Resistant (26 page)

Vaill grabbed Lou’s shoulders, flipped him around, and jerked his arms up behind his back.

“Hey!” Lou shouted. “What in the hell are you doing? You can’t do this. I have rights!”

He felt the pinch of handcuffs being snapped into place.

“Dr. Welcome,” Vaill said, “you’re under arrest.”

“What’s the charge?”

Lou’s demand came out rife with indignation but his voice was also more than a little shaky. The cuffs were incredibly uncomfortable, and in moments his arms began to throb. He tried to reposition his wrists, but the slightest movement caused the manacles to tighten even more.

“I have rights!” he protested. “I want to speak to a lawyer. I’m not telling you anything more until I do. You can’t just take me in like this. Jerks! I haven’t committed any crime.”

Vaill turned Lou around to face him. His smile was scornful and smug, as if this was the best part of his job.

McCall opened the Impala’s rear door, and with some difficulty, the two men stuffed Lou into the backseat.

“When it comes to terrorism,” Vaill said, “the law has a lot of latitude regarding who we take into custody and how we do it. And as for rights, thanks to your unwillingness to cooperate, and Miranda’s public safety exception, I’m sorry to inform you that you don’t have any at all.”

CHAPTER 32

           Social/Political philosopher Lancaster Hill’s growing popularity should be a source of concern to us all.

        
—DAVID CARP,
New York Times
Op-Ed
, MAY 8, 1940

The elevator ride to the bottom of the granite shaft took Kazimi no more than thirty seconds. The platform shuddered and shimmied. Machinery, corroded from the salt air and water, groaned. With each passing foot, the sound of waves grew louder. Faint natural light filtered up through the elevator’s grated platform, and the complex smells of the ocean grew more pronounced. The eerie descent ended with the locking of gears and a jolting stop.

Kazimi peered upward. He saw the lights embedded in the walls and nothing more. There was no trace of the stairway on which he had entered the shaft. Still, he had to hurry. It was only a matter of time before Bacon’s thugs came looking for him. Kazimi exited the platform and followed a wooden walkway out an opening carved through the cliff face. Twenty feet down the narrow dock he entered the boathouse. There he paused, savoring the wind on his face, and breathing in the heavy salt air.

Freedom!

A few feet more and the dock widened to form the floor of a storage area—marine supplies, engine parts, oil and gas cans, life jackets, ropes, bumpers. Not unexpectedly, the construction was first-rate—hardwood walls, beamed ceiling, four good-sized windows. The dock continued as two extensions, one along each wall. At the center of the construction, bobbing on its moorings like a glistening mahogany torpedo, was the boat.

It was a stunning inboard—a Chris Craft, long and sleek, with fold-away seats that increased its transport area.

Please, let there be a key. Please …

The boat looked as if it were ready to speed off just by willing it so, but that simply wasn’t going to happen. Nothing in the ignition.

Please …

Kazimi hurried back to the shelves, and quickly scanned them and the walls for any kind of a key hook or holder.

Nothing.

He returned to the cockpit, pausing to listen for any sounds from back beyond the storage area. Then he loosened the dashboard cover and searched for a way to cross wire the ignition. The computer that controlled the speedboat’s functions looked as complicated as the ones he worked with in the lab.

Rarely an impatient or easily frustrated man, Kazimi cursed his situation and his limitations. There was a single paddle on the floor. Untying the boat and trying to row it out to sea was a possibility. But the afternoon was giving way to dusk, and the gray, choppy, uninviting ocean was frigid. To make matters worse, the brisk wind was onshore. In all likelihood, if he could even get the heavy inboard boat past its boathouse, it would end up wrecked at the base of the mammoth cliff.

His odds of making it away from Red Cliff, he decided, were considerably better on land. He scrambled off the magnificent craft, carefully stepped around the edge of the boathouse, and jumped to the rocky shoreline. To his left, the cliff face rose almost straight up, like a massive arcade climbing wall. Between its base and the lapping waves were five feet of sand, pebbles, and stones.

The wind and salt air stung Kazimi’s lips as he made his way along the treacherous shoreline, slipping on seaweed-covered rocks. When he fell, he pushed himself up and plunged ahead. When he got hurt, he ignored it. His plan was simply to keep going. Sooner or later he would have to come to a trail that would cut up away from the water. For a few moments he considered trying to scale the cliff wall itself, but for years his exercise had consisted solely of half-hour walks around the streets of D.C. once or twice a day. A climb like this one, challenging for an expert, just wasn’t going to happen.

One foot … the other. Again … Again.

The going was painfully slow, and now he had another concern—another enemy. The width of his treacherous and narrow escape trail was shrinking. The tide was coming in. He estimated he had traveled maybe two hundred yards, perhaps a little more. The trail was now half the width it had been when he started. To his left, the cliff was just as sheer. The wind was noticeably picking up, and the thin outfit he had worn to the lab was not fending off the chill. With every step, the taste of his newfound freedom was becoming more bitter.

It was at that moment, with the late-afternoon shadows moving across the water, that Kazimi thought he saw movement on the rocks well ahead. He tensed, uncertain if the vision was a seabird, a person, or his imagination. If it was one of Bacon’s massive bodyguards, there was nothing he could do except try to escape the way he had come—this time sloshing through deepening water all the way.

A few more tentative steps, and he could make out a figure, standing on top of a large boulder. The figure, really a silhouette in the deepening shadows, was waving to him with both hands. Thankfully, it became quickly apparent that the man—for it almost certainly was a man—was tall and lean, not at all like either Drake or Costello.

Slipping on rocks and wading in the cold seawater, Kazimi waved back and quickened his pace. Allah had heard his prayers and answered them. Whoever this man was, he would know of a passageway along the rocks that could bring him to the top of the cliff. The Janus strain was going to be the next great plague unless Kazimi could warn the government to abandon all pretense of secrecy and to put as concerted an effort into stopping Janus as it had the AIDS virus. Hopefully, there was still time to stop it from happening.

“Hello!” Kazimi cried out. “I need help! Help me, please!”

His words were swallowed by the wind and the building sea.

Racing ahead, he stumbled, lost his footing, and fell heavily onto a wet, barnacle-covered rock, slicing his palms and knees like a nest of razors. He cried out at the pain, but it was of no matter. Whatever the price of escape, he would pay it. In seconds he was up and shambling ahead as best he could, peering through the gloom at his savior, mussel shells crunching beneath his feet. The man ahead remained motionless except for his arms, which continued to wave rhythmically back and forth.

As the distance between Kazimi and the man narrowed, he slowed his pace. The fellow’s features were coming into focus. There was something familiar about him—something about his narrow face and corn-colored hair.

Burke!

It was far too late for Kazimi to turn and run now. The killer, dressed in a navy blue sweatsuit with white stripes running down the sleeves, casually slid a pistol from a shoulder holster, and trained the weapon on him.

“From this distance I can shoot you in plenty of places that would be terribly painful, but won’t keep you from working,” he called out.

Kazimi kept his distance, so Burke, wearing high-cuts, jumped nimbly from his boulder and closed the gap between them until just a few feet remained.

“Did you really think we’d just let you walk away?” he asked.

“How long have you been watching me?”

“The whole time,” Burke said. Kazimi could hear the breezy pride in his voice and it disgusted him. “We had cameras on you, but Bacon wanted to see if you’d figure it out. Maybe he was starting to think you weren’t as smart as you were advertised to be. You passed that test. Now you get to pass another one. If you don’t follow me back to Red Cliff, the tide is going to come in, and soon you’ll be swimming in sixty-degree ocean water.”

“Then it would be Allah’s wish,” Kazimi said.

Burke dismissed that notion with a wave of his pistol.

“No, it would be
your
wish—your death wish. But
my
wish, no, make that my orders, are to bring you back to your lab. You’ve got work to do.”

“I will do no such thing. I’m finished.”

Burke did not look surprised. “Bacon told me you’d say something like that.” From a pocket in his sweatpants, he retrieved a cell phone and held it up for Kazimi to see.

“I’ve got a number here on speed dial,” he said. “It will call an associate of ours in California. He’s been stalking a former graduate assistant of yours, Dr. Amy Gaspar. Do you remember Amy? She’s a pretty girl with brown hair and a really sweet smile.”

“Please,” Kazimi said, holding up his hands, imploring Burke to be merciful. “There is no need to hurt her.”

“One call,” Burke said, shaking the phone, “and it’s bye-bye, Amy. Nothing as quick as a bullet, though. We decided on hanging.”

“What do you want?”

“I told you. I want you to go back to Red Cliff and stop trying to escape. We have no patience for this nonsense.”

“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.