Robert Ludlum - CO 1 - The Hades Factor

by The Hades Factor [lit]

  The Iraqi computer system was five years out of date, so going in to remove the originals of the same reports at the source was almost as easy. Oddly, Lily had found most of the original information from Iraq had already been erased by the Saddam Hussein regime. Not wanting to reveal any weakness or need, no doubt.

  Clearing the single Belgian report from all electronic records of her own FRMC master computer, from USAMRIID and CDC's databases, and from all the other databases worldwide had been more time consuming. But the hardest task proved to be erasing the item from the telephone log at Fort Detrick. She had been forced to call in favors from high-level phone company contacts who owed her.

  Curious, she had attempted to comprehend the reason behind the blackmailer's demands, but there seemed to be no common ground among the items she deleted except that most dealt with a virus. There had been hundreds of other research reports flying back and forth over the electronic circuits among a dozen Level Four research institutions worldwide, and her blackmailer had shown no interest in those.

  Whatever he had wanted, her part was successfully completed. She had not been discovered, had left no trace, and would soon be free of her financial problems for good. She would never get in so deep again, she promised herself. With fifty thousand dollars in cash, she could go to Vegas or Atlantic City with enough to recoup everything she had lost. With a carefree smile, she quickly decided she would begin with a thousand on the Capitals to win tonight.

  She almost laughed aloud as she left the restaurant and turned the corner toward the bar where her favorite bookmaker had his private booth. She felt a fiery surge that told her she could not lose. Not now. Not anymore.

  Even when she heard the screams behind her, the screech and rumble of rubber and metal, and turned to see the big black SUV careening along the sidewalk directly at her, she had a wide smile on her face. The smile was still there when the SUV struck her and swerved back onto the street, leaving her dead on the sidewalk.

  __________

  3:16 P.M.

  Fort Detrick, Maryland

  Smith pushed away from the computer screen. There were five reports from the Prince Leopold Institute, but none had arrived yesterday or early today, and none reported anything but more failure to classify he unknown virus.

  There had to be a report with new information in it--- at least one fact important enough for Sophia to be inspired in some new line of investigation she had chronicled as a full-page note last night. But he had searched Detrick's database, CDC's database, and tied into the army's supercomputer to search every other Level Four lab in the world, including the Prince Leopold itself.

  There was nothing.

  Frustrated, he stared at the uncooperative screen. Either Sophia had made a mistake, put the wrong code on her designation, and the report had never existed, or---

  Or it had been erased from every database in the world, including its source.

  That was difficult to believe. Not impossible to do, but hard to believe someone would go to such trouble over a virus when it was in everyone's best interests to investigate. Smith shook his head, trying to dismiss the idea that there had been anything critical on that missing page, but he could not. The page had been cut out.

  And by someone who had gotten on and off the base unseen. Or had they?

  He reached again for the phone to find out who else had been in the lab last night, but after speaking to the whole staff and Sergeant Major Daugherty, he was no closer to an answer. All of Daugherty's people had gone home by 6:00 P.M. while the scientific staff had stayed until 2:00 A.M., even Kielburger. After that, Sophia had been here alone.

  On the night desk, Grasso had seen nothing, not even Sophia's leaving, as Smith already knew. At the gate, the guards swore they had seen no one after 2:00 A.M., but they had obviously missed Sophia staggering out on foot, so their report meant little. Besides, he doubted anyone skilled enough to cut out the page without leaving a trace to the naked eye would have drawn attention to himself as he entered or left.

  Smith was at a dead end.

  Then, in his mind, he heard Sophia gasp. He closed his eyes and saw once again her beautiful face, contorted in excruciating pain. Falling into his arms, struggling to breathe, yet managing to blurt out, "...lab ...someone ...hit. ..."

  __________

  5:27 P.M.

  The Morgue, Frederick, Maryland

  Dr. Lutfallah was annoyed. "I don't know what more we can find out, Colonel Smith. The autopsy was clear. Definite. Shouldn't you take a break? I'm surprised you can function at all. You need some sleep ..."

  "I'll sleep when I know what happened to her," Smith snapped. "And I'm not questioning what killed her, only how it killed her."

  The pathologist had reluctantly agreed to remeet Smith in the hospital's autopsy room. He was not happy to have been pulled away from a perfectly good Tanqueray martini.

  "How?" Lutfallah's eyebrows shot up. This was too much. He made no effort to keep the scathing sarcasm from his voice. "I'd say that'd be the usual way any lethal virus kills, Colonel."

  Smith ignored him. He was bent close to the table, fighting to keep from breaking down again at the sight of his vibrant Sophia so pale and lifeless. "Every inch, Doctor. Examine her inch by inch. Look for anything we missed, anything unusual. Anything."

  Still bristling, Lutfallah began to search. The two medical men worked in silence for an hour. Lutfallah was starting to make annoyed sounds again when he gave a muffled exclamation through his surgical mask. "What's this?"

  Smith jerked alert. "What? What do you have? Show me!"

  But it was Lutfallah who did not answer this time. He was examining Sophia's left ankle. When he spoke, it was a question. "Was Dr. Russell diabetic?"

  "No. What have you found?"

  "Any other intravenous medications?"

  "No."

  Lutfallah nodded to himself. He looked up. "Did she do drugs, Colonel?"

  "You mean narcotics? Hell, no."

  "Then take a look."

  Smith joined the pathologist, who was standing on Sophia's left side. Together they bent close to the ankle. The mark was all but invisible--- a reddening and swelling so small no one had noticed, or perhaps it had not been there before, a late manifestation of the virus.

  In the center of the reddening was a single, tiny needle mark for an injection, as expertly administered as the page had been cut from her notebook.

  Smith stood up abruptly. Fury enveloped him. He gripped his hands in white-hard fists as his head pounded. He had guessed it. Now he knew it.

  Sophia had been murdered.

  __________

  8:16 P.M.

  Fort Detrick, Maryland.

  Jon Smith slammed into his office and stalked to his desk. But he did not sit. He could not. He paced the room, back and forth, a wild animal in a corral. Despite the turmoil in his body, his mind was diamond sharp. Concentrating. For him right now, despite the needs of the world... there was one single goal--- to find Sophia's killer.

  All right, then. Think. She must have learned something so dangerous she had to be killed, and all physical evidence of what she had learned or deduced eliminated. So what else did researchers in a worldwide scientific investigation do? They talked.

  He grabbed the telephone. "Get me the base security commander."

  His fingers tapped a tattoo on the desk like a drummer beating eighteenth- and nineteenth-century regiments into battle.

  "Dingman speaking. How can I help you, Colonel?"

  "Do you keep a record of incoming and outgoing phone calls from USAMRIID?"

  "Not specifically, but we can get one of a call made to or from the base. May I ask what in particular you're interested in?"

  "Any and all made by Dr. Sophia Russell since last Saturday. Incoming, too."

  "You have authorization, sir?"

  "Ask Kielburger."

  "I'll get back to you, Colonel."

  Fifteen minutes later, Dingman phoned with a lis
t of Sophia's incoming and outgoing calls. There had been few, since Sophia and the rest of the staff had been buried in their labs and offices with the virus. Five outgoing, three overseas, and only four incoming. He called the numbers. All checked out as discussions of what had not been found, of failure.

  Disappointed, he sat back--- and then shot forward out of his chair. He ran through the corridor into Sophia's office, where he pawed through everything on her desk again. Checked the drawers. He was not wrong--- her monthly telephone log, the one Kielburger insisted they keep faithfully, was also missing.

  He hurried back to his office and made another call. "Ms. Curtis? Did Sophia turn her October phone log in early? No? You're sure? Thank you."

  They had taken her phone log, too. The murderers. Why? Because there had been a call that revealed what they were trying to hide. It had been erased along with the Prince Leopold report. They were powerful and clever, and he had hit a seemingly impenetrable wall trying to discover what Sophia had done, or knew, to make someone think he needed to kill her.

  He would have to find the answer another way--- look into the history of the victims. Something must have connected them before they died, something tragically lethal.

  He dialed again. "Jon Smith, Ms. Curtis. The general in his office?"

  "He surely is, Colonel. You hold on now." Ms. Melanie Curtis was from Mississippi, and she liked him. But tonight he did not feel like their usual flirtatious banter.

  "Thank you."

  "General Kielburger here."

  "Still want me to go to California tomorrow?"

  "What's changed your mind, Colonel?"

  "Maybe I've seen the light. The bigger danger should get the priority."

  "Sure." Kielburger snorted in disbelief. "Okay, soldier. You'll fly out of Andrews at 0800 tomorrow. Be in my office at 0700, and I'll give you your instructions."

  ___________________

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  ___________________

  5:04 P.M.

  Adirondack Park, New York

  Contrary to the assumptions of most of the world, two-thirds of New York was not skyscrapers, jammed subways, and ruthless financial centers. As Victor Tremont, COO of Blanchard Pharmaceuticals, stood on his deck in the vast Adirondack State Park looking west, in his mind's eye he could see the map: stretching from Vermont on the east nearly to Lake Ontario on the west, Canada on the north to just above Albany on the south, some six million acres of lush public and private lands rose from rushing rivers and thousands of lakes to forty-six rugged peaks that towered more than four thousand feet above the Adirondack flatlands.

  Tremont knew all this because he had the kind of honed mind that automatically grasped, stored, and used important facts. Adirondack Park was vital to him not only because it was a stunning woodland wilderness, but because it was sparsely settled. One of the stories he liked to tell guests around his fireplace was about a state tax chief who had bought a local summer cabin. When the tax man decided his county bill was too high, he had investigated. In the process, he had--- here Tremont would laugh heartily--- discovered county tax officials were involved in massive corruption. The official was able to get an indictment against the lowlifes, but no jury could be impaneled. The reason? There were so few permanent residents in the county that all were either involved in the illegal scheme or related to someone who was.

  Tremont smiled. This isolation and backwoods corruption made his timbered paradise perfect. Ten years ago he had moved Blanchard Pharmaceuticals into a redbrick complex he had ordered built in the forest near Long Lake village. At the same time, he had made a hidden retreat on nearby Lake Magua his main residence.

  Tonight as the sun faded in a fiery orange ball behind pines and hardwoods, Tremont was standing on the roofed veranda of the first floor of his lodge. He studied the play of the brilliant sunset against the rugged outlines of the mountains and drank in the affluence, power, and taste that this view, this lodge, this lifestyle proved.

  His lodge had been part of one of the great camps established here by the wealthy toward the end of the nineteenth century. Built with the same log-and-bark siding as the lodge at Great Camp Sagamore on nearby Raquette Lake, his sprawling hideaway was the only surviving structure from the old days. Concealed from above by a thick canopy of trees and from the lake by a dense forest, it was all but invisible to outsiders. Tremont had planned his restoration that way, allowing the vegetation to grow high and wild. There was neither an address post on the road nor a dock in the lake to reveal its presence. No public nor corporate access was provided, or wanted. Only Victor Tremont, a few trusted partners in his Hades Project, and the loyal scientists and technicians who worked in the private high-tech lab on the second floor knew it existed.

  As the October sun dropped lower, the chilly Adirondack night bit at Tremont's cheeks and seeped through his jacket and trousers. Still, he was in no hurry to go inside. He savored the thick cigar he smoked and the taste of the fifty-year-old Langavulin he sipped. It warmed his blood and coated his throat with a satisfying burn. The Langavulin was perhaps the globe's finest whiskey, but its heavy peat-smoke flavor and incredibly balanced body were little known outside Scotland. That was because Tremont bought the entire supply each year from the distillery on Islay.

  But as he stood in the last golden rays of the sunset on the veranda, it was the wilderness rather than the whiskey that brought a smile to his patrician lips. The pristine lake was only a short canoe portage from overpopulated Raquette. The tall pines swayed gently, and their pungent scent filled the air. In the distance, the naked peak of 5,344-foot Mount Marcy shone like a finger pointing at God.

  Tremont had been attracted to the mountains since he had been an unruly teenager in Syracuse. His father, a professor of economics up on the hill at the university, had not been able to control him then any more than the fat-ass chairman of Blanchard could control him now. Both were always insisting upon what could not be done, that no one could do everything he wanted. He had never understood such narrowness. What limitation was there except your imagination? Your abilities? Your daring? The Hades Project itself was an example. If they had known in the beginning what he envisioned, both would have told him it was impossible. No one could do it.

  Inwardly he snorted with disgust. They were puny, small men. In a few weeks, the project would be a total success. He would be a total success. Then there would be decades of profits.

  Maybe it was because this was the final stage of Hades, but he had found himself occasionally drifting off in reverie, thinking about his long-dead father. In a strange way, his father had been the only man he had ever respected. The old man had not understood his only son, but he had stood by him. As a teen, Tremont had been fascinated by the movie Jeremiah Johnson. He had seen it a dozen times. Then, in the dead of an icy winter, he had taken off for the mountains, determined to live off the land just as Johnson had. Pick berries and dig roots. Hunt his own meat. Fight Indians. Pit himself against the elements in a heroic venture few had the courage or imagination to attempt.

  But there had been little that was noble about the experience. He killed two deer out of season with his father's 30-30 Remington, mistakenly shot at and almost killed some hikers, got violently sick on the wrong berries, and damn near froze to death. Fortunately, because of his missing rifle, parka, and backpack, plus his constant talking about the film, his father had guessed where he had headed. When the forest service wanted to give up the hunt, his father had raged and pushed all the levers of academia and state politics. The result was the forest service grumbled but soldiered on, eventually finding him, miserable and frostbitten, in a cave on the snowy slopes of Marcy.

  Despite everything, he counted it as one of the most important experiences of his life. He had learned from the mountain fiasco that nature was hard, indifferent, and no friend to humanity. He had also discovered physical challenge held little allure for him; it was too easy to lose. But his greatest lesson
was the critical point of why Johnson had gone to the mountains. At the time, he had thought it was to challenge nature, to fight Indians, to prove manhood. Wrong. It was to make money. The mountain men were trappers, and everything they did and suffered was for one goal--- to get rich.

  He had never forgotten that. The boldness and simplicity of the goal had shaped his life.

  As these thoughts flickered through his mind on the rustic veranda, he realized he wished his father were here for the conclusion of Hades. The old man would finally recognize that a man could do anything he wanted as long as he was smart enough and tough enough. Would his father be proud? Probably not. He laughed aloud. Too bad for the old man. His mother would be, but that was meaningless. Women didn't count.