Blown (4 page)

Chapter 7

BERLIN, 9:12 P.M.

Eric Carmichael sat on the edge of the porcelain tub, his eyes on a digital clock. The hair dye took six minutes to work; he’d been waiting for three and a half. The skin of his fingers was turning brown and the smell of peroxide was sharp in his nostrils; he was thankful for these things, uncompromisingly real. They reassured him that he was alive.

He had lost too much blood in the past week, and his memory of some days was hazy at best. He knew he’d pawned his watch somewhere between Budapest and Berlin—it was gone from his wrist, and he doubted it’d been stolen. Krucevic had always kept them short of cash, and he had no credit card in a name he could use. He’d pawned the watch, then, probably in some shop near the Budapest West train station, the day he’d walked away from Caroline toward a certain death.

He’d been trying to save Sophie Payne but he’d gone across Europe in the wrong direction. By the time he’d realized Mlan Krucevic was not in Berlin, the vice president and Krucevic were both dead, along with every terrorist operative he’d known for the past two years. He alone had survived. The whole world would be hunting him down.

What time was it, when he stood at last in the shadows of the loading dock in Berlin? One
A.M.
? Two? He’d been cautious and alert. Moved as silently as a cat up the exterior staircase to the security door, through the darkened complex, past reception to the sealed lab. And then the silent rush of air as the knife blade plunged toward him through the darkness, fueled by hatred. He’d sensed the stroke at the last second and dove sideways—but the sharp steel bit into his neck, a savage arc from the base of his ear to his collarbone. With the instinct of the Green Beret he’d once been—the man trained to kill in darkness or light—he’d ignored the knife and reached for the wrists, dashing them brutally against the laboratory’s doors. There was a cry of pain—the clenched fingers released—the weapon clattered to the floor.

He thought maybe he’d lifted the woman—for his attacker was a woman, he was certain of that—high in the air and flung her like a dressmaker’s dummy into the opposite wall. He wasn’t sure. He only knew that when he finally flipped on a light and stared down at the body at his feet, her neck was broken.

Her name was Greta Oppenheimer. One of 30 April’s loyal slaves. She’d used a laboratory scalpel to stab him; it lay, blade broken, near her lifeless fingers.

Why had she crouched in the office that night? Had she known he was coming?

A spatter of blood fell on Greta’s chest. Eric looked down, then, and saw the stream of it trickling from his neck.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Out in a minute.”

He rinsed his head under the bathtub spigot, careful to keep the flow of stained water from striking his wound. He hardly knew how he’d made it to Mahmoud Sharif’s apartment. The Palestinian lived with his German wife in Berlin’s working-class district of Prenzlauerberg. He’d pounded on Sharif’s door in the middle of the night, scaring the two boys out of their wits. Dagmar had been certain it was the German police, come to haul Mahmoud away on yet another terrorism charge. The Palestinian had crept toward the door with a semiautomatic in his hands. He’d thrown back the lock only when he saw blood seeping across his floor.

Sharif had sealed Eric’s gaping neck wound with plastic cement. Ugly, but efficient; a German hospital was out of the question. He’d bear the scar for the rest of his days.

He toweled his hair with both hands and studied his reflection in the mirror. His blond hair had disappeared, and with it, his blue eyes; he’d inserted brown lenses. It wasn’t a perfect transformation—he was still the same age and size—but it might get him out of Europe.

He settled a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose and stepped into the hall.

Mahmoud surveyed him critically. “I was followed tonight,” the Palestinian said.

“Who?”

“BKA.”

The Bundeskriminalamt—the German equivalent of the FBI. They might be surveilling Mahmoud out of habit—he’d once built bombs for Hizballah—or they might be looking for Eric. “Did you lose them?”

Mahmoud shook his head. “I was only coming home. A normal end to a normal day. Why should I arouse suspicion? But there is a man loitering in the street. He smokes far too many expensive Turkish cigarettes for a punk with no job.”

The sound of a child’s high-pitched voice, insistent and tremulous, drifted from the kitchen. Mahmoud’s elder boy, Moammar, demanding something from his mother. With reflexive Muslim courtesy, Mahmoud had not asked Eric to leave his home and spare his children the possible horrors of their father’s arrest. Eric was Sharif’s guest. He would die defending him if necessary.

Eric had offered as much eight years ago when Sharif was a penniless carpenter in love with a German girl from Hamburg. As chief of the CIA’s base there, he’d recruited Sharif, trained and instructed and molded him to betray the Hizballah cell that had planted him in Germany. Sharif had fed the CIA vital information for nearly four years, and when his cover was blown—when he was burned, in the parlance of espionage—Eric had saved his life and Dagmar’s. The two men were blood brothers. In a world rife with enemies, some named and some unknown, such things were precious.

“The BKA was all over 30 April,” Mahmoud told him apologetically. “They’ll have found that lab. The corpse with the broken neck.”

And who but a 30 April terrorist would have access to such a lab?
Eric thought.
They’ll have samples of my blood on the floor. My DNA.

“I’ll leave tonight,” he said.

“There’s no need. We can hide you for weeks. Move you, if necessary, among our friends, until the hunt dies down.”

Caroline’s face rose with painful clarity in Eric’s mind. “I don’t have weeks,” he replied. “I leave tonight.”

Mahmoud nodded, his relief so intense it bordered on shame. “I will take you down to the garage, fold you into the trunk of the BMW, and Dagmar will drive off with the kids as though we’ve had a fight. She’ll go to her sister’s—after she drops you somewhere convenient, of course.”

Somewhere convenient. Where exactly would that be, for a man hunted the length of Europe? But he merely nodded, and held out his hand. “Thank you, Mahmoud.”

“I settle a debt, only. Too long unpaid.” He grasped Eric’s palm.

When Mahmoud had gone, Eric moved quietly into the Palestinian’s bedroom and drew a small screwdriver from his pocket. It was essential that he remove every trace of himself from Sharif’s apartment.

Behind the collection of Italian wool trousers and the sweeping black cloak Dagmar favored was a small wood panel. Screwed into the plasterboard wall, it covered a hole between closet and bathroom: a plumber’s trap, a clean-out. The builder had designed it for easy access to the workings of Sharif’s shower, but Eric had found another use for it. In all the years of his undercover operation with 30 April, his bugout kit had lived in Sharif’s wall.

The bugout kit was every clandestine agent’s hope for survival. When your cover was blown and the whole world wanted you dead, the bugout kit just might save your ass. In Eric’s case it held a false identity: a British passport in the name of Nigel Benning; a Visa card and driver’s license belonging to the same man. Five thousand dollars in cash. A gun. Enough damaging evidence to send Sharif to prison for years.

He stared at the photograph of Nigel Benning: dark brown hair, brown eyes, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. Himself, in disguise. That and a token would get him a ride on the U-Bahn. The passport was too dangerous to use.

It was a stolen blank he’d bought years ago on the street in Prague. The serial number might already be listed in the world’s immigration databases. If Mahmoud was right—if the BKA was hunting a 30 April survivor—every border would be watched. Every passport studied.

He stuffed the contents of the bugout kit in his jacket and carefully screwed the wooden panel back onto Sharif’s wall.

Chapter 8

WASHINGTON, D.C., 10:48 P.M.

It was Tom Shephard’s job to tell Al Tomlinson, the FBI director, that the Marine Corps Marathon had been hit by a terrorist. While Tomlinson called the White House, Tom got in touch with the Marine colonel who’d spent more than a year planning the race, and broke the bad news. Stannis Morrow wasn’t sleeping—he’d been following the reports of mass illness with growing dread—and thirty minutes later he faxed Tom his computerized registration list of the fifteen thousand people who’d run that day. The FBI was calling each of them now, one by one.

Shephard demanded the names and service records of every Marine who’d worked the Hains Point water and aid stations—just in case the anonymous letter wasn’t joking. Then he asked Colonel Morrow to send the twelve men to the J. Edgar Hoover Building immediately.

With shuddering speed the machinery slid into place. There was a protocol for chem-bio attacks, established months before in the event of such a strike against Washington. An army of medical and law enforcement personnel fanned out across the city. District police took up stations along the marathon route. Hospitals called in extra staff and braced for the flood of worried runners with vague symptoms and imperfect memories of what they’d ingested where. Remaining supplies of fruit and bottled water intended for race-time distribution, along with twelve tons of garbage collected along the route, were seized and trucked to the Bureau’s Laboratory Division, where every scrap would be tested for ricin or other contaminants. And Tom Shephard held a press conference.

“Tonight the Federal Bureau of Investigation, at the direction of the President of the United States, is forced to declare a national emergency,” he said bluntly into the microphone set up at 10:53
P
.
M
. in the Headquarters auditorium. The briefing would be broadcast simultaneously on all the major television channels, preempting the eleven o’clock news, and might take out Leno and Letterman if questions ran long enough.
Shephard in the nation’s living rooms,
he thought acidly.
A real stand-up comic.

“The FBI has received information tonight claiming responsibility for the poisoning of an undetermined number of participants in the Marine Corps Marathon with the castor bean derivative, ricin.” Beyond the halogen bulbs flooding his eyes Tom could glimpse the shadowy figures of the reporters and cameramen, one hundred sixty-two at last count, but even this crowd didn’t begin to fill the auditorium and he was reminded incongruously of his high school drama club days, the dress rehearsals in a darkened house, audience reaction impossible to judge. “The ricin may have been ingested in water distributed by rogue operators unaffiliated with the Marine Corps. The attack is believed to have been the work of a person or group of persons loosely associated with a European terrorist group known as 30 April Organization, acting on U.S. soil, and may have occurred around mile twenty of the race course in the neighborhood of Hains Point. Anyone who observed suspicious activity at that location or elsewhere during the race is urged to come forward, and those race participants who may be experiencing gastric discomfort should report immediately to medical facilities. A hotline has been set up . . .”

The questions were predictable and the answers were few.
No, we haven’t identified the terrorists involved. We have no estimate of the number of casualties but it is likely to run in the hundreds. There is no cure for ricin poisoning. We have no reason to believe that 30 April’s leader Mlan Krucevic survived last week’s attack on his compound outside Sarajevo . . .

The chief problem, Tom thought as he stepped down from the podium with a description of ricin’s chemical structure in his hand and the press still clamoring for information, was that they hadn’t a single fucking lead to follow. Caroline had called from her car and urged him to check out Payne’s Naval Observatory staff—but the FBI had already reviewed the personnel files and clearances of everybody employed by the vice president, from the moment she’d been kidnapped two weeks before. They’d found nothing suspicious. All five of Payne’s employees looked clean as a whistle.

Ricin is composed of two hemagglutinins and two toxins, RCL III and RCL IV; these are dimers roughly 66,000 daltons in molecular weight . . . the B chain of polypeptides binds to cell surface glycoproteins . . . the A chain acts on the ribosomal subunit . . . inhibits protein synthesis . . . leads to cell death. Basic structure is similar to botulinum toxin, cholera toxin, diphtheria toxin, tetanus toxin . . .

In other words, he thought savagely, you rot out your guts and then you die.

“Tom?”

He glanced toward the door. Steve Price, the
Post
reporter, flashing his badge at the conference room guard. “You missed the show,” Tom said.

“No choice. I got a call from George Enfield.”

“The Speaker?”

“His wife’s dying of ricin poisoning.”

“Jesus,” Tom muttered.

Price swung toward him, an athletic figure in a plaid shirt and down vest. He looked like a war correspondent: craggy face, unkempt hair, and functional clothes, hot on the trail of a major story. The Front was down there somewhere on the street.

“Dana remembered a guy at Hains Point,” he told Tom. “Handing out water. It tallies with the letter.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“I taped it.” He lifted his recorder tantalizingly in the air. “She asked me to get it to people who could use it. I figured that meant you.”

Sibley Hospital sits off Massachusetts Avenue, in a section of Washington known as Spring Valley, where the homes and the trees are a century old and antiques stores vie for commerce with gourmet food shops. Unlike most urban hospitals, Sibley, the preserve of the well-heeled and the genteel, is usually immune to violence. Tonight, however, Tom Shephard was forced to abandon his rental car three blocks from the emergency room entrance. A thicket of vehicles cut off access: private cars, television vans, and three ambulances desperately fighting to reach the main doors. It was four minutes past midnight, and busy as noon.

“This is all because of the marathon?” demanded the forensic artist standing beside him.
“Fuck.”

Casey Marlowe had his IdentiKit under his arm. It was a baseline collection of facial features he could plug into a suspect sketch and refine as his witness suggested. If, Tom thought, the witness was still alive. They shouldered their way through the throng of people at the hospital doors.

Tom forced himself to look into the victims’ faces: this red-haired woman, no more than thirty, whose brow was blistered with sweat and whose eyelids were closing, supported by a man who was lover or brother or husband—his mouth twisted with anxiety and fear. This kid of nineteen, in a Georgetown University sweatshirt, whose mother was struggling to keep him upright as he staggered forward. The couple who were helping each other walk to the door. The guy in his sixties who’d sunk down with his back against the hospital’s outer wall. He was vomiting blood.

At least sixty people stood on the chilly pavement in front of Sibley, and more filled the waiting room beyond the doors.

“The hospital is closed!” a voice rang out at the head of the line. Tom craned to find the source—a figure in blue scrubs, squat and grim-faced, who leaned through the half-open door. “The emergency room is full.”

A groan went up from the crowd. “Who ever heard of a hospital
closing
?” one voice shouted furiously. “My daughter’s been poisoned! She needs an IV feed, not a cot in a gym, God damn it!”

“City fire regulations prevent us accepting even one more patient,” the man in scrubs said brutally. “I repeat,
the hospital is closed
. If you require medical care, and you ran the Marine Corps Marathon today, we suggest you report to one of these four medical relief centers being set up in area schools. Volunteer doctors are standing by to help. If your emergency care is unrelated to the marathon, return home and call a private physician.”

A roar of protest rose from the wavering knot of people as the man in scrubs waded into their midst, a sheaf of papers held high. Tom grabbed one and scanned the printed lines. The closest medical station was at American University, a few blocks away. The woman beside him was weeping from frustration.

“Hey, Shep,” Casey Marlowe said. “Ever seen a war zone? Best advice I can give you:
Keep moving.
This is going to get ugly.”

Tom fumbled in his pocket for his FBI badge. He held it high and surged forward.

Dana Enfield was adrift in uneasy dreams. She had lost Mallory in the marathon crowd, but the little girl’s voice followed her relentlessly, high-pitched above the roar of the spectators.
Mommy! Mommy! Don’t leave me! Mommy!

Dana knew, with a surge of panic, that George had let go of her daughter’s hand. He was running through the tight ranks of people lining the race course, yelling something she couldn’t hear. What was he telling her? What was he trying to say? Was she in insulin shock? She tried to stop running—tried to fight against the current of the racers sweeping her forward—and failed. George slipped backward. She reached for him, panic surging—
Where was Mallory?
And then she saw The Man. Standing stock-still in the middle of the oddly deserted road, a cup of water in his outstretched hand.

“Dana,” George murmured in her ear. “
Dana.
Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

She forced her eyelids open. Her lips were thick and parched, the animal smell of blood in her nostrils. She tried to speak. No sound came.

“Honey, these men are from the FBI. They’d like to talk to you. Steve sent them.”

Her memory returned then: She was sick. The race was over. Every fiber of her body screamed with pain and the blur of faces—how many faces?—swam above her.

“Mallory,” she croaked.

“She’s home with Marya,” George soothed. “Sleeping.” He reached for a cup of chipped ice, tipped a few fragments onto her tongue. She closed her eyes again and savored the cool and perfect presence of this one thing. For an instant she remembered the brilliance of snow. She’d skied last winter in Utah.

“Dana.”

She brought George into focus: dark hair graying at the temples, lined face, worried eyes. Too worried.

“Am . . . I going to die?”

“The FBI wants to talk to you. Will you try, honey? Can you try?”

She managed to nod. One of the blurred faces swam closer. The other stayed near the door, watchful and silent.

“Mrs. Enfield, I’m Casey Marlowe,” said the voice at her elbow. She strained to see him, but the face ballooned sickly and she squeezed her eyes shut. “You remembered a man who gave you water at Hains Point. You thought it might have been tainted. Can you describe this man for me?”

She swallowed hard and groped for George. He slipped another piece of ice between her lips. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “that I did this to you.”

“You did nothing, sweetheart. Except run your heart out. Do you remember the man?”

The Man. Of course she remembered.

“Can you tell me what he looked like, Mrs. Enfield?”

The face had a sketch pad and pencil now.

Dana gathered all the life that remained to her, and tried.