“He said he needs to talk to me,” the boy continued. “Then he says, ‘I’m not your real father.’ Gave me some folder with information about . . . He says, ‘You’re actually the clone of this famous murderer guy.’ ”
“He’d never told you any of this before?”
“No.”
“Got it, so then what?”
“Then he said they’d kill me and then he left, and then, so yeah. . . . That’s it.” The boy used the back of his hand to wipe away fresh tears. “Bet you think I’m a total pussy, huh?”
“Because you’re crying?” Castillo really looked at the boy for the first time in twenty minutes and tried to see him just as that: a boy. It was, he realized immediately, a distasteful thought. Because he knew exactly what Jeff really was and because of the kind of life awaiting the kid even in the best circumstances. “Anyone who’d think that just proves nothing bad’s ever really happened to ’em.” He had enough damned dead kids on his conscience to deal with. “What’d you do?” he asked, chasing away the thought.
“What?”
“After your dad left, what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Must have done something.”
“Walked the neighborhood, I guess.”
“Anywhere special?”
“No.” Jeff shook his head. “Just around. It was dark when I got back, I could tell people were in the house, so I hid.”
“Your dad drives a white Avalon, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“You drive yet?”
“No. Supposed to get my temps and stuff this summer.”
“What about that folder your dad gave you?”
“Wasn’t there when I got back. Nothing was.”
“Yeah. You’re doing great, kid. Just hang in there.” Castillo tapped at his smartphone. “This is a list of the students who were killed during the breakout,” he said as he handed the phone over. It was nine names. Nine dead kids. “You know any of these guys?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “How many Henrys are there?”
“Too many,” Castillo agreed. “Last names only, then.”
“Him.” The boy extended his hand and finger to the name.
“Careful, touch screen.”
Jeff read out four names. “They were . . . I don’t know,” he said. “They were nice kids.”
“That seems to be the consensus.” Castillo took the phone back to pull up the list of the six who’d escaped. Like the nine dead, their adopted names.
Albert Young. Jeffrey Williford. Henry Roberts.
Dennis Uliase. Ted Thompson. David Spanelli.
“Know these guys?” Castillo asked, giving the phone over again.
“They . . . They’re, ah, clones, too?”
“Yes. Know ’em?”
“Henry and Al. And David. But David . . .”
“David what?”
“He’d never . . . I can’t believe he’d do this.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He was chill, that’s all. Kinda funny. Friendly. I don’t know.”
“Maybe he isn’t part of this,” Castillo said, making a mental note on David. “Maybe he and some of the others are caught up in it as hostages, or . . .”
“I don’t know.”
“And Henry and Al?”
The boy visibly shuddered.
“That bad?”
Jeff nodded. “It was the way they looked at you. How they looked at everyone. Like you were a mouse and they were cats kinda thing. Always with this smile. Like they could do whatever they wanted to you. I don’t know. Sounds retarded, I know.”
“Not at all. And it helps me figure out who the leaders in this group may be. You know where these guys like to hang out?”
“I don’t know. On Xbox? Movies, maybe. Um, Henry was into paintball.”
“Anything else? David? Ted?”
“No.”
“That’s OK. It’s a good start. We’ve already got eyes on the six homes of these guys. You and I will head back and hit some local malls, theaters, and wherever the hell folk play paintball. A lot of these guys lived near DSTI. Figure King of Prussia Mall. Wawa. Your average person tends to hide in places they already know.”
“These aren’t ‘average’ people.”
“They’re civilians.” Castillo took the phone back, searched, and handed it over again. “And that’s average enough for me. Look at this for me.”
The screen showed a bunch of dates and numbers that didn’t make any sense.
And this:
One drawing on each page surrounded by the seemingly random numbers and letters. Dates? Castillo wondered again.
“Are these . . .”
“Those are from your dad’s journal,” Castillo explained. He could tell the information startled the boy some, and he pressed ahead. Black-and-white questions worked for everyone. “Who is M. Carty?”
Jeff shrugged.
“Do you know any Cartys or McCartys or . . . ?”
“No.”
“Think.”
“No.”
“What’s this bird?”
“Dunno.”
“Al is Albert, yes?”
Shrug.
“Has to be,” Castillo said.
“I guess.”
“Albert Fish or Albert DeSalvo?”
“Who is that?”
“Famous guys named Al.”
“Famous for killing people.”
It wasn’t a question, and Castillo nodded. “What do you think that is?” He nodded down at the phone. “This squiggle. A music note? Did your dad play any musical instruments?”
“Not that I know. And that’s not like any note I’ve ever seen. Is it a nose?”
“You play?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?” Castillo spotted a doughnut chain ahead. Somewhere to pull over, make some calls, turn back toward Philadelphia. “What do you play?”
“Bass.”
“Cool.” Castillo squinted up at the rearview mirror. It was time to get hold of Pete Brody, for sure. Call Colonel Stanforth again. Ox, maybe. He needed so much more info. Where to start? It was a long shot at best that the malls would turn up anything. “Maybe it’s some kinda DNA thing? Like a scientific notation of some kind.”
Shrug again. “Maybe.”
He half watched Jeff exploring the phone, looking at some of the other pics from the journals.
Hi, I’m Jeffrey Dahmer.
“How’s this?” said Castillo. “Your father adopted out one of the Albert clones to a family named Baum. Al Baum . . . How’s that sound?”
“Sure,” the boy said absently, lost in his father’s scribbles.
Castillo had earlier logged into a lower-level NSA database. “There are twenty thousand Baum families in the United States.”
“Is that a lot?”
“Too many for us.” He slowed to pull into the Dunkin’ Donuts.
“What are you doing?”
“Relax. Gotta turn around anyway. And I’ve got some people to get ahold of. Folk who could help point us in the right direction. Maybe grab you some food.”
“Not hungry.”
“Not a problem.” Castillo deliberately parked the car in the one spot where the sun’s position likely blinded the store’s lone outdoor security camera, if it even worked at all. He felt the need to hide Jeff—would have to disguise the kid when they had a breath.
“I need five minutes,” he said. “After, we’ll hit some of the spots you know about. Then probably set up camp somewhere in town to grab some sleep and start digging into the data. Sound good? Good. In the meantime, you stay right damn here. I’ll be over there. But listen . . . hey, Jacobson, listen.” The boy turned again at the sound of his name. An easier name for Castillo to utter. “If you try and take off, or whatever, I’ll catch you easily and drive you straight back to DSTI. Got it?”
The boy nodded.
“DSTI claims that you don’t
even exist to just about everyone. Are you sure you got it? Any time today you go and call the cops on me, ask someone for help, make a scene or anything . . . you need to know that every path leads you straight back to DSTI. And I’m gonna keep this next fact as simple and honest as I can, OK?”
“OK,” the boy said, curious.
“No one’s told me to find you,” Castillo said. “I’m only supposed to find six boys and your dad. That’s it. No one is paying me to find you. In my book, you’re on my team now.”
“What if—”
“If,” Castillo stopped the question, “they decide you’re a ‘liability’ and want me to capture you specifically? I promise to give you some money and a week’s head start. Fair?”
The boy looked away.
Castillo reached out awkwardly to tap his shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “I don’t really understand what’s going on yet. And I know you’re not too far behind me. But I know if the goal is getting you, you and your father, out of this safely, right now I’m your best bet.”
Jeff turned and considered Castillo’s face. It was amazing the way kids didn’t even try to hide it. He was sizing Castillo up.
Castillo thought, If it was me, I’d take off. He had no clue if the boy would really be waiting in the car when he got back. “Don’t move an inch. I’ll be right back.”
“Here . . .” Jeff handed back the phone.
“Nope. Got another for that. Sure you don’t want anything?”
The boy shook his head.
“Then keep looking through those pics. Let me know if anything jumps out at you. Places. Names you might recognize. Something about where your dad might be. We need to find these guys fast.” It was mostly a lie. Castillo knew the way the world really worked. “Fast” was relative. Only thing that mattered was if the operation was completed successfully. Not how long it took.
“From this? It’s just pages of weird cartoons and scribbled numbers.” Jeff stared in wonder. Or horror.
Christ. It was the first time Castillo had successfully visualized the boy as someone’s actual son, as an actual teenager who should have been playing Call of Duty or getting laid. Probably scared out of his mind. Everything he’d ever known as truth was, as of hours ago, now completely wrong. To top it off, his father was clearly a flaming madman. Castillo suddenly wanted to convince the kid everything was gonna be all right, only he couldn’t think of a thing that wasn’t a complete lie. Instead, he tried the truth. “Your dad sure ain’t making this easy.”
The boy kept his eyes glued to the phone. “No shit,” he replied quietly.
Castillo almost smiled as he closed and locked the door.
GROUND ZERO
JUNE 04, SATURDAY—ARLINGTON, VA
It was early morning, and Saturday, yet the courtyard was still more than half full with people grabbing ten minutes of fresh air and buying some fancy coffee or a meal before returning to whatever work it was they did on the inside. Stanforth watched from a wood bench on the northwest side. To pass the time, he played an old favorite game: Trying to imagine what each of them was currently working on. Which project? Whose department? Looking for some clue within the fact that they’d picked up breakfast or dinner. Maybe something in the way they carried themselves, or a loose comment as they passed by. Not an easy game when most were civilians and some were from other countries. It was simple for all of them to get lost in the swirl. Message of the hour, it seemed.
He, himself, wore khakis and a white polo shirt. Sunglasses resting on the end of his sharp nose against the sun in his face, a half-eaten hot dog and a Sprite in his hands. Almost like any other graying D.C. vacationer who’d somehow wandered away from one of the tour groups. Almost. But there weren’t any tours on Saturdays. And when the pretty dark-haired secretary in the sensible skirt had smiled back at him not five minutes ago, she’d seen right through his civilian attire in half a second. She’d seen West Point, and the medals, and the retired chairman of the American-Afghan Security Affairs Committee, and the senior military adviser. She’d recognized the power and pedigree as clearly as if he’d been holding a sign. They almost always did. The ones worth a damn.
Trapped within these five walls, it was a helluva good game. Framing the trees and warm sun and chirping birds was the most powerful building on earth. For fifty years, they’d called the park in the dead center of the Pentagon “Ground Zero” because everyone knew the Russians had twenty nukes aimed right at it. Today it was the Russians and the Chinese and probably the North Koreans, too. Hell, when they didn’t have nukes, the fuckers dropped your own planes on you. Otherwise, it was a terrific park to buy a proper hot dog and enjoy another morning.
He spotted his appointment, Executive Deputy Burandt, across the yard, moving toward him. Even from a hundred yards away, Burandt looked worried. Asshole. Stanforth stared straight at the man and finished the hot dog. The golden age of weapons development and this fucking guy is worried about something that would never even reach page three in any newspaper.
Half of all federal research dollars went to the military—as much as research in medicine, energy, the environment, transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture combined. More than thirty thousand private companies supported R&D.
In short, a lot of people were paid to imagine and produce new weapons for Uncle Sam. A quick fifty billion dollars, to get imaginative, but that was merely a start. Most real R&D was done under the “black budgets” of the four military branches, adding up to another five hundred billion to toy with. These special budgets were so highly classified that not even the president knew how the money was being spent. Hell, it was four fucking years before anyone told Truman they’d built a hydrogen bomb. And, oh, how that unhindered money did roll. When the Cold War ended with no enemy in sight, the Department of Defense still somehow managed to double its budget. And after 9/11, forget about it. With the daily-touted threat of global terrorism and two brand-new wars, the budget kept growing with more than half of it falling safely within these mysterious parameters. Five hundred billion dollars. Unaudited. Unwatched. Unstoppable.
In ’94, an Air Force research lab in Ohio admitted to secretly working on bombs filled with synthetic pheromones and aphrodisiacs to make enemy troops “turn gay.” They’d be too busy sucking cock to actually fight back. Put the whole Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell into a bit more perspective. The same lab also worked on methods to create giant swarms of bees. The Navy spent twenty million dollars teaching bats to carry explosives. For fifty years, the men in this very building had supported and encouraged the scientific study of everything from invisibility and time travel to ghosts, mind control, talking dolphins, and telekinesis.
Trying to figure out how each could be used as a weapon.
There were bound to be some fuckups along the way. Like this one. Another bump in the road. And, if after five years as executive deputy to the commanding general, this mealymouthed Caltech fuck didn’t get that . . .
“Good morning, sir,” Stanforth said.
Executive Deputy Burandt sat beside him. “Where are we?”
Stanforth took a sip of his soda. Birds stirred and chittered in the trees behind their bench. “DSTI is locked down tight,” he said. “Not a problem.”
“All military assets are secure?”
The word SharDhara sprang immediately to mind. Castillo had asked about it, and Stanforth had lied right back. Nope, doesn’t mean a thing. How could it? Most of the civilian players directly involved had been eliminated. How Dr. Jacobson had learned about the field test, he’d have to figure out later. Erdman maintained all toxins were secure. Now there were more pressing matters. “Doesn’t seem to be about those,” he lied again. “This seems to be about the boys only.”
“Make damn sure. How bad is it?”
Stanforth had also decided to remain quiet about Jacobson’s secretly adopted clones. Those could all be gotten rid of neatly under separate cover. Besides, there was no way his solution to that new problem would be
approved, anyway. Easier to ask forgiveness than acquire permission. Best to stick with the original situation. “Thirteen dead,” he said. “Nine kids. Maybe three hostages.”
“Wonderful.”
“It’s messy, but it’ll clean up quietly and hastily. Most of the dead officially never even existed. It helps. After our chat here, I’ve got other appointments to array a few resources nearby, and then I’m heading straight back to New Jersey to oversee any remaining tidying on-site.”
“And the . . . the ‘boys’?”
Stanforth nodded. “A couple of scared teenagers. It’s probable that one of the chief geneticists, Dr. Gregory Jacobson, is helping them. Appears he’s been planning this for years and may have a few resources of his own already set aside. But, he’s also off his rocker. We’ll find them.”
“Then what?”
“You really want to know?”
“No.”
Stanforth leaned back.
“What do you need?” the executive deputy asked.
“Keep the FBI off my ass. If they arrest one of our targets or a teenaged John Doe, freeze it. These kids probably shot their kill wad already. If not, help keep it off Nancy Grace. If anyone starts asking why DNA from a guy who’s been dead for twenty years is showing up, ditto.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Stanforth. Fucking clones?”
Stanforth smiled. “You really want to know?”
Burandt squinted into the sun. Shook his head. “I want this entire undertaking, this damned company, shut down. Today. Eradicated. Permanently.”
“No,” replied Stanforth. “You don’t.”
The executive deputy turned, glaring. “Look, you son of—”
“Most R&D dollars go right down the fucking drain. You know it, I know it. Ninety percent of this shit never leads to anything. We’ve funneled DSTI maybe fifty million over the last decade. Pocket change.” He counted off with his free fingers. “In return, you’ve got the 5HIAA toxin, IRAX11, biodrones . . .” Easier to ask forgiveness . . .
“IRAX11 was terminated.”
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