Lethal Dose (31 page)

68

The last of the four, Tony Warner, arrived at just after five o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, apologizing for being late but blaming it on traffic coming in from Crypto-City. He accepted a coffee from Rothery's executive assistant and thanked her. He stirred in some sugar and a touch of cream and glanced about the office. Allenby, Simms, and Rothery were all sitting in easy chairs with coffee or drinks.

“What's going on, J.D.?” he asked. “What's with the sudden meeting? We did the big press conference yesterday morning.”

Rothery shrugged. “I received a call from the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning. They were adamant we meet this afternoon. She insisted that the entire task force be here. I don't know what it's about.”

“The SEC?”Warner asked.“What the hell do they want with us?”

“That's been the big question since we arrived,” Jim Allenby said.

“Anybody cheat on last year's prospectus?” Simms asked wryly.

All heads turned as the door opened and a mid-fifties woman entered. She wore a blue pantsuit and carried an expensive leather briefcase. She set the briefcase on a table in the center of the room and approached each man individually, introducing herself as Elizabeth Ripley and thanking them for coming. When she had finished the introductions, she reached into her briefcase and pulled out a file. She sat in the last open easy chair and addressed the room.

“Gentlemen, we've got a bit of a quandary over at the SEC. We are concerned about the effect this crisis might have on the market. Not just New York, but also Tokyo, Toronto, and some of the European stock exchanges. We suspect the terrorists may have hedged against the possibility of failure by purchasing shortterm options on some of the larger pharmaceutical companies. I'd like to hear from each one of you as the representative for your various agencies as to if there has been any discussion about possible market manipulation. If there has, I'd like you to describe the actions you've taken to ensure that the markets will remain solvent. Mr. Rothery, perhaps we could start with you.”

Rothery sounded a little confused as he spoke. “Well, I'm not sure this line of thinking has ever reared its head at DHS. We are concerned about the safety of the markets from a physical sense, but we didn't touch on market stability as it related directly to this particular crisis.”

“Thank you. Mr. Allenby?”

“The FBI is a law-enforcement agency, Ms. Ripley. I can't recall ever worrying about the boys on Wall Street. I think they do quite fine without us looking over their shoulders.”

There was a chuckle at his response, but Ripley continued on unfazed. “Mr. Simms. Did the CIA see fit to give this issue any thought?”

“I can't say we did, Ms. Ripley. Our main area of concern was and still is gathering intelligence from around the world that may affect American interests. We have no dealings inside the continental United States, nor do we monitor the international markets on a daily basis. We watch for general trends, but in this particular case, we didn't look for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Mr. Warner?”

“Well, yes, we did watch for any one person or organization buying large chunks of stocks that we felt might be affected by the crisis. That's standard policy. We look closely at situations by inputting data into our computers and analyzing the output. But we didn't notice anything that we considered out of the ordinary.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth Ripley said. A moment later, her cell phone rang and she said, “I'm sorry, gentlemen, but this is one call I must take.” She answered, said “okay” twice, and hung up. She looked over at the door to Rothery's office and said, “I'm going to turn over the meeting to someone else.”

The door opened and Jennifer Pearce entered, followed by Gordon Buchanan and Keith Thompson. Thompson was carrying a large and apparently heavy black case. Gordon remained by the door while Jennifer and Keith walked directly to the table where Elizabeth Ripley had left her briefcase. Keith set his case on the carpet and retrieved a recording device from Elizabeth Ripley's briefcase.

“What's going on here, Keith? And who the hell are you?” Rothery asked Jennifer. She didn't answer, and Rothery turned to Elizabeth Ripley. “This meeting isn't about the SEC, is it?”

“No, it's not, Mr. Rothery,” Ripley said. “After I heard what these people had to say, I agreed to set up the meeting for them. I think you'll find this is not a waste of your time.”

“This had better be pretty damn good,” Rothery snapped. “What are
you
doing here, Keith?”

“I was asked along to run a little test, Mr. Rothery. At the request of the SEC. Sorry.” He busied himself with opening his case and setting up a strange-looking two-sided television screen and a computer. He hooked the recording device from Ripley's briefcase into a USB port and powered up the system. “Ready to roll,” he said to Jennifer.

“My name is Jennifer Pearce. I'm a research scientist in the Alzheimer's division of Veritas Pharmaceutical. I work for Bruce Andrews, the same man who just discovered the drug to combat the virus. But there's a bit of a twist to this whole thing that three of you four gentlemen have missed. And that twist is that there was never a crisis. We were never in any jeopardy.”

Rothery's tone was icy as he responded, reaching for the phone on the table beside him. “This is preposterous,” he said. “I want you out of here immediately.”

“Elizabeth Ripley was correct, Mr. Rothery. This is not a waste of time. If you allow me just a minute, three of you gentlemen are going to find what I have to say very interesting.”

“That's the second time you've referred to three of us, Ms. Pearce,” Jim Allenby said. “What are you implying?”

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “Bruce Andrews over at Veritas develops a drug that he considers to be the next big thing. This baby is going to generate his company billions of dollars in sales. He's so sure of its success that he manipulates the company books in order to assure himself the capital he needs to send the drug through Phase II and Phase III trials. Ms. Ripley has looked into the illegal use of tax credits by Veritas, and she assures me that there will be civil actions arising from her investigation.

“But this goes so much deeper than just stock manipulation. Bruce Andrews had two Veritas employees killed and he wiped out a family in Denver. He tried to kill me three times, but obviously he missed. And here's the part you guys are going to love.

“Bruce Andrews actually developed the virus threatening our country. It makes coming up with a cure so much easier when you're the one creating the problem. Andrews or one of his associates distributed the virus to random locations across the country at carefully selected intervals to let the tension build. Finally, when your task force decided to ask the private sector for help in finding a cure, he was ready. Andrews bided his time, waiting for the fuse to burn down a bit, then handed the cure to Rothery with one condition. Get the drug through the New Drug Application stage and get FDA approval. And that, gentlemen, is what it was all about. Getting a potentially dangerous drug on the market.”

“Why?”Warner asked.

“Money. Billions of dollars that without Zancor getting FDA approval would be flushed down the drain. And with the taxcredit accounting scandal ready to hit without the money being replaced, and with his stock options coming due in December, time was of the essence for Bruce Andrews. He needed Zancor on the market. What better way than to create a false crisis? Just the first round of invoices from the government to protect the population against a threat that was never going to materialize was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If everything goes according to plan, Mr. Bruce Andrews is a billionaire.

“But he needed help. No one person can sit at the helm of a huge pharmaceutical company, murder people, create dangerous viruses, and manipulate the company stock all by himself. And he
had
help. Someone in a very influential position. Someone in this room.”

Four pairs of eyes stared at her and she stared back, allowing her gaze to rest on each man's eyes for a few moments before switching to the next. Nothing. Whichever man it was had the poker face of the millennium. She turned to Keith Thompson.

“I remembered reading about Keith's work on the case in one of the local newspapers. I called him and asked him for a favor. He agreed to help.” She waved her hand at the splitscreen television. “Keith's brought some high-tech equipment with him today, and I'll let him explain it to you.”

Keith Thompson took over. “The recording device in Ms. Ripley's purse has a sample of each of you speaking tonight, in response to her question.” He turned on the screen. The right side remained dark, but the left side showed an image of the masked terrorist threatening the country. Keith let it run for a sentence then stopped it.
The death of innocent American citizens is not our primary goal.
He pointed at a series of wiggly lines that appeared on the right screen. “This is the voiceprint of the terrorist. He hit another switch and J.D. Rothery's voice came over the speaker.
Well, I'm not sure that this line of thinking has ever reared its head at DHS.
A second wiggly line appeared just above the first.

“This line is Mr. Rothery's voice,” Keith said, moving a cordless mouse and drawing the two lines together. Once they were overlaid on each other, he moved the cursor to the right, dragging the second line across the first. After about five seconds, he said, “No match. Mr. Rothery is not the man in the video.”

“Damn right I'm not,” Rothery said.

Our main area of concern was, and still is, gathering intelligence from around the world that may affect American interests.
It was Simms's voice. Keith moved the two wiggles on top of each other and tried to cross-correlate them. No luck.

“Mr. Simms is not our man,” Keith said, loading another voice.
We look closely at situations by inputting data into our computers and analyzing the output.
“That was Mr. Warner,” Keith said, working the mouse. Nothing. All eyes focused on Jim Allenby.

The FBI is a law-enforcement agency, Ms. Ripley.
Keith moved the final line across to the other screen and pulled it to the right. The two series of sine waves lined up perfectly, and once the match was made, the program froze the image on the screen. Keith didn't say a word. No one did; they just stared at the screen and at Jim Allenby. Before anyone in the room could move, Allenby slipped a handgun out from his shoulder holster.

“Jesus, Jim. Why?” Rothery asked. “We've worked together for twenty years. What the hell have you done?”

“Why, J.D.? I'll tell you why. Money. I finally decided to take care of myself. Something the government never considered important. I've been working my ass off for over a quarter of a century, and I've got shit to show for it. Two failed marriages, three screwed-up kids because their dad was never home, and my health is starting to go down the tubes. And you couldn't even dream what Bruce Andrews was offering me. You couldn't even dream the amount.”

“Money, Jim? Money? That's a pretty lame reason.”

“Twenty million dollars, J.D. Twenty million. That buys a lot of nice things for my retirement years. And it's not just the money. The Bureau doesn't give a shit about us anymore. Nothing's the same as it was when I first got in. Used to be the Bureau was run by law-enforcement guys. Cops. Now it's all controlled by the fucking bean counters. And don't put your toe over the line or it'll get shot off. I'm sick of it. Sick of it.”

“You killed innocent people, Jim. You betrayed your country. You killed Boy Scouts, for God's sake.”

“I was careful where and how I introduced the virus. Austin and San Diego went exactly as I planned. I didn't know the Scout troop would pick up that case of Pepsi in Boston. That was just bad luck.”

“You sick, twisted asshole,” Rothery said, leaping from his chair. He moved toward Allenby, his hand outstretched. “Give me the gun, Jim.”

Allenby trained the Colt 1911 on the Under Secretary. “You come one inch closer and I'll kill you.” Rothery stopped but didn't move back.“You know, this whole thing was working until you two got involved,” he said, looking at Gordon and Jennifer. “Now look what's happened. Everything's totally screwed up.”

“So where does it end?” Craig Simms asked, leaning forward in his chair. “You're in the middle of a secure building. You won't get out the front door unless it's with an escort or in a body bag. This is no way to end things, Jim.”

“To hell with you it's not. I've lived my entire life with a gun under my arm or my pillow. Live by the sword, die by the sword. But first, I'd like to pay someone back for all their help.” He jerked the gun around, trained it on Jennifer Pearce, and pulled the trigger.

“No,” Gordon screamed, and threw himself in the line of fire. Too late. The bullet hit Jennifer in the chest and the impact sent her crashing back into an end table. The table took out her legs and she went over on the back of her head on the floor. She lay unmoving, a pool of blood spreading under her on the carpet.

“You bastard,” Gordon yelled, and lunged for Allenby. A quick movement with the gun and a second bullet hit its target.

This time it was Allenby lifting the gun to his head and firing. The bullet entered his temple as a small piece of red-hot metal and exited the other side of his head in fragments, taking a sixinch chunk of skull with it. Gray matter spattered across the room and Allenby dropped to the carpet.

Gordon froze for a second, then looked at Jennifer. Simms and Rothery were already working on her, trying to stop the bleeding, and Elizabeth Ripley was on the phone, demanding an ambulance immediately. He stood in the center of the room surrounded by death. Then something washed over him and he felt a hate that he had never experienced. A loathing so horrible that only one action could cure it. He grabbed the Colt from the floor and ran into the hall. There was nothing he could do to help Jennifer that the men inside that room couldn't do twice as well. And he had seen the bullet hit. She was fatally shot, he was sure.