by Jeff Buick
“You understand what will happen if any word of what happened here tonight leaves this building,” the man said.
The security guard could barely swallow. “Yes, sir, I understand fully.”
“So I can trust that you’ll keep this between us?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I think we have an agreement and I can be leaving now. Take care, Robert,” the man said. He walked back to the second car and drove out onto Technology Boulevard. What the hell was going on? He had sent two experienced agents in to take care of a female research scientist and a country hick, and he had just collected one dead body and one seriously injured agent. How well the injured man would ever see again was in question. Not that he really cared, just that things like this generated questions and he didn’t need questions right now. He checked his watch and swore under his breath. He needed to get back to D.C. before he was missed. He entered the traffic on I-64, then cut off at the turn to the airport.
Christ, Andrews was going to blow a fuse when he found out they had missed Pearce and Buchanan yet again. But what could he do, short of sending in an entire SWAT team? He dialed Andrews’s private number as he approached the airport.
He was not looking forward to this conversation.
67
They drove north of Richmond until they found a small motel in Hanover that would take a cash deposit. They thanked Eric for the ride and settled into the small room. It was completely tasteless, with a flowered bedspread, flowered wallpaper, and flowered curtains. And nothing matched. It was like living in a poorly designed greenhouse. Jennifer took one look at the bed and lay down on top of the covers with her clothes on.
“Well, I guess that explains why the car chasing us through Richmond was government issue. Must have been friends of our good guy turned bad.”
“Gordon, we’re talking about four of the most influential men in the country when it comes to law enforcement and espionage. All four of these men are heavy hitters. And the agencies they work for are huge and have unlimited resources. How the hell are we supposed to smoke out the one working with Andrews?”
“If we could get in the room with all four of them, maybe we could get the traitor to make a mistake and give himself away.”
She shook her head. “Getting in the room with all four of them at the same time is next to impossible. And even if we do manage to get in that room, we can’t rely on him cracking. We’re not dealing with an amateur here. These men are all professionals, and any one of them could twist any proof we have in a totally different direction.”
Gordon stared at the picture in the newspaper. “So one of these men knew all along that the virus threat was completely bogus. What a prick. Whoever it is deserves to go down real hard.”
“What have we got?” Jennifer asked rhetorically. “Andrews owns a ton of stock and options in Veritas. He has to exercise those options by mid-December, and from what has just happened, Veritas stock is set to go through the roof. So his three million common shares and his options will make him close to a billionaire. That goes to motive but doesn’t prove anything. He manipulated the company books by moving regular expenditures into the tax-credit column. But trying to pin that directly on him could be difficult. He’s probably insulated himself from the actual fraud by setting up some poor suckers as scapegoats. Elizabeth Ripley at the SEC is working on that, but I’m not sure I’d hold my breath there.
“We’re pretty sure he ordered the deaths of Kenga Bakcsi and Albert Rousseau, but we’re without definitive proof. He tried to kill me. And he probably had that family in Denver killed as well. Again, we have no trail leading directly back to him. We need to nail his accomplice. We need to have whoever it is that worked with Andrews on this scheme implicate him. He’s too well insulated otherwise.”
Gordon looked up from the paper. “We trust these men to keep us safe, Jennifer. We sleep well at night because men and women inside these agencies risk their lives to protect us. And when one of these men in a position of great power abuses that privilege, he has to be brought down.”
“Wow,” Jennifer said, grinning. “A speech. Very good.”
He grinned and fell on the bed beside her. “Sorry, I was getting preachy. But I feel strongly that abuse of power should be dealt with in the harshest possible manner.”
“I do too,” she said. “We just need a way in.”
Gordon flipped on the television and surfed through the channels until he found a Washington feed with late news. The big story for the day was still the early-morning news conference with the leaders of the antivirus task force, and Bruce Andrews and Dr. Chiang Wai. They watched the telecast again, both of them looking closely at each man now that they knew one of them was dirty. But which one? There were no clues. No sideways glances or uneasy posturing. All four men played the part of savior perfectly. Their agencies had cooperated fully and effectively to bring this threat under control. And they had found a cure for a deadly virus as well. Heroes.
All but one.
Gordon was half listening to the sound when something struck him. He sat up and concentrated on what the newscaster was saying. It was a recap of how the threat had initially been delivered to them and how the team had pooled its resources to find the lab. After the anchor was finished, Gordon said, “I’ve got an idea. We need to use one resource we already have and we need to secure one more. If we do, I think we can get inside the same room with those men and maybe figure out who it is.”
“I’m listening,” she said, rolling over to face him.
68
The last of the four, Tony Warner, arrived at just after five o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, apologizing for being late but blaming it on traffic coming in from Crypto-City. He accepted a coffee from Rothery’s executive assistant and thanked her. He stirred in some sugar and a touch of cream and glanced about the office. Allenby, Simms, and Rothery were all sitting in easy chairs with coffee or drinks.
“What’s going on, J.D.?” he asked. “What’s with the sudden meeting? We did the big press conference yesterday morning.”
Rothery shrugged. “I received a call from the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning. They were adamant we meet this afternoon. She insisted that the entire task force be here. I don’t know what it’s about.”
“The SEC?”Warner asked.“What the hell do they want with us?”
“That’s been the big question since we arrived,” Jim Allenby said.
“Anybody cheat on last year’s prospectus?” Simms asked wryly.
All heads turned as the door opened and a mid-fifties woman entered. She wore a blue pantsuit and carried an expensive leather briefcase. She set the briefcase on a table in the center of the room and approached each man individually, introducing herself as Elizabeth Ripley and thanking them for coming. When she had finished the introductions, she reached into her briefcase and pulled out a file. She sat in the last open easy chair and addressed the room.
“Gentlemen, we’ve got a bit of a quandary over at the SEC. We are concerned about the effect this crisis might have on the market. Not just New York, but also Tokyo, Toronto, and some of the European stock exchanges. We suspect the terrorists may have hedged against the possibility of failure by purchasing shortterm options on some of the larger pharmaceutical companies. I’d like to hear from each one of you as the representative for your various agencies as to if there has been any discussion about possible market manipulation. If there has, I’d like you to describe the actions you’ve taken to ensure that the markets will remain solvent. Mr. Rothery, perhaps we could start with you.”
Rothery sounded a little confused as he spoke. “Well, I’m not sure this line of thinking has ever reared its head at DHS. We are concerned about the safety of the markets from a physical sense, but we didn’t touch on market stability as it related directly to this particular crisis.”
“Thank you. Mr. Allenby?”
“The FBI is a law-enforcement agency, Ms. Ripley. I can�
��t recall ever worrying about the boys on Wall Street. I think they do quite fine without us looking over their shoulders.”
There was a chuckle at his response, but Ripley continued on unfazed. “Mr. Simms. Did the CIA see fit to give this issue any thought?”
“I can’t say we did, Ms. Ripley. Our main area of concern was and still is gathering intelligence from around the world that may affect American interests. We have no dealings inside the continental United States, nor do we monitor the international markets on a daily basis. We watch for general trends, but in this particular case, we didn’t look for anything out of the ordinary.”
“Mr. Warner?”
“Well, yes, we did watch for any one person or organization buying large chunks of stocks that we felt might be affected by the crisis. That’s standard policy. We look closely at situations by inputting data into our computers and analyzing the output. But we didn’t notice anything that we considered out of the ordinary.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth Ripley said. A moment later, her cell phone rang and she said, “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but this is one call I must take.” She answered, said “okay” twice, and hung up. She looked over at the door to Rothery’s office and said, “I’m going to turn over the meeting to someone else.”
The door opened and Jennifer Pearce entered, followed by Gordon Buchanan and Keith Thompson. Thompson was carrying a large and apparently heavy black case. Gordon remained by the door while Jennifer and Keith walked directly to the table where Elizabeth Ripley had left her briefcase. Keith set his case on the carpet and retrieved a recording device from Elizabeth Ripley’s briefcase.
“What’s going on here, Keith? And who the hell are you?” Rothery asked Jennifer. She didn’t answer, and Rothery turned to Elizabeth Ripley. “This meeting isn’t about the SEC, is it?”
“No, it’s not, Mr. Rothery,” Ripley said. “After I heard what these people had to say, I agreed to set up the meeting for them. I think you’ll find this is not a waste of your time.”
“This had better be pretty damn good,” Rothery snapped. “What are you doing here, Keith?”
“I was asked along to run a little test, Mr. Rothery. At the request of the SEC. Sorry.” He busied himself with opening his case and setting up a strange-looking two-sided television screen and a computer. He hooked the recording device from Ripley’s briefcase into a USB port and powered up the system. “Ready to roll,” he said to Jennifer.
“My name is Jennifer Pearce. I’m a research scientist in the Alzheimer’s division of Veritas Pharmaceutical. I work for Bruce Andrews, the same man who just discovered the drug to combat the virus. But there’s a bit of a twist to this whole thing that three of you four gentlemen have missed. And that twist is that there was never a crisis. We were never in any jeopardy.”
Rothery’s tone was icy as he responded, reaching for the phone on the table beside him. “This is preposterous,” he said. “I want you out of here immediately.”
“Elizabeth Ripley was correct, Mr. Rothery. This is not a waste of time. If you allow me just a minute, three of you gentlemen are going to find what I have to say very interesting.”
“That’s the second time you’ve referred to three of us, Ms. Pearce,” Jim Allenby said. “What are you implying?”
“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “Bruce Andrews over at Veritas develops a drug that he considers to be the next big thing. This baby is going to generate his company billions of dollars in sales. He’s so sure of its success that he manipulates the company books in order to assure himself the capital he needs to send the drug through Phase II and Phase III trials. Ms. Ripley has looked into the illegal use of tax credits by Veritas, and she assures me that there will be civil actions arising from her investigation.
“But this goes so much deeper than just stock manipulation. Bruce Andrews had two Veritas employees killed and he wiped out a family in Denver. He tried to kill me three times, but obviously he missed. And here’s the part you guys are going to love.
“Bruce Andrews actually developed the virus threatening our country. It makes coming up with a cure so much easier when you’re the one creating the problem. Andrews or one of his associates distributed the virus to random locations across the country at carefully selected intervals to let the tension build. Finally, when your task force decided to ask the private sector for help in finding a cure, he was ready. Andrews bided his time, waiting for the fuse to burn down a bit, then handed the cure to Rothery with one condition. Get the drug through the New Drug Application stage and get FDA approval. And that, gentlemen, is what it was all about. Getting a potentially dangerous drug on the market.”
“Why?”Warner asked.
“Money. Billions of dollars that without Zancor getting FDA approval would be flushed down the drain. And with the taxcredit accounting scandal ready to hit without the money being replaced, and with his stock options coming due in December, time was of the essence for Bruce Andrews. He needed Zancor on the market. What better way than to create a false crisis? Just the first round of invoices from the government to protect the population against a threat that was never going to materialize was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If everything goes according to plan, Mr. Bruce Andrews is a billionaire.
“But he needed help. No one person can sit at the helm of a huge pharmaceutical company, murder people, create dangerous viruses, and manipulate the company stock all by himself. And he had help. Someone in a very influential position. Someone in this room.”
Four pairs of eyes stared at her and she stared back, allowing her gaze to rest on each man’s eyes for a few moments before switching to the next. Nothing. Whichever man it was had the poker face of the millennium. She turned to Keith Thompson.
“I remembered reading about Keith’s work on the case in one of the local newspapers. I called him and asked him for a favor. He agreed to help.” She waved her hand at the splitscreen television. “Keith’s brought some high-tech equipment with him today, and I’ll let him explain it to you.”
Keith Thompson took over. “The recording device in Ms. Ripley’s purse has a sample of each of you speaking tonight, in response to her question.” He turned on the screen. The right side remained dark, but the left side showed an image of the masked terrorist threatening the country. Keith let it run for a sentence then stopped it. The death of innocent American citizens is not our primary goal. He pointed at a series of wiggly lines that appeared on the right screen. “This is the voiceprint of the terrorist. He hit another switch and J.D. Rothery’s voice came over the speaker. Well, I’m not sure that this line of thinking has ever reared its head at DHS. A second wiggly line appeared just above the first.
“This line is Mr. Rothery’s voice,” Keith said, moving a cordless mouse and drawing the two lines together. Once they were overlaid on each other, he moved the cursor to the right, dragging the second line across the first. After about five seconds, he said, “No match. Mr. Rothery is not the man in the video.”
“Damn right I’m not,” Rothery said.
Our main area of concern was, and still is, gathering intelligence from around the world that may affect American interests. It was Simms’s voice. Keith moved the two wiggles on top of each other and tried to cross-correlate them. No luck.
“Mr. Simms is not our man,” Keith said, loading another voice. We look closely at situations by inputting data into our computers and analyzing the output. “That was Mr. Warner,” Keith said, working the mouse. Nothing. All eyes focused on Jim Allenby.
The FBI is a law-enforcement agency, Ms. Ripley. Keith moved the final line across to the other screen and pulled it to the right. The two series of sine waves lined up perfectly, and once the match was made, the program froze the image on the screen. Keith didn’t say a word. No one did; they just stared at the screen and at Jim Allenby. Before anyone in the room could move, Allenby slipped a handgun out from his shoulder holster.
“Jesus, Jim. Why?” Rothery asked. “
We’ve worked together for twenty years. What the hell have you done?”
“Why, J.D.? I’ll tell you why. Money. I finally decided to take care of myself. Something the government never considered important. I’ve been working my ass off for over a quarter of a century, and I’ve got shit to show for it. Two failed marriages, three screwed-up kids because their dad was never home, and my health is starting to go down the tubes. And you couldn’t even dream what Bruce Andrews was offering me. You couldn’t even dream the amount.”
“Money, Jim? Money? That’s a pretty lame reason.”
“Twenty million dollars, J.D. Twenty million. That buys a lot of nice things for my retirement years. And it’s not just the money. The Bureau doesn’t give a shit about us anymore. Nothing’s the same as it was when I first got in. Used to be the Bureau was run by law-enforcement guys. Cops. Now it’s all controlled by the fucking bean counters. And don’t put your toe over the line or it’ll get shot off. I’m sick of it. Sick of it.”
“You killed innocent people, Jim. You betrayed your country. You killed Boy Scouts, for God’s sake.”
“I was careful where and how I introduced the virus. Austin and San Diego went exactly as I planned. I didn’t know the Scout troop would pick up that case of Pepsi in Boston. That was just bad luck.”
“You sick, twisted asshole,” Rothery said, leaping from his chair. He moved toward Allenby, his hand outstretched. “Give me the gun, Jim.”
Allenby trained the Colt 1911 on the Under Secretary. “You come one inch closer and I’ll kill you.” Rothery stopped but didn’t move back.“You know, this whole thing was working until you two got involved,” he said, looking at Gordon and Jennifer. “Now look what’s happened. Everything’s totally screwed up.”