Jim DeFelice - Threat Level Black

“Sir, did you want to send a message regarding Colonel Howe before you left for the White House?” asked an Army captain. The young man had been tapped as a liaison to keep Blitz up-to-date.

“Just that I hope he’s all right,” Blitz told him. He turned to the defense secretary. “Myron, are you coming?”

“Yes,” said the secretary of defense. “I don’t know how you manage it, Professor.”

“ ‘Manage it?’”

“To come out smelling like a rose when the rest of the world goes to shit.”

The Japanese doctor was speaking English, but Howe couldn’t understand a word.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Really. Except for my ego.”

The doctor patted the back of his own skull and repeated what he said earlier: This time Howe caught the words concussion and rest and what he thought was observation. The man’s English was actually quite good, but between his accent and the pounding pain in Howe’s head he couldn’t process it.

“I will rest,” he told the doctor, standing unsteadily. “Honest. I will.”

The physician frowned and shook his head. Howe took a few steps from the bed, pulling back the white curtain that separated the area from the rest of the small emergency-room suite. The doctor told him to wait. Howe waved his hand no but then saw that the physician was holding out a small envelope of pills; Howe took them, though he didn’t know what they were.

His eyes hurt with the hard white glare of the lights as he walked toward the double doors at the end of the curtained corridor. Howe had no idea where he was, either in the hospital or even Japan. He pushed through the door, wondering if he was supposed to sign some sort of form or other paperwork and maybe pay. He had a credit card in his wallet and wondered if that would be good enough-and even if it was, whether his credit line would cover whatever his treatment cost was.

There was a desk just ahead, and beyond it a set of glass doors that led outside. He decided his best bet was to keep his head down and simply walk out and keep going until he was clearly beyond the hospital’s care, then try to find a taxi or something back to the airport where he’d landed. But before he reached the doors a group of men in business suits poured into the passage.

“Colonel Howe, you’re all right?” asked a short, bald man.

Howe stopped; the accent was American.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Pete McCormack. I’m with the embassy. We’d like to talk to you about what happened.”

“I think I’m supposed to check in with someone,” said Howe.

“That would be us,” said one of the others. Tall and thin, the man’s cheeks were so hollow, he looked more like a corpse than a live person.

“We’re in touch with Dr. Blitz,” said the first man. “And General Jacobs.”

Jacobs was the Air Force commander who had made the arrangements for refueling and looking after the S-37/B. On paper he would appear to be Howe’s boss, though he was actually working for USSOCCOM, the special operations command.

“We want to debrief you,” added the man. “We want to know what happened.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Howe. “You guys got a car?”

In an inspired if somewhat misguided bid at camouflage, the task force’s chemical surveillance truck had been painted to look like an exterminator’s vehicle, complete with a giant mouse cowering from a man wearing a respirator. Fisher thought Kowalski had posed for both images, though the mask made it difficult to tell.

“You’re a barrel of fucking laughs,” said the DIA agent, who was wearing a hazmat suit and standing in Mrs. DeGarmo’s kitchen. Two specially trained investigators were downstairs going over the basement with chemical detection gear. Two others were working upstairs in Faud Daraghmeh’s apartment.

“Listen, if you’re not going to do anything, why don’t you go and start interviewing some of the neighbors,” suggested Kowalski.

“Waste of time,” said Fisher. He got up and poured himself another cup of coffee.

“How do you know it’s a waste of time?” asked Kowalski.

Fisher shrugged.

“You ought to be wearing a suit,” said Kowalski.

“I am wearing a suit,” said Fisher.

“You know what I mean.” He began fiddling with the respirator unit.

“This is one hundred percent natural fibers,” said Fisher, pulling at his sleeve. “Protects against anything. I could pour this cup of coffee on the pants and never even feel it.”

“Go right ahead,” said Kowalski.

He was just pulling on the mask when one of the two men who’d been upstairs came down through the front hallway.

“Nothin’,” said the expert.

“Shit,” said Kowalski.

“What’d you expect?” asked Fisher.

“What’d I expect? You’re the one who called the team in. Jesus, Fisher.”

Expecting Kowalski to process more than one piece of information at a time clearly violated the principle of chemical osmosis.

“Well, let me take a look,” Fisher told him, starting for the hallway.

“Don’t screw up the place. We need photos first,” said the DIA agent.

“What for, a spread in House and Garden?”

Fisher found the other investigator in the bathroom, where he was reinstalling the trap under the sink.

“I’ll be out of here in a minute,” the man told Fisher.

“Take your time,” the FBI agent told him. He went to the medicine cabinet. Mrs. DeGarmo’s tenant was a Gillette man and preferred Bayer over the generic brands. Faud Daraghmeh couldn’t seem to settle on an allergy medicine, however: He had a dozen, from generic store brands to Sudafed. No prescription medicines, though. And nothing more revealing.

“They find anything in the basement?” the investigator asked as Fisher closed the medicine cabinet.

“Not that I heard. How about you?”

“Used ammonia to clean.”

“That mean anything?”

“Not particularly. I did think of one thing.”

“What’s that?” asked Fisher.

“He didn’t brush his teeth.”

“Maybe he just took his toothbrush,” said Fisher. He went back to the medicine cabinet. “He shaved.”

“Yeah?”

“You found hairs around?”

“Oh, yeah.”

The bedroom had a small, single bed with a pair of sheets and a thin blanket. A small desk and chair were the only other pieces of furniture; the drawers were empty except for a paperback dictionary. The closet had a few shirts and pants in it, and two suits that looked as if they’d come from a thrift shop. There were no papers that Fisher could find in any of them.

“Damn it, Fisher. I told you we want to photograph the place,” said Kowalski. He was still wearing his suit but carried the respirator and face shield in his hand. “And we’re going to dust for fingerprints. Don’t touch anything.”

Fisher resisted the temptation to smear the doorknobs and walked back out through the apartment. The living room furniture-it was included in the $1,093 a month rent, according to Mrs. DeGarmo-consisted of a pre-World War II couch, a marble coffee table that had once moved around on miniature wheels but was now propped off the floor with matchbooks, and a two-year-old thirty-two-inch Sony television. The lab people had taken the cushions off the sofa: The foam in them was so old it was degenerating into formaldehyde.

A phone line ran along the front wall. It had been cut open, slit as if for a splice, though Fisher couldn’t see any or a box for an outlet. He bent down to the floor, looking at the line.

“What are you doing?” Kowalski asked.

“Matchbooks,” said the agent, pointing to them.

“Clues, huh?” Kowalski scowled. He went to the coffee table and lifted it. “Sucker’s heavy.”