Greg Bear - Quantico

‘In ordinary times, all this might have passed with little notice,’ Conklin continued. ‘Agencies could have gone through their usual pissing up the side of the barn door-pardon me, ladies-and settled things behind the scenes. But these are not ordinary times.’

‘Samuel, if you’re the messenger,’ Keller said, ‘let’s just have the message.’

‘The message is, we’ve grabbed an empty Zippo. No flint, no fluid, no flame. We have nothing,’ Conklin said. ‘Oh, there are some interesting results-we have eliminated a major international criminal. But that has nothing to do with anthrax. It certainly does not merit further investigation, beyond the general cleaning up and writing of reports.’

‘What were the findings?’ Rebecca asked.

‘There isn’t a trace of anthrax anywhere on the Patriarch’s farm. Not in the barn, not in the woods, and yes, Agent Rose, we have sent out cadaver dogs and are digging up any suspicious sites around the farm. Despite Jeremiah’s story, we have found no dead sheep. We do not anticipate finding any. To say that Jeremiah Chambers and Hagar Chambers are useless as witnesses is an understatement. They can hardly remember their own names. They are low-grade morons, whether from inbreeding or the Patriarch’s beatings and indoctrination, who can say? They don’t even know when they’re lying. Furthermore, though Hagar Chambers is pregnant, the Patriarch is not the infant’s father. We have yet to make a match, but we suspect the sire comes from completely outside the family-so at least it’s not an incest baby.’

‘And in Arizona?’ Keller asked.

‘At our request, they sequestered and scoured the three hundred printers in that trailer. They found no signs of anthrax on the printers or in the recycled ink cartridges shipped along with them.’

Rebecca coughed. She felt as if she had no more air in her lungs.

‘At any rate,’ Conklin said, ‘no anthrax anywhere, and hence no additional evidence of interest to any of us. Thank you, John. That’s my bit.’

‘Someone could have used the Patriarch’s family to get ready for an anthrax attack,’ William said. ‘They could have used the yeast-’

‘BT is commonly available. It’s almost exactly like anthrax, easy to grow, and perfectly legal. If I were going to spread anthrax, I’d use BT for any rehearsal. Yeast just doesn’t cut it, in terms of conspiracies,’ Conklin said, and looked sadly at his knuckles. ‘There’s nothing here.’

Rebecca slowly opened her folder. ‘They knew that we track BT,’ she said. ‘One of our master analysts, Frank Chao, decided to connect some of our apparently unconnected results. He compared the DNA from the blood sample in Arizona to the DNA of Hagar Chambers’ unborn child. They match. I have the proof of paternity right here. Whoever shot our Arizona patrolman was in Washington state, where he impregnated a seventeen-year-old girl right under her elderly husband’s nose, and he was very likely stopped in the act of returning to the Patriarch’s farm to deliver a load of inkjet printers.’

Conklin was momentarily conciliatory. ‘That’s interesting. We will certainly let Arizona know about the match.’ He threw a warm smile in Rebecca’s direction, below very cold eyes.

She nodded.

Conklin continued. ‘It may be they were getting hot from holding weekly orgies out there in the woods. It may be they were complete fanatics, planning to print and distribute millions of Nazi propaganda tracts. And maybe they were messing with yeast and spreading it around to develop their own special sourdough starter.’

‘That’s bacteria, actually,’ Sarah North said.

Conklin shifted his gaze above the table, as if talking to the back wall. ‘Nobody knows what they were really up to, but there’s still nothing compelling, Agent Rose. Not in this time of international emergency, when we need to focus all our resources.’

Grange wanted to be heard, but Keller held up his hand. ‘I’ve received my orders from the Attorney General, by way of the Director,’ Keller said. ‘Hiram Newsome has been reprimanded for using bureau resources without obtaining official approval. We’re reassigning Special Agent Rebecca Rose to Baltimore and instituting an investigation through OPR, to see if anything could have been done differently. Special Agent William Griffin will report to his original probationary assignment in…ah…New Jersey. I have been ordered to apologize to our fellow agencies, on behalf of the director of the FBI. There will be follow-up communications at a higher level.’

‘I’d like to say something,’ Rebecca said.

‘I’d prefer that you didn’t,’ Keller said. ‘Ms. North, while other charges are being prepared against the Patriarch’s family, I’ve been instructed to hand over our evidence to you, as a representative of the Consumer Products Safety Commission, with an eye to prosecution for the production of illegal fireworks.’

Sarah North stood with trembling hands. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

Outside the office, Rebecca followed Keller. William tagged behind at a discreet distance and caught the whispered conversation in mid-sentence.

‘Iran has overshadowed everything, Rebecca,’ Keller was saying. ‘Fortunately, because of that, this fox-up won’t matter much in the IG proceedings at Headquarters. We may all be able to stay on our feet in the middle of the bigger storm. But Hiram’s still out on a limb. Talk to him-and I mean seriously-before you think about wasting any more effort.’

‘I will,’ Rebecca said. ‘Why did we attract so much attention? I mean, if we’re such screw-ups…’

‘Best guess? As far as Grange is concerned, BuDark was created to follow a peculiar trail, and your investigation looked like an interesting side path. Oh, one other thing. Apparently they sent a helicopter into Iraq to investigate something of interest to BuDark. It came within a hundred klicks of the explosion at Shahabad Kord and made a safe tactical landing in the Zagros Mountains-but was subsequently shot down by Iranians or Iraqis before it could make it back to Turkey. We had two agents on board. One of them was an interpreter, I think you know him, William. His name was Fouad Al-Husam.’

‘What were they doing in Iraq?’ William asked.

Keller shrugged. ‘Headquarters is accusing DS of requisitioning our agents and then sending them on a deadly wild goose chase. There’s a lot of bad blood. I doubt there will be any enthusiasm for anthrax for years to come.’

Keller turned and put his hand on William’s shoulder. ‘We’ll take care of Griff. Keep your heads down and look to your careers, both of you,’ he advised.

Northern Iraq

Fouad came down out of the hills with a backpack and a sack of provisions, followed by Harris, who was clutching a pistol in one hand. The brown plain ahead was dotted with yellow dust devils. Blue-gray clouds to the east and north threw long shadows over the red-painted mountains. It was empty and beautiful. There was no place to hide out there. It would be better to stay in the rocks.

They had fled the Superhawk’s wreckage as soon as they could, as soon as they had made sure there were no other survivors, to avoid being found and killed by whoever had shot them down.

The small aluminum case filled with the Kifri tissue samples hung from Fouad’s hip clip. He touched the radio attached at chest level to his flak vest, then turned back to watch Harris. Their analog voice signals were being jammed. The digital signals were not getting through, either, which was pretty surprising, considering they were transmitting directly to at least ten possible satellites. Someone was using chaff, aerostats, pop-ups, or possibly even other satellites to actively jam basic communications over the entire area-probably the Russians but perhaps the Turks as well. Having a nuke go off in your backyard tended to do that to people.