“Listen to me,” Kazimi said. “Bacon does not understand what is at risk here. The Janus germ has mutated. He has lost control of it. The result will be a new plague, worse than polio, worse than smallpox, worse than AIDS. Millions of people will be eaten alive from the inside out.”
Kazimi turned toward the sea. In the distance a large tanker was churning north through the gray water.
“Thinking of trying to swim to that boat?” Burke asked. “You’ll freeze before you get fifty yards.” As if to emphasize that point, a sudden gust of wind kicked up, whipping their hair about. “You’d be far better off returning to Red Cliff with me.”
Kazimi sank to his knees, ignoring the rush of pain caused by barnacles digging into his skin.
“Please,” he said, his hands clasped together. “Please just let me go. You don’t understand what is at stake.”
“Go back and do your work,” Burke said, holding up the cell phone and speaking as if he were dealing with a schoolchild. “It’ll be easier for everyone involved.”
Kazimi looked up at the man fiercely.
“I can’t succeed,” he rasped.
“Repeat that?”
“You heard me. My theories were misguided. I was wrong. The Janus strain has beaten me. If I am indeed smart, then it is smarter—far smarter. As things stand, my efforts will continue not to succeed, and Janus will do what it will do.”
“I’ve heard enough, doctor.” Again he brandished the phone. “And believe me, Amy Gaspar is not the only one you care about who will die.”
“Burke, you can talk about death all you want. This is all about death. Do you wish to see my mice? Do you want to see for yourself what will happen to your wife if she were to become infected with Janus? You must let me go. You must help me get away from here so I can warn the president.”
“I said enough! In another minute I will make the call, and Dr. Gaspar will hang and it will have been your fault. We want you to succeed at what you’re doing here, Dr. Kazimi. What is it you need to make that happen? More equipment? More money? We will get it for you, whatever it is.”
“I need a miracle,” Kazimi said.
“I’ve got news for you, pal. You are the miracle. Now, tell me what you need.”
Kazimi again looked toward the sea. The ship was just vanishing in the distance, leaving a blanket of dark clouds in its wake.
I’ve got news for you, pal. You are the miracle.
“I need someone’s help,” Kazimi suddenly heard himself saying.
“Bacon has already offered you our best scientists,” Burke replied. “We’ll get them here ASAP.”
“No,” Kazimi said, shaking his head vehemently. “I don’t need your scientists. I need one of mine.”
“A name. Just give me a name.”
“His name is Humphrey Miller.”
CHAPTER 33
Benefits for those deemed less fortunate are organic. They spawn a feast of greed and corruption. Civil War pensions, for example, seemed a moral right, until they sprung a cottage industry of unscrupulous lawyers whose sole purpose was defrauding the federal government by securing pensions for those who had not earned them.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, Climbing the Mountain, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1941, P. 33
The FBI field office in Atlanta was a featureless, twelve-story office building nestled within a corporate industrial complex and approached via a series of wide, tree-lined streets. Vaill drove them around back to a controlled-access parking area, protected with chain-link fence, topped by barbed wire, and guarded by two armed men. Lou had multiple run-ins with the law during his drug-using days. None was pleasant, and every one made him feel as he did at that moment—like a hardened criminal. Vaill flashed the guards his credentials and the chain-link gate glided opened.
“What’s up with the barbed wire?” Lou asked. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Nice to know,” McCall said. “But just in case you decide otherwise, there’s no place you can go.”
The pit in Lou’s gut widened.
Vaill drove to a single-story redbrick outbuilding at the rear of the enclosure, and parked the sedan next to a large van with multiple antennae and satellite dishes on the roof. There were signs for an electronics repair shop, and the bay doors of an automotive repair facility. The two agents escorted him into the building by way of a side door and down a hallway to a small room with a drop ceiling and bile-yellow walls. Recessed fluorescent lighting reflected harshly off the white linoleum floor.
“Welcome to wonderland,” Vaill said with no humor. “This is the booking room.”
The space was no more than twelve feet to the back wall, where an electronic kiosk and a camera were set up for photographs and fingerprinting. Vaill and McCall bypassed the area and led Lou to a small alcove where they deposited their weapons into a metal lockbox.
“From booking to detention,” McCall said.
“So does this mean you’re going to uncuff me?”
“Just follow the white rabbit. You’re expected in the interview room.”
“Expected by whom?”
“Well, by us, of course.”
“In that case, you mean interrogation room, don’t you?”
Vaill returned a pleased-with-himself grin that gave Lou the shivers.
“Whatever works for you,” he said.
The interview room was even smaller than the booking room, with a table, three chairs, a box of Kleenex, three small plastic bottles of water, and not much else. There was a wall-mounted camera in one corner that provided a feed to a monitor on the other side of the door.
“You’re never alone in wonderland,” Vaill said, gesturing up to it.
The tight quarters, intense lighting, spartan furnishings, lingering body odors, and incompetent air circulation enhanced Lou’s sense of powerlessness. No doubt the setup was by design. Nice job.
“This is all useless,” he said. “I don’t know anything.”
Vaill, his face brooding and eyes unkind, forced him into a seat at the table, and roughly undid his handcuffs. Lou tried to get the blood flowing again by rubbing at the deep creases persisting on his aching wrists. His chair was slat-backed wood with a flat seat and no cushioning. Uncomfortable wouldn’t have done it credit.
Intimidate … terrify … control …
“Are you doing all right, doctor?” McCall asked.
Only then did Lou realize he was hyperventilating.
“No, I’m not doing all right. You guys are messing with me and I don’t like it, and I want to know what I’m doing here.”
The men sat down opposite him, their expressions disinterested.
“Look,” Vaill began. “We don’t want to do this dance. We’re on your side here. We want to help you out. But for us to help you, you’ve first got to help us.”
“How’s your buddy Duncan doing?” McCall asked. “You call him Cap, right?”
The statement was a warning. They knew things and could catch him in a lie.
“I wouldn’t know,” Lou said. “I’m here and not with him like I should be.”
“You two were running in the mountains when he fell. You do a lot of that trail running?”
They had to have seen Cap’s medical record. So much for HIPAA and patient confidentiality.
On absolute red alert, Lou merely nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about trying trail running myself,” McCall went on. “It’s a good workout, huh?”
“Go ask Cap,” Lou said. “Look, is this part where you guys act nice to me? We develop a rapport and I cave in? I’ve seen enough cop shows to know this act. Well, it’s not going to work. First of all, I don’t know anything that would be of interest to you. Second of all, I haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t belong here. Give me a phone and let me call a lawyer.”
“Where are you staying in Atlanta?” McCall asked.
Lou gave them the name of a hotel, but said he did not know the address.
“When did yo
u get here?”
“You mean this time? Five days ago.”
These two were clearly empowered to trample on civil rights if it suited their purpose.
“You right-handed or left?” Vaill asked.
“What has that got to do with anything? Okay, okay. I’m right. Now, what in the hell is this all about?”
Vaill and McCall were looking intently at his eyes. Suddenly Lou recalled a book he had read on neurophysiology that included a section on using eye movements to separate truth from lies. According to the authors, if a subject were stating a fact, his eyes tended to drift or flick to the right. If he were making up a story, it was more likely for them to move left, unless they were left-handed, in which case the telltale movements were reversed. The question about his hand preference strongly suggested Vaill and McCall were aware of that tidbit—probably from interrogation 101 in agent school. Now, by asking simple, easy-to-answer questions, they were establishing a baseline by which they could judge Lou’s physical response to telling the truth.
He sensed, correctly, that the softball questions were about to end.
“Did someone give you the bacteriophage theory?” Vaill asked.
Jesus!
For a few seconds Lou couldn’t breathe. Who in the hell were these guys? He half expected them to begin asking about Arlene Silver, his fourth-grade girlfriend.
“I came up with it myself,” he said as quickly and evenly as he could.
Humphrey! They have to be after him.
He tried to control his eye movements, but suspected he hadn’t succeeded.
Meanwhile, McCall’s expression gave Lou the feeling that this was his favorite part of the job.
“You’re going to stop lying to us, doctor,” the agent said. “Believe me, it’s not the right way to go.”
“We know you didn’t come up with this phage theory on your own,” Vaill added. “Where did you get your information?”
He spoke in an even, unflappable voice—the kind Lou used whenever he needed to calm an especially nervous patient. Lou had the sense that, like an ultra marathoner who could run hours on end without tiring, Vaill could do the same when it came to interrogating a suspect.
The older agent got up from his chair and came around to Lou’s side of the table. The stuffy, staged discomfort of the little room was becoming increasingly effective. Sweat was running down Lou’s spine. He knew what they were after now.
“Do you want to know what we think?” McCall said.
“Not really,” Lou answered.
“We think you guys are in a pickle. You’ve created a monster with this germ, but for whatever reason, you’ve lost control of it. So, now you’ve got all your smart medical guys tasked with developing a treatment before this nasty bug really breaks out.”
“What do you mean ‘you guys’?” Lou asked, all at once genuinely curious.
“Hey, we’re doing the talking!” Vaill snapped. “You’ll get your chance soon enough.”
“We don’t know how you got recruited into One Hundred Neighbors,” McCall went on, “but I promise sooner or later you’re going to tell us.”
“How long have you and your terrorist pals been working nonstop on this?” Vaill asked. “Turning over every rock, vetting every possible theory, looking for a cure because, without it, you’ve got no leverage. You’re just a bunch of murderers. Mass murderers at that.”
One Hundred Neighbors … Terrorists … Murderers …
Lou searched the men’s faces for any sign he was being toyed with and found none. He felt as if he had stumbled into quicksand, and his legs were no longer capable of pushing himself out. Where in the hell had they gotten their information? Dead on with their information one minute, coming from Mars the next.
“I’m not part of any terrorist organization,” he insisted.
“Of course you are,” Vaill said. “We have proof.”
“What proof?” Lou was outraged now. “You’re making up stuff just to rattle me.”
“Are we?” McCall asked.
At that instant the realization hit. They’re going to hold me indefinitely.
Everyone had heard of suspected terrorists being kept without ever being charged—kept and eventually waterboarded. From his conversations with Humphrey, Lou knew there was some sort of terrorist connection to the germ, but even Humphrey did not know exactly what it was. To give these guys even that much information would eventually lead them to Humphrey—probably at Lou’s bodily expense. For now at least, he vowed to maintain ignorance … at least as long as he could.
“Do you know a group called One Hundred Neighbors?” McCall asked.
“Never heard of them.”
“You’re lying,” Vaill said. “You’re part of them.”
“What about a scientist named Ahmed Kazimi, do you know him?”
“No,” Lou said again, wincing because he was sure his eyes had darted left. Vaill definitely noticed.
“You and your crazy group are bent on destroying America, aren’t you?” McCall said.
“No! No!” Lou shouted. “I would never do that. I love this country.”
Vaill stood again and came around the table.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said, his voice turning softer. “That’s good, that’s real good, Lou. You love this country. You didn’t mean to create this plague. It just got out of control. You’re trying to set things right by coming up with a workable treatment.”
Lou was feeling flustered and a little unsure of himself. He had no trouble imagining this line of questioning going on for hours, circling back to his prior statements as he became more exhausted by the second. He had no doubt that given enough time, coupled with hunger and lack of sleep, it was possible they would extract some sort of a confession.
“I know about your group’s motives,” McCall said. “I’ve read up on them. You did this for the love of your country. You think you’re doing us Americans a huge favor.”
“Nah,” Vaill said. “I think this guy is doing it for the power. Do you get off on what you’re doing?”
“I’m an American citizen just like you,” Lou countered. “I have rights.”
“We discussed that already,” McCall said. “We’ve slapped you with the public safety exception to the Miranda Act. You know what that is?”
“Miranda? I think so.”
“Being a smart-ass doesn’t suit you, doctor. The public safety exception is for terrorists like you. It means you got very few rights in this situation because we say so. Got that?”
“Then think of me like a journalist. They have the right to protect their sources.”
“So you’re admitting there is a source.”
Lou cringed.
“I’m admitting nothing. I’m just saying that if I had a source I would have the right to protect it.”
Vaill shook his head. “A shield law? Really? That’s the best you can come up with? Sorry, pal, but last I checked, the federal government hasn’t enacted any shield laws, so how about you try again. Who’s your source?”
“Whoever put you on this track missed,” Lou said.
The small room felt like a sauna.
“It’s evident to me,” Vaill said, “that you don’t understand how serious this situation is. Our country—the country you purport to love—is under attack, and you have information critical to our national security. Okay? Is that being clear enough for you?”
Lou decided not to answer.
“It’s sure clear to me,” McCall said.
“Do you know what sort of charges you’re facing?” Vaill asked.
“I haven’t committed any crime! I’m doing research to help my dying friend.”
Vaill ignored him. “We’re talking major conspiracy charges here,” he said. “Conspiracy to commit offense against the United States will get you five years and some hefty fines, but, material support to a known terrorist group, that’s another charge you’re facing and that could get you fifteen plus.”
“Not if someone dies,” McCall interjected.
Vaill nodded appreciatively. “Oh yeah, thanks. You’re right. If someone dies then you could be locked up for the rest of your life. But don’t worry. I’m sure you can get posted in the prison infirmary—at least until the guys realize they won’t let you handle any drugs. Then there’ll be no one to protect you.”
“This is crazy. I’m not a terrorist.”
“You are in your government’s eyes. Now, who’s your source?” Again, Lou said nothing. “You don’t have the right to remain silent,” Vaill went on. “You have the right to be charged for a very serious set of crimes. So I’ll ask again. Who is your source?”
“Think about your daughter,” McCall said.
Lou’s eyes sparked. Vaill was locked on him.
“Emily. That’s her name, right?” he said as if congratulating himself for remembering. “Look, Lou, do you think she wants her daddy put on trial as a terrorist? Doctor by day, mass murderer by night. What press.” He dramatized the headline in the stale air. “That’s a terrible thing for a kid to go through.”
“She’d be bullied something awful,” McCall chimed in. “I mean the worst.”
“Probably have to drop out of school.” Vaill’s turn.
“It would most likely ruin her life. You guys are close, right?”
“Keep my daughter out of this!” The back of Lou’s neck was on fire. This whole tact was a ploy, a charade, but it still stung like a swarm of hornets.
“You see, that’s the problem, Lou.” Vaill again. “She would be like collateral damage. There’s no keeping her out of it unless you start talking. Everybody you love, everybody you care about. They’re all going to be questioned. This business is at the head of the government’s to-do list—our list of priorities. We’re going to bring on more manpower to turn over every single stone in the life of every one of them. We’ll dig into their pasts as hard as we’re digging into yours.”
The agents continued with skill and teamwork.
McCall took over. “Your pal, Cap,” he said. “How is he on his taxes? If he survives this germ, you think he’ll still have a gym to work out of when we’re through? And what about your ex, Renee? And her husband, Steve? Do they have any little skeletons in their closet they wouldn’t want the FBI to know about? That law firm of his doesn’t seem like the kind that would tolerate the agency nosing around. You really want to bring all this down on the people you love the most, Lou?”
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