The Hades Factor Part 7

Hospital orderly Emiliano Coronado slipped out into the service alley behind the hospital to have a cigarette. Proud of his distant ancestor's daring and fame, he stood erect, his shoulders squared, and in his imagination he stared off into the vast distances of Colorado four centuries ago, looking for the Cities of Gold.

A sudden pain sliced across his throat. His cigarette dropped from his mouth, and his vision of glory sank into the refuse littering the dark alley. A knife blade had cut a thin trickle of blood from his neck. The blade pressed against the wound.

"Not a sound," the voice said from behind.

Terrified, Emiliano could only grunt.

"Tell me about Dr. Russell." Nadal al-Ha.s.san dug the razor-sharp knife deeper as encouragement. "Is she alive?"

Coronado tried to swallow. "She die."

"What did she say before she died?"

"Nothin' ...she don' say nothin' to no one."

The knife dug in. "You are sure? Not to Colonel Smith, her fiance? That does not sound possible."

Emiliano was desperate. "She unconscious, you know? How she gonna talk?"

"That is good."

The knife did its work, and Emiliano Coronado lay unconscious and dying as his blood soaked the refuse of the shadowed alley.

Al-Ha.s.san looked carefully around. He left the alley and circled the block to where the van waited.

"Well?" Bill Griffin asked as al-Ha.s.san climbed in.

"According to the orderly, she said nothing."

"Then maybe Smith knows nothing. Maybe it's good Maddux missed him in D.C. Two murders at USAMRIID increases the risk of someone figuring it out."

"I would prefer Maddux had killed him. Then we would not be having this discussion."

"But Maddux didn't kill him, and we can rethink the necessity."

"We cannot be certain she did not speak in her condominium."'

"We can if she was unconscious the whole time."

"She was not unconscious when she went into her building," al-Ha.s.san replied. "Our leader will not like the possibility she told him of Peru."

Griffin shot back: "I've got to say it again, al-Ha.s.san, too many unexplained deaths and killings can draw a lot of attention. Especially if Smith's told anyone about the attacks on him. The boss could like that even less."

Al-Ha.s.san hesitated. He distrusted Griffin, but the ex-FBI man could be right. "Then we must let him decide which course of action he likes least."

Bill Griffin felt a weight lift from him. Not all the way off, because he knew Smithy. If Jon even suspected that Sophia's death was not an accident, he would never back off. Still, Bill hoped the hardhead would believe she had made a mistake in the lab, and the attacks on him had no relation to her death. When there were no more attacks, he would give it up. Then Smithy would be out of danger, and Griffin could stop worrying.

In the tile and stainless-steel autopsy room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Frederick hospital, Smith looked up as pathologist Lutfallah stepped from the dissecting table. The air was cold and singed with the stink of formaldehyde. Both men were dressed completely in green scrubs.

Lutfallah sighed. "Well, that's it, Jon. No doubt at all. She died of " a ma.s.sive viral infection that destroyed her lungs."

"What virus?" Smith's masked voice demanded, although he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

Lutfallah shook his head. "I'll leave that part to you Einsteins at Detrick. The lungs and almost nothing else... but it's not pneumonia, tuberculosis, or anything else I've ever seen. Swift and devastating."

Smith nodded. With a giant effort of will, he blanked his mind against who was lying cut open on the stainless-steel table with its channels and slopes to catch blood. He and Lutfallah began the grim business of collecting tissue and blood samples.

Only later after the autopsy was finished and Smith had taken off his green cap and mask and gloves and scrubs and sat outside the autopsy room alone on a long bench did he let himself grieve for Sophia again.

He had waited too long. He had let his excited chase of science and medicine around the globe keep him away too much. He had been lying a to himself that with Sophia he was no longer a cowboy. It was not true. Even after he had asked her to marry him, he had still left her for his pursuits. And now he could not get that lost time back.

The pain of missing her was sharper than anything physical he had ever felt. With a rush of aching comprehension, he tried to come to terms with the fact that they would never be together again. He leaned forward, and his face fell into his hands. He yearned for her. Thick tears poured through his fingers. Regret. Guilt. Mourning. He shook with silent sobs. She was gone, and all he could think about was that his arms ached to hold her one more time.

CHAPTER.

NINE

9:18 A.M.

Bethesda, Maryland Most people think of the behemoth National Inst.i.tutes of Health as a single ent.i.ty, which is far from the truth. Set on more than three hundred lush acres in Bethesda, just ten miles from the Capitol's dome, the NIH consists of twenty-four separate inst.i.tutes, centers, and divisions that employ sixteen thousand people. Of those, an astounding six thousand are Ph.D.s. It is a collection of more advanced degrees in one location than most colleges and some entire states are able to boast.

Lily Lowenstein, RRL, was thinking about all that as she stared out her office suite's windows on the top floor of one of the seventy-five campus buildings. Her gaze swept over the flower beds, the rolling lawns, the tree-rimmed parking lots, and the office structures where so many highly educated and intelligent people labored.

She was looking for an answer where there was none.

As director of the Federal Resource Medical Clearing house (FRMC), Lily was herself highly educated, well-trained, and at the top of her profession. Alone in her office, she stared out at the prestigious NIH, but she did not see the people or buildings or anything else. What she was actually seeing and thinking about was her problem. A problem that had grown almost imperceptibly over many years until it weighed her down like the proverbial thousand-pound gorilla.

Lily was a compulsive gambler. It made no difference what kind; she was addicted to them all. At first she spent her vacations in Las Vegas. Later, after she took her first job in Was.h.i.+ngton, she went to Atlantic City because she could get to the tables faster. She could play Atlantic City on weekends, or on a single day off, or even a one-night stand in recent years as the compulsion grew with the size of her debts.

If it had stopped there--- casino gambling and an occasional trip to the track at Pimlico and Arlington--- perhaps it would have remained a minor monkey. It would have been annoying, draining away her good salary, causing rifts in her family when she canceled visits and failed to send Christmas or birthday presents to her nieces and nephews. It would have left her with few friends, but it would never have grown into the terrifying beast she now faced.

She placed bets by telephone with bookmakers, placed bets in bars with other bookmakers, and, finally, borrowed money from those who lent money to faceless, frantic souls like herself. Now she owed more than fifty thousand dollars, and a man who would not give his name had called to tell her he had bought up all her debts and would like to discuss payment. It shot chills up her spine. Her hand shook as if from palsy. He was polite, but there was an implied threat in his words. At exactly nine-thirty she was to meet him at a downtown Bethesda sports bar she knew only too well.

Terrified, she had tried to figure out what to do. She had no illusions. She could, of course, go to the police, but then everything would come out. She would lose her job and probably go to prison because, inevitably, she had cut a few corners in buying office supplies, and she had pocketed the difference. She had even dipped into petty cash. That was what compulsive gamblers did.

There were no more friends or family who would lend her money, even if she were willing to let them know she had a problem. One of her two cars, the Beemer, had been repossessed, and her house was mortgaged to the maximum. She had no husband, not anymore. Her share of her son's private school tuition was in arrears. She had no bonds, no stocks, no real estate. No one was going to help her, not even a loan shark. Not anymore.

She could not even run away. Her only means of support was her job. Without her job she had nothing. She was nothing.

From a rear booth in the sports bar, Bill Griffin watched the woman enter. She was about what he had expected. Middle-aged, middle-cla.s.s, almost prim, nondescript. A few inches taller, maybe five-foot-nine. A few pounds heavier. Brown hair, brown eyes, heart-shaped face, small chin. There was a certain telltale carelessness about her clothes: Her suit bordered on shabby and did not fit as well as it should on the director of a big government facility. Her hair was ragged, and her gray roots were showing. The gambler.

But she was also a shade haughty as she stood inside the door looking for someone to come forward and claim her, the sign of the middle-rank bureaucrat.

Griffin let her stew.

Finally he stepped out of the booth, caught her eye, and nodded. She walked stiffly past tables and booths toward him.

"Ms. Lowenstein," he said.

Lily nodded to control her apprehension. "And you are?"

"That doesn't matter. Sit down."

She sat, nervous and uneasy, so she went on the attack. "How did you find out about my debts?"

Bill Griffin smiled thinly. "You don't really care about all that, Ms. Lowenstein, do you? Who I am, where I got the debts, why I bought them up. None of it matters a d.a.m.n, right?" He gazed at her trembling cheeks and lips. She caught his look and stiffened her face. Inwardly he nodded. She was terrified, which made her vulnerable to alternatives. "I have your markers." He watched her brown eyes as they s.h.i.+fted uneasily. "I'm here to offer you a way to get out from under."

She snorted derisively. "Out from under?"

No gambler cared much about simply erasing debt. Gambling was a compulsion, an illness. Debt was an embarra.s.sment and danger, but it had little impact until it meant the tracks, the bookmakers, anyone who ran a game would refuse to let you play without cash on the table. Griffin knew Lily was in a daily scramble to come up with enough to place more than a five-dollar track bet.

So he offered her the bone that wagged this dog's tail: "You can start fresh. I wipe away your debts. No one ever knows, and I give you enough to start over. Sound good?"

"A fresh start?" An excited flush appeared above Lowenstein's collar. For a moment, her eyes were bright with excitement. But just as quickly, she frowned. She was in trouble, but she was not an idiot. "That depends on what I have to do for it, doesn't it?"

In his military intelligence days, Griffin had been one of the army's best recruiters of a.s.sets behind the Iron Curtain. Lure them with the personal advantages, the moral principles, the rightness of the cause until they were compromised. Then when they balked at what you asked them to do, and they always did sooner or later, drop the carrot, tighten the screws, and lean. It was not the aspect of his job he had liked most, but he had been good at it, and it was time to lean on this woman.

"No, not really." His voice dropped thirty degrees. "It depends on nothing. You can't pay me off, and you can't be exposed. If you think you can do either, get up and walk out now. Don't waste my time."

Lily turned red. She bristled. "Now you listen to me, you arrogant---"

"I know," Griffin cut her off. "It's hard. You're the boss, right? Wrong. I'm the boss now. Or tomorrow you'll be out of a job, with no chance of getting another. Not in the government, not in D.C., probably not anywhere."

Lily's stomach turned to stone. Then to mush. She started to cry. No! She would not cry! She never cried. She was the boss. She...

"It's okay," Griffin said. "Cry. Get it out. It's hard, and it's going to get harder. Take your time."

The more he spoke compa.s.sionately, the harder Lily wept. Through her tears, she watched him lean back, relaxed. He waved to the waitress and pointed at his gla.s.s. He did not point at her or ask what she wanted. This was not social; this was business. Whoever he was, she realized suddenly, it was not he who was blackmailing her. He was only the messenger. Doing a job. Indifferent. Nothing personal.

When the waitress brought his beer, Lily turned her head away, ashamed to be seen red-eyed and crying. She had never had to deal with anything like this, anyone like this, and she felt terribly alone.

Griffin sipped his beer. It was time to produce the carrot again. "Okay, feel better? Maybe this'll help. Think about it this way--- the ax was going to fall someday. This way, you get it over with, wipe the slate clean, and I give you a little extra, say fifty thousand, to get you started again. All for a couple of hours' work. Probably less time, if you're as good at your job as I think you are. Now, that's not so bad, is it?"

Wipe the slate clean... fifty thousand... The words burst into her brain like a blaze of suns.h.i.+ne. Start again. The nightmare over. And money. She could really start over. Get help. Therapy. Oh, this was never going to happen again. Never!

She dabbed her eyes. She suddenly wanted to kiss this man, hug him. "What... what do you want me to do?"

"There, right to the point," Griffin said approvingly. "I knew you were smart. I like that. I need a smart person for this."

"Don't try to flatter me. Not now."

Griffin laughed. "Feisty too. Got the spirit back, right? h.e.l.l, no one's even going to get hurt. Just a few records erased. Then you're home free."

Records? Erased? Her records! Never. She shuddered, and then she took hold of herself. What had she expected? Why else would they need her? She was a record librarian. Chief of Federal Resource Medical Clearing House. Of course, it was medical records.

Griffin watched her. This was the critical moment. That first shock of a new a.s.set knowing what he or she was actually going to have to do. Betray their country. Betray their employer. Betray their family. Betray a trust. Whatever it was. And as he watched, he saw the moment pa.s.s. The internal battle. She had gotten a grip on herself.

He nodded. "Okay, that's the bad part. The rest is all downhill. Here's what we want. There's a report to Fort Detrick and CDC and probably to a lot of other places overseas, too, that we need deleted from all the records. Wiped out, erased clean. All copies. It never existed. The same with any World Health Organization reports of virus outbreaks and/or cures in Iraq in the last two years. Those, plus all records of a couple of telephone calls. Can you do that?"

She was still too shocked to speak. But she nodded.

"Now, there's one other condition. It must be done by noon."

"By noon? Now? During office hours? But how---?"

"That's your problem."

All she could do was nod again.

"Good." Griffin smiled. "Now, how about that drink?"

CHAPTER.

TEN

1:33 P.M.

Fort Detrick, Maryland Smith worked feverishly in the Level Four lab, pus.h.i.+ng against a wall of fatigue. How had Sophia died? With Bill Griffin's warning ringing in his head, and considering the lethal attacks on him in Was.h.i.+ngton, he could not believe her death had been an accident. Yet there was no doubt how she had died--- acute respiratory distress syndrome from a deadly virus.

At the hospital, the doctors had told him to go home, to get some sleep. The general had ordered him to follow the doctors' advice. Instead, he had said nothing and driven straight to Fort Detrick's main ate. The guard saluted sadly as he pa.s.sed. He had parked in his usual of near USAMRIID's monolithic, yellow brick-and-concrete building. Exhaust ventilators on the roof blew an endless stream of heavily filtered air from the Level Three and Four labs.

Walking in a semi-trance of grief and exhaustion, carrying the refrigerated containers of blood and tissue from the autopsy, he had showed his security ID badge to the guard at the desk, who nodded to him sympathetically. On automatic pilot, he had continued walking. The corridors were like something in a hazy dream, a floating maze of twists and turns, doors and thick gla.s.s windows on the containment labs. He paused at Sophia's office and looked in.

A lump formed in his throat. He swallowed and hurried on to the Level Four suite where he suited up in his containment suit.

Using Sophia's tissue and blood, he worked alone in the Hot Zone lab against advice, orders, and the directives of safe procedure. He repeated all the lab work she had done with the samples from the three other victims--- isolating the virus, studying it under the electron microscope, and testing it against USAMRIID's frozen bank of specimens from previous victims of various viruses from around the world. The virus that had killed Sophia reacted to none. He ran yet another polymerase-chain-reaction-driven DNA sequencing a.n.a.lysis to identify the new virus, and he made a preliminary restriction map. Then he transmitted his data to his office computer and, after seven minutes of decon showering in the air lock, removed his s.p.a.ce suit and scrubs.