Mirrors (29 page)

Flagstaff inched closer to me. “That truck belonged to the water plant,” he whispered.

As we set off again, Flagstaff attended to his phone. “Yes?” he answered softly. He handed it to me. “It’s Brubeck.”

“Not the best time to talk!” I told Brubeck.

“It’s important! I have preliminary results of whole genome sequencing of the outbreak strains of
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
and
Aeromonas hydrophila
. They’re intriguing.”

“Go on!”

“Nothing unusual about the
Vibrio
—consistent with sequences seen in Bangladesh.”

“And
Aeromonas
?”

“Far more DNA than in commonly seen strains. Part of that additional DNA is explained by the presence of a gene for bioluminescence.”

“And the rest?” I asked.

“That’s where things get interesting. There’s extra DNA that we don’t recognize, and for that reason I think the outbreak strain is a chimera of some sort.”

“Be more specific!”

“I can’t yet. We’re still trying to figure out what the extra DNA encodes.”

“Call me when you get an answer!”

10:12 p.m.

Flagstaff grasped my arm. “Did you hear that?”

I shook my head.

“Clanking!” He looked about. “Follow me.”

We crept deeper into the woods, stopping every so often to listen but heard only our breathing and the buzzing of insects. Before long, we came to a clearing where a series of massive pipes ran parallel to the ground before diving underground. Attached to each pipe was a large steel wheel that presumably controlled the flow of water.

“And now?” I whispered, eyeing a sign that read,
Posted: No Trespassing
.

“Let me call the chief engineer. I arranged to meet him at the main entrance up the road, but I’m going to tell him we’re here.”

As he lifted the phone, I heard a clanking.

“There it is again!” I whispered, pulling his arm.

We went to the end of the clearing, beyond the point where the pipes disappeared underground, and entered an area of tangled vines and shrubs. As we pushed forward, the clanking grew louder, a metal-on-metal sound interrupted every so often by a sullen mechanical hum. After a few cycles, a bright light lit the woods. We dropped to our knees and peered through a bush. Shovelfuls of dirt flew into the air from a ditch. The top of a head popped into sight with each pitch, but not enough to reveal its owner. A grunt accompanied each heave.

From his jacket, Flagstaff produced a pistol. “Moving out,” he said.

We slipped around the bush and crossed a short clearing to position ourselves behind a searing bright lamp, a zone impenetrable to the eyes of the man lodged in the ditch. From our vantage, we saw he was of slight build and had dark skin. Beside him, a large pipe had been unearthed for a distance of about ten feet as if it were a prized archeological find. Attached to the top of the pipe was a motorized device and instrument panel from which an electric cord ran to a battery pack that also powered the lamp. A digital display on the panel showed the time and a scale reading
Water Pressure
. Rising from the motorized device was a long transparent cylinder filled with thousands of beads of the sort Flagstaff had shown me in the car. At its lower end, the cylinder tapered to a metal funnel that appeared to have been welded into the pipe.

Flagstaff stepped to the edge of the ditch and took aim at the man.

“
My God
, don’t shoot!” the digger cried. He raised his arms. Under the baseball cap were dark eyes that darted anxiously from gun to Flagstaff to me, a nervous triangle carved serially. His skin was smooth and youthful and his teeth immaculate. He looked oddly out of place in his neatly tucked polo shirt, Bermuda shorts, and leather-strap sandals. Sweat rolled from his face to leave his collar damp.

“Who are you?” Flagstaff called.

“Utility worker,” he replied. “Fixing a leak.”

“My ass!” Flagstaff roared. “Show me your I.D!”

The man lowered a hand to his pocket but his eyes lifted to the lamp. I pivoted to see what had caught his attention but was met with a blow to the back that sent me hurtling into the ditch. I was surprised to see the digger made no attempt to subdue me but, rather, directed his attention to a wrestling match that had begun above us between Flagstaff and a man dressed in black. Flagstaff’s pistol lay on the ground beside them.

“Grainger!” I shouted.

He said nothing, sending a flying kick to Flagstaff’s groin that dropped the Arizonian to his knees. He fled into the darkness without delay.

Only then did an arm push me aside as a body raced toward a ladder at the end of the ditch. Before the digger reached the second rung, I grasped his shirt and pulled him to the ground, dislodging his cap.

“Minal Chandrapur!” I shrieked. I recognized him from a photo I saw in Bhanjee’s condo.

“You’re mistaken!” He tried to leap out of the ditch but I restrained him.

“It
is
you! I’m sure of it!” I pushed him against the wall. “You were supposed to be in India dying!”

“According to whom?”

“Giva Bhanjee. She called me to say she was at your bedside in the hospital in Vellore. Because you were so sick, I had her ask you a number of questions to which you supposedly responded by raising one finger for ‘yes’ or two for ‘no.’ ”

“Bhanjee lied! I left India three years ago and haven’t returned since.”

“Why would she lie? She’s your fiancée!”

“Are you
crazy
? I’d never marry her!”

“You weren’t engaged?”

“Of course not! I’d never propose to such a control freak.”

“Why would she have said you were to be married, then?”

“Because she messes with people’s lives!” He glanced at Flagstaff who kept the gun trained on him. Returning his eyes to me, he added: “She messed with you, too.”

“How?”

“She got a hold of some diaries of yours that Grainger had in his possession and read every word of them.”

“
Damn
, so that’s how she came to know my middle initial was ‘E.’ ” I waited for him to respond, but because he said nothing, I asked: “You are from Vellore, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “That’s the thing about Bhanjee: sometimes she speaks the truth while at other times she fabricates wildly.”

He pointed to my hip. “Check your wallet for your social security card.”

I removed it and filed through its contents. “It’s
gone
!”

“She told me she pickpocketed you the night you walked the towpath. She took your social security card along with a check in your wallet.”

I rifled through the contents again only to find the check I normally carried had vanished. My mind raced to the night I met Bhanjee. I recalled her hugging me twice, once in the parking lot immediately after we met and a second time just before we departed, a duo, I surmised, that allowed her to remove and return the wallet. It explained why the wallet had ended up in a pocket I never carried it in.

“She used your social and check to open a bank account in your name in Bethesda,” he added. “She then wired a hundred thousand dollars into it from a bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua.”

“If she had a check for my credit union in Washington, D.C., why didn’t she wire the funds into it rather than open a new account?

“Because the routing number on the check had worn off in your wallet.”

“From what account in Antigua did the hundred thousand originate?” Flagstaff asked.

“One belonging to a Congressman.”

“Which one?”

He wrinkled his brow. “A guy with a Greek name. I can’t quite recall—”

“Kosta?”

“Yeah, that’s it! He used to visit
BioVironics
often a while back with another politician named Homer McCloskey.” He puckered his mouth as if he was about to spit. “Damn bitch pilfered Kosta, too.”

“What did she take from him?” Flagstaff asked.

“His identity.”

“How?”

“She befriended him at a reception
BioVironics
threw to kick off a project to clean some waterway.” He frowned. “Don’t ask me for details; my job has nothing to do with seaweed.”

I waved him on. “How’d she steal Kosta’s identity?”

“Following cocktails and dinner at the reception, there was dancing in the lobby beside the aquarium. A band played music with the lights dimmed. After schmoozing Kosta at the open bar, she asked him to dance, and while they did, she stole his credit card and driver’s license. She used them to open a bank account in his name in Antigua.”

Flagstaff drilled his eyes into Chandrapur. “Why would she have done that?”

“She didn’t say, but she claimed she funneled a million dollars into Kosta’s account from some funds
BioVironics
received from a group in North Carolina that wanted a waterway cleaned up. I considered everything she told me was nonsense.”

“How could she access that kind of money at
BioVironics
?” Flagstaff asked.

“She works all over the firm, including in the accounting office.”

“Why is she allowed to float about like that?”

“She’s well-connected.”

“To whom?”

“To a major investor in the company.”

“Who is that person?”

“I don’t know, but I believe it’s true because she has free rein of the place.”

“Why would Bhanjee confide in
you
?”

“I’m not sure it was ‘confiding.’ She just runs her mouth.” He paused. “Okay, perhaps she talks more freely to me than others because of our Indian roots.”

I shook my head. “I still don’t understand why she would open an account for me and then pad it with a hundred thousand from an account in Antigua.”

He said nothing as he peered into my eyes.

With the bright lamp still shining into the ditch, I squinted at him. “Do you have an answer?” I asked.

A look of remorse crossed his face. “Do you gamble?”

I flinched. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“She wanted to create the appearance that you were collecting online gambling profits from Antigua.”

“Why?”

“She said your investigation into XK59 was moving too quickly and she wanted to slow you down.”

“But
gambling
? How would she know I gambled?”

“The diaries,” he replied. His look of remorse deepened. “Do you still gamble?”

It took all I had to restrain myself from charging him. Calming myself, I asked, “What did she mean by the investigation was moving too fast?”

“Your questions were addressing sensitive matters, she said.”

“Why would she care?”

“She wouldn’t elaborate.”

“And what did Frank Grainger have against her?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “What do you mean?”

“He planted spiders in her bed.”

“He did?” He chuckled as if amused. “Probably wanted to pay her back for meddling into his affairs.”

Flagstaff pointed into the ditch. “Affairs like the one you’re involved in down there?”

He nodded. “Among others.”

Flagstaff’s attention remained on the ditch. “What’s in the cylinder?”

“Chlorine beads.”

He shot a bullet into the dirt beside Chandrapur.

“Okay, okay! Those beads are filled with XK59. There’s a valve set to release them into the water at midnight.”

“Dismantle it!” Flagstaff ordered.

Chandrapur removed the cylinder and set it aside.

“Was that Grainger’s entire system?” I asked, pointing to the beads.

“No, we inserted an activated charcoal filter at another site upstream to de-chlorinate the water.”

“Why did you partner with Grainger?” I asked him.

“Because he helped me become an American citizen. After I filed my application, I was told it was unlikely I’d be successful, but Grainger pulled some strings on Capitol Hill.”

“Which strings?” Flagstaff asked.

“He didn’t tell me.”

“You’re a geneticist, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“So you rewarded Grainger by genetically altering the bacterium,
Aeromonas hydrophila
.”

He nodded. “That was easy.”

“But Bhanjee told me it was
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
you manipulated.”

“She’s full of it! That’s what pissed Grainger off. She meddled wildly!”

“How did you alter
Aeromonas
?”

“I added genetic material to it.”

“What sort of material?”

“Various genes.”

“Such as?”

“Ones for bioluminescence.”

“What else?”

“A gene Grainger isolated from a specimen he collected in Africa.”

“What gene was it?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

A bullet struck the dirt inches from Chandrapur’s neck.

“I’m telling the truth! Grainger wouldn’t tell me what gene it was. All I know is that it came from a spider.”

“You’re a geneticist!” I protested. “How could you
not
know what you worked with?”

“I knew only enough to insert the material into
Aeromonas
. Grainger wouldn’t divulge anything more, and he warned me not to inquire into it.”

“Where did you do the engineering?”