“Landon said that Reed described them as bloated, covered with sores, bleeding from the orifices.”
Smith felt a tingle as the connections snapped together in his mind.
“I had a message from Peter Howell,” he told Klein. “He had a long chat with Herr Weizsel. He was so cooperative that he insisted on taking Peter back to his apartment, where he accessed the Offenbach Bank’s computers through his laptop. It seems that Ivan Beria had a long and profitable relationship with the bank, especially when one client employed him exclusively: Bauer-Zermatt A.G.”
Klein was stunned. “The pharmaceutical giant?”
Smith nodded. “Over the last three years, Bauer-Zermatt made a total of ten deposits into Beria’s account, two of the last three just before the Russian guard and Treloar were eliminated.”
“What about the third one?” Klein demanded.
“That was for the contract on me.”
After a moment’s silence, Klein said, “Do you have proof?”
As though he were moving a piece in for checkmate, Smith pulled out a floppy disk. “Proof positive.”
Klein shook his head. “All right. Bauer-Zermatt is— was— paying Beria for assassinations. These included the Russian guard and Treloar. That links Bauer-Zermatt to the stolen smallpox. But there are two questions: why would Bauer-Zermatt want the smallpox? And who at the company authorized the hits and the payments?” He pointed to the disk. “Is there a name?”
“No name,” Smith replied. “But it’s not hard to guess, is it? Only one man could have authorized the use of someone like Beria: Karl Bauer himself.”
Klein’s breath whistled through his nostrils. “Okay… But finding Bauer’s fingerprints on the authorization to use Beria, or on the payments themselves, that’s another matter.”
“They won’t exist,” Smith said flatly. “Bauer’s much too careful to leave such an obvious trail.” He paused. “But why would he want the smallpox to begin with? To make a vaccine? No. We can already do that. To play with it? Tweak it genetically? Maybe. But why? Smallpox has been studied for years. It can’t be used as a battlefield weapon. The incubation period is too long. The effects are not a hundred percent predictable. So why would Bauer still want a sample? Want it so badly that he would murder for it?”
He looked at Klein. “Do you know how people die from smallpox? The first symptoms are a rash on the roof of the mouth, which then spreads to the face and forearms, then to the rest of the body. The pustules erupt, scabs form, erupt again. Eventually, there’s bleeding from the orifices….”
Klein stared at him. “Just like the shuttle crew!” he whispered. “They died the way smallpox victims do! Are you saying Bauer got the stolen smallpox onboard Discovery?”
Smith rose and tried to dispel the image of Megan, how she had died, her last, terrible moments. “Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”
“But—?”
“In space— in microgravity— you can reengineer cells, bacteria, virtually anything in a way that can’t be done on earth.” He paused. “We wiped smallpox off the planet but we kept two sets of samples— one here, one in Russia. Ostensibly, we did this because we could not bring ourselves to eradicate a species into extinction. The truth is darker than that: we never knew when we might need it. Maybe years from now we would find a way to convert it into a weapon. Or if someone else did, we’d have enough material with which to produce a vaccine— hopefully.
“Bauer didn’t want to wait years. Somehow he discovered a process he thought would work. Maybe he was fifty or sixty percent of the way there, but he couldn’t finish. He couldn’t be certain. The only way to prove that he was right was to arrange for an experiment in a unique environment where bacteria grow like lightning. He needed to do it onboard the shuttle.” Smith paused. “And he did.”
“If you’re right, Jon,” Klein said tightly, “that means Dylan Reed is his handmaiden.”
“He’s the only survivor, isn’t he? The director of NASA’s biomedical research program. The guy who was conveniently suited up when all hell broke loose.”
“Are you suggesting that Reed murdered his own crew?” Klein demanded.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“Two reasons: To get rid of any possible witnesses, and…” Smith’s voice broke. “And to run a controlled experiment on human test subjects to see how fast the virus would kill.”
Klein slumped in his chair. “It’s insane.”
“Only because whoever devised it is insane,” Smith said. “Not raving, not foaming at the mouth. But insidiously, malignly insane. Yes.”
Mein stared at him. “Bauer…”
“And Richardson, Price, Treloar, Lara Telegin…”
“To nail Bauer, we need hard evidence, Jon. We can try to trace his communications—”
Smith shook his head. “There’s no time. Here’s the way I see it: we assume there’s a bioweapon onboard the shuttle and that Reed is in control of it. Bauer and his accomplices will want to destroy all the evidence of what happened up there. Also, I’m sure that we’ll find no evidence of any dealings with either Richardson or Price. But Bauer still has to make sure that the shuttle comes down safely. He has to get Reed and the sample out of there. When is NASA bringing down the orbiter?”
“In about eight hours. They have to wait for an atmospheric window to open in order to land it at Edwards Air Force Base in California.”
Smith leaned forward. “Can you get me in to see the president— right now?”
__________
Two hours later, after speaking with the president, Smith and Klein found themselves in the small conference room next to the Oval Office. While they waited for the president to finish his meeting, Klein received a call from the Cape.
“Mr. Klein? It’s Harry Landon at mission control. I have that information you were asking for.”
Klein listened in silence and thanked Landon. Before hanging up, he asked: “What is the status of the descent?”
“We’re bringing her down as gently as we can,” Landon replied. “I have to tell you, we’ve never done anything like this— outside of simulations, that is. But we’ll get our people down. You have my word on that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Landon. I’ll stay in touch.”
He turned to Smith. “Landon called everyone in the Black Book— and someone who Reed personally asked for.”
“Let me guess. Karl Bauer.”
“On the money.”
“Makes sense,” Smith said. “He’d want to be on-site when Reed comes down with his baby.”
Klein nodded and pointed to the closed-circuit monitor that suddenly showed a picture. “Showtime.”
__________
Despite the nest of worry lines and crow’s-feet, the president, seated behind his desk, projected an image of authority and control. As he waited for the last member of the working group to arrive, he surveyed the individuals around him.
The Central Intelligence Agency was represented by Bill Dodge, cool, austere, his expression betraying nothing as he leafed through the latest update from NASA.
Martha Nesbitt, the national security adviser, sat next to Dodge. A veteran of the State Department, Marti, as she was called, was famous for the speed with which she assessed a situation, formulated a decision, and got the ball rolling.
Opposite her was the secretary of state, Gerald Simon, picking nonexistent lint off his hand-tailored suit, a ritual indicating that he was racked by indecision.
“I hope you’ve had time to gather your thoughts,” the president said. “Because under the circumstances, we have to make the right decision the first time around.”
He looked around the group. “As of now Discovery will reach its `window’ to reenter the earth’s atmosphere in approximately one hour At that point, it will be another four hours before it begins its descent procedure. Seventy-five minutes later, it will land at Edwards. The question before us is simple: do we allow the craft to land?”
“I have a question, sir,” Martha Nesbitt spoke up. “At what point do we lose the ability to destroy the orbiter?”
“There’s really no such cutoff point,” the president replied. “The fact that the shuttle carries an autodestruct package of high explosives has, for obvious reasons, never been publicized. However, using satellite relays, we can activate the mechanism at any point between the orbiter’s present position and touchdown.”
“But the package, Mr. President, was really designed to blow the orbiter in space,” Bill Dodge said. “The whole point being not to introduce any contaminants into our atmosphere.”
“That’s true,” Castilla agreed.
“What’s also true is that we have no idea what really happened onboard Discovery,” Gerald Simon weighed in. He glanced around the room. “Five dedicated people are dead. We don’t know how or why. But one is still alive. On the battlefield, we always bring out our dead. And if there’s a survivor out there, we damn well go out and get him.”
“I agree,” Marti Nesbitt said. “First of all, according to the latest information, the orbiter is sound, mechanically speaking. Second, NASA is still checking into what could have taken down the crew. Rightly, they’re focusing on the food and fluids supplies. We know that bacteria grow very rapidly in microgravity. It’s entirely possible that something that is harmless on earth mutated in a grotesque way and overpowered its victims before they could respond.”