the navy and air force and Health and Human Services, he knew he was being stonewalled. His last chance was the NIH’s Federal Resource Medical Clearing House (FRMC). After that he was out of options.
“This is Acting Director Aronson of FRMC. How can I help you, Colonel?”
He tried to speak calmly. “I appreciate your talking to me. There seems to be a team of government doctors interested in the virus at Fort Irwin, Atlanta, and—”
“Let me save you time, Colonel. All information on the viral incident at Fort Irwin has been classified. You’ll have to go through channels.”
Smith finally blew up. “I have the virus! I’m working with it! USAMRIID is the information. All I want is—”
The dial tone buzzed angrily in his ear.
What in hell was going on? It looked as if some idiot had clamped a lid on anything to do with the virus. No information without clearance. But from whom? And why?
He rushed out the door, strode furiously along the corridor, and barged past Melanie Curtis and into Kielburger’s office. “What the hell’s going on, General? I try to find out who had those teams of ‘government doctors’ call Irwin and Atlanta and everyone yells ‘top secret’ and won’t talk.”
Kielburger leaned back in his desk chair. He knitted his thick fingers over his beefy chest. “It’s out of our hands, Smith. The whole investigation. We’re top secret. We do our research and then report to the surgeon general, military intelligence, and NSC. Period. No more detectives.”
“In this investigation, we are the detectives.”
“Tell the Pentagon that.”
In a flash of understanding, the past frustrating three hours suddenly made sense. This could not be merely government red tape. There was too much of it, too many agencies were involved. And it was illogical. You did not take an investigation away from those who knew what was going on. Certainly not a scientific investigation. If there were other teams of “government doctors,” there was no reason to keep that from him or anyone else at USAMRIID.
Unless they were not government doctors at all.
“Listen, General. I think—”
The general interrupted, disgusted. “Your hearing gone, Colonel? Don’t you understand orders anymore? We stand down. The professionals will work on Dr. Russell’s death. I suggest you go back to your lab and focus on the virus.”
Smith took a deep breath. Now he was not only furious, he was scared. “Something’s very wrong here. Either someone very powerful is manipulating the army, or it’s the army itself. They want to stop the investigation. They’re stonewalling this virus, and they’re going to end up killing one hell of a lot of people.”
“Are you crazy? You’re in the army. And those were direct orders!”
Smith glared. He had been fighting grief all day. Every time Sophia’s face flashed into his mind, he had tried to banish her. Sometimes he would see something of hers—her favorite pen, the photos on her office wall, the little bottle of perfume she kept on top of her desk—and he would start to fall apart. He wanted to sink to his knees and howl at the unseen forces that had stolen Sophia, and then he wanted to kill them.
Smith snarled, “I resign. You’ll have the paperwork this afternoon.”
Now Kielburger lost his temper. “You can’t quit in the middle of a goddamn crisis! I’ll have you court-martialed!”
“Okay. I’ve got a month’s leave coming. I’m taking it!”
“No leave! Be in your lab tomorrow or you’re AWOL!”
The two men faced each other across Kielburger’s desk. Then Smith sat down. “They murdered her, Kielburger. They killed Sophia.”
“Murdered?” Kielburger was incredulous. “That’s ridiculous. The autopsy report was clear. She died as a result of the virus.”
“The virus killed her, yes, but she didn’t contract it by any accident. We missed it at first, maybe because the reddening didn’t appear for a few hours. But when we took a second look, we spotted the needle mark in her ankle. They injected the virus.”
“A needle mark in her ankle?” Kielburger had a concerned frown. “Are you sure she wasn’t—”
Smith eyes were hard blue agates. “There was no reason for an injection except to give her the virus.”
“For God’s sake, Smith, why? It makes no sense.”
“It does if you remember the page cut from her logbook. She knew—or suspected—something they didn’t want her to know. So they cut out her notes, stole her phone log, and killed her.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“Smith, you’re upset. I understand. But there’s a new virus loose to run across the world. There could be an epidemic.”
“I’m not sure about that. We’ve got three widely separated cases that haven’t infected anyone else in their areas. Did you ever hear of a virus breakout in which only one single person in an area was infected?”
Kielburger considered the question. “No, I can’t say I have, but—”
“Neither has anyone else,” Smith told him grimly. “We still get new viruses, and nature confounds us all the time. But if the virus is as deadly as it appears, why haven’t there been more cases in each of the three areas since? At best it indicates this virus isn’t very contagious. The victims’ families and neighbors didn’t get it. No one in the hospitals got it. Even the pathologist who was sprayed with blood didn’t get it. The only person we can be sure of who got it from someone else is the Pickett girl in Atlanta, who had a direct blood transfusion from her father years ago. That indicates two facts: One, the virus, like HIV, appears to exist in a dormant state inside a victim for years, and then it suddenly turns virulent. Two, it seems to take a direct injection into the bloodstream for infection, either in the dormant state or the virulent state. In any event, an epidemic looks remote.”
“I wish you were right.” Kielburger grimaced. “But you’re dead wrong this time. There are already more cases. People are sick and dying. This crazy virus may not be highly contagious in the usual ways, but it’s still spreading.”
“What about Southern California? Atlanta? Boston?”
“Not in any of those places. It’s in other parts of the world—Europe, South America, Asia.”
Smith shook his head. “Then it’s still all wrong.” He paused. “They murdered Sophia. You understand what that means?”
“Well, I’m—”
Smith stood up and leaned across the desk. “It means someone has this virus in a test tube. An unknown, deadly virus no one’s been able to match or trace. But someone knows what this virus is, and where it comes from, because they’ve got it.”
The general’s heavy face turned purple. “Got it? But—”
Smith hammered his fist on the desk. “We’re dealing with people who have given the virus to other people! To Sophia. They’re willing to use it like a weapon!”
“My God.” Kielburger stared at him. “Why?”
“Why and who, that’s what we’ve got to find out!”
Kielburger’s burly body seemed to quiver in shock. Then he abruptly stood up, his florid face as white as it had ever been. “I’ll call the Pentagon. Go and write up what you told me and what you want to do from here on.�
��
“I’ve got to go to Washington.”
“All right. Get whatever you need. I’ll cut official orders for you.”
“Yessir.” Smith stood back, relieved and a little stunned that he had finally gotten through Kielburger’s thick brain. Maybe the general was not as rigid and stupid as he had thought. For a moment he almost felt affection for the irritating man.
As he ran out the door, he heard Kielburger pick up his phone. “Get me the surgeon general and the Pentagon. Yes, both of them. No, I don’t care which one first!”
Specialist Four Adele Schweik flipped the intercept shunt on her telephone inside her cubicle, warily listening for any sound of Sergeant Major Daugherty leaving her office. At last she lied briskly into her phone, “Surgeon General Oxnard’s Office. No, General Kielburger, the surgeon general isn’t in the office. I’ll have him call as soon as he returns.”
Schweik glanced around. Fortunately, Sandra Quinn was busy in her cubicle, and the sergeant major was in her office. Kielburger’s office was calling out again. Schweik answered in a different voice, “Pentagon. Please hold.”
She quickly dialed a number she read from a list in her top drawer. “General Caspar, please? Yes, General Kielburger calling urgently from USAMRIID.” She took him off hold, returned to her own line, and dialed again. She spoked softly but rapidly, hung up once more, and went back to her work.
5:50 P.M.
Thurmont, Maryland
Smith finished packing in the empty house under the shoulder of Catoctin Mountain. He felt a little ill, and he figured that was no surprise. Sophia was everywhere, from the bottled water in the kitchen to the scent of her in their bed. It broke his heart. The emptiness of the house echoed through him. The house was a tomb, the sepulchre of his hopes, filled with Sophia’s dreams and laughter. He could not stay here. He could never live here again.
Not in the house, and not in her condo. He could think of nowhere in the world he wanted to be. He knew he would have to figure that out eventually, but not now. Not yet. First he had to find her killers. Smash them. Crush them into screaming masses of blood and bones and tissue.
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