“Well, we could go running in circles—”
“Yelling Ebola, Ebola?”
“Yeah.”
“Salmonella it is.” Zambit paused, then added, his voice still strained, “Let’s do it quickly and quietly. I have a feeling we’ve just heard the starting gun fired in a 100-yard dash.”
Dwight sat silently for a moment. With his forefinger he moved a wad of coffee-saturated paper towels in a slow circle on the table in front of him. A soft babble of voices from the EOC drifted into the room.
“What?” Zambit said.
“Well, if this stuff is spread through the air, then we’ve got a lot bigger problem than just doctors, nurses and immediate family. Like this guy McCarthy. As an investment advisor, he probably saw clients. And he had contact with co-workers in his office. A good hack or sneeze, and he’s an Ebola bomb. Somebody inhales a half-dozen virions—”
“Hold it, hold it,” Zambit barked. “Time out. Let’s keep our imaginations under control. All we’ve got at this point is a hypothesis based on something you saw in the virus’s genetic structure. We don’t really know how it’s transmitted. Let’s just go with what we’re certain of, namely that we’ve got Ebola-Zaire, with a capital E and a capital Z, right here in River City, and that Gullison’s probably the index case. We’ll keep an open mind on airborne transmission, but for the time being, let’s get a cordon around the sick people and those they were in close contact with. And let’s try to figure out where the hell this stuff came from.”
“Yes, but what if—”
“No ‘what ifs,’ Dwight. We go with what we know. Let’s not run off the rails again.”
Run off the rails again. A reference to Dwight’s moment of panic in the Level-4 lab the previous night. Dwight ground his teeth together, biting down on his ire, pissed that Zambit had raised the issue once more.
“You’re right,” Dwight said. “Sorry. Better get me a paper bag to breathe into.” He stood and stalked out of the room.
Chapter Five
NORTH METRO ATLANTA
MONDAY, AUGUST 19
By four p.m., the last of the project managers at BioDawn had finished briefing their new CEO. Though he didn’t understand a lot of the technology employed by the corporation, Richard did understand he was at the helm of an eminently successful and innovative firm. Its operations focused on discovering recombinant biopharmaceutical products, products that had the potential to be developed as therapeutic and diagnostic tools for the treatment of cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis, diabetes and various infectious diseases. A noble and, he quickly came to realize, extremely profitable calling.
The project balance sheets suggested the multimillion-dollar company was on solid financial footing. A couple of efforts were leaking a bit of red ink, but overall BioDawn appeared to be in a strong position to attract and retain investors.
He pushed his chair back from his desk, stood and stretched. He walked to the window and looked out. The pond below him lay in late-afternoon shade. Its dark and unrippled waters reflected towering white cumulus cauliflowering into a blue-gray haze. A chipmunk, its tail on Viagra, sprinted across the gravel path and startled a squirrel constructing a small earthen cache.
A lone stroller, a man idly puffing a cigarette, moved along the path. He turned his head to follow the excited dash of the chipmunk. He flipped his cigarette in its direction, not maliciously, just casually, then glanced up in the direction of Richard’s office. Richard, knowing he could not be seen through the heavy tint of the windows, watched the man until he turned and disappeared in the direction of the fenced-in blockhouse.
The blockhouse. Richard had forgotten about it. It hadn’t come up during the course of the briefings. All of the projects he’d been brought up to speed on were being carried out in the labs flanking the administration building. There had been nothing about any efforts being pursued in the odd, windowless structure.
Perhaps Anneliese could shed some light on what went on there. He stepped to his desk to call her. But before he could punch the intercom button, Anneliese’s voice came through the speaker.
“Sir, you have a call from a Mrs. Anthony Scarelli. Do you want me to take a message?”
“Should I know her?”
“Tony Scarelli’s wife.”
Richard decided he should know her and did his best to process the name, running it quickly through the overloaded Rolodex in his brain. He pictured BioDawn’s executive roster and scrolled down to Scarelli, Anthony. Executive vice president. Sometimes I scare myself.
“Tony Scarelli,” he said with satisfaction. “Executive vice president. Killed in the plane crash.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll take the call.”
“Line two.”
He picked up the phone. “Mrs. Scarelli,” he said, “this is Rich Wainwright. I want you to know I’m truly sorry for the loss you and your family suffered. I obviously didn’t know Tony, but from all I’ve read he sounded like a fine man. He certainly displayed exemplary leadership at BioDawn. He seemed to be on top of everything.”
“Yes—” She paused and breathed steadily in and out, as if pondering what to say next.
Finally she said, “Maybe too much so.”
He waited, not wanting to prompt, not wanting to disrupt whatever she was struggling with. It apparently was something other than, “How’s the life insurance claim coming?”
After several moments, she expelled a long breath and said, “I’m not sure the plane crash was an accident. Tony said there were some things going on at BioDawn...” Her words trailed off abruptly, but just as quickly she resumed speaking, moving the conversation in a different direction. “Could we meet for lunch, Mr. Wainwright? I’m uncomfortable talking about this on the phone. Maybe a little frightened, too. Look, when I tell you what I know, which may not be much, but probably enough to raise some eyebrows, I want you to see me, look me in the eye. So you’ll know you’re not dealing with some grief-stricken, whacko conspiracy theorist. Would that be okay?”
Richard realized his left hand was aching. He had a death grip on the telephone receiver. He attempted to relax. “Mrs. Scarelli, I’d be more than willing to look you in the eye and listen to what you have to say. I’ll have my assistant, Ms. Mierczak, set up a reservation for us tomorrow and get back in touch with you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wainwright, thank you so much. I know I maybe should have taken this to the police. But I really wanted to discuss what I know, what Tony told me, with someone in the company first. Someone who could be very objective. I need my concerns validated.”
Richard said he understood and hung up. He spun his chair around and stared out the window. He flexed his left hand. It continued to throb.
He sensed Anneliese’s presence, Carolina jasmine in a soft afternoon, even before she spoke.
“Sir,” she said.
He swiveled to face her. “Yes, Anneliese?”
In the mottled late-day sunlight filtering through his office, her face appeared flushed, a rosy tint beneath a flawless Mediterranean complexion. She brushed a tumble of dark brown hair out of her eyes as she approached his desk.
“Is there anything else I can do for you before I go?” she said.
“Just a couple of things.” He asked her to make lunch reservations and contact Mrs. Scarelli. Then he said, “The building behind the Cyclone fence—nobody briefed me on what goes on in there. Is there any paperwork on it? Project reports? Financials?”
She shrugged. “I’ll check. I really don’t know anything about it. ‘Close-hold,’ I think, was the term used to describe it. Only the senior executives in the company were involved.”
“And they’re all... deceased.”
“Yes.”
Deceased. Accidentally or deliberately? He wasn’t sure
. The rational part of his brain, the part he knew he should pay attention to, told him to back off, let this go, stop playing detective. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t in his genes to be a spectator or an uninvolved bystander.
If he could probe just a bit more deeply, learn a smidgen more, garner a piece of evidence, he might be able to enlist help: the FBI, police, a private investigator, whatever seemed appropriate. But first he needed to talk to Mrs. Scarelli to find out what she knew, and he needed to uncover some documentation on the mysterious blockhouse project.
“See what you can dig up,” he said to Anneliese.
“I think there are some locked file cabinets that were taken out of your office—your predecessor’s office—after the accident and put in a storage room. I’ll see if I have a key for them.”
Richard checked his wristwatch. “It’s late,” he said. “Go home. Tackle it tomorrow.”
She nodded.
“Thanks for your help today.”
She winked at him, turned and walked toward the door. Over her shoulder she said, “It’s my job to help; to keep you out of trouble.”
Really? He smiled at her.
Richard switched on his desk lamp. He’d decided to stay late, going over the financials of BioDawn one more time. His first pass through them had indicated a fiscally healthy company, solidly in the black, but something hadn’t seemed quite right. He hadn’t had time to make a more detailed examination, but now, in the solitude that descends on most office buildings after hours, he’d be able to analyze the balance sheets more closely.
The keys on his calculator clicked softly as he totaled up the profits project by project. There it is. Jumps right out. The total came out to far less than the profit listed as the corporate bottom line. By about 10 million dollars. Somebody cooking the books? He didn’t think so. In terms of risk-reward, something that small and that obvious probably wouldn’t be worth it. Ten million. Small potatoes in the garden of corporate greed. Had he missed something? He went back over his work. The figures checked out. An accounting error? Again, he doubted it. A professional accountant would never let something like that slip by.
A soft rap on his door broke his concentration. He looked up. Anneliese stepped into the office. She had several file folders tucked under her arm.
“What happened to ‘it’s late, go home’?” Richard asked.
“Work to be done,” she said. “Besides, I don’t leave until the boss does.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to write off prime-time television for the next six or seven months.” He looked at the folders she carried. “What have you got?”
With the practiced walk of a model, one foot placed gracefully in front of the other, she glided around the desk and stood next to him. He looked up as she bent to place the folders on his desk. He felt the warmth of her body. Her breast brushed his face. The touch seemed to linger just an instant too long. His pulse quickened, a frisson of craving sweeping through him. She stepped back without acknowledging the encounter. But her eyes suggested she was very much aware of it. He looked away.
“A contract, project reports and cash flow data,” she said, “I think for whatever kind of work is being carried out behind the fence. You asked, remember?”
He nodded. “Thank you. Where were they?”
“Stuck in the back of a file cabinet. I had to paw through quite a few drawers before I found them.”
He stood and faced her. “Anneliese, go home. That’s an order. I’m going to be here quite awhile longer going over this stuff. You’ve gone above and beyond already. Home.” He pointed at the door.
“You sound like a soldier.”
“Four years in the Marines.”
“You can take a man out of the Marines, but you can’t... well, you know the rest. Can I get anything else for you before I go?”
“No. Oh... do you need to be escorted out?”
“A security guard will walk me to my car.” She reached out and touched his arm. “I don’t want to find you asleep at your desk when I come in tomorrow morning.”
“You won’t. Good night, Anneliese.”
After she left, he thumbed idly through the folders she’d delivered. He still sensed her touch on his cheek. Again, a ripple of guilt darted through his psyche, as though his reaction to another woman’s sexuality somehow shattered the bond of trust he and Karen had had. Yes, Karen was dead. But their bond, even now, seemed transcendental, inviolate, eternal.
He wasn’t immune to erotic arousal, but after seventeen years of loving—deeply loving—the same woman, to be attracted to another, no matter how superficial or transient, felt essentially, adulterous.
Lightning flickered outside. Large raindrops splattered against the window. A long, rolling peal of thunder shook the building. He opened the top folder of the stack.
He finished his work sometime after nine o’clock. He sat quietly for a while, thinking about Karen, about Anneliese and the reaction she had ignited, and about where that reaction had led: back to Marty De la Serna. Strange. How’d that happen?
He’d lost track of Marty, but had read, perhaps in an alumni magazine, or heard, maybe through a mutual acquaintance, that she was a minister—a minister, of all things—in Atlanta. Well... He found a phone book in the credenza. Yes, she was listed. Senior Minister, Community United Methodist Church. Somewhere nearby, he judged. Perhaps if I have time...
He left the building and stepped into the clutching humidity of the night. The rain had ceased, leaving only a diaphanous mist hanging over the office park, giving it the look of a damp Scottish moor. Sporadic lightning illuminated a distant horizon, though Richard wasn’t sure which one. He hadn’t yet established his sense of direction here.
A cacophonous chorus—pianissimo—of chirps, hums and croaks filled his ears. The hidden choir fascinated Richard. It was hard to believe so many tiny creatures sustained their existence in a burgeoning urban environment. He stepped in a puddle, and a startled frog long-jumped out of harm’s way.
He reached his car and placed his briefcase on the ground beside it. He stood listening to the night music while he reviewed what he’d learned the past few hours. Whatever work was going on in the blockhouse was off the books, yet generating millions of dollars per year in income. It apparently was a military contract let by the United States Army, but there was a singular lack of details. No work descriptions, no schedules, no contacts. Curious. Not even a phone number.
And the payments were coming from a bank in the Cayman Islands. Since when does the U.S. military make payments to a contractor from an offshore bank? Some sort of classified project? Off the books not only for BioDawn, but perhaps for certain oversight elements of the federal government? Richard decided he’d turned up more questions than answers. Well, he’d get to the bottom of it tomorrow. He’d pay the windowless building a visit and find out for himself what was going on. BioDawn was his command, his responsibility, and he sure as hell was going to know what he was captaining.
He picked up his briefcase and unlocked his car. He glanced at the blockhouse. Lit by floodlights reflecting off a thin layer of fog, it appeared to be almost floating. Away from the building, along the fence line, a flash of motion caught his eye, and he shifted his gaze. In the shadows between the bright smudges of light, and partially obscured by the mist, he barely made out a figure. At first he couldn’t tell which way it was facing, but as he watched, the faint red glow of a cigarette traced an upward arc. Whoever it was was facing outward. Watching me? The same person I saw from my office this afternoon? He shrugged it off and climbed into his car.
Sudden movement adjacent to the Mini startled him. Someone yanked open the passenger-side door. A lithe, attractive woman slid into the seat next to him. The Mini’s interior light illuminated her impeccable attire: a short-sleeved, Ralph Lauren blouse; dark slacks; bronze sandal
s. With spiky blond hair bearing frosted highlights, dangly earrings, and a gold safety pin piercing her right eyebrow, she could have been a rock star. But the well-toned muscles of her tanned arms suggested she was something else. Richard’s left hand dropped to the door handle. Picking up on his reflexive reaction, the woman smiled at him, an attempt at reassurance, perhaps; but her smile was devoid of warmth. Cold. Dead.
He fought to recover from the start she’d given him and forced himself to return her smile. “Good evening,” he said, struggling to conceal his confusion and gain control of the situation. Being on the defense was not a role he played well or even accepted.
Without responding to his greeting, the woman reached into her purse and withdrew a small object. Before his brain could register what it was, she pressed a button on the side of it, and a black, spear-pointed blade sprang out. A knife. She lowered it into her lap and looked at it admiringly, as other women might a string of Tahitian pearls. “In case you’re wondering,” she said, “it’s a Microtech Combat Talon. I’m very good with it.”
Chapter Six
NORTH METRO ATLANTA
MONDAY, AUGUST 19
Richard stared at the knife, knowing from his time in the Marine Corps exactly what it was—a killer’s weapon. Its slightly curved blade, short and serrated, enhanced its slicing ability. “You want the car?” he asked.
“This little shit box? A strange choice for a man of your stature.”
“My stature?”
“A high-profile CEO.”
My first day on the job; what does she know about my profile? “Maybe you shouldn’t stereotype CEOs,” he said. His gaze remained fixed on the knife. His heart rate ratcheted up ever so slightly.
“I would have thought a Maybach, perhaps, not a Mini,” she said.
“Okay, not my car then. My wallet? My briefcase?” He reached toward the rear seat.
“Hands on the steering wheel, Herr Wainwright,” she snapped, her words wrapped in a guttural German accent. She lifted the Combat Talon from her lap.
Plague Page 4
