The Devil's Pitchfork (25 page)

Ling didn’t say anything, but cocked his head. In lightly accented English, he said, “Lay down, please.”

“No.”

Ling nodded to the two guards, who roughly shoved him down on the examining table. Ling opened a cabinet to reveal a tray of sterilized surgical instruments. “Cut off the cuffs and secure his arms and legs to the table, please. I need to take a closer look at his wounds.”

“I’m—”

Ling gave a quiet, “Ssshhhhh, Dr. Stillwater. Please cooperate.”

Derek didn’t have much choice. The two men, Sven and his partner, a stringy, wiry guy with Slavic features that he had started thinking of as Ivan, cut off his cuffs and forced him back on the table. He knew he could take them if they got careless. The two guys were dangerous, but he could kill them. But then he would have to get past Ling and Coffee and out of this place with a dozen armed men all too willing to gun him down. And escaping wasn’t why he was here. Although he had absolutely zero idea how to do it and the rock-solid knowledge that his odds of accomplishing it were probably less than zero, his mission was to locate Chimera M13. His mission was to retrieve or destroy it, and at the very least determine what Coffee and his Fallen Angels intended to do with it.

Derek’s wrists and ankles were placed in padded cuffs and secured. Their presence didn’t bode well, Derek thought. This was not exactly a medical clinic if they were prepared to restrain their patients. They could act like he was a patient, but he knew better. Dread crept up on him like a rising tide, but he forced it away, concentrating on the cover story he had created on the trip here. Ling walked over to him, a pair of scissors in his hands. He stood over Derek a moment, the shiny metal scissors held in front of Derek’s face, as if the man was debating on exactly what to do with them. To trim his hair, to cut his nails, to plunge the sharp shiny points into his eye socket. Derek stared past them into Ling’s face, into his lifeless eyes, looking for signs of humanity and not finding it.

Carefully Ling began to cut off Derek’s clothing. The only sound was the snip and snick of the scissors and the soft plop of his tattered clothing falling to the floor of the trailer.

The scissors were cold against his flesh and Derek found he had to control himself from trembling. He knew, rationally, that there was more than medicine going on here. He knew that forcing a prisoner to be naked gave the captors both a physical and psychological advantage.

Knowing did not necessarily help in dealing with the vulnerability.

After a few minutes he was totally naked on the table, arms and legs immobile. “Gee, you could have asked me to disrobe,” he said, oddly grateful they had left his beads and four-leaf clover.

Carefully Ling peeled away the dressing the Coast Guardsman had placed over the gouge in his ribs caused by the D.C. cop’s gunshot. Ling pulled over a lamp on a tensile steel arm and shined the harsh light on the wound. “You are showing some early signs of infection. But it is not deep. It needs to be cleaned again.”

Ling pulled on Latex rubber gloves and retrieved a bottle of saline. Carefully, skillfully, he began to wash out the wound, blotting it gently with sterile gauze. Derek was not calmed by this. Instead, he was worried. Ling had skills. Ling ... knew things.

Ling nodded his head and said, “It will require a few stitches and antibiotics. This wound in your leg, however, is another matter. It is deeper than the wound in your ribs. Hmmm...” He nodded thoughtfully to himself, picked up a metal probe and looked over at Richard Coffee who had been watching silently from next to the doorway. Ling nodded.

Coffee walked over to the examining table and looked down at Derek. “Where’s Irina Khournikova?”

Derek said, “When I was with her I got a phone call from my FBI contact. He had found out that Halloran, the head guy at U.S. Immuno, had been having an affair with a Russian national named Irina Khournikova. Her cover was blown. I overpowered her and turned her over to the FBI. She should be at FBI Headquarters now, under interrogation.”

Coffee said, “Interesting,” and nodded to Ling.

Ling took his stainless steel probe and deliberately, almost delicately, forced it into the wound in Derek’s ribs. It felt as if a lance had ripped right through him. His body screamed as if every nerve had been dipped in acid. Lights exploded in his head and he shrieked, the sound seeming to come from outside him, from someone else.

Ling withdrew the probe, a slight smile crossing his lean face. “Yes, that worked rather well, didn’t it? Nerve induction. It is a science. And you conveniently left me two openings in your body to probe the nerve directly. Saved me the time and trouble of doing so myself. Now, I believe The Fallen had a question. Where is the woman you know as Irina Khournikova?”

Derek stared at the man, sweat beading off his forehead, burning into his eyes. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He could feel his heart thundering in his ears, taste blood in his mouth. “I ... told ...”

Ling inserted the probe once again and this time the pain exploded along his body like an electric charge and Derek let himself chase the exploding lights behind his eyes into darkness.

36

Walter Reed Medical Center

G
ENERAL
J
OHNSTON WAS SHRUGGING
back into street clothing when Colonel Zataki appeared at the door of the examining room. Zataki now wore Army fatigues, his face pale, expression worried.

“
He
wants to see us,” Zataki said.

Johnston cocked his head as he buttoned his shirt. “Have you talked to him?”

“No. I just got in contact with my people at the Institute. I’ve got to get back there.”

“Anything new?”

Zataki scowled. “Halloran committed suicide; Scully’s dead; Vargas, the only remaining expert on Chimera, accidentally infected herself with it and is starting to show early signs of the infection. For all I know that’s the
good
news. God only know what the
bad
news is going to be. How about you?”

“Well, my hand-picked second-in-command managed to assassinate most of the heads of the U.S. government and the FBI thinks my hand-picked troubleshooter is involved with it as well.”

Zataki’s face grew even paler, if that was possible. Slowly he said, “The Bureau thinks Stillwater’s involved in this?”

Johnston buttoned the top button of his shirt and began working on his tie. “Dalton e-mailed Stillwater around eleven today with some cryptic message: ‘
The Ascent has begun.
’ The bureau thinks it’s a reference to the operation at U.S. Immuno.”

“Huh.” Zataki looked at his hands a moment. “This thing has all the feel of a full-blown act of war, Jim. We’re fighting on multiple fronts, all of then unconventional. Biological, chemical, psychological. It’s terrorism, but organized.”

“Yeah, like three fucking jets into skyscrapers. I know.”

Zataki shook his head. “I’ve known Derek Stillwater a long time. I can’t see him involved in this.”

“Well, I’ve known Sam Dalton for a long time, too, and he wouldn’t have been my first candidate to decapitate the U.S. government with VX gas.”

“But Derek...”

“I know.” Johnston pulled his tie tight as if trying to strangle himself. “Over the years I’ve worked with Dalton he was always a by-the-book guy. Always did what was needed, followed orders, followed the chain-of-command.”

“Derek,” Zataki said, “isn’t like that.”

“No.” Johnston pulled on his jacket. All the clothing they had been wearing in the White House had been taken by the FBI HMRU to be incinerated. He had called his wife and asked her to bring a suit to the hospital ASAP. He sighed, thinking of her, now back at home, watching the news on TV. Waiting for the next wave of the attack ... because Johnston was sure that Dalton and whoever was ahead of all this ... and maybe it was Dalton who was at the top ... had more planned. He said, “Derek thinks outside the box. That can actually be a problem in the Army, as you know.  But I thought it was exactly what Homeland Security needed in a troubleshooter. I wanted creative thinking, not bureaucratic thinking.”

Zataki nodded. “I went into a hot zone with Derek about six years ago. There was an Ebola outbreak in Congo. We were part of a U.N. team sent in to evaluate. On the trip in he was a mess. He was physically ill, throwing up, had the shakes, everything. I thought he’d never make it. Then we set down in Kinshaasa and he was in total control.” He paused, thinking. “I don’t for a minute believe Derek Stillwater would purposefully risk letting this bug loose on the world.”

“I agree with you.”

“Then you’ll need to convince the President of that. You need to leave Stillwater out in the field to do his job.”

Johnston shook his head. “Ben ... I’ll be lucky if I can convince them to take him
alive
.”

President Langston breathed oxygen through a green plastic mask. His skin had a gray, parchment quality to it, and his eyes were red and swollen. He was surrounded by Secret Service and a small cadre of advisors. The few left, Johnston thought.

“Gentlemen,” President Langston said, pulling the oxygen mask away from his face to talk. “I want to thank you both for saving my life.”

“I’m glad I did, sir,” Johnston said.

“I only wish we had saved more,” Zataki added.

“Yes.” Langston seemed to lose focus for a moment, thinking of his dead family and staff, no doubt. Marshaling his strength, he said, “I’ll be leaving the hospital soon, heading to an undisclosed location. Colonel Zataki, a helicopter will take you to Fort Detrick. It is waiting at the hospital helicopter pad, as we speak. Frida will take you there now.”

A female agent with blond hair and freckles separated from the pack and nodded to Zataki. “Colonel...”

Zataki nodded, expressed condolences to the President, and followed the agent out of the hospital room, the door closing behind him. Another agent moved into position in front of it.

“Now, General,” President Langston said, gaze focusing on Johnston. “We have a problem.”

“Yes sir. I think we do, as well.”

Langston said, “Your Deputy Director and one of your troubleshooters is a terrorist.”

“Mr. President,” Johnston said. “I have little doubt that Sam Dalton is behind this. I do not, however, feel that Derek Stillwater is involved. Everything about this, from the misinformation to the booby-trapped vans at the airport, have indicated a sort of ... smoke and mirrors approach—”

”General,” President Langston said, harsh voicing cutting off the Secretary’s words. “Evidence points to an astonishing level of betrayal and corruption in your office. Perhaps it was unavoidable. Perhaps Dalton was the perfect chameleon in our midst. Perhaps. But, General, you were in charge. And your failure to see this ... this devil amongst us, has cost this country many fine leaders and has personally cost me my family. I am asking for your immediate resignation.”

Johnston nodded, having known that this was coming. He was no longer trusted. He had failed, and failed in a way that would go down in the history books. “Yes sir,” he said.

One of the advisors, a man Johnston did not know, stepped forward with a written document. He read it over. It was a letter of resignation awaiting his signature. He took the proffered pen.

“Mr. President,” he said, pen in hand. “I am devastated by your loss, and by my failure in this matter. But ... sir ... I do not believe that Derek Stillwater was involved in this. In my heart I’m convinced that he has a better chance of getting to the bottom of this than anyone does.”

“Your convictions are not shared by me,” Langston snapped. “As far as I am concerned, Derek Stillwater is a conspirator in the murder of my family, and the full strength of this country’s law enforcement structure is going to be focused on catching him and Dalton and prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law. And if they die resisting, well that’s just too damned bad.”

Johnston met the gaze of the President. “With all due respect, Mr. President, I think you’re wrong. I hereby tender my resignation.” He signed the letter and put down the pen.

“You’re dismissed,” Langston said.

Without a word General Johnston turned and left the room.

PART III

Dance With the Devil

1

FBI Headquarters, SIOC

S
PIGOTTA SLAMMED INTO THE
interrogation room, towering over Irina. Five minutes earlier he had taken a call from Pilcher. “I just got a phone call from one of my agents saying you received an e-mail from Dalton at eleven today.”

Khournikova frowned. This was not going well. Spigotta had spent the last hour asking the same questions over and over:
Where was Richard Coffee?
She wished she knew. If they would just cooperate with her, let her track down this impostor using the Russian government’s resources, maybe, just maybe, they would have a chance. She looked up at the angry bear of a man and said, “Agent Spigotta, I am not your enemy here. The enemy here is Surkho Andarbek. You know him as Richard Coffee.”

“Bullshit,” Spigotta growled. “The enemy we have positively identified is Samuel Dalton. The Deputy Director of Homeland Security. He e-mailed you today. Richard Coffee is some phantom a suspected partner of Dalton’s been talking about. In fact, the only people talking about Richard Coffee are you and Stillwater and Dalton. What we know is Dalton e-mailed you and Stillwater before this thing went down today.”

“Perhaps he did,” Khournikova said cooly, “but I have no connection to the man. I remember no e-mail communication with this man. I have no idea who Derek Stillwater is. What did the e-mail say?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

She shrugged. “Agent Spigotta, this is ... a diversion. Has it not been a day of ... red herrings? Richard Coffee—when he worked for your Central Intelligence Agency—successfully convinced Chechen rebels that he was one of them; and convinced us, as well. He has successfully faked his death twice. Now he has your Bureau chasing ghosts, convinced that I am a terrorist. He has convinced you that this man, Derek Stillwater, is a traitor. I know of no one by this name. I have spent over a decade trying to track down the man we know as Surkho Andarbek. And when I finally do determine that Surkho Andarbek is actually an American spy, the man dies again, only to reappear a year later working on the borders.”