“If you were in the market for a professional anyway,” Johan said. “Now, young James, I have told you everything I know. I beseech you do the same.”
Mason nodded and carefully composed his words.
“During my pursuit of the Hoyl, I encountered a room inside the slaughterhouse filled with metal vats like the kind microbreweries use. Huge stainless-steel models. Maybe twenty of them, each capable of holding roughly two hundred gallons. Any one of them—maybe even all of them—could have been filled with Novichok.”
Johan closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. Mason could almost see the gears turning as the old man worked the mental calculations.
“Thank you, James. I was aware of the vats recovered from the rubble, but I knew nothing of their intended function. What about the victims you discovered inside the tunnel?”
“They’d been dead for roughly twenty years,” Mason said.
“I find that hard to believe, considering the history of the building.”
“The date can be easily corroborated.”
“You have an actual date?”
“November twenty-fourth, 2001.”
Johan furrowed his brow and glanced to his left, an instinctive reaction to searching through the part of the brain associated with the recall of specific information.
“You recognize that date, don’t you?” Mason said.
“I have given you what you need, James. And you, in return, have given me much to contemplate. I regret that I must retire in order to do so. The hour is late and my mind is not as sharp as it once was.”
Johan’s eyes grew distant, as though he’d already terminated the call before physically reaching for his computer to do so.
Mason stared at the blank screen while he sorted through what he’d learned.
They desperately needed those military personnel files.
There was no doubt in his mind that the identity of the Scarecrow was hidden somewhere within them.
37
Layne was waiting underneath the aluminum awning outside the main lobby of the Mayfair Towers when he arrived.
“What the hell took you so long?” she asked. “I had to interview the lady from across the hall without you.”
“It took longer than I’d anticipated to get the rooms,” Mason said. “What did she have to say?”
Layne cocked her head and stared at him for several seconds, as though deciding whether or not his story held water.
“She thought his first name was Ichiro, although she only ever called him Mr. Nakamura on the rare occasions she encountered him in the building.”
“Nakamura?” he said. He felt the ground shift beneath his feet. He’d seen that name before. On the screen grab of the whiteboard in Johan’s basement. The shadowed figure connected to Unit 731. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“It’s nothing. Keep going.”
“Apparently, he only lived in that apartment a few months out of the year, a week or so at a time. She said he was very respectful and always wore a suit with an overcoat, a fedora, and dark glasses. Not sunglasses, but tinted glasses, as though he were sensitive to even indoor lighting.”
“Could she give you a physical description?”
Layne removed her notebook from her jacket pocket and flipped through the pages until she found the right one.
“Asian-American. Late forties to early fifties. Somewhere around five five or five six in height. No facial hair, scars, or tattoos. Thin frame. She didn’t think he could have weighed more than one twenty and described his manner as being almost effeminate.”
“Not the mold one would cast for a military man.”
“That’s why I wasn’t overly surprised when she failed to identify him from the photographic lineup I put together from the personnel files for the Chemical Corps.”
“Your army contact came through?”
“Do you not check your messages? Yeah, he came through. Unfortunately, the list only goes back to the mid-eighties, but Locker’s team was able to weed out the deceased and put together a list of the scientists who’d worked directly with sarin, those of Asian origin, and a subset of both. The older files have to be physically pulled from the National Archives in St. Louis, so that’ll take time.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“I also talked to Algren,” Layne said. “Her plane just touched down at JFK. A car’s supposed to pick her up on the tarmac and take her to the New York Field Office. She wants us to get there as soon as we can.”
“Did you tell her what happened here?”
“Seems like she knows more about it than we do, but she did say she was glad we were all right.”
“No, really.”
“She said we should have been more careful. We could have used whatever evidence might have been inside the apartment.”
“That sounds more like her.”
Mason’s stealth phone vibrated against his hip. He knew exactly who was calling, if not why it had taken him so long.
“Why don’t you check in with forensics one last time while I go get the car,” he said. Layne nodded and headed back into the apartment building. He waited until she was out of sight before answering. “I found Nakamura.”
“Does he have anything to do with the men in white suits crawling all over the scorched roof of the building behind you?” Gunnar asked.
Mason looked up into the sky, where the first hint of dawn stained the clouds a pale shade of pink, and toward the distant satellite his old friend had obviously hacked into.
“He knew we were coming and had an IED waiting for us,” he said.
“I’ll take another crack at the name. Maybe I’ll have better luck approaching the search from a different angle. What’ve you got?”
“The apartment he was living in is registered to a company called Maledict Management Services and the woman across the hall thought his first name was Ichiro.”
“I’m on it.”
“You saw the pictures on Johan’s whiteboard,” Mason said. “We need to take this guy off the board before it’s too late.”
“You’re certain he’s the Scarecrow.”
“Without a doubt, but I’m no closer to catching him than I was before,” Mason said. “Tell me you had better luck with the dead guys from the tunnel.”
“You weren’t kidding when you said information was going to disappear,” Gunnar said. “Even with my not inconsiderable skill set, I was only able to find seven occurrences. That’s all. And they’re probably gone by now, too.”
Mason found a relatively private spot behind the tree-lined retaining wall of the adjacent apartment complex, away from the commotion.
“I’ll take what I can get,” he said.
“You don’t have much choice in the matter,” Gunnar said. “My program didn’t have time to run through the whole protocol. Fortunately, I initiated it to search both faces together before searching for each individually. I figured that would get us the most useful information the fastest. And it’s a good thing, too. With as quickly as Homeland moved, we might not have gotten them at all.”
“Are you certain it was the DHS?”
“This was professional work, Mace. We’re talking military-grade hackers or cyberwarfare experts.”
“So what did you find?”
“The first picture is from June seventh, 1989. The Fourth Annual Global Symposium of the Society of Clinical Microbiologists and Virologists in Stockholm. Our guys stand apart from the crowd. Chenhav has a disproportionately large head and Mosche has eyebrows so big and bushy, he probably only wears glasses to keep them out of his eyes.”
“What are they doing?”
“What every other human being on the planet does at a professional convention,” Gunnar said. “They appear to be networking and getting hammered.”
“Keep going.”
“November 1991. A group photo taken at a conference of the Israel Medical Association. All you can see are
their faces. There’s another picture from the same event. Mosche is front and center, with a woman identified as Dr. Lirit Har-Even, vice president of the IMA. Chenhav’s in the background. There’s really not much to work with in either of these.”
“There has to be something useful or it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble to erase them.”
“Here’s an interesting one. August 1994. The Twentieth Assembly of the Society for Lasting International Peace in Copenhagen.” He paused. “Didn’t your grandfather found SLIP?”
“Great-grandfather. More important, why would a microbiologist and a biochemist be there? What are they doing in the picture?”
“Just standing there. Five men smiling for the camera. I’ll read you the caption. ‘Leading the charge for the global transition to a new energy-based economy and socialized health-care model: Dr. Nitzan Chenhav, World Medical Association; Andreas Mikkelson, managing director of Royal Nautilus Petroleum; Dr. Yossi Mosche, secretary of the International Supplement and Pharmaceutical Standardization Organization; Stephen Whitner, CEO Ford Motor Company; and Lyle Amendola, U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania.’”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard the name Royal Nautilus tonight alone.”
“In what capacity?”
“One of its subsidiaries is listed as the owner of a penthouse apartment of significant interest at the moment.”
“What’s the name?” Gunnar asked.
“Aegis Asset Management.”
“Give me a second.” Headlights approached from the distance. Mason leaned against the gray brick facade and settled into the shadows. “Aegis lists more than two thousand properties among its assets, fifty of them in New York City alone. Looks like your standard corporate real estate management firm, the kind of operation massive international companies set up in every country to handle their physical holdings, as their total assets are too large and diverse for a single entity.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“At least not superficially. Of course, it was another of Nautilus’s subsidiaries that lost potentially thousands of pounds of hydrogen fluoride, so I’ll definitely have to dig deeper.”
“What about the SLIP conference?” Mason asked. “You know how that kind of thing works. What do you read into the picture as it pertains to the two Israelis?”
“The photo reeks of a PR photo op for Royal Nautilus and Ford,” Gunnar said. “You know, to show they’re committed to the idea of renewable energy, despite the crushing financial impact it will have on both of them. If there’s something else, I don’t see it.”
A pair of unmarked black Tahoes pulled up and parked against the curb opposite the Mayfair, but no one got out.
“What’s the next instance?” Mason asked.
“New York City. May 1995. Economic Strategy Conference of the U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Alliance. I’m familiar with these guys. Their goal is to improve Israel’s economic stake in the global market by making long-term arrangements with a bunch of American-based multinational corporations to locate and maintain research and development facilities in Tel Aviv. I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about this one, either. All I have here is our two scientists in the background of someone else’s photo. Uncredited.”
“Two more, right?”
“The United Nations Summit on Sustainable Population Growth. Bonn, Germany, 1999. Mosche shaking hands with some UN official wearing a fancy medal. Chenhav standing behind him, like he’s waiting in line. The caption’s in German. ‘Top Israeli scientists receive award from Mr. Lothar Schubert, under-secretary-general for the General Assembly, for their commitment to stable population design.’ That’s a literal translation. I assume they mean ‘population models.’”
“If they were looking for ways to curb population growth, nerve gas would be a good way to get it done in a hurry.”
“I’m pretty confident the UN doesn’t sanction the indiscriminate extermination of millions of people.”
“There has to be something there, though. It’s right in the wheelhouse of both the Hoyl and the Scarecrow. What’s the last one?”
“May eighth, 2000. Saint-Tropez, French Riviera. The World Congress on Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Threat and Terrorism.”
“Finally.” Mason couldn’t get a good look through the tinted windows at the men in the SUVs, but he had a pretty good idea who they were. “What’s in the picture?”
“A couple of pale white guys on a beach in polo shirts and khakis. Both wearing sunglasses. Chenhav has a really big hat. Very formal for the weather. Behind them is a row of hotels. I recognize the Château de la Messardière. Our guys are just sitting at a table, looking serious. That’s all.”
“There has to be something else.”
“You’re welcome to look for yourself.”
“Don’t send them to me directly,” Mason said. “It looks like I’m going to be working under a whole lot more supervision.”
The doors of the Tahoes opened in unison and agents climbed out of both front seats. They wore navy fatigues and bulletproof vests. Mason recognized the two DHS agents he’d seen near Raymond’s body in Central Park as they passed underneath the awning and headed into the lobby of the Mayfair.
“Do me a favor,” he said. “See what you can find about Nautilus and a guy named Charles Raymond. And make it quick. I have a feeling things are about to get a whole lot more interesting.”
38
The Jacob K. Javits Federal Building was a forty-one-story skyscraper with vertical window slits that had been deliberately misaligned to create a zigzagging pattern reminiscent of woven fabric. Situated in the Civic Center of Lower Manhattan, it housed a veritable who’s who of government agencies and a dedicated immigration court. Mason parked in the substructure and he and Layne rode the elevator up to the lobby, where an administrative specialist wearing a gray skirt suit waited for them, the expression on her face one of inconvenience. She guided them through the security gauntlet and to an elevator that took them to the twenty-third floor, home of the New York City Field Office of the FBI.
A handful of agents moved about the hallways, but not nearly as many as Mason would have expected, given that thousands of gallons of Novichok were potentially out there in the city at this very moment. Their escort led them to a conference room, wished them luck, and took her leave. Mason knew something was wrong the moment he opened the door. He took in the room at a glance. A long hardwood table. Video conference call units. At least a dozen faux leather chairs on wheels. No water or coffee on the service cart. A solitary man stood at the window with his back to them, watching the sun rise over the East River. He turned at the sound of their approach.
“Becker?” Mason said.
“What’s going on?” Layne asked.
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me,” the ATF agent said. “The agent who picked me up at the airport brought me straight here.”
“Where’s Addison?” Mason asked.
“The DHS agent?” Becker said. “She wasn’t on my flight.”
Mason felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.
“Son of a bitch,” Layne said.
The door opened and Algren strode into the room. Her makeup was freshly applied and there wasn’t a single crease in her skirt suit. The hint of lace from her bra showed through her blouse. She’d obviously taken the time to change since landing, which was the kind of thing one did when preparing to meet with somebody important, not a group of exhausted field agents who hadn’t slept for more than a few hours during the past few days.
Addison entered behind her and leaned against the front wall. The pale industrial light made the scar on her cheek look like a worm trying to squirm from the corner of her mouth into her ear.
“Everyone please take a seat,” Algren said.
Mason watched her from the corner of his eye as he rounded the table, drew back a chair, and sat down. She deliberately looked anywhere other than in
his direction. Layne chose the chair opposite his and met his stare. She knew the score.
Becker slouched into the chair at the foot of the table and cocked his head in such a way that the shadow from the brim of his ball cap concealed his eyes.
“As you are well aware,” Algren said, “this is a fluid situation. It’s imperative that we’re able to adapt to changing circumstances in real time. The explosion at the Mayfair Towers marks a dramatic escalation beyond the limited experience and response capabilities of this strike force. Had there been so much as a single gallon of a chemical WMD inside that apartment, the force of the blast would have dispersed it over an area several blocks in diameter and thousands of people would have been killed in a matter of seconds.”
“That wasn’t our fault,” Layne said.
“Be that as it may—”
The door opened behind Algren, who stepped aside to make room for the newcomer at the head of the table. An aura of authority radiated from him. His silver hair was slicked back from his long forehead, which drew the focus to his dark eyes. He wore an expensive watch with an oversize face and a tailored Brooks Brothers suit. Mason recognized him immediately.
“Deputy Secretary Marchment,” Mason said. “You’ve certainly moved up in the world since I saw you last.”
“The Department of Homeland Security was so impressed by the success of our strike force in Arizona that they made me an offer I would have been a fool to decline.”
“Our team was wiped out.”
“Were it not for our timely intervention and the sacrifices of heroic agents like yourself, Lord only knows how many people we might have lost to that virus.”
“Congratulations. You got yourself a seat at the big table.”
“I’ll choose to take that at face value, Special Agent Mason.” He paused before addressing them as a group. “I’ll do my best to wrap this up quickly. For the sake of formality, my name is Rand Marchment and I’m deputy secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security, in which role I supervise operations of critical importance to the safety of our nation and liaise directly with the secretary of the DHS and the president of the United States, both of whom would like me to personally express their gratitude. It is men and women like you, leading the charge on the front lines, who make it possible for us to keep our citizenry safe. We thank you for your hard work and sacrifice.”
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