The Solomon Effect

by C. S. Graham

  He started to get in the car, but paused to say, “If I wanted to expose a group of people to this pathogen, how would I do it?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Probably the best way would be to release it into a subway, or the air-conditioning system of a building—a hotel, perhaps, or a large office building. No one would ever know. That’s the terrible beauty of a biological weapon. With a bomb, there’s never any doubt that a deliberate attack has taken place. But if an epidemic suddenly sweeps across an area…who can say that it was the result of a deliberate biological attack?”

  Jax’s gaze met Tobie’s, and she saw her own dawning horror reflected in his drawn features as the same thought occurred to them both: they might already be too late. The pathogen could have been released that morning, anywhere in the country.

  And they would never know it.

  69

  “Maybe we’ve been going at this all wrong,” said October. They were walking along the banks of Carroll Creek in the historic district of Frederick, waiting for Hannah Clark to call. “Maybe we should be focusing on the kinds of people most likely to do something like this. Or the sites they’d be likely to select.”

  Jax shook his head. “They could have picked any one of a thousand sites—anywhere from the subways of New York or Washington, D.C., to the Sears Tower in Chicago. And as for the kinds of people most likely to do something like this…” He let his voice trail off.

  “Where do you start?” she finished for him.

  They walked on in silence, October’s head turning as she watched two laughing, shouting boys on bicycles run the makeshift obstacle course they’d set up in a nearby driveway.

  Following her gaze, he said, “The problem is, wherever it is released, this thing is going to spread like wildfire. Not just here in the States, but across the world. That’s always been the problem with biological warfare: the world has grown too small. A disease targeted at one country will circle the globe within a year.”

  “But that’s what these people want, isn’t it?” said October, turning toward him. “So it seems to me they’d be likely to pick someplace with Arabs and Jews from all over.”

  “What are you suggesting? Disney World? Or how about—” He broke off as his phone began to vibrate.

  Unclipping it from his belt, he hit Talk and heard Hannah Clark’s hushed, troubled voice. “Mr. Alexander? I’ve had a long discussion with my father. He says he had a visit last winter from one of his former graduate students at MIT, someone from Florida. They’ve kept in touch over the years, so the visit didn’t strike my father as unusual at the time. But it seems this former student asked a number of questions about DP3 and the samples that were sent out of Germany on U-114.”

  “Who?” said Jax. “Who was it?”

  “He won’t say. His concern is that the man’s questions were unrelated to what is happening, and that by telling you about this former student, my father will be implicating an innocent man. If you could somehow convince him—”

  “We’ll be right there.”

  On the way to Kline’s house, Jax put in a call to Matt. “See if you can get a printout of the personnel who’ve accessed the Navy’s files on U-114 in, say, the past two years. That might help verify that Boyd’s really our man. And while you’re at it, you might take a look at the flight records for the General’s jet. Maybe we can get something from his travel patterns.”

  “I’ll get on it,” said Matt.

  October said, “They have boats and palm trees in Florida.” Jax clipped his phone back on his belt. “They what? Oh,” he said, remembering the viewing she’d done with Dr. Bukovsky in Russia. “Florida is also a very big state.” He shifted down for a curve, then punched the gas again, hard. “We need this guy’s name.”

  “And if Kline won’t give it to us?”

  Jax shifted rapidly back up through the gears. “He’ll give it to us.”

  Jax was slowing for the turn into Kline’s long drive when he spotted the white commercial van parked on the gravel sweep, beside the green-and-white Mini Cooper that he’d seen parked at Hannah Clark’s house. He hit the gas and kept going.

  “What?” said October. “What’s the matter?”

  “The Acme Cleaning Service van.”

  “What about it?”

  “See the guy standing next to the front door? The open front door?”

  “The one in the Tyvek suit?”

  “Yeah, that one. The one who’s just standing there.” He pulled off the road in the lee of the oaks down by the creek and reached over to pop open the glove compartment. “Here,” he said, handing her a Smith and Wesson 9mm. “Present.”

  “Why do people keep handing me these things?”

  “Because bad men keep shooting at you.” Easing open his door, he slipped his own Beretta from the holster he’d clipped inside the waistband of his slacks. “Let’s go.”

  Following the tree line, they swung around until they reached a thick privet hedge that ran down to an arbor-shaded patio with a French door that looked as if it opened off the kitchen.

  “Got the safety off?” Jax whispered as they edged close to the patio.

  “Yes,” she answered with some annoyance.

  “Just checking.”

  Keeping low, they crept to the door. In the room beyond they could see an old round oak table, white beadboard cabinets, the gleam of a stainless steel fridge. No one was in sight.

  Carefully reaching out, Jax turned the knob. The door popped open. The pungent odor of spilled petroleum wafted out to them.

  “Why do I smell gasoline?” whispered October, following him into the house and across the kitchen.

  “They’re probably getting ready to torch the house,” said Jax, just as a big black dude wearing a Tyvek suit and carrying two red plastic gas cans walked through the doorway from the hall.

  “Fuck!” cried the guy. Dropping the gas cans with a sloshing thump, he reached for the Glock he wore in a shoulder holster.

  October grabbed a giant chef’s knife from the pine block on the counter beside them and drove the blade deep into his chest.

  “Christ,” said Jax. He snatched the guy’s silenced Glock 21 as his eyes rolled back in his head and he tumbled to the floor.

  Pausing for a moment, Jax listened to the sounds of the old house stretching out around them, but heard nothing.

  Taking a deep breath, he nodded to October to follow him. At the entrance to the hallway, they had to step over the body of the dead housekeeper. His gaze lifted to October’s. This wasn’t looking good.

  They crept down the hall, treading warily on the old heart-of-pin floors, past the arched entrance to a shadowy dining room and the living room beyond. To their left, a staircase with an elegant turned banister swept up to the second floor. The front door to the porch still stood open. Through it, Jax could see a trio of pumpkins lined up at the top of the porch’s steps.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs from the second floor jerked his head around. He turned, the silenced Glock coming up, just as the man in the Tyvek suit they’d seen waiting outside walked in the front door.

  70

  “Take him!” shouted Jax. Dropping to the floor in a roll, he pumped three rounds into the dude coming down the stairs.

  He heard the crack-crack-crack of October’s Smith and Wesson. Looking over, he saw the guy in the Tyvek suit stumble backward.

  October yelled, “Behind you!”

  He swung around just as Carlos Rodriguez came charging through the doorway of a book-lined room at the front of the house. Jax fired both the Glock and his own Beretta at the same time. Slamming back against the wall, Rodriguez hung for a moment, then slid to the floor, leaving a bloody trail down the plaster.

  Jax realized his ears were ringing. A blue haze filled the entry; the stench of burnt powder and spilled gasoline stung his nostrils. He waited, his heart pounding, his grip on the two sidearms tight. He heard the wind scuttling dry leaves across the gravel driv
e, the drip of gasoline from the cans dropped by the man on the stairs.

  Jax pushed to his feet. The guy hanging upside down on the stairs was missing half his head. His Tyvek-suited buddy on the front porch was a red, pulpy mess. From the looks of things, October had landed at least half a dozen rounds in him.

  “You hit him,” said Jax.

  She was leaning against the entry wall, her breath coming hard and fast. “He was five feet away and I emptied the gun into him. I should hope I hit him.”

  Walking over to Rodriguez, Jax hunkered down to lay two fingers against the guy’s carotid artery and felt nothing. “He’s dead.”

  She said, “Good.” Swiping the sleeve of her sweater across her eyes, she paused in the doorway to the study. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  Jax went to stand beside her. Kline was sitting in a chair beside the empty hearth, his ankles and wrists duct taped, his eyes wide and sightless. A line of blood trickled down his chin. His daughter lay facedown on the rug beside him.

  Crossing to her, Jax gently turned her over, then pushed up to grab October before she got any closer. “Don’t look,” he said, pulling her back toward the hallway. “You can’t help her. Did you touch anything?”

  She thought about it. “The chef’s knife. And you touched the back doorknob.”

  He turned toward the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “I hope you’ve got something,” Jax told Matt as they headed back toward the beltway, “because we just ran out of luck.”

  “Your idea to check out who might have accessed the Navy’s report on U-114 turned up something interesting: a colonel by the name of Sam Lee. He’s one of Boyd’s protégés—in fact, Boyd got him assigned to the CIA two years ago. He may be our mole.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “That would be difficult. He was found in Rock Creek Park about an hour ago. Dead.”

  “Shit. Sounds like they’re cleaning up their loose ends. I hope this doesn’t mean the operation’s over.”

  Matt let out a harsh sigh. “I stumbled across something else while I was digging around. Somehow or another, the U.S. government knew U-114 went down with a mysterious weapon called die Klinge von Solomon on board. That’s why they sent the Navy looking for it when the Brits authorized their Operation Deadlight Expedition. They thought the Sword of Solomon might be the German A-bomb, and they were afraid the publicity surrounding the plans to raise the old U-boats might give someone ideas.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” said October when Jax relayed Matt’s information to her. “The U.S. government had all Kline’s nasties at Fort Detrick. They should have known what the Sword of Solomon was.”

  “You’ve gotta remember they didn’t have computerized databases in those days. Kline knew DP3 used to be called the Sword of Solomon, but I doubt anyone else did. Why do you think they renamed all his nasty little bugs? Because they didn’t want anyone to know they were carrying on where the Nazis had left off. I’ve no doubt all the original records were destroyed decades ago. Even if they weren’t, you need to understand that the kind of guys playing with plagues up at Fort Detrick don’t regularly communicate with the guys down in Washington who worry about Nazi A-bombs and sunken subs. No one in Washington talks to anyone else, remember?” He paused for a moment, then reached for his phone again and hit Matt’s number on his speed dial.

  “What now?” she said.

  “I’ve got an idea.” To Matt, he said, “Did Boyd ever go to MIT?”

  “Nope. He’s a West Point man.”

  “Then I think we may have a lead to the guy who’s bankrolling this operation. Get onto the university and see if you can get a list of Kline’s former graduate students. We’re looking for a male with ties to Florida.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And Matt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hurry.”

  71

  They were on I-270 headed toward the Virginia state line when Matt called back. “You need to turn around. I’ve got a plane waiting at Frederick Airport to take you to Miami.”

  “A Company plane? I thought we were off the clock?”

  “Yeah, well, I found a way to get creative when I looked at Boyd’s flight schedule. He’s made a bunch of trips to Miami in the last ten months that don’t seem to correlate to anything he was doing for SOCOM. And he left Washington for Miami this afternoon at twelve thirty.”

  Jax glanced over at October. Boats and palm trees.

  “And get this,” Matt was saying. “You remember that viewing session Tobie did in Kaliningrad with the Russian?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’ve been comparing her drawings of that bridge with all the bridges in the Miami area. I think it’s the Venetian Causeway. You’ll find a boat waiting for you at Bayside Marketplace. The way I figure it, the only way to find that house is to have her look for it.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Jax. “You want us to cruise around Biscayne Bay looking for a house October saw in her head?”

  “You got any better ideas?”

  Jax thought about it. “No.”

  The boat was a Speedboat Marine V-drive with a Shepiro-craft inboard rear-mount 350 Chevy. By the time they reached Bayside Marketplace, the sun was a big ball of fire sinking low behind the city. The heat was beginning to go out of the day—or maybe that was just the effect of the long shadows cast by all those skyscrapers crowding up against the water.

  Jax caught the keys tossed by a dark-skinned man in shorts and a white T-shirt, who said, “The hardware’s in the lockbox up under the bow.”

  Jax waited until they were well away from the quay before hauling it out: a Beretta Cougar for himself, and another Beretta he held out to October. “Here. The Smith and Wesson must be out of ammo.”

  She hesitated, then slipped the pistol in her bag.

  “You need to get a holster.”

  She just looked at him. “Oh, right; and where am I going to hide it?”

  He swung around Dodge Island and cut under the Mac-Arthur Causeway, the small, light Speedboat soaring over the sparkling blue waters of the bay. “That look like your bridge?” he said as the Venetian Causeway rose before the boat’s bow, the elegant white guardrail sweeping from one man-made island to the next.

  Her head tipped back, she put up a hand to catch the hair fluttering around her face. “Yes.”

  “So which way do we go? Left or right?”

  She glanced around her. “I guess that depends on whether or not my brain reversed things.”

  “Great,” said Jax. “We’ll try north first.”

  They ran up the island, past dozens of palatial villas with indoor and outdoor pools, squash courts and tennis courts, fleets of Mercedes and BMWs, Porsches and Bentleys. “When I see this kind of stuff,” he said, eying the hundred-foot, gleaming white Chedyek rocking gently beside the nearest private dock, “it reminds me of this book I read about the French Revolution when I was a kid.”

  She turned to stare at him. “You read books about the French Revolution as a kid? Why Jax, who’d have thought you’re really a secret nerd at heart?”

  He spun the wheel, hitting the throttle as he brought the Speedboat in a wide arc and headed south under the bridge again. “I was never a nerd. I just liked history.”

  “Okay. So what about the French Revolution?”

  “I just remember reading about those noblemen in their chateaus, with their carriages and their jewels and their velvet gowns, and wondering how they could look at all those starving peasants and not realize they were being really, really shortsighted.”

  “This from the guy with a BMW convertible and a townhouse on the Potomac?” she said. “If you’re not careful, someone’s going to get the idea you’re a—” She broke off.

  He cut back on the throttle. “What is it?”

  They were coming up on a pale pink Italianate villa with an arched arcade and a wide terrace overlook
ing an Olympic-sized pool and meticulously maintained lawns that swept down to a private dock. “That’s it,” she said, leaning forward.

  Jax studied the massive fiberglass Hargrave yacht with a raised pilothouse tied up at the dock. “Is that the boat you saw?”

  She shook her head. “I honestly couldn’t say. All big white yachts kinda look the same to me. But this is the house. I’m sure of it. Now what?”

  Jax turned the Speedboat in toward the dock, spinning the wheel and cutting the engine so they drifted in to bump gently against the pier. “Now we look for a fluorescent yellow cylinder in an aluminum metal case,” he said, tossing her the bowline, “and hope to hell we’re not too late.”

  72

  Jax was tying the stem line to a cleat on the dock when he heard a man’s shout. Looking up, he spotted a big, blond-headed security guard loping down the lawn toward them. The guy was wearing tan slacks and boat shoes with no socks and a Hawaiian shirt that flapped open as he ran.

  “Hey!” the guy shouted again, waving one beefy tanned arm as he jogged out onto the dock. “This is private property. You can’t tie up here.”

  October straightened. “What do we do?” she said quietly.

  “We look at the Hargrave,” said Jax, turning toward it.

  They’d almost reached the yacht when the security guard caught up with them. He grabbed Jax’s left arm and jerked him around. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, man? This is a private dock. Get out of here.”

  Jax reached behind his back and came up with his Cougar. He stuck the muzzle in the guard’s cheek hard enough to pucker the guy’s mouth and said, “Look. I’ve had a bad day. In fact, I’ve had a bad week. We’re going on this boat. We can either climb aboard with you, or we can climb over you, if you get my drift. The choice is yours.”

  The man’s eyes widened, his splayed hands creeping into the air beside his head. “Who the fuck are you?”