Quantico

by Greg Bear

  He had immediately recognized the name penciled on the vial’s red and white paper label: B. anthracis.

  Tommy had no idea where the vial had originally come from but Sam could hazard a guess. It might have been purloined by a teacher who had once worked in bio-weapons research. Perhaps he had smuggled it out of some lab as a souvenir or a trophy.

  Perhaps he had dreamed of being allowed to teach a course on the glories of germ warfare.

  Tommy had pocketed the vial and taken it home, where, he told Sam, he had spent many nights lying in bed staring at the beige powder, wondering what it all meant, whether it was even real.

  So much potential.

  So much power.

  His parents were fighting every night, driving him under his bed pillows, weeping in terror. He had seen a cable TV program about prehistoric animals that depicted the plight of a pair of reptile parents two hundred million years ago. Harried by a small, swift dinosaur predator, they realized they would have to find another burrow—pull up roots. But they could not move their newly hatched offspring. To avoid wasting precious nutrients, they ate them.

  Tommy had become convinced that this was what his parents were planning—not to eat him, but certainly to kill him and move on. In self-defense, he had laced an open can of mushrooms in the kitchen with just a drop of liquor from his toxic culture of C. botulinum. To Tommy, the logic had been obvious—but he did not watch television any more. He found movies and TV programs too disturbing. Even comedies gave him nightmares. The expressions on the faces terrified him.

  Weeks after their deaths, in between court appearances and even in the presence of his first court-appointed guardian, Tommy had begun his second phase. His brilliance had almost immediately manifested itself. He had started by culturing pinches of anthrax in a broth whose recipe he had found on the Internet.

  The basement lab had filled with the scent of stewing meat.

  Since not every scrap of information he had needed could be found on the Internet, Tommy had improvised. He had devised several original techniques for preparing and refining his goal: weapons-grade aerosolized material.

  Washing, re-drying and re-grinding had removed the dead cell debris, leaving a solution of almost pure spores. The resulting fine powder still had a tendency to clump, however, because of static when dry, and because of moisture when exposed to humidity. He had experimented with suspending the powder in various liquids, and finally arrived at his own ideal formula, using chemicals actually found in printer inks.

  Some of those early products he had stored in jars, to avoid waste and as a record of his progress.

  But Tommy had known from experience that simply drying and grinding would not prevent clumping. The problem had then become to re-deposit the anthrax in very fine grains, already separated and containing fewer than four or five spores per grain. His brilliant answer: common inkjet printers. He had replaced the ink in the disposable printer cartridges with his special solution of chemicals and, at first, brewer’s yeast as a substitute for anthrax. (Once again, Tommy had suspected that using anthrax’s close relation, BT or Bacillus thuringiensis, ordered from a garden supply store, might result in his being tracked. Yeast, however, he had in abundance—left over from the winery.)

  First on heavy paper, then on eight-by-ten-inch glass plates, Tommy had printed out millions of dots of dry solution—tiny granules containing only one or two spores, far finer than he had believed possible. The solution, when expelled through the printer cartridge nozzles, produced a microscopic, silica-wrapped bead that sat high on the glass plate when dry, but strongly resisted mechanical dislodging. The plates could in theory be carried around with minimum precautions, separated only by waxed paper.

  Tommy had worked through ten pairs of glove holes arranged in two levels, front and back. A rolling stepped platform once used to stack barrels had allowed him to reach the upper level.

  His next act of genius had been to array the plates on a rack in a vacuum chamber at the right end of his large hot box and statically charge them using an apparatus he had borrowed from an old office Xerox machine. The microscopic granules had lifted free and flown to a grid of tiny wires where they had discharged, flocked up briefly, and then been drawn by gravity to a Teflon-lined chute and into small jars. He had kept a long brush in the box, just in case the spores stuck on the wires or in the chute.

  He had then networked six printers, so modified, and had finally begun depositing the real thing: weapons-grade, aerosolized Bacillus anthracis. Throughout, he had kept everything sealed in his hot box factory, even the glass plates, which he recycled.

  If there had been accidents he had not told Sam—but despite never having been vaccinated or taken antibiotics, both of which could also have been traced, Tommy was still among the living.

  After filling two jars with superfine spores, he had capped them, sealed them with caulk, and soaked their exteriors in bleach to destroy any residue.

  He had finished in early 2001, just as his aunt had moved into the house. This first lot—fifty grams—had taken Tommy six months of hard, steady labor.

  For a complete amateur, working alone, he had done very well indeed.

  A year after starting his project, in the company of Aunt Tricia, Tommy had traveled to visit relatives in New Jersey and Florida. Along the way, he had insisted on dropping by local post offices to buy commemorative stamps. Taking walks alone at dusk, he had visited public mail boxes, carrying his specially prepared envelopes in plastic bags within a larger bag. From these boxes Tommy had injected fifteen light, deadly packages into the bloodstream of the U.S. mail.

  Five had eventually been discovered.

  He had no idea where the other ten were.

  Tommy was one of the most wanted people on Earth. In the summer and fall of 2001, his hobby had shut down the U.S. postal system and much of the American government. He had killed five people, sickened dozens, and terrorized tens of millions.

  By fitting nobody’s profile, he had eluded the greatest manhunt in domestic American history.

  Tommy Juan Battista Juarez was the Amerithrax killer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Seattle

  William Griffin sat at the tiny table in the old coffee shop on Broadway and waited for his coffee to come up. He rubbed one eye with a knuckle and stared through the window at the rainy street. Last night had been rough and he had not been able to get to sleep until four a.m. Griff’s heart had stopped for the ninth time. The doctors had expertly re-started it, then continued surgery.

  Six days of surgical procedures. Maybe Griff’s spirit was already downing drinks with the old boys up in Omega Precinct. Maybe they were laughing and laying bets on how long it would take Griff’s body to realize the owner had gone AWOL.

  William pursed his lips and felt his eyes go out of focus.

  Hey, Griff, time to choose your heavenly name.

  Heaven? Christ, boys, I assumed…I mean, the liquor in this bar is terrible.

  Assume nothing. We make the booze ourselves. God likes cops, Griff.

  Bullshit. God’s a judge, not a cop.

  Then what are angels? You come up here, join our precinct, pick up your flaming sword, and you go back down, invisible like, and kick some ass. Never have to Mirandize anybody. And the judge never denies a warrant.

  ‘Americano, no sugar?’ the waitress asked.

  William accepted the cup. Taking his first sip, he saw a slender woman with a bandaged cheek, intense hazel eyes, and auburn hair peering through the window. She was wearing a gray pantsuit and a peach-colored blouse with a loose ruffled collar. Another bandage covered her right hand. She gave him a small wave, then opened the door, setting off a clang of cowbells.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ William asked. He was in no mood for conversation.

  ‘My name is Rose. Rebecca Rose.’

  Now he placed the face and he certainly knew the name. ‘Sorry,’ William said, transfer
ring his cup and holding out his hand. ‘I’m William Griffin.’

  ‘So I guessed,’ Rebecca said. ‘Pardon me if I shake southpaw. Sprockett told me you’d be here. I’m your driver.’

  William looked incredulous and pulled out a chair.

  She sat. ‘I’m taking you with me to the farm.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’d like to stay here until they know something for sure.’

  ‘You’re on FBI time. Keller thinks you need a break from the hospital, and so do I. They checked me out an hour ago. Then they let me see Griff. Your father’s not going to recognize anyone for days, maybe weeks.’ Rebecca stretched out her long legs. She had a third bandage around her left ankle. ‘Hiram Newsome thinks Griff might have broken open an important case. Maybe two cases, one old, one new. He asked Keller for you to be temporarily assigned to the taskforce.’

  Newsome was another legend. William had met him once in a hallway at the Q, a big, bear-like man with a square face and large, sympathetic eyes. Despite his exhaustion, William’s pulse quickened. He looked around the coffee shop. There were two other customers, both in a far corner, and the barista was busy grinding beans. ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  Rebecca leaned forward, drawing in one leg. ‘The hell you say.’ She tapped the table with a long fingernail, freshly polished. Some of the polish had smeared beyond the cuticles. She had applied the polish herself, William judged, with her bandaged hand. ‘You are about to pass Go and dance straight on over to Park Place. You’d better do a hell of a lot more than just listen.’

  William felt the coffee kicking in. ‘Is this for my sake, or for Griff’s?’

  Rebecca leaned her head to one side. ‘Right. Someone will tell Griff we’re giving his son a free pass, a terrific case, outside of the rules, and that will give him the will to live. That will perk him right up.’ She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Sorry,’ William said.

  ‘Farrow recommended you.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘That puts three aces up your sleeve.’ Rebecca shaped her hands into cups, then pretended to mold something in the air over the table. William watched her bright eyes. She had the tightest little dimples. ‘When Griff is himself again, we’ll bring him back in—and you will brief him. Four aces. It doesn’t get any better than that for a junior G-man.’

  Rebecca finished molding and tossed him an invisible ball.

  He held up one hand and caught it.

  ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Simpatico.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Temecula

  Sam walked around the Visqueen-covered box. When Sam had first shown up on Tommy’s doorstep, he had not used the old hot box for over a decade. To the best of Sam’s knowledge, the last time Tommy had used it had been three years ago, to prepare the genetically modified anthrax samples delivered to Honduras and Iraq.

  Tommy had found it easy to induce the anthrax to take up plasmids—small loops of DNA—containing bioluminescent genes. The modified bacilli had grown with unaltered enthusiasm and within two weeks Tommy had produced another twenty grams of purified anthrax spores, a trillion spores per gram.

  Roughly four thousand spores, inhaled, would be enough to cause death in fifty per cent of individuals. This was called the LD50 number, LD short for Lethal Dose. As few as a hundred spores could cause death if inhaled by the elderly or the immune-compromised. Children seemed to be more resilient.

  Sam studied the box. Some of the Visqueen had been pulled aside. The power was on. A small quiet blower fan was running, attached by flexible plastic tubing to a HEPA filter mounted in the room’s high window. Bottles of bleach and tins of alcohol had been stacked in a vacant corner.

  Sam gingerly pulled aside a long, horizontally ripped sheet of plastic. Four layers beneath had been taped shut but could easily be opened to allow access to the glove holes.

  On a nearby table Tommy had mounted a small glassfronted incubator loaded with Petri dishes. A jar filled with solidified agar sat next to the incubator. On a corner lab table, a single flask of pinkish liquid like strawberry milk was being rocked in a mechanical cradle. Tommy was working on something new.

  He was using his lab again, and his special box, without telling Sam.

  In the shed, Sam put on a SCBA—self-contained breathing apparatus—and then a loose green plastic Seal-Go suit and helmet with a carbon-filter industrial mask. The suits were warm and puffed out like balloons after a few minutes but Tommy insisted on them—and washed them by hand at the end of each week. He still had dozens of unused suits in boxes in the warehouse.

  The trek to the rear barn took two minutes. Sam walked over gravel and broken asphalt. The barn had been built during the house’s pre-winery days and was beautifully made of brick and wood. It covered three thousand square feet and in layout was much like the barn on the Patriarch’s farm except that it had no basement.

  Sam opened the small door at the side—the only entrance they used now. He stood in the computer room watching small monitors on six networked machines. The lights in the computer room were left on all the time but the lights in the barn itself were now reduced to a minimum.

  Ramping up powder production had been Tommy’s most brilliant accomplishment so far, and he had done it with simplicity and ingenuity. He had laid thick plastic sheeting over the barn’s interior, including the ceiling, and had then hung an additional series of curtains using guidelines he had found on the Web for removing asbestos. There was no way Sam could know how thorough Tommy had been but Tommy was nothing if not obsessive. Sam had seen no trace of residue anywhere in the computer room or on the approach to the barn. If he had, he would have backed off immediately.

  Tommy had worked his science down to a mind-numbing routine. The suits were surplus models from computer chip manufacture, designed to block volatiles and effective at filtering extremely fine particles. But Sam was not about to take any obvious risks.

  The door into the main barn opened with a swish of rubber seals and a hiss of air—negative pressure maintained by a HEPA-filtered fan on the other side. When the factory was working, a fine spray of water played outside the air filter outlet, designed to catch dust and drain it through a large PVC conduit into a deep concrete catch basin where it would just settle and…sit.

  Not even Tommy went near the catch basin.

  Sam walked along the inner curtain. Through the last layer of plastic sheeting, in the dim glow of a few scattered fluorescent bulbs Sam saw twenty rows of inkjet printers now dormant while Tommy slept, twenty printers per row. The printers in the last four rows still had glass plates mounted under their rubber rollers ready to resume work later in the day.

  For this final job, Tommy had specified one particular printer model, with finer dots-per-inch capability than the models he had used in 2000. Week after week, for ten months Tommy had filled four hundred ink cartridges with slurry, walking up and down the rows in his plastic suit, carrying the glass plates to the collection chamber…and the sealed bottles containing fine powder to a metal shed next to the barn, where they had been loaded into crates ready for transport. Still, it had not been enough.

  Ambition had forced Sam to find a partner, to seek a testing area even more remote than the winery, and to plan for another factory.

  If they had been able to deliver the printers to Washington state—

  If the Patriarch’s estate had not been raided—

  Those plans had collapsed with two quick blows. Having tasted failure for the first time, Sam had no way of knowing all of Tommy’s thoughts, his concerns. He had been dealing with the Boy from Another Planet for so long that he had almost let down his guard. But now he was certain that Tommy’s plans had changed, and he needed to know why—and how.

  The barn looked as it had for the last two years. Sam circled the sheeted areas, lightly stroking the rippling plastic with his gloved hand. Nothing new, nothing obvious. What was he missing?

  A rear door to a storage closet attracted his a
ttention. The door had been opened recently. Visqueen had been pulled back and taped up. Sam examined the deadbolt keypad latch. That was new. Tommy had never locked anything before. Sam couldn’t just break open the lock. He poked at the keypad in frustration, without result, then turned to leave.

  On the opposite side of the door he heard a scratching sound, weak whining, then a steady, rhythmic thump-tick.

  He examined the keypad again. He tried Tommy’s birthdate. No go. Then Sam punched in 09-enter-11-enter-01, the date Tommy believed had signaled the world’s descent into noisy madness.

  The day that Tommy had decided anything he could do to strike out, strike back, would be fully justified.

  The door clicked. Sam pulled it open.

  Inside was a brown dog, a beagle-terrier bitch with jutting ribs and staring brown eyes. In the half-dark, the dog fixed on Sam as she paced in a quick, tight circle. She could not stop circling despite her fear, her eagerness to escape.

  In opposite corners lay two other dogs, eyes glassy and legs straight, black blood sludging from their noses and rectums. They were dead. Sickened, Sam closed the door and locked it.

  He walked back to the entrance, pulled off his suit, and returned to the porch.

  Tommy had been the means to an end and Sam had played his part well, convincing even himself sometimes. Over the years, so long as Tommy had been vulnerable, cooperative, and open, Sam had almost forgotten what Tommy actually was.

  He walked over a packed dirt road through the vineyards to the metal shed north of the warehouse. Inside the shed twenty neat wooden crates lay stacked on pallets on a concrete floor. Each crate contained ten starburst shells assembled at the Patriarch’s farm over the last year, shrink-wrapped and cushioned in shredded newspaper and sawdust

  Sam took a handcart and hauled two crates at a time to the garage. It was almost eleven but Tommy was still asleep.

  In the garage Sam loaded the crates into the back of the horse trailer, stacking them against a welded metal bulkhead that separated the rear storage area from the launcher.