“What’s that?”
“Once we had a lead on Safi, we focused our search on records in the Kandahar area. We found a photo of Safi from a newspaper article. I can have my guys use facial recognition software to scan photos of the staff at companies working in the toxicology field and see if we get a match.”
“You’re assuming he’s still working in his specialty?”
“Yes. Think about it. If Creighton somehow got wind of Safi recently, that means he must be up to the same old tricks he was running at Pasha Tech, whatever those were.”
Alton shook his head. The conclusion was obvious, stated that way. Maybe he needed another cup of coffee. “That makes sense. I like the idea of running facial scans on toxicology scientists, but what if that approach doesn’t work?”
“Then we’re back to searching through tens of millions of records,” said Vega, “not a few thousand.”
“How long would that take?”
“Weeks, at the least. Maybe months.”
CHAPTER 36
Alton wrapped up his call with Vega.
After sharing the mission manager’s information with the rest of the team, he rejoined Gilbert and Mastana in their review of the R&D boxes. “Have anything?”
“Not yet,” said Gilbert, “but we’ve just gotten started.”
“The folders were all mixed up,” said Mastana, “like they were thrown in there in a hurry. I am putting folders with the same labels into piles. I think this will help when we review them. All the information on a topic will be in the same pile.”
“Yes, that’s excellent, Mastana,” said Alton. “It looks like you’ve finished organizing, so now let’s see what’s in those folders.”
Mastana started with the closest stack. As she read off the information in English, Gilbert commented on the scientific significance of their find while Alton scribbled notes.
After an hour, Alton stood to stretch his back and bad leg. “Well, we know they did real work on pesticides used to coat agricultural crop seeds. That doesn’t seem to be helpful. It’s what they told the world they were doing.”
Gilbert nodded. “True, but considering their limited resources, Pasha Tech made some astonishing finds.”
Limited resources? The complex they had visited the previous day hadn’t appeared too shabby, but Alton opted to stay silent on this point. “Let’s check out the next pile.”
One stack stood higher than the rest. Mastana reached over and pulled it over from the far side of the table. She read the label on the first folder, mumbling to herself. She examined the second folder, running her finger across its faded label. She put down the yellowed paper and studied the side of one of the R&D boxes.
“Did you find something?” asked Alton.
“Yes,” said Mastana. “Do you see this phrase?” She pointed to the box, which bore an elaborate Arabic script.
“Yes.”
“It means ‘Tears of God.’”
“Is that important?” said Alton.
Gilbert shrugged, but Mastana spoke up. “There was an old legend about the Tears of God. It is used to scare the children. I don’t see how this is related to Pasha Tech, though.”
“Tell me about the legend,” said Alton.
“I don’t know much. I remember that when children didn’t do as they were told, their parents would tell them to behave, or the tears of God would fall on them.”
“And that would be bad?”
“Yes, but I don’t know any more than that.” She smiled. The gesture contained a touch of grief, perhaps as she recalled a long-ago moment with her deceased mother. “When you are a child, you don’t ask for too many details. I don’t even know if this is a real legend or something my mother made up to make me go to bed.”
“I see,” said Alton. He rubbed his chin. Something told him there was more to this legend than the imagination of Mastana’s birth mother. Otherwise, why would it appear on the side of an R&D box? “Why don’t you all start reviewing this pile? I’d like to check into the legend a little more. It might give us some insight into what’s in these files.”
“How are you going to do that?” asked Gilbert.
“When I was here last year, I spoke with Professor Aziz, an archeology instructor at Kabul University. He provided some background about an ancient cult. Maybe he knows something about the Tears of God legend, too.”
“Even if you find out more about some legend,” said Gilbert, “how is that going to help us assess the scientific content of these boxes or find Farid Safi?”
“It might not,” admitted Alton. “I won’t know until I talk with Aziz. But there must be some reason Pasha Tech chose to write ‘Tears of God’ on their boxes. Anyway, what can it hurt to ask? Worst case scenario is I waste five or ten minutes on the phone.”
Alton stepped back to the hotel room’s window so his conversation wouldn’t disrupt the others’ work. It turned out he had to wait nearly twenty minutes on the phone, trying to convince the professor’s administrative assistants, who possessed limited English skills, to put him through.
At last, Aziz answered. “Hello?”
Alton smiled. In the background, he could hear the breeze of an overhead fan produce a muted tinkling of wind chimes, one of hundreds of artifacts packed into the professor’s office. “Professor Aziz, it’s Alton Blackwell. How are you?”
“Mr. Blackwell! My friend! It pleases me to hear your voice.”
“I’m glad to hear you, too, professor. How are you?”
“Excellent. We haven’t spoken since your return to America.” A note of caution crept into the professor’s voice. “Your young friend…she is still safe?”
“Yes, Mastana is fine, thanks. In fact, she’s kind of the reason I’m calling. She mentioned a legend concerning the Tears of God, and I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”
Last year, the professor’s eyes had lit up at the mention of Afghanistan’s ancient Cult of Stones. His voice carried the same animation over the phone. “Ahh…the Tears of God. Yes, yes, I have heard of this legend. I believe most everyone in my country has heard of it at one point or another.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
The professor’s chair creaked, as if he were leaning back in it. “This legend harkens back to the first days of Islam. Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam teaches that at some undetermined point in the future, mankind will experience the end of days.”
“What, you mean the end of the world?” asked Alton.
“Yes. One of the early Islamic sects, the Qadiri, expanded this idea. Their prophecy called for the tears of God to rain onto the earth, ending all life.”
“Why would God’s tears kill?”
“According to the Qadiri’s prophecy,” said Aziz, “it is the way God will cleanse the earth of its sin in order to establish a new paradise, the heaven on earth called for in the Qur’an after the end of days.”
Alton ran a hand through his hair, digesting this information. “The last ancient sect I asked you about was a pretty violent bunch. What about these Qadiri guys? Were they into speeding along God’s plan with a little violence of their own?”
“No, their prophecy was strictly theological. The cleansing was God’s job, not theirs. The Qadiri focused on achieving spiritual worthiness before the end of days arrived.”
“I see.”
“Mr. Blackwell, you never told me…why do you need this information?”
No need to tell the professor too much. “Just curious, really. Mastana said she wasn’t sure if it was a legend or something her mother made up. I figured you’d know the answer.”
The professor didn’t speak for a moment. Did he suspect there was more to Alton’s inquiry? “You know, the legend called for a violent end for those who are exposed to the tears of God. For your sake, I am glad you seek this information only to satisfy your curiosity. Otherwise, I would tell you to be careful. The Tears of God is a prophecy of death.”
CHAPTER 37
Alton returned to Gilbert and Mastana, who huddled over a stack of folders in deep conversation.
Gilbert looked up. “Learn anything?”
“Yes,” said Alton. “There really is a Tears of God legend. It says at the ‘end of days,’ as Professor Aziz called it, God’s tears will kill the people of earth in order to cleanse it for the paradise to come.”
Mastana squinted her eyes in concentration. “The tears kill—like a poison, right?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps that is why the project bears this name,” said Mastana.
“What do you mean?” asked Alton, lowering himself into a chair to ease the discomfort of his damaged leg.
“Agent Gilbert and I have only reviewed the first file in this stack, but the information we found goes along with this idea of a poison.”
“What exactly did you find?”
Gilbert gathered his thoughts. “It’s a little difficult to explain to a layman.”
Mastana jumped in. “The file describes a way to make a snake bite more powerful. It is a process to…how do you say it?” She turned to the toxicologist.
“Distill the venom of the Haly’s pit viper, a species indigenous to Afghanistan, into a concentrated form.”
Alton nodded. “That seems easy enough to understand. Do the documents say why they were trying to do that?”
“No,” said Gilbert. “It’s strictly a description of the distillation process itself. A very detailed description—brilliant, really.”
“Let’s see what the rest of the folders say. Maybe they’ll form a pattern.”
Both groups of NSA team members—those analyzing the R&D boxes as well as those assessing the body-cam photos—worked tirelessly throughout the day, stopping only for a quick lunch. The hours passed, and the sliver of bright sunlight piercing through the window’s drawn shades crept in a slow arc across the room.
At mid-afternoon, Alton rose from the table and stepped over to his wife. “You need to see this.”
Observing her husband’s somber expression, Mallory followed him in silence back to the table of R&D boxes.
“One of the files is nothing but printed e-mails,” said Alton. “They prove Farid Safi was the leader of the project.”
Mallory nodded. “Makes sense, but why did you want me over here?”
Alton swallowed. He slid a yellowed slip of paper to the edge of the table. “This memo talks about your dad.”
Mallory’s eyes grew wide, but she said nothing.
Clearing his throat, Alton continued. “Safi sent a message to some subordinate named…who was it, Mastana?”
“Taloquan Ra,” said Mastana. She could not meet their eyes, instead casting hers to the floor.
“That’s right. Here’s what the e-mail said,” continued Alton, pulling out a sheet of notebook paper on which he had written the translation. “‘Killjoy reports antidote to Cutter Wilson problem administered.’ That’s all it says.”
Mallory’s eyes welled up. She strode to the bathroom and stepped inside.
Alton followed her. His wife cradled her head in her hands, and her frame trembled with quiet sobs.
Stepping forward, Alton wrapped his arms around Mallory and pulled her into a gentle embrace. Neither spoke.
“That son-of-a-bitch,” whispered Mallory at last. “He really did kill my dad. Until now I couldn’t be sure…” She buried her face in his shoulder and wept anew.
“I hated to tell you about that memo,” said Alton, “but I thought you’d want to know.”
Mallory sniffed and pulled back enough to wipe her eyes and nose. “Yeah, I did.” She shook her head. “All this time, I figured it was just horrible luck, Dad dying the way he did. Now to know Safi had him killed…”
Alton nodded. “At least we know who’s responsible. Now we just need to find the guy.”
Mallory wiped a palm across both cheeks, erasing the last traces of moisture.
“You ready to go back in there?” asked Alton.
“Yeah—more than ready.” Mallory made a beeline back to her group. Her face bore a look of fierce determination.
David stepped over to Alton. “Is she all right?”
“Yeah. She’s upset, but I know my wife. She’ll be okay.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell everyone later. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be Farid Safi right now.”
Two hours later, an imam’s call for the five o’clock prayer drifted up from the street below. The translations complete, Mastana dropped the last folder back on top of a pile.
The other team had finished their review of the body-cam footage. David lay sprawled on Mastana’s bed, snoring. Silva and Mallory leaned their heads together over a laptop, the former pointing to something on the screen.
“You all finished?” asked Alton.
“Yes,” said Mallory. “Finally.”
“Good. Let’s gather ‘round and share results.”
Everyone pulled up chairs to the table or sat at the edge of the closest bed.
“You first,” said Alton, nodding to the team responsible for reviewing the body-cam footage.
“Honestly, we don’t have a lot to report,” said Mallory. “Mastana helped us draw up a list of the various departments that are named on the doorways we passed. They’re the same departments whose records were stored in the vault.”
“One other thing,” added Silva. “The hallway leading up to the vault had a ‘restricted access’ sign. No big surprise there.”
David rubbed his eyes before speaking. “I took a close look at the door locks. Remember the wooden door outside the vault room? It looked pretty average except for its heavy-duty locks. I figured if we saw high-security locks on some other door, that might be a room we’d want to check out if we have to go back.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to do that,” said Alton. “Did you see any suspicious doors?”
“No,” said David with a shrug. “They all looked like the standard stuff you see in any white-collar office in the States. What about you guys? What’d you come up with?”
“The only files of real importance were those describing the ‘Tears of God’ project,” said Alton. “That project seemed to be the focus of Pasha Tech’s efforts.”
“What was the project for?” asked Silva.
“Pasha Tech was seeking out more potent and targeted forms of poisons. Unfortunately, none of the files say why.”
Mallory’s expression was grim. “Maybe they were trying to weaponize the poisons for chemical warfare or terrorist attacks.”
“That’s certainly a possibility,” said Alton.
“We saw in the first stack of folders that Pasha Tech really did conduct research on agricultural pesticides,” said Gilbert. “We shouldn’t rule out the possibility that the ‘Tears of God’ project was a concentrated effort in that direction.”
“If that’s the case, why kill Creighton?” said Alton.
“Or my dad?” added Mallory. “No, Pasha Tech was hiding something…something much bigger than agricultural pesticides…something that made them willing to kill to keep it from being discovered.”
“And whatever it is, they’re still doing it today,” added Alton. “Creighton’s murder is proof of that.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Now our job is to figure out what they’re doing and where they’re doing it.”
“How are we gonna do that?” asked Silva.
“Well, we have a few clues in these documents,” said Alton. “One in particular. There’s a symbol that appears on the letterhead of a few e-mails and on the outside of two folders.” He held up a folder stained with tea or coffee. On the cream-colored paper, the letterhead depicted a liquid of blood-red hue flowing from the eyes of a skull pictured inside a triangle. “If Vega’s facial-recognition program doesn’t locate Safi, I can send him a picture of this symbol. He could use it as another search criterion.”
“You mean he could run a search on tha
t particular image?” asked David.
“Exactly. At least it gives us another way to find our man.”
“Can I see the symbol again?” asked Mallory. “I swear, I think I saw it in the footage somewhere.”
Alton passed the folder over to Mallory. She studied the symbol for a moment, then fetched a laptop computer off the bed and began scrolling through dozens of still frames taken by the body cams. At last, she stopped on an image taken outside the vault.
“Look at the top of the door, just below the seam,” said Mallory. A skull with flowing tears, this time rendered from the same stainless-steel material as the vault, had been attached to the door.
“That’s the same symbol, all right,” said Silva. “I should have noticed that.”
“As long as one of us did, we’re good,” said Alton. He turned to Mallory. “Does it look familiar? Did your dad ever show you this or describe something like it?”
“Not that I remember. I’ll send a picture of it to my mom and see if she recognizes it.”
“Good,” said Alton. “It may be tough for her, but this may turn out to be our only link to the location of Safi—the man who arranged for her husband’s murder.”
CHAPTER 38
Mallory called her mother but discovered the Tears of God symbol held no meaning for her. She rejoined the team and shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
As Mallory concluded the update, Alton received a text from Vega.
“Is the whole team there?” asked the NSA manager.
“Yes,” replied Alton.
“Good. Dial into the videoconference channel.”
Alton gathered the team around, activated deep-encryption mode on the communications application, and initiated the call.
Vega sat in his office. An inky night sky appeared in the window behind him. “Greetings, everyone.”
They all nodded in reply.
“It’s pretty late for you, isn’t it?” asked Alton.
“Yes,” said Vega, “but I have some information you’ll want to hear. The facial-recognition software paid off. I think we have a hit on Safi.”
Tears of God (The Blackwell Files Book 7) Page 13