Chronic Fear

by Nicholson, Scott

  Where evil dwells, the Lord sends a servant.

  They detoured around the UNC campus and entered the southern end of town, where rundown student apartments mixed with spotty commercial development and industrial lots. Soon they were pulling up to a concrete-block building whose white walls were mottled with mold. The former gas station featured large windows in the front bearing purple curtains, but the garage area had been sealed off with new cinder blocks that had never been painted. The raised concrete ovals where the pumps had once stood now contained Japanese maples, their burgundy leaves flapping in the spring breeze.

  “Home on the range,” Silver said.

  “It’s government property now,” Scagnelli said, still playing the role of an FBI agent. “It’s considered a drug asset and subject to seizure and forfeiture.”

  “Shit, man! Nobody can just take away your property like that! Whatever happened to the Bill of Rights?”

  “The court will decide whether it was used to facilitate drug trafficking or if it was purchased with illegal profits,” Scagnelli said. “I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting. You think a criminal trial takes forever, wait until you start dealing with these civil procedures.”

  Silver turned to Forsyth with pleading eyes. “Man, this is my pad, man. I got a lot of memories here.”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” Forsyth said. “To relive a few memories. Do you have your cell phone, Scagnelli?”

  Forsyth didn’t want any record of communication between his phone and Dr. Morgan’s, and Scagnelli’s rotating supply of prepaid, disposable cell phones offered the best way to contact her. As they escorted Silver toward his home and laboratory, Scagnelli produced a key they’d secured from the DA. A rusty pickup rumbled by, honking its horn, and Silver waved. The driver must have realized that Scagnelli and Forsyth weren’t typical drug customers, because the truck accelerated and burst down the street, setting off barking dogs next door.

  “You guys are seriously bad for my rep,” Silver said.

  “All it takes is a haircut,” Forsyth said.

  Silver gave a desultory shake of his head that caused his dreadlocks to whip around his neck.

  Scagnelli led the way as they entered the renovated living room, formerly the public end of the gas station where maps, soft drinks, and fan belts had once been sold. The aroma of grease, rubber, and mildew still lingered over the stench of forgotten garbage. The power was off, and Forsyth opened the curtains so they could see. Dust swirled as the sunlight revealed a ground-level living room with a ’57 Chevy chassis suspended from the ceiling by steel cables. A rope ladder descended from the open driver’s-side door. Scagnelli tugged on the ladder, causing the chassis to sway.

  “My bedroom,” Silver said with a smirk. “Wore out the shocks with my lady friends so I had to float it.”

  “I can see why,” Forsyth said. “You’re quite a charming young gentleman. What we called ‘Sugar Britches’ back in Kentucky.”

  Silver squinted at Forsyth, perhaps wondering if he was making a homosexual come-on, but Forsyth waved him to the garage area, passing through a tiny kitchenette and dining area that might have been salvaged from an RV.

  “Did you do all this?” Scagnelli asked, unable to hide his interest. Forsyth took it as a kind of peer respect among criminals. The main difference between Scagnelli and Silver was that Scagnelli would kill his own mom for a buck, while Silver would rather drop acid and fantasize about world peace.

  “Most of it,” Silver said. “When you’re a spiritual entrepreneur, you got a lot of free time.”

  The garage area was equally surprising, with Scagnelli switching on his long-handled police flashlight to augment the weak natural light. The garage was stocked almost like a real garage, with a bizarre array of pumps, belts, chains, and spare parts, but some animal hides were nailed to the walls, gray patches of bare skin showing here and there. Long wooden benches that looked like church pews were arranged across the floor, pointed toward a large-screen television. A mannequin in the corner was draped with a tattered American flag, and it held an empty bottle of whiskey in one stiff hand.

  “Idle hands are the devil’s playground,” Forsyth said. One of the investigating agents had described the space, and the indictment had also mentioned Silver’s clandestine lab. The room wasn’t small, originally housing bays for two cars, but Silver had packed enough oddities to make it feel cramped.

  The shag carpet was peeled back, revealing an opening in the floor where the second service bay would be. A thick piece of plywood was sitting off to the side. Silver hurried through the dim clutter, knelt and stuck his head down into the darkness. Scagnelli leaned over his shoulder and illuminated the space below.

  “Bastards,” Silver said. “They took it all. Some of that was legit.”

  “You know how it works,” Forsyth said. “The government seizes all evidence and assets and sorts it out later.”

  As Silver descended via a metal ladder fixed to the wall, Forsyth stepped to the lip and looked past him to the refashioned service pit. Silver had applied his ingenuity by installing stainless-steel shelving and tables. Forsyth could imagine it full of flasks, trays, electron microscopes, computers, and gooseneck lamps. Silver settled into the metal office chair as if he were opening up shop again, the star of the show in the circle of Scagnelli’s spotlight.

  “So this is where Halcyon and Seethe were reborn,” Forsyth said from above.

  “Seethe?” Silver said.

  “Dr. Morgan’s formula.”

  “Bitchin’ name. I like it.”

  “The good news is the drugs you were manufacturing for Dr. Morgan aren’t illegal,” Forsyth said.

  “‘Alleged,’ dude. My lawyer said make sure the feds always use the word ‘alleged.’ Or did they take ‘innocent until proven guilty’ out of the Constitution while I was in the loony bin?”

  Forsyth smiled. Darrell Silver was beginning to grow on him in a way. A spiritual entrepreneur. Maybe we’re not so different, after all.

  “The bad news is that the drugs can’t ever exist, if you understand my meaning. They must remain our little secret.”

  In the orb of Scagnelli’s spotlight, Silver’s eyes narrowed as if embracing the existential possibilities. “Heavy.”

  Quietly to Scagnelli, Forsyth said, “Rig a recording device. Then call Dr. Morgan and invite her over. I want to get her and this knotty-headed hippie talking, to see how much they know.”

  “What about her husband? The guy who don’t like cheese?”

  “He’s itching to explode. Once he hears she’s been sneaking around behind his back, that’s one less corpse for you to deal with.”

  “And then I deal with him?” Scagnelli squeezed his bony knuckles together in anticipation of revenge.

  “No, I’ll handle this end. Silver’s already in my pocket. You have two CIA agents to put out of my misery. I don’t want the senator to find out we’ve been cutting in line at his all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Get out your scorecard, Chief,” Gundersson said into his Sectera Edge, a clumsier but better-firewalled version of a cell phone. Gundersson normally relied on the device for e-mails and text messages, but the security classification of the Sectera rated higher for audio communication.

  Plus, he wasn’t sure he could have typed the entire message on the tiny keyboard without his fingers cramping.

  Gundersson sat on a stump by the small ring of stones in which he’d built a fire of dry wood to minimize smoke. His camp was half a mile inside the Unegama National Wilderness Area, in a clearing that hadn’t seen a chainsaw for nearly a century. His ankle throbbed after the long hike from the cabin, but it wasn’t broken or he’d never have made it that far.

  Roland and Wendy hadn’t invited him to stay, not that he’d expected it. After all, having a federal agent walk out of the woods would make anybody a little wary, and if Roland’s story was true, the couple had every reason to distrust him. />
  “What do you have?” Harding asked from his cramped NCS office in DC, sounding like his acid reflux was acting up.

  “This is more than just busywork. Another agency is investigating, and the targets have received threats. Apparently it’s connected to some secret drug experiment involving Burchfield.”

  “Did you say Burchfield? The senator?”

  “Might be a smear job, right? But these guys swear Burchfield was behind several murders and a cover-up last year. Apparently Burchfield and CRO Pharmaceuticals were backing development of a drug that helped suppress memory.”

  “Shit, that’s already been invented. It’s called scotch.”

  The forest was settling into the first phase of dusk, with the birds falling quiet and a few insects issuing their high-pitched trills. Faint stars appeared through openings in the bright green canopy, and the dying sun cast a pinkish light over the clouds. It didn’t look like rain, which relieved Gundersson, because he’d packed lightly and would have had to wear his poncho inside his tent.

  “Doyle apparently got some e-mails with NCS as the sender. I told him I was with the CIA in order to get on his good side. I told him we were looking out for rogue elements in the NCS. Playing on all the interagency suspicion.”

  “A double agent within the same agency. Did he fall for it?”

  “Enough. He opened up, but I don’t know how much of it to believe.”

  Gundersson related Doyle’s tale of how the couple and four of their college friends had been involved in a fear-response experiment eleven years earlier, where one of them had died. Then, last year, Sebastian Briggs had tried to recreate the experiment, testing a drug he’d discovered that caused the brain to shed its inhibitions and revert to primal functioning. According to Doyle, Burchfield was there when Briggs was killed, but nobody remembered what happened because Briggs had a different drug that caused short-term amnesia.

  “That sounds like the biggest heap of steaming donkey malarkey I’ve heard since the WikiLeaks mess,” Harding said in response. “Even if half of it is true, I’d guess Doyle was using that ‘amnesia’ card as an out.”

  “I don’t know, Chief. These people don’t really have anything to gain by lying. If they were players, why would they be hiding out in a hillbilly hollow?”

  “I ran a background on Sebastian Briggs and not a whole lot comes up. That first experiment is on the books, and one of the subjects died, but it was apparently unconnected. Briggs was bounced from the UNC faculty, though, and he worked the fringe with some drug companies as a researcher, and then a whole lot of nothing. It’s like the last five years of his life were erased.”

  “Big surprise. But there’s one red flag.”

  “What?” Harding was growing impatient, annoyed that the job had gotten bigger and more complex than he’d counted on.

  “No fake background was filled in for the last five years of Briggs’s life. People who wipe out files usually put in some vanilla dates and places so the hole isn’t so obvious.”

  “So whoever is behind this is either new to the game or is so goddamned big that they don’t care who finds out.”

  Gundersson propped his sore ankle on a stone so it could cool. “And if somebody’s playing connect-the-dots and wants to add more blank pages to the Seethe and Halcyon story, it’s only a matter of time before they show up here.”

  “Or maybe they’re already there.”

  The comment caused Gundersson to look around the forest, which already seemed wild and primal and threatening. “I better sign off, Chief. It’s not so easy to recharge a cell phone by rubbing two sticks together.”

  “Okay. I’ll dig from this end and find out who set up this mission. Be careful out there.”

  Right.

  Gundersson hobbled to his tent and secured the Sectera in his pack, checking the clip in his Glock. He had been so engrossed in playing predator that he hadn’t considered someone might be watching him watch them.

  He made his way back to the fire. Even though it was April, the night was cool, with mist hanging low in the trees. Every snapping twig or flapping limb evoked images of a hunter creeping up on his camp.

  He’d chosen a level clearing, preferring it to the rocky clefts and granite recesses on the ridge, thinking he might have to move quickly. Now he wondered if he’d left himself vulnerable, because he’d be exposed to anyone watching from the forest. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

  Just the fox. Maybe even a black bear, but my food’s suspended in a plastic sack. Nothing here to attract any nocturnal creatures.

  But the shuffle of moist leaves just beyond the perimeter of the clearing indicated something big. Gundersson forced himself to remain casual. If a double agent was involved, or someone wanting Roland and Wendy all to themselves, then Gundersson would likely be already dead. One shot with a silencer and no one would be the wiser until Harding made his scheduled call the following night.

  The NCS was clustered inside CIA headquarters four hundred miles to the north, but it might as well have been a million light-years. Harding would have to watch his step researching the CIA’s involvement, since the agencies maintained an uneasy and oddly competitive relationship despite fulfilling the same basic mission. Harding had his own neck to protect. Gundersson was on his own.

  He sat back down by the fire, keenly aware of the Glock thrust in the pocket of his windbreaker. He put his hands in his pockets, as if he were cold, and then realized that would look suspicious, since the fire was a better source of heat. He rubbed his hands over the flames, realizing how difficult it was to keep such a mundane gesture casual when you had to force it.

  Depp and DiCaprio, you officially have my admiration for a change.

  But good old Leo wouldn’t sit there with a bull’s-eye on his back. The script would tell him to do something cool like roll to the ground and come up firing toward the noise, squeezing off a chest-high line of lead that would result in a cry of pain.

  Except he had no idea who was stalking him. It could be a real hunter, someone poaching deer out of season, or even a lost hiker. And killing the guilty was one thing. Killing the innocent was a lot harder to cover up, even for the National Clandestine Service, whose core mission was still officially classified. If Gundersson was the one who ended up tipping off the world that the NCS was involved in domestic actions, Harding would have him crucified, and the deputy director would make sure the nails stayed in place until the carcass rotted.

  Gundersson opened the tin of pork and beans he’d warmed on a rock. He had no appetite but forced himself to eat a bite anyway. The syrupy odor immediately masked all the earthy, green smells of the woods.

  He heard another clumsy footfall, a little closer and to the left, and he forced himself not to turn his head. He chewed slowly, staring into the fire, calculating distance.

  Maybe I should casually stand up and saunter into the bushes as if I’m taking a leak. Except, if I assumed no one was around, I’d whip it out right here, wouldn’t I?

  Plus, I can’t very well saunter when my fucking foot is about to fall off.

  A night bird let out a piercing call, and it sounded a lot like a secret signal someone might make. Maybe there were two of them in the woods, closing in on him and cutting off any chance of escape.

  The noise came again, and Gundersson decided it couldn’t be a pro. Nobody with any level of training would be so careless.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the thin, fleeting flicker of a penlight beam. His stalker didn’t have night-vision goggles, either.

  Gundersson tossed the sardine can into the fire, the oil causing it to hiss and spit. He leaned back and worked his hands into his pockets, maneuvering the Glock so he could fire through his windbreaker if necessary.

  Then the leaves parted and there she stood.

  Her bathrobe hung open and she was naked underneath except for rubber flip-flops.

  “You almost got yourself killed,” Gundersson
said after swallowing the lump in his throat.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve been killed before.”

  She waited at the edge of the clearing, twenty feet away, and she was unarmed. She was “un” a lot of things.

  Gundersson rose to his feet, remembering Roland’s earlier rage. What if he’d tried to hurt her again? If Seethe had altered them the way Roland had claimed, then their behavior would be unpredictable even a year after exposure.

  He had to admit, Wendy’s behavior was certainly unpredictable at the moment.

  “Are you okay?” Gundersson asked.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes were distant, but they held an animal cunning. “Can we talk?”

  “Uh…I guess. Can I get you a blanket?”

  “No. I know how to stay warm.” She came toward him and knelt by the fire, spreading her legs as she crouched. The cool air had hardened her nipples to dark, blunted points. Gundersson forced his gaze away.

  “Besides,” she said with a girlish grin, tapping the penlight on her knee. “You don’t want to be hobbling around on that sore foot of yours.”

  “I’m better now,” he said, even though he was feeling much worse. What if Roland was after her, and was even now watching them from the woods? He might get the wrong idea.

  But what was the right idea?

  “Roland’s going to be worried,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, I can handle him.”

  “What he told me…about the Monkey House, and what happened to you…”

  “I let him do all the talking because he thinks he remembers. But there are some things he always gets wrong. Like what happened between me and Sebastian Briggs.”

  Gundersson gulped. He didn’t like meddling in other people’s relationships. And he didn’t need any new complications.

  “Your husband is a jealous man,” Gundersson said, choosing his words carefully. “And I don’t know enough about Seethe and Halcyon to judge anyone’s behavior. I’m just here to help.”

  “Why don’t you start by helping me?”