Part 32 (1/2)

'Your husband is waiting for you at home, Mrs. Miller.'

'Oh.'

'Can you tell me where you were born?'

'No,' she said, eyes piercing. 'Have you found my birth certificate?'

'Do you remember your children, Mrs. Miller?'

'I have children, yes.' She tracked between William and the doctor, like an actor hoping for a cue from the wings.

'And their names?'

'I've written them down. I know my children's names, of course. Just look.' She took a notebook from a metal table and began flipping through it. 'Here they are. Nicholas and Susan and Karl.'

'Thank you. And your religion? Where do you go to church, Mrs. Miller?'

She referred to the notebook again. 'First Ohio Evangelical Lutheran. My husband is a deacon. My youngest son sings in the choir.'

'Thank you, Mrs. Miller.'

'I'd like to go home soon, Doctor.'

'We're working on that. I'll check back in a couple of hours. Do you need more magazines or books, Mrs. Miller?'

'No, thank you,' she said, smiling. 'These are just fine.'

The doctor pulled back the curtain and walked to the double doors at the end of the gym. He held up Mrs. Miller's patient chart and biographical data for William to read. 'A lot of our patients began making notes to hide their symptoms from their families. Yesterday, I switched Mrs. Miller's notebook with that from a woman across the aisle. Mrs. Miller is a Southern Baptist, Agent Griffin. And those magazines and books are the ones she was given a week ago. She's re-read them at least three or four times. To her, they're still fresh. Some of our patients have portable DVD players. They watch their movies over and over again-if they can remember how to use the players.'

William looked down the aisle and listened to the quiet. For the most part, the patients seemed contented, even happy.

'What we're experiencing here is like nothing I've ever heard of,' the doctor said. 'It combines elements of Alzheimer's and CJD-Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. It strikes all ages, like variant CJD. But it's fast-it acts in weeks or months, not years. And it's epidemic. We may have three or four thousand cases in the next few weeks. They can't go home, they can't work, they just wander off if we don't watch them day and night. That requires twenty-four-hour care, one-on-one nursing. We're already past our breaking point. We're not a rich county, and federal funding for this level of care has become nonexistent. But let's not focus on the money. Where in h.e.l.l are we going to find that many nurses nurses?'

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO.

SIOC J. Edgar Hoover Building Was.h.i.+ngton, DC.

Charles Cahill, the outgoing director, was a short dapper man with a cap of prematurely white hair, a short wide nose, and perfect teeth. He firmly shook Hiram Newsome's hand and then Rebecca's and led them down the fifth-floor hallway to the Center. 'Congratulations, Hiram. I can't think of a better choice.'

Hiram shook his head. 'I haven't met with the President yet. And there's still the meat grinder-vetting and confirmation.'

'Oh, you'll be confirmed,' Cahill said. 'Talk radio b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are already calling you a liberal wienie special-ordered to tear down the agency. That'll endear you to Josephson.' He winked at Rebecca. Cahill was younger than Hiram Newsome but looked older. He was renowned for his shoes-he always wore two-tones, white and brown, highly polished.

The Strategic Information and Operations Center at Headquarters-SIOC, or just the Center-had been redone three years before. Half of its operations had been moved to the sixth floor, reducing its footprint by half on the fourth and fifth floors-and now, once again, the FBI had a command center that actually did look as if it belonged in a high-budget thriller-two stories high, walls of gla.s.s and polished steel, floating projections of data and video that circled the room like ghosts, and the ability to access a twenty-four-hour bank of a.n.a.lysts who could look up and process anything available on information networks around the world.

The door to SIOC opened at Cahill's approach. The room beyond was like a dark cave, deserted. 'I've got a few minutes before my next meeting and I thought we might spend it in here,' Cahill said as he walked around the room, rubbing his hand on the leather chairs. He smiled. 'This place can make you believe you know all there is to know.'

'Where do you want us? Rebecca's the majordomo on this.'

'So I hear.' Cahill seated himself in one of the audience chairs, leaving Hiram to a.s.sume the Throne-a large black chair mounted on a three-step riser, with the best view of every display. Rebecca stood in a spotlight where the second ring of the circus might have been-the room was almost that large. 'Makes you feel like a little girl about to give a recital, doesn't it?' Cahill asked.

'We could move elsewhere,' Hiram suggested.

'Wouldn't think of it. Sitting here helps you understand our problems better than anything. We so much wanted to be movie stars. Pretty soon, if we don't do something, and fast, we'll just be extras without any lines. Rebecca, don't get all choked up by the glitz.'

'I gave my files to the data logger, sir. They should be coming up shortly.'

'And here they are,' Cahill said. 'My last chance to control the vertical, control the horizontal. News, here you go-the Magic Wand is easy to learn.' He raised a small silver remote.

'No, sir,' Hiram said. 'It's Rebecca's show.'

'So it is,' Cahill said. 'Begin.'

'Amerithrax was a punk, gentlemen,' she said. 'Compared to what we're facing now, what he did to this country was trivial.'

On video and slides, sheep, cows, baboons, monkeys, and chimpanzees died awful deaths. She discussed the creation of antibiotics-resistant anthrax in the FSU-the Former Soviet Union-and showed downwind casualty charts from the accidental 1979 outflow of powder-fine anthrax at Sverdlovsk. Next, she flashed the files of U.S. weapons experts who had been the target of FBI suspicions in the years following Amerithrax. She concluded this segment by saying, 'Compared to the thousands of tons created in Russia and s.h.i.+pped off to Resurrection Island, the five letters mailed in 2001 were no worse than a mosquito bite on an elephant. But the elephant flinched and it got pretty d.a.m.ned expensive. So Amerithrax was an extremely effective punk, and we never caught him. Now, we think he-or someone with his knowledge and expertise-has surfaced again. We think he and his partners are trying to sell genetically modified anthrax to antagonists in the Middle East. Not necessarily to use against us-though that's a possibility, of course. But to use against each other. The Israelis have recently arrested and sequestered a group equipped with crude but effective bioweapons apparently s.h.i.+pped from the United States-fireworks sh.e.l.ls that match the description of those that could have been produced at the farm of Robert Chambers, the Patriarch.

'Our new Amerithrax may be using a particularly seductive lure. He claims that these anthrax sh.e.l.ls carry germs modified to attack only Jews. Apparently, he's managed to convince a number of Muslim extremists. They've tested his germs in Iraq at two locations, Baghdad and Kifri. Just off the BuDark wire service,' Rebecca added, looking up. 'One of our agents, Fouad Al-Husam, was rescued after being shot down in northern Iraq. He delivered autopsy samples to an army a.s.sessment unit in Turkey. They came from the bodies of Kurdish Jews exposed to anthrax spores. Weaponized and genetically modified Ames-type Anthrax has been confirmed as their cause of death. We believe the victims were detained and dosed by Sunnis operating in the area, militants connected to a string-puller and money guy named Ibrahim Al-Hitti.'

Cahill nodded. 'Up-to-the-minute. Continue, Agent Rose.'

'While no expert believes it is possible to manufacture a germ that uniquely targets an ethnic group, we can't discount the possibility that the anthrax has somehow been modified to be selective. We've charted a genome from the samples obtained in Kifri.'

The diagrammatic ghost of a spiraling and twisted circle of DNA, with two smaller satellite circles, floated to the right and center of Rebecca's position. 'In both samples, Baghdad 1 and Kifri 2, they found genes artificially inserted in one of two small circular plasmids-genes that code for bioluminescence. They are triggered by the activation of toxin genes on both plasmids. Our experts say this would have made the lesions on the Baghdad victims glow in the dark-red, then green, just before they died. Oddly, the same genes in the Kifri specimens are not activated. In the Kifri anthrax, a modified Ames strain, there are other, unfamiliar genes inserted in the main chromosome. They may be dummies meant to fool Al-Hitti's scientists, or they may in fact serve a real and destructive purpose. We just don't know-yet.'

'Have we got any of these samples, to do our own workup?' Cahill asked.

'No,' Rebecca said. 'The Baghdad samples are currently being a.n.a.lyzed in Europe. The Kifri samples are in Turkey. The Israeli samples...well, relations are icy at the moment, and not just because of Shahabad Kord.' She looked up.

'There are many reasons for Israel to be angry,' Cahill said. 'Their intelligence failures are the equal of our own. Go on, Agent Rose.'

'Our prime suspect may have been involved in the murder of a state trooper in Arizona. He left behind DNA evidence, blood, saliva, sweat, and skin cells. We have a description of a tall blond American with one blue eye and one green eye, in both the Patriarch case and the Israeli attempt. Apparently, our suspect fathered a child on one of the Patriarch's wives.'

Cahill humphed and buried his chin in one hand.

'We haven't finished our search against available DNA databases to establish his ident.i.ty.' She wasn't about to mention the mismatch between the skin cell DNA and the blood, much less the 9-11 connection, until it was all much more solid.

'How old do we think your suspect is?' Cahill asked.

'Best guess, somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five years old,' Rebecca said.

'Experienced sort of fellow,' Cahill mused. 'Able to move around the Middle East, sell a bill of goods, which means speaka da lingo, Arabic at the very least...the gift of bad gab, in Baghdad. That doesn't fit any FBI profile of Amerithrax I've ever read.' He sat up and leaned forward. 'h.e.l.l, if you find him, recruit him. News, what do you want me to do?'