Schweik came to attention. “Thank you, Sergeant Major.”
Daugherty rotated her pencil again, studying the door that had just closed behind the new woman. Then Daugherty sighed. She had not been completely truthful. Although there was plenty of routine, there were moments like this when all of a sudden the army didn’t make a damn bit of sense. She shrugged. Well, she had seen stranger things than an abrupt shift in personnel that made both transferring parties happy. She buzzed Quinn, asked for a cup of coffee, and put out of her mind the latest lab crisis and the strange personnel transfer. She had work to do.
__________
At 1732, hours, Sergeant Major Daugherty locked her cubicle door, preparing to leave the empty office. But the office was not empty.
The new woman, Schweik, said, “I’d like to stay and learn as much as I can, if that’s all right, Sergeant Major.”
“Fine. I’ll tell security. You have an office key? Good. Lock up when you’re finished. You won’t be alone. That new virus is driving the docs crazy. I expect some of them will be on campus all night. If this goes on much longer, they’re going to start getting cantankerous. They don’t like mysteries that kill people.”
“So I’ve heard.” The small brunette nodded and smiled. “See, plenty of action and excitement at Fort Detrick.”
Daugherty laughed. “I stand corrected,” she said, and went out.
At her desk in the silent office, Specialist Schweik read memos and made notes for another half hour until she was sure neither the sergeant major nor security was coming back to check on her. Then she opened the attache case she had brought inside during her first coffee break. When she had arrived at Andrews Air Force Base this morning, it had been waiting in the car assigned to her.
From the case she withdrew a schematic diagram of the phone installations in the USAMRIID building. The main box was in the basement, and it contained connections for all the internal extensions and private outside lines. She studied it long enough to memorize its position. Then she returned the diagram, closed the case, and stepped into the corridor, carrying it.
With innocent curiosity on her face, she looked carefully around.
The guard inside the front entrance was reading. Schweik needed to get past him. She inhaled, keeping herself calm, and glided silently along the rear corridor to the basement entrance.
She waited. No movement or noise from the guard. Although the building was considered high security, the protection was less to keep people out than to shield the public from the lethal toxins, viruses, bacteria, and other dangerous scientific materials that were studied at USAMRIID. Although the guard was well trained, he lacked the aggressive edge of a sentry defending a lab where top-secret war weapons were created.
Relieved that he remained engrossed in his book, she tried the heavy metal door. It was locked. She took a set of keys from the case. The third one opened the basement door. She padded soundlessly downstairs, where she wound in and out among giant machines that heated and cooled the building, supplied sterile air and negative pressure for the labs, operated the powerful exhaust system, supplied water and chemical solutions for the chemical showers, and handled all the other maintenance needs of the medical complex.
She was sweating by the time she located the main box. She set the attache case on the floor and withdrew from it a smaller case of tools, wires, color-coded connections, meters, switching units, listening devices, and miniature recorders.
It was evening, and the basement was quiet but for the occasional snap, gurgle, and hum of the pipes and shafts. Still, she listened to make sure no one else was around. Nervous energy sent chills across her skin. Warily she studied the gray walls. At last she opened the main box and went to work on the multitude of connections.
__________
Two hours later, back in her office, she checked her telephone, attached a miniature speaker-earphone set, flipped a switch on the hidden control box in her desk drawer, and listened. “… Yeah, I’ll be here at least two more hours, I’m afraid. Sorry, honey, can’t be helped. This virus is a bear. The whole staff’s on it. Okay, I’ll try to get there before the kids go to bed.”
Satisfied her listening and rerouting equipment was working, she clicked off and dialed an outside line. The male voice that had contacted her last night and given her instructions answered. “Yes?”
She reported: “Installation is complete. I’m connected to the recorder for all phone calls, and I’ve got a line on my set to alert me to any from the offices you’re interested in. It’ll connect me with the shunt to intercept calls.”
“You were unobserved? You are unsuspected?”
She prided herself on her ear for voices, and she knew all the major languages and many minor. This voice was educated, and his English was good but not perfect. A non-English speech pattern, and the smallest trace of a Middle-Eastern accent. Not Israel, Iran, or Turkey. Possibly Syria or Lebanon, but more likely Jordan or Iraq.
She filed the information for future reference.
She said, “Of course.”
“That is well. Be alert to any developments that concern the unknown virus they are working on. Monitor all calls in and out of the offices of Dr. Russell, Lieutenant Colonel Smith, and General Kielburger.
This job could not last too long, or it would become too risky. They would probably never find the body of the real Specialist Four Adele Schweik. Schweik had no known relatives and few friends outside the army. She had been selected for those reasons.
But Schweik sensed Sergeant Major Daugherty was suspicious, vaguely disturbed by her arrival. Too much scrutiny could expose her.
“How long will I remain here?”
“Until we do not need you. Do nothing to call attention to yourself.”
The dial tone hummed in her ear. She hung up and leaned forward to continue familiarizing herself with the routines and requirements of the sergeant major’s office. She also listened to live conversations in and out of the building and monitored the light on the desk phone that would alert her to calls from the Russell woman’s laboratory. For a moment she was curious about what was so important about Dr. Russell. Then she banished the thought. There were some things it was dangerous to know.
___________________
CHAPTER
FOUR
___________________
Midnight
Washington, D.C.
Washington’s magnificent Rock Creek park was a wedge of wilderness in the heart of the city. From the Potomac River near the Kennedy Center it wound narrowly north to where it expanded into a wide stretch of woods in the city’s upper Northwest. A natural woodland, it abounded in hiking, biking, horse trails, picnic grounds, and historical sites. Pierce Mill, where Tilden Street intersected Beach Drive, was one of those historical landmarks. An old gristmill, it dated from pre-Civil War days when a line of such mills bordered the creek. It was now a museum run by the National Park Service and, in the moonlight, a ghostly artifact from a faraway time.
Northwest of the mill, where the brush was thick in the shadows of tall trees, Bill Griffin waited, holding a highly alert Doberman on a tight leash. Although the night was cold, Griffin sweated. His wary gaze scanned the mill and picnic grounds. The sleek dog sniffed the air, and its erect ears rotated, listening for the source of its unease.
From the right, in the general direction of the mill, someone approached. The dog had caught the faint sounds of autumn leaves being crunched underfoot long before they were audible to Griffin. But once Griffin heard the footfalls, he released the animal. The dog remained obediently seated, every taut muscle quivering, eager.
Griffin gave a silent hand signal.
Like a black phantom, the Doberman sprang off into the night and made a wide circle around the picnic grounds, invisible among the ominous shadows of the trees.
Griffin desperately wanted a cigarette. Every nerve was on edge. Behind him something small and wild rustled through the underbrush. Somewhere in the park a night owl hooted. He acknowledged neither the sounds nor his nerves. He was highly trained, a complete professional, and so he maintained watch, vigilant and unmoving. He breathed shallowly so as to not reveal his presence by clouds of white breath in the cold night air. And although he kept his temper under control, he was an angry, worried man.
When at last Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith came into view, striding across the open area in the silver-blue moonlight, Griffin still did not move. On the far side of the picnic grounds, the Doberman went to ground, invisible. But Griffin knew he was there.
Jon Smith hesitated on the path. He asked in a hoarse whisper, “Bill?”
In the umbra of the trees, Griffin continued to concentrate on the night. He listened to the traffic on the nearby parkway and to the city noises beyond. Nothing was unusual. No one else was in this part of the massive preserve. He waited for the dog to tell him otherwise, but he had resumed his rounds, apparently satisfied, too.