The Messenger (14 page)

“… in addition to your long experience immersed in these issues, given the availability of technology, what is the feasibility that a small player could accomplish the technological feat of …”

There was a silence around the table. Suddenly Watterman realized that everyone was staring and he had been spoken to.

“… how much could a terror program like what we’re witnessing be downsized … maybe be deliverable by something located in a garage, or a container, or …” Roycroft was trying to clarify things.

“Well, uh, Mr. Secretary … if you’re asking what are we in for, I honestly don’t know, but as far as feasibility goes, it’s not hard at all.” Across the table Joe Norment from the CDC pursed his lips and rocked back in his seat. In the alcove nearest the door to the colonnade, he saw Reilly standing there with his arms crossed, shaking his head.

“Sam’s long background is in exactly this kind of thing …” Barrigar was saying.

“Whoa …” he interrupted. “That’s true, but I’m not up to speed on any of this. There’s lots of phases, there’s manufacture and then there’s delivery. It sounds weaponized to me from what I’ve heard so far, but I haven’t looked through a microscope myself. Was it active?” He looked down the table to Walthaer.

“Yes. Active.”

“All right, it’s active. What that means is that it’s small particles, one or two spores, not heavy clumps. That means it can float easily through the air. It’s like having a cigarette with you that’s burning all the time. According to the briefing paper, Sawalha admitted he carried it in a bottle of talcum powder in his luggage. He’d sealed it in a plastic bag and didn’t open it until he got to Washington, but it would leak right around the threads in the cap anyway.”

“But in your opinion, does that prove the involvement of a state? Is there an organizational signature?” the Secretary of State asked again, the strain beginning to tell in her voice.

“It’s
hard
to make anthrax active. It’s hard to weaponize in that manner, but there have been a lot of advances since …” And for a
moment he fell silent, a little hiccup. “—since the Amerithrax situation, and besides …” And then he did fall silent.

“Besides, what, Doctor?” Walthaer prompted, a little impatiently.

“Besides, it was our conclusion that anthrax would best work as part of something bigger.”

“I think it’s important that we have seen nothing to indicate that there is a second pathogen.” Norment was frowning.

“What do you mean ‘something bigger,’ Dr. Watterman?” said Roycroft.

“We discussed this in detail, you see?” Watterman said. “That’s what
BACCHUS
was all about.” He actually wasn’t supposed to say the name. He didn’t know if
BACCHUS
was still a top-secret program or not, but it probably didn’t matter anymore. “We tried to think like an attacker would think. We tried to war-game it. Anthrax worked best if it could be used in a blitz, to gum up the works, slow down the CDC and local health authorities from dealing with the real demon.”

“Smallpox,” Walthaer picked up, saying it to the entire room.

“Or something else, maybe,” Watterman said. “Anything else. Ebola. Swine flu. Spanish flu, dengue fever, Lassa fever, SARS, Marburg. There’s lots, you name it. Did you see bricks?” he asked Walthaer. Through a microscope, smallpox virus would look like clusters of bricks surrounding the much larger anthrax spores.

“No bricks. Nothing.”

Norment grimaced and raised his hand. “I wasn’t around back when Dr. Watterman’s team made its predictions, but I want to emphasize again that we have no other indications …”

It went around the table a couple of times after that. Watterman didn’t speak again. No one asked him. Maybe it was too much. The realities were shocking. They were staring one of the Four Horsemen right in the eye and they were scared, and what they wanted was reassurance. He wouldn’t give them reassurance. That was just as much a crime as making the stuff in the first place.

The rest of the meeting was devoted to the possibility of finding
evidence that might link to Iran as instigator of the attacks. It was sort of like moving on to the meat course. The stealth bombers were all gassed up and ready to go. He caught Norment looking at him a few times. Reilly was gone to work his evil somewhere else. He must be just about ready to retire too. Forty years in the darkest bowels of the CIA probably would generate a pretty hefty pension, Watterman calculated.

The meeting broke up with a fresh reminder that everything that had been said in the room was top secret.

Roycroft came over. “We want you to stay in the loop this time,” he said, as if being in purgatory for ten years had been Sam’s idea all along. “The general says you’ve agreed to come back on board?”

“Sure, that’s no problem. I’ll do everything I can.”

“We don’t pay as well as academia or Big Pharma. I know out there you’d pull down high six figures. We can’t match that and we’re in an emergency.”

“What about the medical? My wife is—”

“I’m sure we could get you on a plan, Doctor. Don’t worry.”

“Okay. What do you think, Lansing?”

“I’m not your booking agent, sir.”

“Look,” he said to Roycroft. “I need the money. I work on a fee-and-expenses basis. It’s three grand a day, not a penny less. That’s a good deal, a lot less than some lawyers I know. And I work from home. That’s in Atlanta. If you take me out of the region, there’s travel time and per diem on top of that …”

“Don’t worry about the money, Doctor. We can print as much as you need.” Roycroft laughed and walked away, heading for his first press conference of the day.

Somehow the sight of the woman and her broken daughter has affected Daria, and she cannot just sit there and listen to music on the Nano, no matter how anonymous she would like to be. There is a bar in the next car back, actually nicer than the one on the Acela, and she sits with a couple of alcoholic businessmen who are knocking back early vodkas to ease the commute. She thinks about a beer,
but instead buys a carafe of sour red wine for fifteen dollars and sits down to nurse it. She needs a book to deflect the attentions of the men, but it is too late and the nearest, red-faced and happy, leans over to comment that they’re lucky that the train is running on time. She smiles but turns her attention to the Nano earbuds, plugs them in and begins scrolling through her playlist, looking for something, anything that will just transport her … away.

The man, seeing that she’s not available, goes back to his friend, who is making a show of looking out the window. He shakes his leg like a man suffering from a heat rash, and tugs at his belt, trying to loosen the fabric around his middle. “I’m going to start wearing kilts,” he says.

An Amtrak attendant comes into the bar car and goes behind the bar and begins talking into his walkie-talkie. A third man suddenly walks in and slides in beside the two drinkers. “Better whoa up on the sauce …” he says. “We might be driving, Big Bear.”

“No … What the hellizat about?” says the happy man.

The window gazer turns around. “Don’t lie to me … I don’t deserve any more pain,” he groans.

“What’s up, Ned?” the happy man calls out to the attendant.

“Don’t know nothing, yet,” the attendant says. He clips his microphone back on his sweater and heads back up the train. The happy man looks over at her and raises his eyebrows. “You ready to be snowed in, sweetheart?” He winks, and raises his glass.

She pours another glass of wine just as an announcement comes over the intercom.

“Oh, what a crap fest …” says the window gazer.

Ned returns and the three men begin to question him around the
bar. She can hear his voice—defensive: “… No, we don’t have any notification about it, and I don’t know anything except it’s some kind of emergency …”

“These things are always late,” says the happy man to her.

The train has slowed noticeably and she realizes that they are clanking over the switches at the edge of the Baltimore yards.

She gets off along with everyone else and hikes down the platform and into the station. There is a coffee bar and a television showing CNN. The sound is too distant for her to hear, and she doesn’t want to press herself up to the counter and watch. But most of the customers are looking at the set, and the barista has stopped. That’s how Daria can tell it is a genuine emergency instead of the normal “breaking” news.

She’s been watching BBC and RAI for the last few years, but after only a few days in America she can recognize the jovial young host; he shuffles his notes back and forth and glares into the camera as he talks. Across a corner of the screen is a red banner:

Over his shoulder a graphic comes up—a passport photograph or something taken for an identity card—

Below is his full name—
Tariq Abdel Sawalha
.

Tété …

Her heart stops. She steps back.

Her first instinct is to be sick, then it’s to run. Her knees are weak, and she turns, looking for a way out of the station. She begins to walk toward the exit, rolling her luggage behind her, starting to
sweat. She pushes her way through the doors, and right outside in the parking lot is a police car with its flashers on. Milling on the sidewalk, other marooned passengers are on cell phones, calling taxicabs, coworkers, spouses …

Look normal, she tells herself. Look normal,
be
normal. She takes a shaky breath, goes out, waits by the curb and in a few minutes is able to share a cab to downtown Baltimore with Gillian, who works for the city and was going to have to come back to the city later tonight anyway. The bus station is on the way. She suffers through the ride and invents a story about going to see her mother, who lives in Richmond.

“Just wait until tomorrow. There are good hotels. You’ll get out in the morning. They’ll probably be up and running by then,” Gillian tells her.

“I have to get there tonight.”

“Well, if you’ve got enough money you could take a taxi, but don’t go by way of D.C.… or just go around it. It’s starting to sound scary down there.” Gillian laughs and shakes her head.

So … Tété too, she thinks as they ride along. That means there were—that there probably still are … 
more
. She has not been alone. There are many arrows flying. Now Creighton’s warning makes more sense.

Tété!
How long have they had him? Did he leave on the same day she did? But how could they have caught him so quickly? Could he have been … was he … a double agent?

She tries to think back to every conversation she ever had with him. They never, ever talked about politics or anything remotely serious. It was all silliness and football and movie stars and fast cars. She never kept a diary, or wrote anything that might … They used to dream about crazy things, childish things, streets of gold in the clouds, fabulous dream houses they could live in. He was a little boy, really. That was why he was so charming.

She starts to cry, but wipes the tears and gets back her control. Tété … did he, could he ever suspect that she too was part of a … well … of something that was obviously a larger operation …?

Tété caught spreading anthrax …

Anthrax …

She remembers the
USA Today
article about the arrest in Israel. How big is this? she wonders.

“Here you go …” says Gillian as they swoop into the bus station parking lot to drop her off; she pays with a twenty and leaves with a polite “Thank you.”

Her cover has to be blown. It’s only a matter of time now before they trace her. If Tété hasn’t given her up already, they’ll just rake through his background. Italian secret police and CIA agents will surf through all his records. They’ll vacuum up her name along with everyone else’s. And then they’ll get a match when they look at arrivals into the U.S. over the last two weeks.

The hotel will gladly tell them all about her. That will get them her
Klic!
credit card number, so her cards are no good anymore. If she uses them, they’ll be on her instantly.

Tété can’t last. He’ll tell them everything that comes to mind. She knows him. He’s not hard enough. And she knows all about enhanced interrogation techniques. She knows about waterboarding and stress positions, sleep deprivation, truth drugs, and techniques of humiliation. She knows enough. No one can stand it. Sooner or later Tété will fall apart and tell them. She, Tété … and if there are others, probably none of them have had any training, the kind of training that you would need to resist. Just like her, none of them have any fallback plans. Now they are all fugitives.

Across the lobby of the bus station, there is a large timetable that refreshes via a series of flapping letters as each bus moves higher in the queue. There is only one open ticket window. The next bus displayed is heading for
FREDERICK
.

She goes right up and buys a ticket. She’s on the edge of panic. When she talks to the woman at the window, her voice comes out raspy and she has to cough and clear her throat. She has no idea where Frederick is or how long it will take to get there. She’s just running now.

And less than fifteen minutes later, she is seated halfway back in
an air-conditioned Greyhound, leaning through the corners as the bus navigates in lurches to get into the supposedly “fast” lane of rush-hour-clotted I-70. Below her the Americans are choking on their own vomit, she thinks, looking down at the rivers of cars.

It is amazing how people can individualize their vehicles. Loving care and twenty coats of paint lavished on a pickup truck that gets ten miles to the gallon and will never actually carry a load of gravel. There are a great many gun racks. Bumper stickers abound. There are Democrats, Republicans, people who attend Tea Parties, and people who are boycotting oil. None of them are shy about loudly proclaiming their politics to whoever is behind them.