Wendell Black, MD

by Gerald Imber, M. D.

“You talking about me or your two gorillas?”

  “Keep being a wise ass.”

  “Enough. Get me out of here.”

  “You got it. I had to pull rank on those two hotheads before they get themselves laughed out of court. What they have here is nothing but a few interesting facts about Alison’s behavior.”

  I agreed with that, and I had a few questions of my own.

  “What facts?”

  Deuce had stopped talking while the duty officer went through the ritual of identifying me, opening the self-locking door to the interview room, and instructing me on where to pick up my personal items. I did the whole cliché: rubbed my wrists, shook the stiffness out of my shoulders, took a deep breath, and followed the two men out of the room. I guess the ritual did exactly what it was supposed to. I was shaken up and defensive when I actually had no reason to be. The whole thing didn’t sit well and only increased my interest in getting to the bottom of whatever pit it was that I had fallen into.

  Deuce had a different take on the whole thing than I, but he was warming to the possibility of anthrax and terrorism being at the center of events. Where I lost him was Alison. “I don’t follow the whole MI6 part of this,” he said. “Is she a foreign asset, or isn’t she? If she is, then the feds should have no trouble squaring her role in this. If none of her masters owns up to her, then she has gone rogue or was never MI6 at all. In which case, she either has a lot of explaining to do or could be a person of interest, and maybe a very dangerous one.”

  “And?”

  “And we have to find her. That’s the best chance she has of telling her side of the story to friendlies. Rodriguez and Griffin won’t make it easy on her.”

  “True. Best if we find her first.”

  “The other problem is the feds. Do they know she disappeared?”

  “I’m not sure.” I looked skyward and tried to think but couldn’t remember the exact sequence of events. I shook my head. “I will fill Dell in on everything at noon.”

  “I take it I am not invited to this party.”

  “Sorry, Deuce, no can do. Dell has been pulling strings to get this together, and I can’t cross him. I’ll speak to Dell and deal you in as soon as I can, but obviously, I’m not in charge.”

  “Understood. You know the department is going to have to take action on our own unless the feds get us called off or at least establish a joint task force. It would be best for all of us to work together.”

  “Understood. Just give me until after we meet. I’ll call your cell. Maybe we can meet with Dell later in the day.” Deuce thought about that and nodded his agreement.

  “Agreed. Till after your meeting. Come on, I’ll drop you off. Where’s Dell at?” The suggestion seemed odd, but I let it slide.

  “I don’t know. Dell is going to call when they touch down.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “Great. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “I think you already said that.” Deuce smiled. We left the same way we came in, and I felt a whole lot less conspicuous. There were a few familiar faces, not the same ones from earlier. I put on a happy face, waved, and said hellos.

  Twelve minutes later, I was back at my empty apartment and Deuce took off to do whatever was on his schedule.

  “Thanks, Deuce. I’ll call you as soon as the meeting breaks.” I hoped it would be as easy as that.

  37

  Dell was down at 26 Federal Plaza on the honcho floor of the FBI offices. The place was new to me, and the contrast with Police Plaza was sharp—maybe shocking. Other than federal security, there were no uniforms. Everything was neat, and if not new, things were maintained in a manner well outside the mind-set and the budget of the NYPD. The suits had the day, but maybe that was just upstairs. There were none of the blue FBI windbreakers in evidence, just a lot of no-nonsense people who were a world apart from New York cops. I wasn’t sure if that was good. Imperfect and screwed up as they were, New York cops were people. These guys had a different mind-set.

  The check-in process at security was thorough, polite, and impersonal. My NYPD ID carried about as much weight as my driver’s license. Being on the visitors list for the director of the New York field office brought a bit more snap to it, and I was upstairs at reception in a flash. Even the elevators were faster than at 1 PP, and they weren’t packed like subway cars. But again, maybe that was just for the executive floors.

  Dell was standing to the left of the reception desk, looking solemn. He was dressed in a lightweight gray business suit, white shirt, and dark red necktie. He was a big, healthy-looking, happy guy, but he barely smiled a greeting. All business. “Hi, buddy,” he said, and walked forward as I entered, shook hands firmly, and ushered me across a waiting room decorated with flags and lots of official photos. I recognized the president and the attorney general, but I had no clue about the others. I looked around us to see if the serious face was for company, but we were alone in the waiting room, if you didn’t count a receptionist, who was concentrating on something out of view on the desktop. She paid us no mind, which set her apart from an otherwise alert organization.

  “Let’s go in here,” Dell said, and opened an unmarked door behind and left of the reception desk. I walked in first, and he closed the door behind us.

  “Dr. Wendell Black, NYPD,” Dell said, announcing me to two men and a woman. They were sitting along the long axis of a conference table with their backs to the big, bright, west-facing windows, and I couldn’t make out their faces. They had the home court advantage. They could study me while I had to squint to see their silhouettes. This was not meant to be an adversarial situation. I knew the game and I was disappointed.

  “I would like to introduce you to Harriet English, director of the New York field office of the bureau; Benjamin Marks, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District; and Constantine Panopolous, undersecretary of Homeland Security.”

  All three rose and reached across the table to shake hands. These were heavy-hitters with good manners and they were working on a Sunday. My annoyance dissipated and I asked Dell if he could close the blinds before he took his seat, which he did. It took a few seconds to acclimate myself to the lower light level, but I was more comfortable and could see who was across the table. Harriet English was a good-looking amalgam of austere features. Yankee to the core. She was tall and thin but definitely not skinny. Her hair was pulled back away from fine features that were slightly too prominent to be pretty. She sat board-straight and, all in all, gave the impression of strength and rectitude. I guess those were attributes a woman needed to land on top of the most important field office of the bureau.

  Marks was a really big guy. Big, like in fat. He was under six feet and over two fifty. His skin was taut, his black hair slicked back, and he looked as preppy as a Princeton freshman. His white golf shirt had a yacht club burgee on the left breast, where most people had an alligator or a polo player, and he wore finely pressed chinos. No evidence of a jacket. Marks couldn’t have been more than forty-five. He was going places. I classified him as a trust-fund baby doing the job because he loved it. Which, coming from me, wasn’t an indictment—I was the same kind of guy.

  The last member of the group, Constantine Panopolous, looked, acted, and talked like a cop, which he had been. He was pretty well known as the tough guy who kept the Homeland secretary on message. Panopolous’s sad eyes and Mediterranean features were regularly seen on news interviews and panels whenever issues of security in the post 9/11 world were discussed. He, too, was dressed casually. More JC Penney civil-servant than the upper-class-casual Marks. For no concrete reason, I was happy to see him at the table. I was happy to see them all involved. Apparently, they saw the threat.

  I was wearing a jacket and tie.

  Dell joined me on the wall side of the table and we looked at the faces across from us. An uncomfortable few seconds of silence followed. Not interrogation silence, but a where-do-we-go-from-here silence. Dell broke it.r />
  “Wendell, it’s your party.” He extended a hand in my direction. The others, except Dell and me, had been provided with legal pads and Department of the Treasury pens and were getting themselves into position to listen and take notes. Bottled water, Coke and Diet Coke, and an ice bucket were lined up on the left side of a dark Formica refectory table along the wall. Styrofoam coffee cups, a large vacuum bottle, and a pint of ultra-pasteurized half-and-half were on the other end of the table, as if to avoid cross-contamination. Used cups and water bottles were already in front of the participants. Dell got up and walked around the table and grabbed two bottles of water. He handed one to me and sat down. BlackBerrys, iPhones, and iPads were arranged in differing but compulsively neat patterns around the yellow pads. No one was more than a second away from base, and I noticed English and Marks already glancing down at flashing lights. I didn’t know whether or not to stand, and chose not to. I chewed my cheek and gazed upward, as I tend to do when I’m looking for inspiration, then got right into it.

  Twenty-five minutes later I had stumbled to the present. The hardest part was trying to keep the events of the last week chronological, unembellished, and unedited. I might have been long-winded, but I was into it. Everyone sighed and fidgeted a bit as I took a brief break before adding, “That’s how it happened. I’m convinced the whole thing means a terrorist event in the next few days.”

  English broke the silence with a word.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t really know. Obviously, New York, but I don’t know where.” I felt like that was a dumb answer or at least not the answer they wanted, and they were testing me. The faces around the table were not laughing at me, but they could have been. I felt defensive enough to explain my reasoning. “The port of entry has always been Kennedy. All the practice runs came through there, even though it may be the most secure airport in the country. Air transport was used repeatedly, even though our borders, north and south, and our ports are like sieves and truck or ship would have been easier and carried a far larger payload.”

  “So that means what?” English again.

  “Well, it means that the target is New York City. It’s less than an hour from JFK. Neither bags nor people are routinely examined at the port of entry, and the city has nothing more than a patrol car and a cop at bridge and tunnel entries, and if you take a look at those guys, they’re too busy texting or making calls to discourage anyone. My take: It’s New York, and it’s anthrax.”

  Panopolous was bouncing the spring end of his pen on the table and moving his head to some inner tune. He had our attention when he finally spoke. Actually, he had our attention when he was thinking.

  “Are we all agreed this is not a classified substance matter?”

  “Drugs?” someone asked. It was a rhetorical question.

  “No, not drugs,” I said. “They would go broke pushing such small quantities past customs. The infrastructure and the losses would cripple them. Look at the people involved; there are red flags all over the place. This is al-Qaeda.”

  Panopolous nodded in agreement. “I agree with the good doctor.”

  I was as sensitive about that good doctor bullshit as I was about doc. A false tribute about as meaningful as “my fine feathered friend.” “I agree with my fine feathered friend over here . . . though he is surely a babe in the woods.” But lots of silly, unimportant things annoy me. It may help explain why I live alone.

  “This could be the real thing,” Panopolous continued. “We have had intercepts sent up over the last three months that now make sense, but there is no humint to back it up. I need to bounce this back to the CT desk.”

  Ben Marks interrupted. “Any chatter heard in your shop, Harriet?”

  “Nothing that fits this. We hear mostly Stateside stuff. By the time the combined task forces are given intel to consider, it has been through the filter. This is raw stuff. Not our meat.”

  “Figured that,” Marks said. “Dell?”

  “Nothing. I heard all this first from Wendell, made some calls, talked to the secretary, who knew what Constantine knew and gave us the green.”

  “Okay,” Marks said, assuming the role of team leader and taking charge of the meeting. I half-expected him to go around the table pointing fingers. “What do we know about Ms . . . Dr. Withers? Where is she, and how does she tie into the big picture? Doctor?” Panopolous lifted an eyebrow at the power coup. The others either didn’t notice or let it slide. I had a little rush of anxiety before realizing I had already read him chapter and verse of all I knew. Maybe this was a good way to force us to focus, and I was all for that.

  “I haven’t a clue,” I answered. “I think she’s on our team, I mean, I’m pretty sure she’s on our team, but her behavior doesn’t square with the rest of the story.” I heard my response meld into my private doubts. “To answer your question directly, I have no idea how she fits in.” I stopped talking and looked at the inexpressive faces across from me. No one was rushing forward with information or letting me off the hook.

  “Dell?” The headmaster moved his gaze a few degrees to my right, taking in the quiet agent, the only man in a business suit. He was sitting comfortably erect, taking it all in. Dell kicked his chair back from the table and folded his hands across his chest. “We have made inquiries through several channels. We know her background is MI6, just as she told Wendell. They refer to her as Alison Withers, which does not mean that’s her name, not that it matters. Their people, pretty high up the chain, claim no knowledge of her whereabouts, which we tend to believe. This is not the kind of thing one deludes an ally over. We can count on the Brits to do whatever they can to defuse this, but they still may be skirting around giving up an asset. Whatever. We kicked the inquiry up to the very highest level. Let’s see if anything comes back.”

  “Do we all agree this represents a real threat?” Marks seemed to be looking for a show of hands. There was none. English nodded, followed by Dell. Marks skipped by me. “What about you?” he asked, looking at Panopolous.

  “Ben,” Panopolous snapped back. “With all due respect, this is our territory. We have procedures for situations like this. There can’t be a criminal investigation in the U.S. Attorney’s office without a crime or a suspect on American soil. So ease up.”

  If Marks was flustered, he didn’t show it. His face reddened a bit, but he barreled on. “Got it, so let’s lay it out.”

  “No, no. You don’t understand. At this stage you are an observer. I hope to God we will need you for legal opinions and prosecution, but right now, let us do our jobs.” Which struck a nerve.

  “Hey, if I’m not needed here, why did you fuck up my Sunday?” Now he was seriously red in the face. Marks had that look that only hypertensive, obese men can muster . . . two or three seconds of hyperventilation and apoplexy.

  “Ben, get a grip. Let me do what they pay me to do. The secretary requested DOJ presence. Me, I think the action will start and end at Kennedy. That would be the U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District, unless I am mistaken. Correct?”

  New York City is divided into two federal judicial districts, the Southern and the Eastern. Each district has its own roster of federal judges and a U.S. attorney. John F. Kennedy Airport is located in the Borough of Queens. And Queens and Brooklyn are in the Eastern District. If anything legal went down, Benjamin Marks would be bypassed, and the case would go to his colleague in the less publicized, very busy Eastern District. Marks was a smart guy. It could be a career-changer and he wanted to stay in the game.

  Panopolous was in charge. It also looked natural on him. He was the gritty, working-class, tough guy at school, who instinctively did the right thing, put himself on the line, then disappeared into the crowd. Now he ran with the ball. “How will this attack go down?”

  Dell interrupted, “Are we all convinced there will be an attempt?” That was a bit more optimistic. The show of hands was unanimous. He deferred to Panopolous, who was bouncing his pen again.

  “I thi
nk we should all thank Dr. Black here for his great work.” He showed his upturned palm my way. “Doctor, you have done the nation a great service.” He stood and reached across the table to shake my hand and I stood to meet him halfway. The others provided a smattering of applause. I was being dismissed.

  Dell rose as well. “Hold on, Constantine. Wendell is in the middle of this. We need his help. He blew the whistle. He knows the players.”

  “Dell, all kidding aside, we are professionals. Again, this is what we do. We will go to Dr. Black as necessary to check facts, and his ideas are welcome.”

  Dell responded, “Right, but he knows more of the technical stuff about anthrax than we do, and he is plugged into the medical establishment. He’s also NYPD, and we have to include them soon. Very soon. Be nice to have as little town-gown agro as possible.”

  “Dr. Black, are you a toxicologist?”

  “No.” Duh. He knew I was a police surgeon, not a lab rat. “But I’m as close to an expert on weaponizing anthrax as anyone else, and I know more of the science than any of you. By the time you rally the people at Fort Detrick it might be too late. And this is no longer about weaponizing the bug, we’re into the intervention phase, and I know the players better than anyone in this room.” If the first part was an exaggeration, the second was true. Time was a-wasting. I had read a great deal on the subject after the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Most every doctor had. It had become virtually negligent not to have a working knowledge. I forgot a lot of it, but I could get up to speed quickly. It wasn’t all that complicated. I went on. “There was nothing a couple of microbiologists and a bunch of untrained terrorists couldn’t learn from the Internet. Obtain some spores of Bacillus anthracus, which was still a disease to be reckoned with in much of the Third World. Grow it in an enriched medium, deprive it of enrichment so spores form; dry the hardened spores and grind them down as close to one micron each, about one-twenty-fifth the thickness of a Kleenex; add bentonite or silica to neutralize the electrostatic charge on the spores so they won’t stick together—and bingo, you have an aerosolized biological weapon. Inhale the spores, allow them to sprout in the lungs, which, by the way, are a perfect place—warm, moist, and rich with nutrients—and the anthrax bacillus is reconstituted from its spores, infects and destroys the lungs, and in short order you have a 90 percent fatality rate among untreated cases.”