Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (29 page)

Mikhailov shouted something, but his words were lost in a fusillade of gunfire that again lit up the night. Jack was astonished to see that the cats, instead of shying away from the gunfire, bored straight on toward the Russians. He only saw two cats go down, caught by stray bullets. The rest passed through the Russian line and ran straight past Jack and the others. But before they reached the men on the other side of the perimeter, they suddenly spun about and gathered around him and the others in the center, mewling pitiably.

Turning his attention back to the fight, Jack watched through the thermal sight as several dark blobs arced outward from the Russian soldiers, grenades that exploded amongst the harvesters with spectacular results. Kuybishev had them use white phosphorus, and brightly burning fragments sailed outward from each grenade blast, many of them landing on harvesters and setting them ablaze.
 

He lowered the sight. It was nearly useless in the sudden glare of the flames.
 

“I do not understand.” Mikhailov shouted to be heard over the gunfire. “Why do they come at us this way? Why did they not pretend to be humans and ambush us, as they did on Spitsbergen? Or try harder to infiltrate us, masquerading as our own men?”

Jack shook his head. He’d been wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. We know so little about them to begin with, and this generation is genetically different from the old ones. They can obviously cooperate, but beyond that, only Naomi might be able to tell us.”

A chorus of shouts erupted from behind them, to the west, followed by gunfire and screams.

Bringing up the shotgun, Jack took a look through the thermal sight and felt his heart leap into his throat. He should have paid closer attention to the cats’ behavior. There was a reason they didn’t keep heading west, away from the attacking harvesters. “
They’re coming in behind us!
”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Naomi escaped from one form of captivity only to trade it for another. As the elevator opened on the ground floor, she and the others were greeted by a team of FBI agents.
 

One of them was a tall black woman with close-cropped hair sporting a few streaks of gray. While that suggested she was a bit older than the agents around her, she also had the build of an Olympic sprinter. “I’m Special Agent Angie Boisson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If you’ll all please exit the elevator and move to your right,” she gestured toward another group of agents who formed a cordon in the lobby, “I’d appreciate it.”

Naomi let the others file past her as she pressed herself into the front corner of the elevator near the control panel. As the last person, Harmony, stepped out, Naomi jabbed the button for the floor where her office was located.

“Dr. Perrault?”

Naomi looked up in surprise to see Boisson, a bemused expression on her face, stepping into the elevator.
 

“You won’t be able to go anywhere without this.” Boisson held up an emergency key, which she stuck into the control panel. Giving it a turn, she asked, “Which floor were you planning to go to?”

“Three.” Naomi had stepped back involuntarily, not sure what to make of Boisson’s actions. “I need to get to my office. My cats are there. I won’t leave them.”

The FBI agent pressed the button for the third floor and the elevator doors slid shut on the pandemonium beyond. “Assistant Director Carl Richards sends his regards,” Boisson said. “He wanted to thank you for the tip on Kline.” She paused, her dark eyes locking with Naomi’s. “He also wanted me to ask about what you’ve been holding out on him.”

Naomi felt sick. She had been worried that this might happen. Her silence in exchange for Morgan telling her everything about the Beta-Three samples had been necessary, but had been a bargain with the devil, all the same. That, however, didn’t mean she was going to spill her guts to an FBI agent she didn’t know. “If I did know something, why should I tell you?”
 

“Because if you don’t, you’re probably going to wind up in prison for a very long time, and Assistant Director Richards indicated to me that he wasn’t very fond of that idea.” She turned the key and hit the stop button. “He wanted me to find you and have a little private chat before anyone else got hold of you.”

“He could have just called me and asked.”

Boisson shook her head. “No, he couldn’t. This raid was based on your tip about Kline. But we also figured out on our own that someone here at Morgan Pharmaceuticals was involved in getting their hands on the biological weapon we believe Kline was selling. Richards is trying to keep this as above-board as he can, given the circumstances. By calling you about this, he would have been involving himself directly with a potential suspect in a case.”

“And this little conversation doesn’t amount to the same thing?” Naomi’s voice was laced with skepticism, but she couldn’t help but cling to the small hope Boisson might represent. Naomi didn’t want to wind up in prison for many reasons, not least of all that she knew that her world could soon be under siege, and she was one of the few people who might be able to help stop it.

“Richards and I go back quite a ways. I was also one of the agents involved in the Sutter Buttes raid. He helped save my ass. I owe him.”

Naomi put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” Fifty-three FBI agents had lost their lives in the raid the year before on the Earth Defense Society base, an old Cold War Titan-I missile complex, at Sutter Buttes, California. It was the most grievous loss the Bureau had ever suffered, and had come right on the heels of the destruction of the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia by the harvesters. Watching those men and women die among the mines that defended the base had been one of the most heart-wrenching, horrible things Naomi had ever witnessed.

Boisson shrugged. “I walked away when a lot of others didn’t.” She looked at her watch. “I’m going to give you three minutes. That’s all I can spare before we’re both sorely missed. If you come clean, I’ve got a cover story that I’ll use to take you into protective custody. I can’t guarantee it’ll keep you out of the pen in the long term, but you’ll at least have a chance.” Her voice hardened. “If you want to keep up the ‘I’m not telling’ routine, you’ll be walking out of this elevator in handcuffs.”

Naomi closed her eyes. Once again, she had no choice.
 

Then she told Boisson what she knew about Howard Morgan and his Beta-Three project.

* * *

“How can I help you, Special Agent Boisson?”

Boisson turned to see Howard Morgan, a Cheshire Cat’s grin on his face, striding toward her, with the woman Boisson recognized as his security chief right behind. They were flanked by a pair of her agents.

“You can start by telling me what the hell’s behind this door.” Naomi had told Boisson the critical facts about the Beta-Three research in the short time they’d had before Boisson had to turn her over to a trio of agents, who, after gathering up the two cats, whisked Naomi out of the building to a safe house. The most important thing Naomi had revealed was the existence of Lab One, and the rushed evacuation just after the FBI had arrived. Leading a team of agents to the basement, Boisson had found the lab, of course, but there was no way to get inside.
 

That was when she’d sent her people to find Morgan and drag him down here. She knew that she didn’t have enough to pin anything on him, but he still had to comply with her search warrant.

Of course, compliance didn’t necessarily mean she would get what she wanted.

“I’m so sorry,” Morgan said, not sounding sorry at all, “but Lab One suffered a catastrophic breach this morning and had to be sanitized. I can get you through the outer door, here, but beyond that, I can’t help you.” He shook his head, pursing his lips. “For safety reasons you won’t be able to get past the inner door. No one can, not even me, until the internal sensors judge it to be safe.”

“We’ll see about that,” Boisson snapped. “Open it.”

Morgan nodded at his security chief, who stepped forward and swiped her ID card over the outer door’s control panel, then looked into the retina scanner.

The console beeped, a light turned green, and with a sharp hiss of air the outer door swung open.

Boisson led the way into the vestibule, and was confronted with the vault-like inner door. “Open it.”

“I told you, Agent Boisson, that’s impossible. Put your hand up against that door.”

She did, and was surprised to find how warm the door was. It was almost painful to the touch.

“Lab One was designed for highly sensitive research that involved extremely hazardous substances. We had protocols in place to ensure that if anything happened, the lab could be contained and sterilized to ensure there wouldn’t be any contamination.”

“You lit a fire in there?”

Morgan laughed. “Oh, it was a fire, all right, although not a bonfire of paper and plastic like you’re probably imagining. We based the fail-safe system on the incinerators used in the most advanced crematorium in the world.” He put his palm against the door and quickly withdrew it, shaking his hand theatrically, as if it were on fire. “Along with the vault door, the entire lab, including the floor and ceiling, is lined with inch-thick steel and ten inches of reinforced concrete. All that will be left beyond that door is powdered ash, once it’s cool enough to open, of course. That should be in two, maybe three days.”

“A perfect system for destroying evidence.”

Morgan’s expression hardened. “Agent Boisson, you are welcome to come in here and dig through our files and do whatever else you feel compelled to do in this little witch hunt. But if you’re going to imply or directly accuse me or any of my employees of wrongdoing, say it and say it loud so my legal team can hear it up on the sixth floor.”

Boisson didn’t blink. “Sorry, but I don’t really feel like shouting, and some of my agents are already talking to your lawyers. But now that you mention employees and wrongdoing, where can I find the good Dr. Adrian Kelso? We’ve been looking for him everywhere and can’t find him. I have a warrant for his arrest.”

That, Boisson could clearly see, came as a shock to Morgan. While he recovered his composure in a heartbeat, she knew that had rocked his boat.
 

“On what charges?”

“Well, technically that’s none of your business, but since you asked so nicely I’ll give you a clue: we believe he’s been peddling bio-weapons to other countries.” She stepped closer. “I don’t have anything on you right now, Mr. Morgan, but we’ll see if Kelso wants to reveal any skeletons from your closet once we catch up with him. Of course, if you helped us track him down, that might look good when your turn comes up. Was Dr. Kelso supposed to show up today?”

“It’s not my habit to keep daily track of my employees, Agent Boisson. I trust them to do their jobs, for which they’re highly paid. If Dr. Kelso isn’t in this morning, I’m sure he’s engaged in work-related business or he’s on sick leave. As my chief scientist, he has a lot of responsibilities, both here and at our other facilities, and the latitude to do as he sees fit.”

“Harmony Bates said that she expected him today, if that makes a difference to you. It’s sort of convenient that you have an accident at your lab and torch it and Kelso doesn’t show up on the day that we decide to pay you a visit.”

“If she says he was supposed to be in, then he was supposed to be in. He probably saw your army of thugs invading our building and just drove on home.”

She shook her head. “He’s not there, and his car’s missing.”

Rolling his eyes, Morgan said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there. You’ll just have to do the job that I pay you to do with my tax money.”

“So how about foreign travel? Does he travel often?”

“Of course he does. He’s a leader in the field of genetics, and like other scientific illuminati, he attends seminars and other gatherings of great minds which, I might point out, are not routinely attended by FBI agents for obvious reasons.”

Boisson ignored the insult. “What would you say if I told you that he’s traveled to six different countries in the last year using fake passports?”

She suppressed a smile as she saw Morgan falter. His eyes widened in surprise.

“What?”

“That’s right, Mr. Morgan. We may not go to all the gatherings of great minds, but we’re still pretty good at figuring things out.” She pulled a tightly folded sheaf of paper from her jacket and opened it up before showing it to him. Karina Petrovsky leaned over Morgan’s shoulder to look, too. “Here are images of the passports he used and the dates and countries he traveled to while using them. And while we don’t have any evidence yet, I’d wager my next month’s pay that he was involved with another suspect, Norman Kline.”

Morgan shook his head, and Petrovsky’s expression suddenly clouded. “I don’t know anything about that,” Morgan said.

Lying sack of shit
, Boisson thought, but didn’t say aloud.
Fine, you can play that game. For now.
“I didn’t expect that you would, Mr. Morgan. But how about Dr. Kelso. Any idea why he was traveling under false identities to all these countries? And was it with your permission and knowledge? Think very carefully before you answer, or do you want me to shout it out so your legal team can hear?”

After a moment more of looking over the papers, which Boisson then took back, Morgan shook his head. “No, I knew nothing of this. I knew he’d been taking quite a bit of leave over the last year for medical problems, but never gave it a second thought.”

“And you, Ms. Petrovsky?”

“I had no idea. I’d have to check the personnel records, but I recognize some of the more recent dates as times that he was away. As Mr. Morgan said, Dr. Kelso had taken quite a bit of sick leave along with his normal travels.”

“What do you think he was doing?” Morgan’s tone carried a hint of anger, but Boisson suspected it wasn’t directed at her.
 

“He was probably selling whatever
wasn’t
in your lab here to as many people as he could. If I had to guess, I’d say that he was working with Kline.” She put on a theatrical expression of thinking hard. “So if you bought anything from Kline, it probably originally came from Kelso.” She smiled, a predatory display of teeth that would have looked at home on a shark. “That’s just sheer speculation, of course. But it makes a good theory, don’t you think?”