Blasphemy wf-2

by Douglas Preston

  “It’s worth pointing out,” said Lockwood, “that fifty-two percent of Americans don’t believe in evolution—and among self-identified Republicans, it’s sixty-eight percent. This attack on Isabella is an extension of that. It could get partisan—and ugly.”

  “Where’d you get those figures?”

  “A Gallup poll.”

  The president shook his head. “We stay on message. The Isabella project is a crucial part of keeping American science and technology competitive in the world. After years of lagging, we’ve pulled ahead of the Europeans and Japanese. The Isabella project is good for the economy, good for R and D, good for business. It may solve our energy needs, free us from dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Stan, issue a press release to that effect, organize a press conference, make some noise. Stay on message.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  Galdone’s turn had come. He heaved his bulk about in the chair. “If good news were flowing from the Isabella project, we wouldn’t be so vulnerable.” He turned to Lockwood. “Can you tell us, Dr. Lockwood, when the problems out there will be fixed?”

  “In a week or less,” he said. “We’ve got a good handle on it.”

  “A week is a long time,” Galdone said, “when you’ve got a man like Spates beating his tom-toms and oiling his guns.”

  Lockwood winced at the mixed metaphor. “Mr. Galdone, let me assure you we’re doing everything we can.”

  Galdone’s suetlike face moved as he spoke. “One week,” he said, his voice heavy with disapproval.

  Lockwood heard a voice at the door to the Oval Office, and his heart just about stopped to see his own assistant being ushered in. It would have to be something big to interrupt him in a meeting with the president. She came ducking along with almost comic obsequiousness, handed Lockwood a note, and exited swiftly. With a feeling of dread, he unfolded the note.

  He tried to swallow and couldn’t. For a moment he contemplated saying nothing, then changed his mind: better now than later. “Mr. President, I’ve received word that one of the Isabella project scientists has just been found dead in a ravine on Red Mesa. It got called into the FBI about thirty minutes ago. Agents are on their way to the scene.”

  “Dead? How?”

  “Shot—in the head.”

  The president stared at him without speaking. Lockwood had never seen his face flush so deeply, and it frightened him.

  16

  BY THE TIME THE NAVAJO TRIBAL Police arrived, Ford had watched the sun disappear in a swirl of bourbon-colored clouds. Four squad cars and a van came humming down the shimmering asphalt, lights flashing, and pulled up, each with a perfectly calibrated squeal of rubber.

  A barrel-chested Navajo detective got out of the lead car. He was gaunt, about sixty, with a grizzled crew cut, followed by a cadre of Navajo Nation policemen. Wearing a pair of dusty cowboy boots, he walked with bow legs down the tire tracks toward the rim of the arroyo, followed by his people, and they began setting up the perimeter of the crime scene and stringing tape.

  Hazelius and Wardlaw arrived in a Jeep, pulling it off the road and getting out. They watched the police work in silence, and then Wardlaw turned to Ford. “You say he was shot?”

  “Point-blank to the left temple.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Significant powder tattooing.”

  Wardlaw regarded him, his eyes hard and narrow with suspicion. “You watch a lot of CSI on television, Mr. Ford? Or you just make a hobby of crime-scene investigation?”

  The Navajo detective, having secured the site, creaked toward them, voice recorder in hand. He walked with great deliberation, as if every movement hurt. His badge read BIA, and his rank was lieutenant. He wore mirrored wraparound sunglasses that made him look dopey. Ford sensed that he was anything but dumb.

  “Who discovered the victim?” Bia asked.

  “I did.”

  The glasses turned toward him. “Your name?”

  “Wyman Ford.” He heard suspicion in the man’s tone, as if the lies had already begun.

  “How’d you find him?”

  Ford described the circumstances.

  “So you saw the buzzards, saw the tracks, just decided to get out and walk a quarter mile across the desert in the hundred-degree heat to investigate—just like that?”

  Ford nodded.

  “Hmm.” Bia scribbled some notes, his lips pursed. Then the glasses turned toward Hazelius. “And you are—?”

  “Gregory North Hazelius, director of the Isabella project, and this is Senior Intelligence Officer Wardlaw. Will you be in charge of the investigation?”

  “Only on the tribal side. The FBI will lead on this one.”

  “The FBI? When will they be here?”

  Bia nodded toward the sky. “Now.”

  A chopper materialized in the southwest, the thwap of its rotors growing steadily louder. A few hundred yards away, it came into a hover in a storm of dust, then settled down on the road. Two men stepped out. Both wore sunglasses, open-necked short-sleeved shirts, and baseball caps with FBI stitched across the front. Despite their differing skin color and heights, they could almost have been twins.

  They marched over, and the tall one pulled out his shield. “Special Agent in Charge Dan Greer,” he said, “Flagstaff Field Office. Special Agent Franklin Alvarez.” He slipped the shield back into his pocket and nodded at Bia. “Lieutenant.”

  Bia nodded back.

  Hazelius stepped forward. “And I’m Gregory North Hazelius, director of the Isabella project.” He shook Greer’s hand. “The victim was a scientist on my team. I want to know what happened here, and I want to know now.”

  “And you will. As soon as our investigation is complete.” Greer turned to Bia. “Site secure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now listen up: I’m going to ask everyone from the Isabella project to please return to their base. Dr. Hazelius, I’d like you to gather everyone at some central meeting place at . . .” He looked at the sky, then his watch. “Seven o’clock. I’ll be there to take everyone’s statement.”

  “I’m sorry to say that won’t be possible,” said Hazelius. “We can’t spare everyone all at once. You’ll have to take our statements in two shifts.”

  Greer pulled down his glasses and stared hard at Hazelius. “I will expect everyone in the same place at seven o’clock. Understood?” He spoke precisely, enunciating every word.

  Hazelius returned the gaze, his face mild, unthreatening. “Mr. Greer, I’m in charge of a forty-billion-dollar machine inside this mountain, and we are in the middle of a critical scientific experiment. I’m sure you wouldn’t want anything to go wrong, especially if I had to tell DOE investigators that the machine had been left unattended—at your insistence. I have to keep three team members in the mountain tonight. They’ll be available for questioning tomorrow morning.”

  A long pause, then Greer nodded curtly. “Fine.”

  “We’ll be at the trading post by seven,” said Hazelius. “It’s the old log building—you can’t miss it.”

  Ford headed back to the Jeep and climbed in, Kate following. He turned the key, and they pulled back onto the road.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Kate, her voice shaking, her face pale. She fumbled in her pocket, tugged out a handkerchief, and wiped her eyes. “This is terrible,” she said. “I just . . . can’t believe it.”

  As the Jeep hummed down the road, Ford had a final glimpse of the two coyotes, who had finished their meal and were hanging back, skulking out of range, hoping for a second helping.

  For all its beauty, he thought, Red Mesa was a hard place.

  AT SEVEN O’CLOCK SHARP, LIEUTENANT JOSEPH Bia followed Greer and Alvarez into the former Nakai Rock Trading Post. He remembered the place from his childhood, when old man Weindorfer was the trader. He felt a twinge of nostalgia. In his mind he could still see the old store—the flour bin, the piles of stovepipe for sale, the halters and lassos, the candy jars. In the back had bee
n the stacks of rugs Weindorfer was taking in trade. The drought of 1954–55 killed half the sheep on the mesa, but not before they had peeled the land. That was when Peabody Coal was hauling out twenty thousand short tons a day. The Tribal Council, with money from the coal company, had paid off everyone who lived on the mesa and resettled them in HUD housing in Blue Gap, Piñon, and Rough Rock. His parents had been among those moved down below. It was the first time Bia had been back in fifty years. The place looked completely different, but he could still smell the old scent of woodsmoke, dust, and sheep’s wool.

  The scientists had gathered, nine of them, tense and waiting. They looked like hell, and Bia had the feeling something else was wrong besides Volkonsky’s death. Something that had been wrong for a while. He wished Greer hadn’t drawn the case. Greer had been a good agent once, until what happened to all good agents happened to him: he’d been promoted to special agent in charge and then ruined by spending most of his time shifting paper from point A to point B.

  “Good evening, folks,” said Greer, slipping off his dark glasses, with a warning look to Bia to do the same.

  Bia left his on. He didn’t like people telling him what to do. He had always been like that—it ran in the family. Even his name, Bia, came about because his grandfather refused to give his last name when he was hauled off to boarding school. So they wrote down “BIA”—for Bureau of Indian Affairs. A lot of other Navajos had done the same, making Bia a common surname on the Rez. He was proud of that name. The Bias, even though they weren’t related, all had something in common—they didn’t like to be pushed around.

  “We’ll get through this as quickly as possible,” Greer was saying. “One at a time in alphabetical order.”

  “Have you made any progress?” Hazelius asked.

  “Some,” said Greer.

  “Was Dr. Volkonsky murdered?”

  Bia waited for Greer’s answer. None came. They’d been dealing with the question from the get-go, but the forensics would have to be analyzed. There’d be a wait for the ME’s report. All being handled in Flagstaff. He doubted he’d see more than a summary. He’d been included only because some FBI bureaucrat needed a name to fill a blank space on some form—proof that the Tribal Police had been “liaised with,” to use the favored FBI term.

  Bia told himself he had no interest in the case anyway. These were not his people.

  “Melissa Corcoran?” said Greer.

  An athletic blonde rose to her feet, looking more like a tennis pro than a scientist.

  Bia followed them into the library, where Alvarez rearranged a table and some chairs and set up a digital recorder. Greer and Alvarez handled the questioning; Bia listened and took notes. The questioning went fast, one after the other. It didn’t take long for a consistent line to develop: They’d all been under pressure, things weren’t going well, Volkonsky was an excitable type and he’d been taking it especially badly, he’d begun drinking, and there was a suspicion of harder drugs. Corcoran said he’d banged on her door drunk one night, wanting to sleep with her. Innes, the team psychologist, talked about the isolation and said Volkonsky was depressed and in denial. Wardlaw, the SIO, said the Russian had been acting erratic and was careless with security.

  All this had already been confirmed by a search of Volkonsky’s place: empty vodka bottles, traces of methylated amphetamine powder in a mortar and pestle, ashtrays overflowing with butts, stacks of porn DVDs, all in one trashed little house.

  The stories were consistent and believable, with just enough contradictions to be unrehearsed. Working the Rez, Bia had seen a lot of suicides, and this looked pretty straightforward, aside from a few elements. It wasn’t easy to shoot yourself and roll your car into a ravine at the same time. On the other hand, if this had been a murder, the killer would have torched the car. Unless he was smart. Most killers weren’t.

  Bia shook his head. He was thinking instead of listening. It was his worst habit.

  By eight thirty, Greer was done. Hazelius saw them to the door, where Bia, who until now had said nothing, stopped. He removed his shades, tapped them on his thumbnail. “A question, Dr. Hazelius?”

  “Yes?”

  “You said Volkonsky and the rest of you are under a lot of stress. Why exactly is that?”

  Hazelius answered calmly. “Because we’ve built a machine that cost forty billion dollars and we can’t get the goddamned thing to work.” He smiled. “Does that answer your question, Lieutenant?”

  “Thank you. Oh—and another thing, if you don’t mind?”

  “Lieutenant,” said Greer, “don’t you think we’ve covered enough ground here?”

  Bia continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Will you hire a new person to take over Mr. Volkonsky’s responsibilities?”

  A beat, and then, “No. Rae Chen and I will handle them.”

  Bia slipped the shades back on and turned to go. There was something about this case he didn’t like, but he was damned if he could put his finger on it.

  17

  THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. FORD eased open the back door of his casita and slipped into the shadows, a rucksack on his back. Stars jammed the sky. A chorus of coyote yips rose in the distance, then died. The moon was nearly full, and the high desert air was so clear that light silvered every detail of the landscape. It was a beautiful evening, thought Ford. Too bad he didn’t have time to appreciate it.

  He scanned the little settlement. The other casitas were dark, except for the last one at the far end of the loop: Hazelius’s, where a yellow glow in the back bedroom diffused through the curtains.

  Volkonsky’s casita lay a quarter mile the other way down the loop.

  Ford darted across the moonlit yard and gained the shadows of the cottonwoods. He moved slowly, avoiding the puddles of moonlight, until he reached Volkonsky’s house. He scanned the grounds, but neither saw nor heard anything.

  Moving behind the house, he flattened himself in the shadow next to the back door. It was sealed with crime-scene tape. Delving into the rucksack, he removed kid gloves and a knife. He tried the doorknob—locked, of course. Briefly he weighed the consequences of breaking the seal, decided it was worth it.

  He slit the tape, pulled a hand towel from his pack, wrapped it around a rock, and pressed it steadily against the window until the glass gave with a shiver. After plucking out the loose slivers, he reached inside, unlocked the door, and slipped in.

  The smell of Volkonsky’s despair hit him: stale smoke from cigarettes and marijuana, bad liquor, boiled onions, rancid cooking oil. He slipped an LED flashlight out of the pack and shined it around low. The kitchen was a mess. Green-and-gray mold grew on a paper plate of cooked cabbage and miniature peppers that must have been sitting out for days. Beer bottles and vodka minis had spilled out of the overflowing recycling bin. Some had shattered on the Saltillo tile floor, the pieces swept into a corner.

  He moved into the living/dining area, the rug gritty with dirt, the sofa stained. No decoration of any sort hung on the walls, except for a couple of kid’s drawings taped to a door. One showed a spaceship, the other the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb. Beyond that, there were no photographs of wife or children, no sentimental details.

  Why hadn’t Volkonsky taken the drawings? Probably he wasn’t much of a father. Ford had a hard time imagining him as a father at all.

  The door to the bedroom stood open in the hallway, but still the room smelled stale. The bed had the ratty look of one that was never made, the sheets never changed. Dirty laundry dangled out of the hamper. In the closet, half-full of clothes, Ford found a suit. He felt the material—fine wool—and paged through the rack. Volkonsky had brought a lot of clothes to the wilderness, some of them chic in a kind of Eurotrash way. He must not have realized what he was getting into here, at least socially. But why hadn’t he taken them when he left?

  Ford moved down the hall to the second bedroom, which had been turned into an office. The computer was gone, but the unhooked USB and FireWire cables re
mained, along with a printer, a specialized high-speed modem, and a wi-fi base station. Computer CDs lay scattered about. It looked as though they had been sorted through in a hurry, the unwanted ones discarded.

  He opened the top drawer of the computer desk to more mess: leaking pens, chewed pencils, and stacks of printed-out assembly language program code, the kind of stuff that would take years to analyze. In the next drawer he found an untidy stack of file folders. He sorted through them—more printed fragments of code, notes in Russian, software flowcharts. He pulled the pile up, and there, underneath, was an envelope, sealed and stamped, unaddressed, and torn in half.

  Ford lifted the two pieces out, unfolded them, and found not a letter, but a page of hexadecimal computer code. Handwritten. The date at the top was Monday, the day Volkonsky left. Nothing more.

  Questions flooded Ford. Why had Volkonksy written this, then torn it in half? Why had he stamped it, but not addressed it? Why had he left it behind? What did the code mean? Above all, why had he handwritten it? Nobody handwrote computer code. It took forever and was ridiculously error prone.

  Ford had a thought: in a high-security computing environment like the Isabella project, you couldn’t copy, print, transmit, or e-mail any data without the action being logged. But the computer wouldn’t know if you copied it by hand. He stuffed the pieces into his pocket. Whatever they were, they mattered.

  From the back porch came the crackle of grit under a footfall.

  He switched off the LED and froze. Silence. Then the faintest crick of something between the sole of a shoe and the kitchen floor.

  He could not exit either door—the kitchen or the front—without being seen.

  Another whispery crunch of a footfall, closer. The intruder knew he was there and was coming for him, moving very slowly, no doubt hoping to ambush him.

  Silently Ford crossed the carpet to the back window and reached up. He turned the circular latch and grasped the upper divider, giving it a little upward pressure. It stuck.

  He was just about out of time.