The Dante Conspiracy (19 page)

He shivered suddenly and looked around nervously. Reilly and
Dermott were behind him, and Dermott, the doctor noticed, was still carrying
his shotgun. Walters bent again to the corpse and looked closely at what was
left of the man’s face.

‘Hey,’ he called out, ‘I think I know this guy.’

‘Bingo, doc,’ Reilly said. ‘We all know him. Now, don’t
touch
anythin
’ else. Just get the hell away from
him.’

Walters stood up and walked backwards, retracing his steps
as accurately as he could until he was standing outside the ring of stakes.
‘Damnedest thing I ever saw,’ he commented briefly, pulling off his mask and
gloves.
‘When are you moving the body – when can I do the
post?’

‘I
ain’t
movin
’
the body,’ Reilly said, ‘and probably you won’t get to do an autopsy. I’m not
gonna
to mess around with
somethin
’
as weird as this. I’ve already called the FBI, and as soon as they get here I’m
leavin
’ it to them.’

Oval Office, White House, 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

Presidential Aide Mark
Rogerson
paused outside the partially-opened door of the Oval Office, looked up at the
green light glowing above the doorway, and leant forward, listening intently.
Standing instructions forbade him to enter the room if the President was on the
telephone or in conference. The green light meant that he was able to enter,
but a couple of times the President had forgotten to press the switch, hence
Rogerson’s
cautious double-check.

Satisfied, he straightened up, gave a brisk rap on the door
with his knuckle, waited a moment for the call to enter, then pushed it open
and walked inside.

The forty-seventh President of the United States of America
was sitting at his desk, a thick report open in front of him. A short,
grey-haired man whose ready smile had been rather less evident – at least in
private – since he had taken office, Charles
Gainey
was, unlike many of his predecessors, both a consummate politician and an
intellectual. He had a firm grasp of the realities of politics that had led him
to the White House but, perhaps more importantly, he could talk mathematics,
economics and finance with anyone. He read everything that crossed his desk,
and seemed able to remember most of it.
Rogerson
found him quite unnerving, an almost frighteningly competent man.

‘James Dickson is here,
Mr.
President.’

Charles
Gainey
nodded. ‘Good. Send
him in, please.’

The Secretary of
Defense
, who had
followed
Rogerson
down the corridor, nodded and
walked past him into the room. The aide pulled the door closed and retreated to
his own office.

‘Good afternoon, James,’ the President said. ‘Please take a
seat,’ he added, gesturing towards the three leather armchairs in front of his
desk. He picked up the report he’d been studying and held it up so that Dickson
could read the title.

‘This report,’
Gainey
began. ‘I
presume you’ve read it?’

Dickson squirmed slightly. There was no right answer to that
question. He’d not actually read the report, just the three page summary at the
end, but he had signed off on the distribution list. Whatever he said, he
guessed he was going to be in trouble.

‘Well?’

‘Yes,
Mr.
President, I’ve read
it,’ Dickson replied, mentally crossing his fingers and hoping for the best.

‘And your conclusions were what?’

‘It’s a complex matter. What particular aspect is concerning
you?’

Charles
Gainey
shook his head.
‘It’s not that complex. The CIA, in my experience, isn’t capable of producing
anything very complicated – at least, not in writing. The aspect concerning me,
as you put it, is the analysis of birth figures in Appendix Six.’

Dickson was already lost.
‘Birth figures?’

Gainey
nodded patiently. ‘These
conversations would take a lot less time if you just admitted you didn’t know
what the hell I was talking about right from the start. This report,’
Gainey
continued, tapping the dark blue cover in front of
him, ‘is the CIA’s annual analysis of –’

‘I do know what the report is,
Mr.
President,’ Dickson interrupted. ‘What I still don’t know is what aspect of it
is bothering you.’

‘What bothers me, James, is the fact that the annual
statistics for births in America are showing a small but measurable anomaly.’

Dickson looked blank.
‘Birth statistics?
I’m sorry, I don’t –’

‘It’s not in the summary, James, which is no
doubt
why you missed it,’
Gainey
said, revealing his knowledge of Dickson’s professional routine with
uncomfortable accuracy. ‘In fact, it’s not actually mentioned specifically in
the CIA report at all. It was detailed in the AMA Annual Medical Statistics
report, which I note you’ve also signed as having read.’

‘I have to read a lot of reports,
Mr.
President,’ Dickson said, somewhat irritably, ‘and I still don’t see what
you’re driving at.’

‘What I’m driving at is that these two separate reports both
refer to birth statistics, but with obviously different emphasis. The American
Medical Association just gives the numbers with some simple mathematical
analyses. The CIA report doesn’t cover total figures, but does contain one very
interesting – or disturbing – fact. What concerns me is the conclusion you can
draw if you correlate the two reports.’

Dickson had endured similar conversations with Charles
Gainey
over the two years he had been in office. Usually
the easiest and fastest response was to play dumb and let the President work
his way through the arguments and make whatever point he had in mind.

‘And what conclusion is that?’ he asked.

‘According to the AMA’s figures – and they should be right –
the number of female babies born is increasing every year, with a corresponding
decrease in new-born male children.’

Dickson shrugged and relaxed, though he still couldn’t see
where
Gainey
was going.

‘I’m sure that’s just a minor statistical anomaly,
Mr.
President. No doubt if you looked back at the analyses
from previous years you’d see similar fluctuations.’

‘I agree, James. Taken by itself, it’s totally
insignificant, although the same kind of bias has been evident since about
nineteen-ninety. What worries me is the other factor mentioned in the
classified footnote to Appendix Six of the report from Langley.’

The President paused, looking at Dickson in silent
appraisal. The Secretary of
Defense
shook his head.

‘I don’t think –’ Dickson stopped, comprehension suddenly
dawning. ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with Roland Oliver, has it?’ he asked.

Charles
Gainey
nodded. ‘Yes, it
has. According to the CIA report, every woman who claimed to have had any close
contact with Roland Oliver has subsequently only produced female offspring.’

Beaver Creek, Western Montana

The FBI arrived in force, if two people in one car could be
described as ‘force,’ some two hours later. Dermott and Reilly were sitting in
the front seats of the sheriff’s Cherokee, drinking beer and eating the
sandwiches that one of the deputies had brought out to them, when the grey Ford
compact nosed into the field, preceded by one of the Beaver Creek police
cruisers. Reilly got out of the Jeep and walked towards the car.

The Ford stopped, and a tall, well-built man in his early
forties climbed out of the driver’s seat. He had short-cropped fair hair and a
craggy face that stopped just this side of being handsome. Reilly was used to
sizing up people at a glance, and could tell by the way the man moved that he
was very fit.

Reilly looked at him for a few moments,
then
switched his attention to the blonde woman who was just emerging from the other
side of the car. She was twenty-eight – no older – and had the kind of face and
figure that could stop traffic, just as she had stopped Reilly.

Steven Hunter grinned. He was starting to get used to the
effect Christy-Lee Kaufmann had on middle-aged men.

‘I was
kinda
expectin
’
Mulder and Scully,’ Reilly said, extending a large and horny hand.

‘They don’t work for us any more, sheriff,’ Christy-Lee
Kaufmann replied politely, and walked over to Reilly. The hugely popular
‘X-Files’ television series seemed to entitle all US citizens to make smart
remarks about the Bureau these days, but she smiled anyway. She pulled out her
identification and showed it to the sheriff.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s cut to the chase. I’m Special
Agent Kaufmann of the FBI and this is Steven Hunter. What’ve you got for us?’

Chapter Two

Tuesday

Beaver Creek, Western Montana

Christy-Lee Kaufmann put her hands behind her back and
surveyed the crime scene, much as Sheriff Reilly had done earlier that day, and
came to pretty much the same conclusions.

Kaufmann had joined the Bureau straight from college, and
although she’d only worked in Montana, she’d been assigned to investigate over
twenty murder cases already. Some had been unusual for one reason or another; a
handful had been frankly bizarre, but most of them had just been boring and
predictable – at least for the investigators. They had had a somewhat different
effect upon the victims’ families, not least because in the vast majority of
cases another family member had been the perpetrator.

But this case was a first for her, and she was entirely in
agreement with Sheriff Reilly.

‘What we have here, Special Agents Hunter and Kaufmann – I
get that right, miss? – is a murder that couldn’t have happened.’

Reilly had taken them to the edge of the ring of stakes, and
all three of them were standing and looking down at the body.

‘Do you know the victim?’

Hunter spoke for the first time, and Reilly looked up
sharply.

‘You’re British,’ he said, almost accusingly. ‘What’s a
goddamn limey
doin
’ in the Bureau?’

Hunter just looked at him, and it was Kaufmann who replied.

‘A good question, sheriff.
Mr.
Hunter is British, but I didn’t actually say he was in
the Bureau. He’s a policeman who’s been seconded to the FBI for a couple of
years.’

‘What kind of a policeman?’

‘Does it matter?’ Hunter asked, deflecting the question and
looking straight at Reilly.

The sheriff stared back at him for a few seconds,
then
dropped his eyes. ‘No, I guess not,’ he said, and after
a moment turned back to look again at the body. ‘OK, we do know the deceased.
Name was Billy Dole.
Lived on the northern edge of town.
He worked in the prison service in Texas and retired out here two or three
years ago. Never married, and he kept himself pretty much to himself. Told me
he’d spent almost his whole life cooped up behind concrete walls just like a
convict, and aimed to enjoy his retirement in the open air –
huntin
’,
shootin
’ and
fishin
’.’

He looked down at the husk of the man. A 30.30 rifle with a
telescopic sight lay beside the body, and he had a heavy-calibre pistol and a
hunting knife on his belt.

‘Up here after deer, I guess.’

‘You ever go hunting together?’ Hunter asked, looking at the
rifle with professional interest.

‘Yeah,
coupla
times.
Why?’

Hunter ignored the question. ‘Was he a good hunter? You
know, aware of what game was around, a good shot, that sort of thing?’

Reilly paused for a moment,
then
nodded. ‘Yeah, I see where you’re
goin
’ with that,’
he said. ‘He was good enough, I guess, so nobody could sneak up on him and
punch his lights out with a goddamn human leg bone.

‘And,’ Reilly continued, ‘the doc thinks the attack was from
the front, ’cause he’s
lyin
’ on his
back,
and there’s no sign of the body
bein
’
turned over. As far as we can see, Billy Dole died right where he fell.’

Hunter and Kaufmann looked at each other, but neither spoke.

‘There’s the height problem, too.’

‘Height problem?
What height
problem?’ Kaufmann asked.

‘Billy Dole here was a big guy – around six two, six three,’
Reilly said. ‘Whoever smashed that bone into his head drove it straight down
through the top of the skull. He used it like a dagger, not a club. That means,
according to the doc, that the attacker had to be at least two feet taller than
the victim. Unless o’ course Billy Dole bent over to let him do it, and I can’t
think of
no
good reason why a man
carryin
’
a rifle and pistol would let that happen to him.’

Reilly grinned, but there was no humour in his face. ‘The
doc’s
mutterin
’ about Bigfoot and all sorts. He
reckons the force needed to drive that bone six inches into the skull
ain’t
somethin
’ any human could
do, not even a guy nine feet tall and built like Arnie. And,’ he added,
grinning again, ‘we don’t get too many of them around here.’

‘Arnie?’
Hunter asked.

Reilly glanced at Kaufmann and smiled before replying.
‘Big Arnie – Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I guess you don’t get
out to the movies much,
Mr.
Hunter.’