McCabe all but slammed his coffee cup onto the table and ran back across his head in a gesture of frustration. "No doubt you noticed the glaring absence of Tissot's photos in the reports that you read." Leaping from the couch, he went to his computer desk, opened the drawer, withdrew a crumpled fax, came back and handed it to her. "Meet Dr Death-Albrecht Tissot."
She examined the image of the man whose work featured so strongly in her research on bioweapons, trying to divine something, some obvious evil in his bland expression.
"Now look at the photographs on the second last page of the album," McCabe added.
Turning the pages back, Jordan stared in dismay. Less wrinkled and with more hair, the same man was standing with his arms around two teenage boys. One was obviously Joshua McCabe. The second was an older, slightly stocker version.
"Tissot was a close family friend whom my brother and I called 'Uncle Albert'-Albert Kraft," McCabe continued.
He wiped a hand across his mouth-another nervous gesture, which was beginning to alarm Jordan. McCabe was never nervous.
"This photo was taken the week that Ed and I spent with him in Kinshasa, just before going upriver," he said, looking down at the open page of the album. "My father must have already known the pattern of distribution of Ebola, so the cocky son of a bitch would have 'known' that my mother and I would be safe! But Uncle fucking Albert infected me. I was the one who brought it into the village. I was their living, breathing carrier of their goddamned fucking experimental bioweapon!" He abruptly strode into his bedroom.
For several moments, Jordan was too stunned to react. "McCabe?" She called, going to his bedroom door. When he didn't answer, she took a hesitant step in.
It was dark in the room. She'd never been there before, but she knew the layout from a few passing glances. In the residual light from the living room, she saw him standing at the window, looking out into the night. The thin scabs over her emotions had been picked at today, but the anguish she'd seen on his face surpassed even her own. Walking in, she gently grasped his shoulder and said, "Josh, you weren't responsible. You couldn't have known."
A shudder rippled through his body. Jordan had once thought him cold, lacking emotions, but since Oklahoma she had become the same. As her hair grew out, most of the unmarried and a few married male members of the investigative team had tried, like Nate, to edge closer, but she quickly developed a reputation for aloofness, coldness. Like McCabe. Some considered them a well-matched pair.
He wasn't looking for sympathy; he'd resent it as much as she would, but she understood him and his need for her now. "Tell me about it?"
Without turning, he said, "Nothing to tell. Places like that, Spinner, they're used to diseases like Lassa, Marburg-Jesus, there are more haemorrhagic viruses than you can count. They'd normally hit, kill, and vanish back into the jungle before the outside world was any the wiser. Villages traditionally imposed a self-quarantine and then torched everything to stop the spread. Something as bad as Ebola normally burned itself out before it could spread.
He snorted. "But you know what breaks me up? Every time my old man looked at me, it was with loathing. He always made me think it was my fault." McCabe squeezed his eyes shut, bit his lip and whispered, "And the hell of it was, he was right. But he had to have figured out that I'd been deliberately infected. Maybe not straight way, but later. Damn him to hell, he knew who Tissot was. Dad must have guessed what he was doing because he was just as hip-deep in developing BW technology himself!"
The tears finally broke free. McCabe slowly collapsed onto the floor, and Jordan pulled him into her arms, holding him close as he sobbed. It seemed to her that years of bottled up grief had finally been let loose. To be used like that… What sort of father would then allow his son to carry the burden of blame? But McCabe had already given her the answer. "Your father was part of the Consortium." She closed her eyes and held him close. In was incomprehensible to her that anyone could have chosen that road. "Why?"
He was quiet for a time, and then he said, "I grew up in the middle of a jigsaw coloured with moral greys. My life was mixed up amongst the pieces, but I never saw the pattern. And after Zaire, I deliberately chose not to."
Lifting his head, he stared up and out of the window. A bitter smile twisted his lips and he added, "You saw how easily it can seduce you; the first day we met. It had long since seduced my father. Imagine what it was like. You spend your entire life dedicated to something that the government told you was vitally important, because the Reds were doing the same. Hell, it was your patriotic duty. Then, one day, without any warning, the same government orders you to chuck away your life's work. Not only that, want you to burn it, destroy it as if it never existed-and go play golf or something."
As much as Jordan wanted to believe that researching bioweapons was intrinsically abominable, and that she would never have gone down such a career path, the way that McCabe explained it, there but for the grace of God and one generation…
"At the time," he continued, still looking out the window, "a lot of people believed it was un-American, plain and simple, to tear up and burn research. Tantamount to book burning, Dad said. Nixon was a fool and everyone knew it. Abandoning BW research would make us vulnerable to what everyone but the CIA were convinced were very active BW programmes in secretive, repressive regimes like China, Russia and North Korea." He took a deep breath and blew it out forcefully. "And history has shown us that they were right. Meanwhile, BW researchers were tinkering with haemorrhagic viruses collected in South America and Africa, unaware that the South Africans were ahead of everyone. Tissot must have been laughing his goddamned head off, watching everyone chasing their tails, trying to get samples of the 'natural' outbreak of Ebola in 1976, while the CDC were simultaneously trying to stop it in its tracks. That was the beauty of it, you see. Ebola is a naturally occurring virus."
Although he did not withdraw from her arms, his refusal to meet her gaze seemed to be a way of him distancing himself from her. Or perhaps he was so focussed on that gruesome that he did not see her. She gently stroked his back.
A bitter smile crossed his lips. "For the South Africans, having BW was about subtlety. Their ultimate goal was to attack by using an untraceable weapon, one that could be dismissed as an unfortunate but natural outbreak. For the Russians, it was about deterrent, because they couldn't compete with our nuclear arsenal. They filled intercontinental ballistic missile warheads with tons of anthrax and smallpox and botulinium, stuff that was dirt cheap to manufacture."
"And Iraq?" said Jordan. "What was in it for them?"
"Wrong question, Spinner. What was in it for the men in our government who viewed Nixon's 'criminal blunder' as a temporary aberration that would be rectified by the next administration?
"It's hard to hide a secret in a democratic society. Especially a secret that requires laboratories and manpower and complex technical support. Although Iraq was a signatory, it never ratified the BW treaty. Besides, nobody else was taking much notice of the treaty conditions, why should Iraq? Don't forget, Saddam only came to power in 1979 because of the help of the US administration. Back then we had a brand new Middle Eastern puppet and a whole lot of uninhabited desert. Just as importantly, Saddam runs a tight intelligence ship. Free speech and dissent were never part of his regime's vocabulary, and when it comes to things like testing BW, he's a moral leper. The Consortium, who figured that they'd only needed to bide their time until Nixon had gone, said to Saddam, Can we have a little of your desert to develop a few things? In exchange, we promise we'll share ."
He finally turned his head to meet hers, and she caught her breath at the pain in his eyes. He lifted his hand to her face, stroked her cheek and leaned down to-
Abruptly, his hand fell away and he withdrew. Confused, she reached up to touch him and said, "Josh-" But, eyes turning apologetic, he put a finger to her lips and took her hand away with his other.
In that moment she understood that ending this conversation in bed wo
uld have been a mistake. Or was it something more? Had the nightmares that stalked him stolen more than his childhood?
McCabe stood and walked into the bathroom, turned on the light, and stared at the vanity mirror for a moment before washing his face. The he resumed his explanation as if the last few moments, that almost intimacy, had never occurred. Jordan wasn't sure what disturbed her more, his words or his sudden and definitive drawing of that emotional line.
"Baby steps, Spinner. It wasn't anything untoward, at first. Test subjects were monkeys and dogs, just like they were back here in the States-still are, as you know from your work on the chimera. But then, the checks and balances that existed within the old US biowarfare development infrastructure eroded and crumbled. With no ethical constraints, people within the Iraqi regime were willing to assist with this extraordinarily lethal technology. France and the US were throwing research into Iraq in exchange for a share the biotechnological largesse. Let's face it; we'd already demonstrated our willingness to test BW on our own unwitting civilian population with Operation Large Coverage.
"Then Khomeini took Americans hostage at the Tehran embassy. Amongst diehard right-wing advocates like Robert Williams and my father, Jimmy Carter was considered more of a traitor than Nixon. Carter sat castrated and ineffectual while Iran thumbed its fundamentalist Moslem nose at the once mighty but now apathetic United States. We had, as some put it, become a nation of immoral weaklings, a fat and clumsy lion whose claws had been pulled."
Yanking a towel from somewhere unseen, McCabe ran it across his face, adding, "While the Consortium was congratulating itself for retaining our BW capacity, war broke out between Iraq and Iran. And so, our patriotic Consortium had a ready-made opportunity to do what every weapons' developer dreams of, a real live war to test their Frankenstein's tiny dolls."
He must have caught the look of repugnance on her face because his lips curled in a brief, knowing smile, and, walking back into the bedroom, added, "The US government wanted to ensure victory 'at any price'."
Standing, Jordan asked, "How could the Consortium have funded all this without anyone knowing?"
He made a sound of disgust and walked back to the window. Jordan could see outside to the streets below. The earlier rain lent an artificial freshness to the DC lights. "When it comes to black money," he said, "our government's sleight-of-hand abilities were honed during the Cold War. And the Consortium was-still is-a shadow part of our government. And they turned a blind eye when Hussein saw an easy way to rid himself of a few other pressing problems, like the Kurds and the Southern Marsh Arabs. But what no one planned on as Hussein turning rogue."
He turned and faced her again, his expression more like the one he habitually wore. His demons had been buried once again, but Jordan was hardly taking any notice, for her own anger was beginning to surge into focus.
"Then entire nations like South Africa and the Soviet Union started unravelling at the seams, he continued. "But while the old South African regime hid their technology in Tissot's garage and dreamed of the day when Die Organisasie would eradicate the black man from Africa, the BW technology, the scientists and the bugs the Russians had developed, spewed across the globe to the highest bidders.
"By then it was clear that the US had lost all control of Hussein. He knew we-and I mean the US, France and Russia-wouldn't move against him."
"Because you knew what he had. You'd helped him develop it!" The anger in her continued to grow.
"And Hussein knew the names of those in the Consortium, and he knew where the bodies were buried.
"UNSCOM was hobbled from the beginning. Not just by Hussein, but by Consortium, members working within the UN-French, Russian and American-to scuttle the inspections. They're shit-scared of the truth coming out. It's a cat-and-mouse game across a dozen nations, because equally, the Consortium wants the US to take BW technology very seriously, and it wants Iraq disarmed. And, just like Tissot wanted to turn back the clock and reinstate Apartheid, the Consortium wants the US government to return to the good old days before Nixon pulled the plug."
"That's insane! That would instantly trigger a biological arms race."
He shot her a look. "Too late, Spinner. You know that. When Clinton stepped up to the ball plate, he brought with him the approach of make the third world a better place by sharing the largesse and everyone will love America. It's a lot more cost-effective than bombing our enemies into the Stone Age, but it's also naïve. Rogue states like Iraq and North Korea are years ahead of the US in their BW programme. They have no interest in making the world, especially the parts inhabited by their own people, richer or better, because that would undermine their power base. The Consortium, people like Williams and my father and whatever other misguided 'patriots' are in on this-hell, for all I know half the people who were on that flight to New Zealand-are scared. Jesus, Spinner, Fort Detrick is practically in mothballs; USAMRIID has been downsized to a fraction of its original level, which is why Susan Broadwater has to go to the CDC cap in hand every time she wants to work with a Level 4 organism, and the CDC's facilities are so decrepit most of them should have been bulldozed years ago."
Snorting in disgust, he turned and switched off the bathroom light. "UNSCOM's scratching around the desert tuning up scraps. Sure, the top weapons inspectors aren't fooled. But to others, including a Republican dominated Congress, the lack of evidence is seen as proof that Iraq's biowarfare programme is defunct. Jesus, talk about affirming the consequence!" He folded his arms and shook his head in disgust. "Clinton knows that the new enemy is not a nation but an ideology that uses terrorism as a weapon. Fighting that hinges on the need to prevent radical Moslem organisations from acquiring bioweapons and other WMDs. But Congress keeps refusing to approve the legal authorities necessary to wage this war on terrorism."
Jordan leaned against the bed frame, almost light-headed. He was right, terrifyingly right-not just about the CDC, but everything else as well. The Consortium, the vigilantes, had decided on a wakeup call. And to protect themselves from discovery, they had-what? She grabbed his arm and demanded, "Blowing up a building just to kill five potential witnesses-"
"Hours before the bombing, the head of the Saudi Intelligence Service called the CIA's former chief of Counterterrorism Operations to report that Saddam Hussein had hired terrorists to bomb the Murrah Building."
"The Saudis warned us?" Her grip on his arm tightened.
A look of sympathy crossed his face. In all the time that she had known McCabe, she had never seen that expression, and it made her gut crawl. " What ?"
"Think about it, Spinner. Given the number of people who normally worked in that building, a hell of a lot more than one hundred and sixty eight should have lost their lives. ATF and other federal agents, hell, even the judge who initially presided over the McVeigh case had found pressing reasons not to be in the building at the moment the bomb was detonated-they'd been tipped off on their pagers."
Jordan had thought her emotions had been pummelled to the point of numbness, but each new revelation had its own impact. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing . A few people were alerted, fewer killed, but Williams said, Sacrifices have to be made . These were not good men, and all they had to do was-nothing.
Her anger finally burst open and she grabbed McCabe by the arms and tried to shake him. "They knew and warned a precious few, and they let kids, my son , be butchered…. fallout in some twisted plan to 'protect' the American people from bioweapons that they themselves had developed! Who killed my husband and son, McCabe?" The pain of unshed tears-tears she thought had dried up and withered along with her soul-fractured her voice as she demanded, "You've known all along your father was involved and you never told me! Who are these people, McCabe? Who are they ?"
The feel of his arms around her only inflamed her further. She tried to pull away from him, but he held her tightly until she no longer had the strength to battle him. She wanted to keep yelling at him, to demand
the answers, but a persistent kernel of logic railed at her. He was as much a victim as she.
He was taking again, explaining his father had joined the CDC's Special Pathogen's Unit-or so he'd thought until reading Tissot's journals. McCabe released her, walk back into the living room and, selecting another photo album from the shelf, he began turning the pages.
Following him, she said, "And when the American public learnt the truth?"
"The American people have an unquenchable thirst for conspiracies, from Roswell to JKF to Elvis," he replied, intent on whatever it was he was looking for. "The various Oklahoma conspiracies are just more urban myths to be discounted by anyone but simpletons and the gullible supermarket tabloid set."
"But what about the evidence?" Jordan said, desperate to clinging to anything of substance. "Williams killed Adams because of what Adams knew!"
"Adams wasn't much of a field man, but he was dogged, determined, and he had an extraordinary eye for detail-which is why he was assigned to the evidence room in the McVeigh case. Internal surveillance tapes show him having dinner in the cafeteria with Williams, and Adams was very animated, even excited."
Apparently finding the page that he was looking for, McCabe looked up and added, Spinner, you had to have known Adams. He was about as excitable as a week-old corpse. But he admired Williams, respected him, and he must've found something so extraordinary, something that implied a conspiracy that he went to the one man he trusted.
"Williams would have told Adams not to act rashly, but to 'sleep on it', giving the Consortium time to deal with the problem. The next day, Adams didn't go to the evidence room, but he did go to his computer-and found the hard drive had been wiped clean. That's when he came to me. But that's just my opinion.
"And with Tissot's files gone, there's no supporting evidence," she said, trying to control the desperation in her voice.
Chimera Page 25
