Biowar (11 page)

“He hasn’t worked on germ warfare programs for years,” said Rubens. “But the FBI is reviewing what sort of exposure there is.”

“Why was he contacted?”

“We’re still working on it. There’s nothing new since yesterday,” conceded Rubens. “His lab work over the last few years has mostly dealt with recombinant DNA. There’s a project to breed a bacteria that will eat PCBs and other pollutants. It’s possible that this is about that.”

Hadash made a face. Rubens himself did not believe that, but throwing out different possibilities emphasized the difficulty of the situation. Thus when the problem was solved, those who had solved it would receive sufficient credit.

It would also put problems into the proper perspective.

“We’ve been concentrating on finding him and, more important, tracking down the people who were trying to contact him,” said Rubens.

“And you have nothing new?”

“Hints, but nothing solid.”

Hadash took a long gulp of his coffee. “How serious is the threat?”

“Potentially, extremely serious,” said Rubens.

“Potentially?”

“That’s the best I can say.”

“You’ve tracked the E-mails back?”

Rubens realized where the NSC head was going and sank back in the chair.

“The E-mail messages you recovered?” added Hadash.

“Yes.”

“You tracked them?”

“As far as we could, yes.”

Rubens could offer nothing else. Hadash began talking about the proposal that would provide biometric IDs as part of every Internet activity.

“This makes a good case—an almost airtight case,” said Hadash. “If the biometric ID was in place, you would know.”

“It could easily have been spoofed.”

“Not if it’s properly constructed. At a minimum you would have a starting point to work from.”

“We have starting points now.”

“Not as extensive as Internet DNA,” said Hadash.

Internet DNA. Good God, what a sound bite.

“I don’t believe it’s a good idea,” said Rubens. “And this case certainly isn’t an argument in its favor.”

“Your task force is recommending it be studied.”

“It’s not my task force,” said Rubens quickly. “It’s Homeland Security. Sandra Marshall’s. And I’ve already gone on record as recusing the agency from the recommendation.”

“Recusing or opposing?”

A tactical error, Rubens thought—he had been far too cautious. He should have opposed.

Unless Hadash was pushing it. Which he seemed to be.

“I don’t believe the proposal is in anyone’s best interests,” said Rubens. “Not the government‘s, not the NSA’s, and certainly not our citizens’.”

Hadash frowned. Rubens put the conversation back to its original track.

“Not to change the subject, but British intelligence was apparently a little too aggressive in tracking arrivals at the conference,” said Rubens.

“How so?”

“They attempted to detain one of my agents while she was following Mr. Dean’s kidnappers. They were rather adamant about it, and I’m afraid there was an incident.”

“What did she do?” asked Hadash.

The remark tipped Rubens off that Hadash had already been informed, undoubtedly by the State Department, which would have given him the British version.

“She responded in kind,” Hadash told him.

“Spraying them with pepper gas was responding in kind?”

“Given the circumstances.”

“The British are upset.”

Rubens reached into his suit jacket pocket and took out a printout containing the text of a British protest. “They’re to deliver this protest later today.”

“This wouldn’t have been poached from the British embassy phone lines, would it?” asked Hadash.

“Of course not. The Russians intercepted it and we stole it from them.”

Hadash shook his head. “Why were the British following her?”

“Apparently they were surprised to find Lia in London. We believe it was merely a coincidence. The MI-5 agents happened to be in the station, trailing someone else. They may have thought she was interfering with their project.”

“Quite a coincidence.”

Rubens didn’t trust coincidences, either, but this one did appear to be just that.

“I hope you’ve given this enough priority,” said Hadash.

“Absolutely.”

Rubens rose to go. Hadash stopped him.

“William, the Internet DNA thing. You should know the President has expressed interest.”

“It’s absurd,” said Rubens. “To waste money on a study that will tell you it’s technically unfeasible and politically suicidal?”

The comers of Hadash’s mouth flickered, but he said nothing.

16

Karr bounded off the plane into the airport, pushing through the knots of medical and sex tourists whose pace slowed as they realized their moment of decision or indiscretion was finally near. A potbellied American in a perfectly tailored silk suit stood at the right of the funneling line; Karr made a beeline for him, pointing to him as he came close.

“Deavor, right?” said Karr.

The man nodded. He was a military advisor to the ambassador, tasked to meet Karr and take him into the city. Karr pumped the man’s limp hand, then reached over and grabbed the hand of an associate who’d been trying to act nonchalant in the background. There were two other men nearby, all part of the security detail and undoubtedly thinking they were passing incognito in the mix. Karr didn’t bother saying hello to them, as it would break the unwritten rules of etiquette—never tell your host how incompetent he was.

They paid the briefest of courtesy calls to the back room of the Thai customs agency, then went to a pair of waiting cars. A light rain was falling, casting the city in a gray shroud.

“So you’re with the CDC,” said Deavor, leaning over the front seat.

“I’m kind of a consultant for them,” said Karr.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Why? You got a broken leg?”

“I have this numbness in my pinkie every so often.”

“You smoke?” asked Karr.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“If you don’t want my advice, don’t ask for it,” said Karr.

“That’s caused by smoking?”

“Not necessarily. You try sex?”

“Now I know you’re putting me on.”

Karr laughed at him. “You could have a screwed-up disk, or just the muscles pulling it are out of whack. Massage’ll loosen it up. Or sex. Those don’t work, see a chiropractor.”

Deavor looked at him, trying to figure out if he was on the level or not.

“Thanks, Doc,” he said finally.

“Don’t mention it.”

The embassy put Karr up in a house occasionally used by Marines assigned to the security detail. Karr knew it would be bugged, but he was surprised to find not only American and Thai devices, but a Chinese pair as well—an interesting fact that Rubens would no doubt relish passing along as a less than subtle dig against the CIA, which would have certified the lodgings as clean.

The sheer array of bugs was impressive, but none presented a real problem; he disabled them all, then fired up his handheld and retrieved the latest dossier prepared by Desk Three.

The NSA had found an old credit card account, since closed, that Kegan had used on a visit to Bangkok about a year before. They had also been able to connect Pound, the lab assistant, to a $300 cash withdrawal from an ATM in the arrival hall of Terminal 1 at Don Muang Airport two weeks ago; he’d used his mother’s account. But so far they hadn’t been able to locate any records indicating what he had done after that. His mother, in a nursing home in Kentucky, didn’t know where he was. An Alzheimer’s patient, she didn’t really know where she was.

One of the E-mails Pound had sent to Kegan had been posted from a kiosk in Bangkok a few blocks from the hotel Kegan had stayed at. The other had been tracked to a small Thai military unit on the border with Myanmar.

A wild-goose chase, but one with promise.

Karr had never been in Thailand until today. Had he been asked what he expected, he probably would have drawn a verbal picture of small huts and rickshas in crowded, muddy streets. The streets here were crowded and there were rickshas—here called
samlors.
But there were also a variety of motorbikes, slightly larger motorcycles (though still small by American standards),
tuk-tuks
(three-wheeled motorcycles with roofs that had no real counterpart in the West), cars, truck-buses (pickups with double-deck standing-room-only spots in the rear), ordinary buses, and a range of delivery vehicles and trucks. There was also an elevated rail system called Skytrain and any number of ferries and boats plowing through the waterways that crisscrossed the city.

Karr stared at the city through the front seat of his car, rented with a driver by the Art Room through a fictitious account. Luc Dai, the driver, was a former freelance newspaper writer who’d found it much more lucrative to rent out his car than his typewriter. A Vietnamese national who’d spent considerable time in America, Luc Dai was exactly the sort of person who’d be “rented” by various intelligence agencies, though if he was working for any, the Art Room hadn’t told Karr.

The light rain that had greeted him at the airport was gone. They threaded through the congested streets and found the Bangkok Star Imperial Hotel, which was among the most expensive in the city. Karr told the driver he’d be inside for a while, then hopped out as a uniformed doorman reached for the door.

The hotel had some claim to its fame, or at least its high cost. Outrageously ornate, its ceiling glowed with a thick layer of gold leaf, showing off what was said to be up to a million dollars’ worth of precious stones and jewels encrusted in a design that imitated the visible constellations. Below the stars an elaborately designed handwoven rug depicted the earth as a mythic kingdom of gods and dragons. The carpet was not merely spotless but also seemed to have been woven only the day before. The hotel desk sat beyond several groupings of lushly upholstered chairs, its massive beak like the hull of a boat. The wooden trim and accents were inlaid and highly polished.

Karr walked to the young man at the far end of the desk and in English asked for “my good friend Mr. Bai.” The man bowed his head, then led the way through a paneled hallway to a room that looked decidedly more utilitarian than the lobby; its whitewashed walls provided the backdrop for three banks of nine-inch television sets offering a uniformed guard with a view of the hotel environs as well as the lobby, elevator, and upstairs hallway. The young man muttered a hello—it was definitely English—to the guard, then knocked at a metal door at the far end. A few words flew back and forth in Thai.

“Mr. Bai has much work,” said the man when he returned.

“Great,” said Karr. He remained planted in place.

The man frowned and returned to the door. More Thai flew around until finally the door opened and a short man in a brown silk suit emerged to shake Karr’s hand as if he were an old friend.

“Bai,” whispered Sandy Chafetz, the runner in the Art Room. They’d tapped into the hotel’s security system; she could see everything that was happening.

“A friend in D.C. sent me,” said Karr.

“Oh, very good,” said Bai, ushering Karr inside as if he’d been expecting him half the day.

Old enough to be Karr’s father, Mr. Bai had escaped from Burma as a young man, then joined the Thai Army. As an officer he’d had some dealings with the American military in the seventies and eighties, and he still had occasional contact with the embassy, though mostly now as an expediter for the hotel. He accepted Karr’s hints without question or elaboration, ordering tea and nearly insisting that Karr have something stronger. But for all his jovial hospitality, Mr. Bai showed no sign of recognizing Kegan or Pound when Karr showed him the photos.

“They’re not among our guests, are they?” asked Mr. Bai.

“You tell me.”

Mr. Bai studied the photos again, then shrugged. “If they were guests they did nothing to attract attention.”

“You think you can look up some names in your computer?” Karr asked.

Desk Three had already run the same check—Karr was asking not only to see how cooperative Bai might be but also to emphasize how serious he was about finding the men.

Mr. Bai’s expression grew grave. “The privacy of our guests is extremely important.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that,” said Karr.

He smiled at the hotel security chief, who soon enough reached for the keyboard of his computer. The names were printed at the bottoms of the photos.

“No,” said Mr. Bai.

“How about recently?”

“How recent?”

Karr shrugged. “Ever, I guess,” he said offhandedly.

Bai frowned.

“Three years?” offered Karr.

“Two is all I can manage.”

“Go for it.” He’d been prepared to settle for one.

Mr. Bai hesitated, then clacked a few more keys. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Ah well, life’s like that, you know?” Karr got up, sliding a business card on the desk. It listed the CDC as his employer, giving a local number that would be intercepted by the Art Room and rerouted to Karr’s sat phone’s voice mail. “If something rings a bell, you can get me through the embassy.”

Bai smiled and, once more the hospitable host, led him back to the lobby.

“So are those real jewels or what?” Karr asked as he shambled past the reservations desk.

“What are you talking about?” asked Chafetz.

“The ceiling,” he told her.

“I haven’t a clue,” she said. “Why are you talking to yourself ? Aren’t you afraid people will stare at you?”

“Nah. They see big blond crazy Americans all the time.” Karr smiled at a pair of elderly European women who were, in fact, staring at him. “Part of the image, Sandy. I’m supposed to be a lovable, nutty bear.”

“Well, you have the role down well:”

“Except that I’m smarter than the average bear, right?”

“You said that; I didn’t.”

“Yuk, yuk.” Karr twisted around. He’d managed to pick out all of the security people and was confident that no one else inside was watching him. “So does Bai know something or what?”

“He’s not using the phone or the computer. We’ll activate the fly you left once you’re out of the building.”