Peter May - Snakehead

Hrycyk glared at him, but the implications of what Li was saying were not lost on him. Hrycyk’s cellphone rang again. He threw his cigarette butt down into the street and answered it. He listened in silence, flicked Li a glance, then said, simply, ‘Sure,’ and hung up. He thought for a moment, then looked at Li again. ‘We got fifty minutes to get across town to Hobby and catch the next flight to Washington.’

The rain was driving horizontally across the tarmac at Dulles. The temperature had tumbled to just a few degrees above freezing. Their airport security vehicle ploughed through the darkness on the apron, the lights of the main terminal receding behind them, the rain caught in their headlights like stars at warp speed. Li peered through the windshield trying to see where they were going. Hrycyk had been less than illuminating, and Li suspected that was because he had no idea where they were going, or why.

There were lights up ahead now, and the roar of an engine. As they drew close, an army-camouflaged helicopter took shape in the dark, buffeted by the wind, lights blazing, rotors turning. It was waiting for them. Their driver drew up alongside it, and Hrycyk cursed when he realised he was going to have to get out in the wet. He pulled up his collar, hunching himself against the downdraught and the rain, and slipped out into the night. Li ran across the tarmac in his wake. Uniformed arms extended from an open doorway and drew them up into the belly of the chopper. In the faint yellow electric light of the interior, he saw colourless faces looking up at him. Margaret, Fuller, Major Cardiff in his Air Force blue. Someone handed him a helmet with a built-in headset, and strong hands pushed him down into a canvas seat. The door was pulled shut as he slipped on his helmet and heard Hrycyk’s voice. ‘What’s all this about, Sam?’ They lurched to one side as the helicopter lifted off into the night.

Fuller shouted above the roar of the engine, ‘They’re flying us up to a little town in Maryland called Frederick. The army base at Fort Detrick.’

‘What the hell’s there?’ Hrycyk demanded to know.

‘USAMRIID,’ Fuller said, and when Hrycyk looked blank, spelled it out for him. ‘The United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.’

‘Jesus!’ It was the first time Li had seen Hrycyk overawed by anything. ‘That’s the biowarfare defence place.’ He thought about it for a moment, glanced at Li, then turned back to Fuller. ‘Christ, and they’re going to let a foreign national in there? A Chinese ?’ Fuller just shrugged. Hrycyk was completely nonplussed. ‘For God’s sake, Sam, what is going on here?’

‘You’ll find out when we get there, Mike,’ Fuller shouted.

Li looked to Margaret for some kind of elucidation. She gave the merest shrug of her shoulders. And he saw that Steve Cardiff, sitting next to her, was pale as a ghost.

By the time their chopper touched down on the landing pad at Fort Detrick, the rain had stopped. Stars twinkling in a very black sky, were periodically obliterated by occasional scurrying clouds. An almost full moon cast its silver light across the landscape, and in the distance you could see the outline of the Catoctin mountains of western Maryland traced against the sky. The group was driven across the base in two army jeeps, and Li saw the flashing orange lights at the security gates, before they turned into the car park outside the USAMRIID building. It was a collection of ugly, windowless concrete blocks, designed to contain the most dangerous organisms on earth. It wouldn’t win any prizes for its architecture.

In the front reception area they had to fill out forms and were in turn handed guest security passes by a silver-headed security man. A young uniformed woman with hair neatly plaited up the back led them along a wood-panelled corridor. Portraits of past USAMRIID commanders followed their progress to the Joel M. Dalrymple conference room, where a large oblong table had been set up with more than twenty seats around it. There were already a dozen other people standing about in groups talking, several of them in uniform. Li took the opportunity of whispering to Margaret, ‘What are we doing here?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said grimly. ‘But I have a real bad feeling about it.’

Steve brought over an older man in a dark suit to meet Margaret. Li drifted away.

‘Margaret, this is Dr. Jack Ward,’ Steve said. ‘Dr. Ward is the Armed Forces medical examiner.’

Dr. Ward shook Margaret’s hand solemnly. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Campbell. I’ve heard a very great deal about you.’

Margaret glanced at Steve then back to Dr. Ward. ‘Have you?’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘You have…’ he chose his words carefully, ‘…something of a reputation.’

‘Really?’ said Margaret. ‘Reputations can be good or bad. I hope it’s not the latter.’

‘I’m far too much of a gentleman to say,’ the doctor said, and allowed himself the most distant of smiles.

Margaret looked to Steve to see if he had shared in this obscure joke. But he was standing with a glazed look in his eyes, staring into the middle distance. He became aware of her looking at him and quickly refocused. ‘What?’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ He seemed flustered. ‘Sorry. Stuff on my mind.’

A commanding voice cut above the hubbub in the conference room. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, would everyone like to take a seat around the table?’ It took a few minutes for the assembled to settle and for the possessor of the voice, in full army uniform, to introduce himself as Colonel Robert Zeiss, Commander of the USAMRIID facility which was hosting this hastily arranged meeting. He, apparently, was going to chair it, and he began by introducing everyone at the table. There were a couple of doctors from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, several senior USAMRIID officers; two representatives of the FBI in addition to Fuller; three representatives of an organisation that Zeiss referred to as FEMA, but without explanation; a middle-aged man in a grey suit from the CIA; and a secretary seconded from the Commander’s office to take notes. Curious eyes fell on Li and Margaret as they were introduced. Hrycyk sat at the far end of the table with his arms folded, watching and listening, and not saying much.

‘We’re also expecting someone from the CDC very shortly,’ Zeiss said. He looked at Li. ‘For the uninitiated, that’s the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.’

Steve’s attempted smile at Margaret across the table lacked conviction, and the sense of impending doom that had been descending on her over the last couple of hours started to become acute. Why were they here? And why the need for all these high-ranking military medical people?

She had her back to the door and did not turn until Zeiss said, ‘Oh, and this is Felipe Mendez, emeritus professor of genetics, formerly of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.’

Margaret felt a sudden restriction across her chest. She turned to see Professor Mendez shuffle into the conference room with what he probably imagined was haste. He was just as dishevelled as she remembered him, his overcoat hanging open, buttons missing from his jacket, trousers two sizes too big, belted at the waist and gathered in folds around his loafers. His hair was whiter than when she had last seen him, thinner, but just as unruly. The only thing about him that reflected any measure of care and attention were his neatly trimmed white goatee beard and moustache.

His watery brown eyes smiled at the faces around the table. ‘Apologies,’ he muttered. ‘So sorry to be late.’ He found an empty seat opposite Margaret, put his battered old leather briefcase on the table and sat down. For a moment she thought he hadn’t seen her, until he looked up and smiled beatifically. ‘Hello, Margaret my dear,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time.’