“The black residue,” muttered Gabe. “I bet it’s a carrier of some sort of super bacteria or virus.”
Eli smiled and nodded. “That would be my theory.”
“Sending out a sample for testing now,” said Helen, looking up from where she was tapping on her tablet. “Especially if there is a significant amount copper wherever these beetles live and breed…maybe they’ve used the microbial properties of the copper in their bodies to build up resistance to this bacteria.”
“It makes sense on so many levels. But there are countless unidentified, undiscovered organisms and bacteria living in the rain forest. If these beetles are existing and breeding in a highly-charged-with-copper area in Ecuador, most likely whatever is on their legs is going to be something we haven’t seen before.” Eli's eyes sparkled with wild desperation. “I need to get my hands on a live specimen.”
“I don’t think you’d want to do that,” Gabe said, giving a wry laugh. “If these beetles are as dangerous as they seem to be. Stay suited up around them.”
Marina got the distinct impression Sanchez not only didn’t care about the risk, but would happily bathe in the beetles if he had the opportunity. She smothered a grin, then her levity faded. Not much different than how she felt about the ancient library maintained by her grandfather.
“Dr. Sanchez also told me about how he came to have two specimens, and that one of them was found at the site of the center of the St. Louis blackout,” Paul Labine said in his rusty voice. “Let me rephrase. That a cluster of them, burned out and melted together, was found at the site.”
“Tell them your theory about that,” Eli said, settling against the edge of Helen’s desk. He was still burning with excitement, and Marina could feel the energy rolling off him. She bet the University of Illinois had a higher than usual number of female students in the entomology department.
“Because copper conducts electricity so extremely well,” Paul continued, “it seems possible to me that a swarm of these bugs—er, insects,” he added with a nod at Eli—who shook his head in mock exasperation, “might have flown into the cables at the electric transformer plant. If they were caught up in the lines, their extremely high levels of the metal could have caused a surge of electricity to blow through the lines. It’s even possible they carry an electric charge on their own—like electric eels. We won’t know until we get a live specimen.
“Anyway, if there were several who flew into the lines all at once, causing the insects to zap and fry together in those big clumps, it could have caused several massive surges simultaneously. If the swarms were on different lines at the power plant, that could have caused the plant’s automatic load-balancing system to go haywire. The load-balancing system is equipped to handle random ebbs and flows of electricity, but if it were hit with several strong ones all at once, in the same location, that could blow the system and cause the blackout.”
Eli's brows were high and his eyes sparkled. He nodded all during the speech, as if to punctuate his agreement with Paul Labine’s theory. Helen had ceased tapping on her tablet, and pursed her lips as she considered this new information.
Even Gabe seemed to buy into it. He exchanged glances with Helen, then said, “If that’s what happened—which sounds reasonable to me—then the question becomes: were the beetles released in the area for that reason, and if so, to what end…and if not, how did they get there if they’re native to the Amazon jungle and nowhere else? And are we going to find other casualties—deaths from cardiac arrest caused by that bacteria—from exposure to those insects?”
“That,” said Eli, crossing his arms, “is your problem. But I’m happy to help if you get any more beetle specimens. And if you have to go to the Amazon to find them, or want to send a team down to study them, sign me up. I just got back from a field trip in Nicaragua, but I’d leave again in a heartbeat. I speak Spanish and Portuguese fluently, as well as—”
“Got it. We’ll let you know.” Gabe had pulled out his cell and was texting something as Helen picked up her desk phone to call one of the admins.
Marina glanced at Eli, who seemed a more than a little disappointed he wasn’t having a flight booked at that very moment, and she felt a little nudge of sympathy. After all, he had made the identification of a unique insect, an unknown one—and one implicated in an unusual death and possible terrorist attack. This had to be the most exciting development in the field of entomology in possibly ever.
Just as she would be—was, in fact—determined to follow through on the copper mystery and her newly forming theories about Phoenicians in North America, surely Eli Sanchez must feel the same way. He would want to be the one to work on the project, to see it through, to use his expertise to assist, to claim the credit for the discovery, and, most importantly, to write the paper. He needed grants for his lab at the university just like every other researcher did.
Speaking of discoveries… “I’d like to head back to the hotel,” Marina said. “I’ve got work to do there, and some things to follow up on. Mind if I take your car, Gabe?”
The copper mystery awaited, and she wanted to dig back into the details of what she’d learned about Chief Joseph—he was the Native American leader who’d had the ancient tablet with Phoenician writing on it—and the small cuneiform slab. Along with what she’d found, or, rather, what Matt Granger had found, that could be the clincher…
Gabe’s expression was odd—wary and a little suspicious. Marina felt a niggle of disloyalty, and sharply brushed it away. The conversation she’d had with Rue Varden in her hotel room was between the two of them, and Varden was no more a threat to her than Gabe was—at least, as long as she stayed way from the Skaladeskas. He’d made that clear. In fact, he had most likely saved her from being abducted. Without him, she wouldn’t even be here now.
“I’ll need the car. But I could take you back in a few hours,” said Gabe.
“I’ll see if I can arrange a cab,” said Helen, looking between the two of them. “Give me a few.”
“Which hotel?” asked Eli. “I can drop you off.” He slid off the desk, clearly realizing his presence was no longer needed. “It’s no problem.”
Gabe started to say something, then stopped. “Appreciate that, Sanchez. Marina, if I could have a minute before you go.” He gestured to the exit, and Marina led the way out into the hall.
He closed the door behind them, then got right to the point. “Rue Varden has been in and out of Ann Arbor for the last five to six years. Right in your backyard, Marina. If you have something going on with him, you’re better off telling—”
Marina was as stunned as if she’d been blindsided with a two-by-four. “Five years? I didn’t know. Believe me, Gabe, I had no idea. Until he showed up bleeding all over the place, I hadn’t seen or heard from him—or any of the Skaladeskas—since we left Siberia.”
Almost true. But the package from Roman or Lev wasn’t really relevant.
Gabe’s blue eyes were focused steadily, almost uncomfortably on her, and that moment reminded Marina how dangerous a man Gabe MacNeil was. A lethally trained CIA agent. God knew what he’d done with those hands.
After a moment, he nodded. “I just wanted you to know…Rue Varden’s been around. Maybe watching you. Probably watching you.”
Varden had nearly admitted the same thing to her yesterday, so that part didn’t surprise her quite as much. Still. “Thanks.”
“Maybe you want to reconsider and start carrying a firearm,” Gabe added. “I can—”
“Not gonna happen. I’ve got Boris, and that’s enough.”
He drew in a breath then exhaled slowly. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but then thought better of it. “All right. I don’t know how late I’ll be here tonight, but—”
“I’m going back to Ann Arbor. Probably not till tomorrow, though. There’s no reason for me to stay here. I’ve got work to do, some things to follow up on, and if you need me in person, you know it’s only a matter of hours before I can get here.”
“Right. All right. Wait till tomorrow, just in case something breaks with all this new information about the bugs. There was a car rental agreement on the body of the Skala—his name was Marcko—who died at the hospital, and we’re following that trail. The car isn’t at the hospital lot, so someone must have dropped him off. Maybe even knew he was going to die. So if you happen to see a dark blue Taurus with a Kentucky plate, let me know,” he added with a short laugh.
Marina smiled at his attempt at humor. “Will do. See you later.”
Neither made a move to kiss or even embrace the other, and she felt as if something had shifted in their relationship, such as it was. Of course, she was only going back to the hotel and would see him later tonight. Yet something had changed.
TWENTY-FOUR
Eli Sanchez drove a dark green Jeep Cherokee that had seen better days. Though the interior was clean—except for a collection of drive-thru coffee cups and a stack of plastic baggies containing what looked like beetle specimens—one of the bumpers was hanging on by a bungee cord. There was also a patch of rust on the corner of the passenger door, and a small dent near the front headlight. There was a bumper sticker on the back that said: “A spider did not bite you.”
“Meet Juanita,” he said with a grin as Marina climbed in. “She’s been around a while, but, as they say, she runs good.”
“What’s up with the bumper sticker?” she asked as he closed the door after her.
Sanchez laughed. “About the spider bite? Yeah—no one gets bitten by a spider. The poor darlings are completely misunderstood. Maybe four percent of reported spider bites are actually spider bites. It’s sort of an inside joke among us entomologists.” He slid into the driver seat. “Where to?”
She told him, and settled back in the seat…then curled her fingers surreptitiously around the door handle when Eli roared out of the parking lot, taking a corner a lot more quickly than she would have.
“So tell me,” he said, belatedly shoving on a pair of sunglasses, “how does a search and rescue caver and—what is it? an epigraphic historian?—end up working on a terrorist case like the Skaladeskas?”
“Nothing like getting right to the point.” Marina couldn’t hold back a smile. “And I simply say ‘an historian, with a competence in epigraphy,’ if you want to get technical.”
“I do—want to get technical.” He flashed a grin. “And I like to get to the point. It’s the only way to go. Speaking of getting to the point—are you and MacNeil involved or not?”
Marina blinked at the random question. Right. “We’re good friends. We’ve been through a lot together.”
“Good friends? All right. That works for me.” Eli flashed her a warm smile, then careened around another corner. He punched the accelerator as he passed a slower vehicle, then eased back into the right lane. As she clung to the grip, Marina felt a wave of sympathy for Gabe during the time she’d taken a small plane through an acrobatic routine in order to disrupt their Skaladeska kidnappers. Gabe had been more than a little green around the gills after that—but he, at least, had been in better shape than their kidnappers.
“Sorry,” Eli added when he slammed on the brakes just before cutting off another vehicle. He gave a cheery wave when the other driver honked angrily, and the Jeep leapt forward again. “So?” he prompted. “You’re not CIA, and you’re not a Fed—you’re not any law enforcement as far as I can tell…so how the hell did you manage to get onto the team as a civilian consultant? What the hell does an historian have to do with a terrorist group?”
“You just want to go to the Amazon.” She smiled.
“Damn right I do. Hell if I’m going to let someone else study that sweet little coleop. So how does one get in on the big boys club—including Helen Darrow, by the way. She’s got her own pair of testes, and far as I can tell, holds her own with the big guys.” He glanced at Marina, a grin twitching his lips. “And, quite clearly, so do you, Dr. Alexander.”
“Thanks. I think.” She found it impossible to be offended by Eli Sanchez, and actually found him more than a little intriguing—and a lot attractive. Though he was a few years older than she, he had the quicksilver mind and mentality of a much younger man. If only he were a little less enthusiastic with his driving… “So you spent a little time on Google last night, I take it.”
He nodded, that smile still playing around his mouth. “Hell yes. And I’ve got other resources besides Google, anyway. With all the international travel I do—well, suffice to say I’m not about to walk into anything without being prepared. Why do you think I wasn’t waiting for MacNeil at my lab like a good boy?” Then he sobered. “Look, Dr. Alexander, I’m not trying to make light of this situation. It’s damned serious. And that’s why Homeland Security needs an expert on the team if they’re going to work with that coleop—find it, categorize it, study it. I’ve already begun the process anyway. I think I’ve taken about five hundred megs of pictures of it already. And if even half the theories we talked about today are true—”
“I’m thinking they were pretty spot on. Knowing…knowing what I know.”
“So what put you smack in the middle of the case? You were involved back in ’07 when all those fake earthquakes were happening and the Skaladeskas were first IDed as a terrorist group.”
“You are thorough.”
“Oh, very.” His voice dropped, and he flashed her a look. Then he ruined it by zooming through an intersection just as the light turned red, and slipping into the hotel parking lot with the roar of a muffler on its last legs. “You hungry? How about we grab a bite—it’s not too early for lunch—and you can tell me about how you got on the team.”
“Lunch? It’s barely ten thirty,” she protested, then her eyes widened. She flung out a hand and it smacked into his chest. “Stop. Stop!”
He obliged, slamming on the brakes. She was out of the Jeep in an instant, hurrying over to a blue Taurus with Kentucky plates. It was parked right there in her hotel parking lot.
Eli was on her heels. “What? What is it?”
Marina looked around. There was no one in the vicinity, and the car—fortunately—was empty. “The guy who died in the hospital from the bug, from the rash from the bacteria—we think anyway—had a rental agreement for a blue Taurus with—”
“Let me guess. Kentucky plates,” he finished. Eli peered into the window on the driver’s side, and she looked on the passenger side. The car was empty. “What the hell is he—or was he—doing here? In the same place you’re staying? That can’t be good.”
Marina was afraid she knew the answer to that question, and had a sneaking suspicion Eli was only asking it rhetorically.
Either Varden or whoever it was he’d intercepted outside her room yesterday had driven the vehicle here. If it was the same one on the rental agreement. But really—what were the chances? She memorized the license plate as Eli tried the door handle.
To her surprise, it opened, and she pulled open the one on the other side. They both crawled in from either side, she in back, he in front, looking around.
“Nothing,” he said, and they closed the doors. “Obvious, anyway. The sweepers would probably find something, but…” He walked around to the back of the car and unlatched the trunk.
It popped open to reveal an empty space. Except…they both spotted it at the same time: the small wisp of black silk tucked deep inside the trunk.
Sanchez reached for it first, employing his longer arms, and grasped the fabric. Then his expression changed and he swore, spinning from the trunk as three small insects erupted from the depths of the trunk. They shot out like infuriated bees, and Marina ducked instinctively even as Sanchez grabbed at them. The beetles missed her and easily evaded him, zooming off into the air. Their wings and bodies glinted like shiny new pennies in the sunlight.
“Damn!” Eli stared off after the insects, looking as if he’d just found coal in his stocking on Christmas morning. “Almost had them! Un-freaking-believable!” He looked as if he
wanted to cry.
Then Marina noticed something, and her heart nearly stopped. “Dr. Sanchez, your hand!”
He looked down, then said something in Spanish.
His fingers were covered with black cobweb-like smudges.
TWENTY-FIVE
“I think you’d better stand back.”
Marina glanced over to make sure Eli was out of the way, then opened the door to her hotel room with care. When nothing happened—no bugs flying in her face, no hand grabbing for her—she gave it a hard shove, ducking to the side just in case.
Everything was still and silent except when the heavy hotel door swung back and slammed with a thud that echoed down the hall.
“What was that all about?” asked her companion. He’d thrust his hands deep into his pants pockets in an effort to keep from touching anyone or anything with his contaminated fingers.
“Wanted to make sure no one was in there waiting, or anything.” She opened the door again and ushered him in. “Have a seat.”
“I think I’ll wash my hands first.” His voice was grim. “Can’t hurt.”
“Don’t touch anything. Let me turn on the water.”
By the time Eli came out of the bathroom, vigorously drying his hands, Marina had her laptop open and was booting it up. Housekeeping had come in while she was gone, and the room was neat and clean—hard to tell if anyone else had been inside during her absence. Who had brought the car? Was it Varden? Or was the man named Bellhane lurking about somewhere?
“You said you had an idea.” For someone who’d most likely just infected himself with untreatable bacteria, Eli Sanchez seemed relatively calm. He looked around, then, apparently deeming the armchair by the window the safest location, he sat.
“Yes. All right.” Marina drew in a deep breath. “I suppose I’d better tell you what the options are before I do anything irreparable.”
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