Chimera (31 page)

“I’m here on official business,” she replied.

The Customs officer glanced at his screen, blinked, and then refocused his gaze on the young woman’s face.

“I see you’re listed as an international law enforcement officer.
 
May I see your credentials, please?”

“Yes, of course.”
 
Achara reached into her purse and handed over her badge case and credentials, which the officer examined closely before looking back up.

“Are you carrying any weapons with you, in your carry-on or checked luggage?”

“No.”

“Is this your first trip to the United States?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I understand you’re carrying items of evidence in your carry-on luggage?”

“Yes, I am.”
 
She reached into her carry-on bag, and pulled out a shipping box bearing red Thai Forestry Division evidence tape wrapped tightly around all of the cardboard edges.

The Customs officer stared first at the box, and then at his computer screen before turning his attention back to Achara.

“I’m going to have to take that box into custody for inspection.”

It was Achara Kulawnit’s turn to blink.
 
“I’m sorry, officer, but I am not authorized to release this evidence into anyone’s custody except the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s crime lab,” she said emphatically.
 
“And they specifically told me not to open it under any circumstances, for safety and security reasons.”

The Customs officer started to say something, hesitated, then reached for his phone.
 
For approximately two minutes, he and someone at the other end of the line engaged in a serious if not heated discussion.
 
Finally, the Customs officer hung up the phone and turned his attention back to Achara once again.

“I understand your concern about the chain-of-custody of your evidence,” he said, “but there are specific rules and regulations about potentially dangerous materials entering this country that must be observed.”

“Yes, I understand all of that; I was a customs inspector in my country.
 
But —”

The Customs officer turned and motioned to an armed and uniformed officer who was standing near the exit to come over to the booth.

“I’m going to ask this officer to escort you and your evidence package to the U.S. Marshall’s Office,” the Customs officer said as he stamped her passport and handed it back.

“But —”

“I’m sure they’ll be able to assist you with your problem, Captain Kulawnit,” he said firmly, and then motioned for the next person in line.

*
   
*
   
*

U.S. Marshall’s Office, Customs and Immigration Arrivals, San Francisco Airport

Fifteen minutes later, under the watchful eye of the armed Customs officer, fatigued, and now more than a little grumpy, Captain Achara Kulawnit retrieved her suitcase from the slowly-moving carrousel, set it in the airport cart, walked over to the door marked U.S. Marshall’s office, gently pushed it open with one hand while she pushed her cart in with the other, stepped inside the office; and then immediately saw Bulatt.

“You’re here?” she said, her eyes widening with surprise.

“Yes, of course, I’m here.” Bulatt grinned.
 
“Where did you expect me to be?”

Achara started to say something, hesitated, then quickly brought the palms of her hands together in a polite
wai
.
 
“Khun-Ged,” she said, her cheeks visibly turning red, “I am happy to see you again.
 
Thank you so much for meeting me here, instead of waiting for me at Medford.
 
I — I —”

Then, before Bulatt could say anything in response, she walked up to him, put her arms around his neck and shoulder, and hugged him tightly.

“I’m not just happy to see you,” she whispered against his ear, “I am delighted to see you; more than I can possibly tell you here.”
 
Then she stepped back, stared into Bulatt’s widened and shocked eyes; and only then saw the lanky and deeply-tanned man out of the corner of her eye.
 
He was sitting in chair at the opposite side of the room, wearing a nicely-tailored dark suit, cowboy boots and a bolo tie, and starring at her and Bulatt with a wide dimpled grin on his dark mustached face.

“Captain Achara Kulawnit,” Bulatt said once he was able to regain his composure, “I’d like you to meet a very good friend of mine, U.S. Marshall Bill Clark.”

Still grinning, Clark stood up from his chair, paused a brief moment to savor the shared looks of embarrassment between Bulatt and the young woman, and then stepped forward and offered his hand.

“Captain Kulawnit, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a very long time.”

Achara cocked her head curiously as she took the federal law enforcement officer’s hand in a firm handshake.
 
“Oh?”

Clark glanced down at his watch.
 
“Well, for at least for thirty-seven minutes, anyway; but that can be a very long time for us impatient types.”

Achara’s eyebrows were now furrowed in confusion.
 
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand —”

The dimpled grin seemed to be a permanent fixture on Clark’s tanned face.

“Ma’am,” he said, “anytime my good buddy here starts looking vaguely embarrassed when he’s asking the U.S. Marshall Service for an official favor, I definitely want to meet the reason why.”

“A favor?”
 
Achara looked over at Bulatt in confusion.

“Yes, ma’am,” Clark nodded.
 
“I understand you’re running a bit late, and that you’ve got some anxious forensic scientists waiting to get their hands on that bullet and cartridge case you toted all this way; so I am going to do my buddy here a very official favor and see to it that you folks get to Ashland post-haste, U.S. Marshall Transport Service style.”

*
   
*
   
*

Outside the MAX facility at the Draganov Research Center

Sergei Draganov stood beside the rumbling Sno-Cat, trying to ignore the snowstorm that raged around him, as he anxiously watched Aleksei Tsarovich hurry out of the MAX facility.

“Did you find him?” Draganov demanded.

“No, he is nowhere in the facility, and he does not answer his pager.”

“Are the animals fed and watered?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Draganov said with a relieved sigh, and then hesitated. “We could be running out of time.
 
I think I need to help you — to get everything done — before he returns.”

Tsarovich started to argue but Draganov shook his head.
 
“Another two or three days won’t make any difference to Tanya. I have an approach that I think will work; but this must be done first, or we’ll all be dead.”

Tsarovich stared at his long-time associate for a long moment, and then reluctantly nodded his assent.
 

The two men quickly pulled themselves into the Sno-Cat and drove down to a mid-way point between MIN and the entrance to the Maze.

Then, as Draganov continued to guide the lurching heavy vehicle toward the distant Maze entrance, Aleksei Tsarovich stood in the attached trailer-sled with a sharp knife and began tossing bales of hay and pouring sacks of feed across the snow-covered ground.

*
   
*
   
*

On a snow-covered rock crag overlooking the lurching Sno-Cat

The green-glowing eyes of Borya watched the scene below.

CHAPTER 32

Criminalistics Examination Room, National Fish & Wildlife Forensics Lab

As Bulatt and Achara Kulawnit watched from the far side of the Criminalistics examination room, Donn Renwick, Steve Hager and Dr. Juliana Ferreira — who were now dressed in white lab coats and sitting across from each other at a table-height lab bench, with the shipping box bearing the red Thai Forestry Division evidence tape sitting between them in the middle of the table — began to record information from the evidence tag onto their individual examination note forms.

Once they finished their initial note-taking, all three forensic scientists put on pairs of white cotton gloves and masks.
 
Then Ferreira picked up the colorfully wrapped and tagged box and walked over to the far opposite side of the room, followed closely by Hager and Renwick.

Stopping in front of a ‘glove box’ — a three-foot-wide-by-two-foot-deep-by-three-foot-high glass-faced box equipped with a sealable-door at one end, a double-door vacuum chamber at the other, and a pair of long rubber gloves that allowed an examiner to handle items inside the box without physical contact — Ferreira opened the side door, placed the box inside, and sealed the door shut.

Then, after slipping her arms into the long gloves, she used a scalpel to slowly and carefully cut open the box.
 
A small manila envelope and a six-inch-square box, both sealed with evidence tape, slid out onto the floor of the glove box.

Ferreira used the scalpel to cut the envelope open; slid a clump of wrapped tissue out into her gloved hand; placed the tissue clump in a vial; filled the rest of the vial with a liquid from a squeeze bottle marked ‘PROBE DECON’; screwed on a cap; placed the vial inside the vacuum chamber; shut and locked the inside door; pulled her hands out of the gloves; made a few valve adjustments on the vacuum chamber console; pressed a button marked ‘DECON’; and waited thirty seconds.

Then, after walking around to the side of the glove box and opening the outside door of the vacuum chamber, the three forensic scientists came back to the workbench, the vial in Ferreira’s hand and the evidence box in Hager’s.

“Can we watch what you’re doing, or should we be running for the door?” Bulatt asked.

“Sure, come on over, no problem,” Ferreira said as she sat back down at the workbench and began making adjustments to a low-power dissection microscope.
 
Renwick and Hager took chairs on either side of the microscope station.

“Was all that glove-box business really necessary?” Bulatt asked as he and Achara cautiously approached the workbench.

“Probably not,” Ferreira said as she opened the vial, removed the now-soggy white tissue
 
clump with a pair of plastic forceps, set it into a small glass Petri dish, placed the dish under the dissection microscope, and began to tease apart the wet tissue. “The nano-probes we found in those Clouded Leopard carcasses broke down real quick under UV light, once we isolated them from the lymphatic system, so exposure to air and sunlight at the Preserve in Thailand should have sterilized the bullet and the cartridge case.
 
But there may be some completely isolated tissue under that peeled-back jacketing, and we’re still trying to figure out what the DNA segments attached to the nano-tubes do, so we don’t want to take any chances.”

“Appreciate that,” Bulatt muttered, eyeing the now-exposed mushroomed rifle bullet that Ferreira was slowly moving into the view-field of the microscope with a whole new appreciation for its lethal nature.

“That’s also why we asked you and the Chief to take a good soapy shower and go though that decontamination procedure with the evidence box,” Ferreira explained to Achara as she carefully turned the pullet onto its mushroomed tip, “just in case.”

“Finding anything?” Renwick asked.

“Um, yeah, definitely picked up some animal hairs — looks like grey, white and light brown — and a bunch of tissue, all tucked up nice and safe under the peeled-back jacketing.”
 
Mumbling to herself now, Ferreira began using the plastic forceps and another plastic probe to carefully remove hairs and bits of bloody tissue from under the mushroomed bullet tip, placing the recovered hairs in a small sterile capped vial and the tissue bits into a second identical vial.

After another thirty seconds, Ferreira got up, said, “I’ve got my samples,” and walked purposefully out the door of the Criminalistics lab; on her way to the Genetics lab with her vials and notes.

“My turn,” Renwick said as he moved into the chair vacated by Ferreira, and put his eyes up against the eyepieces of the dissecting microscope.
 
“Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

As Renwick carefully manipulated the bullet under the microscope with the same plastic forceps, Hager gently slid a folded ‘C-shaped’ two-inch-wide strip of cardboard out of the small evidence box.
 
The top and bottom ‘C’ ends of the cardboard strip were pressed against the base and mouth of a fired brass rifle cartridge casing — the casing being held in place by a twig stuck through the top end of the cardboard and into the cartridge mouth — the entire structure being held tightly together with a looping wrap of duct tape.
 
The effect was a protective three-sided cardboard shield protecting the secured casing from any outside source of abrasion.

“Looks like a point-two-four-three casing,” Hager said.
 
“I’ll check the base for confirmation after I finish the latent work.”

“Based on the scope reticule, the bullet appears to be a two-four-three also,” Renwick said, talking mostly to Hager who was now examining the casing under a low-powered magnifying lens.
 
“I’ll confirm with the calipers after I make the scan.”
 
He reached over with one hand to take another series of photos with the digital camera built into the microscope, and then made a few notations to his exam form.

“The twig’s a nice touch,” Hager said as he continued to examine the surface of the protected casing with an angled flashlight beam.
 
“You teach him that?” he asked, looking back up at Bulatt.

“All I did was explain the basic principles of preserving evidence; he took it from there,” Bulatt said.
 
“From what I could see, the Chief’s a natural crime scene investigator.”