Greg Bear - Quantico

The entire city was drunk with God.

The settlers’ sons prayed in small groups, seeking a renewal of their strength. Yet not one of his young men asked for forgiveness. They had been raised with equal passion and focus, confirmed in a blood religion rooted in sacred land. They had long since grown inured to the sting of hate, like scorpions immune to their own poison.

The tall American hardly knew what name to use now. John Brown, Sam Bedford, Larry Winter-he could feel his past falling off behind him like the slats of a cartoon suspension bridge. Soon the final slat would drop and he would tumble into a deep chasm of forgetting and all would be peaceful. His grief lost, his reason reduced to a simple matter of day to day, hunger and sustenance…should he live to see out the week, which was also doubtful.

I’ll return to them their first memory of a blue sky seen by an innocent child. All of them, victims and killers, equal under God.

The only problem was, now that the intense and constant memory of his grief was fading, Winter was less and less convinced any of this was necessary. He had assumed he was acting out of conviction and not hate. Unlike Tommy, he had reason, he had an achievable goal. Now, however, he was like a bullet. Gunpowder spent, the slug moved forward on momentum alone, impeded by the thickening air, slowed by the scent of hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings trying to talk to God.

Trying earnestly, desperately, submissively, to hear His words.

Listening.

Federal Correction Institution Cumberland, Maryland Domestic Security Wing

As Rebecca had commented earlier, no prison was beautiful, but at least they hadn’t incarcerated William in a Virginia Department of Corrections hell-hole or in the Marine Corps brig on the base at Quantico.

But then, neither had they told him why he was being held or where they had taken Rebecca or what the hell was going on in the outside world that could explain why two special agents would be treated this way.

After eight hours, guards escorted William to the end of the yellow hall and across a small courtyard with one thin tree to a windowless room on the second floor of a windowless concrete building. The room had a table and two chairs and it was smaller than his cell. Its only other features were a round grill in the wall-some sort of speaker-and higher up two air vents with red ribbons. The ribbons rippled as the two men sat him in the northern chair. William had made sure to keep his sense of direction, if only to have this small bit of knowledge. The rest was a nightmare puzzle.

Even so, he was glad to be out of the cell, and he actually looked forward to this discussion.

‘This is Gene, and I’m Kurt with a K,’ said the taller of the two men. Both were trim and wore golf shirts with alligator patches-one pink, one pale green-and beige pants, and both were shorter than William, less than five-ten. The taller one, Kurt with a K, had thinning brown hair and a wisp of mustache. The other, Gene, had thick curly black hair and green eyes. They seemed calm enough. Kurt pulled out the other seat and sat. William could not help but think of the men and women he had interrogated for the NYPD-and of course Jeremiah Chambers.

Gene leaned against the wall under the speaker grill. The east wall. The west wall held the windowless door. There was no knob on the inside of the door. It could only be opened by someone on the outside.

Kurt began. ‘You graduated from the Academy in April, and right away you were assigned to work with Special Agent Rebecca Rose, correct?’

‘It just sort of happened.’

‘You didn’t choose to work with her?’

‘She asked the Bureau if I could be temporarily assigned to work with her.’

‘So she liked you.’

‘I suppose.’

‘She usually doesn’t work well with others. Is that your evaluation?’

‘We got along.’

‘She’s prickly. A loner.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Did you know anything about Amerithrax before you worked with her?’

‘What we studied in training and read in books.’

‘She’s been working on that case for some time, hasn’t she?’ Kurt asked. ‘Crazy theory about inkjet printers.’

‘She and another agent, Carl Macek,’ William said.

‘Macek is dead. It was a cold case. Why did Hiram Newsome let her continue to work on it?’

‘Something like Amerithrax is never really a cold case, is it?’

‘Did you know that ten years ago Rebecca Rose had an OPR file opened against her? Sexual harassment. A fellow agent claimed she made inappropriate advances, then threatened to get him demoted and reassigned if he refused her.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Agent Rose,’ William said.

‘It was a scandal, and it took Deputy Ay-Dick Hiram Newsome to cool it down. The charges were eventually dropped. The other agent resigned. He’s working as an industrial security consultant in Chicago. Yet here’s that same predatory Rebecca Rose, shacking up with fresh young Feebeye veal in a Mobile Agent Domicile in Washington state. You tell me how that looks.’

‘She did not harass me. She didn’t make a pass at me. We did not sleep together.’

Gene came around and put both hands on his shoulders, then slapped him hard on one ear. His ear rang and then heated up. Keep it down, Griff said in the other ear. You know the drill. There are probably lives at stake. Either that, or these two are dirty. Either way, watch them.

‘Did she ever mention working with an agent named Larry Winter?’

‘No.’

‘Did Hiram Newsome ever mention working with Larry or Lawrence Winter?’

‘No.’

‘What do you know about anthrax?’

‘Not much.’

‘Was Rebecca Rose an expert in the manufacture and production of biological weapons, in your opinion?’

William thought this over for a moment. ‘She knew as much as an agent should, who’s investigating a case,’ he replied.

‘Doesn’t it make you suspicious that Hiram Newsome, Rebecca Rose, and Carl Macek-supposedly, but we can’t talk to him-that these three were the only agents in the FBI who were pursuing this particular theory?’

‘No,’ William said. ‘It didn’t seem inappropriate.’

Gene moved quickly to grab his shoulders and straighten him.

‘Don’t look at him like that, dickhead,’ Kurt said. ‘You have no reason to be afraid if you tell me the truth.’

‘You asked for my opinion,’ William said, and despite Griff’s best advice, he was getting mad. ‘I gave you my opinion.’

‘That makes us think you might have been involved all along. You don’t want us to think that, do you? Why don’t you tell it all nice and simple, just for the Bureau’s sake.’

‘I don’t know of any conspiracy. I don’t believe Rebecca Rose or Hiram Newsome were involved in a conspiracy.’

‘But we do know. There was a conspiracy. It may have reached to the highest branches of government. Hiram Newsome wanted to cover it up. Rebecca Rose was his partner. Do you think they’re fucking each other, William? And maybe they’re fucking with you , too?’

William pressed his lips together.

‘Maybe that doesn’t bother you,’ Kurt said. ‘Maybe you like that picture. You played queer for vice in New York. Personally, I could never do that. It would make me sick. Maybe you are queer. Maybe you secretly want to fuck Hiram Newsome, a real double agent jim-jam, right?’ He stood and let Gene take the chair.

Gene resumed the questions. ‘America is in real danger if we don’t stop this shit, Agent Griffin. How did you know so much about transgenic yeast?’