Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (2 page)

“No, please, it’ll be fine,” she
insisted firmly. Mainly because she had no intention of opening her trunk for
him. She figured the battery would die again, but she didn’t anticipate driving
herself anywhere for a while. After tonight, she’d need to hole up anyway.

He searched her face and then
said, “Okay, but you really ought to be prepared for something like this to
happen.”

She couldn’t help it. She burst
into loud nervous laughter. She clamped her mouth shut as he turned around from
his trunk and eased the lid closed. He cocked his head at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s not funny.
It’s just … I was thinking the exact same thing is all.” She smiled broadly.

He stared at her for a few
seconds, then he shrugged. “Okay, then. You have a good weekend. See you on
Monday.”

“Goodbye, Ben,” she said. Her
words conveyed a finality she hadn’t meant to share.

She hurried into the car and
slammed the door shut. She checked the time and cursed under her breath. Then
she put the car in reverse, exited the parking spot, and raced out of the lot,
giving Ben a short
beep
in thanks as she passed him.

In her rearview mirror, she could
see him standing there, looking after her as she pulled away.

If she had looked back when she
reached the end of the drive, she’d have seen him walk over to his Buick, kill the
engine, and lock his car door, then head back into the building with a
thoughtful, concerned expression.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Michel Joubert
held his breath as he swiped his key card to gain entrance to the lab. There
was never any way to know when he would encounter one of his coworkers. After
all, what they did was part science and part art. When inspiration struck
during dinner, the researchers had been known to tuck their children into bed
and return to their work afterward. Not to mention, some experiments took hours
to run. Some people left their experiments unattended or assigned a student to
watch them, but others preferred to hover over their work in progress like
anxious parents.

If there was ever a time to sneak
into the lab unnoticed, though, it was twelve-thirty in the morning on a Saturday.
As much as the researchers loved their work, they were, after all, French. A
few bottles of wine and a leisurely meal were every Frenchman’s due at the end
of a long week. He expected that anyone still awake was in no condition to do
anything but sit in front of a roaring fire and wax philosophical in the
candlelight. He hoped so, at least.

He eased the door shut and crept
down the darkened hallway. His rubber-soled, leather driving moccasins made
virtually no noise on the tile floor. This pleased him because the safer move
would have been to wear running shoes, but he’d dismissed that as an option.
His views on appropriate attire for the laboratory were well known; if he did
run into someone, sneakers on his feet would be a glaring announcement that something
was out of place.

He reached the end of the hall
and pressed his thumb against the reader. While the machine scanned his
thumbprint, he stared at the biohazard sign that he’d seen a hundred times
before without really looking at it and ran through the sequence again: get in;
get what he needed; get out. It would be astonishingly easy.

To the public, he imagined the
laboratory’s designation as a biosafety level 4 facility—the institute was the
first in Europe to attain the highest level—conjured up visions of multiple
levels of impregnable security designed to prevent precisely what he was about
to do. That was, of course, a fiction. The strict standards and precautions in
place in a level 4 facility were designed to prevent an accidental release of a
dangerous biological agent and to contain such a release if one were to occur.
It was as if the drafters of the rigorous standards had never entertained the
notion that a person might want to waltz out the door with the Ebola virus or
some smallpox tucked into his pocket.

The machine finished digesting
his swirls and beeped its approval. He passed through the double doors and
walked into the outer change room. Here, he hesitated. The usual procedure
before entering the lab when the biological agents were not secured would be to
strip naked and suit up in the underpants, shirt, pants, shoes, gloves, and
personal pressure protective suit, then enter through the shower room. He would
reverse this sequence when leaving the lab: take off the lab clothes; shower;
dress in his street clothes; and exit the laboratory.

But he didn’t have that kind of
time. And, currently, the virus was secured and the laboratory decontaminated.
If he ran into anyone, he could explain away his appearance by saying he needed
to check his station for some misplaced item. Besides, he thought, what
difference did it make? Soon enough, he’d be toting the H17N10 virus around in
a soft-sided cooler, for the love of the saints.

He shrugged and left the room,
opting to enter the lab through the sealed airlock instead of the
decontamination shower chamber. He pressed the pad on the wall to open the
first airtight door to the passageway. Once inside, he pressed an identical pad
to close the door. He felt the breeze from the HEPA filters blowing on him,
something he never noticed while suited up. He stepped up to the second door.
After the first door had sealed shut behind him, he pressed the pad to open the
door leading to the laboratory.

Once inside, he breached protocol
by leaving the door open. Then he ran across the gleaming, white tile floor to
the glovebox that held the vials. Inside the box, a heavy, stainless steel
container, shaped like a thermos, sat alone on a shelf. He reached for it,
breathing hard, and twisted the top until the seal broke.

Michel had originally planned to
take the entire container, but his buyer was interested in purchasing only a
small amount of the virus. And he’d explicitly told Michel to leave the
container behind as it would slow detection of the theft. Unless and until
someone had a research need to open the container, no one would know the virus
was missing. That was the buyer’s belief, at least.

Michel knew the buyer was
mistaken. When he didn’t return to work on Monday, there would be concerns. By
Tuesday morning—if not sooner—the supervisors would check the monitoring
systems and see that he had swiped his card at twelve twenty-eight in the
morning; pressed his thumb into the print reader at twelve thirty-four; and entered
the airlock at twelve forty-five. And, then, they’d wonder what he’d been
working on. They would open the glovebox and see that a sample of the H17N10
virus was missing. But, the Americans had a saying that the customer was always
right, so he gingerly removed one sample and returned the thermos.

The tube was remarkably light
considering the incredible weight its contents carried. In his hand, Michel
held a weapon more powerful than any other yet made by man. A droplet or two
sprinkled in a market could start a daisy chain of suffering, illness, and
death that would stretch across the globe. A vision of moaning, dying children
filled his eyes, and he blinked it away.

The buyer had promised he would
not release the virus; he’d said he needed it for leverage, that was all. If
the man had offered only money, Michel would have pressed for more details,
better assurances. But, he hadn’t offered only money—money
was
changing
hands, and quite a bit of it. More than money, though, the American had offered
him priceless information: the address where that tramp Angeline had taken his Malia.
Four years old, a jumble of wild blonde curls and elbows and knees, singing her
silly songs, oceans away from her
papa.

He felt his grip tighten on the
bottle and took a long, steadying breath.
Soon, Malia. Very soon your papa
will come for you.
He slid the cold vial into the front right pocket of his
trousers and hurried back to the airlock.

He retraced his path out of the
laboratory. His anxiety began to recede with each step closer to the exit. The
soft bump of the vial against his thigh with each quick stride thumped out a
beat: He’d done it. He’d done it!

The hard part was almost over.
Soon he’d be in his pristine Smart, with the cooler on the seat beside him,
driving carefully through the countryside to the prearranged drop spot. He’d
split the sample among the three smaller vials the American had provided and
leave the cooler behind. And then he would begin his journey to retrieve his
daughter and begin his new life.

Leo’s cell phone
came to life in his pocket, and he flushed with annoyance. He knew from the
ring tone that the call was from Grace Roberts, his second in command. When he’d
left the office at lunchtime to get an early start on the weekend, he’d instructed
Grace not to bother him for anything short of a catastrophe.

Sasha’s head rested against Leo’s
chest. She was reading some legal journal article about intellectual property
rights in cyberspace. He tried to ignore the ringing in his pocket and continued
stroking Sasha’s hair. The warm, gingery scent of her shampoo rose and
enveloped him like a cloud.

Leo watched through the window
overlooking the lake as the outdoor spotlights illuminated the fat, wet
snowflakes that floated past in the darkness. He was perfectly content—the
happiest he’d been in months—if not entirely relaxed. The truth was he was on
his best behavior. The lake house, situated in Deep Creek, Maryland—a resort
town halfway between Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh—was both a compromise and
an experiment. In the two months since he’d left Pittsburgh and the Department
of Homeland Security to take a private sector job as the chief security officer
for Serumceutical International, headquartered outside D.C., the situation with
Sasha had been delicate.

In his view, he had left her with
an open invitation; but in her view, it had been an ultimatum. To her credit,
though, she’d been the one to pick up the phone and call him.

She’d agreed to try out a
long-distance relationship with some reluctance, and he didn’t dare to revisit
the issue of her moving to D.C. As an early Christmas gift to one another, they’d
rented this lakefront vacation home for the season. The house was a place to
spend time together on neutral territory while they figured out a long-term
plan. Leo hoped that, by spring, she’d be willing to make a permanent move. But
she was like a deer, liable to start at any moment and gallop away.

His cell phone rang a second
time, and he felt Sasha stiffen.
Great.

He caressed her arm and gently
shifted her to the couch, then fished the phone from his pocket and answered on
the third ring.

“What is it, Grace?” Leo said,
keeping his voice even on the off-chance that she was calling about an actual
emergency.

“Not on the phone,” Grace said immediately.
Her voice was serious but calm.

Grace’s tone conveyed urgency.
And she hadn’t apologized for interrupting him on a Friday evening, which meant
she had no doubt that whatever was going on, it was important enough to merit
his involvement.

He felt Sasha’s eyes on him.
Although Grace’s judgment to date had been sound, he decided to probe her for
some details, hoping to find a reason to let her handle the problem, whatever
it might be, and return to lounging on the couch with Sasha in his arms.

“In general terms, then,” he
said.

Grace exhaled, a frustrated
snort, and said, “Corporate espionage. That’s all I can say.”

Leo’s stomach sank, but he
nodded. As usual, Grace’s instincts were spot on; if the issue was a spying
competitor, they couldn’t talk about it over the phone, especially not in light
of the sensitive nature of their government contract.

He should have known she wouldn’t
have called him unless it was warranted. Grace was a former National Security
Agency analyst. She was blazingly smart. She was also something of an
adrenaline junkie. Upon realizing that the NSA position entailed none of the
glamour of a Jason Bourne movie but all of the paperwork of a position at the
Department of Motor Vehicles, she’d put out feelers for a more exciting, not to
mention more remunerative, gig.

Leo’s friend Manny Ortiz, a
special agent in the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, had called him
about Grace. Manny had known Leo wanted to bring in an outsider to work
directly for him at Serumceutical. Someone who was smart and driven, and, most
important, had no ties to Serumceutical. A lieutenant whom Leo could trust.
Manny had promised that Grace fit the bill. He’d also mentioned that she was a
knockout, a fact that shouldn’t have mattered, but had ended up removing any
objections the other corporate officers might otherwise have had to his first
official act: hiring a well-paid assistant. To a man, they’d been utterly
charmed by her. Women, by contrast, appeared to hate Grace.

“Leo? Are you there?” Grace
asked.

He could tell from the tight way
she spoke that she was tense and ready for action. And he realized he was going
to have to leave the cocoon that he and Sasha had built.

“I’m here. I heard you. I’m
leaving now. I’ll be there in about three hours,” he said and ended the call.

He slid the phone into his pocket
and looked at Sasha. Her head was still bent over the journal, but her eyes
weren’t moving.

“Hey,” he said in a soft voice.

She twisted around to face him,
her green eyes searching his.

“I have to go to the office. I’m
sorry. I’ll be back in time to start a fire before we turn in for the night,”
he said, nodding toward the hearth.

He glanced down at his watch.
No,
he wouldn’t
. It was after six. Even if the meeting with Grace only took an
hour or two, it would be well after midnight by the time he returned.