The Huguenot Thief

by L. K. CLEMENT

  Thompson gave silent thanks for Amarintha’s scientific training, and nodded.

  “But why would anyone believe the reliquary was somewhere in Charleston?” asked Ava.

  “The Vatican sent the FBI a picture of it. An FBI image recognition program matched the Vatican’s picture to one of your father and the reliquary, taken in 1986.”

  “My father?” replied Amarintha. “Where was this picture taken? Do you know if he’s the one who buried it?”

  “The picture is from his workplace. It seems likely he’s the one who buried the thing, but we don’t know why,” said Thompson.

  Fannie turned to Amarintha and said, “You know your daddy studied germs for the Department of Defense, which back in the ’80s was experimenting with bacteria and viruses. He was very troubled by the work they were asking him to do.”

  Thompson gaped at Fannie. He wondered how many FBI agents were still trying to uncover the information that she had just nonchalantly shared.

  “Mrs. Sims, do you remember seeing anything like what Amarintha found? She did tell you what it looked like, didn’t she?”

  “She sure did, and believe me, I’d remember if I’d ever seen a box with a giant red stone on it. He was always looking for antiques that had sealed tops, like old bottles. We used to rummage through estate sales for stuff like that. His group wanted to analyze air that hadn’t been exposed to modern contaminants. I found it all quite interesting to listen to, even though I didn’t understand everything he told me. How did this reliquary end up in Charles’ hands?”

  One corner of Thompson’s mouth turned up. “It may have been an ancestor of your husband. The Vatican gave me an old report to read, and it states that a Huguenot girl stole the reliquary in 1685 from the convent, and brought it to Charleston. Her name was Marin Postel.”

  Fannie and Amarintha looked at each other, but said nothing.

  Richard said, “So, when I called you yesterday, you realized we had dug up this missing thing, and then those people showed up to test me. Scared the bejesus out of me too.”

  “Wait a minute.” Amarintha threw her hands out. “The explosion was at MUSC. That’s where you said the reliquary was. What are you not telling us, Thompson?”

  He thought for a long moment and looked at Amarintha. “The explosions are connected. The reliquary is gone, taken from MUSC.”

  There was no reaction to Thompson’s statement. The boat rocked gently as Richard stopped at a marker separating the harbor from the Cooper River. The five of them watched a giant container ship move ponderously towards the port a few miles upstream, all of the passengers silent. Thompson was surprised that the freighter would be allowed to dock, but such was the power of capitalism. The people of America needed their stuff.

  Finally, Ava said, “Agent Denton. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t let the detective take us to be tested. If the reliquary might be infected, couldn’t Mama have been exposed? Why wouldn’t you want her to be treated?” She gazed at him, and he knew her head would soon begin to tilt a little to the right.

  Istanbul

  Chapter 62

  Zora sat in the small office that Anton had given her, reviewing the horde of scholarly publications on anthrax. Although Anton had not told her she was a prisoner, he had not given her access to the Internet, and the last time her phone had worked was when she called Interpol from the terrace. She had smiled throughout a long evening dinner with him, and her boss did not question that Zora was now on board with his reprehensible project. Given their joint history, why would he?

  For ten years, Zora had attended meetings and dispassionately discussed mortality figures, expected death rates, modes of transmission, and a variety of factors that had detailed how to kill Soviet enemies in the most cost effective way. She worked for months trying to create a biological weapon from cobra venom and influenza, months of her life that Zora suppressed as a nightmare, because what kind of twisted mind thought of that combination? Had that mind really been hers?

  She had not questioned using biological research to change the course of history. Anton still did not question it. For him, nothing had changed. Russia was his homeland, and if his homeland wanted him to decimate an entire region of the world, and was willing to pay billions of dollars for him to do so, he would. The billions from the Russian government to create an apocalyptic biological weapon was a long overdue reward for the years he spent essentially doing the same work, for the same employer, for a pittance and a free apartment.

  Zora pushed the research paper away from her and leaned back in the chair. Anton had concocted a brilliant plan. The sources of the anthrax would be the ruins of Palmyra, and similar sites that the Islamists had destroyed. The mortar used by the ancients had sometimes contained ground up animal bones, so blaming the spread of the bacteria on these cities’ destruction might appear feasible. Anton talked about this plan with no reservations, no suspicion that she was anything but his brilliant, subservient colleague. She had never defied him, never even questioned him in the days he had been her boss. He had ignored the fact that she had spent twice as many years trying to cure people as she had trying to exterminate them, and seemed blind to the woman Zora had become.

  In 1991, a part of Zora had known that to stay in Russia would be giving legitimacy to a government that, with its demise, exposed the objective of the Institute to be as lethal as the diseases they had studied. Her utopian idea of communism had begun to die when she stepped off an ancient Boeing prop plane into a steaming jungle. By the end of the four-day jeep ride to the clinic, she had shed her idealism, her Caucasian sense of superiority, and her certainty of how life should be lived, as easily as she shed the useless paraphernalia—she had brought a hair dryer of all things—she thought indispensable for jungle life. Communism and capitalism were feeble ideas in a region of the world where it took four hours to retrieve water that was drinkable.

  At the most basic level, the people in the small villages were no different from those anywhere else. They wanted their children to be healthy, their crops to flourish, and their loved ones to live a long life. Any form of government other than a council where grievances were taken was considered ludicrous and unnecessary. Their lives were beset with woes, but unless Lenin managed to return from the dead with a foolproof method to eradicate mosquitoes, communism could not ameliorate these woes. Her years in the jungle had honed Zora’s sensibilities away from destruction, towards a singlemindedness that tried to save one baby, one toddler, one child at a time.

  “Well, Zora, I see you have been studying.”

  Zora turned to see Anton, wearing an enormous grin, standing in her doorway. “I have news for you. One of my associates has found one of the twelve poisoned artifacts in the United States. I will not have to storm the Vatican or Notre Dame.”

  He took a cigarette and pointed it to her. “My source in Interpol told me that two Vatican researchers have an unknown form of anthrax. The priests got it from a reliquary that was in an old French convent’s altar. The altar was in Rome for repair, and it was supposed to contain two reliquaries. Only one was there, and that one was infectious.”

  Zora gave a slight shudder. “Are you sure the priests have anthrax?”

  “Yes. My Interpol friend sent me the results of the CDC’s testing of the priests, as well as a copy of a picture of the missing reliquary found in the U.S. It’s quite ordinary.” Anton took a heavy folded sheet out of his pocket and handed it to her. The reliquary was wooden with a mosaic top. A human figure stood with its arms outstretched, one hand holding a daisy-like flower, the center of it appearing to be an enormous red gemstone.

  “The FBI plugged this picture into their image library, and like magic, the reliquary was traced to a place called Charleston, a city on the eastern coast of the United States.”

  He leaned forward and touched the picture. “This box was found buried in a garden. Just thin
k of it. The germ has been sitting in a box for over three hundred years and might still be viable. What do you think of that?”

  “How did you get it?”

  “Zora, you do not want to know the details. Suffice to say that I have contacts everywhere and was able to hire people in Charleston to steal the reliquary right from under the nose of the FBI.” Anton boomed with laughter.

  He stood up and put his hands on the back of the chair. “I no longer need Dr. Strong. I do need you, dear Zora. We still need to figure out a way to ensure distribution of this little present.”

  She put her hand on his. “Anton, will you let Dr. Strong go? You said you would drug her and dump her at the U.S. Embassy. Will you still do that?” Zora paused and then asked, “What will you do with Dr. Atay?”

  “Atay? I will let him go back to his parchments. He cannot stop me. As for Dr. Strong, I think you are right. No one will believe her. Have tea with her. I will give you something hallucinogenic to put in her drink, and drop her off on our way to the airport. The good doctor might even be able to dress herself again one day.” Anton walked out, snickering.

  Zora took a deep breath. Hang on, Dr. Strong, she thought, and then wondered how she would save herself.

  Charleston

  Chapter 63

  The sirens did not stop their wails during the ten minutes Jack rested under an ancient twenty-foot-tall camellia. Each time he moved his arms, a cascade of pink petals silently fell on his shoulders. The longer he stayed hidden, the more likely the police would cordon off the entire peninsula. He needed to get out of town.

  Jack stood up, surveyed the area and realized he was on the corner of Ashley and Wentworth Streets, west of King Street and south of the hospital. His truck was parked near the hospital, many blocks away from where he stood. That area would be swarming with law enforcement. Assuming he could even get to the truck, driving it off the peninsula was out, as was a taxi. No way were the police going to allow any vehicles to leave downtown without a thorough search of each one, and given Agent Reynold’s reaction to seeing him, law enforcement might be looking for him.

  His anxiety was reaching a level that approached the first days after Kate’s disappearance, and now that he had a sliver of hope that she was alive, he was determined to get out of Charleston and to Istanbul by any means.

  A way out presented itself when he saw the truck from Jackman’s Lumber creeping slowly down Ashley Street with what looked like the trusses for Amarintha’s house. The project plan had called for the roof trusses to be delivered today. Normally, no delivery ever actually occurred on the day it was scheduled, and Jack took it as a sign that events were finally happening in his favor.

  The police had been pushing the crowd towards Lockwood, which ran north to south on the west side of the Charleston peninsula. Presumably, the police would corral people there, and then determine whether to let them leave. Reversing course, Jack ran down Wentworth towards the east side of the city. He’d go to the cruise ship area, as far away from the hospital as possible. Perhaps he would find a way north from there.

  Jack ran east on Wentworth, detoured to East Bay Street, then slowed and walked a few blocks to the Maritime Center, where throngs of people aimlessly milled about. A massive white cruise ship loomed at the dock, lines of passengers at every rail watching and pointing to the smoke. Every passenger was holding a cell phone or camera, narrating the visible events for videos, some that would end up on YouTube if they weren’t there already.

  At the end of the dock were several employees from the cruise line arguing with a police officer. Several huge buses idled, their diesel engines adding to the noise of the sirens and alarms. Jack busied himself inspecting the tires on the buses, watching the police officer, and trying to listen to the conversation.

  “I’ve got five hundred people expecting to tour Charleston in those buses,” said an anxious woman, who kept gazing down to her clipboard and then looking up, as if the scene would surely have changed in the meantime.

  “Ma’am, we’ve had two explosions in this city. Nobody is getting off that ship. The tour is cancelled. I have two thousand tourists already downtown and I don’t want any more from your ship. I’ve a good mind to confiscate those buses to help with the evacuation,” said the officer. He walked a few feet away and spoke into his radio.

  “I’ve got five buses by the docks and each one can take out about a hundred people at a time. After you check people for injuries, get their IDs and fingerprints and then send them to the Maritime Center. I’ll load the buses and send them to the North Charleston Convention Center where we can do formal interviews.”

  Jack could not hear the garbled reply. He walked closer, thinking that he might be able to meld into the crowd the cop was talking about and slip into one of the buses.

  The cruise woman leaned forward and shouted, “You can’t do that!”

  “Ma’am, yes I can,” the officer said. “Hey you!” He yelled to Jack, “Get that bus ready to board.”

  Jack froze, thought quickly, and said, “I’m not the driver. I’m a tourist.”

  “Get on the bus,” said the officer.

  Jack turned and saw an escorted column of people three blocks away, mostly older men, women, and children, moving towards the busses. Jack quickly boarded, found a Veteran of Desert Storm ball cap on an empty seat, and sat down. He took his jacket off, and pulled the cap low over his eyes, pretending to be asleep. Jack sincerely hoped no one would ask him any questions about Kuwait or Iraq, but if they did, he would claim amnesia due to exposure to something toxic.

  The first passengers scrambled on board, and after five minutes, a man got into the driver’s seat. Once the bus was full, the driver headed toward North Charleston. Looking out the back window, Jack saw a crowd of people, gesturing, crying, some on their cell phones, all looking shocked and angry. More than a few seemed to be arguing with whoever in uniform that was nearest to them, a mixture of volunteers, police officers, and firefighters. The cruise ship was receding from the shoreline.

  Jack yawned, rubbed his eyes, and asked the nearest person. “What’s going on?”

  An elderly man across from Jack said, “You slept through that? My poor wife and I were on a carriage tour on Rutledge Street, and the building on the next block just blew up. It was horrible.”

  A babble of excited voices erupted. From what Jack could glean, the bomb at the hospital had created a twenty-foot fireball, causing devastation to an area about forty-feet wide.

  “Then that other explosion happened, and I swear, I thought Charleston was under attack,” said another elderly man with ‘WWII Veteran’ on his own ball cap.

  A younger man, looking at his cell phone said, “The other one at the Huguenot church wasn’t as big as the one at hospital.” He held his phone up, and Jack could hear the tinny voice of a well-known CNN anchor.

  At a stoplight on East Bay, the driver turned around and shouted, “You people just relax back there. I’m supposed to take everybody to the North Charleston Coliseum.”

  By the time Jack had heard four or five versions of the story, the bus was at the northern end of the peninsula, idling at a barricade across I-26 West. An officer boarded the bus and gave a cursory look to the passengers. “Thank y’all for your cooperation. We’re almost at the coliseum.”

  When the officer left the bus, Jack let out his breath. He could see barricades on the westbound side of I-26, holding back an ever-growing line of cars originally heading south into the city. Law enforcement was attempting to reroute traffic out of downtown, but given the interstate was elevated and dead-ended at downtown Charleston, providing a way for the eastbound traffic to go west, away from Charleston, would be a nightmare. Jack thought it likely that eventually a nincompoop would leave his car and try to climb down the enormous concrete pillars supporting the interstate, thus snarling traffic even further.

  Jack
called his daughter.

  “Daddy, where are you?”

  “Where are you, baby?” he asked simultaneously.

  “I got a ride to Georgetown. Ava texted me. They’re on a boat going to the B&B. Where are you?”

  “I’m on my way out of Charleston. I’ll meet you in Georgetown,” said Jack.

  “Daddy, Ava told me about the picture of mom. When were you going to tell me?” Sara asked this in a resigned way, too upset and distracted to badger him.

  “I’ll tell you everything later, including what I’ve found out since Richard showed me that picture and what we need to do.”

  “Yes, but, why? Why won’t you tell me what is going on?” She was beginning to cry now.

  “I will, I promise. Just not over a cell phone. Get going.”

  Silence. “Ok. Come get me, Dad, please.”

  “I love you, and I’m on my way. I’m about an hour behind you.”

  Chapter 64

  Fannie squinted at Thompson. “Ava asks a very good question. Why wouldn’t you want Amarintha to be tested?”

  At that moment, the freighter let out a long blast of its horn, a deafening noise that gave Thompson a few moments to think. He sat with his hands hanging between his knees, the three suspicious, impatient women sitting opposite him, waiting for his answer.

  When the noise stopped, he continued. “Do you remember there were three researchers at the Vatican?” They nodded. “The third priest recovered from the inhalation form of anthrax.”

  Amarintha started. “That’s almost never heard of.”

  Thompson kept his eye contact with her. “The priest was in a drug trial, and the CDC tested his current DNA profile against an old one. Genes related to inflammation, the MC1R genes, have caused his body to heal itself. You’re not infected with anthrax. Something else has happened to you. ”