CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Carl Richards was pacing in his office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, from the window to the door, then back again. It was a luxury he afforded himself only when he was alone. It was an expression of anxiety, an old habit he’d picked up as a child, locked in his room for hours on end after being beaten by his alcoholic father.
He had conveyed his faked tip to the French National Police about the kidnapper they’d been searching for. He’d spoken for some time to his counterpart in Paris, who’d promised to send a team into the town right away. Richards couldn’t, of course, tell him what they might really encounter, but didn’t want them to be completely unprepared if they encountered harvesters. So he did the only thing he could: he told the French that the information the FBI had on the suspect indicated he was heavily armed and should be considered extremely dangerous. He was plagued with a sense of guilt, sending the French into what could easily turn into a slaughter, but he didn’t see any alternative, other than to let the situation in the town fester.
Renee and her sidekick in the Directorate of Intelligence had found indicators of additional potential harvester infestations in France, and the situation was getting worse around the globe. While nothing had hit the mainstream news yet, the outbreaks appeared to be spreading to other parts of the countries that Renee had already pegged as hot zones. Oddly enough, the only major corn producing country where things were quiet was the United States, and Richards wasn’t sure if that was a good sign, or if it was just the calm before the storm.
His cell phone, which he’d been holding in his hand while he paced, rang. He stopped in mid-stride, halfway to the window, and answered it. “Richards. Go.”
“Sir, this is Special Agent Kayla Sweeney.”
Sweeney was the leader of the team Richards had sent to investigate the home of the late Norman Kline, whom Naomi had fingered as a middleman for the person selling samples from The Bag. Richards knew that information had come as a huge relief for Renee, who wouldn’t have to bang her head against the wall anymore on the image matching program. Richards had tried to pry out of Naomi who had been the source of the tip, but she had steadfastly refused, and he’d had to let it go. For now. The information had probably come from one of her Earth Defense Society cohorts, who were still working in a very loose coalition, he knew. But it didn’t matter. It had been enough for Richards to get Sweeney a warrant to search Kline’s condo and seize his banking and telephone records, along with any travel information they could dig up. It was highly unusual for an agent like Sweeney to be reporting directly to Richards, and not through a Special Agent in Charge, or SAC. But this particular investigation had to be both thorough and discreet, and Richards knew from having worked with her before that she was both. For this assignment, at least, she was to report the findings of her team directly to him.
“Make my day, Sweeney. What have you got?”
“To begin with, his real name isn’t Norman Kline. It’s Anatoli Klimov. He emigrated from Russia fifteen years ago and legally changed his name when he became a naturalized citizen. We ran a background on him, and it turns out he had some associations with Russian organized crime after he came here. Nothing big that we can find, and he doesn’t have any priors either here or in Russia. But there are definitely some shady characters in his social network.”
“I’m liking him as a bad guy so far. What else?”
Sweeney’s deep Southern drawl went on. “He ran a boutique import-export business that specialized in biotechnology, special supplies and consumables that are used in a lot of different kinds of laboratory work. He had customers in all the countries in the background information you gave me, and others, as well.”
“Was all of it legal?”
“From what we can tell so far, yes, sir, it looks legit. We haven’t gotten through everything yet, but aside from his social connections to the Russian mafia, we haven’t found any red flags. We ran him and his business through Commerce and State, and the results came back clean.”
Richards frowned. He hadn’t been under any delusions that there’d be a smoking gun marking Kline as the suspected purveyor of New Horizons seeds, but he hadn’t expected him to be squeaky clean, either.
“How about travel?”
“That’s the kicker, sir. Unless he’s got a fake passport or two hidden away, the only travel he’s done since coming to the States was a trip to Canada ten years ago and one to the Bahamas five years ago. Even here, as best we can tell, he didn’t do much traveling. He was a homebody who conducted almost all his business over the phone and the web from his home office. We already pawed through his computer and came up blank. We’re going over his bank records to see if anything stands out, or if there are any pointers to offshore accounts. Nothing stands out so far. If I had to label this guy based on what we’ve found so far, I’d have to say he was just a businessman who was making a decent living, or he really knew how to launder his money.”
Carl started pacing again. “There has to be something. The information we have on this guy was very specific. Was he up to anything unusual right before he died?”
Sweeney was silent for a moment, then told him, “The only thing that I’d qualify as unusual was a phone call he received the day he died. It was the last call he got before the break-in when he was killed.”
“Why does that stand out? Somebody had to have been the last to call the poor schmuck.”
“It’s because we think the caller was using a prepaid phone, with no associated user information, and that same phone called Kline a lot during the period you told us to focus on, from September through December of last year.”
Carl stopped pacing, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest. “And?”
“That’s just it, sir. This particular phone called Kline’s cell number seventy-eight times between 9 September and 15 December, but not again until the day he was killed. I took the liberty of looking back a bit further, and found a series of calls from that phone to Kline starting exactly one month before the bomb went off in California. I couldn’t find any other calls before that.”
“Good God. I’m going to get you a warrant for a wiretap on that phone.”
“There may not be a need to, sir.” Sweeney sighed. “We got a warrant to access the calling records for that number, too, looking for any associations beyond the calls to Kline, but there was nothing, no other contacts. It was never used for anything but contacting Kline. It’s probably in the landfill by now.”
Stifling a curse, Carl asked, “What about follow-on calls or activity by Kline? Those calls must have been for a reason. The timing is too coincidental. Did he call anyone or do anything unusual after he got the calls from the throwaway?”
“From September through December, no. He was always on his phone, contacting clients all over the world, but that was his daily routine. So if our throwaway mystery caller had instructions for him, let’s say to get in touch with potential buyers for whatever it was he had to sell, it would just blend in with his regular business calls.” She paused. “The only exception was last year, in the weeks leading up to the bomb in California. Interspersed with calls with Mr. Throwaway, Kline made calls to two other unusual numbers. One was to another throwaway that doesn’t have any associated user information. But the other number was in Los Angeles, which was unusual in itself, because Kline didn’t make any other calls there in the previous year.”
“Who was it?” Carl was gritting his teeth, willing her to somehow make a connection that would make sense.
“It was to a company called Morgan Pharmaceuticals. We don’t know who he spoke to, because it was the company’s public contact number and was probably routed internally to whomever he might have asked for. But it was a pretty short call, and not half an hour later he got the first call from the other number I mentioned, the second prepaid phone. There were a lot of calls between those two over the next week, then nothing until two days before the bomb blast in California, when there
was one final call from Kline to the second prepaid.”
“Setting up a delivery,” Carl thought aloud, but his insides had suddenly gone cold. Morgan Pharmaceuticals. That was where Naomi was working, and she had tipped him to Kline as the provider. That meant that someone inside Morgan Pharmaceuticals had information linking Kline to The Bag, and Sweeney’s analysis was pointing at Morgan as a potential buyer. And that meant someone at Morgan must have samples from The Bag, or at least knew where they might be. He couldn’t believe Naomi was holding anything out on him, but she had been very cagey about where she’d gotten the information about Kline. She was trying to protect someone, but whom? And why? “Damn.”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Listen, Sweeney, that’s some good work. Keep digging and let me know the instant you find anything else.”
“Yes, sir.”
Carl hit the end call button, then sat down in his chair to think. Kline must have been the middleman, he thought. Mr. Throwaway was probably the guy with The Bag, and through Kline he must have made a sale to someone at Morgan Pharmaceuticals. And the last call from Mr. Throwaway to Kline just before Kline was killed was a bit too coincidental for Carl’s liking. It was probably to make sure Kline was home. “You were set up, buddy.”
Something else was nagging at him, tickling his brain as he stared at the computer screen. All it showed right now was his email and calendar.
The calendar.
Leaning forward, he looked at the date when Kline was murdered. Like a bolt of lightning, he made the connection. It was the same day that Naomi started working for Morgan Pharmaceuticals.
“Damn.” He reached for the phone and buzzed his secretary. “Get me the Assistant Director in Charge of the Los Angeles Division on the line right away. And I want Renee Vintner and her sidekick from the Intelligence Directorate in front of my desk in ten minutes.”
* * *
“I wish your people would learn to write things that actually make sense.” President Daniel Miller glanced up at the Director of National Intelligence. While technically not a member of the cabinet, Miller insisted that the DNI be a regular attendee. In Miller’s hand was a copy of the PDB, the President’s Daily Brief, a highly classified document containing the latest and most urgent intelligence information that the DNI and his subordinates in the intelligence community thought the President should see. Miller propped his glasses on his nose, then read from the document:
Anomalous military activities have been observed over the last seventy-two hours in Russia, the People’s Republic of China, India, and Brazil. Regular military and special forces units have made unscheduled deployments, and there are some reports of serious casualties inflicted by unspecified entities. The Chinese, in particular, have reportedly suffered the decimation of at least two divisions, and both the Chengdu and Guangzhou regions have been put on general alert.
The causes behind these activities, and whether they are somehow linked across the above mentioned nations, is unknown.
He let the document fall to his desk. “Where’s the punch line? Are these countries going to war? Did they simultaneously decide to have civil wars? What? This sounds alarmist but doesn’t really tell me anything. And what’s this unspecified entities garbage?”
The DNI looked uncomfortable. “Mr. President, we aren’t sure what’s going on, yet. But the situation, particularly in China and Brazil, is quite serious. The Chinese have deployed five divisions into rural agrarian areas, and there’s no question that those units are engaged in combat operations.”
“And you’re sure it’s not an exercise?”
“Positive, sir. If you look at the first appendix in today’s PDB, you’ll see imagery that spells it out in rather vivid detail.”
Miller picked up the document and thumbed through it to the appendices. There were several black and white overhead shots of a village or small town pockmarked with the circular craters of artillery impacts. Most of the buildings had sustained heavy damage. Vehicles marked in the graphic as tanks and infantry personnel carriers were in the town, along with dozens of little dots that Miller assumed must be soldiers. He had served in the Army many years before, and so had some appreciation for military tactics. He noticed that the troops in the village had formed a defensive perimeter, with their guns pointing out toward the surrounding fields, where more vehicles stood, blackened and smoking.
He looked up at the DNI. “These are the Chinese troops?”
“Yes, sir. The information we have so far indicates that the town had been overrun or taken over, it’s not really clear by whom, and the Army was sent in to sort things out. They tried just marching into the town and got their clocks cleaned. Then they leveled it with artillery before going back in. Now it looks like they’re trapped.”
“Trapped? By whom? Has there been an armed uprising in China and we missed it?” The other members of the cabinet looked away. Miller’s sarcasm could be quite acidic.
“Sir, if you look closely at the first image, in the fields.”
Miller did so. “Besides the burning tanks, all I see are a bunch of, what, rocks maybe? What are all those things?”
“That, Mr. President, we don’t know. They could be insurgents with some sort of special camouflage or body armor. But we know they move, and we think they’re the ones that the Chinese are fighting.” He paused. “By the way, the Chinese unit you’re looking at now started out four days ago as a full infantry brigade with an attached armor platoon, around three thousand men. What you see there is all that’s left.”
Miller looked at the text sidebar on the image, then sat back, shocked. “There can’t be more than two or three hundred men here.”
“That’s right, Mr. President. More are certainly hiding in the buildings or aren’t easily distinguished in the rubble, but yes, as best we can tell, that brigade has pretty much been wiped out. And it’s not the only one.”
“So who the hell is responsible? The Chinese aren’t blaming us, surely.” Miller glanced at the Secretary of State, who shook her head.
“They haven’t uttered a peep to us about it,” she said. “They’ve deflected all our inquiries on the diplomatic circuit, telling us a lot of nothing.”
“No, sir, whatever it is, it’s an internal matter,” the DNI went on. “But as the PDB indicate, China’s not the only place where something odd is going on. We’ve seen unusual movements of Russian airborne units over the last week, including what appears to be a battalion-level exercise in southern Russia that kicked off last night. The situation in Brazil isn’t clear, but something’s definitely going on down there that involves regular army troops being deployed to the interior. And our military attaché in New Delhi got a whiff of some Indian special forces being sent off somewhere in central India a day or so ago, along with some credible information that the Indian Army’s airborne brigade has been put on alert.”
“Maybe in reaction to what’s going on in China?” Miller’s voice was hopeful. At least that would be a situation he could understand.
The DNI shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t think so. Things are quiet along their mutual border. The ruckus in China is well to the east, away from India.”
“Kyle, you look like you swallowed your kid’s goldfish.” Miller had noticed the change in expression on the face of his new FBI Director as soon as the DNI had mentioned India. “Do you have something to add?”
Harmon licked his lips. “Sir, I had a discussion the other day with Carl Richards, the former…”
“I know who he is.”
Nodding, Harmon went on with obvious reluctance. “Richards believed, postulated, that there might have been a potential incident in India, and had some circumstantial evidence about a similar incident in Russia.”
Miller cocked his head to one side, a look of growing incredulity on his face. “What sort of incident?”
Closing his eyes, Harmon spat out the word. “Harvesters.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Harmon sat l
ike a toad under a brace of spotlights as everyone in the cabinet, along with the President, stared at him.
The Vice President, Andrew Lynch, broke the silence. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, sir, I’m not. I wish I was.” Harmon turned back to Miller. “Richards said that Jack Dawson was in India and had found a village that had been infected, as he called it, and he had dug up some other information indicating that something similar had happened in Russia.”
“And you didn’t pursue this?” The DNI said the words, but the thought was clearly echoed in the expressions of the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security.
“Of course not!” Harmon’s temper broke. “May I kindly remind everyone here,” he glanced at President Miller, “that the whole topic of harvesters was shelved after the Curtis administration. SEAL came up with nothing after an entire year, and there wasn’t any physical evidence to prove their existence. All of it was anecdotal or based on information that could easily have been faked. None of us believed it then, and I still don’t. There’s a rational explanation for what’s going on. We don’t have to haul the boogeyman out of the closet.”
“You’ve made your point, Kyle.” Miller glanced around the room. “Here’s what I want.” He picked up the PDB and waved it at the DNI. “First, I want to know what the devil is going on with this. And I don’t want any eyewash because someone’s afraid to use terminology that, up until now, wasn’t considered politically correct.” He shot an apologetic look at Harmon. “I want everything back on the table, no matter how unpalatable it might be, including the H-word. Harvesters. Whoever wrote — or edited — this PDB said that unspecified entities were behind what’s going on. I want that unspecified replaced with something specific, and I want it pronto.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” The DNI looked and sounded relieved. “I’ll have an update to you right away. I’d also recommend bringing in the CDC on this.”
“Fine. Make it happen.” Miller turned to Harmon. “Second. You’re going to have to eat some crow and make peace with Richards. I’d eat it for you since I made the bed that we’re all going to have to lay in, but that’s not the way things work. Pump him for whatever information he has on this, then get it sent to the DNI, Defense, Homeland Security, and whomever else you think needs to know. If what Richards has is credible, figure out how to share it with the countries that are being hit with this outbreak without making us look like complete lunatics.”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 18