‘Jeremiah, if you used real anthrax, why aren’t
you
dead?’
William felt his stomach tighten.
‘You don’t know nothing,’ Jeremiah said. ‘We wore masks.’
Rebecca pushed back her chair. ‘What kind of masks, Jeremiah? Red bandannas? What about your skin? Were you all vaccinated?’
‘We don’t believe in that,’ Jeremiah said. ‘God protects those who do his work.’
‘Oh, really? If you had actually been packing anthrax, you’d
all
be dead by now.’
Jeremiah shook his head violently. ‘We cleaned it up. We burned it. You’ll never find anything.’
‘We haven’t found a trace of anthrax. You’re the one who’s ignorant.’
Rebecca touched William’s arm: tag team. He moved in, though he felt lost in the story by now. What was fiction, what was horrible fact?
‘We set you up, Jeremiah, all of you. There was never any anthrax. What other whoppers did your father swallow?’ William asked.
‘You just wait and see,’ Jeremiah said. ‘I ain’t talking any more.’ His face twisted in doubt and confusion. ‘I don’t believe anything you say.’ Then he started to wail, ‘I’m telling you, some of it I just don’t remember! They’re putting stuff in my food. This place is making me crazy. Maybe I
am
sick. Would they get me help if I was sick? I think I need a doctor. I need a lawyer.’
‘We’re done here,’ the virtual counsel said. The background on the screen began flashing red. ‘Questioning of my assignee
must stop, and human counsel must be physically present for any further interviews.’
The guard had put some distance, as much as he could, between himself and the table.
Rebecca stood. ‘Get our boy a doctor, then a lawyer,’ she suggested. Then, acid, ‘Check him for
anthrax
.’
Rebecca was on her phone as soon as they had left the detention center. In the parking lot she made three calls: one to Hiram Newsome in Virginia, one to John Keller, and one to a doctor name Bobby Keel. She slipped the slate into her pocket and took out a handkerchief to wipe her face.
‘Are you all right?’ William asked.
‘Right as rain. This is nuts,’ she said. ‘Pack anthrax for a year in a dusty old barn and live? I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘Can we afford not to believe?’
‘I
know
anthrax, William. The anthrax we dealt with back in 2001 graded out at one trillion spores per gram, so fine it acted like a gas. It went
everywhere
.’
‘Maybe he’s smarter than he looks. He was having us on, playing back our story and upping the ante.’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘They might have been creating a diversion. The farm might have just been a testing station.’
‘Who’s Bobby Keel?’
‘A veterinary epidemiologist,’ she said. ‘We need to know if any sheep near the farm have come down with anthrax.’ She unlocked the driver’s side door. ‘A tall blond man with one blue eye and one green eye. How about some breakfast?’ Her hands worked like an ex-smoker searching for cigarettes, the cop’s second drug of choice. Then she turned the key in the ignition and switched on the radio. They caught the tail end of the news:
‘…
no confirmation from the White House that the seismic tremors detected around the world came from a thermonuclear explosion in
northern Iran. A State Department spokesperson is quoted as saying that the demolition of large ammunition stores can create a similar signature, but weapons experts disagree.’
Rebecca gripped the steering wheel.
‘Kind of puts what we’re doing in perspective, doesn’t it? Anthrax killed five people in the U.S. I wonder how many are dying out there, in Iran or
wherever the Christ it is?
’ She pounded the wheel to each shouted word. Then, quieter, ‘This will suck up every resource, distract everyone. We’re sunk.’ She bowed her head over the wheel. ‘Shit.’
After a moment, William said, ‘I can drive.’
‘Then drive,
Goddammit.’
She turned the car off in the middle of the parking aisle and they exchanged seats. William watched her from the corner of his eye. She was trying not to bite her fingernails. Beneath the chipped polish, they were already down to the quick.
He was about to put decent Americans in peril, make them unknowing sheep before a new American Trinity: and so he came to an inland shipwreck of a town washed up on the midwestern shores of that endless tidal sea of red ink—the young out of work and moved away, the old begging along the highways.
The town he had chosen had once boasted a population of fifteen thousand, too many even for Sam’s angry, fanatic heart.
Now, at five thousand, it was just about right.
At seven-thirty, the tavern parking lot was nearly empty. Sam parked the truck and trailer, taking up two spaces, then got out and stretched. The moon was up, a crescent hanging one handspan above the low skyline. The dingy neighborhood on the outskirts of town was quiet. The single-story brick-walled tavern made a small pool of friendly light—orange and red neon from beer signs, a golden glow through the small windows—in the general grayness of warehouses and grain elevators.
Sam was hungry but he did not much care if the tavern served food. He had been shoring up against a heavy wave of black doubt. He needed something to distract him. Something to temporarily replace all he had lost—the warm press of willing flesh, a moment of oblivion.
He entered and stood by the door. Four women sat at the
bar. They had long ago stopped looking for Mister Right. All they wanted now was what Sam wanted—a night when they weren’t too lonely.
Young or middle-aged, it did not really matter. Just as long as he could stop the little machine in his brain and get a good night’s sleep.
Tomorrow would be a busy day.
Griff had his eyes open and his lips—what could be seen of them—were trying to move but speech wasn’t on the menu and would not be for days or weeks to come. He could, however, move his arm and hand, and one of the agents standing vigil had set out a legal pad on the bed and taped a large marker to Griff’s hand. The markings recovered thus far were taped to the wall beside the medical monitors, showing substantial progress as jibs and jabs settled into single large letters.
Now Griff seemed to have returned in force. He was aware that William was in the room, and he made soft but determined grunting sounds. William held up the pad so that Griff could see it and Griff wrote in large block letters, with so much effort at control that sweat beaded up on his cheeks,
WATSON?
William looked his father in the left eye—the only eye that showed signs of life—and said, ‘She’s dead, Father.’
Griff looked at the ceiling and blinked. William knew that even had his father’s face been capable of showing emotion, Griff would have tried to suppress it, to let it out in private later when no one could see him.
Griff again looked at his son. William flipped to a new page. Griff wrote two words with no space between:
WHATFIND
‘Fireworks makings, bags of yeast, inkjet printers,’ William said.
Then,
VID?
‘We got video, and we’ve all seen it, if that’s what you mean,’ William said.
WHYYUO
‘Does that mean, why am I here?’
Griff nodded, then winced.
‘Special Agent Rose has taken me under her wing,’ William said. ‘Out of pity for you.’ He smiled.
REB
‘Right, Rebecca Rose.’
PRNTRS MPORTNT
‘We know, Father,’ William said.
NEWS
‘Hiram Newsome? He’s supervising,’ William said.
Griff shook his head, wrote N, then
NWS ABUT JEW
William thought this over for a moment, then said, ‘We’re investigating what someone told the Patriarch, about killing Jews. We’re not working on this alone.’
Griff closed his good eye, squeezed it. The other remained open. Then he looked at William and scrawled, with quick, sharp strokes,
D JEWS A-BMB?
‘You heard agents talking about Iran?’
Griff nodded.
‘So you’re asking, did Israelis drop a bomb on Iran? We can’t get a straight answer from anybody,’ William said.
MAD, Griff wrote.
‘True enough,’ William said.
Y YEAS
‘I don’t understand that one.’
Griff stroked in a rapid W and then a T: WY YEAST.
‘Maybe to study dispersal of a biological agent.’
NTHRX
‘It’s a possibility.’
FND NTHRAX
‘No. No traces yet of anthrax in the barn, or anywhere else, for that matter.’ They were almost out of paper. ‘You should rest now, Father.’
Griff shook his head and glared.
‘Now you’re scaring me, Griff,’ William said. ‘You’re going to turn into Donovan’s Brain or something if you keep it up.’
Griff continued to glare.
William shrugged, turned the pad around, ripped off the cardboard, and placed it on the opposite side, giving Griff more relatively blank paper—minus marker bleed-through.
CREDS
‘Yes, Father. I did get my credentials.’
ASSGN OFFC?
‘Not for the moment. They sent me out here to watch over you, and, like I said, Agent Rose has me working with her. I…had a moment with some flaming toilet paper, to distract…’ He wondered how much of this story Griff could stand. ‘It worked, but I’m being investigated by—’
Griff shook his head and continued to glare.
‘Right. Not important.’ William drew close to the plastic curtain around his father’s face.
ESIA
‘What’s that mean, Father?’
ESIA, again. Griff was trying to make sounds and the effort cost him.
OHI
The last letter started off as a U. He capped it with a slash. It looked like an upside-down hat.
‘Is that Ohio?’ William asked.
Again, the short nod, followed by a tic—the only grimace he could make now.
SV LIVES
Griff pushed the marker against William’s hand, leaving a black streak, and tried to grab his fingers. Then the good eye closed. His father’s hand spasmed, then relaxed.
William sat with tears dripping down his cheeks, he could not help himself, he felt so much, all of it contradictory, for this broken man with the unbroken spirit.
SAC Keller and Rebecca entered the hospital room. ‘We’re attending an inter-agency pow-wow tomorrow morning,’ Keller said. He handed William a vinyl folder. ‘You’ll team with Rebecca.’
‘You’re completely off the hook,’ Rebecca said. ‘Someone in OPR apparently likes the way you think.’
‘Not even weird enough to become the stuff of legend,’ Keller said dryly. ‘Has our Michelin man decided to say something?’ He waved at the scrawls pinned to the wall.
‘He’s curious,’ William said, and showed them the pad.
Keller flipped through the sheets, both sides. ‘We won’t put these on display, I think,’ he said, and took the pad from William, slipping it into his briefcase. ‘Until we figure out what’s happening, we stay real cozy. Anybody not vetted by headquarters, even fellow agents, are to remain in the dark. And that includes Griff. What in hell is this?’ Keller pointed to the two sheets marked ESIA and the awkwardly slashed OHIO.
‘I don’t know,’ William said. ‘He fell asleep.’
‘Could be “Asia”,’ Keller said.
Nurses and doctors entered and told them they should leave. Griff was being taken away for more scans.
Fouad had walked around the Superhawk twenty or thirty times, he had lost count. Each time, he had surveyed the broken clods of dirt in the abandoned farm field, the yellow stalks of old hay mixed in with the clumped, clayey soil, the surrounding mountains—extreme washboard, Master Sergeant had called them. He did not know the names of any of the surrounding peaks, or even if they had names. Despite studying the maps, he knew so little about this part of the world. He was just another ignorant American. He could speak many of the languages but not like a native—he did not know the local phrases, the local traditions—he did not even know whether this field had lain abandoned for years or decades, a poor effort in a high and rugged land. And now hard, icy snow was stinging his cheeks. They had not dressed for such cold. The air was cooling rapidly as the sun dropped closer to the horizon.
What if it has finally come. The fanatics have won, and it is Islam against the West, and the West…that is me, my people now, must bathe the Middle East in a sea of flame. Like a lion stung too many times, ripping up a nest, killing all the silly, stupid hornets.
Where will I stand? Unbelievers all around. Who am I to stand alone among them, when the
umma
is dying?
Fergus plodded out to where he was standing. They said nothing for a while, just wincing at the hard snow and watching the sun dim behind yellow streaks of clouds blowing away from the nearest peaks like feathery wings.
Fergus said, ‘Master Sergeant tells me the bird’s back up.’
‘Bird?’ Fouad asked.
‘Satellite links. We’re getting our instructions. We’ll be going soon.’ He looked around the clodded furrows. ‘I can’t believe someone wasted a plow. Wonder what they used to pull it? Sherpas?’
Harris joined them. ‘Small talk, gentlemen?’
‘I was just asking Fred here how long he’s been in the FBI.’
‘Not long,’ Fouad said. ‘This is my first assignment.’
‘Wow,’ Harris said. ‘That’s not typical FBI procedure, is it? Diplomatic Service, now, they take their newbies and dump them straight into the worst hellholes. Trial by fire.’
Fergus grinned. ‘Luck of the bid lists, right?’
‘Right. You ask for Paris, you get the stans.’
Fouad looked between them. ‘The stans?’
‘Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan,’ Harris said. ‘My wife absolutely
adored
Pakistan. Our first child was born there. We got divorced six months later, after I bid on Frankfurt and got Tajikistan.’
‘Ah, divorce,’ Fergus said. ‘The patriot’s annulment.’
‘I want to get home and crawl under my blanket and not look out,’ Harris said. ‘Being scared for nine hours straight
hurts
. My head is pounding, my back and neck are tight as springs, and I have to take a shit but my sphincter is clamped tight as a vice. I keep wondering when the next nuke is going to go off and where, and I don’t want to be caught taking a squat, mid-grunt.’
Fergus laughed and beat his arms together.
‘Screw anthrax,’ Harris said, the wind almost blowing his words away. ‘That’s small-time shit.’
‘I wonder when Beatty’s going to finally leave Iraq?’ Fergus said. ‘Dedication is admirable in a man.’
‘He’s an asshole,’ Harris said. ‘I learned to hate him when I was working here eight years ago.’
‘He seemed to have some humanity,’ Fouad said. ‘He seemed to care.’
‘Did you ever watch
Apocalypse Now
?’ Harris asked. They both had, Fergus five or six times. ‘Remember Robert Duvall—what the fuck was his name—going up to the wounded gook begging for water, telling Martin Sheen that any soldier holding in his guts with his bare hands was a hero. Anyway, he gives the gook his own canteen—spills water on him—and then a young jock tells him about some righteous waves. Duvall jerks the canteen away before the gook can take a sip. Right on. That’s America—a boatload of righteous sentiment, then we lose interest and pull out. We fucking go home and leave them to bleed to death.’
‘Beatty did not leave,’ Fouad pointed out.
‘He’s sticking around to prove a stupid point,’ Harris said. ‘Same difference. Screw that.’
‘Where do you want to go, right now?’ Fergus asked, with a wry smile.
‘Home,’ Harris said.
‘Me, too. Fred?’
‘I will bravely vote with the majority,’ Fouad said. Somehow, his turmoil and fear had transformed into lightheadedness, even levity. He did not have a clue what would be happening to them in the next few hours. ‘I am a young agent, lacking all experience, and yet, because I speak a strange language, here I am,’ he said. ‘With you two strapping Yankees, and we are all feeling very mortal. We will have a beer many years from now, in a bar, and laugh. We will be great friends.’
Harris gave Fergus a look. ‘You drink beer, Fred?’
‘I have been known to, to my shame,’ Fouad said. ‘But not at the Academy. My father would hear of it.’
‘Harsh man, your pappy?’
‘Not particularly,’ Fouad said. ‘But not a drinker.’
‘So if the anthrax isn’t from around here, where is it from?’ Harris asked Fergus.
‘Anthrax is everywhere,’ Fergus said. ‘But this particular stuff is special. Current thinking is, it’s our own domestic blend. One secret we’ve kept from John and Jane Q Public for a long time, is how many places in the U.S. used to work with anthrax. Agricultural schools, weapons research during World War 2—hell, back then every pharmaceutical company and university with a war contract worked with anthrax. Just inside the United States, we’ve traced leftovers to abandoned warehouses, old college labs, scientific supply houses. Nothing shocks me any more.’
‘Who in America still wants to kill Jews?’ Fouad asked. ‘Are we after Nazis or American Fascists?’
Harris and Fergus immediately sobered.
‘I am asking, who in America would make an anthrax that kills only Jews?’
The two men looked down and scuffed their feet but still said nothing.
‘Someone thinks it is American Muslims?’ Fouad ventured.
Master Sergeant called from the Superhawk’s cabin. The wind shredded his voice. ‘We’re leaving, gentlemen. All aboard!’
‘Whoever the fuck it is, it can’t be done,’ Fergus said to Fouad as they walked back across the rugged field. ‘There’s no genetic marker or receptor that singles out Jews. You just can’t breed that kind of germ. It’s a scientific impossibility.’
‘So what is it they are trying to accomplish?’ Fouad asked.
‘Someone’s lying,’ Fergus said. ‘Someone is delivering samples to radical Islamists and telling them a nasty fib. We need to know who, and we’d certainly like to know why.’ Fergus clutched his hat under the wash from the blades. Harris helped Fouad, and Fouad pulled up Fergus.
‘Hell, you know what the fanatics around here would
likely do,’ Fergus said. ‘They’d round up six Jews, any old Jews, and dose them—but why do a double-blind and test it on the faithful? That would be an abomination.’
Fouad looked between them. They both returned his look, as if trying to figure out his disposition, his race, the psychology of all Islam, through his dark young eyes.
‘Six Kurdish Jews,’ Harris muttered. ‘And a year ago, seven Shiites dead in Baghdad.’
‘Sunnis wouldn’t mind killing both Jews and Shiites,’ Fergus said.
‘And now you probably know as much as we do,’ Harris said to Fouad. ‘The more you know, the less it makes sense.’
Master Sergeant welcomed them aboard, grinning with relief. ‘The hell with this, let’s
motor
,’ he said. They resumed their seats and strapped in.
‘If it is not modified to kill Jews, could it be modified to mislead fanatical Muslims? Simple souls that they are?’ Fouad smiled his most ingenuous smile.
Fergus snorted. Harris looked around the helicopter. ‘Fred, are you impugning the intelligence of our enemies?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps to convince these simple souls that there is a way to win an old war,’ Fouad said. ‘And make them pay great sums of money to get it.’
‘An expensive fake-out,’ Fergus said with wry appreciation.
Master Sergeant listened intently but his heart wasn’t in the discussion. ‘The whole world’s got to change,’ he said.
‘If Fred’s correct, selling fake anthrax wouldn’t be a major crisis, would it?’ Harris asked. ‘It would be like selling red mercury to the Serbs. That cost Slobodan Milosevic six million dollars for squat—a high-yield explosive that doesn’t even exist.’
‘But these American suppliers are not stupid people, if they can obtain or modify such anthrax. From who else would they extort money? From fanatics with equal hatred,’ Fouad suggested.
‘Who would that be?’ Harris asked.
‘I am thinking out loud,’ Fouad said.
‘Fred here believes we may not have the complete picture yet,’ Fergus said. ‘Maybe we’re all thinking simplistically.’
‘Amen to that,’ Harris said. ‘That’s always been our problem in this part of the world.’
Master Sergeant closed the hatch. The helicopter rose from the old farm field, turned into the snowy wind, and immediately headed west, making a beeline for Turkey.
Once again Fouad had closed his eyes. He was in the middle of a vivid dream of sick and dying cattle. They had the most sympathetic and pain-filled eyes. The cattle began kicking over huge oil drums. He heard rapid sounds of banging metal. As he jerked awake, he saw Fergus slump forward. Harris had crossed the aisle and was fumbling with his hands to cover a fountain of blood from Fergus’s chest. Master Sergeant calmly threw flak jackets at them. ‘Up front,’ he ordered. ‘Thicker armor.’
Fouad worked his arms to get into a jacket. He helped Harris drag Fergus forward. Master Sergeant popped open a first aid kit and flung compresses and tourniquets in plastic bags at them. ‘Open ’em, tie him off, press ’em wherever there’s blood,’ he instructed.
‘Hell with that,’ Harris shouted back. ‘He’s dying!’
Fergus was bleeding out in great gushes on the deck. His hands, held up in supplication, shook uncontrollably and his lips were blue in a chalk-white face. Despite the futility, Fouad went to work, helping Harris. They were covered in blood.
The Superhawk roared and veered and careened. ‘We’re being painted!’ the co-pilot shouted. Countermeasures screamed away from the chopper on both sides—flares and chaff. ‘Tango Victor Charlie, we got red eyes. Scorpios up our crack and we cannot shake ’em.’
‘Shit on a stick,’ Master Sergeant said, and doubled over.
The cabin hissed like a huge snake and filled with smoke and flame.