"More or less. When I called him, I said, 'Harry, I've been talking with Patricia Davies Wilson about you.' To which he replied, 'Don't believe a thing that lying bitch says.' Then I asked, 'Is it true somebody told the DCI she was your personal mole over there?' And Harry replied, 'Go fuck yourself, Roscoe,' and hung up."
"I can see where losing one's personal mole in the CIA might be a trifle annoying," Waldron said. "But-judging from what you've told me about this lady-might one suspect she is what our brothers in the legal profession call 'an unreliable witness'?"
"Oh, yeah," Roscoe agreed. "But the other one, Dillworth, is different."
"How different?"
"Well, for one thing, everybody I talked to liked her, said she was really good at what she did, and was sorry she got screwed."
"How did she, figuratively speaking of course, 'get screwed'?"
"She was the CIA station chief in Vienna. She had been working on getting a couple of heavy-hitter Russians to defect. Really heavy hitters, the SVR rezident in Berlin and the SVR rezident in Copenhagen, who happen to be brother and sister. Dillworth was so close to this coming off that she had had Langley send an airplane to Vienna, and had them prepare a safe house for them in Maryland."
"And it didn't come off?"
"Colonel Castillo showed up in Vienna, loaded them on his plane, and flew them to South America."
"She told you this?"
"No. What actually happened was that Dillworth said she wasn't going to tell me what had happened, because I wouldn't believe it. She said she would point me in the right direction, and let me find out myself; that way I would believe it."
"Is this Russian defectors story true?"
"There's an Interpol warrant out for"-Roscoe stopped and consulted his organizer, and then went on-"Dmitri Berezovsky and Svetlana Alekseeva, who the Russians say stole several million euros from their embassies in Germany and Denmark."
"And you know that Castillo took these Russians to South America? How do you know?"
"My friend who is close to the DCI and doesn't like Ambassador Montvale told me that Montvale told the DCI that he was going to South America to get the Russians. And that when he got down there, Castillo told him the Russians had changed their minds about defecting."
"And you believe this?"
"I believe my friend."
"So what happened is that when Castillo stole the Russians from Dillworth, blew her operation, the agency canned her?"
"That got Dillworth in a little hot water, I mean when the Russians didn't come in after she said they were, but what got her recalled was really interesting. Right after this, they found the SVR rezident in Vienna sitting in the backseat of a taxi outside our embassy. He had been strangled to death-they'd used a garrote-and on his chest was the calling card of Miss Eleanor Dillworth, counselor for consular affairs of the U.S. embassy."
"Curiouser and curiouser," Waldron said. "The agency thought she did it?"
"No. They don't know who did it. But that was enough to get her recalled from Vienna. She thinks Castillo did it. Or, really, had it done."
"Why? And for that matter, why did he take the Russians? To Argentina, you said? He was turned? We have another Aldrich Ames? This one a killer?"
Aldrich Hazen Ames was the Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer convicted of selling out to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
"I just don't know, Chris. From what I've been able to find out about him, Castillo doesn't seem to be the traitor type, but I suppose the same thing was said about Ames until the FBI put him in handcuffs."
"And what have you been able to find out about him?"
"That he was retired at Fort Rucker, Alabama-and given a Distinguished Service Medal, his second, for unspecified distinguished service of a classified nature-on January thirty-first. He was medically retired, with a twenty-five percent disability as the result of a medical board at Walter Reed Army Hospital. That's what I got from the Pentagon. When I went to Walter Reed to get an address, phone number, and next of kin from the post locator, he wasn't in it.
"A diligent search by another friend of mine revealed that he had never been a patient at Walter Reed. Never ever. Not once. Not even for a physical examination or to have his teeth cleaned."
"And being the suspicious paranoid person you are, you have decided that something's not kosher?"
"I suppose you could say that, yes."
"What do these women want?"
"Revenge."
"Is Dillworth willing to be quoted?"
"She assures me that she will speak freely from the witness box, if and when Castillo is hauled before Congress or some other body to be grilled, and until that happens, speak to no other member of the press but me. Ditto for Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson."
"She has visions, in other words, of Senator Johns in some committee hearing room, with the TV cameras rolling, glaring at this Castillo character, and demanding to know, 'Colonel, did you strangle a Russian intelligence officer and leave him in a taxicab outside the U.S. embassy in Vienna in order to embarrass this fine civil servant, Miss Eleanor Dillworth? Answer yes or no.'"
Senator Homer Johns, Jr. (Democrat, New Hampshire), was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and loved to be on TV.
Roscoe laughed, and added, "'Would you repeat the question, Senator?'"
Waldron laughed, then offered his own answer: "'Senator, I don't have much of a memory. I've been retired from the Army because I am psychologically unfit for service. I just don't recall.'"
"'Well, then, Colonel, did you or did you not steal two Russians from under Miss Dillworth's nose and fly them to Argentina?'"
Roscoe picked it up: "'Two Russians? Senator, I don't have much of a memory,' et cetera."
Waldron, still laughing, reached into another drawer of his desk and came out with two somewhat grimy glasses and a bottle of The Macallan twelve-year-old single malt Scotch whisky.
He poured.
"Nectar of the gods," he said. "Only for good little boys and naughty little girls."
They tapped glasses and took a sip.
"That's not going to happen, Roscoe," Waldron said, "unless we make it happen. And I'm not sure if we could, or even if we should."
"In other words, let it drop? I wondered why you brought out the good whisky."
"I didn't say that," Waldron said. "You open for some advice?"
Roscoe nodded.
"Don't tell anybody what you're doing, anybody. If there's anything to this, and I have a gut feeling there is, there are going to be ten people-ten powerful people-trying to keep it from coming out for every one who'd give you anything useful."
Roscoe nodded again.
"I can see egg on a lot of faces," Waldron said. "Including on the face of the new inhabitant of the Oval Office. He's in a lose-lose situation. If something like this was going on under his predecessor, and he didn't know about it, it'll look like he wasn't trusted. And if he indeed did know there was this James Bond outfit operating out of the Oval Office, stealing Russian defectors from the CIA, not to mention strangling Russians in Vienna, and doing all sorts of other interesting, if grossly illegal, things, why didn't he stop it?"
"So what do you want me to do?"
"One thought would be for you to go to beautiful Argentina and do a piece for the Sunday magazine. You could call it, 'Tacos and Tangos in the Southern Cone.'"
Roscoe nodded thoughtfully, then said, "Thank you."
"Watch your back, Roscoe. The kind of people who play these games kill nosy people." [THREE] U.S. Army Medical Research Institute Fort Detrick, Maryland 0815 4 February 2007 There were three packages marked BIOLOGICAL HAZARD in the morning FedEx delivery. It was a rare morning when there wasn't at least one, and sometimes there were eight, ten, even a dozen.
This didn't mean that they were so routine that not much attention was paid to them.
Each package was taken separately into a small room in the rear of the guard post. There, the package
-more accurately, the container, an oblong insulated metal box which easily could have contained cold beer were it not for the decalcomania plastered all over it-was laid on an examination table.
On the top was a black-edged yellow triangle, inside of which was the biological hazard indicator, three half-moons-not unlike those to be found on the tops of minarets of Muslim houses of worship-joined together at their closed ends over a circle. Below this, black letters on a yellow background spelled out DANGER! BIOLOGICAL HAZARD!
Beside this-in a red circle, not unlike a No Parking symbol-the silhouette of a walking man was bisected by a crossing red line. The message below this in white letters on a red background was AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!
This was apparently intended to keep curious people from opening the container to have a look at the biological hazard. This would have been difficult, as the container was closed with four lengths of four-inch-wide plastic tape, two around the long end and two around the short. The tape application device had closed the tapes by melting the ends together. The only way to get into the container was by cutting the tape with a large knife. It would thus be just about impossible for anyone to have a look inside without anyone noticing.
Once the biological hazard package was laid on the table, it was examined by two score or more specially trained technicians. It was X-rayed, sniffed for leakage and the presence of chemicals which might explode, and tested for several other things, some of them classified.
Only after it had passed this inspection was the FedEx receipt signed. The package was then turned over to two armed security officers. Most of these at Fort Detrick were retired Army sergeants. One of them got behind the wheel of a battery-powered golf cart, and the other, after putting the container on the floor of the golf cart, got in and-there being no other place to put them-put his feet on the container.
At this point the driver checked the documentation to the final destination.
"Oh, shit," he said. "It's for Hamilton personally."
J. Porter Hamilton was the senior scientific officer of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute. It was said that he spoke only to God and the commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, but only rarely deigned to do so to the latter.
Although he was triply entitled to be addressed as "Doctor"-he was a medical doctor, and also held a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Oxford and a Ph.D. in molecular physics from MIT-he preferred to be addressed as "Colonel." He had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with the class of 1984 and thought of himself primarily as a soldier.
Colonel Hamilton had the reputation among the security force of being one really hard-nosed sonofabitch. This reputation was not pejorative, just a statement of the facts. Colonel Hamilton-a very slim, very tall, ascetic-looking officer whose skin was deep flat black in color-showed the security guards where he wanted the biological hazard container placed on a table in his private laboratory.
After they'd left, he eyed the container curiously. It had been sent from the Daryl Laboratory in Miami, Florida. Just who they were didn't come to mind. They had paid a small fortune for overnight shipment, which also was unusual.
He went to a closet, took off his uniform tunic, and replaced it with a white laboratory coat. He then pulled on a pair of very expensive gloves which looked like normal latex gloves, but were not.
"Sergeant Dennis!" he called. Dennis was a U.S. Army master sergeant, a burly red-faced Irishman from Baltimore who functioned as sort of a secretary to Colonel Hamilton. Hamilton had recruited him from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Hamilton, doing what he thought of as his soldier's duty, often served on medical boards at Walter Reed dealing with wounded soldiers who wanted-or who did not want-medical retirement. Dennis had been one of the latter. He did not wish to be retired although he had lost his left leg below the knee and his right arm at the shoulder.
There was no way, Hamilton had decided, that Dennis could return to the infantry. On the other hand, there was no reason he could not make himself useful around Building 103 at Fort Detrick, if that was the option to being retired. He made the offer and when Dennis accepted, he'd asked, "Can you arrange that, Colonel?"
"I can arrange it, Sergeant Dennis. The chief of staff has directed the Army to provide whatever I think I need for my laboratory. Just think of yourself as a human Erlenmeyer flask." Dennis appeared. "Sir?"
"What do we know of the Daryl Laboratory in Miami, Florida?"
"Never heard of it, sir."
"Good. I was afraid that I was suffering another senior moment. Right after we see what this is, find out who they are and why they sent me whatever this is."
"You want me to open it, Colonel?"
"I want you to cut the tape, thank you. I'll open it."
Dennis took a tactical folding knife from his pocket, fluidly flipped open the stainless-steel serrated blade, and expertly cut the plastic tape from the container.
Hamilton raised the lid.
Inside he found a second container. There was a large manila envelope taped to it, and addressed simply "Colonel Hamilton."
Hamilton picked up the envelope and took from it two eight-by-ten-inch color photographs of six barrel-like objects. They were of a heavy plastic, dark blue in color, and also looked somewhat like beer kegs. On the kegs was a copy of The Miami Herald. The date could not be read in the first shot, but in the second photograph, a close-up, it was clearly visible: February 3, 2007.
"My God!" Colonel Hamilton said softly.
"Jesus Christ, Colonel," Sergeant Dennis said, pointing. "Did you see that?"
Hamilton looked.
The envelope had covered a simple sign, and now it was visible: DANGER!!! BIOHAZARD LEVEL 4!!!
Of the four levels of biological hazards, one through four, the latter posed the greatest threat to human life from viruses and bacteria and had no vaccines or other treatments available.
Hamilton closed the lid on the container.
"Go to the closet and get two Level A hazmat suits."
"What the hell's going on?" Dennis asked.
"After we're in our suits," Hamilton said calmly.
Two minutes later, they had helped each other into the Level A hazmat suits. These offered the highest degree of protection against both direct and airborne chemical contact by providing the wearer with total encapsulation, including a self-contained breathing apparatus.
The suits donned by Colonel Hamilton and Master Sergeant Dennis also contained communications equipment that connected them "hands off" with each other, as well as to the post telephone system and to Hamilton's cellular telephone.
"Call the duty officer and tell him that I am declaring a potential Level Four Disaster," Hamilton said. "Have them prepare Level Four BioLab Two for immediate use. Have them send a Level Four truck here to move this container, personnel to wear Level A hazmat gear."
A Level Four BioLab-there were three at Fort Detrick-was, in a manner of speaking, a larger version of the Level A hazmat protective suit. It was completely self-contained, protected by multiple airlocks. It had a system of highpressure showers to decontaminate personnel entering or leaving, a vacuum room, and an ultraviolet-light room. All air and water entering or leaving was decontaminated.
And of course "within the bubble" there was a laboratory designed to do everything and anything anyone could think of to any kind of a biologically hazardous material.
Colonel Hamilton then pressed a key that caused his cellular telephone to speed-dial a number.
The number was answered on the second ring, and Hamilton formally announced, "This is Colonel J. Porter Hamilton."
"Encryption Level One active," a metallic voice said three seconds later.
Hamilton then went on: "There was delivered to my laboratory about five minutes ago a container containing material described as BioHazard Level Four. There was also a photograph of some six plastic containers identical to those I brought out of the Congo. On them was
lying a photo of yesterday's Miami newspaper. All of which leads me to strongly suspect that the attack on the laboratory-slash-factory did not-repeat not-destroy everything.
"I am having this container moved to a laboratory where I will be able to compare whatever is in the container with what I brought out of the Congo. This process will take me at least several hours.
"In the meantime, I suggest we proceed on the assumption that there are six containers of the most dangerous Congo material in the hands of only God knows whom.
"When I have completed my tests, I will inform the director of the CIA of my findings."
He broke the connection and then walked to the door and unlocked it for the hazmat transport people. He could hear the siren of the Level Four van coming toward Building 103. [ONE] Laboratory Four The AFC Corporation-McCarran Facility Las Vegas, Nevada 0835 4 February 2007 Laboratory Four was not visible to anyone looking across McCarran International Airport toward what had become the center of AFC's worldwide production and research-and-development activity.
This was because Laboratory Four was deep underground, beneath Hangar III, one of a row of enormous hangars each bearing the AFC logotype. It was also below Laboratories One, Two, and Three, which were closer to ground level as their numbers suggested, One being immediately beneath the hangar.
When Aloysius Francis Casey, AFC's chairman, had been a student at MIT, he had become friendly with a Korean-American student of architecture, who was something of an outcast because of his odd notion that with some exceptions-aircraft hangars being one-all industrial buildings, which would include laboratories, should be underground.
This had gotten J. Charles Who in as much trouble with the architectural faculty as had Casey's odd notions of data transmission and encryption had done the opposite of endearing him to the electrical engineering and mathematics faculties.
Years later, when Casey decided that he had had quite enough, thank you, of the politicians and weather of his native Massachusetts to last a lifetime, and wanted to move at least the laboratories and some of the manufacturing facilities elsewhere, he got in touch with his old school chum and sought his expertise.
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