The Biofab War (3 page)

It was, John realized as Bill continued, the classic Outfit pitch.
The enemy are upon us! To the walls, brothers!
He interrupted with a laugh. “Bill, do you know how often I’ve delivered that line? No, let me finish.” He held up a hand. “I saved Uncle’s ass a lot of times over the years. First with CIC in Asia, then with the Outfit in Africa, and finally running your Eastern networks.”

“Like I said, you were the best.”

“Am the best. Good enough for the Outfit to pay me very well to bail it out, now and then. And when you’re not in trouble, DIA or NSA is. It’s a good living. I don’t have to do it all the time, and I don’t have to put up with bureaucratic BS. So save your pitch for the next candidate. I’m out. But tell me—whose ass needs saving today?”

Before Sutherland could reply, the door slammed back and a great white-haired bear of a man stormed in, wearing denim shirt and pants with red suspenders. Under his left arm was a star-spangled red, white, and blue motorcycle helmet.

“Can’t ride a bike in this town without getting killed,” he fumed. “Some turtle brain’s limo ran the light at Seventeenth and L. Another inch I’d have greased the road with my…” He spotted Sutherland. “Bill! How’s our merry master of mendacity?” he grinned.

“Bob. You unrepentant commie.” Sutherland shook the big hand. “Still riding that suicide rack?”

“My daughter disapproves,” the older man said with a smile. Sinking into an armchair, he plopped his helmet down on the blue-and-white oriental. “But Jason and Melanie adore having the only grandpa in town with a two-wheeled BMW.”

“What brings you across the bridge, Bill? Something lucrative chore we can do?” asked a lithe olive-skinned woman, coming into the room. Her wet jet-black hair was wrapped in a mauve towel, a man’s red terry-cloth robe falling to her feet. Rather large feet, the CIA officer noted covertly.

“Good morning, Zahava,” said Sutherland from the safety of his chair

“Good morning,” echoed John and McShane.

“Good morning,” she said, pulling up a chair and lighting an unfiltered Camel. “This had better be worth my crawling out of bed, Bill.”

“It’s worth a listen, Zahava.” He settled back in his chair, the center of attention. “First, though, the usual tired protocols.” Taking a small voice-activated recorder from his pocket, he put it on the coffee table. “This briefing is classified Top Secret/Janissary. No one may reveal any portion of it without the prior written permission of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Stifling a yawn, Zahava poured herself a cup of coffee. They’d all heard this at least a dozen times in the past three years. She glanced at John, toying with his letter opener. Catching her eye, he winked.

“So much for that,” said Sutherland. “Okay, here’s the situation. Royal Petroleum’s been trying to sink some test wells off the Massachusetts coast. The project’s a year behind. Supports for the first platforms haven’t even been sunk. There may be as many as forty-eight billion barrels of oil out there, maybe five times that much in natural gas. The delays, before last week, appeared to be coincidental: small accidents, bad hiring decisions, organizational snafus.”

“There was the litigation,” said McShane. “Greenpeace, the Sierra Club…”

“On appeal,” said Sutherland.

“And those Zodiac boats intercepting supplies,” added John.

“Removed by the Coast Guard.”

“What happened to the windmills?” asked Zahava. “Drilling off Cape Cod—will you be fracking in Yellowstone next?”

“I’m not the bad guy,” said Sutherland. “Just the messenger. And Yellowstone’s seismically active, Zahava.”

“Why would that stop people?”

“What were the other delays?” John asked before Zahava got on a roll.

“Oh, not ordering special equipment, damage to mapping gear, endless negotiations over the clearing and dredging of a modest port facility.”

“Royal’s project crew is based at the Leurre Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod. Last week they were finally set to begin seismic mapping and core sampling when the submersible
Argonaut
was lost with both divers. One of them was our man.”

“This is domestic security,” said John. “How did you get into it?”

“
Argonaut
was ours. She was on loan to Leurre—Leurre’s under contract to Royal. We used her last year raising the
Great Wall 49.”
It had been a brilliant coup, raising a deep-sunken Chinese nuclear sub, her weapons, navigation and communications systems intact.

“What happened to your submersible?” asked Zahava, tucking her feet beneath her on the chair.

“Lost. And our man murdered.” Sutherland set his coffee mug on the ceramic tabletop. “His body came drifting ashore at Yarmouthport, a spear gun shaft through the heart. A poor attempt had been made to sink it.”

“Anyone I knew?” asked John

Sutherland shook his head. “Joe Antonucchi. He was a field op, mostly West Africa. He’d been investigating the delays for the past month. The night before he was killed, he met with an informant on the Institute staff. But we don’t know who the informant was—Antonucchi never got to file a report.”

“Any idea who’s behind it?” asked Bob.

“We first assumed an unfriendly power, trying to restrict our energy resources. But no longer. Take a look at this.”

Sutherland opened his attaché case. Taking out a small flat package wrapped in ordinary brown paper, he removed a triangular-shaped rock, its edges fused. “This came addressed to me two days after we found Antonucchi’s body,” he said, passing the object to Bob. “The package had the right internal mail code and Joe’s fingerprints all over it.”

McShane turned the fragment over in his large hands.

“What do you make of it, Bob?” asked Sutherland.

“I’m a political philosopher and historian, Bill,” he replied, examining the marks chiseled into the front.

“But your hobby’s Bronze Age languages, isn’t it?”

“How much are you paying my grandchildren?” grumbled McShane, not looking up.

“You’re a distinguished scholar, sir, your career one of public record,” said Sutherland, velvet-voiced.

“Someday, someone’s going to poison you, Bill, slowly,” John said.

Zahava peered over Bob’s shoulder. “It looks like . . .”

“It is.” The professor nodded. “The language Moses learned at the feet of the Great Ramses—Egyptian. Court Egyptian. It reads, ‘The Exalted One: His Dwelling.’”

“Fascinating.” He handed it to John, who glanced at it, then gave it back to Sutherland. The officer carefully re-wrapped it and locked it back in his attaché case.

“Good old igneous granite,” Sutherland continued. “Found all over New England. Very rare on the Cape, though, but present.”

“Why do you think it’s from Cape Cod?” asked Zahava.

“Our resident geologists say it’s from the northeastern United States. I believe Antonucchi sent it to me. He was on the Cape. I assume, therefore, that this three-thousand-year-old item is from there.”

“Are you sure it’s not a forgery?” John asked, disbelieving.

“The stone and inscription are equally weathered.”

“What is something from my part of the world doing in yours?” asked the Israeli.

“There’s some evidence of pre-Columbian colonization of the Americas,” said Bob. “Nothing as far back as this, though.” He pointed to the attaché case. “But who knows?”

“Again, why us, Bill?” asked John. “I’m not trying to drive business away, but why not the FBI?”

“We’re in a double bind. I shouldn’t have sent Antonucchi in. And sure, legally it’s a case for the FBI. The Bureau, though, tried to penetrate whatever’s happening at the Institute for eight months. Nothing. The Bureau are mostly good people. I work with them every day. And if I thought this a case requiring the wherewithal to walk unblinking into a firefight, I’d pick the Bureau over the Outfit any day. But this one’s weird and political dynamite. If the Hill gets wind of our involvement in a domestic matter, it’s good-bye Bill. So, I need you, we need you, and at the risk of being gauche, your country needs you.

“Well?”

Bob raised his hand. “Aye.”

“Why not?” said Zahava, her hand joining McShane’s in the air.

Shaking his head, John looked at the cluttered desktop. “Aye,” he said with a sigh.

“I knew you couldn’t let the Gipper down,” Sutherland grinned.

“You’re dating yourself,” said McShane.

Rising, Bill switched off the recorder and pocketed it. “With your help, we’ll get that port facility built and some producing wells dug. Can’t run an armored division on cordwood.”

“Windmills,” counseled Zahava.

Bill turned at the door. “I’ll send a courier around with a full briefing packet. Oh, and John? Throw that coffee out. You’ll live longer.”

“Bill’s in trouble?” asked Zahava over brunch the next morning.

John shrugged, looking up from the patio to the trees surrounding the townhouse’s bricked-in yard. A pair of cardinals contended noisily with a blue jay for the last piece of winter suet hanging from the budding cherry tree.

“A little. What’s he going to do, retire? He’d be home with Shewombod all day.”

“Shewombod?”

“She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. His ghastly wife. He’d be dead in a year. You know our last two assignments were obscenely easy money. Besides, it’s often complex, sometimes intriguing—even dangerous. We’re not going to do this forever, so we might as well enjoy it.”

“And it pays well.”

“There is that.”

“It’s all arranged,” called Bob, stepping onto the patio.

“What is?” John asked.

“Miss Tal’s new career, Special Assistant to my old friend, Dr. Lawrence Levine. Larry’s currently Director of Marine Microbiology Research at Leurre Oceanographic.”

“I don’t know anything about microorganisms, Bob!”

“Ah, but can you type?”

Agilely ducking the napkin ring, the professor sank into one of the white iron lawn chairs. Zahava menacingly hefted a grapefruit half.

“Peace!” McShane laughed, crossing his arms over his face. The grapefruit slowly returned to its bowl.

“Listen, you two,” he continued. “Zahava will have to type, marginally, but it’s superb cover. Someone on the staff knows about that misplaced Egyptian stele and its origins. There are only about two hundred people at the Institute, and Oystertown’s a small place.”

“All right,” conceded the Israeli.

“We’re agreed, then? Zahava goes tonight? Larry will meet her at Hyannis Airport and see her to her motel.” The two nodded.

“And tomorrow,” John said, “I’ll drop in on Fred Langston, the Institute’s Director. I’m an investigator from Royal, checking into the project delays—nothing new for him.”

“And you’re going via Boston?” he asked Bob.

“Yes. I’ve some related research to do, mostly at Harvard. I’ll meet you two at your motel Wednesday.”

“Sounds good.”

“I hate offices.” Zahava made a face then raised her coffee cup. “Well, to a quick and successful investigation.”

John flicked on the Buick’s headlights. The gray Cape Cod twilight found him alone on the two-lane road, flanked by scrub pine. The flight from Washington to Boston’s Logan Airport had been uneventful, only the cold driving rain marring his arrival.

Not chancing the box kite of a commuter plane that shuttled between Boston and Hyannis, he’d rented a car and was now nearing the end of a lonely drive down a nearly deserted Route 6, the only other traffic an occasional truck.

Wondering how Zahava had fared her first day at the Institute, his thoughts turned to dark, slender legs, supple thighs and sleepless, steamy nights in the big king-sized bed.

The tractor-trailer rig jackknifed across the road snapped him back to the present. Slowing to a stop, he saw no sign of a driver. Hoodie turned against the cold Atlantic drizzle, he got out and started toward the overturned cab, silently cursing the moron who’d evidently gone for help without setting flares.

Senses honed on a hundred night patrols saved him, sending him flying back behind the car as the bullets came, shattering the windows. Wrestling the big 9mm automatic from under his pocket, John crawled toward the back of the car as the concealed gunman continued spraying the Buick. Risking a quick look, he spotted the muzzle flash just as the rifle bolt snapped at the end of a magazine. Leaping up, he braced the pistol with both hands against the wet vinyl roof and emptied the weapon into the brush. Changing magazines, he charged across the slick road and into the bushes.

There was no one there, only spent shells and a small pool of a green liquid melting away in the rain.

Shaken and angry, John returned to the car, checking tires and engine. They were okay, but the windows were gone. Breaking away the last fragments of windshield with the tire iron, he got in and drove slowly into the gathering dark, ignoring the rain that swept in, soaking him.

J
ohn reached Oystertown just before five. Once a sleepy Nantucket Sound fishing village, it had been transformed by Leurre’s endowers into a gentrified summer colony, a cobblestoned, yacht-slipped enclave for anyone with the money and taste for what
The Boston Globe
had dubbed Louisburg Square-by-the-Sea.