While Giselle kept watch, Ben dragged the two thugs to the van’s rear and dumped them into the back. As quietly as possible, he closed the doors. “We need to get out of here and regroup.”
“Wrong.”
Same Giselle. Always contrary. Always battling for dominance. He used to love that about her. He checked the magazine on his Glock and handed her Hagen’s electric baton. “What do you mean, wrong?”
“I mean we can’t leave—not yet.” She smacked him in the arm with the weapon and walked away, heading for the cover of the pier’s heavy equipment yard. “This way. Leviathan has a bioweapon.”
“I know they have a bioweapon,” he said, chasing after her. “That’s why I’m here. How do you know they have a bioweapon?”
“Remember Rome? The enemy agent who died? What do you think I’ve been investigating since the Company blew up my house?” She reached a row of tracked, mobile cranes and slowed to let him catch up. They walked down the line together, crouching and watching the activity at the ship. “This is a severance, Ben, for both of us. If we can help the Company stop Leviathan, perhaps the Director will forgive us for whatever he thinks we’ve done and let us back in, yes?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “Exactly what I was thinking.” Then he said it again with more confidence. “Exactly. So let’s make it happen. Here’s what I’m thinking. The Behemoth was a launch point for the Tokyo and Munich attacks. And tonight, those tanks they’re loading are all connected like one big bioweapon.” He tilted his head, scratching his ear. “There’s just one problem—”
“The workers aren’t wearing protection,” Giselle said, finishing his thought. “Odd for evil minions loading a plague ship, yes? You are meant to think this is a boatload of nitrogen, just as the tank markings say.”
He nodded. “It’s the obvious conclusion. And I’m struggling to find evidence to the contrary.”
She winked. “Forget your misgivings, mon chéri. The tanks are a weapon.”
“How do you know?”
“You investigated from the Leviathan angle, starting with their last known attack in Rotterdam. I started with our Rome clue—the plague. I looked for experts and found a Chinese microbiologist who vanished this summer and a Pakistani named Kidan who recently walked away from a dream job at Oxford. I tracked them both to Valencia. The first one, Dr. Xue, is dead.”
“What about the other one?”
Giselle grabbed Ben’s chin with two fingers and directed his gaze to the Behemoth’s gangplank. “Here he comes now.”
53
Kidan had parked his brand-new Jag in a second employee lot near the heavy equipment. Ben and Giselle waited for him in the shadows between a pair of high-capacity forklifts that made the one Ben had caught on fire look like a Tonka toy.
“That’s Kidan’s car,” she said, nodding at the Jag only a few meters away. “I stowed away in an equipment truck that followed him, under a pile of hoses.” She showed him a tear in the knee of her jeans. “I tripped getting out and knocked a crate of chains and fasteners off the truck bed. That’s how those thugs captured me.”
Ben remembered the crash he heard while stealing the forklift. He let out a bemused huff. “You almost got me captured too.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t mention it. But how do you know about the tanks?”
“I breached Kidan’s lab at a massive industrial compound owned by Jupiter Global Industries, not far outside Valencia.”
“Jupiter.” Ben said the name as he would speak the name of an unwanted ghost.
“Yes. The name with which your Algerian friend taunted you in Rome. Jupiter Global owns Sea Titan, although the trail of shell companies is hard to follow.” With her eyes, Giselle followed Kidan as he strolled across the yard, heading their way. “In his lab, I saw a mockup of the tanktainer design—a scale test. The tanks are filled with water vapor. Seed canisters push the bacteria into the first tanks, and it . . . infects the whole system, replicating on its own.”
Ben watched her. Same Giselle. Laser focus. Like old times. “Why didn’t you contact me?”
She kept her gaze on Kidan. “Focus, Ben. Remember what Hale used to say about emotions?”
“Yeah. I remember. What about the lab? You got inside. Did you get a look at his computer?”
She gave him a silent duh roll of her eyes. “I couldn’t crack the password.” Kidan had reached the parking lot’s edge, a few steps from his Jag. She gestured at the scientist, lowering her voice to a whisper. “That’s why I need him, yes? Come on.”
They ambushed Kidan at the vehicle.
Giselle hit him with just enough shock from Hagen’s cattle prod to put him down but not out, and the two dragged him back into the shadows between the heavy forklifts.
The left half of Kidan’s body woke up before the right. With a disturbing partial crabwalk, he scrambled back against an oversize tire. “Don’t shoot. I’m only a scientist.”
Only a scientist. Ben let out a sour huff and touched the man’s nose with the barrel of his Glock. “You scream. You die. The guards might come running, but it won’t matter for you, because your brains will be splattered all over this tire. Got it?”
Kidan nodded.
Ben nodded too. “And for the record, you’re not a scientist. You’re a death merchant with an advanced degree. Now”—he gestured at Giselle with his gun—“she’s got some questions. I suggest you answer them.”
Together they lifted him to his feet, grabbing the lapels of Kidan’s lab coat with one hand each. Giselle thrust her chin at the ship. “Tell me what kind of disease you and the other minions are loading onto the Behemoth.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She snapped her fingers and held out a hand to Ben.
He slapped the Glock into her open palm. They’d played this game before.
Giselle, a perfect actress on her favorite stage, rested the barrel against his temple at an almost casual angle, luring him in with a relaxed smile. Then the electric baton appeared from nowhere, an inch from his eyeball. A single arc sparked between the prongs.
Kidan went rigid.
Ben paced behind his teammate, slipping into an old rhythm. “You failed to answer her question. She hates that. So here’s the deal. Answer the next question or lose an eye. And before you choose, please understand we know more than we’re letting on. Lie to us, and my associate will use her cattle prod.”
Giselle didn’t have to repeat her question.
“We engineered a new bacterium. W-weaponized plague. Multiple forms.”
“Multiple forms?” Ben stopped pacing and squinted at him. “How so?”
Kidan hesitated.
The prongs crackled.
“They serve d-d-different purposes. The one on the ship is highly contagious. The other kills a single victim and dies before it can spread.”
A single victim. Rome. The contagious version worried Ben far more. What was Leviathan planning to unleash? Hadn’t the world suffered enough? “Show us. Take us to your lab and bring up the data. I want proof. And . . . formulas.”
Giselle shot him a look that said Formulas? Really?
Ben walked out of Kidan’s sightline and shrugged. He had no idea what microbiologists called them, but the bio-death-merchant career field had to include something like formulas.
The good doctor seemed to take his meaning. “I can’t.”
The prongs crackled again, lighting up his face.
“B-because he confiscated them. He took my data, my samples. Jupiter took it all.”
Ben had to shush the man because his voice had gone up too many octaves. Maybe Giselle was a little too good at her job.
“Jupiter,” she said. “He’s your boss, yes?”
“Yes.” Kidan tried and failed to push the back of his head through the forklift’s steel frame, unable to escape the cattle prod. “He took everything. I swear.”
I swear.
A little fear makes lies obvious. The id
ea that fear tactics including the threat of bodily harm have no place in an interrogation is a twenty-first-century invention, ignoring centuries of practical experience. A good field interrogator knows that, yes, fear brings lies, but it also makes those lies stand out, enabling the interrogator to get at the truth. An individual locked in fight-or-flight mode loses guile and reverts to childish tactics like I swear and other pointless oaths.
Kidan’s I swear, told Ben the words preceding it were a lie. He took everything. Not true. The scientist–slash–death merchant, unwilling to let his master take complete control of his valuable creation, had held something back—maybe a lot.
“Everything.” Ben clicked his tongue. “Too bad. In that case, we’re done here.” He walked behind Giselle and let his fingers graze the small of her back. The same old routine. “This place is too hot. We need to go. Don’t leave any evidence behind.”
The prongs crackled again, moving closer.
“All right. All right. Don’t hurt me. I . . . I kept copies.”
Ben put his face close enough to Kidan’s to let the man smell his breath. He used one finger to tilt the baton up and away. “Where?”
54
“Can we talk about the hair?” Ben lifted his gaze to the Jag’s rearview mirror, meeting Giselle’s eyes.
“Now?”
“Yes, now. It’s bugging me.”
“Let’s get off the property first, yes?”
Kidan drove, with Ben beside him holding the prod and Giselle behind him depressing the seatback fabric with the Glock. The two had assured the scientist that despite what he might have seen in the movies, the bullet would happily pass through the cloth and aluminum to sever his spine, so he’d better keep his mouth shut at the gate.
He did. The fence rolled back, and the guard waved them through.
“Good,” Ben said, patting Kidan on the arm. “Now. Take us home. I can’t wait to see what kind of luxury selling out mankind will buy.”
The scientist claimed he kept copies of everything on his laptop at home, a fifteen-minute drive from the port. The management kid with the New York accent had mentioned the Behemoth shipping out in three hours. That gave Ben and Giselle time to get the data, but not enough time to convince the local authorities to stop the ship, especially with Ben’s current reputation. They’d have to find a way on board and do this themselves. They could do it—together. Ben had been fighting this battle alone. A well-trained teammate made all the difference.
He waited until the complex’s blue glow faded from the mirror before pressing Giselle again. “The hair, Giselle. Why amber?” It bugged him. A spy on the run often changed hair color, but she’d chosen a color so close to the one he’d picked for Clara.
Giselle tossed her disheveled locks back and forth like a bad shampoo commercial, toying with him again. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d like it.”
“Why would I like it?”
“Morocco, silly. In the souk?” She widened her eyes and nodded at Kidan, indicating she couldn’t be more specific in front of an enemy. “At the start of the job, you said, ‘Watch the lady with the amber hair. She’s too pretty to be out here on her own.’ Too pretty, you said.” Giselle pushed out a lip. “I was jealous.”
Too pretty. Ben remembered those words. Maybe that experience had influenced his choice of hair color for Clara too. He nodded. “I guess that covers it.”
“Covers what?”
“Nothing.”
Kidan coughed. “I can park and get out if you two want to talk.”
Ben raised the cattle prod.
The scientist pushed his body against his door to keep clear. “Or I can drive, if you’re in a hurry. Do you want me to speed? Run red lights? Perhaps you want some music. I have satellite. Two hundred channels.”
Ben resisted the urge to jab the prongs into his liver. “Follow the rules of the road. Other than that, shut up and drive. Got it?”
“Yes, yes. Okay.”
The scientist looked sufficiently cowed, and he didn’t seem to be driving them into danger. A warehouse district south of the port had given way to an empty coastal forest, but Ben saw luxury beach villas ahead. He glanced at Giselle in the mirror again. “What about your cottage?”
“I told you. Part of the severance.” Her expression darkened, and she took on an exaggerated suburban couple tone. “Do you really want to keep discussing our private business in front of your new friend?”
“Fine. We’ll talk later.”
“You bet we will. I must hear about this mysterious woman with the blue hair, yes?”
Now he felt like Kidan—a man under interrogation. “Yes. Of course.”
After five minutes of awkward silence, Kidan pulled into the garage of a two-story condo overlooking Pobles del Sud Beach, south of Valencia proper. Giselle kept the Glock glued to his ribs until they reached his home office on the second floor.
Moonlight glittered on the black water of an infinity pool outside on the balcony, and beyond the pool, Ben could see the port, with the Behemoth brightly lit, still at its berth. “Nice place for a man who’s only a scientist,” he said, clamping a hand down on Kidan’s shoulder. He steered the scientist to the desk. “We’re here. Now show us what you’ve got or I give this nice lady the cattle prod again and we go back to square one.”
“Yes.” Kidan shook his head, smiling. “No problem. I have the drive here in my top drawer, as promised.”
Ben watched the scientist work his way around the desk. The smile seemed forced. The as promised sounded rehearsed. Ben lowered his gaze to Kidan’s fingers, opening the drawer, quivering with anticipation. Was Kidan dumb enough to pull a gun?
The scientist raised his eyes, watching them both, and dipped his hand into the drawer.
“Giselle! Hold fire!” Ben lunged, putting his body between her and the threat.
55
Ben stabbed the crux of the scientist’s arm with the cattle prod. Kidan yelped and convulsed, smashing his flailing wrist through a glass double-helix sculpture. He dropped into his chair and clutched the arm. Red stains spotted his lab coat.
“Don’t move,” Ben said, threatening him with the cattle prod. He opened the drawer all the way. No gun. A remote with a single red button lay in an organizer among the papers and pens. He inclined his head, motioning for Giselle to look.
She seethed. “A silent alarm. Toi idiot. You tried to call the cops?”
Kidan growled back at her. “Private security. A man in my position cannot be too careful.”
“I guess paranoia and death merchant go hand in hand.” Ben kneeled to yank the wires from the button. As he worked, he felt Giselle’s glare boring into him.
“And you,” she said. “You should have kept out of the way. I might have shot you through the back, jumping between us like that.”
“We need him.”
“For now.” Her lips flattened, and she shifted the menace of her gaze to Kidan.
The scientist swallowed.
Ben opened the laptop in front of him. “Show me the data, Dr. Kidan.”
“But my arm, it—”
“Data first. Medical attention later. I’ll make it easy and do all the typing and clicking for you. Give me the password.”
Kidan complied. He’d saved everything.
For all his failings as a man, Kidan’s record-keeping deserved high marks. His notes rivaled those of the most meticulous researchers on the planet. Ben scrolled through page after page of data. Most of it made no sense—not to him. He wished Tess was there to translate. Now that he and Giselle had the data, they’d make sure she got the chance.
A few phrases stood out. Asymptomatic contagion phase. Predicted infection rate. And he kept seeing the same R0 symbol over and over again, followed by increasingly large numbers.
“What is R zero?”
“We pronounce it R naught,” Kidan said. “R0 is a measure of a disease’s potential using the number of people each host infects. It combines the d
uration of pre-symptom contagiousness with the ease of transmission. For instance, the virus causing the measles has an R0 of eighteen, meaning one host will infect eighteen others before being quarantined.”
“And this R0 figure increases in cities, right?” Ben shot a glance at Giselle, remembering the pandemic and the impact it had on the world’s larger cities, especially New York.
Kidan nodded. “Climate and population compression are most important. A disease in London has far more potential than the same disease in the Gobi Desert. In urban areas, our modeling for PB2 shows incredible promise.”
Potential. Promise. A parental pride showed through the strain in Kidan’s features caused by his wound.
“A high R0 is bad. Got it.” Ben scanned the pages. Each progressive cycle of Kidan’s experiments boosted the figures until the R0 reached into the hundreds. A hundred hosts could each infect another hundred before showing symptoms. Each of those could infect a hundred more, and so on.
The exponential math boggled Ben’s mind. “We should kill you right now.” He sensed Giselle’s finger tightening on the trigger again and raised a hand. “Hang on. Figure of speech.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Ben scrolled on. The file included diagrams—CAD-style drawings of the bacteria plus the layout of the ship-turned-weapon. One showed the stacks of forty-foot-long tanktainers on the cargo deck with a sketch of the tanks and hose system in the margin. “It looks like one big bioweapon. How does it work? What’s inside the tanks?”
Kidan clamped a hand over the growing bloodstains on his sleeve, and Ben saw glossy red on his fingers. The glass had cut deep. The scientist stared down at his wound as he answered. “The bacteria propagate during transit, populating the water vapor in the tanks. When the cranes lift the tanktainers from the ship upon arrival, the hoses break away and snap a valve into place, beginning a measured aerosol release—invisible.”
“An aerosol weapon,” Ben said. “And wherever the tank travels by rail or truck—”
“The bacteria spreads.” Kidan looked up at him with a defiant grin. “To every corner of the target nation.”
The Paris Betrayal Page 21