Chimera

by Sonny Whitelaw

  Except for a peculiar and mostly classified personnel record unconnected to the case, McCabe had nothing to embarrass him but bad personal habits, a fridge full of exotic life forms that Meg, his newly inherited housekeeper, had probably nuked by now, and a few dog-eared copies of Penthouse. His eclectic and somewhat bizarre collection of books and bookmarked websites could be considered disturbing, even damning, except that he was a forensic psychiatrist, a profiler of life's worst psychopathic killers, paedophiles, and the most rabid terrorist and white supremacist hate groups. The investigative teams would discover that Joshua McCabe lived in a singular world, a world of the mind. He ran and ate, breathed and slept like normal men. He passed psych evaluations, cleaned and oiled his weapons. He even watched a few games on the weekends. But he never socialized.

  It suited McCabe. And it suited the FBI. Win-win all around, he thought-if he ever thought much about anything. Anything, that was, except what drove men like Timothy McVeigh, Shoko Asahara, and now, Robert Williams.

  Following the initial briefing, Reynold had directed people to work in specific task forces. One team was assigned to review the post-bombing Oklahoma investigations with a new eye, particularly the spate of robberies at the homes of dead and injured federal agents. Other teams would commence the lengthy detective work of tracking every minute of Williams and Adams' last days, particularly their last hours. This would later expand into extensive background checks of dozens, possibly hundreds, of individuals and organizations-all of which could take months, even years.

  However, assurances from President notwithstanding, the one place that could have provided them with immediate answers, the evidence room, would remain off-limits until every piece to be used in the McVeigh trial was checked and cross-matched against the database.

  Williams would have known that, and he would also have known that removing any piece of evidence would instantly draw attention. Ergo , nothing would be missing. Security tapes had corroborated what records showed. Adams hadn't been in the evidence room for almost twenty-four hours before Williams killed him, nor had Adam's been examining the Oklahoma victimologies. Therefore, Adams had learned something outside that arena and had connected it with the evidence. This connection, in turn, had prompted him to run, pale and scared, to McCabe.

  The sun wasn't up yet, and it was too dark for McCabe to use the vast and winding running tracks around Quantico. Instead, along with a platoon of Marines and handful of FBI agents, he ran around one of the well-lit ovals. Feet pounding the frozen ground in a metronomic rhythm, his mind settled into a familiar routine. Build the evidence-not the physical evidence, that wouldn't help him for now. Instead he focussed on what he knew, what he'd taught before Williams had convinced him that he was wasted in front of a classroom of undergraduates.

  He could recall his last lecture, word for word. Several aspects of the psychopathology of serial killers, mass murderers and terrorists, especially cult terrorists, overlap. Each work within their own intricate set of values, instilled into them by parents, peers, religion or government. Each dehumanises their victims. And each strives to gain control over their own lives through acts of torture and/or killing, by living out fantasies. They feel pain in some form and want to share the pain with the rest of the world, be it on an individual or mass scale. It's a philosophy commonly cited by the likes of people such as bin Laden, to 'punish' America for misdeeds going back to WWII.

  It had been such an oversimplified analysis. Not wrong, but vastly incomplete. The mistake that many investigators made was to lump all terrorists, even home-grown ones like McVeigh, into the same category. When religion was cited as the driving force, their motivations were arguably political. Fundamentalist Moslem Palestinian 'suicide' bombers used cheap, plentiful, 'intelligent' weapons-their bodies strapped with a few pounds of explosives-against superior, more heavily armed forces. Religious faith might promise a post-mortem reward, but their goals were ultimately socio-political.

  McCabe's thinking slipped from the role of teacher into that of the profiler. As much as he believed the Consortium were attempting to hide the truth about Oklahoma, he was not convinced that they were directly responsible fro the bombing. Something else was at play, something that on face value would appear to contradict the Consortium's goals. He must now consider the mindset of those whose social imperatives were very different to those of the average American. The best place to begin was by examining the motivations behind the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993.

  That event should have been America's wakeup call. Despite speculation, the bombing hadn't simply been about revenge for the Gulf War. It hadn't even been about religion so much as ideology. From the perspective of the bombers, America had spawned an evil that threatened to engulf the world, an evil not only propagated through modern technology-the Internet and Hollywood-but through economic pressure. America and its minions demanded all others embrace these new evils: democratic rule, freedom of speech and expression, which encouraged criticism, even the denial, of God. America had spawned social anarchy and the destruction of family values. In short, America, an amalgam of adopted ethnic groups with one foot firmly planted in Judaism, had evolved a new and ungodly culture. It shoved this abomination down the world's collective throat, reached into homes, corrupted wives, turned children against parents, and corroded the principles by which people had lived for countless generations. Then, to cap it off, America viewed the rest of the world as, at best, incidental. It preached human rights but condoned, even partook in the slaughter of thousands of civilians in the name of freedom and righteousness. Witness Vietnam.

  As if all of that hadn't been enough, America had then stationed its infidel troops in the holy lands of Saudi Arabia. This was an act of abomination that went against every tenet of Islam. Indeed, it could be argued that not opposing this insidious evil was a sin in the eyes of God.

  Presently, the only thing that restrained the more rabid Middle-eastern leaders was fear of retaliation. During the Gulf War, President Bush had told-not threatened or warned, but told -Saddam Hussein that if biological or chemical weapons were used against allied forces, the US would nuke Iraq into the stone age. So America, secure in the belief that it was too powerful to be attacked, too big to be toppled, and that any such move by a few camel-jockey rag-heads would invite swift and bloody retribution, had ignored the warnings.

  1995 had been ringing with yet more wakeup calls, beginning with the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo by a new form of terrorist. How could you defend against, much less prevent attacks by the likes of Aum Shinrikyo, who wanted to destroy the world? When Congress had demanded to know how the sect's leader, Asahara, a fanatic with virtually unlimited funds and a worldwide network of operatives, had escaped the notice of Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies, senior FBI executives had replied that serious civil rights and constitutional constraints in both the US and Japan restricted investigations of any chartered religious organizations.

  Waco had proved an embarrassing-and fatal-fiasco, ostensibly inciting McVeigh to bomb the Murrah Federal Building-the next wakeup call. Each insanity had triggered yet another greater insanity as violence begat violence. Law enforcement agencies, constrained by constitutional rights and due process-as they should be-were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

  Yet even after the World Trade Centre, Tokyo and Oklahoma, America still wasn't listening. Because America suffered from hubris: the belief that no nation could have surpassed its technology in developing the seeds of apocalypse. And because it suffered from conceit: if we couldn't develop bioweapons, no one could. And finally, because America believed it could and would retaliate if attacked.

  The question must now be asked, who was the enemy? How would the US know if it had even been attacked? Could drug resistant TB be a biological attack? What about Mad Cow Disease in Britain? Russia's payback for destroying their economy? Despite Clinton's lobbying, America, as Williams had said, was woefully, even criminally unp
repared for a BW attack.

  McCabe slowed his pace. The altered rhythm brought his mind back to the present. He looked across at the buildings. Even now, task forces were shaking the cobwebs off their informants, chasing leads on overseas and domestic terrorists, militia groups, religious cults and rogue states. They were wasting their time, because the Consortium was simultaneously working to bias information. And the Consortium, which included people like Williams, were fanatics only in their patriotism. They were out to prove unequivocally to a Republican-biased and agonizingly parochial Congress that any American city could successfully be attacked with a BW agent. By using a chimera, such a 'demonstration' could not be dismissed as a natural outbreak. The aim was not to hurt America or American citizens; indeed, the purpose was to protect them and the American way of life. The demonstration must therefore kill a significant proportion of an exposed population-but not in the US. To ensure the infection could not spread, exposure must be on a discrete group with no access to the outside world: controlled and contained. That narrowed the parameters. A lot.

  A map. He needed a map and weather reports.

  Inside the newly designated situation room a dozen agents and technicians were hovering over computers and telephones, doing what the FBI knew best-poking around peoples' lives.

  In one corner hung a large world map. Clustered nearby were Peter Brant, David Wilson, Commander Chuck Long, and Dr Jordan Spinner. The table was cluttered with laptops, notes, and coffee cups. In front of them, writing on a large white board, stood Susan Broadwater. McCabe's gaze fell to her hips. She was the only woman he knew who could make military fatigues look sexy. No point going there. Safer to stare at the coffee pot.

  "Developing a hybrid is one thing," Spinner was saying. "Weaponising it is something else again. Except for anecdotal evidence from UNSCOM and Ken Alibek, the Russian defector, there's no absolute proof that a chimera, by definition a delicate organism, has been weaponised. The Aum sect tried it with botulinium-"

  Wilson snorted dismissively. "They were a bunch of fuck ups."

  "Hello, Josh," said Susan. Her eyes travelled to his damp hair, and she smiled knowingly. "Have you met Dr Spinner, yet?"

  Spinner also looked at him. Her eyes were calculating rather than hostile. And she was still wearing the watch cap that he'd given her. He nodded and poured himself a coffee.

  "Still hot?" Wilson's eyebrows arched curiously.

  McCabe walked to the map beside the white board. There were a hell of a lot of islands in the world. "Yeah," he replied absently, running his hand down through the Gulf of Mexico. "So, Dr Spinner, let's assume for a moment that our most paranoid delusions are real, and someone successfully weaponised the chimera. We're looking for an isolated area with a small population and highly controlled access."

  "Why?" He heard the scrape of her chair against the floor. "I thought the point of the demonstration was for major impact?"

  "The Consortium isn't a terrorist organisation."

  "It isn't?" Spinner came to join him at the map. The expression on her face was incredulous.

  From the corner of his eye, McCabe saw Broadwater shake her head, a polite warning to be civil. Sure, he could do that. "The goal of terrorism is to undermine all aspects of Western society. This attack has nothing to do with terrorism. On the contrary, it's about demonstrating the efficacy of a weapon in a controlled environment."

  "Which requires a ninety to one hundred percent nuking of a small population." Chuck Long had also come to stare at the map. Focussing on where McCabe was pointing, he added, "You're ruling out the continental US?"

  "European nations are just as paranoid about BW," countered Wilson. "We're certain the Consortium is not limited to Unites States citizens. What's Williams story, anyway?"

  "He was a zealous patriot," McCabe replied. He dropped his hand and turned around. Wilson was rummaging around a box of papers on the table. "Williams was fastidious, pedantic, believed in the death penalty, and had zero tolerance for fools. He also believed that the US justice system was so hobbled by civil liberties campaigners that it had become hopelessly ineffective. When it came to serial killers, Williams was convinced that only shock tactics would have any impact on the community, hence his penchant for releasing grisly reports to the media. I'm not moralizing his behaviour, but he acted that way in order to catch the perpetrators, and in turn, protect potential victims."

  "Extensive background checks on Williams and all known associates are being undertaken as we speak," Brant reminded everyone. "Although nothing stands out yet, it's only a question of time before we find something."

  Unable to hold back a dismissive grunt, McCabe replied, "You won't find a damned thing. Williams knew how to cover his tracks. Better yet, he knew how to mess with your heads."

  "You worked with him for years," said Spinner. "Why-?"

  "Didn't I see this coming? I'm a profiler, not a mind-reader."

  "There's a difference?" Wilson muttered, still poking around the box.

  Ignoring him, McCabe continued, "Picking at Williams' behaviour to create a profile of his fellow conspirators is of only limited value."

  Finally pulling out whatever it was he was looking for, Wilson retorted, "C'mon, background checks are the FBI's meat and potatoes. Right?"

  McCabe sipped the coffee. Not bad. "Williams wrote the book on profiling. And the book said he was too arrogant to kill himself, so he went ahead and did just that."

  "To protect his fellow conspirators."

  "No." McCabe corrected. "He wasn't worried about being interrogated. Suicide was totally out of character. He did it because couldn't resist one last mind-fuck of his erstwhile protégé."

  "That's a little egocentric, Josh." Susan replaced the lid on the marker pen and dropped it on the table. "Even for you."

  "You have no idea, no idea, how his mind worked." McCabe spun around to face her. "Nobody here does. And you have no idea of the obsessive, pathological hatred he had for me." He saw Spinner's expression. "Yeah," he added, meeting her look. "Everyone here is thinking exactly the same thing. That I'm an arrogant son of a bitch."

  Spinner's mouth opened in surprise, but she didn't avert her gaze.

  "I've already submitted a profile on Williams," McCabe added. "But I'll connect the dots for you. Background checks will find his computer hard drive erased and not a scrap of paper in his house, not even a Con Ed bill that could indicate his movements or contacts outside of normal day-to-day work. He has no safety deposit boxes, no hidden safes, not one item that could link him in any way to anything or anyone suspicious. His credit card bills will show nothing but normal purchases. His other bank accounts will offer no insight. His car might show unusual mileage, but all gas purchases for any activity he wished to hide would have been in paid for in cash, and he would have set up meetings in different locations so no one would remember him. His office files will be entirely work related, with nothing personal in them. After his wife died, he didn't have a life outside of work so the best you'll get from them are volumes of psychobabble.

  "Williams lived in his mind," he continued, aware that Brant was watching him with a calculating look. "Everything catalogued and checked, cross referenced and carefully tucked away. Only the loyal cadre who worked for him saw glimpses of that-and I'll be talking to them later today. Still, they only saw what Williams wanted them to see. He played mind games with everyone, not just criminals and suspects, but with his peers, his superiors, and me, because that's what he did, that's who he was. He was a master craftsman at it and he got off on it. He could have pleaded insanity on Adams murder, and denied any connection whatsoever to Oklahoma, and there would be no way to prove otherwise.

  "Sure, Williams was insane, just not in that way. He did not think in a linear fashion and he never did things for one reason alone. He defined the antithesis to Occam's Razor."

  "The sniper was targeting him," Spinner said thoughtfully. "Another two seconds-"

  "Very good, Dr Spinner.
" She had picked up on the obvious detail that eluded everyone else. "Williams saw the sniper trace, so he had to kill himself then . Think about it," he added at Wilson's dubious look. "Williams knew he was a dead man. Even if he'd surrendered, he wouldn't have lasted an hour in custody. Yes, I am implying that someone within this building-FBI, Marine, CIA-would have taken him out, because I know for certain that at least one person present at this morning's meeting is in deep with the Consortium, or had explicit instructions from them. Williams hated waste, and he couldn't stand the thought of his death being wasteful, so he used it to maximize confusion by doing something so totally out of character, so totally unexpected that it would drive every profiler who ever worked with him nuts, forcing us to second-guess every assumption we've ever made about him.

  "Williams believed that Adams was dead and that I knew nothing. He wanted me alive only because he could play one last mind game with me, with everyone . That appealed to him far more than seeing me dead."

  "So what are you saying?" Brant pushed his notepad aside and leaned back in the chair. The legs creaked dangerously under his weight. "That investigating Williams, profiling him, will get us nowhere?"

  "No, he made mistakes. He neither recognised nor understood his own insanity, he didn't make certain that Adams was dead, and he didn't kill me."

  "Why did Williams hate you?" Spinner crossed her arms and leaned against the whiteboard, smudging one of Susan's carefully drawn lines.

  "You think knowing that will lend you insight into his motivations?" McCabe took another sip of his coffee, then decided to down it all before it went cold.

  "You're the profiler, you tell us."

  From around the rim of his mug, McCabe noticed Brant's eyes flicker. How much had Reynold told him? More to the point, how much did Brant believe? Placing his empty cup on the table, he replied, "I had something of a…talent for catching serial killers, a talent Williams desired. He wrote the book on the subject and I used…methods not in that book."