by Pike, JJ
“Fran. Stop crying.” Alice had turned her heart off at the source. She was an iceberg monarch, ruling from on high.
Bill had never seen this side of his wife. He didn’t like it.
“I have an idea…”
Oh, God, please. Don’t offer Paul. Our children deserve better. After all you’ve put them through. He needed to say it. She’d terrified them when they were still young and impressionable. Aggie’s situation had been worse, but Paul and Petra weren’t completely shielded from that madness. He’d done his best to patch things up and protect them, but here she was, the wolf mother, throwing her cubs back into the fire.
“You say there are people who are possibly immune to MELT?”
“Maybe,” said Fran. “That’s what Professor Baxter thinks, anyway. There’s no other explanation. How have so many died or been horribly malformed and disfigured while some of us remain unscathed?”
“Use us,” said Alice. “Use anyone who’s immune to fight this thing.”
Fran didn’t speak. Bill prayed her self-interest would kick in. She’d been at K&P when MELT got loose. She was still alive. She was among the immune, too.
“What a great idea,” she said.
The lines were drawn. Alice and Fran were on one side, Bill on the other. He had to get to his kids before Alice and hide them from her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Jo was livid. Michael Rayton had played her. He’d said he knew what MELT was made of, taken them all the way to the edge, then dumped them off a never-ending cliff.
“I don’t know what’s making people sick.”
She wanted to punch him.
Was it because he didn’t have his immunity in writing? Was that why he was holding out? Or did he genuinely not know? He’d have immunity for his time in China. That was a given. The CIA would have annexed him to a diplomatic agency—a sham embassy job or title that made him look like he couldn’t be touched—but what would they do for him in the States? What would that look like? Could she forge something? She needed leverage and she needed it now.
She banged on the partition and asked the driver to pull over. It was a pain, moving in a convoy, but at least they were moving. She needed to talk to the general then her team. When they finally came to a stop Fran was on the road faster than she was and headed her way.
“What is it?” Jo didn’t have time for chitchat or nonsense.
“Alice gave us permission to use their cabin. I didn’t know if anyone had told you.”
“Our cabins?” Jo hadn’t been expecting that. She was—quite suddenly—going home.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re neighbors.”
Fran knew a lot about Alice’s life. More than Jo would have expected. The Everlees were fanatical about people not knowing they had a place in the woods, but here they were, giving it away. “I guess that’s good.”
“It’s outside the hot zone, apparently.” Fran was almost her old self. Hearing Michael admit he’d been responsible for bringing a weaponized form of MELT into the country put her in the clear and the relief showed in her face, her carriage, her manner. She was the almost-bubbly assistant they all relied on.
Jo, on the other hand, was cranky and out of sorts. She didn’t need bubbles she needed results. Was there a task she could hand off to Fran? She had to talk to her team alone, but perhaps Fran could be of some use. She was an admin expert, after all. “Come with me.”
The general had insisted that the sick soldiers be completely segregated from the rest of the convoy. He was in a transport that housed and was driven by sick men and women only.
Jo banged on the side of the vehicle, shouting his name.
When he came out, Jo took a step back. He hadn’t just covered his wounded arm in plastic, under his misshapen uniform he was wrapped from head to toe in plastic wrap. He’d poked a hole for his nose and mouth and made a slit for his eyes, but other than that, he was plastic man.
“She doesn’t do anything by halves,” he said.
Jo had to ignore all that. “Michael Rayton claims not to know what’s making people sick. He’s hinted at the idea that there’s another agent or reagent in play, but he’s not naming names.”
“Right.”
She took a few steps away from Fran.
The general did the same.
Then both of them turned their backs on her.
Jo dropped her voice. Fran shouldn’t hear what she was about to say. “I want to create a document that looks like an official indemnification.”
“Forge it?”
“Can you help?”
“I wouldn’t have the first idea what it would look like…”
“Neither will he. Who’s seen a letter like this? A couple of stiffs in the State Department. Some lawyers.”
“The President.” The general lifted his hand to scratch his ear, but it was under plastic and he was forced to rub his head against his shoulder. “Rayton might have seen something like this before. Of all of us, he’s the most likely to know what it actually looks like…”
“It’s not going to be simple, but I bet we can find something on the web. Everything’s been leaked…” She stopped herself. Not everything. Not the formula for MELT. Not any answers about how to stop it. “We can find the Seal of the President. We can mock up some letterhead. I’ll come up with the language. We can get Fran to track down a copy of the President’s signature. That’s online, right?”
“It’s a sad state of affairs if we can pull this off,” said Hoyt. “You think he’ll believe it’s real?”
“What other choice do we have? You said yourself, General, the fate of millions hangs in the balance.”
It was impossible to read anything from a man covered in plastic. The general could have been laughing, crying, scowling, raising his eyebrows. All she had to go on was his voice.
“You think it’s a bad idea?”
“I think Michael Rayton’s a very smart man. He was an undercover operative at a biotech firm for over a decade, on more than one continent, and no one flagged him once.”
“Right.” Jo was deflated, but not defeated. She rolled her neck, touching her chin to her chest the way her yoga teacher had trained her. She felt, rather than heard, the crackle of paper in her bra. She turned her back on the general and fished out the piece of paper she’d demanded from Rayton.
“It’s all documented,” she read.
“You said that. I still think it’s a flimsy idea. We only need to get one element wrong and he’ll…”
“No. It’s what Michael said. He said everything he’d done was documented. That’s the way we go at it.” She turned and ran back to the truck, leaving a confused Fran and a silent general in her dust.
“Get out,” she said.
“Me?” Michael had been a model prisoner, following orders to the letter.
“Yes, you. Out.”
Together they walked towards the field.
“If you have any smart devices on you—or any bugs of any kind—leave them here.” She waited.
Michael looked her dead in the eye.
She didn’t flinch. He was good, but so was she.
Finally, Michael Rayton removed his belt and took the buckle from the leather. “I want it someplace safe. I have no guarantees but your word.”
“Glove compartment. The car we were in. I’ll wait.”
Michael jogged to the car, deposited his belt buckle, and jogged back. “This better be good,” he said.
“Last call. Any more devices on you?”
“We’re in this so deep, Morgan. If you can’t trust me now, you never will.”
There was every chance she was never going to trust another human being ever, but that was beside the point.
“Let’s go.” She marched into the wheat walking even further than she and the general had gone. This time people knew it was a place for private conversations. They no longer had the element of surprise.
“You’
ve found something?” he said. “You know who released MELT?”
“No. I need to ask you for names.”
“Names?”
“You said everything was documented.”
Michael nodded. He was right to be suspicious. He hadn’t demanded she divest herself of all listening devices. For all he knew she was bugged. She wasn’t about to get naked to prove her point.
“Okay. I’ll lead,” she said. “All yes or no questions so you don’t have to speak. I won’t repeat your answers back and I won’t write anything down. How’s that?”
He nodded.
Jo wanted to say, “For the tape, the suspect is nodding…” But she held off on her moment of high comedy. This was a delicate moment in their negotiation. It was impossible, though, given the stakes, for her brain not to go to the wildest place she could imagine. Comedy was built for moment of high tension like this.
She righted herself, picking her words carefully. “If you can share the names of those who gave the orders, we might be able to track them for data. Are you able to share those names?”
He shook his head.
“They’re not protecting you.”
He didn’t answer.
“Sorry. Not a yes/no statement.”
“Did you expect them to protect you?”
Michael nodded.
“They’re not. They’ve bailed on you. You’re on your own.” She hung her head. She wasn’t following her own plan. “I’m going to tell you a story.”
Michael folded his arms and rolled his eyes.
“It’s a true story…” How could she convince him this wasn’t a trap? “Okay, look. You can pat me down. If I’m mic’d up, you’ll know. I doubt there’s anything the Bureau would have given me that you didn’t stop using ten years ago.”
Michael ran his hands through her hair, behind her ears, down her neck. He lifted her arms out and away from her sides. She held them there. He was brisk and businesslike. There was nothing prurient about his touch. He’d done this many times before. When he was done frisking her, he pointed at her shoes. She took them off. He checked the heels, the buckles, the inner linings. When she got them back they were a little worse for wear.
“Tell me your story.”
“I lied.”
“Big shock.”
“We haven’t been able to find anyone to grant you immunity.”
Michael turned and walked away.
“As in no one.” She didn’t want to shout, but neither did she want to scurry after him like some servant. “No one from the CIA, the State Department, or the Office of Legal Counsel will return our calls.”
Michael stopped.
“If one person was missing, I’d get it. We’re all scrambling and making do: not just the FBI, but police departments, fire departments, EMTs, hospitals, the national guard; all of us. We don’t have offices or servers or any of the tools of our trade and we’re critically understaffed. Some people will turn up at friends’ or relatives’ houses, others are going to be in the rubble under Manhattan, and I’m guessing at least two or three people will take the opportunity to walk away from their lives and reinvent themselves.”
Michael nodded.
“But my point is this: the Bureau is under the same pressure as the Company…” She waited for it to sink in.
Michael nodded slowly.
“We have our losses…”
“I get it. You sustained losses, but have assembled your team.”
“That’s right. Even though we’re under more pressure than we were for 9/11 or Oklahoma City or any of the recent attacks on domestic soil, I’ve managed to cobble together a working team. And not some pokey skeleton crew, mind you. I have some of my top guys working on this.”
Michael’s guard was down in ways she’d never seen before. Emotions ran across his face one after the other. He was coming to terms with the fact that he’d been right to put together an insurance package for himself. His bosses—or more likely people far more senior than anyone in the CIA—had left him holding the bag.
Jo prayed. Let this be the impetus he needed. Let his ire propel him to talk. Let him tell me what I need to know in order to solve this puzzle.
“I don’t know who most of the players are.”
For the second time in two hours, Jo wanted to punch the man. Was he a never-ending puzzle that went from one empty promise to another?
“But I know some. I’m going to recommend you start at the bottom and work your way up the list quickly.”
“Okay…”
“In 1983, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards threw this gem out to reporters. ‘The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.’ Do you remember that?”
Jo nodded. Her heart had set up a rhythm she wasn’t familiar with and her mouth was completely dry.
“It’s not true anymore. You can be gay and get elected. It’s the lying that gets you into trouble. But dead bodies. These are still a problem. And I know where the dead bodies are. Metaphorically speaking.”
“You’ve got dirt on the people who gave you your orders?”
Michael laughed. “I can tell you everything you want to know from their shoe size to their brand of kink. You don’t last this long in this business without crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s.”
“How are we going to do this?”
“You’re going to need to bring me into the fold.”
Jo tutted. Could she sell that to her team? He’d been in their crosshairs for so long. He could use this opportunity to tip his people off. It could all go wrong with one phone call. One word from him and they could all go to ground. She needed a poison pill; something that would prevent him from taking over her investigation and scuppering it. What did she have? He wouldn’t care if she threatened Fran. That relationship had gone down in flames. What then?
“You think I’m going to double cross you,” he said. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a fact.
“You’d think the same,” she said.
“So? What do we do? We want the same thing. We want this to stop. I don’t want to find myself jabbed with ricin or wearing lead boots at the bottom of the Hudson.”
Amazing how the universe was giving Jo what she needed. “You double cross me and I’ll have you dumped in the center of Manhattan.”
Michael laughed, but he got the picture. She wouldn’t hesitate to take him out if she had to. She’d never killed in cold blood, but her blood was pretty warm, all things considered.
When they reached the side of the field, Fran was waiting. “Jo? Might I borrow you for a moment?”
The fact that she and Michael had been out in a field together made them look suspect and/or fascinating but they owed no one any explanations. She nodded at Michael who returned to his prison-car without a backward glance.
“How can I help?” she said. She tried her best to look interested in Fran when her brain was totally obsessed with Michael and what came next. She needed to talk to Alex and Sam and get them to agree to take this chance on Rayton. That was a big ask. Did she have enough points with her guys? Sure, she’d dissed Sam when he was in earshot, but he deserved that. For the most part, she’d tried to do right by them during her years in the service; giving more than she took; sharing her ideas without stealing theirs; putting the hours in whether she was lead on the op or not. With any luck that work was about to pay off. She’d cash in all her chips if it got Rayton to talk.
“Alice had an idea,” she said. “She thinks we can contain the spill at Indian Point.”
“She does?” That stopped the Michael thoughts for a second. That was genuinely good news. Alice was no fool. If she had an idea it was worth listening to. The day kept getting better and better.
“Did you ever see the miniseries about the accident at Chernobyl?”
“Nope. Can’t say that I did.”
“They eventually sent ‘human robots’ in to deal with the explosion. The helicopters that we
re dumping retardant onto the fire melted out of the sky; the robotic debris clearers disintegrated on the rooftop. In the end, they had to use humans to move the radioactive graphite.”
“But MELT means we can’t send…” She stopped, her stomach was doing backflips. She got it. Professor Baxter had told Alice that there were people who were genetically predisposed not to respond to MELT. That explained Alice’s weird call. “She wants us to send in the immune?”