Reprisal (29 page)

In twenty minutes, they squealed into a three story parking ramp on the West Bank, near the hospital where the imam had worked in the supply room. They bounded out of BJ’s car and ran to a circle of squad cars, Medical Examiner’s van, yellow tape, and a few reporters.

Carolyn Bechter was there and waved to Zehra.

As she and BJ closed in on the activity, a cop in uniform came out to meet them. “BJ,” he said. “Gotta stay back.”

“Thanks for the call. What’s shakin’?”

“A citizen saw the car parked here and thought there was an unusually big pool of oil underneath it. When he got closer, he saw it was blood. Looks like the killer backed the car over the pool after killing the victim. To hide it. They’re tire tracks in the blood.”

“Where’s the imam?”

“Trunk. It’s his own car. M.E. says he’s been there a couple days.”

“Leads?”

The cop shrugged his shoulders.

“Lemme take a quick look.”

The cop looked back and forth. Sighed and said, “Okay. But just a minute. I’ll get my ass whooped.”

“Yeah.”

BJ and Zehra moved slowly toward the car. As they got closer, Zehra saw the trunk standing open and a lumpy form stretched out inside. A pallid white hand with dirty fingernails hung over the edge. She started to shake.

BJ stopped and put his arm around her. “Okay, Z?”

Taking a deep breath, she nodded yes.

They came up from the side of the car. A tech bent over the body. She worked on something and then stood up. When she moved to the side, BJ squirmed to the end of the trunk. Zehra moved beside him. She forced herself to look at the body.

Just a glance was enough. She felt sick and her knees began to buckle. She gagged on the fear rising from within her body.

The imam’s head flopped back at an unnatural angle. His neck had been sliced open from ear to ear, penetrating deeply into his throat. It was an identical wound like the one that killed the young Somali boy, the victim in her case.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Zehra met Mustafa at a small Thai restaurant across the street from the Guthrie Theatre. BJ had stayed with her for awhile until she felt calm again. She wanted to see Mustafa, to get away from all the blood and killings she’d seen lately. When he insisted on meeting, she readily agreed. Zehra walked the few blocks from her office and arrived sticky from the humidity.

As she stepped into the air conditioning, she fluffed her blouse and ran her hands through her hair to lift it off her shoulders. Zehra normally would have put it up but thought it looked better down for now.

Mustafa, handsome as ever, stood in the corner and came to her quickly. He opened his arms toward her.

Zehra paused, worried that she was a little sweaty.

When he touched her arms, for a moment, she wondered about him, hoping BJ was wrong.

As he pulled back, his eyes opened into a smile. “You look hot and starved.” He caught himself. “I did not mean ‘hot’ like …”

“Of course, you didn’t,” she laughed and followed him to the table. It felt good to laugh, to have a man look at you and tell you he liked what he saw. She relaxed and

tried to clear her mind of every horrible event of the past days.

He had already ordered chicken satay. They sat, and Zehra launched into the food, surprised at how hungry she was until she remembered she’d missed lunch.

While they ate, Mustafa asked dozens of questions. The waiter brought an order of vegetable curry and Pad Woon Sen, a noodle dish with shrimp that Mustafa had ordered previously for her. For a moment, this bothered her, but his formality was sweet, thoughtful. She let it slide.

Suddenly, BJ’s words echoed in her head. Was Mustafa more interested than normal? Was he simply curious about her work? When she met people and told them what she did, they usually reacted with fascination. Maybe Mustafa was like them.

“You seem so interested in this trial. Is there a reason?” she asked.

His eyes dropped to the table for an instant and flicked back to her. “I am interested in anything you do. There are few Muslim women in my country who are like you.”

Impressed, Zehra still pushed on. “But I’m wondering why.”

“Why? There is nothing special. It is you.”

Her thoughts twisted. Was BJ correct or was he too critical? To stall for time, she leaned over her plate and twirled some noodles around her chopsticks. When she looked up, her body shuddered. Mustafa’s expression had changed to something Zehra’d never seen before. The look slipped away quickly, but it left her shaken. She leaned back in her chair.

His voice resumed the pleasant tone of before. “All right, if you insist. Let us talk about me for a while.” He told her of his volunteer work at three mosques with younger people.

“As I have told you, Islamic scientists used to be the best in the world, many centuries ago. One of my missions in life is to resurrect that leadership. I work with younger Muslims to encourage them to go into the sciences. No one else does that for them.”

“What do you do?”

“Science fairs are coming up tomorrow at many of the schools. In cooperation with my company, the schools let us scientists help the kids with their projects.” He lifted his shoulders. “This is how I can help them.”

“How wonderful.”

His head tilted up. “Maybe you would be interested in visiting with them.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, Friday afternoon.” He stopped. “I forgot. You are probably too busy for that. On the other hand, it may be interesting for you. I could pick you up.”

Zehra paused. The work required for the trial grew larger, but in the back of her mind small suspicions, like the new weeds in her pots at home, poked their way out. She had to find out the truth about him. Zehra smiled. “Sure, I’d love to come.”

But before she went, she’d call BJ with the details just in case.

Thirty-Five

When Paul returned to the FBI office in downtown Minneapolis, he could feel humid hints of a coming storm. As he walked into the lobby, a similar sense of tension struck him. It wasn’t so much the level of noise or activity as it was the lack of both.

Conway’s voice had a panicky edge to it and this time, he hadn’t yelled at Paul. Something was wrong.

He hurried to the conference room to find Conway pacing back and forth. Several people Paul didn’t recognize surrounded Conway. Paul was surprised to see Joan Cortez, standing in the corner.

He walked up to her and said quietly, “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t look him in the eye. “We’ve been pulled in, too. You better listen.”

Nervous conversations rose from pods of people around the table until Conway cleared his throat. “Listen up, everybody.” In a second, the crowd went silent. Paul could feel the electricity in the air.

“Folks,” Conway began, “this is Dr. Stanley Samson from the USAMRIID.”

“The what?” asked someone from the back.

A man who looked like a college professor stood up next to Conway. Short white hair bristled over his scalp. He wore a button-down shirt with a striped tie. He carried a coffee cup with stained brown edges from all the coffee it had held. Immense wire-rimmed glasses hid a small face with blue eyes. He moved slowly in contrast to Conway.

“I’m Dr. Samson from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease.” He lifted his eyes to look around the room. “Haven’t heard of us, huh?” He grinned. “Just call us RID.”

Dr. Samson lifted a thin arm and waved it toward a group of drab looking people who stood to the side of the conference table. “My team. We don’t have much time, so I’ll cut the crap and make this short. We’ve been in existence since 1969. Our mission is to research biological threats to the military and develop strategies for medical defense against the threats that require containment. Of course, our work usually includes the defense of the civilian population, also.”

Conway, always needing attention, stepped forward. “You’d be surprised to learn they have over 200 scientists working in their labs at Ft. Detrick, in Maryland. We got involved in the wake of nine-eleven. Remember, there were several anthrax threats in the form of mailings to senators and people in Washington?”

When heads nodded, Dr. Samson continued, “As a result, we evaluated over 30,000 samples. We initiated Operation Noble Eagle, which required our country to expand its capacity for threat agent identification by tenfold.” Dr. Samson’s face lit-up. “And we did it.”

Valentini spoke, “Is this about an anthrax scare? I haven’t heard anything.”

Dr. Samson furrowed his eyebrows and shook his head back and forth. “Not so simple, I’m afraid to say.” He sipped coffee.

Paul felt his insides squeeze tighter. Something bad was coming.

Looking around him, Dr. Samson said, “Don’t repeat this, but we were taken by surprise, frankly. Until the message came from our Russian counterparts at Vector, we would never have guessed …”

“Vector?” Conway asked.

“Sorry. I’ll back up, but we don’t have much time so keep your questions short,” the doctor said. He shifted from one leg to the other and looked down into his coffee cup.

When he looked up, he spoke quickly. “Smallpox was eradicated from the planet in 1979 according to the World Health Organization. However, two repositories were established to contain the smallpox virus, called by its scientific name Variola, for future research purposes. One is located in Atlanta at the Center for Disease Control and the other is in eastern Russia. It’s called Vector.”

Paul glanced at the people around him. No one moved or sat down.

Dr. Samson continued, “Vector was chosen because the Soviets had established a top-secret biological warfare research lab there during the Cold War. It was only natural to continue to use the facilities. President Richard Nixon officially halted all biological warfare research in this country in 1969. The Soviets agreed to halt theirs also.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “They lied. In fact, as late at the 1980s, they were actively assembling biological weapons.

“Once the communists fell, our government moved into Vector and set up joint research projects, mostly to monitor their work. In fact, the complex is under military guard and has a security system built by the Bechtel Group and paid for by our government. Today, Vector stills conducts research as we do in our labs in Atlanta and Ft. Detrick.”

Conway asked, “I thought you said only Atlanta has the small pox virus?”

“That’s correct. We just do research. Atlanta and Vector are the only places on earth where the virus is kept in deep freeze storage. By the nineties, we learned the old Soviet Union had a culture collection of extremely virulent Variola strains and they were manufacturing it by the ton.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Valentini said.

“I’m getting to that. Our defense department actually funds much of the present research at Vector in order to have access and to control it. We received word two weeks ago that a sample of the smallpox virus and the vaccine against it had been stolen from the secured facility.”

“Where’d it go?”

Samson shrugged. “Disappeared. The Russians are questioning all employees but that’s a lot of people. As of now, they don’t have any answers.”

“So … what’s that mean for us?” Valentini asked slowly. “After being frozen, are these samples dangerous?”

“As a rule, the Soviet scientists preferred to manufacture their viruses in dry, powder form. That wasn’t true of Variola because the liquid form retained its viability for months when deep frozen and would be extremely stable if converted to aerosol form. That means the stolen samples are probably extremely hot.”

“Huh?”

“Dangerous, contagious,” Dr. Samson said. “The Soviets had a three hundred gallon tank that looked like the hot water heater in your home. I’ve seen it. They filled it with live kidney cells from African green monkeys and pumped in smallpox. They ran it at warm temperatures and in a few days, the reactor became hot with amplified smallpox.”

Paul could tell people still failed to catch on to the danger. When Dr. Samson looked around the room, he didn’t get any reaction.

Dr. Samson continued, “A single run of the reactor could’ve produced one hundred trillion lethal doses of smallpox—enough to give everyone in the world about two thousand infective doses. It would be easy for someone to draw off samples that could’ve been freeze-dried in small vials and easily carried anywhere in the world. I’m sure you remember that smallpox invades the respiratory system from human to human. It’s spread by coughing, sneezing, saliva, anything that can be airborne. So, it’s easy to transmit and wouldn’t take a lot of the sample to start a pandemic.”

“And,” Conway interrupted, “you think the samples are here.”

Dr. Samson stopped to sip his coffee. He swallowed slowly. “Yes.”

“What evidence do you have?” Valentini demanded.

“When the young Somali man was killed a few months ago, the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were alerted, as they’d been tracking these young men for months. Agent Cortez,” he nodded at Joan, “worried there may be something more to the murder since he returned to the country, rather than stay in Somalia to fight like the others. In turn, she alerted our contract scientist in Minneapolis to accompany her to the crime scene.”