by C. S. Graham
“I can’t believe you got all this out of Mudd,” said Matt.
“Using Jax’s name worked like a charm.” She flipped open her notebook. “Kline’s new identity was Dr. Marvin Clark. You’re right about the time-honored tradition of bureaucratic red tape. He signed for everything from a new birth certificate to a social security number and fake degrees. And then, in November, they issued new birth certificates for his wife, who changed her name to Caroline, and to his baby daughter, Hannah.”
“That must have been part of the deal he struck,” said Jax. “The U.S. government got his family out of Eastern Germany, and he went to work for them. When and where did he die?”
“He didn’t. He’s still alive. I Googled him. He’s ninety-three years old, and he published an article in Scientific American just last year.”
“An article? On what?”
“Colony Collapse Disorder in bees.”
“Bees?”
“Bees. They’re his hobby.” She frowned down at her notes again. “He worked at Fort Detrick until 1967, then moved to Boston and became a professor of biochemistry at MIT.”
Matt said, “But he didn’t have a degree in biochemistry.”
“He did by the time the OSS got through with him. That’s what they gave him, rather than an MD.”
“Nice.”
“When he retired from MIT in 1988, he moved back to Maryland.”
“Any particular reason?”
“That’s where his daughter and grandchildren live. She works at Fort Detrick herself, although for a while she was assigned to the human genome project for the Department of Energy.” Tobie looked up. “What I don’t understand is why the genome project is under the Department of Energy.”
“For the same reason the Manhattan Project was,” said Jax. “Because this is not about making people’s lives better. It’s about killing them more efficiently.”
Matt said, “Kline’s daughter is a scientist, too?”
Tobie nodded. “Dr. Hannah Clark. She has a Ph.D. in biochemistry. A real one.”
Jax loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his dress shirt. “I wonder how much she knows about what Daddy did in the war.”
“She may not know anything.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. You remember what that Communist from Dachau said in those old reports Andrei gave us? About helping load Kline’s files and medical specimens on an American truck? Somehow, I can’t see Kline shipping all his discoveries off to the Far East on U-114. He must have kept some of the pathogens with him at the camp.”
Tobie stared at him. “You think the U.S. government brought the Dachau pathogen back to the States with Kline??”
Matt said, “It makes sense.”
“But…Then why would Rodriguez and Boyd—or whoever we’re dealing with—need to salvage U-114?”
“Maybe they tried to get their hands on the government’s stock and couldn’t.” Jax pushed to his feet. “See if you can get someone at Fort Detrick to talk to us—preferably Kline’s daughter. October and I will head up to Maryland and see what we can get out of Kline.”
Matt glanced at the clock. It was already a quarter past nine. “You’d better hurry.”
67
General Gerald T. Boyd settled back into the comfortable leather seat of the aircraft provided for his particular use by the United States government, and nodded to his aide, Phillips. “Let’s go.”
Phillips looked at him in surprise. “We’re not waiting for Rodriguez?”
“Rodriguez has some business to attend in Maryland.”
After thirty years of special ops, Boyd knew that the success of an operation always depended upon the ability to improvise and remain flexible. Which was why he’d decided to send Rodriguez up to Maryland today.
Originally, they’d planned to quietly eliminate the German, Kline, in a few weeks, when the old man’s death—and any possible speculation that might arise from it—would be lost in the chaos of the plague sweeping the world. But the situation had changed. The man needed to be silenced, now.
Boyd was not pleased with Rodriguez’s recent performance. It was bad enough the way he’d screwed up with the Russian kid. But by letting that asshole from Division Thirteen slip through his fingers again and again, he’d seriously jeopardized the operation.
The most critical segment of the operation—the actual release of the pathogen—would be carried out by Walker himself, with Boyd and Phillips as backup. That segment was simply too crucial, and too delicate, to delegate. Besides, Boyd had learned long ago that the best way to run a black op was to keep each stage carefully compartmentalized, with the men working on one stage kept ignorant of both the details of the other stages and the big picture.
Rodriguez knew about the U-boat and about the pathogen it carried. He now knew about the German, Kline. That was it; the rest of the operation was outside the parameters of his briefing. But Boyd had decided that once the project was completed, Rodriguez would need to be eliminated, too. The man had outlived his usefulness.
Only three people knew the scope of the entire operation: Boyd, Walker, and Phillips. And even Phillips, as Boyd’s aide, was clueless about the origins of the venture. The man sincerely believed he and Boyd were working on another dirty but legitimately authorized black op. That was the nice thing about secret projects: they were so easy to keep hidden from everyone—the public, the press, Congress, even the president. Phillips was Boyd’s creature and always would be. But Walker…
This whole brilliant project had originally been Walker’s idea, although he’d lacked the expertise and the dirty contacts required to pull it off. That’s why he’d come to Boyd. It didn’t matter. Once the pathogen was released, Walker would be silenced, too.
Boyd didn’t believe in loose ends.
Frederick, Maryland
Turning off the Interstate at Frederick, Jax drove through idyllic farmland of gently rolling fields and quiet canals. Here, away from the city, the sky was a cold, crisp blue. The home of the man once known as Dr. Martin Kline turned out to be a neat white Federal two-story with green shutters and acres of pasture that sloped down to a stream edged with beech and white oak.
“Nice place,” said Tobie as Jax parked his 650i BMW on the broad gravel sweep before the door. They had not phoned ahead.
A thickset housekeeper with sleek black hair and a heavy accent pointed them toward an almond orchard, where a tall, bone-thin man in a white boiler suit with a veiled hood was tending a hive of bees.
“Dr. Marvin Clark?” said Jax as they walked up to him.
“Yes?”
Jax drew his real, genuine, official CIA ID from his pocket and held it up. “I know you’ve seen one of these before, Dr. Kline.”
The man behind the veiled hood stood very still, a frame crawling with bees gripped in both hands. “What do you want?”
“The answers to some questions. Last Saturday, someone salvaged a World War II-era U-boat that sank off the coast of Denmark in March 1945. Amongst its other cargo, U-114 carried samples of a pathogen you isolated at Dachau and called die Klinge von Solomon. The Sword of Solomon.”
The old man slid the frame back into the hive and carefully replaced the inner and outer covers. Only then did he take a step back and shove the hood off his white head. His face was long and bony, with deeply wrinkled flesh and dark brown eyes that blinked several times.
“Who?” he said, his voice husky, his German accent still there despite the long passage of years. “Who has it now?”
“We don’t know,” said Tobie, carefully watching his face. “That’s what we’re hoping you can help us with.”
His gaze shifted to her. “You think I had something to do with this?”
Jax said, “Who else knew the pathogen was on that U-boat?”
Kline shook his head. “How would I know? Surely there have been many with access to the records over the years.”
“All official records related to U-114 were lost in the wa
r,” said Jax. “As far as we can tell, the only person with any knowledge of the submarine’s cargo is you.”
Kline stared off across the rolling pastureland to where a stand of oak turned a vibrant gold and rust beneath the pale blue autumn sky. As Tobie watched, a quiver moved across the sunken features of his face.
She said, “Has anyone approached you recently? Someone interested in your research at Dachau?”
He shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin, flat line. “No. No one.”
“No one?” said Jax.
“No one.” Reaching down, Kline picked up his hive tool and smoker. “I know what you think when you look at me. You see a monster. You judge me by what I did in Germany, in the war. You think I should have been hanged at Nuremburg, with the others.”
When neither answered him, he began to walk across the field, toward another stand of hives near the creek. “You tell me this: Why is the work I did for Hitler wrong, and what I did for your government acceptable?”
Keeping pace with him, Tobie said, “You deliberately exposed men to a disease you knew would probably kill them.”
He swung to face her. “I did, yes. And what of the American doctors who infected four hundred prisoners in Chicago with malaria in 1940? Or those who exposed African Americans in Virginia to a fungus they hoped to develop into a race-specific weapon? Do you think they should be hanged, as well? How about the presidents who authorized their experiments?”
He glanced at Jax. “And you. Your CIA released Type Two dengue fever in Cuba, and supplied Saddam Hussein with West Nile Virus, sarin gas, and anthrax to use against Iran. And now? Now the United States is spending billions to develop a new generation of genetically engineered bioweapons with no possible cure.” He swiped the air before him, as if brushing away a bee. “Don’t talk to me about war crimes.”
“Is that true?” Tobie whispered to Jax as Kline took off across the pasture again with the long-legged stride of a man half his age.
Jax said, “I’m afraid so.”
“You think what some madmen are doing now makes what you did sixty years ago all right?” said Tobie, stomping after him. “Maybe you think it would be a good thing if that pathogen were let loose on the world.”
At the edge of the second set of hives, he turned to face her again, his smoker billowing a cloud of fragrant wood smoke around them. As she watched, all the anger and aggression seemed to leach out of him, leaving him looking older than before. “No. In that, you are wrong. I am not proud of the work I did when I was younger—either for Hitler or for your government. We were vain, foolish men, ignorant of so many of the secrets of life and human diversity. I understand now what the Sword of Solomon would do to the world. You think I want that to be my legacy? My gift to my grandchildren?”
“Then tell us who salvaged that U-boat.”
He slipped the veil over his head again and turned toward the new hives. “What I am about to do is likely to agitate my little friends. If you are averse to being stung, I suggest you leave.” “Think he’s telling the truth?” said Tobie, leaning against the side of Jax’s convertible.
Jax stared off across the fields, to where they could see Kline gently prying the cover off a new hive. “Not entirely.”
“So what do we do?”
Jax pushed away from the car. “We go talk to his daughter.”
68
Dr. Hannah Clark received them on the wraparound porch of her gingerbread-draped Victorian, where she was carving a pumpkin with crescent-moon-shaped eyes and a sad mouth. She was a tall woman, with her father’s bony frame and haunted brown eyes. Born in the last years of the Second World War, she was in her sixties now, white haired but still slim and vigorous. According to Matt, who had set up their meeting, she had retired from Ford Detrick the previous year.
She listened without interruption, her hand tightening around her small paring knife, while Jax told her of the salvaging of U-114 and the plot by unidentified agents to release the pathogen known as the Sword of Solomon. When he finished, she said, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we’re hoping you can help us figure out who’s behind it.”
Laying aside the knife, she went to stand at the railing, her gaze on the canal that ran placidly beside the distant road. Despite the sunshine, the air was crisp and heavy with the scent of burning leaves. “It’s because of my father, isn’t it? You think he’s somehow involved.” When Jax didn’t answer, she said, “Well, you’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
She swung to face him again. “Last December, shortly before I retired, the security guards at Fort Detrick caught one of the lab technicians trying to smuggle a sample of DP3 out of the facility.”
“DP3?”
“The pathogen was never called die Klinge von Solomon in this country. When brought here, after the war, it was given the name Dachau Pathogen III—DP3, for short.”
Jax and Tobie exchanged quick glances. Dachau Pathogen Three? How many of Kline’s other nasty diseases had the U.S. imported?
Jax said, “What happened to this technician? Can we talk to him?”
“Unfortunately, no. He was arrested and turned over to the local authorities for prosecution. Two days later, he was found dead in his cell. It was ruled a suicide.”
Tobie said, “Do you believe it was?”
A faint, ironic smile touched her lips. “After thirty years of working on secret projects for the government? Hardly. I heard they discovered that a hundred thousand dollars had been transferred into his account the week before the incident.”
“Did they trace the source of the funds?” said Jax.
“They tried. It came from a bank in the Cayman Islands.” She looked from one of them to the other. “You need to remember that DP3 has been is this country for sixty years. There are probably dozens of people who know about it.”
“Perhaps. But how many of them would know that when their attempt to bribe someone to steal the pathogen from Fort Detrick failed, there was more available on a U-boat that sank off the coast of Denmark in 1945?”
Dr. Kline’s daughter stood very still. A breeze kicked up, rustling the dying leaves of the beeches along the canal and fluttering the fine white hair that framed her lined face.
Tobie said, “According to what we’ve been told, this DP3 is some sort of respiratory virus that is only lethal to those of Semitic origin. Is that true?”
Dr. Clark put up a hand to push the windblown hair from her face. “It’s a retrovirus, actually, not a virus—which means it replicates itself by using its host’s cells to transcribe its RNA into DNA, which is then incorporated into the host’s own genome. At first we didn’t understand how the pathogen could kill some people so quickly while hardly affecting others. But with the advent of DNA testing, we were able to determine that many Europeans and Asians produce a series of three hormonelike substances called chemokines, which block the DP3 retrovirus from slipping into their T-cells. Those of Middle Eastern descent typically lack those three protective chemokines.”
“What about Africans?” said Jax.
“The results there have been mixed. It seems that those from certain areas frequently share the genetic sequence; others don’t.”
“It’s fatal?”
“For those who lack the necessary protective sequence, yes. Nearly always.”
“So it really is an ethnic bioweapon,” said Tobie softly.
“In a sense. But I’d hardly describe it as a smart bomb.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because the concept of race is a social illusion—not a scientific construction. The truth is, there is far more genetic variation within a group than between groups.”
Jax said, “Meaning?”
“Meaning that if this pathogen were let loose, millions of those who consider themselves ‘white’ would also die. Anyone who sees DP3 as an easy way to rid the world of Jews and Arabs is not just evil; he’s a bigoted fool.”
Tobie s
aid, “Is there a treatment for it?”
Dr. Clark shook her head. “The U.S. never had any plans to pursue DP3 as a weapon, so there was no need to develop a vaccine.” She must have seen the shock in Tobie’s face, because she gave another of her wry smiles and said, “The United States gets around the Biological Weapons Convention by saying our bio programs are purely defensive, which technically makes them legal. Unfortunately, knowledge that is developed for ‘defensive’ purposes can all too easily be used for a different purpose entirely.”
Tobie studied the woman’s even features. She looked like someone’s gentle, white-haired grandmother, not a mad scientist who had devoted her life to devising new and more lethal ways to kill. “That doesn’t bother you?”
Dr. Clark turned to look toward the canal, where a fat brown duck waddled complacently across the lawn, its feathers ruffled by the growing wind. “It bothered my father. He long ago decided that all such work is morally indefensible, since we never know how our discoveries will be used by others. It’s why he left Fort Detrick and went to MIT.”
When neither Tobie nor Jax said anything, she added, “I know you’re remembering what he did at Dachau, during the war. But if you think he’s involved in any of this, now, you’re wrong. He’s not the same man. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”
It was obvious that as far as she was concerned, the conversation was at an end.
She walked with them to the road beside the canal, where Jax had parked his car. Jax said, “Your father claims he never told anyone about the shipments sent out of Germany under Operation Caesar. But he may have told someone he’s hesitant to betray—someone he trusts and doesn’t want to believe could be involved in this.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line, and after a moment said, “I could try driving out to see him. He may be willing to talk to me.”
Jax handed her a card with his cell number. “Please.”