Plum Island

by Nelson DeMille

  Mr. Cool replied to his new protégée, “As you probably suspect, Beth, it may not be possible to discover if anything is missing. The problem is, the micro-organisms can be propagated secretly in some part of the Plum Island laboratory or in other places on the island, then taken off the island, and no one would ever know. It’s not like chemical or nuclear agents, where every gram is accounted for. Bacteria and virus like to reproduce.”

  Scary, if you think about it … microbugs are low-tech compared to nuclear fission or manufacturing nerve gas. This is home lab stuff, cheap to produce, and it replicates itself in—what did we use in bio lab? Beef bouillon? No more cheeseburgers for me.

  Ms. Penrose, proud of her last question, asked Mr.-Know-It-All, “Can we assume the organisms studied on Plum Island are particularly deadly? What I mean is, do they genetically engineer these organisms to make them more lethal than they are in their natural state?”

  Mr. Nash did not like that question and replied, “No.” Then added, “Well, the laboratory at Plum Island does have genetic engineering capabilities, but what they do is take viruses and genetically alter them so they can’t cause disease, but can stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies in the event the real virus ever infects the organism. This is sort of a vaccine, made not by weakening the infectious organism and injecting it, which can be dangerous, but by genetically changing the organism. To answer your question in short, any genetic engineering done on Plum Island is to weaken a virus or bacteria, not to increase its power to cause disease.”

  I said, “Of course not. But that’s also possible with genetic engineering.”

  “Possible. But not on Plum Island.”

  It occurred to me that Nash was genetically altering information—taking the germ of the truth, if you will, and weakening it so we got a mild dose of the bad news. Clever fellow.

  I was tired of the scientific crap, and I addressed my next question to Mr. Foster. “Are you people doing anything to keep this bottled? Airports, highways, and all that?”

  Mr. Foster replied, “We’ve got everyone out there looking for … whatever. We have all area airports, seaports, and train stations being watched by our people, local police, and Customs people, and we have the Coast Guard stopping and searching vessels, and we’ve even got the Drug Enforcement Agency using their boats and planes. The problem is, the perpetrators would have had about a three-hour head start because quite frankly we weren’t notified in a timely fashion….” Mr. Foster looked at Chief Maxwell, who had his arms crossed and was making a face.

  A word here on Sylvester Maxwell. He’s an honest cop, not the brightest bulb in the room, but not stupid either. He can be stubborn at times, though that seems to be a North Fork trait and not peculiar to the chief. Being in charge of a small rural police force that has to work with the much larger county police force and on occasion the state police, he’s learned when to protect his turf and when to retreat.

  Another point: the geographical realities of a maritime jurisdiction in the era of drug running have put Max in close proximity to the DEA and the Coast Guard. The DEA always assumes the local gendarmes may be in on the drug trade; the locals, like Max, are positive the DEA is in on it. The Coast Guard and FBI are considered clean, but they suspect the DEA and the local police. The Customs Service is mostly clean, but there have to be some bad guys who take bucks to look the other way. In short, drugs are the worst thing that has happened to American law enforcement since Prohibition.

  And this led me from thinking about Max to thinking about drugs, about the Gordons’ thirty-foot Formula with big, powerful engines. Since the facts didn’t seem to fit the Gordons selling end-of-the-world plague for money, maybe the facts did fit drug running. Maybe I was on to something. Maybe I’d share this with everyone as soon as I worked it out in my mind. Maybe I wouldn’t.

  Mr. Foster threw a few more zingers at Chief Maxwell for his tardiness in contacting the FBI, making sure he was on the record about that. Sort of like, “Oh, Max, if only you’d come to me sooner. Now, all is lost, and it’s your fault.”

  Max pointed out to Foster, “I called county homicide within ten minutes of learning of the murder. It was out of my hands at that point. My ass is covered.”

  Ms. Penrose felt eight eyes on her ass and said, “I had no idea the victims were Plum Island people.”

  Max said, gently but firmly, “I reported that to the guy who answered the phone, Beth. Sergeant … something. Check the tape.”

  “I will,” replied Detective Penrose. She added, “You may be right, Max, but let’s not get into this now.” She said to Foster, “Let’s stick to solving the crime.”

  Mr. Foster replied, “Good advice.” He looked around the room and offered, “Another possibility is that whoever took this stuff is not trying to take it out of the country. They could have a lab set up locally, an inconspicuous kind of operation that wouldn’t attract attention, wouldn’t require unusual materials or chemicals that could be traced. Worst-case scenario is that the organisms, whatever they are, are cultured, then introduced or delivered to the population in various ways. Some of these organisms are easy to deliver in the water supply, some can be airborne, some can be spread by people and animals. I’m no expert, but I phoned some people in Washington earlier, and I understand that the potential for infection and contagion is very high.” He added, “A TV documentary once suggested that a coffee can full of anthrax, vaporized into the air by a single terrorist riding around Manhattan in a boat, would kill a minimum of two hundred thousand people.”

  The room got silent again.

  Mr. Foster, enjoying the attention it seemed, continued, “It could be worse. It’s hard to gauge. Anthrax is bacterial. Viruses could be worse.”

  I asked, “Do I understand that we’re not talking about the possible theft of a single type of virus or bacteria?”

  George Foster replied, “If you’re going to steal anthrax, you might as well steal Ebola, too, and anything else you can get. This would pose a multifaceted threat, the type of threat that would never be found in nature, and would be impossible to contain or control.”

  The mantel clock in the living room struck twelve chimes, and Mr. Ted Nash, with a sense for the dramatic and wanting to impress us with his education, undoubtedly Ivy League, quoted the Bard, thus: “ ’Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.”

  On that cheery note, I said, “I’m going out for some air.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I didn’t go directly outside for air, but detoured to the west wing of the house where Tom and Judy had set up their office in what used to be a bedroom.

  A compu-nerd sat at the PC where I had intended to sit. I introduced myself to the gent, who identified himself as Detective Mike Resnick, computer crime specialist with the county police department.

  The printer was humming away and stacks of paper lay all over the desktop.

  I asked Mike, “Did you find the killer yet?”

  “Yeah, now I’m playing Jeopardy.”

  Mike was a real card. I asked him, “What do we have so far?”

  “Oh … mostly … hold on, what’s this? Nothing there … what do we … what … ?”

  “Have so far.” I just love talking to butt holes at the computer. “Have so far.”

  “Oh … mostly letters … personal letters to friends and relatives, some business letters … some … what’s this? Nothing….”

  “Anything mentioning Plum Island?”

  “No.”

  “Anything that looks interesting or suspicious?”

  “No.”

  “Scientific papers—”

  “No. I’ll stop what I’m doing and let homicide know the minute I think I have something.”

  Mike sounded a little testy, like he’d been at this a few hours and it was past his bedtime. I asked him, “How about financial stuff? Investments, checkbook, household budget—?”

&nb
sp; He glanced up from the monitor. “Yeah. That’s the first thing I downloaded. They wrote their checks on the computer. There’s the printout of all their checkbook activity for the past twenty-five months—since they opened the account.” He pointed to a stack of paper near the printer.

  I took the stack and said, “Do you mind if I look through this?”

  “No, but don’t go far with it. I have to attach all that to my report.”

  “I’ll just take it into the living room where the light is better.”

  “Yeah …” He was playing with the computer again, which he found more interesting than me. I left.

  Out in the living room, the latent fingerprint lady was still dusting and lifting prints. She glanced at me and asked, “Did you touch anything?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  I walked over to the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. To the left was fiction, mostly paperbacks, a nice mixture of trash and treasures. To the right was nonfiction, and I studied the titles, which ranged from technical biology stuff to standard health and fitness crap. There was also a whole shelf of locally published books about Long Island, flora, fauna, history, and so forth.

  On the bottom shelf was a row of sailing books, navigational charts, and such. As I said, for land-locked Midwesterners, the Gordons had really gotten into boating. On the other hand, I’d been out with them a few times, and even I could tell they weren’t great sailors. Also, they didn’t fish, clam, crab, or even swim. They just liked to open up the throttles now and then. Which brought me back to the thought that this was a drug thing.

  With that thought in mind, I put the computer printouts down and using my handkerchief took an oversized book of navigational charts from the shelf and propped it up on the mantelpiece. I flipped through the pages, my finger wrapped in the handkerchief. I was looking for radio frequencies, cellular phone numbers, or whatever else a drug runner might mark in his chart book.

  Each page of the navigational charts showed an area of about four miles by four miles. The land that appeared on the charts was basically featureless except for landmarks that could be seen from the water. The seas, however, were marked with reefs, rocks, depths, lighthouses, sunken wrecks, buoys, and all sorts of aids and hazards to navigation.

  I scanned page after page looking for “X’s,” I guess, rendezvous points, or grid coordinates, or names like Juan and Pedro or whatever, but the charts seemed clean except for a yellow highlighter line that connected the Gordons’ dock with the Plum Island dock. This was the route they took to work, passing between the southern shore of the North Fork and Shelter Island, keeping to the deep and safe part of the channel. That wasn’t much of a clue to anything.

  I noticed that on Plum Island, printed in red, were the words, “Restricted Access—U.S. Government Property— Closed to the Public.”

  I was about to shut the large book when I saw something nearly hidden by my handkerchief—toward the bottom of the page, in the water south of Plum Island, was written in pencil, “44106818.” Following this was a question mark, similar to the one that just popped out of my head like a little cartoon balloon—44106818? Make that two question marks and an exclamation point.

  So, was this a standard eight-digit grid coordinate? A radio frequency? A disguised Dial-A-Joke? Drugs? Bugs? What?

  There is a point in homicide investigations when you start to assemble more clues than you know what to do with. Clues are like ingredients in a recipe with no instructions—if you put them together in the right way, you have dinner. If you don’t know what to do with them, you’ll be in the kitchen a long time, confused and hungry.

  Anyway, I held the chart book with my handkerchief and took it to the latent fingerprint lady. I asked her, “Could you do a real thorough job on this book for me?” I smiled nicely.

  She gave me a tough look, then took the book in her latex-gloved hand and examined it. “This map paper’s hard to do … but the cover is good glossy stock…. I’ll do what I can.” She added, “Silver nitrate or ninhydrin. It’s got to be done in the lab.”

  “Thank you, professionally competent woman.”

  She cracked a smile and asked, “Who has the most fingerprints? FBI, CIA, or EPA?”

  “What’s EPA? You mean Environmental Protection Agency?”

  “No. Elizabeth Penrose’s ass.” She laughed. “That’s going around headquarters. You haven’t heard that one?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  She put out her hand. “I’m Sally Hines.”

  “I’m John Corey.” I shook her gloved hand and remarked, “I love the feel of latex against my bare skin. How about you?”

  “No comment.” She paused, then asked, “Are you the NYPD guy working with county homicide on this thing?”

  “Right.”

  “Forget that crack about Penrose.”

  “Sure will.” I asked her, “What are we seeing here, Sally?”

  “Well, the house was cleaned recently so we have nice fresh surfaces. I’m not studying the prints closely, but I’m seeing mostly the same two sets, probably the Mr. and Mrs. Only a few other sets now and then, and if you want my opinion, Detective, the killer was wearing gloves. This was no druggie leaving perfect fives on the liquor cabinet.”

  I nodded, then said, “Do the best job you can with that book.”

  “I only do perfect work. How about you?” She found a plastic bag in her kit and slipped the chart book inside. She said, “I need a set of elimination prints from you.”

  “Try Elizabeth Penrose’s ass later.”

  She laughed and said, “Just put your hands on this glass coffee table for me.”

  I did as she asked, and inquired, “Did you take prints from the two guys with Chief Maxwell?”

  “I was told that would be taken care of later.”

  “Yeah. Look, Sally, a lot of people, like the guys in the kitchen, are going to flash a lot of big-time ID at you. You report only to county homicide, preferably only to Penrose.”

  “I hear you.” She looked around, then asked me, “Hey, what’s with the germs?”

  “This has nothing to do with germs. The victims happened to work on Plum Island, but that’s only a coincidence.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I retrieved the stack of computer printouts and walked toward the sliding glass door.

  Sally called out, “I don’t like how this crime scene is being handled.”

  I didn’t reply.

  I walked down to the bay where a nice bench faced the water. I threw the purloined papers on the bench and stared out at the bay.

  It was breezy enough to keep the gnats and mosquitoes busy treading air and away from me. Little ripples rode the bay and rocked the Gordons’ boat down at the dock. White clouds sailed past the big, bright moon, and the air smelled more of the land than the sea as the light wind shifted around and blew from the north.

  Somewhere, somehow, through osmosis, I guess, I’d begun to understand the elemental forces of land and sea around me. I suppose if you add up all the two-week summer vacations out here when I was a kid and the autumn weekends, it’s not too surprising that something seeped into my urban brain.

  There are times I want to get out of the city, and I think about some place like this. I guess I should come out here in the winter and spend a few months in Uncle Harry’s big drafty house and see if I become an alcoholic or a hermit. Hell, if people keep getting bumped off around here, the Southold Town Board will make me a full-time homicide consultant at a hundred bucks a day and all the clams I can eat.

  I was uncharacteristically ambivalent about returning to duty. I was ready to try something else, but I wanted it to be my own decision, not the decision of the docs; also, if the quackers said I was through, I couldn’t find the two hombres who plugged me. That was serious unfinished business. I have no Italian blood, but my partner, Dominic Fanelli, is a Sicilian, and he taught me the entire history and protocol of revenge. He made me see The Godfather three times.
I think I get it. The two Hispanic gents had to stop living. Dominic was working on finding them. I was waiting for him to call one day when he did.

  On the subject of my mortality, I was getting a little fatigued, and I sat on the bench. I wasn’t quite the superman I used to be before the shooting.

  I leaned back and regarded the night awhile. On a small patch of lawn to the left of the Gordons’ dock was a tall, white flagpole with a crossbar, called a yardarm, from which ran two ropes or lines called halyards. Note how I have picked up some of the nautical lingo. Anyway, the Gordons had found a whole collection of flags and pennants in a locker in the garage, and they’d sometimes hang signal pennants from the halyards for fun—such as the pennant for “Prepare to be boarded” or “The captain is ashore.”

  I had noticed earlier that at the top of the mast, the Gordons had run up the Jolly Roger, and I thought it ironic that the last flag they had flown was the skull and crossbones.

  I noticed, too, that on each halyard was a signal pennant. I could barely make them out in the dark, but it didn’t matter because I was clueless about nautical signals.

  Beth Penrose sat down on the left end of the bench. She was wearing her jacket again, which was a disappointment, and her arms were crossed around her as if she were cold. Women are always cold. She didn’t say anything, but kicked off her shoes, rubbed her feet in the grass, and wiggled her toes. They also wear uncomfortable shoes.

  After a few minutes of companionable silence—or maybe frosty stillness—I chipped at the ice and said, “Maybe you’re right. It could have been a boat.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I’m going to blow your f-ing brains out.”

  “Now, Beth—”

  “Detective Penrose to you, buster.”

  “Lighten up.”

  “Why were you so nasty to Ted Nash?”

  “Which one is that?”

  “You know f-ing well which one is that. What is your problem?”