words would not come out. The others stood there like zombies, and
Peter just glared at him, not understanding. A baby was crying, and
then a few young women. He tried to shout again, but nothing came out.
He was wild with terror. He felt suffocated, claustrophobic. He saw
his brother’s upturned head, welcoming the water he expected to come
from the nozzles. At the same time, he could hear the knobs being
turned, the rusty squeak-squeak-squeak of the valves opening, the hiss
of the gas. He shouted, “No!” opened his eyes, and looked around at
the pitch-dark study.
Slowly he sat up, listening. There was no rusty squeak; he had dreamed
it. He was in his late brother’s cabin in the woods, and he had been
sleeping.
But had he heard a noise, or had he dreamed that, too?
Then he heard the thunk of a car door closing.
It was unmistakable; there is no other sound like that. And it was a
big car, perhaps a truck. His Range Rover?
He bolted out of bed, grabbed the flashlight, slipped quickly into his
jeans and sneakers, and threw on his leather jacket. He thought: Could
it be Liesl who’d gotten into, or out of, the Range Rover for some
reason? He passed by her bedroom and pushed open the door.
She was in bed, eyes closed, asleep.
Oh, God. It was someone else. Someone was out there!
He rushed to the front door, grabbed the revolver from the table, opened
the door silently. He looked around the clearing, illuminated by the
pale light of a crescent moon. He didn’t want to switch on the flash
light, didn’t want to call attention to himself or alert whoever was out
there. Then he heard an ignition turn and the roar of an engine coming
to life. He raced outside, saw the Range Rover still parked there,
caught the red taillights of a truck.
“Hey!” he shouted, running after it.
The truck was barreling down the narrow dirt path at maximum speed,
constrained only by the closeness of the trees. Ben ran faster, gun in
one hand, clutching the Mag-Lite flashlight in the other like a baton at
one of his college track meets. The taillights grew farther away even
as he put on a burst of speed, the branches whipping his face, though he
barely noticed. He was a machine, a running machine, a track star once
again, and he would not let that truck get away, and as he tore down the
dirt road that connected with the path from the cabin he thought, Did
they hear a noise in the cabin? Were they planning a break-and-enter
but were frightened away? and he kept on going, faster and faster, and
the red lights grew smaller and smaller, the truck getting away from
him, and then he knew that he’d never catch it. The truck was gone. He
turned around, headed back toward the cabin, suddenly remembering the
Range Rover. He could try to chase them down in the Rover! There were
only two directions the truck could have gone; he could race after them
in his vehicle. He ran back down the path toward the cabin, and was
suddenly jolted by a tremendous, ear-splitting explosion in front of
him, coming from the cabin, an explosion that turned the night sky
orange and red like a giant Roman candle, and then he saw with terror
that the cabin was ablaze, a ball of fire.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
Washington, D.C.
The zipper on Anna’s garment bag snagged on one of her dresses just as
the taxi arrived and honked impatiently.
“All right, all right,” she groaned. “Cool it.”
She yanked at the zipper again, with no luck. Then the telephone rang.
“Good God!”
She was late, trying to get to Reagan National Airport to catch the
evening flight to Zurich. No time to get the phone. She decided to let
the voice mail answer it; then she changed her mind.
“Agent Navarro, forgive me for calling you at home.” She recognized the
high, hoarse voice at once, though she’d only spoken to him once before.
“I got your home number from Sergeant Arsenault. It’s Denis Weese from
the Chemistry Section of the Nova Scotia Forensic Laboratory.”
He spoke excruciatingly slowly. “Yes,” she said impatiently, “the
toxicologist. What’s up?”
“Well, the ocular fluid you asked me to look at?”
She finally worked the fabric of her dress loose from the zipper’s
teeth. She tried not to think of how much the dress had cost. Damage
had been done, but maybe it wouldn’t be too noticeable. “You find
anything?”
“It’s most interesting.” The taxi’s honking grew more insistent.
“Can you hold on a second?” she said, then dropped the phone to the
carpet and ran to the window. “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” she
shouted.
The driver yelled up, “Navarro? You called for a taxi?”
“You can put the meter on. I’ll be down in a few.” She ran back to
pick up the phone. “Sorry. The ocular fluid, you said.”
“The band showed up on electrofluoresis,” the toxicologist went on.
“It’s not a naturally occurring protein. It’s a peptide, a sort of
folded chain of amino acids–”
She dropped the garment bag to the floor. “Some synthetic compound, is
that what you’re saying?” Not a naturally occurring protein. Something
that was created in a laboratory. What could this mean?
“One that selectively binds to neuro receptors That explains why we
didn’t find any traces of it in the bloodstream. It can only be
detected, in trace quantities, in the spinal and ocular fluid.”
“Meaning it goes right to the brain, basically.”
“Well, yes.”
“What kind of compound are we talking here?”
“It’s an exotic. I guess the closest thing to it found in nature is a
venom peptide, like snake venom. But the molecule’s clearly synthetic.”
“It’s a poison, then.”
“An entirely new molecule, one of the new toxins that scientists are now
able to synthesize. I’m guessing that what it does is induce cardiac
arrest. It goes right to the brain, crossing the blood-brain barrier,
but leaves no traces in the blood serum. Really quite something.”
An entirely new molecule.
“Let me ask you something. What do you think this toxin is intended to
be used for? Biological warfare?”
He laughed uneasily. “No, no, no, nothing of the sort. One does see
such synthetic peptides created, sort of modeled, on naturally occurring
poisons found in toads or snails or snakes or whatever, in basic biotech
research. You see, the fact that they selectively bind to certain
proteins makes them useful for tagging them. It’s the same property
that makes them toxic, but that’s not why people concoct them.”
“So this this substance might have been made by a biotechnology
company.”
“Or any company with a research arm in molecular biochemistry. Could be
any of the big agricultural firms, too. Monsanto, Archer Daniels
Midland, you name it. I don’t know where this was created, of course.”
“I’m going to ask you a favor,” she said. “I’m going to ask you to fax
whatever you got on this to this number, O.K.?” She gave him a fax
number, thanked him, hung up, and called the I.C.U. If she missed the
plane, so be it. Right now nothing was more important than this.
“Can you patch me in to whoever has liaison with the U.S. Patent
Office?” she said. When she’d been put through, she said, “Agent
Stanley, this is Agent Anna Navarro. I need you to check something for
me real quick and get back to me. In a couple of minutes you’re going
to get a fax from the Nova Scotia Forensic Laboratory. It’s a
description of a synthetic molecule. I need you to do a search for me
at the U.S. Patent Office. I want to know if any company has filed a
patent for this thing.”
Find out who makes it, and you’ll find the killer. One will lead to the
other.
She hoped it would be that simple.
The taxi driver was honking again, and she went to the window to tell
him to cool his jets.
Switzerland
Virtually catatonic, Ben drove to Zurich. Back into the lion’s den, he
thought ruefully to himself. Yes, he was persona non grata there, but
it was a city of nearly four hundred thousand; he’d make out so long as
he kept a low profile and avoided any tripwires. And where would those
be? It was a risk, a definite, calculated risk, but there was no reason
to believe that safe refuge lay elsewhere. Liesl had quoted Peter’s
warning words: the question isn’t where they are, it’s where they
aren’t.
Oh, God. Liesl! The odor of wood smoke that permeated his clothes was
a wrenching, steady reminder of her, of the once-comfortable cabin, of
the explosion he had witnessed but could scarcely comprehend.
The one thing he clung to, the one thing that allowed him to keep his