Final Epidemic (17 page)

“Yes. Some of them with their own private armies. Like our militia movement in the States.”

“We too have paramilitary organizations in Russia, my friend. They are no less crazy than your militias—and, I fear, ours are far better armed. Some of them are clearly fascists, others seek a return to socialist values. A few even wish to restore the czar.”

“And the CIA?”

Alexi shrugged. “Your good associate was ordered by the CIA to report on these elements. To get close to the leadership. If possible, to become part of the movement. This he did very well. With great enthusiasm, in fact.”

“And they knew he was Aum.”

“Probably not,” Alexi said. “Just as the Aum probably did not know he was affiliated with the CIA. But, my friend, I find it somewhat improbable that your people were unaware of his, shall we say,
religious
persuasions. I have not found CIA case officers to be totally incompetent; they certainly research the background of agents they recruit.”

The Russian shook his head. “No. My belief is that your people thought that by recruiting Davidovich, they expected that they also acquired a window into this interesting little cult.”

“So Carson lied,” Beck said evenly. “Davidovich was providing information on Russian opposition movements, perhaps even channeling CIA assistance to them. And he was providing information, real or not, on the Aum.” He looked up at the Russian, and his tone was chiding. “Unless you’re lying to me now. Are you, Alexi?”

“Perhaps a little,” Alexi admitted. “Old habits are hard to break. One must balance discretion against the requirements of our profession. For instance, it would be indiscreet to tell you that our people have agents in place close to your own paramilitary extremists. But of course, we do.”

Beck nodded, filing away the information and wondering why it had been offered.

“And all the while, Davidovich was acting as an emissary for the Aum. I imagine he was very generous to your extremists.”

“Yes, indeed,” Alexi said. “He extended to them an assistance that far surpassed their own capabilities. Our friend Davidovich offered to provide them with nerve gases, which excited them greatly. And he hinted to them of even more interesting toys with which they might play.”

Beck looked up. “Not this virus?”

“It is one possibility. I fear the Aum were disinclined to share the specific nature of this other plaything, even with our friend Davidovich,” Alexi said. “Davidovich claims he does not know. Perhaps he is truthful in this.”

“And your people were following him all the while,” Beck said. “Watching and waiting.”

“We waited perhaps not long enough,” Alexi replied. “We took Davidovich into custody six days ago. It was a stroke of very bad luck. A day later, there was a visitor at his apartment. When he found no one at Davidovich’s apartment, he
knocked on the door of the building superintendent and spoke to the man who answered.” Alexi snorted. “A Japanese—very polite, as they so often are to one’s face. Our so-called building superintendent said he spoke abominable Russian. Very difficult to understand. It might have been because the man appeared to suffer from a bad cold.” Alexi had the dark look of a man who wished he had someone to hit, hard. “Had we the wit to arrest this visitor, we might have been spared much sorrow.”

Beck felt his heart beat faster.

“Now, how do you think we obtained this extensively detailed information?” Alexi’s voice was mockingly professorial. “You will approve, my friend. No physical coercion was involved. Do you wish to guess?”

He waited for the briefest of moments before continuing.

“The superintendent was not the real superintendent! He was FSB, one of my oh-so-expert surveillance specialists. He made his report on this visitor—fortunately, by telephone—the day before he began to display symptoms of influenza. He died the next day.”

Alexi took a deep breath; he did not look at Beck.

“You have, of course, guessed the final piece of this puzzle: Davidovich lived in Tuvelov, where the infection began.”

“I want to talk to Davidovich,” Beck said.

“The conversation would be a trifle one-sided, I fear. Like his fellow believers, Comrade Davidovich is no longer in a condition to discuss anything.”

“You killed him?” Beck was aghast. “My God, Alexi. He could have—”

“No, my friend, though I certainly would have done so with pleasure. He saved us the effort. Last night, he did the job himself.”

Helena, Montana
July 22

“Provisionally, I’m going to rule it a clean shooting,” said Frank Ellis. “Under normal conditions, you’d be placed on administrative duties pending a formal hearing.” The Helena special agent in charge looked up at April O’Connor and eyed his subordinate steadily. “These are not normal times. I need you on the job.”

April nodded. She did not need to say anything; disclosure that the Florida outbreak was a terrorist attack had galvanized the Bureau. Every available agent was called in, pulled away from any other assignments and targeted on this terrible new threat.

April had been filled in at the emergency midmorning briefing, piped by video feed to all FBI field offices in the United States. Every available agent was called in for the event. Attendance was mandatory, as was evident from the large number of agents who crowded into the Helena office: financial and white-collar crime specialists, RICO task force teams, even a number of agents pulled from deep-cover assignments. April had been painfully aware of the low buzz of comments that had circled the room when she took a chair. She had seen the surreptitious glances they had sent her way
and ignored them. Instead, April had donned an ice queen demeanor, narrowing her focus tightly on the FBI director’s image on the oversized monitor and the procession of speakers who followed him.

Along with the others in the room, she listened with a growing sense of horror. The litany of the mortality rate, the projected spread, the lack of a viable response—all struck each agent like a physical blow. The additional updates focused on the mushrooming turmoil that was spreading its own wildfire in virtually every major city. When the teleconference was over, April walked down the hallway in a state near shock—a state mirrored on the faces of her FBI colleagues.

Now she was seated in her SAC’s office and granted absolution, at least the official kind, for the previous night’s tragedy. It was a relief, as well as a surprise. She had been certain she would be dismissed—transferred, at the least—and was not yet fully convinced such an action would have been unjust. Certainly, Robles’s death weighed on her mind; she knew she would relive every moment for a long time. But from a professional viewpoint, she had come to grips with the killing as an accident of war. She was certain she could tough out any psychological aftereffects—without outside assistance, if possible. With it, if the Bureau insisted, as she assumed it would.

Ellis quickly disabused her of that notion. All the usual rules were off.

“Do
you
think you need a psychologist?” Ellis’s voice was that of a man who did not brook fools well, or easily. “Neither do I. When this is over, we’ll see if we’re both right. Until then—hell, no. I need you to stay on the job you’ve been doing. Find Trippett. Track down this paramilitary group he’s part of.”

April was startled, and it showed on her face.

“You have a problem with that, O’Connor?”

“No, sir. I just assumed every agent would be working on the virus outbreak.”

“That’s right. You are.”

The SAC pushed a thin sheaf of computer printouts across the desk to April. “Washington says there’s a Japanese connection in the Florida virus. We’ve got one here also. The nerve gas in the warehouse—the manifest had it down as ‘garden supplies—pesticide.’ Shipped in by Federal Express yesterday morning, an international delivery from Kamikuishiki, in Japan. The town is headquarters for a religious cult called Aum. They’re the same bunch that released nerve gas in the Tokyo subways a couple of years back.”

April scanned the top sheet, a frown lining her features. “This cult is sending nerve gas to terrorists in the United States?”

“Looks like it,” Ellis said. “Here’s the thing: FedEx and Customs ran a search on every shipment that came out of this Kamikuishiki place and into the United States over the past six months.”

“Let me guess,” April said. “There were more of them.”

“Yeah,” Ellis said. “In addition to the container delivered yesterday morning to Columbia Falls, there was another sent to an address in upstate New York. Same size, same weight as the package that went to your warehouse.”

“God, Frank,” said April. “There’s more of this out in New York?”

“No.” Ellis smiled coldly. “We got lucky. FedEx tried to deliver yesterday morning, but nobody was around to sign. So it came back to the terminal. It was sarin, the same kind of nerve gas we found here.”

“New York pick up the addressee?”

The SAC shook his head. “Alias. Probably used the foyer scam.”

April nodded. It was a tactic common to credit card crimes. The perp uses stolen card numbers to make a purchase by phone, gives the number of an apartment building,
and pays extra for next-day delivery. By ten o’clock, he is waiting in the foyer when the delivery arrives—to all appearances just one more overeager consumer.

“Here’s the bad news,” Ellis said. “Those two were only the most recent deliveries. Ten days ago, both addresses took receipt of another shipment. Manifest said it was food products, canned soup.”

“We have any ideas what was really in there?” April asked.

“All we know about is the boxes it came in,” Ellis said. “They were bigger, April. And heavier.”

He straightened in his chair, assuming an almost formal posture.

“Start looking for Orin Trippett,” Ellis said. “This Mountain Warrior bunch he’s involved with had M-16s from the National Guard break-in. Trippett himself gets sent nerve gas from some crazy religious cult—the same one that may have let loose germ warfare on us. The thought of what else he may be carrying around now scares the hell out of me.”

April stood. “Who do I work with, Frank?”

“Start solo. I’m trying to find you some help,” Ellis said. “I’m working with Andi Wheelwright—used to be Bureau, now she’s something or other with National Security. Washington’s got her coordinating the security side of all this. She wants to send out a guy, an expert on terrorist groups, biological warfare. A professor—but apparently he used to work with the intelligence people.”

“He’s a spook?” April asked.

“Odds are good.” Ellis’s face twisted unpleasantly. “He’s on his way back from that god-awful mess in Russia. I guess he was helping them, too.”

April matched his expression.

“If that was his idea of help,” she said, “we don’t need him.”

Washington, D.C.
July 22

Larry Krewell slumped in the borrowed chair that sat behind the borrowed desk in an office normally reserved for the use of visiting dignitaries. Health and Human Services was a typical government bureaucracy, housed in a typical government building built and furnished to typical government specifications.

Translated, that meant it possessed an empty ambiance that was so blandly regimented, so sterile as to be disorienting to anyone unaccustomed to such surroundings. Krewell, at heart an unrepentant elitist, firmly believed that it contributed heavily to brain rot; he attributed the current state of American democracy to the absence of individuality every bureaucracy represented.

Today, he was certain that he was its most recent victim. He felt drained, helpless and worse: useless.

Krewell had considered relocating his office to Fort Detrick, or even returning to Atlanta; in both locations, teams of research specialists were frantically working to dissect and decode the carefully convoluted secrets someone had built into H1N1-Florida. In either location, he would have felt
closer to the efforts being made than he did here, in his borrowed HHS office.

He turned to the computer and his fingers tapped out an access code.

Thanks to the miracle of modern electronics, he was able to track everything that was happening across the country, as well as the larger part of the world. In the former, there was a firestorm of bad news, tempered only by a weak glimmer of good.

The CDC teams in Florida reported the present death toll at one hundred and forty-six, with current confirmed cases now numbering almost two thousand persons. More than three times that many were confined under armed guard—these persons still asymptomatic, but determined to have been in close contact with the infected. Soon there would be too many to guard, and at that point Krewell knew that all hell would break loose.

On the computer, Krewell called up the outbreak graphic, surveying the numbers that flashed above the communities. About half of the total caseload was in or around Fort Walton, though the contagion had now spread to a half-dozen surrounding communities in Northwest Florida. Panama City, fifty miles to the east, now reported twenty-three deaths due to the virus. Worse, three additional flu cases had been found outside the state—two in Mobile, the other in southern Georgia. The borders of the now-misnamed Florida Quarantine Region had been moved back accordingly.

He selected another item from the screen’s menu, and a list of the latest reports from the medical research staffs appeared.

At present, there was no progress on vaccine development, despite the herculean efforts under way.

And there was one new, chilling report: at Johns Hopkins, virologists studying H1N1-Florida had theorized that it had the potential to cross species—most likely to infect swine, but possibly also able to spread to avian species.

If accurate, it was a nightmare scenario: even if by some miracle they could contain the current outbreak in the south, the virus could become endemic in pigs and birds. One could, conceivably, slaughter every pig in North America. But what did you do about billions of birds, forming a constantly moving reservoir of contagion?