They stepped out into the peerless blue day and walked swiftly along the gravel path that curved around the auditorium.
“One day, Tony, the politicians will have to get it,” Richardson said grimly. “Running this country through public opinion polls is killing us. Mention that you want to stockpile anthrax or Ebola and watch your numbers sink. That’s bullshit!”
“Old news, Frank,” Price replied. “You might recall that our biggest problem is verification. Both we and the Russians agreed to have our biochem stockpiles monitored by international inspectors. Our labs, research and manufacturing facilities, the delivery systems— everything was out in the open. So the politicians don’t have to `get’ anything. As far as they’re concerned, bioweapons are a dead issue.”
“Except when they come back to bite them on the ass,” Richardson said caustically. “Then they’ll be screaming, `Where are ours?’ ”
“And you’ll be able to tell them, won’t you?” Price replied. “With a little help from the good doctor Bauer.”
“Thank Christ for guys like him,” Richardson said through clenched teeth.
Behind the auditorium was a small, circular landing pad. A commercial Jet Ranger helicopter with civilian markings sat waiting, the rotors spinning lazily. When the pilot saw his passengers, he began to warm up the turbos.
Price was about to duck into the passenger compartment when Richardson stopped him.
“This business in Venice,” he said over the growing whine of the engines. “Did we take it on the chin?”
Price shook his head. “The hit came down as arranged. But there was an unexpected development. I’m expecting an update shortly.”
Richardson grunted and followed Price into the cabin, strapping himself into his seat. As much as he respected Bauer and Price, they were still civilians. Only a soldier knew that there were always unexpected developments.
__________
The sight of the Big Island from two thousand feet never failed to stir Richardson. In the distance was the lush Kona Coast, with its grand hotels moored like great ocean liners along the seaside. Farther inland were the black plains of hardened lava, as foreboding as the lunar landscape. In the center of what appeared to be sheer desolation was the fountainhead of life: the Kilauea volcano, its crater glowing red from the magma seething deep within the earth’s core. The volcano was quiet now, but Richardson had seen it during eruptions. Creation, the formation of the newest place on the planet, was a sight that he had never forgotten.
As the helicopter swung along the edge of the lava field, what had once been Fort Howard came into view. Occupying several thousand acres between the lava field and the ocean, it had been the army’s premier medical research facility, specializing in cures for tropical diseases, including leprosy. Several years ago, Richardson had set the wheels in motion to have the base decommissioned. He had found himself an opportunistic senator from Hawaii and, with a little behind-the-scenes help, had gotten the politician’s pork-barrel project through Congress: a brand-new medical facility on Oahu. As a quid pro quo, the senator, who was on the Armed Forces Appropriations Committee, had rubber-stamped Richardson’s request that Fort Howard be mothballed and sold off to private enterprise.
Richardson had already had a buyer waiting in the wings: the biochemical firm Bauer-Zermatt A.G., headquartered in Zurich. After two hundred thousand shares of company stock had been deposited into the senator’s safe-deposit box, the politician saw to it that no other bids for the base were acceptable to his committee.
Richardson spoke to the pilot over the headset: “Swing over the compound.”
The helicopter banked, giving the general a panoramic view of the area below. Even from this height, he could tell that the perimeter fence was new and strong— a ten-foot-tall Cyclone fence topped with razor wire. What looked like military personnel manned the four guard posts. The Humvees parked at each post heightened the effect.
The compound itself was startlingly empty. The Quonset supply huts, barracks, and warehouses stood baking under the tropical sun, with no activity around them. Only the old command building, repainted, with a few Jeeps parked nearby, looked as though it was being used. The overall effect was perfect: a mothballed military installation, still off-limits to everyone except a few locals who serviced the skeleton staff working there.
The effect was extremely deceptive. In truth, what had once been Fort Howard now lay three stories beneath the earth.
“We’re cleared to land, General,” the pilot informed him.
Richardson took a last glance out the window and saw a toylike figure tracking the helicopter’s flight.
“Take us down,” he replied.
__________
He was a short, muscular man in his early sixties, with swept-back silver hair and a carefully trimmed goatee. He stood with his feet apart, his back ramrod straight, hands clasped at the small of his back— an officer of wars past.
Dr. Karl Bauer watched the helicopter drift down, flutter above the grassy landing area, then settle. He knew that his visitors would have hard questions for him. As the rotors wound down, he carefully reviewed just how much he would tell them. Herr Doktor did not take kindly to having to provide explanations or apologies.
For over a hundred years, the company founded by Bauer’s great-grandfather had been at the forefront of chemical and biological technology. Bauer-Zermatt A.G. held a myriad of patents that, to this day, were a revenue-producing stream. Its scientists and researchers had developed pills and potions that remained household staples; at the same time they had brought to market esoteric drugs that had won the company international humanitarian awards.
But for all the medicines and vaccines it distributed to health-care workers in the Third World, Bauer-Zermatt had a dark side that its well-paid spinmeisters and glossy brochures never alluded to. During World War I, the company had developed a particularly noxious form of mustard gas that was responsible for the slow deaths of thousands of Allied soldiers. A quarter century later, it supplied German companies with certain chemicals that were then combined to subsequently create the gas used in the death chambers throughout Eastern Europe. The firm had also closely monitored the ungodly experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele and other Nazi physicians. At the end of the war, while other perpetrators and accomplices were rounded and hanged, Bauer-Zermatt retreated behind the Swiss cloak of anonymity while quietly extrapolating on Nazi medical research. As for Bauer-Zermatt’s owners and principal officers, they disclaimed any knowledge of what might have been done with the corporation’s products once they’d left the alpine borders.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Dr. Karl Bauer had not only kept the family firm in the forefront of legitimate pharmaceutical research, but had also broadened its secret program of developing biochemical weapons. Like a locust, Bauer went where the fields were most fertile: Gadhafi’s Libya, Hussein’s Iraq, the tribal dictatorships of Africa, and the nepotism-infested regimes of Southeast Asia. He brought with him the best scientists and the most modern equipment; in return, he was showered with largesse that was transferred by computer keystroke into the vaults beneath Zurich.
At the same time, Bauer maintained and upgraded his contacts with the military in both the United States and Russia. A prescient student of the global political condition, he had foreseen the breakup of the Soviet Union and the inevitable decline of the new Russia struggling to adopt democracy. Where the twin streams of Russian desperation and American ascendancy met, Bauer fished.
Bauer stepped forward to greet his visitors. “Gentlemen.”
The three men shook hands, then fell in step to the two-story, Colonial-style command building. On both sides of the gracious, wood-paneled lobby were the offices of Bauer’s hand-picked staff, who looked after the administrative duties of the facility. Farther along were the cubbyholes where the scientists’ assistants toiled, inputting data from the laboratory experiments. At the very back were two elevators. One was hidden behind a door that could be opened only with a key card. Built by Hitachi, it was a high-speed unit that linked the subterranean labs with the command building. The second elevator was a beautiful brass birdcage. The three men got in, and in a few seconds were in Bauer’s private office, which occupied the entire second floor.
The office might have belonged to a colonial governor from the nineteenth century. Antique Oriental rugs graced polished hardwood floors; mahogany bookcases and South Pacific art filled the walls. Bauer’s massive partner’s desk stood in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the entire compound and the ocean below the cliffs, straight across to the black lava fields in the distance.’
“You’ve made a few improvements since the last time I was here,” Richardson commented dryly.
“Later, I will take you to the staff and quarters and recreation area,” Bauer replied. “Life here is not unlike on an oil rig: my people have leave only once a month, and then only for three days. The amenities I provide are well worth the expenditure.”