Fires of Midnight

by Jon Land

  Blaine grabbed a phone from a nearby end table and dialed Sal Belamo.

  “Fax come through, okay, boss?”

  “Better than Harry, Sal.”

  “Trouble?”

  “He’s gone and someone went through a lot of trouble to cover it up. Walls were wiped clean and everything but the wool got sucked out of the carpets.”

  “Keeping someone like you from seeing something, maybe. Christ, you think Harry really did have a kid who got snatched?”

  “If he did, there’d be phone calls.”

  “Records easily obtained.”

  “I’ll call you in an hour.”

  Even though all tests indicated that nothing was unsafe about the air inside the Galleria, procedure dictated that Susan and Killebrew don Recal II space suits before entering. For her the feeling brought on an eerie sense of déjà vu, even though the remains of the dead had been removed from the premises and transported to the CDC containment facility in the Ozark Mountains.

  A service elevator brought them to the basement level and Killebrew wheeled himself along even with Susan down the corridor, sliding ahead of her when they reached the boiler room.

  “Were any bodies found in here?” Susan asked him when they were both inside.

  “No. We’ve managed to identify the three on-duty physical plant personnel among the remains in the mall and that’s an anomaly in itself.”

  Each was able to hear the other thanks to the microphones built into the helmets’ frames beneath their faceplates. Tuned properly they could talk to each other instead of to Firewatch, though precaution dictated that their conversation be recorded back at the mobile command center. The only thing technology could not manage was to make their voices sound less raspy and guttural when relayed through a miniature earpiece.

  “Why?”

  “Because according to procedure one of them was supposed to be inside at all times.”

  Killebrew pushed the door open and led the way in. The boiler room was a high-tech affair, hardly fitting its mundane title. There was no “boiler” per se visible, just the main heating elements, pump stations and air-conditioning compressors, which were shut off now, raising the mall temperature to just under one hundred degrees. None of this interested Susan so much as a wall that was composed from ceiling to desk level of built-in, twelve-inch-square black and white security monitors.

  “Doesn’t seem like these belong in a boiler room,” she noted.

  “This was originally supposed to have been the main security station. The developers decided to move it to the top floor after all but the finish work was complicated.”

  “Are these monitors functional?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Assume they are,” Susan proposed.

  “Is that important?”

  “I’m beginning to think it might be. What track has your investigation been proceeding on so far?”

  “Microbreak of previously unidentified virus or bacteria.”

  “Accidental introduction?”

  “Inadvertent, anyway.”

  “Assume hostile action.”

  Susan could see Killebrew’s displeasure through his misting faceplate. “You’re the government liaison here,” he relented. “Not me.”

  “Play along. What do we know, what can we prove?”

  “Whoever was supposed to be in here during the incident wasn’t. Fact.”

  “Unless he himself was the perpetrator. Let’s assume, though, that he was lured away by the actual perpetrator.”

  “Hypothesis,” Killebrew said staunchly.

  “So whoever that someone might be arranges to have this boiler room to him- or herself.” Susan’s gaze lifted toward the bank of monitors. “He, she, or they would then be able to watch the results of their handiwork live from a dozen different angles, assuring them of knowing when it was time to flee.” Now she turned her eyes on the air-conditioning registers built into the ceiling. “You said the cooled air spread from the third floor down. That makes this the last place in the mall the organism would have reached. Proceeding with that scenario, how would the perpetrator have fled?”

  “Continuing down the subbasement corridor we took to get here brings you to an exit leading into the parking garage.” Killebrew seemed to stiffen in his wheelchair. “The same place we found …”

  “Found what?”

  “I’d better show you.”

  FIVE

  McCracken took his time working his way back to Captain Hornblower’s to follow up on Harry Lime’s final moves the previous night. He strolled down Duval Street toward Mallory Square past an endless succession of bars, restaurants and clothiers featuring the trendiest of selections. There were any number of sidewalk pitchmen selling art, as well as numerous galleries, and there seemed to be a kiosk on every corner trying to lure tourists to sign up for the various water activities offered.

  McCracken watched a collection of canopied cars roll by, dragged by a fake train engine and barely a third full of tourists busy with their cameras. An old-fashioned trolley followed close behind, also only about one-third full. The tourists inside looked bored and listless, as though trying to get all this over with before the day became too hot to stray far from the water.

  Captain Hornblower’s had just opened when Blaine got there. Inside, a bartender and a single waitress Blaine recognized from the night before were busy readying the place for whatever business might be coming in. Both remembered Harry leaving several hours after McCracken Monday night, having broken his own record on the video game at the expense of another handful of quarters and his usual number of Rolling Rocks.

  McCracken was about to take his leave when he noticed the Key West Irregular Harry had called Sandman leaning up against the same support beam he had the night before. Could be he hadn’t left, except Blaine was fairly certain this bathrobe was a different color.

  “I know you,” Sandman said, as McCracken approached.

  “Don’t think we’ve ever met.”

  “We haven’t. I know you all the same.”

  “I’m looking for Harry.”

  “Come back later.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be here then, either.”

  “Harry moves around a lot.”

  “I think this time somebody made that decision for him.”

  What was left alive in Sandman’s eyes flashed concern. “You talk to Papa?”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Key West Harbor. Hustling charters.”

  Papa’s boat was called the Bell Tolls. Seated there on the deck he looked even more like Hemingway than he had in Captain Hornblower’s the night before. He seemed to have no interest at all in hawking his wares for prospective charter customers, preferring to spend his day pouring a pitcher of Cuba Libre into a plastic cup.

  “Hello, Papa,” Blaine said, stepping on board from the dock without waiting for an invitation.

  The grizzled man turned and held back on his drink. “Do I know you?”

  “You know Harry.”

  Recognition flashed through his bloodshot eyes. “You were in the bar last night.”

  “Harry needed me. Now he’s gone.”

  “He does that sometimes, usually when there’s something on his mind needs working out.”

  “Lately?”

  Papa shrugged. “I suppose. He’ll take a boat out late at night. Closest one he can climb into. Drunk, sober—matters not at all. Figures out how much gas he’s got in the tank and goes out as far as he can before he has to turn around. Likes to push things, including his luck. Up till now, though, he always came back.”

  “Does he have a favorite boat?”

  “Yeah: my dinghy.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Sure, if it were here. I showed up this morning and found it gone.”

  “We found this just outside the exit door on that subbasement level,” Killebrew told Susan as he hovered over a table in the trailer with a number of items cluttere
d atop it.

  The two of them smelled pungently of soap and powerful disinfectant, courtesy of the portable decontamination shower units contained in an adjacent trailer. Susan’s hair was drying into gnarled, matted strands she paid no heed to whatsoever. Killebrew was seated in a different wheelchair since his regular one was still undergoing “cleaning” procedures. Susan watched as he leaned across the table and grasped a tattered and worn backpack made of blue nylon.

  “I’ve catalogued the contents,” Killebrew continued. “They’re right there on the clipboard before you.”

  Susan ignored his suggestion and reached inside the backpack for herself. There were four books—tomes, in fact. Susan withdrew the one on top, a thick, tightly bound effort titled Advanced Organic Chemistry. The second, almost as thick, was called Molecular Physics and Quantum Mechanics . Three and four were both paperbacks masquerading in hardcover size, Nuclear Physiology and Applied Chemical Engineering. Susan actually recognized at least two of the books on sight, thanks to earlier editions she’d come across during her years preparing for medical school.

  “Textbooks,” she said to Killebrew, feeling about the now flattened backpack’s innards. She fingered the rough blue fabric. “No name on any of the contents?”

  “No. I checked.”

  She slid her hand inside the bag and it closed on a few stray pieces of paper which she pulled from the darkness.

  “Receipts,” she said, as she uncrumpled and spread them out. “Harvard Coop. Since the bag is on this table, I assume you haven’t been able to match it up with any of the early witnesses on the scene we were able to identify.”

  Killebrew looked at her. “No match. And there’s only one set of fingerprints present on it. We already ran them through the FBI and drew a blank.”

  Susan glanced at the slips she still held before her. “And these are cash receipts, so they’ll be no help to us either. Well, they do have the time and date on them. We might get lucky there.”

  “Several weeks ago,” Killebrew reminded, not sounding like he cared very much. “Doubtful we can expect anything. Harvard summer session, though, has a fairly limited enrollment, so following up on those students enrolled in classes requiring these texts shouldn’t be too hard. Probably turn out to be some scared-shitless kid who slipped away instead of lingering like the others we’ve identified.”

  “Maybe,” Susan said, turning her attention to a trio of identical eighteen-inch cylindrical shafts attached to rectangular high-tech meters next to the backpack on the table. The meters, both digital and curved, were built into the top of sealed boxlike frames with a number of tiny holes punched symmetrically across all sides. The objects were freestanding, thanks to tripods set at their bases.

  “We found these late yesterday,” Killebrew said. “Haven’t been able to identify them yet.”

  “Don’t bother,” Susan told him. “I’ve seen them before—actually, not exactly like them, but close. They’re air quality testers, left in confined spaces for extended periods of time to measure the levels of potentially toxic gases. Results of studies employing them have been primarily responsible for smoking bans in restaurants and malls to reduce the effects of secondhand smoke.”

  “Then we can assume their presence to be routine.”

  But Susan’s mind was elsewhere. “Where is your sweep team?” she asked Killebrew, referring to the personnel responsible for collecting onsite data.

  “Rechecking the mall for anything we may have missed yesterday.”

  “Tell them to get down to the boiler room. I want it swept again now.”

  “What exactly are they looking for?”

  “Something I think they missed.”

  “Here’s the way it plays, boss,” Sal Belamo reported when Blaine reached him minutes after leaving Papa’s charter boat.”Looks like your friend Harry liked to keep to himself. We got almost no calls going out, and only a few coming in.”

  “Any overlap?”

  “Nope. But almost all the incomings originated from a single line in Cambridge. As in Massachusetts, boss, Harvard specifically.”

  “Someone was calling Harry from Harvard?”

  “A dorm room. Last call was made, let’s see, Sunday afternoon about two. Big one, over twenty minutes in duration. Hey, I was just thinking. Harry have a fax machine?”

  “No paper inside.”

  “From what you told me, it figures. Thing is, these records can’t differentiate between a regular call and a fax transmission. Mighta meant something if there’d been paper.”

  “Means I’ve got to catch the next flight to Boston,” Blaine told him.

  “As in Harvard? Cambridge?”

  “The tone in your voice just changed, Sal. What gives?”

  “Something went down there couple days ago you better know about, boss … .”

  The man inspecting the original oil paintings stacked along the sidewalk waited until Blaine McCracken was well past him before slipping away and raising the cellular phone to his lips.

  “McCracken’s taken the bait,” the man reported as soon as the party on the other end had answered.

  Susan was reviewing the latest data when the soft beep sounded. She watched as Killebrew lifted a receiver from the communications board connecting him to the sweep team he’d dispatched minutes before to the boiler room. He listened to the report briefly, never taking his eyes off Susan.

  “Your hunch was right,” Killebrew said, voice sinking as his gaze fell on the backpack she had hastily repacked. “Fibers of blue nylon fabric were found in the boiler room.”

  SIX

  “Doctor?”

  The slumped form of Dr. Erich Haslanger remained motionless behind his desk.

  “They’re waiting for us at the test site. We’d be well advised to get started.”

  Erich Haslanger stirred in the high-back leather chair and with great effort lifted himself up and shuffled toward Colonel Fuchs, a creak in his bones for every step. He would be seventy-three soon, much too old for this kind of work but knowing no better or different. Without work Haslanger would have time on his hands and he feared time more than anything except sleep. Sleep terrified him most of all, so much so he had given it up altogether nearly two years before. He had good reason; sleep had almost killed him.

  Haslanger drew even with Colonel Fuchs and found himself hating the man more than usual today. All prim and proper in his perfectly tailored uniform. Fuchs’s skin was so tight it seemed ready to snap at any moment. Haslanger liked to imagine he sprayed the expression on in the morning and left it there all day. Usually by this time of the afternoon, his uniform would show some creases, his old-fashioned brush cut losing the battle to Long Island’s humidity. But not today. Today the men from the Pentagon had come to visit Group Six and Colonel Lester Fuchs had made himself look early-morning fresh.

  “Did you hear me, Doctor?”

  “What? Excuse me?”

  He and Fuchs were at the end of the corridor in front of the elevator. Haslanger couldn’t remember making the walk, lost in one of the fugues he figured replaced his mind’s need for slumber. The elevator door’s polished steel showed him his face and he cringed at the sight.

  Did he really look that bad?

  A corpse, that’s what he was becoming. His face was gaunt to the point of skeletal, pale puckered flesh making the cheekbones, jaw and chin more pronounced. His eyes were gray and lifeless and his white hair was a wild frizz. Besides all this his joints always ached and his neck was constantly stiff.

  “I was asking you about the final staging you did yesterday for today’s test,” Fuchs continued.

  “Yes. Everything checks out.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Quite.”

  Fuchs’s voice grew icy. “You were sure before the Reyvastat incident, as I recall.”

  “Hardly a comparable example,” Haslanger returned without missing a beat. “Today’s experiment is taking place in a controlled environment, not a
war zone.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” Fuchs followed grimly.

  Haslanger ignored him, reviewing in his mind the litany Fuchs would soon be spouting off to his eager audience of Pentagon officials: the gospel of Group Six, starting with how the organization pursued its single-minded purpose isolated in the back end of the sprawling pine barren occupied by Brookhaven National Lab in the town of Upton on Long Island. Group Six had been so named because it was envisioned by the Pentagon as the “sixth” branch of the armed services. The Pentagon, specifically Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Starr, had determined that the importance of technology meant its development should be centralized. The work of labs like Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, or Aragon often mirrored one another, untold man hours of research wasted toward identical ends. Group Six would change all that and in the process change something else as well.

  This was the part Fuchs liked spouting off the most and Haslanger cringed just thinking about it.

  The five groups currently charged with safeguarding the nation’s interests were having a tougher and tougher time doing it. The Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, even the newly formed Special Operations Command had found themselves in a post-Cold War world where the rules had changed more quickly than their collective ability to adapt to them. Fires kept springing up faster than they could put them out, and now a number of renegade countries held a match in one hand and a nuclear trigger in the other.

  Although Group Six’s original charge was to develop weapons of a nonlethal nature, the latest and more crucial mandate undertaken at the Brookhaven facility itself was to produce a weapon that would effectively neutralize the latest members of the nuclear family. The problem was that so far, under Colonel Fuchs’s administrative leadership, it had failed miserably. Complicating matters further was the fact that Group Six’s quasi-secret existence had recently been the subject of several media leaks. The president was furious. Congress was demanding a full investigation. Some of Group Six’s primary supporters in Washington had started distancing themselves, wanting no connection to projects responsible for expending hundreds of millions of dollars with often disastrous results.