Crime Zero (26 page)

"OK, OK, I'll tell you. His name's Luke Decker; he contacted me by phone."

"Decker? As in Special Agent Luke Decker? Jesus."

"Yeah. He told me about getting Dr. Kerr out of the Sanctuary and how you'd deceived the FDA. Also how Axelman was possibly a mistake you wanted covered up. Or something else."

"Did he tell you what this something else might be?"

"No, he said Dr. Kerr's got some suspicions but nothing concrete. That's what I was asking Pamela Weiss about at the reception, but she seemed completely in the dark."

Naylor smiled at that. "Oh, she is, Mr. Butcher, she is. And that's exactly how it's going to stay. Would you please get out of the car now?"

A look of relief and then renewed fear crossed his face. "Why? What are you going to do with me?"

"Mr. Butcher, get out of the car, or I will shoot you where you sit. If you run or shout for help, I will shoot you dead. In this blizzard no one will see or hear you anyway."

Once they were out of the car she steered him to the back. "Open the trunk."

Shivering with terror and the sub-zero temperature, he did as she asked. There was a small case and a laptop inside. Otherwise it was empty.

"Get in the trunk."

"But it's freezing."

"Now! Or I will shoot you."

For a moment she thought he was going to struggle, but then he sat on the bumper, allowing her to push him into the trunk. Butcher lay there trembling, his eyes staring up at her though his eyeglasses, pleading with her.

"Let me leave you with two points of consolation," she said to him. "One, you aren't dying much sooner than you would have anyway. Two, you got off light compared with what I'm going to do with Dr. Kathy Kerr and Special Agent Luke Decker." With that she fired one perfectly placed bullet into Butcher's forehead and closed the trunk.

After checking she was still unseen in the vast snowswept lot, she retrieved a Swiss Army knife from her inside pocket and unscrewed the rear and front plates from the rental car. She swapped the rear one with a Saab's plate ten cars down and the front plate with a similar one on a Chevy's two rows back. The whole process took her twelve minutes, but it ensured that Hank Butcher's rental car and therefore his body wouldn't be found for weeks, especially if the weather stayed cold. By then it wouldn't matter.

Walking toward the courtesy bus shelter, she turned to watch her footsteps disappear in the falling snow. Despite her reservations about exposing herself, there was something satisfying about doing a job personally and doing it well. It took her back to her early days as an agent, when she'd finished in the top percentile in her class at the Quantico FBI academy and helped bust two murder cases in her first six months, receiving a bullet in her left leg and right shoulder for her troubles. She certainly felt no remorse for what she had done. It was necessary, and in the long run the morality of the deed would cease to be relevant. In the courtesy bus shelter she reached for her cell phone and dialed Assistant Director Jackson's number.

"Jackson," she ordered when he picked up, "find Dr. Peters and get rid of him. He allowed our guest to escape. Then find Luke Decker. Dr. Kerr will be with him."

"Decker?"

"Yes, the same Decker who beats you every year at the Quantico shooting meet. Find them both and bring them to me. Naturally no one in the bureau except your people must know about this. Understand?"

"Yes, but what if I can't bring them to you alive?"

Naylor looked up as the courtesy bus approached through the snow. She checked her watch, calculating that she could get a cab from the terminal building in plenty of time to rendezvous with Alice Prince before their meeting with Pamela Weiss.

"Director," said the voice on the phone, "if I have to, can I kill them?"

Madeline Naylor looked back across the rows of cars, already unable to identify which contained the rapidly cooling corpse of Hank Butcher. "Of course you can, Jackson. You can do whatever you like. Just make damn sure you get them."

Chapter 23.

Babylon, Iraq.Thursday, November 6, 10:07 P.M.

The presidential palace in Babylon, one hundred kilometers south of Baghdad, was one of more than fifty built since the 1990 war. Its unrestrained opulence seemed obscene in a land where continuing international sanctions meant many people lived in poverty. The rais and his family now owned over eighty such residences, including the older palaces, around the country.

Standing in one of the military planning rooms, Dr. Yevgenia Krotova shifted the weight of her heavy frame from one foot to the other and stared at the six silent television screens on the far wall, each showing a different cable channel. These flickering images of the modern world contrasted sharply with the palace's old-world splendor: the marble pillars, the thick rugs, the gilt high-backed chairs facing the screens, and the alabaster water fountains visible in the floodlit courtyard beyond the tall, arched windows.

The ostentatious show of wealth didn't shock Yevgenia Krotova. After she had sold her soul to the devil, nothing shocked her anymore. Ten years ago she had been deputy director of Russia's State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, helping run its illegal germ warfare program. But Russia was poor and unable to maintain even the meager salary she was paid. Iraq had outbid both Iran and North Korea to purchase her expertise--and whatever secrets she could bring with her.

One freezing night in January 1998 Yevgenia had decamped with her husband and three daughters, and for the last decade she had headed Iraq's formidable biological warfare program. She was paid more money than she could ever use and had a good life, but she was a guarded prisoner, a bought possession of the rais. She was forbidden to leave the country, and her family would always be watched. Dr. Krotova never allowed herself to question her decision, though. Regret served no purpose.

But now she was in trouble. Aziz had died before he could explain the escalating deaths in the Republican Guard, and because he had involved her in his investigations, she had been summoned to the palace to supply answers. Any sadness she may have felt for Aziz's death was more than countered by frustration. She had been left to explain the unexplainable to the three generals? Why couldn't Aziz at least have left a few clues before he died? The only consolation was that the generals, not the rais himself, were here.

After greeting the generals, she stood in the middle of the room. It was late, and she felt tired. She wanted to sit down, but they didn't invite her to join them on one of the comfort-able-looking high-backed chairs surrounding the long table. Instead they left her standing and proceeded to interrogate her. Frowning, she tried to ignore the screens flickering over the generals' shoulders and concentrate on their questions.

"Dr. Krotova, do you or do you not know what the cause is?" General Akram was the tallest of the three men. His eyes searched her face as he spoke, his voice brusque. Ostensibly Akram had overall responsibility for medical matters in the army, although the man was an idiot who was given the role only because of his distant blood relationship to the rais.

"Not exactly, but I'm convinced Dr. Aziz was close. He thought it was steroid abuse at first, but now he has died with the same symptoms, which implies that whatever killed the men is infectious."

"Infectious?" asked General Rashani, a short, bald man with glasses. He sounded incredulous. "But these men have been dying of brain hemorrhages and committing suicide. How could that be infectious?"

"That's what Aziz was trying to confirm. It might be a complex virus or a prion or else something entirely new that changed the men's DNA and brain chemistry. Aziz was writing up his work on the night he died, and I tried to recover his report, but his computer was damaged, and most had been deleted. However, from the fragments we salvaged from his hard drive, I think he may have found something."

"But you don't know the cause or how to cure it?"

"Not yet. My people are reviewing all the tests Aziz's team conducted on the patients, and we are currently conducting detailed autopsies on the men's brains to shed more light on the pathology. But we need more time."

"You haven't got more time. We haven't got more time. We await the rais's order to march on Kuwait at any moment."

"But you can't wage a military campaign until we know more. This phenomenon is no longer confined to the Al Taji camp. At least a hundred men are now dead, and the rate is increasing. We need to check how widespread this epidemic has become and contain it. If you don't, you will lose even more men."

"In war men always die," said General Akram. "Unless you can explain what's wrong, we shall proceed as planned. If it's noninfectious, then there's no problem. And if it is, then at least they can serve a purpose before they die."

"But that's--" she started to say before the third general gave her a dark look.

"This is not open to debate," he said.

Yevgenia bit her lip, framing a more positive response. It was dangerous to anger them any more than she had done already. Before she could say anything else, she heard a loud voice speaking in English. The three generals swiveled around to face the wall of televisions, and Yevgenia realized that the volume had been increased on the top right-hand screen. The channel was CNN, and the voice she could hear was that of the U.S. President. He was standing in front of a podium, and at the bottom of the screen was a subtitle that read: "Bob Burbank Live from the White House." Behind him were four men and a woman. One of the men was in uniform. The President had been speaking for some minutes when Yevgenia, who spoke English well, picked up what he was saying.

"I hope and pray that the president of Iraq sees reason and doesn't cross the thirty-second parallel. But if he does, then the coalition allies are committed to crush his offensive. He must understand that we will execute this ruthlessly and decisively because we firmly believe that to delay would only encourage him further. We have the conventional force in place to destroy his army, and we will employ that force immediately if one Iraqi boot, tank, or plane crosses that line in the sand."

As the U.S. President spoke, his face was pale and his eyes looked tired. His face worried Yevgenia; he had the look of a man telling an awful truth. "We are aware that the Iraqi president has promised to retaliate with unconventional weapons, but we will not appease him. We cannot appease him. The very last thing we want to do is start a conflict, let alone escalate one. But he must be in no doubt that if he raises the stakes one notch, we will have no choice but to end this decisively. The game of bluff and counterbluff he has been playing with the UN for the last eighteen years has come to an end. There is no more patience."

President Burbank seemed to sway on his feet, and as he did so, he wiped beads of sweat from his brow. At first Yevgenia thought that the man was affected by the import of what he was saying, but then she realized that it was more than that. He looked ill. "As I speak, the president of Iraq controls the greatest destructive force we have ever seen. His actions will determine whether this nuclear response remains unused or whether it is unleashed on him and his country." Burbank paused and looked into the camera, his face haggard. "I hope he chooses his actions wisely."

When he finished, there was a hush--not only in the palace but also in the White House briefing room on camera. Yevgenia looked at the generals and could see them craning over the backs of their chairs staring at the screen. Then, just as the journalists began asking their questions, the most unimaginable scene unfolded before her eyes: Bob Burbank clutched his chest, reached for the podium as his knees buckled, and collapsed to the floor. There was a second of shocked silence; then the screen went mad. Secret Service men in black glasses formed a circle around the man. Journalists left their seats to rush forward, and the President's aides stood around in panic.

The camera suddenly focused on one of the men who had been standing behind the President. A tall, thin man identified by an excited commentator as Vice President Smith, he looked shellshocked, paralyzed by terror. "I'm sure somebody will take control of this awful situation soon," said the CNN commentator more out of hope than knowledge. But Yevgenia could see from his stricken face that the Vice President was not going to be that someone.

At that moment there was a thumping noise, and the camera shifted back to the podium. The woman who had been standing behind the President was now tapping her hand on the microphone, her eyes looking straight at the camera, her gaze unflinching. She was a striking-looking woman with a thick bob of auburn hair streaked with silver. Her face was open and strong, and although she was clearly in as much shock as anybody else was, she was not debilitated by it.

"Please resume your seats. This briefing isn't yet over," she said. Her voice wasn't loud, but the tone was so calm and clear it cut through the collective panic, stopping everyone and making all turn to her. Gradually the journalists returned to their seats, and a semblance of order was restored as the Secret Service men and two paramedics lifted the President and removed him from the room. One man, who looked like a doctor, came over and whispered something in the woman's ear, and her chest heaved as she took in this new information.