Part 30 (2/2)

'I'm sure,' Nancy said. 'Use the guest bedroom, past the entrance and on the immediate right. It's quiet. I sweep the bugs out every day.'

'Thanks.'

The Jerusalem number belonged to a former Quantico student named Ehud Halevy, an international trainee now an officer in the Israeli Police-a brigadier general. The Israeli police used the whole range of military ranks. Rebecca had been an instructor at the Q during Ehud's cla.s.s a decade ago. She did the math and came up with Israel's current time. It was four a.m. but he had left his message just a half-hour before.

Her call went through immediately. The general was wide awake. 'Agent Rose, thank you for returning my call. I am distressed that we have not communicated earlier. But this is no time. Why has not anyone told me of BuDark?'

'I don't know much myself, Ehud. What's up?'

'We have come upon something terrible, something you must have certainly known about. Did we not discuss anthrax, American anthrax, ten years ago at FBI? Now it is here, in Israel, in the hands of Islamic terrorists. They were going to use it on Jerusalem, Agent Rose. Jerusalem! Jerusalem!'

'Please, General. Tell me what you can.'

'Fireworks rockets, brought in on private jet by a group working out out of Iraq and Syria, but they are receiving their supplies from America. Some of the captives are talking. It is an unbelievable story. We are a.n.a.lyzing what we have found. This will take time, because we are using such precautions. How could you allow this? Has America become a gigantic infection, a boil that is bursting?'

'Listen, Ehud, what do you know about the American connection?'

'Some have told us it is a tall man, blond and quiet. He minimizes his contact with others, but some say he is a lady's man. He has one blue eye and one green eye, that he sometimes disguises with contact lenses. He is very careful, and he is no longer in Israel, if ever he was. That is all we have been able to learn.'

Rebecca sat on the bed and bent over, feeling as if she were about to be sick. 'Can I reach you at this number, any time?'

'Yes. I may never sleep again, Agent Rose.'

'Thanks for trusting me, General. Let me do some work here.'

'I only hope your FBI and government will trust us, us, Agent Rose. We have of course informed the Prime Minister and Knesset, and they are talking with your State Department. We need answers very soon. We have in custody only one team. What if there are others?' Agent Rose. We have of course informed the Prime Minister and Knesset, and they are talking with your State Department. We need answers very soon. We have in custody only one team. What if there are others?'

Rebecca came out of the guest bedroom, her face ashen. Nancy was asleep in the chair. She could hear Hiram still talking in his office.

She slammed her fist on the heavy door.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT.

Silesia, Ohio.

William hitched a police ride from the tiny local airport. The driver, a young officer from the Ohio State Patrol, had been ferrying officials back and forth for two days now and she looked stretched thin. 'They're telling us nothing. Must be pretty big.'

Big enough to get him out of a garbage detail.

He quietly observed the neighborhoods of modest homes, trim and clean-except for block after block of overgrown yards. He noticed two or three burned-out houses and wondered if that was above average for a town this size. On the flight, he had hooked up to Web reports about Silesia, famous mostly for grain distribution, bakeries and local German food-as well as for its churches.

He had also read what little was available about Silesia's medical crisis. That made his brain itch. He couldn't fit these reports into a compelling pattern.

A large yellow tent had been set up in the Warren K. Schonmeyer Park. Three patrol cars, two local police cars, a big FBI van, and a CID semi-trailer had been pulled up on the gra.s.s next to the tent. Power cables and hoses ran to a brick restroom that had been marked off limits with police tape.

The officer parked. William got out and saw George Matty, the Mississippi agent from his cla.s.s, standing by an open flap near one corner of the tent. 'Thanks,' William told the officer. She popped the trunk and retrieved his floppy bag, then backed her patrol car out for more runs to the airport.

William walked across the patchy gra.s.s toward the tent. The afternoon air was crisp. He sidestepped a dog t.u.r.d. Matty grinned. 'Scoop your p.o.o.p, Agent Griffin,' he called out. 'That one's been lying in wait for some unwary b.a.s.t.a.r.d for two days.' He held out his hand and William shook it firmly. 'I'm case agent. Luck of the draw, I guess.'

William suspected it was much more than that. Matty had slimmed down in the months since Quantico. He had also lost some of his drawl. He wore a gray suit and black walking shoes and looked a proper FBI agent, blue through and through. Compared to Matty, William suspected he still looked rumpled.

'How's Cincinatti?' William asked.

'Gritty,' Matty said. 'Nice town on a long slide. Great work environment. I hate it. Silesia is better, except n.o.body remembers where they left their keys.' He smirked. 'That makes interviews a challenge.'

'You pulled me out of garbage detail,' William said. 'I owe you one.'

Matty escorted him across the tent. 'As soon we got a bulletin about cardboard tubes and traces of polybutadiene, the Patriarch connection came up and we flew out of Cincinatti like bats out of h.e.l.l. I told the ASAC one of my Academy mates had worked Patriarch fireworks with Rebecca Rose. He doesn't get along with Agent Rose, I guess, so he told me to bring you in.'

'Show me,' William said. Matty took him to a folding table. Beside a a small portable spectrum a.n.a.lyzer, a row of ten clear-top plastic boxes had been filled with fragments of mushy cardboard rea.s.sembled on pristine white paper. Pieces were missing but at a quick glance William could see that each cardboard tube, rea.s.sembled, would be two or three inches in diameter and about fifteen inches long.

'A sleepless little old lady filed a complaint,' Matty said. 'She said there were about a dozen bright flashes one morning, very early, right over the park and the town. She was out on her porch and she says she counted them. A couple of months later, an officer scouting for drug use in the park found fragments of fireworks tubes on the top of that very same comfort facility.' Matty pointed through a breeze-whipped gap in the tent at the brick restrooms. 'All together, we've recovered the remains of ten tubes, scattered from the comfort station to the parking lot of a church just beyond the park.'

William peered down at the boxes. 'HAZMAT team?'

'Of course,' Matty said. 'We put the officer and any locals who had touched the fragments under observation and ran tests. I'm sure you're dying to ask...Did we find anthrax?'

'Just dying,' William agreed.

'Well, we're not, and neither is anybody else. There was perchlorate residue, poly-B, aluminum powder, some gla.s.s beads, talc, fine white sand, and...this'll sound familiar...' Matty looked a challenge.

'Yeast,' William said.

'd.a.m.n. You're brighter than I remember. So, can you tell me why we're here? Why somebody would bother to shoot fireworks filled with yeast all over a small town?'

'What kind of yeast?'

'Regular kind. I'm no expert. But it's pretty fine.'

'Was the yeast killed by the heat?'

'Not according to our a.n.a.lysts. They're growing some right now back in Cincinnati. I'd say most of it blew right out of the tubes and spread out from the point of origin, not far from that curb over there. Are these like the tubes the Patriarch's family was packing?'

William nodded. 'They look right,' he said. 'Any ideas about motive?'

'The Patriarch's kids are rampaging across America, shooting off their d.a.m.ned yeast sh.e.l.ls, and thereby telling us they could just as easily use anthrax. Ransom notes to follow.'

William frowned. 'That would explain a lot, but we haven't heard word one from any of the others.'

'Then maybe these were duds. Maybe they didn't work the way they planned. SAC's on my b.u.t.t about getting a piece of Patriarch pie. Your confirmation could really set me up here.'

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