Wildfire (57 page)

"I'm not trying to be argumentative," Tisbury said, "but isn't agent— uh—Takahara a wildlife officer and not an FBI agent?"

"Yes, he is," David Halahan said, staring at the industrialist with eyes that could only be described as cold and predatory, "but Technical Agent Takahara and all of the other
remaining
members of Bravo Team have been temporarily detailed to the Special Bahamas Task Force."

"Under whose authority?"

"Mine," Halahan said in a voice that made it absolutely clear what he thought about the word "remaining."

"And I might add that, as the commander of that task force, I have authorized Special Agent Takahara to conduct a complete crime scene investigation of this residence in cooperation with the remaining members of
my
team," Hal Owens said in an equally frosty voice.

"We understood that you wished to cooperate fully with our investigation, Mr. Tisbury," Grynard went on in a carefully casual manner. "But if you wish to have an attorney present—"

Tisbury shook his head. "No, no, I fully understand my rights, and I have absolutely no wish or need to have an attorney present. "I . . . I . . . apologize, gentlemen. It's just that with the death of my father
and
my son, I hardly know what—"

"That's perfectly understandable, Mr. Tisbury." Grynard nodded in apparent sympathy. "Several of us here in this room lost people we deeply cared about as a result of this case, and emotions are understandably running high. So if you'd like to continue this conversation at a later date—"

"No, please, I
do
want to help you with your investigation in any way I can," the industrialist said, making a point to look over at the deputy U.S. attorney. "I was just startled because the Crucible project is a rather sensitive piece of industrial research."

"Crucible project?" Mike Takahara asked.

"Yes." Tisbury nodded, seeming to regain his confidence now that they were off the topic of jurisdictional authorizations. "What you're holding in your hands is a prototype—a beta model."

"What does it do?" the tech agent asked, turning the cylinder in his hands.

"Well, that's the sensitive part, but I suppose I can trust you fellows with the information," Tisbury said with a discernible lack of enthusiasm. "Basically, what our engineering team created is a very efficient thermal device which can be used in sequence with several identical devices— one device igniting the next in a timed sequence—to, well, mine precious metals."

"You mean by
melting
them out of the veins, through
rock?"
Takahara asked, his eyebrows furrowing.

"Yes, essentially." The industrialist nodded.

"Then you must be talking about generating a tremendous amount of heat," the tech agent said, continuing to turn the device in his hands.

"Yes, actually, we are."

"I suppose that's why you have this little radioactive isotope warning label here," he said, pointing to a small symbol etched into the head of the cylinder.

"Uh—well, that's something I really can't discuss."

"So, basically, what you're doing is creating a miniature meltdown every time you ignite one of these things," the tech agent said, nodding to himself. "Boy, I'll bet the environmentalists must really love
that.
But then I don't suppose you've gotten around to mentioning your Crucible project to any of the environmental groups, such as Wildfire, have you?"

"I beg your pardon?" Tisbury said, blinking his eyes in confusion. "No, of course we haven't—" he started to say, but Mike Takahara interrupted again.

"Were you aware, Mr. Tisbury, that somebody has been bolting blank camouflaged signs to trees in the Yellowstone National Park area? Signs made out of a specific metal alloy and camouflaged with a specific chemical etching process, both of which—according to our crime lab—were patented by Cyanosphere VIII. Signs that when exposed to intense heat, such as you might get with a raging forest fire, melt away the less-heat-resistant portions of the sign to display the word
Wildfire
in big, bold letters?"

"What are you talking about?" Sam Tisbury demanded.
"Our
process? Are you—?"

"According to Deputy U.S. Attorney Fletcher, Mr. Tisbury, Wildfire is the name of an extremist environmental activist group that advocates, among other things, the complete destruction—and ultimate resurrection—of the earth by fire."

"What does that—?"

"Were you aware, Mr. Tisbury, that your son Eric was a member of that group?"

"Eric?!" Tisbury's mouth dropped open.

"And then there were the signs in Sequoia National Park that say"—the tech agent picked up his notebook—"'And one day soon, when the ember falls, and the sky is filled with fire, He shall rise up from out of the darkness, and none shall stand before Him.'" Have you ever heard that quote before, Mr. Tisbury?"

"I don't understand any of this," Sam Tisbury said, turning to Grynard with a furious expression on his face. "If the FBI intends—"

"If not, Mr. Tisbury," Mike Takahara said softly, "perhaps you can explain to me why
your
son, with his last breath, whispered in my ear: 'And one day soon, when ember falls—'?"

Sam Tisbury whirled around and stared at the tech agent with widened eyes. "What did you say?" he rasped hoarsely.

"One day soon, when
ember
falls." Takahara repeated the words slowly. "Not 'the' ember," he emphasized. "Just ember. Like it was a name."

"Oh, my God," the industrialist whispered, his face ashen.

"Who is Ember, Mr. Tisbury?" Mike Takahara continued on in a gentle voice that—to Sam Tisbury—had become almost hypnotic.

"My—my daughter. We called her Ember. Childhood nickname, because . . ."

His voice drifted away, his eyes first blinking and then staring off somewhere in the distance, as his face turned deathly pale.

"Mr. Tisbury, how many of these Crucible devices has Cyanosphere VIII made so far?"

Lost in the horror of his sudden realizations, Tisbury shook his head. "What?"

"How many Crucible devices have you made so far?" Mike Takahara repeated.

"Two thousand."

The room went silent.

"Do you know where all those devices are right now, Mr. Tisbury?"

"Eric, he was responsible . . . testing, storage." Tisbury spoke the words as if he could barely believe them himself.

"Mr. Tisbury," the tech agent continued, "is there anyone in your organization you could call, right now, who might be able to verify the location of those devices?"

Four minutes later Sam Tisbury looked up at seven waiting sets of eyes and rasped in utter dismay: "They're not there. They're gone."

For another fifteen seconds the room remained silent. Then Mike Takahara said softly:

"I think I know where they are."

Chapter Thirty-nine

At four-thirty that Sunday afternoon, Fish and Wildlife Special Agents David Halahan, Henry Lightstone, and Mike Takahara, and FBI Special Agent A1 Grynard, buckled themselves into four of the six overstuffed captain's chairs in the cabin of an executive Learjet that Halahan had leased at the Nassau airport when the agents discovered that nothing else fast enough was available.

Mike Takahara waited until the plane was high up over the clouds and beginning to steady on course. Then he adjusted his seat around so that he was facing the other three agents, and began to describe the hour-long conversation he'd had with Sam Tisbury—the last surviving member of the ICER Committee—while all of the other FBI agents, FWS agents, and Bahamian officials were moving in and out of the villa trying to make some sense out of the Cat Island crime scenes.

"It was the Tisbury tradition that really started it all," Takahara said. "At the age of sixteen all the Tisbury males are brought into the family business. Apparently it's been that way for six generations. So when the twins, Eric and Erica—his daughter's real name—hit sixteen, Eric was brought into Cyanosphere VIII."

"And Erica was shuffled aside?" Lightstone said.

"That's right." Takahara nodded. "The only trouble was, Erica was the better engineer by a factor of ten. Her father—Sam Tisbury—recognized that and tried to make an exception to the tradition, but
his
father— Harold Tisbury, one of the DOA's in the dining room—refused to consider it, which apparently resulted in one hell of a family blowup. The mother ultimately filed for divorce over the whole deal. But Harold was the patriarch of the family, so that was that.

"Except that it wasn't"—Takahara smiled—"because with her father's help, Erica went ahead and worked at Cyanosphere VIII anyway. Changed her name, worked her way into the engineering department, and came up with the idea for Crucible."

"That was
her
idea?" Al Grynard blinked in surprise.

"That's right." Mike Takahara nodded with a smile. "Good old Erica. Probably would have turned out to be a tougher industrialist than her father and grandfather put together. Actually, what she
did
was come to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that all the accumulated nuclear waste in Russia and the United States was just sitting there not being used. So she decided to try to find some way to use it. She couldn't get permission to work with the stuff in the United States, but that was when Russia was opening up and looking for people to help them figure out how to get back on their feet. She had a decent chunk of her own trust fund money to support the basic research, and I guess their regulatory process was a little more lax."

"So she used
Russian
nuclear waste to design Crucible?" Grynard said incredulously.

"Or at least a crude version of what is now Crucible." The tech agent nodded. "And in the process managed to absolutely fry her bone marrow."

"Leukemia?"

"Apparently, only she didn't know it then," Mike Takahara said. "If she'd been careful—taken routine precautions, limited her exposure, and gotten regular checkups—then none of this might have ever happened. But she didn't, probably because she was so damned determined to show her grandfather
and
her father
and
her twin brother that she was just as good as any male Tisbury."

"Which she was." Lightstone shrugged.

"No question about it." The tech agent nodded. "And they were duly impressed when she showed them what she'd done. So impressed, in fact, that they immediately turned the project over to their chief engineers to refine, develop, test, and market."

"Let me guess," Grynard said. "They put Eric in charge of the testing and shoved Erica right out the back door."

"Close. Actually, they held a special meeting of the board of directors, presented her with a plaque and a whole bunch of money, essentially a corporate pat on the head, and
then
put Eric in charge. Whereupon Erica found the back door on her own, put a copy of the blood work-up that she'd just received the day before in the mail to her grandmother, and then effectively disappeared."

"Jesus!" Grynard whispered.

"Oh, they tried to find her," Takahara said. "Sent flyers to every police and sheriff s department in the United States, hired dozens of private detectives, placed coded messages in engineering association newsletters, the works. No go. Every now and then she'd send her grandmother another blood work-up sheet with the lab and patient name and case number torn off, but they all knew it was about her."

"Christ, with all their money, couldn't they have helped her?" Lightstone asked.

"Like with first-class treatment in the best chemotherapy clinics in the world? You bet." The tech agent nodded. "Only by then, I guess, Erica decided that she didn't
want
to be helped, and there wasn't anything in the world they could do to make her change her mind. Kinda funny, in a sad sort of way, because by disappearing like that, she was basically proving her case: that she really was a true Tisbury. Which, as I understand it, means she's got a stubborn streak a mile long, and a temper to match. According to her father, that was why they gave her the nickname 'Ember' as a kid.

"Anyway," Takahara went on, "after receiving a half dozen of those lab work-up reports, the grandmother finally ended up drinking herself to death, which really hit the family hard, but I guess that wasn't enough for Ember."

"So she and her brother go right for their throats, in their own nasty little way," Grynard said. "Hire this Riser character to take out the ICER Committee, and then set it up so that you guys get blamed for the whole thing."

"She was definitely going after her grandfather and the committee in general," Mike Takahara said, "but I'm not sure about the father. I kind of got the sense that he didn't think she blamed him quite as much as she did the rest of the family."

"How does that hold if she turned that cannon-shooter loose on the committee in general?" Grynard asked.

"My theory is that her father wasn't on the hit list." The tech agent shrugged. "Way I understand it, this Riser character had plenty of opportunities to blow him away if he'd wanted to. Either that or Eric might have been trying to protect his father by taking him out fishing when the hit was scheduled to do down. With Riser and Eric both dead, I suppose we'll never know for sure. But either way, the crucial thing now is that Ember and her environmental activist friends came up with a really clever way to set this 'cleansing' fire they were always talking about, and then blame her grandfather's corporation for the whole mess. The classic two-birds-one-stone strategy. Finding that network communications program in Crowley's computer, and then having your guys hit their headquarters in Reston gave us the final link we needed. What it all came down to was four words: 'The Ember has fallen.' "

"Has
fallen?" Henry Lightstone blinked.

"That's their code for the ignition of Wildfire," Takahara explained. "Ember and a guy named Harris have it all plotted out. According to your agents, they even rigged up a pretty scary computer simulation. It's pretty simple, actually: They ignite the 'ember,' which is presumably one of the Crucible devices hooked up to an ignition system, and then drop it out of a small plane at the center point. In x number of seconds, they get to watch the first device ignite every other Crucible device within a ten- mile-radius circle, each of which will ignite the next set in x number of seconds, and so on and so on. Two thousand devices capable of generating enough heat to melt gold out of a mining vein, every one set ten miles from the next and going out in all directions. If we don't stop them, it's going to be one hell of a fire."