The Messenger (22 page)

Chamai has found his cigarette and lit it. He is one of a crew of geeks who are just now coming to maturity amid the chaos of the chicken factory. It’s a transformative time for him too, Watterman sees. He’s avidly following the game, as badges chase terrorists
across the continent. It’s something they can all root for, something they can accomplish, he thinks. Light at the end of the tunnel.

“… and so they have all the credit card numbers, they’ve got names off of that. Deeper down is your corporate records, but they can get all that … Banks, telephones, that shit’s coming out of the system all the time. Canada’s on it, Mexico is on it.”

“Forensic accounting,” Watterman says.

“Oh, yeah. Wireless communications, the NSA—just them alone, they suck up a tremendous amount. You know what fucks things up worst of all?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Spelling mistakes. Number out of place, picky little shit like that.”

“Right, ‘smart but dumb.’ ”

“Yes, sir. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Watterman hands the phone back to the boy, and they turn around and head back to the sealed doors. “I ever tell you about when we used to use punch cards?”

Chamai laughs. “No, sir, you didn’t. That’s crazy …”

Inside the chicken factory there is constant repurposing as space and furniture are configured to respond to the attacks. A long room on one side has been carved out, wired, and screened. Altogether it produces a deluge of information. All those billions of dollars of counterterror infrastructure spending coming back to haunt him. Apparently Watterman, Lansing, and Chamai are now part of ART—the Anthrax/smallpox Response Task Force. Watterman finds it profoundly depressing. Huge screens display their lack of progress so far.

Banks are vectors. ATMs are vectors. Banking and credit card information plays a crucial part in chasing down the villains, and Watterman remembers Robert Redford’s admonition in
All the President’s Men
—follow the money. Pay phones. Grocery stores. The produce section is great for spreading certain kinds of pathogens. All the places people go. All vectors.

In the middle of the broad central street a meeting place has spontaneously grown up; it reminds Watterman of the gloriettas in Mexico City, traffic circles where people can congregate. He has
found a personal sanctuary on one of the modernist bench seats that rim the outside of the circle. It’s quiet enough to work and he’s close enough to the FBI cubicles that he can be found when they need him. If he has to be in the chicken factory, at least he’ll make an effort. He pushes for information, and Lansing agrees, making sure that Grimaldi and Chamai keep him up to speed by providing him with the relevant bulletins, updates, and revisions.

In the “bar,” he meets other consultants. Deke Foreham, who has come over from the Defense Intelligence Agency. His pet theory requires him to liaise with the Border Patrol, because he thinks separate teams of terrorists have entered from Ciudad Juarez.

“It’s the softest way in we’ve got. Just walk along, find a low spot, cross the mudhole … no trace. No credit card, no pictures. Hour later you’re in El Paso.” Sam shrugs and orders another double scotch. It’s his last for the evening. This is war and the FBI bartender has informed them that there are limits.

Vectors. He spends his time trying to decipher Khan’s game. There are plenty of office supplies: He’s liberated a legal tablet and dug up a box of pencils, then stalked through the chicken factory until he found a sharpener. Now he starts doodling out a solution. There’s only a few ways it can work, he thinks.… Time slips away on him. He takes breaks and ambles around. Skylights. The place needs skylights. The bar has closed down. It must be night, because everyone else is sleeping.

There is a flurry of activity and he watches two agents conferring over a photograph that has just come out of the printer. They begin making copies. He walks over and stands at the end of the paper feed.

Khan, Khan, Khan … by the dozen. Older, still well dressed as ever in this JPG captured by some government’s border security camera. At first glance you wouldn’t take him for the devil.

His game has to be a version of the purloined antidote strategy. It has to be. First you develop a high-lethality bioweapon. Once you develop a cure you restrict doses of the precious vaccine to your loyal friends and associates. On the day of the attack, you release
the germs and hide out. Have a glass of wine while simmering. When it’s all over you come out of your sealed bunker and take over the earth. Free love and lots of resort property. No more problem with resources. No more problem with global warming.
Lebensraum
. That’s the dream. That’s the nightmare.

But there is only one way it can work.

Chamai comes on shift. He brings coffee, muffins. Asks if Watterman needs anything else. Anything at all.

“Have they got the samples yet? Did you phone?”

“You know, you ought to get some sleep, Doctor. Tomorrow’s going to be big, I got a feeling.”

“What about the damn samples, Aldo?”

“They’re crackin’ ’em as we speak, Doc. Really, you should go fall over somewhere …”

“Yeah …” he says. “What time is it? Okay, don’t tell me. You’re right.” He’s gone through almost the whole legal pad, and he’s been sitting on the bench seats so long he’s paralyzed.

As he manipulates his joints in an attempt to stand, another agent comes by. There are gunfights in Italy, where security forces have cornered a cell of terrorists and have been forced to shoot their way into the building. Also, an updated list is passed out: IDs of suspected terrorists and associates being sought within the borders of the United States. Bulletins have gone out to every law enforcement agency in the country. The agent hands both of them copies. Watterman glances at it; it is only about a third of a page long, which is good, he thinks.

“We have to break out Khan’s people from this list, you know that, right?” he says to Chamai.

“Working on it as we speak, Doc. Oh, and you’ve got a call
from a fellow named Sanjay Mijares in Mumbai. Just press star,” Chamai says, and holds out his phone.

Sanjay’s voice way down the line.
“… hell here, my friend. Absolute hell …”
Watterman, tired, can barely listen. Of course it’s hell in India. And it’s going to be hell everywhere else too, and soon, he thinks.

“Have you run your samples, Sanjay?” He shouts into the cell phone and waits. The encrypted telephones cause a lag. It’s like talking to an astronaut on the moon.

“Yes, Sam. It’s classic variola major and the amount of penetration was extremely high. They say we have sufficient inoculations, but no one really believes it. Of course, more can be made—”

“You’re sure? It wasn’t tweaked? It would be logical if it was tweaked,” he insists, knowing Khan, trying to guess how he’d game it. It has to be tweaked.

“Thank God, no, Sam. That would be a true misery. We did ours and it’s a classic virus and has not been modified. I have not yet received European samples, but they should be arriving any minute. Where are you, Sam?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“How’s Maggie?”

“Maggie’s fine. She said to give her love to your mother.”

“Oh, Mum’s been dead for five years now.”

“I know, but she doesn’t remember.”

“I’m so sorry, Sam. Please give her a big kiss for me.”

“I will.” They both fall silent for a moment before they lurch into the business of quantifying the unfolding tragedy in India. Does Sanjay know anything about Khan or his whereabouts since the epidemics have been launched?

“The security people tell me nothing, Sam.”

“Don’t let them get away with anything. We need every bit of information if we are going to beat this thing.”

“Yes, Sam. I won’t.”

“It’s time to lay down in front of the bulldozer, Sandy.”

“I know, Sam. I have told the Army, I have told all my contacts in security. Politicians and all those in planning for epidemics, I have told them many times. Not only myself, I’m not a hero, Sam, but many others. But they didn’t listen and now they are hiding their failures. Admitting that you are wrong takes courage, Sam, and I do not think they have it.”

T
he women who have been rescued overnight by the armies of salvation are expected during the day to go out and look for work, a process that begins with being herded out the front door, where they cluster to smoke and try to develop their plans. Most just start walking and Daria follows suit, her pack slung across her shoulder on her good side. For lack of a destination, she simply heads deeper into the heart of town.

Looking for a doctor is out of the question. No one gets a hole like that in their side by accident. And she can’t risk showing her incriminating ID. Better to just limp along, and she heads down the sidewalk, trying to dream up a plan to actually gain access to the vaults at Fort Knox, or at least make some kind of step forward in her program to bring the Great Satan to justice.

When she thinks about her progress so far, she gets angrier and angrier at Mansur al Brazi, Saleem Atcha Khan, and dear laughing Cousin Ali, because, as an American might say, they have hung her out to dry. Given that she is on a suicide mission, this shouldn’t matter, but it does. If you are going to die—and more specifically, if you are going to die for a cause, if you are at war with this enormous machine called “America”—then shouldn’t you sell your life as
dearly as possible? Shouldn’t your handlers have planned a little more efficiently?

For instance, there is no second set of identification papers, which would come in very handy just now. For instance, the whole Mr. Creighton fiasco has demonstrated a lack of communication. For instance, there is no way of getting any money, of which she is in desperate need, and worst of all, she’s being forced off target.

Specifically, what is the point in just killing the poorest of the poor? Cleansing America of the women at the homeless shelter is only helping the enemy, not hurting it. It only relieves the godless upper classes from the burden of taking care of its castoffs. Moreover, this type of action runs contrary to all Muslim teachings. A good Muslim opens his house to the stranger, a good Muslim gives alms.

No … they may be the bow, they may be the string, they may be the archer, but she is the sharp tip of the arrow and she knows best. The mission has been rushed, shoddily conceived, and it makes her angry.

The bullet hole—even if it’s become infected, she can keep going. But her skin is killing her. It must be the smallpox, or an allergic reaction to the injection she was given in Berlin, the one that is supposed to slow down her death and give her the chance of being a grandmother. The very idea is funny, but laughing hurts, and when she does so, she gasps.

After about two blocks she becomes aware that she is being followed.

Her stalker is one of the women in the shelter. Daria had glimpsed her at the dinner. Noticed her because she was different than the others. First, she is not black or Hispanic; second, she is white-blonde and one of the few pretty girls who have required rescue.

Oh, there are a lot of girls back there who were once pretty. And almost all have been at one time pretty enough. Girls with good bones. Girls who could make someone’s heart quicken. All those once-pretty girls who have been sucked dry of life. Girls who can’t
control their limbs, and now walk in jerky zombie steps. Girls who know too much about heroin, cocaine, or meth. Girls who blame it all on men. Girls who are killing themselves for … whatever reason. All these beautiful girls dying, dying … Even right here in Louisville, this city that is trying so hard to be elegant and historic. Dying.

But this blonde seems healthy enough, with clear, bright eyes, and she walks along purposefully, not staggering like a junkie. It doesn’t compute really; a girl with her kind of looks should be able to make some money, if not on the street then at least as a waitress, or with some better clothes as a clerk. She’s pretty enough to work for
Klic!
, assuming
Klic!
even exists anymore.

The girl catches Daria looking back at her and she raises one pale hand, nods, then catches up to her. “I’m not sleeping there again. That place is a living hell …” the girl says—the way she says “slipping” for “sleeping” and “liffing” for “living” marks her as another foreigner, a European of the eastern persuasion—“… and I don’t need them to tell me that I am a sinner, I already know that …”

They stand there on the grimy historic sidewalk of Louisville, Kentucky, staring at each other, eye to eye. “Hi, I’m Nadja, and I am running away too,” the girl says.

“I’m not running away. Who told you that?” Daria asks.

The blonde Slav is smiling at her now. “Sure, sure. However you want to have it.”

“I’m on the way to Hollywood.”

Now the girl laughs. “Okay … that’s sounds like a realistic plan. Do you have any money?”

“Some. Not much.”

“So, how do you think you are going to get there? Do you have an agent?”

“I’m going to hitchhike.”

“Yah, yah … of course. You don’t mind getting raped in every province from here to California? Okay, bon voyage.” The girl—Nadja—walks on ahead.

Still hurting, and still needing to make some decisions, and still
basically lost, Daria follows. When they get to the intersection, they both pause and look both ways. “I don’t know any of the streets here,” Nadja says. “Stritts” is the way she says it. She hasn’t even checked to see if Daria was following, she just assumed it. It’s insulting, but now she looks around and smiles.

“I am going to help my sister in Kansas City. We might as well travel together. It would be much safer, don’t you agree?”