Quantico Part 31

William walked along the line of boxes. Yeast at the farm, dozens of pounds of it spread over the trees. Yeast in the printer cartridges. Yeast everywhere, but no anthrax-not even BT or some other more suitable anthrax subst.i.tute.

'Any guess what alt.i.tude they exploded?' William asked.

'Anywhere from five hundred to three thousand feet,' Matty said.

'I a.s.sume you've already checked up on supremacist churches in town.'

'There aren't any. No n.a.z.is, either. Just schnitzel.'

'How about you-have you gone to church?'

'Not yet, but there's plenty to choose from.'

'Synagogues?'

'Not a one,' Matty said.

'Anybody check how far the yeast might have spread?'

'Why? It's yeast.' Matty grinned. 'Might give our young ladies itchy privates. Is that what you're worried about?'

William shrugged. 'My father mentioned Silesia on his hospital bed.'

Matty tightened like a race horse at the post. 'In what connection?'

'There might have been a map or fragment of a map in the Patriarch's barn. Griff asked us to check out Silesia. It wasn't in the final report because there wasn't any anthrax, n.o.body could make sense of it, and...well, they weren't interested in the fireworks angle. Griff told us there were lots of churches. He seemed to think that might be a motive, that the Patriarch wanted to kill both Jews and mainstream Christians.'

'I'm interested, you can bet on that.'

'I don't know if anybody kept my father's scrawls. I doubt it.'

'Sounds like a bad lapse of judgment,' Matty said.

'Well, now it does,' William said. 'But that's all there was.'

'Why didn't you check it out?'

'We were shut down. You know that.'

Matty nodded. 'Question is, will this be enough to reopen?'

'I'd sure like to know why someone gets his jollies by flinging yeast.'

'Could we re-interview your father?' Matty asked.

'You can try. His thinking fades in and out. He doesn't remember a lot of things.'

'Doesn't know where his keys are?' Matty asked. 'It's a pattern. That's what happened to the deputy who first checked out the Patriarch. He's on disability leave. Happy guy, from what I hear.'

I'm telling you, some of it I just don't remember! They're putting stuff in my food. This place is making me crazy.

Jeremiah Chambers, the Patriarch's son- Griff. And now, the Snohomish County sheriff's deputy, William tried to remember his name-Markham, Kerry Markham.

William stood in front of the table and the boxes, not moving a muscle. He had just felt a sour foreboding, like guilt for a mistake he had yet to make. Matty was watching him. 'Can I set up in the trailer...or here?' William asked. 'I'd like to make some calls.'

'As long as you share, and I mean everything everything,' Matty said, 'you're welcome to join our little circus.' He reached in his coat pocket and handed William a green bottle: gingko biloba tablets. 'Try some. Whole town's popping them like candy.'

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE.

Incirlik Air Base Turkey.

Fouad saw his mother standing in the far rocks. His father pointed and smiled. The Jinn swirled around her, whirlwinds of blue and red. 'She's making it all up,' his father said. 'There's nothing to come home to, no blankets, no hot water, no chocolate, no comforts, and neither of us can hide, right? We'll both kill again. No fairy tales. Just a madness for G.o.d.'

He was dreaming, of course, but even though he felt the bed beneath him and the tape wrapped around his ribs, he could still see his father, his mother, and the rocks. The dark outlines of the small room gradually came into focus through the edgy pall of the painkillers. A picture of a helicopter hung on one wall, and another of an A-10 Warthog hung over his bed. These were his Jinn. They had plucked him out of the desert.

His intercom chimed and he got out of bed to answer. It was David Grange, who had been on the rescue chopper, inviting him to a late night coffee in the mess hall. His chest did not hurt much. He got dressed with only a few twinges.

The mess hall was brightly lit and nearly empty. Two hundred aluminum tables stood in neat rows under a concrete roof that could have covered a football field. David Grange, short and pug-nosed, on the edge of plumpness, shook his hand and asked Fouad if he wanted cocoa or coffee.

'Tea, white, please,' Fouad said. Grange went through the long bars before the cafeteria station and brought back two cups. He set one on the table before Fouad.

'You've impressed the h.e.l.l out of Trune and Dillinger,' Grange said. 'And me, for what its worth. Who else has spoken to you?'

'The doctors. The officers who debriefed me.'

'You did a remarkable thing out there. You helped us put a big chunk of the puzzle together. Do you have any idea what's happening? What's happened in the last few days?'

'No,' Fouad said. 'I have been pretty dopey. I'm still having dreams.'

'Well, that will happen after trauma. We're moving you up a few steps. Right now, everyone's scrambling to get a piece of Iranian nuke pie. But...' Grange regarded Fouad through amused eyes. 'It was an accident. The Iranians were moving their warheads at Shahabad Kord and one of them got triggered. Right now, that's not the official story, because some of our generals want to play this hand for all its worth. But it's an accident-a wet match fizzle, compared to what we're after. You look a little woozy. Still following me, Fouad?'

Grange p.r.o.nounced his name perfectly.

'I am okay,' Fouad said. 'What has happened?'

'Israel may have foiled an anthrax attack. We thought someone was after Jews, maybe Jerusalem, so no surprise there. But Vatican authorities and Interpol have busted a ring of Jihadists preparing to launch a bioweapons attack in Rome. They never got their payload-an interruption in the supply. It's worse than we thought. Someone's after major religious cities. All of them. We don't know why, but now at least we know who-we've ID'd one of the conspiracy, maybe the main guy.'

Grange stood. 'Drink up. I'll introduce you to some fine young men. They're eager to meet you.'

CHAPTER FIFTY.

Washington, DC.

Rebecca sat next to Hiram in the limousine. Traveling with the director-designate to headquarters would have once made her heart go pitty-pat, but now she was bone-tired and worried sick.

It's going to happen, and this time it's going to be worse.

Something new, some invention or variation n.o.body could antic.i.p.ate. Jesus Christ, high schools and junior colleges have gene a.s.semblers now-they can make make viruses from scratch. viruses from scratch.

Her mind raced, trying to go through all the possibilities.

Two young, prime hunks of FBI beef, sitting on the drop seats, gave her their best critical stares. Rebecca had been working the phones and all her connections throughout the day and most of the night before. Her slate chimed.

The call was from Frank Chao at Quantico.

'What's up, Frank?' she said, shoving herself into a seat corner.

'You tell me. Trying to be of service, pulling in a few favors...but what I've got is weird. No hits on any criminal database, and I've been through them all. However, I've run some outlandish DNA searches, and your Arizona blood not only proves paternity to the Patriarch's wife's unborn baby...but it could be a match to someone who died in 9-11.'

'You're joking.'

'Not. I scored a hit from a theoretical DNA match list constructed to help people find relatives in the World Trade Center. Fortuitously, that database isn't closed, and obviously it points toward the Memorial Park database from 9-11, but I don't want to go there without solid backup.'

'What do you mean, theoretical?'

'Statistical ranges of DNA markers that could represent victims. Relatives of missing persons gave DNA samples to the Medical Examiner's teams working on DM tissue samples held in refrigerated trailers at Memorial Park. Those databases are closed to us, of course.'

'I know.'

'In those instances where they couldn't retrieve DNA from hairbrushes, tooth brushes, biopsies or whatever to match to victims, a researcher in a contract corporation planned to generate statistical marker links to match living relatives and severely reduced samples. Heat, water, decay-pretty nasty conditions. Some of the bits were recovered from the tummies of racc.o.o.ns and rats scavenging the Fresh Kills site where they dumped the rubble. They'd trap them and-'

'I didn't need to know that, Frank.'

'Sorry.'

'You have a hit with a theoretical theoretical victim of 9-11.' victim of 9-11.'

'Right.'

'So it could lead us to a relative,' Rebecca said, 'or to a statistical n.o.body-a bogus projection.'

'Both are possible.'

'All right. Let's get Memorial Park.'

'Let's us, you mean, or let's me? That's sacred ground, Rebecca. I'd rather continue with every other database, military, hospital workers, whatever, before I tackle Memorial Park.'

Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut. Their footing was not good. If they tried something that audacious...'How long will it take?' she asked.

'A few days. A week, if I don't get priority time on the computers. And I won't, you know that. I'm just squeezing my searches in between the cracks.'

The Arizona trooper's body had been moved away from the rig. The glove was a Hatch Friskmaster.

'Law enforcement, Frank. Narrow it down to recruits and graduates from the last twenty years.'

'Any particular reason?'

'More than a hunch, less than a certainty.'

'Will do.'

She pocketed her slate, then removed it, turned it off, and showed it to the agents flanking Hiram.

'Thanks,' said the agent on the left, his jaw muscles clenching. 'Is your Lynx active?'

'No,' Hiram said testily. 'We are off the grid.'

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE.

Silesia, Ohio.

William walked beside the young doctor through the high school gymnasium. Beds and portable curtains had been erected around the hundreds of patients who had spilled over from the main hospital. The doctor was bleary-eyed from hours of admitting and running tests. William had told him nothing about what he had learned in the last three hours; he was in listening mode, fully aware that everything he thought he knew was wrong.

'It's got to be the biggest outbreak I've ever heard of,' the doctor said. 'We're getting back diagnosis after diagnosis, and all of them are coming up with the same indicators-CT scans show early spongiform lesions in the brain, we can isolate prions, the prions appear to be able to transform lab tissue cultures-all of which confirms the clinical symptoms, the mental and in some cases physical deterioration. But hundreds of cases in one town? And growing by twenty or thirty every day? Not to mention throughout the county...and now, the state.'

The doctor pulled back a curtain and let William look in on a middle-aged woman. She was sitting up on her cot, reading an old, tattered Smithsonian, Smithsonian, and looked up with a puzzled smile and shifting gaze. and looked up with a puzzled smile and shifting gaze.

'Good evening, Mrs. Miller,' the doctor said.

'Good evening.'

It was three in the afternoon.

'We met yesterday,' the doctor said.

'Yes, I remember.'

'This is William, from the government, Mrs. Miller.'

'Can he help me find my husband?'