C. Graham - The Solomon Effect

Rodriguez knew about the U-boat and about the pathogen it carried. He now knew about the German, Kline. That was it; the rest of the operation was outside the parameters of his briefing. But Boyd had decided that once the project was completed, Rodriguez would need to be eliminated, too. The man had outlived his usefulness.

Only three people knew the scope of the entire operation: Boyd, Walker, and Phillips. And even Phillips, as Boyd’s aide, was clueless about the origins of the venture. The man sincerely believed he and Boyd were working on another dirty but legitimately authorized black op. That was the nice thing about secret projects: they were so easy to keep hidden from everyone-the public, the press, Congress, even the president. Phillips was Boyd’s creature and always would be. But Walker…

This whole brilliant project had originally been Walker’s idea, although he’d lacked the expertise and the dirty contacts required to pull it off. That’s why he’d come to Boyd. It didn’t matter. Once the pathogen was released, Walker would be silenced, too.

Boyd didn’t believe in loose ends.

Frederick, Maryland

Turning off the Interstate at Frederick, Jax drove through idyllic farmland of gently rolling fields and quiet canals. Here, away from the city, the sky was a cold, crisp blue. The home of the man once known as Dr. Martin Kline turned out to be a neat white Federal two-story with green shutters and acres of pasture that sloped down to a stream edged with beech and white oak.

“Nice place,” said Tobie as Jax parked his 650i BMW on the broad gravel sweep before the door. They had not phoned ahead.

A thickset housekeeper with sleek black hair and a heavy accent pointed them toward an almond orchard, where a tall, bone-thin man in a white boiler suit with a veiled hood was tending a hive of bees.

“Dr. Marvin Clark?” said Jax as they walked up to him.

“Yes?”

Jax drew his real, genuine, official CIA ID from his pocket and held it up. “I know you’ve seen one of these before, Dr. Kline.”

The man behind the veiled hood stood very still, a frame crawling with bees gripped in both hands. “What do you want?”

“The answers to some questions. Last Saturday, someone salvaged a World War II-era U-boat that sank off the coast of Denmark in March 1945. Amongst its other cargo, U-114 carried samples of a pathogen you isolated at Dachau and called die Klinge von Solomon. The Sword of Solomon.”

The old man slid the frame back into the hive and carefully replaced the inner and outer covers. Only then did he take a step back and shove the hood off his white head. His face was long and bony, with deeply wrinkled flesh and dark brown eyes that blinked several times.

“Who?” he said, his voice husky, his German accent still there despite the long passage of years. “Who has it now?”

“We don’t know,” said Tobie, carefully watching his face. “That’s what we’re hoping you can help us with.”

His gaze shifted to her. “You think I had something to do with this?”

Jax said, “Who else knew the pathogen was on that U-boat?”

Kline shook his head. “How would I know? Surely there have been many with access to the records over the years.”

“All official records related to U-114 were lost in the war,” said Jax. “As far as we can tell, the only person with any knowledge of the submarine’s cargo is you.”

Kline stared off across the rolling pastureland to where a stand of oak turned a vibrant gold and rust beneath the pale blue autumn sky. As Tobie watched, a quiver moved across the sunken features of his face.

She said, “Has anyone approached you recently? Someone interested in your research at Dachau?”

He shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin, flat line. “No. No one.”

“No one?” said Jax.

“No one.” Reaching down, Kline picked up his hive tool and smoker. “I know what you think when you look at me. You see a monster. You judge me by what I did in Germany, in the war. You think I should have been hanged at Nuremburg, with the others.”

When neither answered him, he began to walk across the field, toward another stand of hives near the creek. “You tell me this: Why is the work I did for Hitler wrong, and what I did for your government acceptable?”

Keeping pace with him, Tobie said, “You deliberately exposed men to a disease you knew would probably kill them.”

He swung to face her. “I did, yes. And what of the American doctors who infected four hundred prisoners in Chicago with malaria in 1940? Or those who exposed African Americans in Virginia to a fungus they hoped to develop into a race-specific weapon? Do you think they should be hanged, as well? How about the presidents who authorized their experiments?”

He glanced at Jax. “And you. Your CIA released Type Two dengue fever in Cuba, and supplied Saddam Hussein with West Nile Virus, sarin gas, and anthrax to use against Iran. And now? Now the United States is spending billions to develop a new generation of genetically engineered bioweapons with no possible cure.” He swiped the air before him, as if brushing away a bee. “Don’t talk to me about war crimes.”

“Is that true?” Tobie whispered to Jax as Kline took off across the pasture again with the long-legged stride of a man half his age.

Jax said, “I’m afraid so.”

“You think what some madmen are doing now makes what you did sixty years ago all right?” said Tobie, stomping after him. “Maybe you think it would be a good thing if that pathogen were let loose on the world.”

At the edge of the second set of hives, he turned to face her again, his smoker billowing a cloud of fragrant wood smoke around them. As she watched, all the anger and aggression seemed to leach out of him, leaving him looking older than before. “No. In that, you are wrong. I am not proud of the work I did when I was younger-either for Hitler or for your government. We were vain, foolish men, ignorant of so many of the secrets of life and human diversity. I understand now what the Sword of Solomon would do to the world. You think I want that to be my legacy? My gift to my grandchildren?”

“Then tell us who salvaged that U-boat.”

He slipped the veil over his head again and turned toward the new hives. “What I am about to do is likely to agitate my little friends. If you are averse to being stung, I suggest you leave.” “Think he’s telling the truth?” said Tobie, leaning against the side of Jax’s convertible.

Jax stared off across the fields, to where they could see Kline gently prying the cover off a new hive. “Not entirely.”

“So what do we do?”

Jax pushed away from the car. “We go talk to his daughter.”

Dr. Hannah Clark received them on the wraparound porch of her gingerbread-draped Victorian, where she was carving a pumpkin with crescent-moon-shaped eyes and a sad mouth. She was a tall woman, with her father’s bony frame and haunted brown eyes. Born in the last years of the Second World War, she was in her sixties now, white haired but still slim and vigorous. According to Matt, who had set up their meeting, she had retired from Ford Detrick the previous year.

She listened without interruption, her hand tightening around her small paring knife, while Jax told her of the salvaging of U-114 and the plot by unidentified agents to release the pathogen known as the Sword of Solomon. When he finished, she said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because we’re hoping you can help us figure out who’s behind it.”

Laying aside the knife, she went to stand at the railing, her gaze on the canal that ran placidly beside the distant road. Despite the sunshine, the air was crisp and heavy with the scent of burning leaves. “It’s because of my father, isn’t it? You think he’s somehow involved.” When Jax didn’t answer, she said, “Well, you’re wrong.”