by Greg Bear
The vehicle had a Combat Guidance unit—it could drive itself to a rendezvous if its drive train and wheels were intact but humans inside were incapacitated. Fouad could not help but believe that it had eyes and ears and a will of its own. Machines had evolved faster than men in the fog of war.
The large white house on the outskirts of Kifri might once have been comfortable: a cement-walled single-story square surrounded a courtyard, the square itself fenced in by battered black iron and what might have once been a cactus garden. For blocks around, all the other houses were rubble.
The Humvee rumbled over a toppled gate and stopped. An older man in a worn dirty business suit with a white kerchief wrapped round his head stood up from the porch and lifted his arm. Fergus stepped out first. Master Sergeant was more cautious. He moved slowly, surveying everything with critical eyes.
‘Superhawk is parking, gents,’ he announced, tapping his headphones. ‘We have forty-five minutes and you know I will pull y’all out before that.’
Harris opened his door last, throat bobbing.
Fouad followed Fergus and they stood by the Humvee.
The older man in the white kerchief approached Fouad with a suspicious glance at the others and cautiously extended his right hand. ‘As-salaamu aleikum,’ he greeted. Then he hugged Fouad and sniffed his cheeks. ‘I am glad you are here. It is not proper, what happened. We must be careful. This still is a house of death.’
All heads turned. An engine roared far off down a deserted street. A small rust-pocked Subaru Forester drove up to the gate in a cloud of dust. A tanned hairy arm stuck out and waved. Master Sergeant tapped his headphones as if to knock out what he was hearing. His lip curled.
‘Gents, home office says we have a mandatory guest.’
‘Hell, Kifri is the last place I’d expect to find Saddam’s hidden stockpiles,’ the large, barrel-chested man said as he approached the group through the gate. ‘My name is Edmond Beatty. Friends call me Beatty. To whom am I addressing my concerns?’ He held out his hand and raised a bushy eyebrow.
Master Sergeant introduced the group but the older Iraqi held back in the shadows, glaring resentfully.
Harris said, ‘Beatty and I know each other already.’
‘Pleasure’s mutual,’ Beatty said.
Fouad shook hands but felt he was missing something crucial—history. ‘And why are you here, Mr. Beatty?’ he asked. Boldness seemed called for—Harris did not like the man and neither did Fergus. Master Sergeant seemed irritated but also amused.
‘I’m a retired colonel,’ Beatty said. ‘I served in Iraq in GW 2. Don’t ever call it the Coalition War to my face. Right, friends?’
‘Colonel Beatty is something more than local color,’ Fergus said. ‘He was given a State Department assignment, at the behest of six senators, to continue the search for Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons. That assignment has not been revoked, unfortunately.’
‘I heard about your plague house on the weed vine,’ Beatty said. ‘I wish you gentleman had called me. I could have scurried up here and gotten the facts and that would have saved the U.S. taxpayers some real money. Superhawks are expensive pieces of machinery. Bright and shiny. I am well acquainted with Dr. Mirza Al-Tabrizi. He represents the Shiites in Kifri, kind of a pooh-bah for the oppressed majority. The Kurds seem to like him, too. That does not make him an objective source, in my book.’
Al-Tabrizi folded his arms and leaned against the closed door.
‘We’d appreciate your standing second fiddle on this one, sir,’ Master Sergeant advised in a low tone.
‘That’s play second fiddle, not stand. I’ve been here, continuously, longer than any other American soldier,’ Beatty said. ‘A true gentleman never gives up on a good cause.’ He turned to Fouad. ‘Sir, like Fergus, you are Special Agent, FBI, am I correct? And connected somehow with this Bureau of Ultimate Darkness, or whatever the hell it’s called now?’
Fouad was about to speak when Beatty moved in, towering over him. ‘They drag you in here to interpret?’
‘His identity is not important to you, Beatty,’ Harris growled. ‘Bad enough you know who we are.’
Beatty swung around and looked them all in the face in sequence. ‘I speak Kurdish, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic,’ he said. ‘Six or seven dialects.’
‘All with a Tennessee accent,’ Harris added.
‘True, but I am understood wherever I go in this country. And who are we interviewing? Any live people, this time?’
‘Sir,’ Master Sergeant said, more forcefully. ‘You are subordinate to our mission. Whatever help you can render will be appreciated but you are not in charge here.’
‘Well, who in hell is in charge? On the ground, I mean.’
‘That would be me,’ said Harris.
‘Lead on,’ Beatty exclaimed with a broad smile. He clapped Harris on the back. ‘I will call you sir, and mean it. Just explain to me what in hell anthrax is doing this far north.’
Inside the house the stench of death was strong, but carried on wafts of cool moist air, the smell seemed somehow unnatural and frustrated. Fouad watched the men move through the empty trash-filled rooms with detachment. He did not like this strange sense of calm. There was a perversity in him that his mother would not have appreciated but that his father might have understood too well, and it had been exaggerated by his training at Quantico. To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot.
That is why young men go off to war.
The house had looked better from the outside. Most of the rooms were open to the air, with gaping shell holes in the roof. The courtyard was filled with broken and burned sticks of furniture. Someone had tried to stay warm in the winter.
Al-Tabrizi took Fouad by the shoulder. ‘Be at ease with me,’ he said in Arabic. ‘I take solace that Muslims at least sometimes speak with these men and temper them. The bull, Beatty, is not respected around here. He has made too many deals, spoken from both sides of his mouth to gain information.’
‘I heard that, you old bastard,’ Beatty called out.
Al-Tabrizi ignored him.
‘Then tell me, what brings you here?’ Fouad asked the old man.
‘A pious man spoke out of turn for the sake of his closeness to God. Some of my people went at his behest to this house and found the Kurds, these Jews, dead. Ice was brought by police. Had they been Muslims we would have buried them…’ He shrugged. ‘It is possible the Sunnis have been doing experiments with our poor Jews. I do not know. They have no respect for life.’
‘Amen,’ Beatty said.
Walking around the courtyard, they approached the back of the house—the kitchen. A pump handle stood in one corner before a small stone and mortar cistern.
Fergus slipped on rubber gloves. He removed from his rucksack more gloves and fine-filter masks with little rubber bellows and a jar of nose cream and handed them around. ‘Slip these on and fasten them tight.’
‘Nobody else has fallen ill,’ Al-Tabrizi said, this time in English.
Past the kitchen, stepping over broken glass and empty cans, they came to what might have once been a workshop or a storage room. In the center of the room, blocks of ice had been arranged in a flat igloo and shaved ice had been sprinkled over a tarp that partially covered the blocks. Naked feet stuck out from under the tarp, heels soaking in puddles of filthy water.
Master Sergeant put his gloved hand over his mask. Harris stood with hands on his hips staring critically at the wrinkled and discolored feet.
Al-Tabrizi handed Fouad an old and battered compact flash memory card. ‘We took many pictures before the ice arrived, donated by a hotel and a hospital. The people who did this left Kifri two days ago in a truck. We have pictures of them as well. If we have disturbed the truth of what is here, I apologize, but you understand…There was urgency.’
‘All right,’ Fergus said. ‘Gentlemen, lend a hand. Let�
�s pull one of them out.’
‘Then they haven’t been here more than a few days,’ Beatty said. His voice had dropped by half in the smelly chill of the back workshop.
Fouad moved to help Harris and Fergus tug a corpse from beneath the nearest igloo of ice. It was an older woman, naked but for a single undergarment. Her face was a mask. Her mouth fell open in a dead scream. Her tongue was swollen and black.
‘They are not from Kifri,’ Al-Tabrizi said. ‘They were brought here from farther north by men in trucks. Workers who were paid to clean this room and prepare have told me the men who delivered these poor souls were bragging they had something that would kill only Jews, and that the planet would soon be cleansed.’
‘Jesus,’ Beatty said.
Fergus checked the woman’s skin. Her legs, torso, and one arm were covered with wide black scabs. He removed a microlume, a small plastic plate, from his belt pack, pulled out a red tab, turned her head, and rubbed the tip over her tongue, then examined the read-out. He did the same on an eschar—one of the flaking black lesions on her chest.
‘It’s anthrax, both pulmonary and cutaneous,’ he said. He pointed to black marks and splotches on her stomach and around her ribs. ‘GI as well. They must have made her eat some of it.’ He examined the card’s display from a few inches, scowling. ‘I see protective antigen, edema factor, and lethal factor—PA, EF, LF—but I’m also getting something unfamiliar. Could be a new plasmid.’ He looked up at Al-Tabrizi. ‘I have to take internal samples. It would be better if you left the room. I will do my best to be respectful.’
‘I will stay,’ Al-Tabrizi said. ‘It is my duty, and the necessity is clear.’
‘Sir, we’re talking about the likely release of bacilli made even more virulent by vegetative mutation inside a victim,’ Fergus said. ‘Please leave.’
Al-Tabrizi glanced at Fouad. ‘He is a good doctor,’ Fouad told the Shiite.
They stood outside and made sure their masks were tight.
‘Is that even possible?’ Beatty asked. ‘Can they target something like this to Jews? And how in hell would Saddam hide something this big for so long?’
‘We’re pretty sure it wasn’t Saddam,’ Harris said.
‘He made tons and tons of the shit. If not him, who the hell is it? Goddammit, boys, this could be what we’ve all been looking for. My senators—’
‘Sir, you are not to speak of this to anybody,’ Master Sergeant cautioned. ‘Not even your senators.’
‘Well, how in hell—I’m not in your line of command, son.’
Master Sergeant lifted his H&K. ‘Sir, I have been instructed to tolerate your presence, so as to access whatever information you may provide, and so as not to create another partisan mess in Washington. But I am authorized by the Commander in Chief to prevent this information from being leaked by anyone, including you. Do I have your word as a patriot and a military officer that you will keep absolutely silent about everything you see and hear today?’
Beatty’s face stiffened. He raised his gloved hand, keeping it well away from his face and body. ‘When you put it that way,’ he said, ‘on my mother’s grave, I so swear.’
Al-Tabrizi stood in an outer doorway, gasping and trying not to be sick. As Fergus came out of the death room, Fouad approached him and quietly asked, ‘Can these people now be properly buried?’
‘They should be burned,’ Fergus said.
‘That is not the custom,’ Al-Tabrizi protested.
‘If dogs get ’em it could spread all over town.’
Master Sergeant intervened. ‘Sir, we won’t be able to return for the next day or so and we certainly can’t take them with us. We do not want to violate local customs. That might attract even more attention.’
Harris nodded to Al-Tabrizi. ‘Tell the burial detail to wear masks and hospital gloves and to bury them deep, where no dogs will find them,’ he suggested. He removed a glove, reached into his jacket, took out a thousand-dollar bill, and gave it to Al-Tabrizi. ‘For expenses, headstones, whatever.’
Al-Tabrizi took the money but refused to look at anybody now. He had tears on his cheeks, tears of anger and shame.
Beatty returned to his vehicle, walking beside Fouad, Harris, and Fergus for a few yards. ‘Doesn’t matter what we do now, what we give or what we try,’ Beatty said. ‘They needed twenty years to learn democracy. We gave them five. When the Baathists rose up again and the Shiites allied with Iran, we supported the Sunnis with money and weapons, bless our pointy little heads. That cranked up the old death machine all over again. When we pulled out, we left the whole country twisting on a short rope. God have mercy on us all.’
Master Sergeant followed them, walking backward, face to the battered white house. Beatty gave them a brief wave, climbed into his Subaru, and put it in gear, spinning up a rooster tail of dirt.
The Superhawk roared overhead and made its dusty landing.
‘I hate dust,’ Fergus said. ‘Could be spores everywhere.’ He pulled a canvas-wrapped plastic box from the wall of the helicopter and showed them syringes pre-loaded with Gamma Lysin. ‘We’ll all carry these, just in case.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Seattle, Harborview Medical Center
SAC John Keller joined William in Griff’s hospital room late in the evening. Keller turned a metal hospital chair around and sat on it with his long legs jutting out like a crane fly’s. In his late fifties, thin, with sculpted Appalachian features and large gray eyes, he looked like a particularly conservative accountant or an undertaker and more likely to be William Griffin’s father than the man in the hospital bed, behind the plastic curtains, even in his better days.
They said very little for the first few minutes of Keller’s visit. Griff hadn’t moved except for the rise and jerky fall of his chest. ‘They’re going to transfer him to Swedish in a week, I hear,’ Keller said.
‘That’s what they tell me, sir.’
‘He’s going to make it. He’s tough. I’ve worked with a lot of fine agents and I have never known anyone tougher. We cannot afford to lose agents like Erwin Griffin.’
Keller was thinking out loud. Agents had come in and out, observing Griff in his bed and all of them without exception had begun to think out loud as if at confession.
Keller glanced over his shoulder at William. ‘I hear you spend an hour here each day.’
‘I’m waiting for OPR to return me to duty,’ William said.
‘Right.’ Keller smiled. ‘Rose gave you one hell of a spirited defense. Told me she’d be dead if you hadn’t turned arsonist.’
‘I’m not allowed to speak about the matter, sir.’
‘It was certainly unorthodox.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Keller pushed to his feet and brushed off his midnightblue pants. William stepped aside in the small space as Keller strode for the door. Keller paused, turned, and held out his hand. ‘Thanks.’
‘Sir?’ William shook with him.
‘We need fine agents. Hate to lose any.’ Reaching into his jacket, smiling like a bandit, Keller pulled out a length of white toilet paper, about a yard’s worth, hung it around William’s neck, and made a quick sign of the cross. ‘May this wipe away your sins.’
Pleased with himself, Keller closed the door behind him.
William sat in the metal hospital chair the same way Keller had and leaned his chin on the back like a puppy.
Griff’s face, in the shadow of a steel cage studded with screws, was a map of sutures held together by shining glue and plastic strips. His nose and cheek bones had been pulled back into place from where the bomb suit’s face-plate had squashed them. Shims of sterile cartilage interlaced with stem cells from his own marrow had been inserted between the bones. They made little bumps under the sutures. Nose cartilage had been removed so Griff’s face was still flat, and he would need more reconstructive surgery later. His mouth was full of so much plastic tubing that he couldn’t speak even had he been conscious.
‘Come on
, Griff,’ William said. ‘I need some advice right about now.’
Griff opened his eyes. The eyes surveyed the ceiling, but did not turn either left or right. They closed.
Still no Griff. Just the body fighting along as best it could, waiting for its owner to return. Waiting for the commanding presence it had been used to for so many years.
Like William himself.
An hour later Rebecca arrived with two coffees in a cardboard carry box. William jerked out of a stiff slumber on the metal chair.
‘It’s four a.m.,’ she said, staring through the plastic at Griff. Her eyes glinted like onyx in the penumbra of the room’s small night light. ‘They’re holding the wife and son at Seatac. Since we bagged them, News has arranged for us to interrogate them before anyone else. But we have to get in and out before eight. Drink this, then come with me,’ she said.
‘I’m on probation,’ William said.
‘Did Keller avoid you like a pile of dogshit?’ Rebecca asked.
‘No.’ William pulled the toilet paper from his pocket and let it unfold. ‘He put this around my neck.’
Rebecca’s smile transformed her. Again those dimples that could only be improved with cat’s whiskers. She pressed the quilted paper between her fingers, lifted it for a sniff, and stroked it as if it were velvet. ‘Order of the lilac garter. Welcome back to duty.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Middle America
The only place Sam could now be at shallow peace with himself, with his plans, was the open road—driving the old Dodge, dragging the horse trailer over long, flat miles between scattered rocky plateaus, past odd grassy humps rising from gravel-bedded alkali flats, desert towns whose gutters flowed with olive-colored water after a heavy rain—all of them cut through by endless ribbons of cracked and eroding asphalt—and at the end of each day, each great segment stricken from his map, spartan rooms with worn carpets in little strip motels.
He tried not to think about the past—everything his father and grandfather had worked to build being squandered, a country turning inward, distracted by fear and greed. He could not help but see these rough untended roads as the truest, deepest sign of an America once too fat and happy to stand up to the plate and bat a really smart game, and then, after 9-11, too lost in its own paranoia and bitterness to realize that it was being taken for a nasty ride.
