Nodding gratefully to the FBI agent-he was sure the figure behind the plastic facemask was a Fed-Mike picked up his carryon and laptop.
"We're going to have to ask you to leave them, sir. It will be necessary to disinfect the aircraft and all of the bags separately."
Reluctantly leaving the laptop behind, Mike followed the agent into an otherworldly white-cocooned container lined with bench seats. Katie sat close beside him. He knew that she'd weathered too many horrible diseases and witnessed too many tragic deaths for this to rattle her. Still, when he'd broken the news that all those initially sick, including Tom Kaleo, were now dead, he'd seen the tears in her eyes. These people had been her friends, her family. She no doubt felt as if she'd deserted them and her colleagues in their time of need. Worse, inadvertently or not, she might have carried the deadly virus into the outside world.
Only the Fed who'd spoken joined them in the cabin. He waited until the hatch closed before saying, "I'm sorry about the delay in getting to the aircraft. It took a while setting up everything. I'm Agent Wilson."
"FBI?"
"DIA."
Well, that confirmed what he'd suspected. And dreaded. "All right, Agent Wilson DIA, what the hell is this thing? It's been-" Mike glanced at his watch. "Twenty-five hours since we left Mathew Island and neither one of us show symptoms."
"Dr Sturgess also remains asymptomatic," replied Wilson. "We have no idea what this 'thing' is. It could be weeks before you fall ill."
Mike glowered at him. "Don't bullshit me. I told your boss you'd better be up to speed!"
"Or what, Doctor? As of this moment you will be held incommunicado."
Katie gasped. Rising from his seat, Mike barked, "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Special Supervisory Agent Brant is not my boss. He is, however-"
"Running the investigation. And you're with the DIA. Those two things and that spell one thing." Mike stabbed a finger at equipment labelled USAMRIID "A biological weapon. When will you have the blood samples that Nate gave me?"
Wilson's expression was clearly visible behind the hood's plastic faceplate. "I was asked to tell you what we know," he replied. "Health authorities in Vanuatu have refused to forward the samples to us. Instead they put them on a charter flight to Noumea. From there, they were shipped to the Louis Pasteur Institute in France. Near as we can figure, it will be at least another twenty-four hours before USAMRIID or the CDC can get their hands on a sample. And that's no guarantee. There are already rumblings from within the French government that the samples may not be released. The French are more than pissed at the way this entire situation is being handled. Although Sturgess informed the WHO and CDC simultaneously, apparently the WHO doesn't check their email that often. Now the French claim they were deliberately kept in the dark until it hit the news services. The guy running Vila base hospital, Gene Marshall and a politician in Vanuatu have both denied that there's any outbreak, although they admit that there's an escalating incidence of haemorrhagic dengue."
The container they were in bumped to a halt. Grinding and lifting motions followed as they were moved onto another truck. Wilson explained they were being taken to a special military hospital at an undisclosed location.
"Jesus," muttered Mike, sitting down again. "And I though Mount Rainer would cause nightmares. Still, none of this explains why we can't talk to anyone."
"My family are expecting me in Seattle tonight," Katie said, wrapping her arms about herself. Mike reached over and took her hand again.
"The families of everyone aboard the quarantined flights are being notified."
"Flights?" Mike's head snapped around.
"Every aircraft that departed Vila or Nadi after you passed through the airports has been quarantined. Flights into and out of Vanuatu and Fiji have been diverted or suspended."
Mike ran a hand across his head and face. Shit. The world was jittery after Kikwit; but for airlines and governments to move that fast when they had no idea what sort of outbreak… He stared at Wilson and said in a soft, flat voice, "You know exactly what this is, don't you?"
"Honestly?" Wilson's face screwed up. "No. No one does."
"But it's some sort of weapon, right?"
Wilson's tone changed, and he sounded like a cop reading them their Miranda rights. "Our number one primary is to contain the outbreak, and we believe we have achieved that. But we cannot risk anyone thinking this is a weaponised biological agent. It's now a national security matter and until the immediate risk is assessed and your cooperation is assured, you will not be allowed to communicate with anyone outside the quarantine facility."
The DIA were more than capable of making him and Katie disappear and then regretfully informing their families and colleagues that they had succumbed to the disease. He glanced at Katie. She'd sucked her lips into her mouth, but her expression was determined. "What do I have to sign?" she said.
A ghost of a smile crossed Wilson's face. "Once we arrive at the facility, we'll do a full blood workup on you both. There's always a possibility that Sturgess made a mistake; it could be haemorrhagic dengue."
"No." Katie was emphatic. "Nate wrote the definitive papers on haemorrhagic dengue. Gene Marshall, on the other hand, is an incompetent bully, except when he's being a professional sycophant."
Despite himself, Mike grinned. Katie was no wilting violet. "All right, Agent Who Doesn't Work For The FBI, you've got my full cooperation-on one condition. I get my laptop and bags. I've got a stack of data recorders that need analyzing. If I'm gonna be locked up for the next-well, however long this is gonna take-at least let me get some work done."
Wilson's smile was full-bodied this time. "We'll make sure you get everything you want by tomorrow morning. Now, I want to go over every step you took from the moment you left Mathew Island."
-Chapter 23-
Christchurch, New Zealand
Dispersal: Plus 4 days
"This is fucking insane!" Susan Broadwater's fists clenched in fury.
Brant's voice sounded tinny through the speakerphone. "I agree, Major, but we're not going to get you into either New Caledonia or Vanuatu until we have hard evidence of something other than haemorrhagic dengue. The United passengers bought us a reprieve, not proof."
McCabe turned away in disgust. By their nature, governments were slow-witted entities, made numbingly stupid by the bureaucracies that maintained them. But inject a healthy dose of terror into an equation, and governments became capable of acting with the same lightning reflexes as individuals. In the case of the French New Caledonian and Vanuatu governments, the dominant reflex was adamant denial-on all counts. Both countries insisted that they did not have a deadly outbreak on their hands, and both refused permission for the USS California to enter the territorial waters around Mathew Island.
The official explanation for the denial of entry cited the fact that the California was nuclear powered, and the Pacific island nations were, like New Zealand, nuclear-free zones. This bizarre volte-face by the French government, who popped off nukes in the Pacific with gay abandon, was not lost on anyone. But the French were claiming the moral high ground, because of the US government's hysterical over-reaction to a 'relatively minor' outbreak of dengue fever.
Every other government was now acting with equally lightning reflexes. Flights and cruises were cancelled, and tourists still in Vanuatu and Fiji were left to demand assistance from their respective embassies. The economic consequences for nations heavily dependent on tourism were dire. With the exception of journalists looking for a post-Kikwit story, nobody wanted to go anywhere near either country.
Vanuatu and New Caledonia were also mightily ticked off at the 'unwarranted entry into its air space by the New Zealand Air Force, at the behest of the US government'. And the Kiwi's weren't too chuffed about having to mollify their chronically hypersensitive northern neighbours. Meanwhile, over a thousand airline passengers in nine countries were under, or about to go under, strict quarantine while their aircrafts,
which had departed Fiji after Warner and Wood had passed through Nadi airport, were grounded subject to decontamination.
For several tense hours, Assistant Director Reynolds' head had been on the Attorney General's chopping block, with Brant's lined up right behind. The State Department had crowed to the White House that it had advised against issuing the Ebola alert, adding in a private aside, 'this is what happens when you play on our turf.'
Then the United passengers began falling ill.
The State Department abruptly went mute. Every country with quarantined passengers crowed about its foresight in quarantining passengers inbound from Fiji. Vanuatu and New Caledonia alone stubbornly maintained that the disease was not Ebola, but dengue. Meanwhile, the response team had wasted an entire day sitting around an aircraft hangar in Christchurch, New Zealand, watching service personnel load crates into a Hercules bound for Antarctica.
Brant had then called from DC to update the team. "As for how this virus reached Mathew Island," he added. "We've traced the movements of all commercial and private international flights. Apart from Vanuatu's domestic carrier, no aircraft has been anywhere near the island for months-it's miles from regular routes."
"Given Sturgess' reports, distribution of the virus appears to have been too even, too widespread to be anything but aerial," said Susan. "That means a long-range aircraft with sophisticated delivery systems. Military. Forget civilian aircraft movements; trace all military aircraft in this region."
"What was the time lapse between the vulcanologist boarding the United flight and the first symptoms appearing in their passengers?" McCabe asked.
"A pregnant woman was sick at twenty hours," replied Brant. "Between twenty-four and twenty-seven seven hours for the others."
Rapidly calculating backwards from the time Tom Kaleo had become symptomatic, McCabe said, "Check aircraft movements around December Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, local time."
"Include Australian and New Zealand aircraft," Spinner said. "This is our region, after all."
Susan shook her head. "They don't have bioweapons or play footsie with Iraq."
Spinner's eyebrows lifted. "The French do. On both counts."
" Now you're getting it, Dr Spinner," McCabe replied in a low voice.
"Has the CDC received those blood samples from Mathew Island yet?" Susan added.
"No." The grumble in Brant's voice was unmistakable even through the speaker. "Another black mark against the French."
"You have the sick United passengers," Spinner suggested, crossing her arms. "What about samples from them?"
"Secondary infection." Susan's face creased in a frown. "That will let us see the virus, but to figure out where they came from, who made this thing, we need a sample of the original weaponised particles. We have to get to Mathew Island!"
"There's the United aircraft and the human carriers, Warner and Wood," McCabe said.
Susan rolled her eyes at him. "Josh, you know better than that. Trying to find a chimera particle on them would be like looking for a particular and as yet unidentifiable grain of sand in the Persian Gulf."
He smiled slyly. "The French don't know that."
A cunning look across Susan's face. "You may not appreciate it, Josh, but not only do you have your father's sense of humour, you also think like him."
"All right," Brant replied. "Another few hours will tell us if these United passengers have something besides dengue. If that's the case, we'll have the French by their diplomatic balls. McCabe? There's no indication of tampering in the evidence room or the files related to that. However, Agent Adams' personal computer has been sanitized. Nothing in his notes or diary indicates he was working on anything other than his assigned job either the night, or the morning prior to his death."
The vast bulk of the evidence to be used in the McVeigh trial was not, as the public assumed, related to the technical aspects of the bombing or tying McVeigh to the crime. The Attorney General was going for the one thing every judge and defence attorney warned jurors not to consider: the emotive impact of the victims. This trial wasn't about convicting McVeigh. Whether the public knew it or not, they were already in the sentencing phase.
There was, however, another kind of evidence, and it was right there in the same aircraft hangar room as McCabe. Chuck Long's nephew had been killed and so had Tina Giovanni's sister, but neither of them had lived or worked with any of the victims. And neither of them had been in the building. McCabe's predatory eyes slid to Spinner. "Working on it," he replied.
"One last thing, McCabe" Brant said. "The Perrier water."
Even the name was sufficient to evoke memories. Avoiding Spinner's penetrating gaze, he replied. "Chilled, with a dash of lemon."
Ignoring the wisecrack, Brant added, "It was placed there by one of the canteen staff-because of a cell phone call supposedly coming from me. I'm chasing it down, but don't expect much."
"Probably the same person that sterilized Adams' computer."
"Perrier?" Susan shot him an odd look.
"Someone put it in my glass at the first briefing in Quantico," he explained.
It took her several seconds to make the connection, then she paled.
Like the South Africans, the Consortium had been smart not to draw attention to itself. Sterilizing Adams' computer and ordering the Perrier, a childish ploy designed to rattle him, were like neon signs. Williams would be rolling in his grave at the stupidity of such a ham-fisted ploy.
When the call ended, Spinner went to leave, but McCabe took her by the elbow.
"Agent," she said neutrally, stopping and turning to look up at him.
"Oklahoma."
Her expression froze, then her nostrils flared in anger. "You going to play Brant's game?"
"You think he made that story up, about McVeigh being a pawn, just to get you on board?" McCabe almost smirked.
"I think I'm standing in the middle of an aircraft hangar wasting time," she retorted.
"Then tell me what you were working on in Oklahoma."
"Listen, Agent McCabe, I'm prepared to do anything- anything -to find out who's behind this. But I can't help you unless you tell me what the hell is going on. This investigation is no longer about Oklahoma, but about a conspiracy, a bioweapon, and a bunch of people you refer to as the Consortium. Unless I understand how those people and events are connected, you're going to have a bloody hard time digging anything useful out of my brain because believe me, I've been in there trying to find clues myself. You tell me where you're headed with this…conspiracy theory, and I'll let you crawl around inside my skull all you want."
He looked around the busy hangar. "Let's get out of here."
A few minutes later they were seated in the Antarctic Exhibition Centre's restaurant, just across the road. Although it was well into the evening, the sun had not yet set in the high latitude's summer sky. A Haglund pulled up just outside and disgorged some laughing tourists. Then a six-foot penguin waddled past their table, stuffed and mounted in the arms of a beleaguered looking father. Mum and the kids followed with food trays and excitement.
McCabe sipped his cappuccino. Spinner's scarred head drew a few stares from the penguin's owners, but as she'd said, he was more interested in what was tucked away inside her skull than what covered the outside. "Timothy McVeigh had agendas that coincided with the plans of other considerably more powerful and less visible individuals, including those within our own government."
"I've heard every conspiracy story in the book-and then some-about Oklahoma, but it'll take a lot to convince me the US government was somehow involved."
"Not the government," he corrected. "Individuals connected to the government going back more than a quarter of a century. Was your apartment robbed while you were in the hospital?"
"I suspect you know it was." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not a child to be coddled into adopting a perspective that you need to vindicate one of your theories. Spill it or I'm gone."
He licked the froth from his lips
. "Do you remember when you were trapped in the rubble, fireman and rescue crews had to clear the area twice, because they'd found other, undetonated bombs?"
"The Customs Service kept a dummy TOW missile in the Murrah Building. The missile was marked live because you don't paint 'dummy' on a missile when you're dealing with suspected arms and drug traffickers. As a member of the investigative team, McCabe, you should know that and also that there's a gag order on the information because it could undermine current and future Customs stings. The public heard about the missile before the gag order. Next thing, it's a conspiracy."
"The gag order is to cover Customs' butts; no one likes the idea that they kept missiles, live or otherwise, a couple of floors above the Day Care Centre," he replied. "However, that in itself is a convenient cover to what they really found. Did you read the transcripts from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol's radio dispatch logs?"
Frowning, Spinner shook her head.
"Actual transcripts are available; I'll get you a copy when we get back to DC. Remember, the TOW missile was kept on the western side of the building. It wasn't until after they'd removed the missile that an officer radioed that there was another bomb-not a missile-on the south side. At 10:37am the Fire Department confirmed a second device in the building, ordered the immediate evacuation of all rescue workers, and troopers to move all civilian personnel back one more block.
"The log entry at Forces Command, Fort McPherson, Georgia for April Nineteen at 11:57am then stated, 'Two more explosive devices were located in the vicinity of the explosion site-evidently intended for the rescuers.' Ask Agent Wilson, and he'll tell you that a DIA Atlantic Command memo from Norfolk, Virginia-these guys have a fair idea of the difference between an explosives package and a dummy warhead-for April Twenty, stated, 'A second bomb was disarmed, a third bomb was evacuated.' Finally, the FEMA Situation Report, also for April Twenty, reads: 'Second and third bombs were located in the building. The second bomb was disarmed and the third bomb was evacuated.' Interestingly and perhaps more pertinently, there was never any retraction or correction of any of these logs or memos; something that regularly occurs when new information comes to hand."
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