“Otwahl,” I comment. “We’re developing weapons like this?”
“We aren’t. That’s not what DARPA’s paying all these millions for, dammit. But someone at Otwahl is, and we don’t think it’s just one. A cell of
superbrains engaging in experiments not authorized or approved, and in fact as dangerous as it gets.”
“I assume you know who.”
“Damn kids,” he says, gazing out at the bright afternoon. “Seventeen, eighteen, with IQs off the charts and full of passion but nothing home up
here.” He taps his forehead. “I don’t need to tell you about boys especially, their frontal lobes not done, half-baked like a cookie until they’re in their
early to mid-twenties, and yet there they are, fucking around in nanotech labs or with superconductors and robotics and synthetic biology, you name
it. Difficult enough we give them guns and throw them into stealth bombers, but we have rules,” he says in a hard tone. “We have structures,
regimens, leadership, the strictest of supervision, but what the hell do you think goes on at a place like Otwahl where the objective isn’t national
security and discipline but money and ambition? Those damn whiz kids like Johnny Donahue and his gang over there don’t know shit about
Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq, for Christ’s sake. They’ve never set foot on a military base.”
“I don’t see Jack’s connection to it beyond his teaching martial arts to a few of them.” The sky is a spotless deep turquoise, and below it, the
blue ocean heaves.
“He got tangled up with them, and my guess is unwittingly became a science project. You know all too well what goes on with research projects
and clinical trials, only the type we’re familiar with are supervised and strictly monitored by human-study review boards. So where do you get
volunteers if you’re an eighteen-year-old Harvard or MIT technical engineer at Otwahl? We can only guess that Jack made his contacts, likely
through the gym, through tae kwon do. All of us are painfully aware of his lifelong problems with substance abuse, mainly steroids, so now someone
is going to deliver the elixir of life, the fountain of youth, through pain-relieving patches. But he sure as hell didn’t get what he bargained for. Neither
did Wally Jamison, Mark Bishop, or Eli Goldman.”
“Wally Jamison didn’t work at Otwahl.”
“For a while he dated someone who does. Dawn Kincaid, another one of the neuroterrorists over there.”
“Johnny Donahue’s best friend,” I say. “And where is she right now?” I ask. “It seems everyone you’ve mentioned is dead. Except her.” I feel an
alarm going off inside me.
“Missing in action,” Briggs says. “Didn’t show up at Otwahl yesterday or today, supposedly is on vacation.”
“I’m sure.”
“Exactly. We’ll find her and get the rest of the story, because no question she’s going to be the one to tell it, since her expertise is
nanoengineering, nanoscale chemical synthesis. Based on what we’ve learned, she’s likely the one developing these nasty little nanobots that
found their way to Jack Fielding and turned him into a Mr. Hyde, to put it mildly.”
“Mr. Hyde,” I repeat. “The same thing Erica Donahue says happened to her son,” I point out. “Only I doubt Johnny killed anyone.”
“He didn’t kill that boy.”
“You’re convinced Jack did.”
“Out of control, sloppy,” Briggs says.
“And then he killed Eli.” My comment hangs in the air, and I wonder if it sounds as hollow to Briggs as it does to me. I wonder if he can hear
how strongly I don’t believe it.
“You realize this is because of the damn swine flu.” He continues staring out at the day blazing beyond dusty old glass. “If the stepdaughter’s
biological father hadn’t gotten sick, Liam Saltz wouldn’t have had the pleasure of giving her away at her wedding, and he wouldn’t have come to the
US, to Cambridge, to Norton’s Woods, at the last minute. And Jack wouldn’t have had to stab Eli in the back with a damn injection knife.”
“To stop him from telling Dr. Saltz what you’re telling me.”
“We can’t ask Jack, unfortunately.”
“Maybe I could understand it if Eli was going to tell Dr. Saltz or someone that Jack was selling semen he was stealing from dead bodies.
Maybe that would be a motive.”
“We don’t know what Eli knew. But he likely was aware of Jack and his drugs, obviously was well enough acquainted with him to have one of
his guns. That must have been a bad feeling when Jack found out from the Cambridge police that the dead man had a Glock on him with an
eradicated serial number.”
“Sounds like Marino’s filled you in. Told you all this as if it’s an irrefutable case history. And it’s not. It’s a theory. We don’t have tangible
evidence that Jack killed anyone.”
“He knew he was in trouble. That much I think is safe to say,” Briggs replies.
“As much as anything is safe to say. I agree he wouldn’t have removed the Glock from the lab, had he not feared he had a problem. My
question is whether he was covering for himself or for someone else.”
“He knew damn well we’d restore the serial number, that we’d trace the pistol to him.”
“‘We,’” I reply. “I’ve been hearing that word a lot of late.”
“I know how you feel about it.” Briggs plants his hands on the windowsill and leans forward, as if his lower back aches. “You think I’m trying to
take something away from you. You believe it.” He smiles grimly. “Captain Avallone came here last fall.”
“Someone that junior? So it wouldn’t raise suspicions?”
“Exactly, to appear casual, an informal drop-in while she was on her way somewhere else. When the fact is we were hearing things we didn’t
like about how your second in command was running the CFC. And I don’t need to tell you we have a vested interest. The AFME does, DoD does,
a lot of people do. It isn’t yours to ruin.”
“It isn’t mine at all,” I answer. “Obviously, I did a terrible job before I even started—”
“You haven’t done a terrible job,” he cuts me off. “I’m just as much to blame. You picked Jack or, better put, gave in to his wish to come back,
and I didn’t get in your way, and I sure as hell should have. I didn’t want to step on you, and I should have stepped all over you about that decision
you made. I figured in four months you’d be home, and I honestly didn’t imagine the havoc that man could cause in such a short period of time, but
he was mixed up with the Otwahl Laboratory Rat Pack, doing drugs and losing it.”
“Is that why you delayed my leaving Dover? So you could find time to replace the leadership at the CFC? Find time to replace me?” I say it as
bravely as I can.
“The opposite. To keep you out of it. I didn’t want you tarred by it. I delayed you as many times as I could without an out-and-out abduction, and
then the father of the bride in London gets the damn swine flu, and a dead body starts bleeding. And your niece shows up in her chopper at Dover,
and I tried to get you to stay by offering to transport the body to Dover, but you wouldn’t, and that was the end of it. And here we are again.”
“Yes, again.”
“We’ve been in our messes before. And we probably will again.”
“You didn’t send Lucy to pick me up.”
“I did not. And I don’t think she’s likely to take orders from me. Thank God she never thought about enlisting. Would end up in Leavenworth.”
“You didn’t ask her to bug my office.”
“A suggestion made in passing so we could know exactly what Jack was doing.”
“Your making a suggestion in passing is like a cannibal offhandedly inviting someone to dinner,” I reply.
“Quite an analogy.”
“People pay attention to your suggestions, and you know it.”
“Lucy pays attention if it suits her.”
“What about Captain Avallone? Did she conspire with Jack, conspire against me?”
“Never. I told you why she showed up last November for her tour. She’s quite loyal to you.”
“So loyal that she told Jack about Cape Town.” I surprise myself by saying it out loud.
“That never happened. Sophia knows nothing about Cape Town.”
“Then how did Julia Gabriel know?”
“When she was yelling at you? I see,” he says, as if I’ve just answered a question I didn’t know he’d asked. “I stopped outside your door to have
a word with you and could hear you talking on the phone, could hear you were somewhat intensely involved. She talked to me, too. Talked to a
number of people after getting word on the grapevine that we routinely extract semen at Dover, that every medical examiner office does this
routinely, which is utter bullshit. We would never do such a thing unless it was absolutely proper and approved. She got this impression because
Jack was covertly doing that at the CFC and had done so in the case of the man who got killed in a Boston taxicab on his wedding day. Someone
connected to Mrs. Gabriel’s son. And I think you can understand how she got the idea that her son Peter should get the same special treatment.”
“She knows nothing about me personally. She didn’t mean it personally. You’re sure.”
“Why would you believe these negative things about you personally?” he says.
“I think you know why, John.”
“No damn way she was referring to anything specific. She’s an angry, militant woman and was just venting when she called you the same
names she called me, called several other people at Dover. Bigots. Racists. Nazis. Fascists. A lot of staff got christened a lot of ugly names that
morning.”
Briggs steps back away from the window and collects his laptop off the sill, his way of saying he has to go. He can’t have a conversation that
lasts more than twenty minutes, and in fact the one we just had is lengthy for him and has tried his patience and gotten too close to too many things.
“One favor you could do for me that would be greatly appreciated,” he says. “Please stop telling people I thought MORT was the best thing
since sliced bread.”
Benton, I think. I guess the two of them have gotten quite cozy.
“Not so, but I understand your remembering it that way, and I’m sorry we butted heads about it,” Briggs goes on. “However, given a choice of a
robot dragging a dead body off the battlefield and a living person risking his life and limb to do it? That’s what I call a Sophie’s choice. No good
choice, only two bad ones. You weren’t right, and I wasn’t, either.”
“Then we’ll leave it at that,” I answer. “Both of us made bad decisions.”
“It’s not like we hadn’t made them before,” he mutters.
He walks with me out of the sea captain’s house, passing through rooms I’ve already been in. Every space seems empty and depressing, as if
there never was anybody home. It doesn’t feel that Fielding ever lived here, just parked himself as he worked demonically on his renovations and
labored secretly in his cellar, and I just don’t know what drove him. Maybe it was money. He’d always wanted money and was never going to get it in
our trade, and that bothered him about me, too. I do better than most. I plan well, and Benton has his inheritance, and then there is Lucy, who is
obscenely rich from computer technologies she’s been selling since she was no older than the neuroterrorists Briggs just talked about. Thank God
Lucy’s inventions are legal, as best I know.
She’s inside the CFC truck with Marino and Benton, and the yellow suits and hard hats are off, and everyone looks tired. Anne has driven off in
the van again, making another delivery to the labs while more evidence waits for her here, white boxes filled with white paper evidence bags.
“There’s a package for you in your car,” Briggs says to me in front of the others. “The latest, greatest, level-four-A armor, specifically designed
for females in theater, which would be fine if you ladies would bother with the plates.”
“If the vest isn’t comfortable,” I start to say.
“I think it is, but I’m built a little different from you. Problem’s going to be if it won’t completely close on the sides. We’ve seen that too many
times, and the projectile finds that one damn opening.”
“I’ll try it out for you,” Lucy offers.
“Good,” Marino says to her. “You put it on, and I’ll start shooting, see if it works.”
“Or trauma from blunt force, which is what most people seem to forget about,” I tell Briggs. “The round doesn’t penetrate the body armor, but if
the blunt force from the impact goes as deep as forty-four millimeters, it’s not survivable.”
“I haven’t been to the range in a while,” Lucy chats with Marino. “Maybe we can borrow Watertown’s. You been to their new one?”
“I bowl with their range master.”
“Oh, yeah, your team of cretins. What’s it called? Gutter Balls.”
“Spare None. You should bowl with us sometime,” Marino says to Briggs.
“Would it be acceptable to you, Colonel, if AFDIL sends in backup scientists to help out at the CFC, for God’s sake?” Briggs is saying to me.
“Since it seems we have an avalanche of evidence that just keeps coming.”
“Any help would be greatly appreciated,” I reply. “I’ll work on the vest right away.”
“Get some sleep first.” Briggs says it like an order. “You look like hell.”
22
Massachusetts Veterinary Referral Hospital has twenty-four-hour emergency care, and although Sock doesn’t seem to be in any distress as he
snores curled up like a teacup dog, a Chihuahua or poodle that can fit in a purse, I need to find out what I can about him. It is almost dark, and Sock
is in my lap, both of us in the backseat of the borrowed SUV, driving north on I-95.
Having identified the man who was murdered while walking Sock, I intend to bestow the same kindness toward the rescued race dog,
because no one seems to know where he came from. Liam Saltz doesn’t know and wasn’t aware his stepson Eli had a greyhound, or any pet. The
superintendent of the apartment building near Harvard Square told Marino that pets aren’t allowed. By all accounts, when Eli rented his unit there
last spring, he didn’t have a dog.
“This doesn’t really need to be done tonight,” Benton says as we drive and I pet the greyhound’s silky head and feel great pity for him. I’m
careful about his ragged ears because he doesn’t like them touched, and he has old scars on his pointed snout. He is quiet, like something mute. If
only you could talk, I think.
“Dr. Kessel doesn’t mind. We should just do it while we’re out,” I reply.
“I wasn’t thinking about whether some vet minded or not.”
“I know you weren’t.” As I stroke Sock and feel that I might want to keep him. “I’m trying to remember the name of the woman who is Jet
Ranger’s nanny.”
“Let’s not go there.”
“Lucy’s never home, either, and it works out just fine. I think it’s Annette, or maybe Lanette. I’ll ask Lucy if Annette or Lanette could stop by
during the day, maybe first thing each morning. Pick up Sock and take him to Lucy’s place so he and Jet Ranger can keep each other company.
