The Hades Factor

by Robert Ludlum

  He barked, “When can they ship?”

  Jesse Oxnard shot back, “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “They’ll need to pay their costs,” Nancy Petrelli pointed out. “Plus a reasonable return on investment. It’s what we agreed to, and it’s fair.”

  “Money will be wired tomorrow,” the president decided, “right after the first batch leaves their lab.”

  “What if a nation can’t pay?” Nancy Petrelli asked.

  “Advanced nations will have to cover the impoverished nations’ costs,” the president told them. “It’s been arranged.”

  Secretary of State Knight was shocked. “The pharmaceutical company wants money up front?”

  Chief of Staff Ouray scowled. “I thought this was pro bono.”

  The surgeon general shook his head, chiding them. “No one provides vaccines or serums for nothing, Charlie. You think the flu vaccine we want everyone in the nation to have every winter is free?”

  Nancy Petrelli explained, “Blanchard incurred enormous expense developing the biotechnology and facilities to produce the antiserum in quantity to see if it could be done so we’d have such facilities in the future. They expected to recoup over a long period. But now we need it all and fast. They’re way out on a financial limb.”

  “I don’t know about this, Mr. President,” Norman Knight worried. “I guess I have some reservations about ‘miracles.’”

  “Especially when they don’t come cheap,” Ouray added, an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  The president slammed his fist onto his desk, jumped up, and paced into the center of the room. “Dammit, Charlie, what’s the matter with you? Haven’t you been listening these last few days?” He prowled back behind his desk and leaned over it, facing them. “Almost one million dead! Untold millions who could be dying any day. And you want to argue about dollars? About a reasonable return for stockholders? In this country? We preach that economic view as the only right and fair way, dammit! We can end the scourge of this awful virus right now. This minute. And it’ll be fast and cheap compared to what we spend every year fighting flu, cancer, malaria, and AIDS.” He spun on his heel to peer out the Treaty Room window as if looking out on the entire planet. “It could really be a miracle, people!”

  They waited unspeaking, awed by the righteous rage of their taciturn leader.

  But when he turned to face them again, he had calmed himself. His voice was quiet and compelling. “Call it God’s will, if you like. You cynics and secularists are always doubting the unknown, the spiritual. Well, there are more things on heaven and earth, gentlemen and lady, than are dreamed of in your philosophies. If that’s too highbrow for you, how about ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the friggin’ mouth’?”

  “It doesn’t appear it’s going to be exactly a gift,” Ouray said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Charlie. Give it up. It’s a miracle. Let’s enjoy it. Let’s celebrate. We’ll have a big ceremony accepting the first shipment up there at Blanchard’s headquarters in the Adirondacks. A beautiful setting. I’ll fly there, too.” He smiled as the ramifications struck him. At last there was good news, and he knew exactly how to use it. His voice rose again, but this time in excited anticipation. “In fact, let’s bring all the world leaders in by closed-circuit TV. I’ll give Tremont the Medal of Freedom. We’re going to stop this epidemic in its tracks and honor those who’ve helped us.” He gave a wicked grin. “Of course, it’s not too shabby for our political aspirations either. After all, we’ve got to think of the next election.”

  5:37 P.M.

  Lima, Peru

  Amid the gilt and marble of his office, the deputy minister smiled.

  The important Englishman said, “Everyone who goes into Amazonia needs a permit from your ministry, correct?”

  “Very true,” the deputy minister agreed.

  “Including scientific expeditions?”

  “Especially.”

  “These records are open to the public?”

  “Of course. We are a democracy, yes?”

  “A fine democracy,” the Englishman agreed. “Then I need to examine all the permits granted twelve and thirteen years ago. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “It is no trouble at all,” the deputy minister said cooperatively and smiled again. “But, alas, the records from those years were destroyed during the time of a different government.”

  “Destroyed? How?”

  “I am not certain.” The deputy minister spread his hands in apology. “It was a long time ago. There was much turmoil from unimportant factions that wished a coup. Sendero Luminoso and others. You understand.”

  “I’m not certain I do.” The important Englishman smiled, too.

  “Ah?”

  “I don’t recall an attack on the interior ministry.”

  “Perhaps when they were being photocopied.”

  “You should have a record of that.”

  The deputy minister was unperturbed. “As I said, a different government.”

  “I will speak with the minister himself, if I may.”

  “Of course, but, alas, he is out of the city.”

  “Really? That’s odd, since I saw him only last night at a concert.”

  “You are mistaken. He is on vacation. In Japan, I believe.”

  “It must have been someone else I saw.”

  “The minister is unremarkable in appearance.”

  “There you are, then.” The Englishman smiled as he stood and bowed slightly to the deputy minister, who returned a pleasant nod. The Englishman left.

  Outside on the wide boulevard of the elegant old city famed for its colonial architecture, the Englishman, whose name was Carter Letissier, flagged down a taxi and gave the address of his Miraflores house. In the taxi, his smile evaporated. He sat back and swore.

  The bastard had been bought. And recently, too. Otherwise, the minister would have allowed Letissier to waste his time in the files only to discover the records really were missing. Instead, the records must not have been destroyed yet. But Letissier also knew they would be gone by the time he could get an appointment with the minister. He glanced at his watch. The ministry was closing. Given the normal lazy habits of Peruvian deputy ministers, the records would not actually disappear until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

  Three hours later, the grand offices of the Ministry of the Interior were dark. Armed with his 10mm Browning semiautomatic, Carter Letissier broke in dressed completely in black and wearing the black boots and antiflash hood with respirator of the British SAS counterterrorist commando. At one time he had been a captain of the 22nd SAS Regiment, a proud and memorable period in his life.

  He went directly to the filing cabinet he had learned contained Amazonian documents, found the section on permits, and extracted the folders for the two years he needed. He erected and flicked on the minute lamp he had brought with him. Under it, he opened the folders and photographed the pages with his minicamera. As soon as he had finished, he returned everything to where it belonged, collapsed his light, and slipped back out into the night.

  In his private darkroom in the Miraflores house, Letissier, now a well-known importer of cameras and equipment to Peru, developed the film. When the negatives were dry, he made large prints.

  Grinning, he dialed a long series of numbers and waited. “Letissier here. I have the names of those who led scientific teams to the location you wished in the years you wished. You have paper and pencil ready, Peter?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  10:01 A.M., Thursday, October 23

  Syracuse, New York

  The old industrial city of Syracuse was nestled in the autumn-colored hills of central New York state, a land of rolling farmland, ample rivers, and independent-minded people who enjoyed the great outdoors from the safety of their sprawling lakeside metropolis. Jonathan Smith knew all this because his grandparents had lived here, and he had visited them yearly. A decade ago, they had retired to Florida, where they had fished, surfed, and h
appily gambled until first his grandmother had died of a heart attack, and then within three months his grandfather had followed, too lonely to go on.

  Jon gazed out the window of the rented Oldsmobile that Randi was driving. As they sped along, she shifted lanes, preparing to leave Interstate 81 going south to join Route 5 east toward where they hoped to find Marty. From here he could see familiar landmarks in the central city—the historic brick Armory, the Weighlock Building, and Syracuse University’s recent Carrier Dome. He was glad the old buildings were still standing, an affirmation that there was some sort of continuity in this precarious world.

  He was tired and tense. It had been a long trip from the Iraqi desert to Syracuse, New York. As Gabriel Donoso had promised, a Harrier jet had picked them up and flown them to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. There Randi had finessed a ride on a C-17 cargo jet. Once aloft, she had sweet-talked the copilot out of his notebook computer, and Jon had tapped into the Internet to search OASIS, the Asperger’s syndrome Web site. Finally he had found Marty’s message on the ABCs of Parenting page, part of the Web site’s extended Web ring:

  Coughing Wolf,

  A riddle: Who is attacked, separated, stays home with Hart’s erroneous comedy 5 ways east, is colored lake green or thereabouts, and whose letter is stolen?

  Edgar A.

  “That’s the message?” Randi had read it over his shoulder skeptically. “Your name’s not even on it. And there sure as hell isn’t any ‘Zellerbach’ mentioned.”

  “I’m Coughing,” he explained. “Think: Smith Brothers cough drops. My uncle who treated Marty swore by them. Marty and I joked about it all the time. Horrible-tasting black things. And what does a wolf do?”

  “Howls.” She rolled her eyes. “Howell. Unbelievable. That’s really stretching it.”

  He smiled. “That’s why we agreed to address our messages to each other that way. We figured they’d expect us to use E-mail to communicate, but going through the Asperger’s site gave us a place to hide out, as long as we came up with some kind of personal code. For Marty and me, since we grew up together, it’s no problem. We have a lot of shared history to draw on.”

  “So he fashioned this message from allusions the three of you would understand but with any luck they wouldn’t.” She crouched next to him. “Okay, I’m hooked. Translate it.”

  “The first two things are obvious: Marty and Peter were ‘attacked,’ and had to ‘separate.’ But Marty ‘stayed home.’ That is, he’s in the RV someplace and may still not know where Peter is.”

  “Clear as a bell,” she said with more than a little sarcasm. “So where are Mr. Zellerbach and the RV?”

  “In Syracuse, New York, of course.”

  She frowned. “Enlighten me.”

  “‘Hart’s erroneous comedy.’”

  “That tells you he’s in Syracuse?”

  “Absolutely. Rogers and Hart’s Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse was based on Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. So, Marty’s in the RV somewhere in or near Syracuse.”

  “And ‘five ways east?’”

  “Ah! That was particularly clever of him. I’ll bet we’ll find him on some kind of Highway ‘five’ on the ‘east’ side leading into Syracuse.”

  She was doubtful. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  They had landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and caught a ride over to Dulles, where they had eaten breakfast and bought new clothes—simple dark trousers, turtlenecks, and jackets. They had discarded what they had worn in Baghdad and boarded a commercial flight for Syracuse. They had been watchful the entire morning, their gazes never ceasing to look for anyone too curious. For Jon, the entire trip had been one of fighting off tension between the two of them. He was getting over the shock of looking at Randi and thinking for a moment she was Sophia. But still, the fact was unchangeable: The face, voice, and body were so close that it kept his pain simmering. He was amazed that they worked together as well as they did, and he was grateful for her help in getting him out of Iraq and back into the United States.

  A half-hour ago they had landed at Hancock International Airport northeast of Syracuse, where Randi had rented the Oldsmobile Cutlass. Now they were on Route 5—there was no Interstate 5—watching both sides of the road as they skirted the city.

  “‘Colored lake green,’” he read. “Something on this highway refers to the color green, and it involves a lake. A landmark. Maybe a motel.”

  “If you’ve interpreted the gibberish right,” Randi pointed out, “we could pass something like that a hundred times and not notice.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll know. Marty wouldn’t give us anything that hard to figure out once we’d gotten this far. Keep driving.”

  They cruised through the suburb of Fayetteville, still searching for the final references in the message. They were growing discouraged. They passed country clubs, malls, car dealerships, used-car lots, and all the other satellite businesses of the citified suburb that had once been a country town. Nothing rang a bell.

  Suddenly Jon froze. Then his arm shot out and he pointed. “There!” On their left was a pole sign at the entrance to a large park: GREEN LAKES STATE PARK. “Both ‘lake’ and ‘green.’” His voice was excited. “The message says ‘or thereabouts,’ so he’s got to be holed up somewhere nearby.”

  Randi’s gaze was on the traffic as she expertly moved from lane to lane so they could keep their slower speed without interfering with the flow. “Looks as if you’ve been right so far. Let’s see if I can help. Okay, now it refers to a letter that’s been stolen and the message is signed ‘Edgar A.’” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “What strikes me is Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter.’ Does that help?”

  Jon was staring off into the distance, trying to put himself in Marty’s place. Marty was an electronics wizard, but he also enjoyed arcane information and trivia. “That’s it! So where’s a missing letter best hidden? In a letter rack, of course, with other letters where no one will notice. The best place to hide something is in plain sight.”

  “Then your friend is saying he’s hidden where we can see him. What the hell does that mean?”

  “He’s talking about the RV, not about himself. Turn the car and go back the way we came.”

  Annoyed at his bossiness, Randi pulled off into a side street, U-turned, and spun back onto the road toward Syracuse itself. “Did you see something earlier?”

  Smith’s blue eyes were alight. “Remember those car dealerships lining the road on the other side of Fayetteville? I think one of them was an RV lot.”

  Randi began to laugh. “That’s just dumb enough to be where he is.”

  Watching carefully, they drove through Fayetteville once more. The city seemed longer, more chaotic. Jon was getting impatient.

  Then he saw it. “That’s it. On the right.” His voice was compressed excitement.

  She said, “I see it.”

  Ahead spread a mammoth lot crammed with a variety of recreational vehicles, new and used. Sunlight played across them, and the metallic vehicles glowed. There was no showroom, only a wood-sided sales office where a man wearing sunglasses and a polyester suit sat in a lawn chair in front, reading a newspaper.

  “Doesn’t look busy. That could be a break for us.” Randi drove past, turned the corner, and parked in the shade of a large flaming maple.

  Jon decided, “We’d better scout it on foot to be safe.”

  They walked back, alert for surveillance. Cars and trucks continued along the busy road. No one sat inside parked vehicles. The few pedestrians strode past without paying much attention. No one leaned against the buildings across the street, pretending to be waiting for someone while in reality they were on watch. From where they walked, they could see the man sitting in front of the sales office. About forty feet distant, he turned the page of his paper, engrossed.

  Everything appeared normal.

  Jon and Randi exchanged a look and quietly stepped o
ver a loose chain that fenced the lot. They slipped between two RVs and searched the packed area. They sped past row after row of campers, trailers, and RVs. Smith was beginning to think he had been wrong, that this was not where Marty had gone to ground. Finally they reached the last line of vehicles, which backed up to a stand of sycamores, maples, and oaks. A breeze rustled through the woods, disturbing the mounds of colored leaves that had already fallen.

  “Jesus.” He let out a long, shocked breath. “There it is.” Peter’s RV was at the very back among a long row of dusty used vehicles that appeared to have been for sale a long time. Its metal sides had been ripped up by what had to have been gunfire, and several of its windows were shot out.

  “Wow.” Randi took a deep breath. “What happened to it?”

  Jon shook his head worriedly. “Doesn’t look good.”

  No one was in sight. They split up, and, weapons in hand, reconnoitered. When they saw nothing suspicious even in the woods, they approached the trashed vehicle.

  “I don’t hear anything inside,” Randi whispered.

  “Maybe Mart’s sleeping.”

  He reached to try the door, and it opened in his hand as if it had been closed so hurriedly that the latch had failed to catch.

  They jumped back, their weapons ready. The door swung back and forth in eerie silence. No one appeared. After another minute, Smith climbed up into the living room. Behind him, Randi aimed her mini-Uzi around the interior, her fierce black gaze sweeping it.

  Jon called softly, “Mart? Peter?”

  There was no answer.

  Jon padded forward across the cramped interior. Randi, her back to him, advanced in the other direction toward the driver’s cab. A box of Cheerios, Marty’s favorite dry cereal, stood beside a bowl on the kitchen table. The spoon was still in the bowl, as was a puddle of congealing milk. One bunk had been slept in. It was a jumble of sheets and blankets. The computer was on, but opened only to the desktop, and the bathroom was empty.