Fatal

by Michael Palmer

  Nikki rolled over, drew Matt’s face down to hers, and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

  “Tell her what she just won, Merv,” he said as she finished. “Congratulations, you just won another two hundred hours of massage.”

  Matt cupped his hands over his mouth and imitated the roar of a crowd.

  “I’ll tell you what, big guy,” she said. “We’ll stop in some city in New Jersey and I’ll just file a report with the FBI office there. Then I’ll go with you wherever it is you want to go. Deal?”

  “I’m agin it.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Okay, deal . . . There’s something else you want to add. I can see it in your eyes. What is it? What?”

  “Matt, I hate to say this, and I don’t want you to get upset or discouraged, but the mine theory isn’t holding together well for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the connection between the toxic exposure and the syndrome we’ve encountered.”

  “The waste dump is there. I saw it.”

  “Given. Let’s assume the two miners had the same spongiform disease that Joe found in Kathy. Spongiform encephalopathy, at least the four or five different types we know of, is caused by prions, but I just don’t know how a toxic exposure can cause a prion infection.”

  “Well,” he said after some thought, “let me take a crack at that. There are good, life-sustaining prions that everybody has and loves, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there are bad, spawn-of-the-devil, PrPSc prions that cause spongiform disease, right?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “Then, how about the toxic exposure increases susceptibility to bad prions . . . or . . . or causes mutations from good to evil? Organic toxins cause mutations that go on to cause cancer.”

  “That’s a fact. But remember, these conditions seem to take years to develop—in some instances, decades. So if a toxic exposure did occur affecting our three cases, I would think it occurred before any of the subjects was old enough to be working in the mine. And what about Kathy? She never even came close to the mine as far as we know.”

  “What about groundwater contamination?”

  “The toxins from the mine get into the water and accelerate prion mutations. Is that what you wish to believe?”

  “That is what I would like to believe, yes,” Matt said.

  She kissed him once again, then pulled her pillow in tightly as she drew her knees and arms in.

  “Works for me,” she said dreamily.

  But Matt could tell that it didn’t. He waited until her breathing said that she was asleep.

  “G’night,” he whispered.

  He rolled over and drifted off, his mind playing images of an underground river churning past countless barrels of poison, then coursing off into the darkness.

  NEWARK, NEW JERSEY. With four stops for directions, which were invariably given to them in dense Newarkese, it took longer to locate the FBI office than it had to make it to Newark from Stamford. They chose Newark because they expected it would have a good-sized office, and because neither of them wanted to drive into Manhattan. Matt rolled slowly down a tree-lined street, past the tall, nondescript Gateway Center on Market Street, and stopped half a block away.

  “So,” he said as Nikki stripped off her helmet, buckled it to the bike, and ran a brush through her hair, “here we are.”

  “Here we are,” she echoed, hands on hips. “Matt, you’re looking distressed. I thought we had decided on a plan.”

  “I just don’t feel comfortable about this.”

  “I understand. How about making it a little easier on me.” She reached her arms out to him. “Come on,” she cooed.

  “Sorry,” Matt muttered, accepting the invitation to hold her. “I still have trouble coming to grips with why people don’t accept my point of view on any given subject as the only viable one, let alone the best one.”

  “You can come in with me if you want.”

  “The FBI agents might not look charitably on any guy with a ponytail who isn’t Steven Seagal. Tell you what, I’m going to call my uncle from that pay phone we saw on the next block. After that I might come in.”

  “It shouldn’t take too long just to file a report.”

  “We’re talking government agency here. ‘Shouldn’t take too long’ is not a well-understood concept in that world.”

  “Hold down the fort.”

  Matt watched as she strode away, took a tentative step to follow, then turned, climbed back on the bike, and rode to the next block. There were two messages on his answering machine. One was from Mae, reminding him of a three o’clock appointment with his dental hygienist, and assuring him that his patients for the day had been moved to other slots.

  “I certainly hope you are all right,” she added, the concern in her voice unmistakable.

  The second message, recorded yesterday evening, was from Hal.

  “Everything’s set, Matthew. Fred Carabetta will see us at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon at his office in D.C. Call me for details.”

  Hal answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, Matt. Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  Quickly, Matt reviewed the events of the previous night.

  “God, that’s just awful,” Hal said. “And where are you calling from?”

  “Newark. Nikki’s in with the FBI right now, filing a report.”

  “Well, I think you’ve got to get her out of there,” Hal said. “I was just going to leave another message on your machine. Grimes has an APB out for your arrest—both of you.”

  “I was afraid he might do something like that. What’s he charging us with?”

  “Murder.”

  “What?”

  “Grimes called me early this morning, then came by and drove me out to view a body and bring it back to the morgue. Big man, what’s left of him.”

  “I think I know who he is,” Matt said, feeling the acid in his stomach beginning to percolate. “Name’s Larry. He worked for Grimes.”

  “Extra crispy. From what I could tell he was shot in the head in a cabin off Tall Pines Road, then incinerated when it was burned to the ground. Quite well done, the man was. Then, while we’re driving back to town, Grimes casually tells me that you and Dr. Solari are wanted for the guy’s murder. Wants to know if I might happen to know where you are.”

  “How does he get off making me a suspect?”

  “There are hospital medications and supplies in the woods near the cabin with fingerprints on them, and motorcycle tracks all around. Grimes is speculating that the big man was working for you when he kidnapped Dr. Solari and that you killed him to keep him quiet or from squeezing you for more money.”

  “Slick. He’s setting both Nikki and me up to die, Hal. Maybe a murder-suicide by this deranged doctor who became obsessed with his patient to the point where he had her kidnapped. All Grimes has to do now is get his hands on us. Hal, I’ve got to get to Nikki before she speaks with the FBI people. I’ll call you later.”

  “We’re expected at Carabetta’s office at three this afternoon. Constitution Avenue.”

  “We’ll be there,” Matt said.

  He sped around the block and dismounted the Harley across the street from the office building.

  “FBI, please.”

  “Twenty-second floor,” the uniformed security man at the lobby reception desk responded, glancing up from his magazine only long enough to ensure that the questioner wasn’t encased in dynamite and brandishing an assault rifle.

  The six elevators were all between floors ten and fifteen of the twenty-four stories. Their descent was so painfully slow that Matt actually gave passing thought to sprinting up the twenty-two flights. He was the only one in sight as he stepped into the car, but predictably, three others—a man and two women—materialized just as the doors were about to close, and pressed buttons for floors five, nine, and seventeen. Matt tapped his toe and drummed his fingers over th
e upward journey, which seemed to take an hour. The elevator opened directly into the waiting room.

  Thank God!

  Nikki was there, seated opposite a receptionist, thumbing through a copy of People. A wizened Asian woman occupied one of the other chairs. Just as Matt stepped off the elevator, a darkly handsome young man with a Hollywood chin emerged from one of the offices, crossed to Nikki, and introduced himself as Duty Officer Sherman. Nikki, clearly startled by Matt’s sudden appearance, didn’t respond immediately to the agent. The hesitation was all Matt needed. He moved quickly to her side, slipping his hand around her arm, and applying as much force as he dared. Nikki looked momentarily shocked, but then came through and handled the assault coolly, her expression saying, This had better be good.

  “I’m sorry to bust in like this, Officer,” Matt said, “but we’re going to have to come back a little later. There’s been a death in the family.”

  “NOW, YOU JES listen here, Sara Jane Tinsley. You gotta stop actin’ up an’ let me get some damn work done. There ain’t no one followin’ you an’ there ain’t no one tryin’ to hurt you. Now go on out an’ find somethin’ to do or someone to play with. If’n you can’t occupy yerself, then jes get out back an’ start pickin’ corn.”

  “Corn ain’t ready, Ma, an’ you know it,” Sara Jane snapped.

  “It’s plenty ready.”

  “Besides, you jes want me out there so those men can have me. You hate me. You hate how ugly I done become. You think it’s my fault. You think I’m staying up all night jes to git under yer skin. You don’t understand that I cain’t sleep. No matter how hard I try, I cain’t sleep.”

  She was twelve, tall and willowy, but yet to show any outward signs of becoming a woman. Right now, she thought, she really didn’t care if she became a woman er not. She cared about the men who had tried to git her into their car as she ’uz walking down the road. First they called her by name an’ offered her a big stuffed panda to come with them. Then one of them—the thin one with the cowboy hat—got out of the car with a fist fulla money an’ held it out for her. At the sight of him, Sara Jane had whirled and taken off through the woods. The man came after her, but there was no way in hell he ’uz gonna catch her. Those were her woods. No one caught her out there less’n she wanted ’em to.

  “You’re making a big mistake,” the man had called after her as he gave up chasin’.

  Sara Jane reported the incident to her ma, but it ’uz clear she didn’t believe her. All she said was that Sara Jane wouldn’t be gettin’ in such trouble if she’d jes stop runnin’ off ever’ chance she got an’ stayed closer to home. Seven kids an’ Sara Jane was the only one actin’ out the way she was. Stayin’ up all night. Makin’ up stories. Havin’ tantrums. Screamin’ at her ma. Gettin’ into fights with her brothers and sisters. Racin’ off into the woods.

  It were the bumps on her face that were poisoning her an’ makin’ her do bad things, Sara Jane had tried to explain. The bumps. The doctor in Ridgefield disagreed. He said she ’uz jes becoming a woman an’ doin’ it harder ’n most. The lumps’d go away as soon as her monthlies started. Maybe so. But this mornin’ she had found another one, this one jes above her eye—nearly as wide as a dime an’ hard as a knuckle. It was the sixth one, plus two right on the top of her head. Them monthlies had better come soon or there wouldn’t be nothin’ left of her face.

  It was clear that her ma had said all she was of a mind to say on the topic of Sara Jane Tinsley. Well, to hell with her. If she wanted the corn picked so damn bad, her fav’rite daughter would pick it.

  Sara Jane stormed from the house, slamming the torn screen door behind her, and grabbed one of the plastic baskets. Takin’ in laundry an’ ironin’ was her ma’s main source of money, but the corn, half an acre of it, helped. Only this year had been dry, real dry, an’ many of the ears was runted. Well, she wanted ’em, she was gonna get ’em, runted or not.

  Furious, Sara Jane marched to the end of the farthest row and began tearing off all the ears she could find and throwing them into the bucket. The bending and shaking stalks made a sound like a thresher was going through them. The noise and her own wild movements kept her from hearing the man stealthily approaching her from behind, or sensing his presence until it was too late. Simultaneously, one of his strong, bony hands pinned her to him across her chest, while the second one clamped a cloth over her mouth and nose—a cloth soaked with something that smelled sickly sweet. Sara Jane tried to fight and bite, but he pulled her down to the ground and smothered her with his hand and his body. She knew it was the man with the cowboy hat, but there was nothing she could do. Quickly, her struggles lessened.

  I told you, Ma. . . . I told you they ’uz after me. . . .

  Her head began to spin. Then, just as she thought she was going to throw up, peace and darkness settled over her.

  CHAPTER 27

  ELLEN SAT ALONE, NESTLED IN THE WELL-WORN leather easy chair in Rudy’s pine-paneled den, a barely touched avocado and Swiss sandwich on the TV tray in front of her, a nearly drained glass of Merlot—her second—cradled in her hand. She had never been much of a drinker and couldn’t remember if she had ever drunk wine in the morning. But the Omnivax “documentary” she was watching, put together by the Marquand campaign, coupled with the letter in her purse that she had yet to deal with, had generated a level of tension that simply could not go untreated.

  It was just after twelve noon on the day following her remarkable interview with Nattie and Eli Serwanga, and a few hours after that, with Lassa victim John Gendron, a thirty-seven-year-old schoolteacher from Baltimore.

  It was a frantic dash, with some luck from the traffic gods thrown in, but Ellen managed to catch a return flight from Chicago to BWI Airport. Her car was at Reagan International outside of D.C., so she rented one and drove to Gendron’s place—a modest town house on Fayette, several blocks from the sparkling Baltimore waterfront.

  Before his infection with the Lassa virus, Gendron had taught English in an inner-city junior high school. He was now eighteen months past his close brush with death, and believed he was too disabled ever to teach again. Ellen’s conversation with him was limited by his hearing, which was 70 percent gone in one ear and 100 percent in the other as a result of his illness.

  “I went to Sierra Leone to visit my sister, who is a nurse with an international aid organization,” he said. “About a week after I returned, my throat began to burn when I swallowed anything—even water. Within three days, my temperature was spiking to a hundred and five. Blood was coming out of my nose and rectum.”

  The man’s eyes began to glisten, and Ellen could see that, however gracious he had been about inviting her to his home, this exchange was exquisitely painful for him.

  “Mr. Gendron, please feel free to send me packing if this is too hard for you,” she said. “I live close enough to come back another time.”

  “No. No, I’m okay. You promised to tell me what it is you’re working on.”

  “And I will,” Ellen said.

  “Well, I became delirious around the end of the second week, and was put in the hospital. They . . . they had to remove my intestine to keep me from bleeding to death. Even so, I nearly did. I’m divorced and live alone, so my sister flew back here from Sierra Leone and took care of me for nearly two months. My colostomy is a souvenir of my trip to Africa.”

  It may actually be the souvenir of your flight home, Ellen was thinking.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “As far as I know,” he went on flatly, “I infected six of my students, plus my son and one of his friends. The friend made it okay. Two of my students and my son, Steven, weren’t as fortunate.”

  Oh, no.

  “I am so sorry.”

  “He was my only child. Every day I wish I had died and pray that I will soon.”

  “I’ve had personal tragedies, too,” Ellen said. “Making any sense of life afterward is terribly hard. Therapy and time. That’s all I can tell you. Ther
apy and time and reaching out to help others.”

  “Thank you.”

  Once again, Gendron assured Ellen he was able to continue.

  “Is there anything unusual you can recall about your flight back to the States?” she asked, taking pains to avoid any leading questions.

  “The flight back here was uneventful. But I did meet one unusual character on the flight from Freetown to London, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “He was an American engineer—interesting and very outgoing. Specialized in inspecting bridges, I think he said.”

  Ellen gripped the arm of her chair. “Can you describe him for me?”

  “I think I can, although my memory hasn’t been so good since—”

  “Just do your best,” Ellen said, deciding not to put the man through Rudy’s writing exercise.

  “Well, first of all, he was big. Not just tall, but big. Like a football player. His hair was sort of blondish and he wore thick glasses with a heavy frame.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I can’t think of anything . . . except, wait, he had a scar—an unusual scar—right here above his lip.”

  Bingo!

  With some prompting now from Ellen, Gendron even recalled being bumped by the man while waiting in line at Gatwick Airport in London.

  “He tripped, I think, and stumbled into me. It was like getting hit by a train. We both went down.”

  After extracting the same pledge of silence from Gendron as she had from the Serwangas, Ellen explained her interest in the Lassa cases and the man with the scar. Then she drove to Reagan and exchanged the rental for her Taurus. She arrived back at Rudy’s cabin just after two in the morning and was relieved to find that he hadn’t waited up for her.

  Now she sat in his den watching the Omnivax campaign special, breathing in the lingering, earthy essence of his pipe tobacco. His Merlot was gradually stoking the fires of her resolve to speak to him. Rudy was upstairs in his study, poring over the passenger manifests, making phone calls, and being a rock of support to a woman he considered a good friend—a woman who just happened to know that he had been in love with her to the exclusion of all others for almost forty years.