Cold Frame (27 page)

“What's your ultimate fascination with weeds?” she asked.

“I think that plants have brains,” he said. “Not like ours of course, but in the sense that some aggregation of their cells acts like brains. At least that's my theory, and I think weeds are probably the best example of that.”

“I can see that,” she said. “Our brains could be called just an aggregation of specialized cells, I suppose.”

“Each of us in our little botanical society has a pet theory like that,” he said. “We collaborate on projects when two or more of those pet theories intersect.”

“Would curare be an example of how plants can help us?”

“Yes, it would. A potent poison in some applications, and yet it's used in tiny amounts to supplement general anesthesia. It's a profound muscle relaxant whose effects can be easily reversed. The technical name is tubocurarine chloride, which is isolated from the bark and stems of a South American vine,
Chondodendron tomentosum,
and is the purified form used in medicine. In toxic concentrations, the way the Indians there make it, it brings on respiratory paralysis in wild game, or anything else hit by a curare-tipped arrow.”

“Yikes,” she said. “Would that grow here, say, in northern Virginia?”

He shrugged. “In an appropriate environment, say inside an environmentally capable greenhouse? Yes. But at the risk of sounding smug, what I'm working with these days has gone a long way beyond curare. Let's go see some of the other gardens.”

They spent the next two hours walking through the various plantings, which ranged from what looked like totally natural patches of fairly ugly vegetation to manicured rose gardens lining the large, stepped reflecting pool that led down toward the Potomac River. Then he took her down to the basement laboratory, which looked like every other lab she'd been in. After a brief tour of the lab, they took an elevator up to the back side of the mansion's roof, where a narrow greenhouse extended the full length of the house. From the driveway this had looked like the ridgeline of the roof.

Toward the end, she noticed that he was moving slower, and suggested they go back into the house. He gratefully accepted her suggestion and they took the elevator back to the ground floor. When the elevator door opened, Thomas was standing there, as if he'd been about to set out on a rescue mission. Hiram excused himself for a few minutes, asking Thomas to take her to the sunroom for lunch. As they walked back through the house, she asked Thomas if Mister Walker needed a lot of medications.

“Do you know what Marfan syndrome does?” he asked in reply. “Besides the elongated body and the face-in-a-vise look?”

“Mister Walker mentioned something about the aorta?”

“Got it in one,” Thomas said. “Main blood supply right down the middle of the body. If that lets go he'll go down like a felled tree. They've got better drugs now, and he has a cardiologist and a vascular surgeon who come once a month. We have a medical treatment room here in the mansion with whatever machines they need. But basically, he must pace himself and I must pay careful attention to medications. Here we are, miss. You sit there, if you will, please, and he'll be right along.”

The sunroom was like an ornate greenhouse at one end of the expansive, column-lined porch along the back of the mansion. Everything was white—the circular table, the wrought-iron chairs, even the framework supporting the eight ornate panels of glass which arched up to a point some sixteen feet above the table. The table was set for two, and the chair she'd been shown to was, to her great relief, normal-sized. The one across from hers was throne-sized, just like the one she'd seen in the library.

She took in the view, the beautiful avenue of trees and flowers laid out alongside the reflecting pool, which descended through a series of small waterfalls almost a thousand feet to the tall trees that lined the riverbank. There was a patch of golf-green-quality grass on the exterior side of the gardens, and then a dense forest beyond that. She wondered if that huge brick wall went all the way around the estate.

“Special Agent,” Hiram's voice boomed from behind her. She blinked as he slipped past her to his side of the table. Her head had been level with just above his knees, he was that tall.

“This is really beautiful,” she said as he sat down, carefully, she noted.

“That is the blessing of the plant world,” he said. “Nurture them, and they produce beauty to the eye and solace for the soul. They produce the air we breathe and the food we eat.”

As if on cue, Thomas came through with lunch, two salad plates with more ingredients than Ellen could count. He returned with a bottle of white burgundy, poured out, and then left them alone. Outside, the noonday sky was displaying that special hazy blue that signaled the end of summer.

“To your good health,” Hiram toasted, and she lifted her glass. The wine was wonderful. She glanced at the label, which listed Montrachet, among other things.

“This is spectacular,” she said.

He smiled. “Wine is not my friend,” he said. “But then neither is Marfan, so I tend to balance one against the other. And, of course, it comes from plants.”

She smiled and tucked into the salad.

“Tell me about yourself,” Hiram said. “Wait, let me rephrase. What's a nice girl like you doing in the FBI?”

She laughed. “I'm a Washingtonian,” she said. “Both my parents were schoolteachers here in Fairfax County. I grew up in Herndon, which is one of the not-so-important suburbs. Went to George Mason, got a degree in business management, and then went to work for the Department of Transportation as a cubicle slave.”

Hiram smiled. “Must have been pretty boring,” he said.

“I didn't end up living at home like some of my classmates did,” she said. “The issues were interesting, but I learned pretty quick that the bureaucracy's main focus was on nurturing itself, not solving the issues affecting transportation.”

“That's universally true, from what I've observed,” he said. “And then?”

“I was dating a guy who was a newbie agent at the Bureau, and he told me that they were desperately trying to recruit and integrate women agents into the major Bureau career fields. I decided to take a shot. Long story short, I ended up in the New York field office, met a young investment banker at a conference, and we got married. That ended, unfortunately, on nine-eleven.”

Hiram's eyebrows went up. “And now you sit on a committee that…”

“Yes, exactly.”

Thomas appeared and refreshed Ellen's wineglass. Hiram raised his empty glass, but Thomas ignored him and put the bottle back down on the table.

“Oh, my,” Ellen said, after Thomas left. “Nanny Thomas?”

“He knows, just like I know,” Hiram said.

She reached across the table and poured him a small splash. “Live a little,” she said.

“That's just the problem,” Hiram said with a tired smile.

“Anyway, I've made my way. A career with the Bureau is about competence and conformity, in about equal measure. Hew to the straight and narrow, do your job, do it well, and they'll unfailingly promote you. Screw something up, then things become a lot less certain.”

“And you being on the DMX?” he asked. “How'd that happen?”

“My boss got across the breakers with an ADIC—that's an assistant director in charge, one rank level below
the
director. I don't know what it was about, but one day he was gone and they were looking at me to take over one of his duties, which happened to be the DMX.”

“Was that a promotion?”

It was her turn to smile. “More like an assignment where the potential for screwing up was significant. DMX was—and still is—controversial. Savvier and more senior career agents probably declined the ‘opportunity,' and there I was.”

“What do you do when the committee actually meets? In general, I mean—I know it's all superclassified.”

“For good reason, Mister Walker. The information we use to make a nomination is derived from sources and methods that need rigorous protection. But to answer your question, we brief and we talk. And talk. Some agencies are into posturing, others are trying to protect themselves, the spooks like to be spooky—it's a
government
committee, Mister Walker. But when we approve a nominee, we're writing his death warrant.”

“And Carl Mandeville—what can you tell me about him?”

“He is the special assistant to the President and senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security staff. He works in the EEOB. That's the old executive office building. Nowadays it houses the ceremonial offices of the Vice President and the offices of the National Security Council staff.”

“How important is he?” Hiram asked, sipping the last of his wine with visible regret.

“He's a legend in his own mind,” Ellen said. “On the other hand, because no one knows exactly what his powers are, people are afraid of him, and he encourages that reaction. He's arrogant, physically imposing, overbearing, and typically about half a mile ahead of anyone trying to go up against him.”

“A true mandarin, then,” Hiram said.

“Precisely,” she replied. “And, I'm pretty sure, a killer, or at least someone who has organized two murders. He's the ‘who.' Now: your turn. Please.”

Hiram nodded. “In 2011, a man called Kyle Strang approached me.” He went on to tell her what Strang had talked about.

“All of that being aimed at having a backup program in case the opponents of DMX shut off the means to execute the Kill List?”

“That's what he said.”

She worked on her salad and had some more wine. “The things you handed over—would they account for the way in which these two men died?”

“Can't tell,” Hiram said, hedging just a bit. “I don't know how they died.”

“Well, let me fill you in on the one I was present for. That was McGavin. We were in a restaurant, we had a sip of wine, I went to the powder room, and when I came back, he was dead on the floor.”

“And the flowers?”

“Right, yes. I bought a bouquet of flowers from a vendor who came into the bistro.”

“Recognize them?” he asked. “The flowers?”

She thought about that for a minute. “No,” she said. “Very pretty, but no, I couldn't tell you what they were, but then again, I don't know anything about flowers, except—very pretty. The only technical term I've heard related to his case was ‘aconitine.'”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “And Logan? I read in the papers that he got out of a taxi and just walked directly into oncoming traffic.”

“That's all I know. I have a contact in the MPD who actually witnessed it. He said the man looked like a zombie.”

“What in the world is a zombie?”

She giggled. “
The Zombie Revolution
? Dead guys walking around and scaring people. Rigid bodies, lurching walk, scarifying faces—oh, shit, I—”

He was laughing now. “Walked right into that one, didn't you,” he said.

Ellen realized she was blushing.

“Back to business,” he said. “Aconitine is a by-product of the monkshood plant. Extremely poisonous, and known to be so for centuries. The other case, Logan, is more complex. You're describing the effects of what possibly might be a saxitoxin, commonly produced by algae, which are, of course, plants, usually aquatic plants. The best-known vehicle for human attacks are the cyanobacteria, some of which have been implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/parkinsonism–dementia complex.”

“That's a mouthful,” she said.

“So to speak,” he replied. “Sometimes people eat shellfish, which tend to act as the ocean's filtration system, and then have a reaction which mimics what you've been describing. It can range from a temporary discomfort to outright death. That's why they clear the beach when an algal bloom appears.”

“Okay, here's the tough question—did you give Strang anything like that? A bucket of pond scum or something?”

“No,” he said. “But I did give him one of my mutations of kelp.”

“Kelp?” she said. “As in those big-ass seaweed formations off San Diego?”

“Yup,” he said. “Kelp is an alga.”

“Holy shit.”

“Indeed, but it also means that Mister Strang or his boss has some connection with a certain army laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, known as USAMRIID. It's where the army used to develop biological weapons.”

“Good God!” she exclaimed. “I thought we were long out of that horrible business.”

“We are,” he said. “Now they work on ways to
defend
our troops against bioweapons that the other guys might use, such as our good friends in North Korea, Syria; enchanting places like that.”

She sat back in her chair. “I had no idea, and, I guess, I should have.”

“The world of toxins is all around us, Special Agent. Consider all those Hollywood lovelies who want fuller lips or a wrinkle-free forehead. What do they use?”

“Botox?”

“Yes, Botox. Otherwise known as botulinum toxin. Think botulism, often synonymous with death by paralysis. You see the problem here?”

“I'm starting to,” she said. “Would a toxicologist be able to sniff out one of these saxitoxins?”

“I would,” he said. “But not most forensic criminology labs, no. The Bureau's lab, yes, if properly cued. That said, it's not what I do here, Special Agent. These lethal compounds the plants produce are defensive mechanisms. I'm interested in how they develop them and how they mutate them to fit changing circumstances—an increase in animal predation, the onset of drought, humans and their sprays, and so on. Sometimes humans are helping—think Roundup Ready corn seed, for instance. But then there are my beloved weeds, who manage it all on their own.”

“So if Mandeville gave him some substance like that, it might not even be detectable?”