The Escape

by David Baldacci

  “He was that specific? And I thought I had been totally exonerated.”

  “That’s highly doubtful, since I believe that you had him killed.”

  She waggled a finger and gave him a sly look. “And yet you had dinner with me on the very night he died. Have you no heart, Mal?”

  “I didn’t want to believe it of you, of course. You have a first-rate intellect.” His gaze wandered over her body. “Along with other attributes.”

  “I seemed to have dressed up for no good reason tonight.” She smiled warmly, her eyes crinkling. “Yet I did get your mind to wander, it seems. You have no idea what you’re missing out on tonight, Mal. Your timing is absolutely horrendous.”

  “Stop treating this like a game, Susan! Do you really deny any of what I’ve said?”

  She shrugged. “I can tell you’ve made up your mind. And I’ve never been one to waste time, Mal. And I’m sorry. I liked you. I really did.”

  “You used me to get what you wanted.”

  “I did. But you see, I only use the ones I really like. And just to clarify, the Russians did manage to aerosolize it. A number of years ago. Then the bastards somehow managed to lose it in Africa. Those were the canisters you retrieved. And I thank you very much for your hard work in doing so. It would have been beyond my capabilities, which was why I called on my good friend and fellow START verifier to do it for me.”

  Aust said forcefully, “Where are the canisters, Susan? You know as well as anyone what damage they can cause. You will tell me right now, or I swear to God–”

  She rose. “I need a drink stronger than wine. Is the scotch in the same place?” She didn’t wait for an answer but walked over to the cabinet set against one wall, opened the door, and pulled out a bottle.

  Watching her closely, Aust kept his gun trained on her. “I want an answer, Susan. If you work with me, we might be able to undo the damage you’ve done. That will help your cause later on.”

  She took down a tumbler from a shelf and unscrewed the top of the scotch. “I appreciate the professional courtesy, Mal, I really do. It’s rather gallant of you. But I don’t need your consideration. I’m sticking with the ones who brought me to the party.” She poured out a portion of the scotch into a tumbler and swirled it around.

  “So you would betray your own country?”

  “Well, I don’t see it that way.”

  “You’re an American!”

  She turned back to face him. “I don’t go by those types of old-fashioned allegiances anymore. They just don’t work for me.”

  He tightened his grip on the pistol. “Listen to yourself. Are you insane?”

  “Well, you need to get out more. Because these days everybody’s a little crazy.”

  She raised her glass as though in salute to him.

  A moment later a bullet broke through the window behind Aust and slammed into the back of his head. Aust fell sideways off his chair and thudded to the floor.

  Reynolds took a sip of scotch and then put down the glass. She didn’t look at Aust as she stepped over his body and walked out of the house.

  CHAPTER

  66

  THEY HAD OBVIOUSLY left Robert behind when they went to DTRA. Their badges got them into the building and security escorted them to Reynolds’s office.

  As the guard unlocked her door using his master key he said, “She won’t be in until tomorrow morning.”

  Puller said, “I doubt very much she’s going to be in ever again.”

  He switched on the lights and strode across the room to stand behind her desk. “You remember I said something was off when we left Reynolds’s office last time?” She nodded. He picked up the photo he had seen previously when they visited Reynolds here. “Well, this was off.”

  Knox said, “How so?”

  He pointed to a younger Reynolds standing in a row of men. “There she is.”

  “Okay, so what?”

  He pointed at some writing at the bottom of the photo. “The caption says this was the START verification team.”

  “Again, so what?”

  He ran his finger down the line of men. “Recognize anyone?”

  She eyed one of the men. “That’s Malcolm Aust. But we knew he was on the verification team. So you’re still suspecting him of partnering with Reynolds?”

  Puller ignored this question and said, “Recognize anyone else in the line?”

  Knox took the photo from him and went one by one. When she got to the end she started from the beginning and worked her way down it. She paused at one man standing to the left of Reynolds. He was tall, well built, his features sharp and angular, truly a memorable countenance.

  “This guy looks familiar for some reason.”

  Puller had taken out his phone and brought up an image on it. “I snapped this shot off the computer screen at Fort Leavenworth.”

  When Knox looked at the picture on the screen and then the photo, she gasped. “Omigod, it’s him!”

  “Ivo Mesic. The ‘Croatian’ who brought my brother’s would-be killer into DB in the trunk of his car.”

  “So you believe he’s partnered with Reynolds? But why?”

  “She’s at the WMD Center. They were both START verifiers, which has to do with nukes. She was sucking up to Aust, who hunts WMDs for a living.”

  “So they’re planning something. With a nuke?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like folks leave nukes lying around.”

  As they left the building and got back into the car, Knox’s phone buzzed. She answered it, listened, and then said, “Okay, thanks for the heads-up.” She put the phone away, looking pale and shocked.

  “What is it?” asked Puller.

  “Malcolm Aust is dead.”

  “What?” exclaimed Puller. “How?”

  “He was supposed to phone in on a late conference call this evening that originated in L.A. He never did. They sent someone out to his house to check on him when he didn’t answer his phone or email. They found him dead. Shot through the head.”

  Puller said, “That means the plan must be coming to fruition. They’re tying up all loose ends.”

  Knox snapped, “But what is the plan, Puller? We don’t have a clue. And that means we can’t stop it.”

  “We do have clues. We just have to piece them together. And we’ve got one of the biggest brains in the world to help us.”

  He jammed down the gas and pointed the car back to where they had come from. Back to Robert Puller.

  They sat around the motel room looking at each other. Puller and Knox had filled in Robert on what they had discovered at Reynolds’s office. And also about Malcolm Aust’s murder.

  “What had he been working on?” Robert asked. “We need to know that, John. That will narrow things down considerably.”

  Puller took out his phone and called General Aaron Rinehart. The general was in a late meeting, but he called Puller back a few minutes later. Puller gave him a quick sketch of what they had learned and what they suspected.

  Rinehart said, “I’ll find out, Puller. In the meantime, I’ll make sure everyone goes on high alert. And I’ll put all our resources out to find Reynolds and this Ivo Mesic.”

  While Puller was on the phone Robert was typing away on his laptop. After Puller ended the call his brother said, “His real name is Anton Bok.” He spun the laptop around so they could see a page of both pictures and text.

  “The START Verification Team from the 1990s. A full accounting with names, backgrounds and photos.” He pointed to one picture. “Bok is the third from the left. Right next to Reynolds.”

  “What’s his background?” asked Knox.

  “Former military. Former KGB. With the equivalent of a master’s degree in biochemistry and a PhD in molecular biology.”

  “Chemistry and biology,” said Puller.

  “Molecular biology,” amended Robert.

  “But he also had experience in nukes, otherwise he wouldn’t have been on the verification team,” pointed o
ut Knox.

  “He was probably there more to gather intelligence for Russia than count warheads,” said Robert. “And to recruit Susan Reynolds to his side.”

  “So biology and chemistry are his specialties,” said Puller. “What can we learn from that?”

  Robert said, “Not all WMDs are nukes. Nukes are tough to get and impossible to make unless you have a large infrastructure and billions of dollars and years to work with. But you have plenty of far cheaper and easier-to-manufacture bioterrorism possibilities. Contaminating the air, water, and food chains. That would also be more in line with Bok’s background.”

  Knox said, “I’m surprised she left that photo out in her office.”

  Puller said, “She never knew we had latched on to Ivo Mesic at Fort Leavenworth. So she wasn’t worried about our making the connection. And remember what her son Dan said about his father? He would kill the guy if he got the chance? I think Susan Reynolds and Anton Bok are a lot more than business partners. She probably got a kick out of seeing his face every day. And who would get suspicious? She has a photo in her office of her days as a START verifier? Perfectly normal.”

  “You’re probably right, Junior,” said Robert.

  A few hours later Puller’s phone buzzed. It was Aaron Rinehart. Puller listened and nodded. He stood. “Rinehart has someone we need to talk to.”

  “Who?” asked Knox.

  “Donovan Carter’s second in command.”

  “What can he tell us?”

  “He apparently can tell us what Malcolm Aust was working on.”

  CHAPTER

  67

  THEY DIDN’T GO back to DTRA as dawn broke. Warren Johnson, the interim director of DTRA, was at a facility in D.C.

  Puller drove fast and they pulled into the underground garage in record time. He and Knox were cleared through security and rode the elevator up to the office.

  Johnson met them in the lobby. He was a short man, balding, with a thickened nose and eyes partially hidden behind spectacles. He escorted them back to an office, where they sat around a small table. Johnson came quickly to the point.

  “General Rinehart was clear that I was to be frank and speak freely with you about all this.”

  “That would be helpful,” said Puller. “I have a feeling that we might be running out of time.”

  “He’s told me of your suspicions about Susan Reynolds. I won’t add my opinion to the mix right now. But with Donovan and now Malcolm Aust murdered, it doesn’t really matter what I think.” He leaned forward. “The fact is, Susan Reynolds was the point of contact for Malcolm for a mission he was performing in partnership with the WMD Center.”

  “And what was the mission?” asked Puller. “Something to do with chemical weapons in Syria, maybe?”

  “No. We were provided intel about a cache of weaponized Ebola-Zaire in Africa.”

  “Ebola-Zaire?” said Knox.

  Johnson nodded. “There are four types of Ebola virus. Ebola-Reston is one. There was a lot of hoopla about that because it involved monkeys and was in a heavily populated area, Reston, Virginia, hence the name. But Ebola-Reston is nonpathogenic to humans. Ebola-Zaire, on the other hand, is deadly to human beings.”

  “You said weaponized,” pointed out Puller.

  “We believe it’s been aerosolized. Meaning it can be distributed through the air. Up to this point we always believed that all strains of Ebola required hands-on exposure, exchange of fluids, that sort of thing. That made the virus, while still extremely dangerous, manageable under most circumstances. It was rumored that the Russians had aerosolized Ebola-Zaire some years ago, but the trail on that petered out. We thought it a rumor. Until we received this latest piece of intelligence.”

  “And Reynolds was running your end of the mission? Was she also the source of the intel?”

  “That is not clear,” said Johnson, with a very troubled look. “But she may well have been. She and Aust went way back. It was her idea to call on him to track this cache down. He was successful.” He paused. “With a disclaimer attached to that.”

  “I thought there might be,” said Puller. “What disclaimer?”

  “He didn’t believe he got it all. At least that’s what he confided to Donovan and Donovan in turn told me.”

  “Why didn’t he get all of it?” asked Knox.

  “Because he believed that someone had been there ahead of him and taken a portion of the supply.”

  Knox and Puller exchanged glances. She said, “So Reynolds piggybacked on Aust to get what she needed? He was probably feeding her daily reports. He gets the location of the stuff nailed down and tells her. And she has her team show up first to take some of it”

  Johnson held up a hand. “I’m not speculating on that point. But we don’t have time to worry about that. We have a major problem if that cache is going to be used.”

  “I have no doubt it’s going to be used,” said Puller. “And I would be seriously surprised if it weren’t going to be used against us.”

  “Us?” said Johnson. “You mean in this country?”

  “I mean in this area.”

  “What do you base that on?” Johnson demanded.

  “On the fact that Susan Reynolds is here.”

  Knox said, “Aerosolized Ebola-Zaire. What sort of casualties are we looking at with the amount of virus they might have?”

  “Catastrophic in a high-population area like this. If one drop of virus-infected liquid enters the body, it’s enough to kill. There is no cure, and really no widespread approved vaccine for humans. As you may know, there’s been another outbreak of it in West Africa. Many have died and they have yet to contain it.

  “So people exposed to it will be contagious?” asked Knox.

  “Of course. But the one good thing about Ebola is that, unlike other diseases, it’s only after you develop symptoms, meaning you are sick and feverish, that you become contagious. However, it is damn difficult to diagnose Ebola because its symptoms mirror so many other types of diseases. Ironically, the best diagnostic tool is one’s passport. If you’d been to areas in Africa that have had outbreaks of Ebola, that helps to narrow the diagnostic possibilities.”

  “But if it happens here?” said Puller. “People could just think they have the flu. And ten days or two weeks pass and they’re contagious and they spread it to a lot of other people without even knowing they have Ebola.”

  “It is quite an unprecedented possibility,” said Johnson glumly.

  “How much of the stuff did Aust think had been taken before he got to the cache?”

  “Three five-foot-tall canisters. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but with the aerosolized Ebola a little goes a long way. And infection through the lungs, which are chock-full of blood vessels that travel the length of the body, is quite rapid.”

  “What happened to the canisters that he did recover?” asked Puller.

  “They were transported to a highly secure facility equipped for dealing with bioterrorism elements. They are scheduled to be thoroughly examined and then they will be destroyed.”

  “So the examination hasn’t started yet?”

  “No. These things take time to prep, to make sure it’s done safely. The examination may lead us back to who engineered the weapon. If so, I would imagine severe consequences will follow.”

  “Could it be the Russians?” asked Knox. “You seem to think that’s where this stuff came from.”

  “It might very well be. And with the state of the world right now, and Russia seemingly raising its imperialistic head again, things might