The tension in McCabe's stomach ratcheted up several notches. From somewhere in his childhood escaped a desperate voice before he could stop himself. "Dad?"
He felt Wilson's hand on his shoulder. "It's a journal, McCabe. It's anecdotal."
But Wilson had already said it. The evidence would be there, somewhere in this room, of that McCabe was certain.
"I'm going back to the hotel," Wilson added, dropping his hand. "I assume you'll want to stay here?"
Barely acknowledging Wilson's departure, McCabe opened the first folder.
The tools employed by criminalists and epidemiologists are almost identical, which is why the CDC's investigators are often referred to as disease detectives. Serial killers, be they human, microbial, or both, adopt patterns of behaviour that, while often unique to an individual person or disease, are nevertheless definable. Within a few hours, McCabe realised that Tissot's files mostly were a set of comprehensive reports grounded in methodical scientific procedures. The microbiological side of it would be of more interest to Spinner and Susan. While the files also stated that Ebola had been tested in Zaire in 1976, anecdotal evidence was not enough, for such claims could be dismissed as delusions of grandeur. Because Tissot's primary intention had been to hide his outdoor experiment within a natural outbreak, McCabe's job was made doubly difficult.
Officially, the spread of the 1976 outbreak was blamed on the repetitive use of unsterilised needles by Belgian nuns-a common problem in third world nations with few resources. That so-called 'amplification in a hospital setting' still could not account for why the disease erupted simultaneously in fifty-five widely separated villages, when so few of those villages had had contact with the hospital. McCabe needed to find a clear link between Tissot and those villages, and that wasn't available in the files.
He hesitated before touching the first of Tissot's journals. Sitting under the flickering overhead light, surrounded by a coldly scientific liturgy of inhuman experiments, McCabe would sooner have touched one of Nate Sturgess' journals without the benefit of a glove box, than open up and crawl around inside the mind of a pathological butcher like Tissot.
Uncle Albert . What was he frightened of? The man was dead. The words in the journal held no power over him. They could not even pull him into what it was to be Albert, to empathise with a killer so closely that he could taste the blindingly compelling, erotic sense of power. He did not have to become this bastard in order to hunt him down.
No, but he needed it to hunt down those that had used the dark fruits of Tissot's labours. Taking a deep breath, McCabe pulled the first journal to him, opened the page, and skimmed through the entries to 1976.
Although he'd known what to expect, to see his name written there, so boldly, still came as a physical, and sickening shock. He found the link that he was seeking almost immediately. And the memory hit him with painful clarity.
"Your eyes do not look good to me, Joshua." Uncle Albert frowned and peered closely at him. "Come into the clinic and let me take a look at them."
"I'm okay," Josh replied, and continued playing with the cook's pet monkey.
"I warned you that you must wash your hands after touching that animal."
"I know!"
"Josh, do as your told," Ed said, looking up from the report he was working on. "Dad'll hit the roof if your arrive on the doorstep with conjunctivitis."
"Oh, all right," Josh mumbled. He stood and followed Albert into the clinic.
After pulling on a set of gloves, Albert took a vial from the fridge and carefully placed one drop in each of Josh's eyes. "This will stop any infection before it has a chance to take hold." He smiled. "It will be our little secret. Your father need never know."
That son of a bitch. It had been the perfect ruse. Diseases that led to blindness inflicted half the villagers in that part of Africa. Good old Uncle Albert and his medicines would have been welcomed with open arms. Epidemiologists who had later tracked Ebola Zaire would never have thought to ask villagers if anyone had given them eye drops. Why would they? Disease couldn't be spread from person to person when the dropper never touched the body.
Unless, of course, the dropper itself was filled with the virus.
Tissot's journals held much more, for they unlocked the key pieces to a secret world that McCabe had caught glimpses of but never fully understood. And the logic of it was compelling.
A key landed on the open page in front of him. "I got you a room at the Hyatt," said Wilson.
"Thanks." McCabe stood, walked across to one of the boarded windows, and looked out between the cracks down onto a park. The sun was coming up. "I think I'll go for a run." He turned and, seeing the look in Wilson's eyes, said, "My father knew."
Wilson said nothing. There wasn't a lot anyone could say.
He'd just finished his run and was walking through the lobby of the Hyatt, when the explosion rattled the hotel's windows. By the time McCabe reached the grey building on Jellico Street, the surrounding structures were well ablaze, and fire fighters were ordering everyone back.
It wasn't until later that evening, that it was ascertained that eight people, including Agent David Wilson, had been killed in the 'gas' explosion.
In Pretoria, Albrecht Tissot's house and adjoining garage had also mysteriously caught fire and burned to the ground. His wife and daughter had apparently been trapped inside.
-Chapter 33-
Oklahoma, April 19, 1996
The open-air memorial service for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing failed to offer catharsis. If anything, it left a bitter taste in Jordan Jordan's mouth.
Nate Sturgess placed a consoling arm around her shoulder and mumbled something about McCabe. Jordan nodded. She's already sensed the FBI Agent's presence. At first she'd thought it was someone else wearing the familiar cologne. But no, McCabe was there in the sombre crowd that had gathered at the empty space where the Federal Murrah building once stood.
Jordan wished that both men had left her alone. The grief that Nate Sturgess and Joshua McCabe had suffered was different from hers. So, too, was the grief of those around her. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the lone bomber in the Federal Murrah Building was in custody.
The service continued. The preparation for McVeigh's trial continued. Life continued, yet Jordan was no closer to the truth than the day it had happened, a year earlier.
Once upon a time, just a few short months ago, she would have dismissed McCabe's theories about a deliberate cover-up in the Oklahoma bombing as paranoid and delusional. But she would have said the same about a chimera virus.
She thought back over the past months, and the evidence in McCabe's files that did not fit the prosecution's case against McVeigh. In the crowd of mourners were people she knew, friends and colleagues, but, warned off by investigators, they were unwilling to go public with their doubts. Don't muddy the issue, they'd been told. Play the game, play by our rules, and we get McVeigh. Open you mouth, uncover the truth and we lose him. Eventually, the warnings had become threats. Do you want to see McVeigh go free? Keep this up and he'll walk! They said it so often, in so many different ways to so many different people that it became a truth in itself until the evidence-the facts-had been discarded.
Lee Harvey Oswald might have pulled the trigger, but who really killed Kennedy? McVeigh had detonated the bomb, but who was responsible for butchering her husband and beautiful little boy?
Like the Federal Murrah Building itself, the evidence that might have connected the events had been bulldozed and buried. The Justice Department was using McVeigh's prosecution as a public relations exercise, a showcase for interagency cooperation and forensic ingenuity. Here is the crime, here are the suspects, here's the motive. All they needed to do was ensure that the forensic witnesses said the right things, while the real witnesses were kept away, so that twelve honest men and women could render the scripted verdict. Anything else, including McCabe's attempt to connect Oklahoma with subsequent the events on Mat
hew Island, had become a matter of 'national security'.
Those who knew the truth, knew that the Consortium was real and that it had somehow had a hand in the bombing of the Federal Murrah Building, were obliged to work within the constraints of an antagonistic Congress. Just a few days earlier, in his speech at Washington University, President Clinton had declared war on terror. But many, including senior members of the Pentagon, State Department and FBI, were determined to protect their turf against what they saw as a White House power grab. The sheer fact that Clinton the Democrat, a man they saw as a mere pretender to the Oval Office, wanted action, was the best possible reason to do absolutely nothing. Wars were things you declared on countries, not a few Moslem extremists.
And that, of course, was where the power of the Consortium rested. For the most part, their interests ran parallel to powerful factions within the US government.
The service was finally over. Jordan turned and walked away, leaving Nate to follow. The first time he'd seen her scarred, shaven head, he'd been concerned and sympathetic. In the months since Mathew Island, he'd become a friend rather than an acquaintance. It was only a question of time before he wanted to be something more.
Jordan spotted McCabe amidst the thinning crowds. He wasn't trying to be anything. She preferred that; it allowed her to retain her strength and dignity. It also allowed her to retain the shutters on her emotions. How odd, McCabe can actually remain still . He wasn't even looking at her.
"Brant send you to fetch me back?" she said when she reached him.
He said nothing. If there was one constant with Joshua McCabe, it was that he would not elaborate until it suited him.
"Hey, Josh! How ya doing?" Nate was clearly delighted to see the man who had been his principal debriefer.
Nate had figured McCabe to be, in his words, 'an intelligent cop'. After weeks of regurgitating everything he could recall to a dozen dark-suited men from a dozen federal US agencies, and one pathetic little WHO filing clerk who'd handed him his marching orders, Nate had thanked McCabe for helping him. He'd jokingly suggested that he should be a psychologist instead of a G-man. It was only later, when McCabe was out of earshot, that Jordan had revealed the truth. McCabe was a profiler. Her rummaged through human minds like others rummaged through garage sales, picking through people's lives, paying next to nothing for the odd, useful item, then leaving without a backward glance.
Still without looking at her, McCabe smiled at Nate and said, "Congratulations on your new job."
Well, that was different. Jordan was slowly categorizing the multiple facets of Joshua McCabe. Politeness was a tool. Or perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps McCabe genuinely liked Nate. Both men had been through a rare kind of hell, one that the FBI agent didn't have to psychoanalyse to understand. And Nate had never let personal demons hobble him. Was that why McCabe had come to Oklahoma now, on her last day here? To judge her ability to deal with her demons? To see how she'd coped packing up the final mementoes from Doug and Jamie's lives and shipping them to Australia, then putting the apartment on the market? Or was his interest more to do with what she'd learned from the other survivors whose lives had been shattered that day? Knowing McCabe, all of the above.
"Thanks," Nate replied. "Despite claims to the contrary, the CDC pays a whole lot better than the WHO. Conditions are better, too. No mud."
McCabe chuckled. "No volcanoes, either."
"Mike Warner has insisted on getting married on a 'nice' volcano. He's determined that my experiences on Mathew Island should not colour my perspective forever."
"And you're going?" Jordan was genuinely confused. She'd only been away from work a few weeks, during which time McCabe had learned to laugh and Nate had agreed to go to another volcano?
"I don't have any choice. I promised I'd be his best man." Nate shrugged. "And Katie would never forgive me if I didn't show. Now all I have to do is convince Jordan to take a few more weeks off work and come with me." He put his arm around her. It was a hopeful rather than a possessive gesture. "The way I see it, if Vulcan really had it in for me I would have been dead a dozen times over. I think Mathew actually cured my volcanophobia."
Jordan wasn't in the mood for this. She was happy for Nate, really. But her world was elsewhere-at least as long as the FBI continued to employ her. "Sorry Nate," she replied. "I'm leaving for DC this afternoon."
"It's Friday. Can't you at least wait until Monday?" But he dropped his arm, shrugged good-naturedly, and added, "In that case, how about I buy you lunch?"
McCabe looked up. Jordan followed his gaze, to see Commander Chuck Long coming towards them. She felt a flash of resentment. This was to have been her time, alone with her memories and her grief. Then she saw Chuck's face, and remembered that the tragedy of Oklahoma was not hers alone.
Like her, Chuck had no desire to share his pain. In the time it took to reach them, his expression had shifted from sombre to friendly. Jordan resigned herself to an afternoon of unwanted companionship.
"Another?" Chuck asked.
McCabe shook his head and nursed his beer.
"Please," Jordan replied.
Nate had departed on an earlier flight to Atlanta. Her and McCabe's flight to DC wasn't due out for another hour, while Chuck was leaving for San Diego in a few minutes. She opened her mouth to say something while Chuck was gone, but McCabe was staring at the bottles lined up behind the bar. His face was as flat and expressionless as Jordan had ever seen it, and he had gone still again.
A tendril of fear began to work its way up her spine. All through lunch, it had been like he was working overtime to remain calm in the face of-
"Too bad about Hussein Kamel, huh?" Chuck had returned with a couple of club sodas and a bowl of peanuts.
Saddam Hussein had enticed his son-in-law back to Iraq on a promise of reinstatement as head of Iraq's BW programme. Kamel had accepted. His remains had been found dumped on a rubbish pile a few days later.
At no point had Jordan ever considered Iraq a serious contender for the source of the chimera, despite the spin that the CIA had put on Kamel's 'Chicken Farm' documents. Iraq's viral programme simply was not that advanced. However, in the weeks that she'd been back in Oklahoma, she'd learned things that drew an unnerving connection between events. It just wasn't a connection that made any sense. Why would the Consortium, whose aim had apparently been to demonstrate the risk posed by bioweapons, specifically by Iraq, conspire to hide the evidence that Iraq had had a hand in the Oklahoma bombing?
Still watching McCabe, Jordan said, "Didn't Saddam say something about 'all being forgiven'?"
Picking up a handful of nuts, McCabe let out a derisive snort. Jordan sipped the soda. She was imagining things. McCabe was…well, McCabe.
Then a fleeting thought struck her. The Iraqi leader hadn't always been an enemy of the US, a fact that she well knew because of Doug's work in Baghdad. She studied McCabe. His face lacked any discernible expression.
"Well, the other sixteen who defected with Kamel sure as hell aren't going home." Chuck Long pushed the bowl of nuts aside. "They've opted to stay in Kuwait."
"There's been no attempt to bring them here?" Jordan said hopefully. Debriefing them could help untangle a lot of questions.
"To the States? Hell, no. They're helping the Kuwaitis set up counter-intelligence networks in Iraq conditional on not being taken anywhere near US soil. We screwed the pooch, big time, with the last defectors." Chuck shook his head in disgust. "The CIA are a bunch of fuck-ups."
McCabe tensed, and his head jerked up. "What are you talking about?"
Startled by his sudden animation, Jordan glanced around the bar. After the Cold War, the illusion of glasnost had supposedly seen a decline in the number of spies running around DC. But as old allies became new enemies, the numbers had, in fact, increased. Then again, this wasn't DC. The chances of anyone overhearing them in an airport bar were minimal.
Chuck lowered his voice before replying, "Back in 1994, twelve top-level Iraqi officia
ls, including a couple of Yale-trained biochemists and molecular biologists, defected from Iraq to Kuwait."
"I remember reading something about that," Jordan said.
"Four of them stayed in Kuwait, but I found out yesterday that the eight scientists decided to place some distance between themselves and Iraq, so the CIA brought them to the US. Three of them were almost immediately assassinated by Iraqi agents. It was real Hollywood stuff. High-speed car chases, right in the middle of DC. The spooks took out the Iraqi assassins, but then the whole scene was replayed two weeks later, although no one was killed this time. Someone in the CIA was tipping off Iraqi intelligence to the movements of these guys, so the White House decided that, when it came to matters of domestic security, it was the FBI's jurisdiction.
"Yeah, old buddy." Chuck smirked at McCabe. "You guys got babysitting duty. But what happened next; you wouldn't read about it in a paperback. The Feds hauled them out west, way out west away from anything remotely resembling a CIA or FBI safe house, and shuffled them round for a while. Eventually, someone in DC decided to put them on ice in a secure apartment inside a goddamned Federal Building. Two weeks later-" He shook his head in disgust and downed the last of his drink. The boarding call for his flight had just been announced.
Jordan froze. "Here in Oklahoma? They kept them in the Federal Murrah Building under lock and key?" She turned to McCabe-and did a double take. He'd visibly paled "Josh," she demanded, trying to quell her rising panic. "What is it?"
He met her look. "Five knew who."
-Chapter 34-
En route to Washington, DC. April 19, 1996
McCabe wasn't entirely sure why he'd gone to Oklahoma. Initially he'd told himself that Spinner was the only one he could trust; her losses outweighed his, her desire to learn the truth, more compelling. But on the flight from South Africa, he'd realised that, over the last four months, he had come to view her not just as a tool but as an ally. From the very first day, when he'd ripped aside her illusions about her profession, she'd refused to let preconceptions rule her thinking. Fragile walls around her psyche, carefully constructed barriers, emotional crutches; he understood her better than she feared, for he was her. And, like him, she did not ignore or deny evidence because it did not conform to an accepted or politically convenient theory.
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