“We not only know where the virus came from, Mr. President, we know who is planning to use it,” Hughes said.
“How in God’s name did you know, and why didn’t you do something about it?” President Reasoner demanded angrily.
“We thought that it was something else. Diamonds. And we’re still working on the project. It was something that the German Federal Police asked us to help with a few weeks ago.”
“I want the three of you over here as soon as possible. We can exchange information,” the president said. “We don’t have much time.”
Moira had turned on the light, got out of bed, and put on her robe. “Shall I make coffee, Thomas?”
Hughes looked at his wife and a wave of love came over him. He shook his head. “There’s not enough time,” he said. He’d never heard the president, any president, speak with so much fear in his voice. “I would like you to call William and Frances for me. Tell them that I’m on my way to fetch them. It has to do with Reichsamt Seventeen.”
Lane was up and dressed in Armani slacks, a light handmade sweater he’d picked up in New Delhi a few years ago, and Bruno Magli loafers, when Hughes arrived at the house. Frannie, dressed in light silk slacks and a cream-colored blouse and flats, wasn’t happy that Hughes was here. But Lane was ready to go. “What’s this about Reichsamt Seventeen? Something new?”
“It’s a deadly virus, not diamonds, and Speyer apparently means to use it. The president wants to see us immediately.”
“No wonder the Germans wanted our help, and yet they didn’t want to cooperate with us,” Lane said. “They would have had to admit they were covering up their knowledge of what really was in the bunker. Did Speyer give a deadline?”
“The president didn’t say,” Hughes said. “But he sounded—”
“Frightened?” Frances asked.
Hughes nodded. “He did indeed sound frightened.”
It was a few minutes after 3:00 A.M. when they were admitted through the west gate. They left their car under the portico and were immediately escorted to the Oval Office where the president and his national security adviser were in shirtsleeves, waiting. They looked as if they hadn’t slept in days.
“Thank you for coming out at this hour and on such short notice,” the president said tiredly. “Now maybe we can start to get somewhere. You say that you know about the virus and who has it?”
“A former Stasi captain by the name of Helmut Speyer,” Hughes said. “But it was William who infiltrated his organization three and a half weeks ago.”
The president turned to Lane. “Tell me.”
Lane quickly told the president and his adviser everything, starting with the German federal police request to find Speyer and Baumann, all the way to his rescue in the Gulf Stream by the Coast Guard, and his and Frannie’s entry to the Kalispell compound.
“That’s quite a story,” the president said, impressed. “But then I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you. Where did he go with the captain’s gig after the Maria was sunk?”
“It’s a safe bet that he didn’t take the gig to Miami. He would never have gotten the box through customs. He might have gone to Havana and from there to Mexico City. But he did show up in Miami three days later where he and his wife and the sergeant took the Gulfstream jet back to his ranch. How he got the box through customs is something we haven’t figured out yet.”
The president sat forward. “Good lord, is he still there?”
“No. He and all of his people left the day after William and I were there,” Frances said. “The FBI office in Helena has been watching his operation, but Speyer somehow slipped through their fingers when they were looking the other way. The Gulfstream showed up at New York’s LaGuardia forty-eight hours ago, dropped off two people, then flew down here to Dulles where a woman got off—presumably the man’s wife—and then continued on to Miami where the crew disappeared.”
“Was anything found aboard the airplane?” Newby asked.
“No, sir,” Frances said. “Not even fingerprints. The entire aircraft was wiped clean.”
“Nothing since then on Speyer?”
“We haven’t come up with anything,” Hughes said. “But under the light of present circumstances that is a task for the FBI. I’m sure that somebody has seen something.”
The president handed Lane a file folder. “This is what we have so far. The note that came with the sample bottle, the CDC’s findings, and a transcript of the computer conversation I had with him.”
Lane quickly read through the material and handed it to Frannie and Hughes. “Well, his demands have certainly risen. When he was telling me that the box contained diamonds he was going to sell them back to the German government for three hundred million. Now he wants thirty times that much.”
“The Bureau and the CIA are working on this, I would assume,” Hughes said.
“Yes, but of necessity they’re going about their jobs quietly. It’s hampering their effectiveness, as is the deadline, but for the moment we have no other choice but to accept this madman at his word.” The president glanced at his desk clock. “We have less than sixty-four hours, and we don’t have an idea where to start.”
“I’m sorry to disagree, Mr. President,” Lane said. “But Speyer has inadvertently given us some very good clues. I’m guessing that he went to New York to pick up the virus where it came in on the ship that met him in the Gulf Stream. He’s going to release the virus right here in Washington, and when he’s done he’s going to Cuba. Eden, he calls it.”
“What if we don’t pay him?” Newby asked.
“It doesn’t matter to him,” Lane said. “If we do pay him he’ll give us the virus. I’m pretty sure of that much. But if we don’t pay him, he’ll release some of it in Washington. If it works, he’ll take the rest of it to Cuba where he’ll sell it to the highest bidder.”
“Good Lord, the man is worse than crazy,” the president said. “He’s a sociopath.”
“Much worse,” Lane agreed. “But we’ll find him. In the meantime don’t tell the FBI or CIA that we’re in the mix. It might leak and then the game would be up for us. At least for now.”
“Very well,” the president said. “Then there’s nothing left but to put this in your hands.” He smiled wryly. “But that’s why I created The Room and hired you in the first place.”
Back in their offices at the Naval Observatory Hughes telephoned BKA Chief Inspector Dieter Schey in Berlin. It was after 8:00 A.M. in Germany. He put the call on the speakerphone.
“We’re running into a problem with Helmut Speyer and his people,” Hughes said.
“What sort of problem, Herr Hughes?” Schey asked. They could hear he was under a strain.
“Well, as you know he made it back here to the States with whatever it was they brought up from Reichsamt Seventeen. We wanted to give him some room, you know, to see what he was up to. But he seems to have disappeared. With the box.”
“Gott in Himmel,” Chief Inspecter Schey said softly. “Your man should know more about this than I do. He was there.”
“He doesn’t know,” Hughes said. “Dieter, this is very important to us. To all of us. What was in the box they brought up from the bunker? What were the Nazis doing down there in the forties?”
“I will have to get back to you with that information.”
“Quit stalling, we’re under the gun here.”
“I’m not stalling. It’s that I do not know myself what went on in Reichsamt Seventeen, except that it was very secret. I will talk to my superiors. The decision will be theirs. You must understand this.”
“Get back to me as soon as you can,” Hughes said.
“I will.”
Hughes broke the connection and looked at Lane. “They know about the virus.”
“No doubt about it. And they’re not going to help us.”
“That’s monstrous,” Frances said.
“It’s politics.”
The regular staff wouldn’t be in fo
r a few hours yet, so Hughes and Frannie powered up two of the terminals. Lane looked over their shoulders.
“Where do we start?” Frannie asked.
“The box came to New York by ship. Let’s start with that,” Lane said. “After the Maria was scuttled Speyer made a rendezvous, transferred the box, and then either headed off to Cuba, or sunk the gig and came aboard with his wife and Baumann.”
“He didn’t go to New York with the ship,” Frances said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why did he go all the way back to Miami just to fly to Kalispell, and then fly back to New York?”
“Maybe the ship that picked them up made a stop in Miami first,” Lane suggested. “Maybe he and his wife and Baumann got off, but the box was sent on.”
“There won’t be many ships that fit that profile,” Hughes said.
“If it was Gloria who got off here in Washington she might still be here getting ready for the attack,” Frances put in.
“A gold star for the mom to be,” Lane said.
“If you keep that up I’m just as likely to brain you as thank you.”
“Ta-ta, kids,” Hughes said. “Okay, what am I looking for exactly? If it’s merely a safe house you’re after, that could be anywhere within a fifty mile radius, and we would have to be very lucky indeed to stumble across it. Could be a rental under God only knows what name. Or, they could have purchased a house months ago, and under an assumed name.”
“This will have to be a very special place,” Lane said, pacing. “It’s probably a rental unit, something that they picked up within the last six months. Speyer was starting to pinch pennies, so I don’t think he would have spent the money to buy a house. It’ll be off by itself to give them privacy. They don’t want snoopy neighbors watching their comings and goings, especially not if they brought their storm troopers with them.”
“We’re looking for a place out in the country. Some woods, maybe. Near a highway, but not on it.”
“That’s right. And it’ll have an airstrip on the property, or it’ll be very near a small regional airport.”
“You don’t think this will be a static release, like off the Washington Monument?”
Lane shook his head. “Too many things could go wrong. Too many people, tourists as well as park rangers. And they would be at the mercy of the wind. Only the half of Washington downwind from the monument would be affected.”
“There was no evidence that their Gulfstream jet had been fitted out to accept an external spray mechanism.”
“See if there are any agricultural spraying companies in the area. Maybe he’s talked to them about a job.”
Frannie looked up from her computer. “It’s too bad we can’t tap Thomas Mann’s telephones. If the ever-alluring Mrs. Speyer is indeed here in town, she might telephone the dear old man.”
“I don’t want to get the Bureau here in Washington involved,” Lane said. “It’s too risky. If Speyer does have an informer inside the FBI the inquiries could get back to him. Besides, we haven’t had much luck decrypting their telephone programs. Not without the CIA’s computer system.”
“So we do it the old-fashioned way,” Hughes said. “I have a friend at the phone company who has done me a favor from time to time. Even if we cannot decrypt their conversations, maybe we can trace the calls.”
“Clever man—” Lane said, when Frannie let out a little shout of joy. She was beaming.
“With child I may be, but dumb I’m not.” She looked up. “Your ship is the Akai Maru, love, out of Nagasaki. Captain Shintaro Kato. At this moment she’s at the Brooklyn docks, but she’s scheduled to sail at noon.”
“What do you have, Frannie?”
The figures were scrolling up the screen. “Nagasaki to the Panama Canal and from there through the Florida Straits to Miami where she dropped off six containers of Sony electronic equipment and Japanese furniture. The times match, and she was a couple hours behind her ETA.”
“She’s listed as a general carrier,” Lane said. “And there’s nothing about three passengers.”
“Convenient,” Frannie said. “Should I keep looking?”
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Lane said. “See if you can round me up some transportation to New York, and a car when I get there. Then you can help Tom.”
“Why did I know that you were going to leave me home?”
“Don’t fret, my dear girl, lunch is on me,” Hughes said without missing a keystroke.
NEW YORK
At ten o’clock Lane showed his Immigration and Naturalization Service identification to the gate guard and was directed to the Akai Maru. The Brooklyn docks were alive with activity; trucks came and went from the warehouse in steady streams while front-end loaders darted about like angry wasps. Giant cranes unloaded some ships, while others lifted containers onto outbound vessels. Pallets of goods from around the world were piled everywhere in seemingly haphazard jumbles.
Lane parked his government Ford Taurus across from the Japanese ship and, attaché case in hand, went up the boarding stairs to the port quarterdeck. The ship was down on her lines, which meant that she was fully laden, her hatches dogged down and deck containers securely chained.
A Japanese man in spotlessly white coveralls came on deck from the superstructure. “No visitors are authorized,” he said in reasonably clear English. “You must go.”
Lane held out his INS identification. “I’m Agent Bob Salmon. I want to see the captain.”
The crewman looked nervously from Lane to the picture on the ID and back. He took out a walkie-talkie and spoke rapid-fire Japanese to someone.
He got his reply in a moment, and motioned for Lane to show his INS identification again. He read the name and badge number back, and got another reply.
“Captain says there are no passengers on his ship. We get ready to sail now. You must go.”
Lane suppressed a grin. He’d not said anything about checking for passengers. “Tell Captain Kato that if he does not wish to speak to me now, I will unfortunately impound this vessel and it may be days or weeks before the paperwork is completed.” Lane didn’t think that the crewman understood all of that, but he spoke at length into the walkie-talkie. He got his reply immediately.
He nodded. “The captain is coming down to see you.” The crewman stepped aside, but kept a wary eye on Lane.
Captain Kato, a slightly built man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and dressed in khaki trousers and a yellow Izod polo shirt, came on deck. His mood was impossible to read from the bland expression on his round face.
Lane showed the captain his government identification. “You are carrying three passengers. I want to meet with them now and inspect their papers.”
“There are no passengers aboard my ship.”
Lane took photographs of Speyer, Gloria, and Baumann from his attaché case and handed them to the captain. “These three were reported to be aboard.”
“By whom?”
“That information is confidential. Are these people aboard?”
“No.”
Lane put the photographs back in his attaché case, smiled and glanced toward the bow of the ship, as if he were coming to a decision. When he turned back, the captain was watching him with interest.
“Look, captain, I know that keeping to sailing schedules is very important. If need be I will impound this ship until it can be searched top to bottom. That might take days. But the fact of the matter is I don’t care about your involvement with these people. I merely want to know if they are aboard at this moment. And if they’re not, where did they get off? And where is the package that they brought with them? When I have that information you will be free to leave. You have my word on it. The INS does not care about your ship, we only care about these three illegals.”
“They are not aboard.”
Lane shrugged. “As you wish—”
“They got off the ship in Miami, seven days ago.”
Lane gave him a hard stare. “Where did they board?”
“We picked them up in the ocean, in international waters between Florida and Cuba. Their small boat was sinking and we rescued them.”
“Why didn’t you inform the U.S. Coast Guard?”
“We were asked not to do so.”
“What about the package?”
“They took it with them,” Captain Kato said.
“Not in Miami, they didn’t,” Lane said. “Did they come here for it?”
The captain hesitated for only a second, but then he nodded.
“How was it passed through customs?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was this?”
“Two days ago,” the captain said. “I have cooperated with you; now get off my ship, please. I have done nothing illegal.”
“I sincerely hope that you have not lied to me, captain,” Lane warned. “If I find out that you have lied, then the next time that you enter U.S. waters you and your crew will be subject to arrest, your vessel and cargo impounded.”
The captain nodded gravely. “No lies.”
Lane allowed a faint smile to curl his lip. “Except about the money.” He turned and went down the boarding ladder.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Hughes pushed away from the computer terminal and stretched his back. “Our jobs are certainly cut out for us.”
Frances looked up from her terminal across the narrow hall. “Have you found something?”
“Enough to know that we might be looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
She got up from her desk and came over. “What is it?”
“In a fifty mile radius from downtown Washington there are no less than twenty-seven airports. That’s not counting Dulles, Reagan, Baltimore, and the other big commercial airports, or the military bases or even the small private grass strips. I’m just adding up the regionals.”
“What about crop dusting companies?”
“That reduces the number of airports to two, neither of which meets William’s other conditions. Too big, too busy.” Hughes shook his head. “If this was the Midwest where there was more farming it would be relatively easy to hire an ag pilot. But not here.”
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