“You’re kidding,” Dwight said. “Super plague with diphtheria toxin. This guy likes floating down the River Styx, doesn’t he?” His sandals slapping the asphalt, he strode along the road behind Richard and Seligmann.
“Only this time he got into rapids he couldn’t handle,” Seligmann said. “The assault was so deadly it killed not only Israelis but the terrorists, too. That was the end of Barashi’s assistance to the Palestinians; after that, he disappeared. The Israelis hushed up the attack for fear of triggering a worldwide panic. The U.S. was never notified because of Mossad’s concern over the sieve-like security here, America’s inability to keep secrets. When Barashi didn’t surface again, the Mossad assumed the Palestinians had ‘rewarded’ him, but I didn’t. My hatred burned a little too deeply to assume anything. The Palestinian attack had hit a kibbutz where my family lived. My mother, father and younger brother were killed. I’ve never been able to let go of that.”
“So you kept watching for signs that Barashi had resurfaced someplace?” Richard said.
“After I heard about the BioDawn Gulfstream going down, I got curious about the company. That’s when I learned a Dr. Alano Gonzales, a microbiologist, was working on some sort of hush-hush military project. At that point I guess my intelligence officer’s sixth sense kicked in. I hopped a plane to Atlanta. ‘Extended American vacation,’ I told my superiors.
“Only I realized when I got here I’d need inside help to flush out Barashi, if that’s who he really was. Gonzales was just too damn low profile and secretive for me to get close to. Which intrigued me even more. But I couldn’t just walk into BioDawn, unofficial as I was, and ask what was going on behind the razor wire. That’s when I turned to the von Stade-Uncle Remus bit.”
“Worked pretty well,” Richard said.
“You must be a predictable SOB,” Dwight suggested.
“Not really.” Seligmann shook her head. “The caper at Diamond Cutters was totally off the wall. I never expected that. Especially with the lady minister.”
Richard grabbed Seligmann by the arm. “You were there? You saw Barashi kidnap Marty?”
“I’ve been on your tail like flies on crap ever since Barashi tried to kill you that night at BioDawn. After that, I knew for certain he was Barashi and not Gonzales. Unfortunately, he got away after trying to turn you into mincemeat at the strip club. But you were my only link to Barashi, and I had to keep you going.”
“Had to keep me going?” Richard stopped walking and tightened his grip on the Mossad agent’s arm. “What do you mean by that? How did you keep me going?”
“Who do you think gave you the wake-up call, the warning, at the motel?”
“No, no. You meant something else.”
Her gaze hardened. “Quid pro quo. Tell me what you know first. What brought you to this subdivision? Why were you interested in a pickup truck rigged for spraying?” She drew a deep breath. “I hope it’s not for the reason I think it is.” She looked away, as if searching for something distant, unseen. “You know, I’d always hoped if something positive came out of my family’s murder it might have been to prove that plague-diphtheria was not viable as a WMD. Unless...” She turned to look at Dwight.
“No, that’s not what Barashi developed here,” he said. “Something worse.”
Her gaze darted from Dwight to Richard. “What?”
Dwight and Richard shared in telling the story; Dwight supplying details on the pathology, transmission and weaponization of Ebola; Richard laying out his hypothesis on how and where it would be delivered. When he finished, he handed Seligmann the slip of paper Khassem had given him. “This is Barashi’s target list... at least his candidate list. We’re checking out Elysian Fields, Magnolia Heights and Crystal Corners. The cops are handing the rest.”
“I can help,” she said, scanning the scrap. She looked up at the lightening sky. “All but out of time.” There was something close to despair stitched into her words.
“Quid pro quo,” Richard reminded her.
“Yes. My car.” They resumed walking. The Lincoln came into sight.
The absurd notion—was it absurd?—hit Richard that Barashi was about to spring from the vehicle and open up on them with an automatic weapon. He tightened his grip on the SIG. Useless, of course. Seligmann had the ammunition clip.
They reached the car. Seligmann rapped on a window, then stepped back.
Chapter Thirty
NORTH METRO ATLANTA
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24
Marty De la Serna emerged from the passenger-side door of the Lincoln.
“Protective custody,” Seligmann explained.
“Sure it was,” Richard said, fighting to conceal his emotions. He released his grip on the SIG. Two quick steps brought him to Marty. They hugged, an embrace that became a bit more prolonged and fierce than platonic protocol might have dictated.
“Glad you’re okay,” she whispered. “I was afraid you were going to come out of that happy hooker joint like Humpty Dumpty.”
“Glad you’re okay, too, Marty. I was worried sick about you.” He recalled his dry-heaves outside Diamond Cutters. “Literally.”
She stepped back from him and stared at his head. “I love what you’ve done with your hair.”
Seligmann walked over to where they stood. “You’re right,” she said to Richard. “She wasn’t just in protective custody, she was a carrot, something to keep you trotting forward. I didn’t want you to give up, loose the scent, after Diamond Cutters. Like I said, you were my only connection to Barashi. Any normal guy would have bailed after being shot, beat up and almost blown up. Maybe you didn’t need an incentive to keep your nose to the ground, but I couldn’t take the risk.” She rested her hand on his shoulder and spoke to Marty. “A real Mensch, this one.”
“But only a piece of shrapnel away from being a sacrificial lamb,” Marty said, her retort sharp and snappish, harsher, Richard judged, than she really wanted it to be.
“Point taken. But he’s off the hook now. Job well done. Thank you. All of you.”
“And my brother, Jason?” Richard asked, ignoring Seligmann’s acknowledgements. “He never was in any danger then?”
“Of course not. I wasn’t even sure where he lived. I got the photo off his Facebook page.” She walked toward her car. “Tell me how to get to Crystal Corners. You guys can check out that other place...”
“Magnolia Heights?” Richard said.
“Yes.”
“Wait a minute,” Dwight said, “can’t you use your intelligence agent status to light a fire under the FBI?”
“I’m not here, remember?”
“But—”
“And tell them what? That I’m a Mossad agent operating without sanction in the U.S.? Let’s stick with the plan we’ve got going. If the list Mr. Wainwright got is the real deal—and I have no reason to believe it isn’t—either we or the cops are going to find Barashi. If not today, then tomorrow or the day after. But I have a feeling he’s not going to putz around.” She settled into the driver’s seat of the Lincoln. “Which way to Crystal Corners?”
A pair of doves cooed morning greetings to one another through the evaporating mist. The eastern sky glowed a pale shade of steely orange as the disc of the sun nudged above the horizon.
Marty spoke up. “Look, I’ll admit I don’t do well in strip clubs. But I can drive a car. And you know the old saw, two pair of eyes... If it’s okay with Dr. Butler, I’ll drive his Mercedes and take Richard. I know my way to Magnolia Heights. Dr. Butler can go with Ms. Seligmann.” She turned toward Dwight. “You know how to get to Crystal Corners?”
Dwight nodded and handed Marty his keys. “Take good care of my baby,” he said.
Richard and Seligmann exchanged cell phone numbers.
Dwight spoke to Richard. “And you’ve got the duty of
ficer’s number, right?”
“I do. Now let’s go find this bastard... if the cops haven’t already nailed him.”
Seligmann tossed Richard his ammo clip. “I don’t think you’ll need it, but just in case...”
“Will you go back to Oregon after this is over?” Marty asked. She drove the Mercedes slowly along Roxburgh Drive, a road circling through the heart of Magnolia Heights, a multi-hundred-home subdivision. A minivan scurried past them, its side-panel sign advertising a catering service.
Richard watched the van disappear over a hill. “After this, I think I’d better retire for real. This is too much for an old man.”
“You’re hardly old.”
“Yes, but I’m probably lucky to be alive. Suddenly golf, fly fishing and widows’ casseroles have massive appeal to me.”
“So, you’re going back?”
There was something more to her question than idle curiosity. He detected it in the subdued timbre of her voice, heard it in a chord that suggested a longing for something never quite realized, something suppressed. A desire, perhaps, to explore what had beckoned before but had been ignored, shoved aside, filed away for future use. But Richard understood how the future slips by, becomes the past before it becomes the present. He wondered how—if—things might be different had he planned to stay for a time. A foolish thought, he realized. Their lives were poles apart. “Yes,” he said.
She didn’t respond, didn’t look at him.
He recalled the photograph in her office, the one of her and her family on the Madison River. “I’ll bet the trout in the Deschutes or Metolius are just as big as the ones in the Madison.”
She said nothing.
“That was an invitation,” he said.
She concentrated on driving, her head craning forward over the steering wheel as if it would help her see more clearly. “Sometimes there’re deer in these subdivisions early in the morning. You have to be careful.”
“We could go hunting, too.”
She turned toward him. “Only with a camera.” Her eyes flickered with a restrained flash of her patented smile.
He remained silent, tried to look nonchalant.
“That was an acceptance,” she said, a hint of exasperation in her voice.
“I know.” He broke into a smile.
A pickup truck passed them going in the opposite direction. He pivoted his head to watch the vehicle. “Oh crap,” he said.
“What? What’s the matter? Was the truck outfitted for spraying? Could you see?”
“No, it went by too fast. But it looked like there were some kind of rods sticking up out of its bed.”
“Rods?”
“Poles or something.”
“The truck might belong to a house painter or gutter cleaner. Maybe you saw some ladders.”
“Maybe. Turn around. Go after it. Let’s get a closer look.” He paused. “I think it’s the same model pickup I saw Barashi get out of at Diamond Cutters.” Any frisson of elation he’d felt earlier with Marty’s return and the revelation that von Stade—Seligmann—was not an assassin, quickly drained from him, replaced by a tiny knot of metastasizing dread.
A pair of joggers, early risers, husband and wife perhaps, bounced by giving Richard and Marty a casual wave. Marty descended a steep hill then climbed back up. A Porsche Carrera growled by going in the opposite direction. As she crested the next rise they could see the truck ahead of them, moving at a leisurely pace.
“Come up behind it slowly,” Richard said.
Marty nodded. Her knuckles had turned white from her death grip on the steering wheel.
“Slowly,” he repeated.
She tapped the brakes and coasted to within two car lengths of the pickup, a white Dodge Ram. “That’s a funny looking rig,” she said.
“How so?”
“Those vertical pipes.”
He stared at the pipes, four of them mounted on the right side of the bed. Nozzles on their tips. A large tank and what apparently was a motor or pump were snugged beneath the rear window of the cab.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like that around here.”
“It looks like spraying apparatus.”
“That’s my point. If someone is spraying, whether it’s fertilizer on lawns, or insecticide on tent caterpillars, they usually drag a hose off a reel and walk to wherever they need to spray. They don’t spray from a truck.”
“Unless they want to avoid ingesting the spray.” Richard punched in the task force duty officer’s phone number. He kept talking to Marty as he did. “Keep going at the same pace, pass him, let me get a good look at the truck.” A Captain McDowell answered the phone.
“Captain, this is Richard Wainwright—”
“Wainwright! Damn. You’re the guy wanted for murder.”
“Put that second on your priority list. First is that I think we may have spotted the terrorist here in the subdivision. We need reinforcements. Fast.”
“Jesus. What subdivision?”
“Magnolia Heights.”
“Hold on.”
Richard heard McDowell yelling out questions and commands. Then he came back on-line. “The nearest police unit is about ten or twelve minutes away. I’ve also got a Detective Jackson whom I’ve been asked to roust out of bed if we found you. He might get there just as quickly.”
“If this is our guy, then I guarantee you we don’t have ten or twelve minutes.”
“Don’t lose sight of him,” McDowell cautioned. “I’ll give our cruiser your cell number.” He hung up.
Marty pulled around the pickup. In the waxing light, Richard got a good look at it. A dirt-splattered sign on its door indicated it belonged to Wilson and Son’s Tree Service. Richard cupped his hand over his forehead and didn’t risk looking up into the cab as they passed.
Barashi watched the Mercedes come up behind him and then follow at a discrete distance. He parted the duffel bag on the seat beside him so the AKS-74 was within easy reach. He’d debated whether to run a reconnaissance circuit of Magnolia Heights before beginning to spray, and now was glad he’d decided to, just to make sure he wasn’t entering a trap. And he wasn’t sure yet. The car pulled out to pass him, and he felt inside his windbreaker for the Glock. The car went by, then slowed and signaled to turn into a driveway.
Barashi withdrew his hand from his jacket and, more at ease now, drew a long, deep breath. Only isolated joggers and walkers moved along Roxburgh, a normal Saturday morning in an upscale bedroom community. Nothing to preclude launching his attack. Following Magnolia Heights, he would strike other subdivisions then end his assault with a pass through South Chattahoochee Park. The park was a community gathering place that played host to hundreds of tennis players, picnickers, strollers and softball teams on summer Saturdays. Not many trees, but a bounty of victims.
Inshallah, hundreds of thousands of Americans would be dead or dying within a week. And Ebola would be loose in a nation unprepared. He recalled the country’s woeful response to Hurricane Katrina.
Marty wheeled the car into a long driveway, edging slowly toward a three-car garage. The pickup passed to her rear, continuing along Roxburgh. Richard called Seligmann as Marty waited for the truck to disappear over the brow of a hill. Once it had, Richard nodded for her to follow.
Dwight answered the phone. “That you Richard?”
“You and Seligmann better get over here, doc. Fast. We’ve got a pickup, the kind I saw Barashi driving yesterday, with some kind of customized spraying rig on it reconnoitering the subdivision. Marty says it doesn’t look like a typical yard-care pickup. It looks like maybe somebody wants to spray, but doesn’t want to get out of the truck to do it. And the cops are ten or more minutes away.”
Even through the weak acoustics of
the phone, Richard could hear Dwight speaking to Seligmann, then the roar of the engine as the Town Car accelerated away from wherever it was. “Cavalry’s on the way, chief. Keep the truck in sight.”
“What if he starts spraying?”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“What if I can’t think of anything smart?”
“Five minutes. We’ll be there in five minutes. Or less. Hang on.” The line went dead.
Marty’s eyes appeared ready to leap from her head.
“Seligmann and Dwight are on the way,” Richard said, hoping to calm her. “We’ll just track the truck ’til they arrive.”
“And if he starts spraying?”
“I’ll think of something stupid to do.”
They came up behind the truck again. The pickup slowed as they approached; a vise-like squeeze tightened around Richard’s head. He leaned over to Marty. “Stop the car. Get out,” he said quietly. “I can drive. I want you away from this. We’re in trouble.”
“I know we are,” she said, barely able to articulate her words. She quivered, a palsy of fear, Richard knew, rippling through her body.
“Stop the car, damn it.”
“Don’t swear at me. I’m not leaving.”
“Listen to me, Marty. Like you didn’t at Diamond Cutters.”
“I was wrong about that. I’m not about this.”
“Okay, use your influence then. We need divine intervention. Right now.”
“I’m in sales, not management,” she said, then issued a tiny gasp. “He’s stopping, turning. What’s he doing?”
Barashi was sure it was the same car again. Why? It certainly wasn’t a police car. Two people in it. Who? He intended to find out, didn’t like the way things were starting to go. He turned left into a driveway, backed out and reversed his course. He pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster, set it in his lap. He passed the car, an older Mercedes, going in the opposite direction. Yes, two people. A man and a woman. The woman driving. She seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place her. The man stared out the passenger-side window, looking away from him. He couldn’t see his face. But his carriage and profile were distinctive and familiar. No, it couldn’t be. “I killed him,” he muttered. “I killed him yesterday.”
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