Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

He thought a moment, then replied, "That could be. Who knows? It depends on the wind. Is it summertime? Is it lunchtime?"

"It's like tomorrow evening rush hour."

"All right… two hundred thousand. Three hundred thousand. A million. It doesn't matter because no one knows and no one has a coffee can full of anthrax. Of that, I can assure you. The inventory was quite specific on that."

"That's good. But not as specific on other things?"

"As I told you, if anything is missing, it is an antiviral vaccine. That is what the Gordons were working on. You'll see. Tomorrow you will all wake up alive. And the day after, and the day after that. But six or seven months from now, some pharmaceutical company, or some foreign government, will announce an Ebola vaccine, and the World Health Organization will purchase two hundred million doses to start with, and when you discover who is getting the richest from this vaccine, you will discover your murderer."

No one replied for a few seconds, then Max said, "You're hired, Doctor."

Everyone smiled and chuckled. In fact, we all wanted to believe, we did believe, and we were so relieved that we were walking on air, giddy over the good news, thrilled that we weren't going to wake up with terminal bluetongue or something, and in truth no one was focusing as closely on the case now as we had been earlier. Except me.

Anyway, Zollner continued showing us all sorts of rooms and talked about diagnoses and reagent production, monoclonal antibody research, genetic engineering, tick-borne viruses, vaccine production, and so forth. It was mind-boggling.

It takes an odd type to go into this sort of work, I thought, and the Gordons, whom I considered normal people, must have been considered by their peers as somewhat flamboyant by comparison — which was how Zollner described them. I mentioned this to Zollner and he replied, "Yes, my scientists here are rather introverted… like most scientists. Do you know the difference between an introverted biologist and an extroverted biologist?"

"No."

"An extroverted biologist looks at your shoes when he talks to you." Zollner laughed heartily at this one, and even I chuckled, though I don't like it when people upstage me. But it was his lab.

Anyway, we saw the various places where the Gordons' project had been worked on, and we also saw the Gordons' own lab.

Inside the Gordons' small lab, Dr. Zollner said, "As project directors, the Gordons mostly supervised, but they did some work here on their own."

Beth said, "No one else worked in this lab?"

"Well, there were assistants. But this laboratory was the private domain of the Doctors Gordon. You can be sure I spent an hour in here this morning looking for something that was not right, but they wouldn't leave anything incriminating around."

I nodded. In fact, there may have been incriminating evidence at any previous time, but if yesterday was to be the culmination of the Gordons' secret work and final theft, then they would have sanitized the place yesterday morning or the day before. But that supposed that I believed all of this stuff about an Ebola vaccine, and I wasn't sure I did.

Beth said to Dr. Zollner, "You are not supposed to enter the workplace of homicide victims and look around, remove things, or touch anything."

Zollner shrugged, as well as he should under these circumstances. He said, "So, how was I supposed to know that? Do you know my job?"

Beth said, "I just want you to know — "

"For next time? All right, the next time two of my top scientists are murdered, I'll be sure not to go into their laboratory."

Beth Penrose was bright enough to let it go and said nothing.

Clearly, I thought, Ms. By-the-Book was not handling the unique circumstances of this case very well. But I gave her credit for trying to do it right. If she'd been one of the crew on the Titanic , she'd have made everyone sign for the life jackets.

We all looked around the lab, but there were no notebooks, no beakers labeled "Eureka," no cryptic messages on the blackboard, no corpses in the supply closet, and in fact, nothing at all that the average lay person could understand. If anything interesting or incriminating had been here, it was gone, compliments of the Gordons, or Zollner, or even Nash and Foster if they'd ventured this far on their earlier visit this morning.

So, I stood there and tried to commune with the spirits that possibly still occupied this room — Judy, Tom… give me a clue, a sign .

I closed my eyes and waited. Fanelli says the dead speak to him. They identify their murderers, but they always speak Polish or Spanish or sometimes Greek, so he can't understand them. I think he's pulling my leg. He's crazier than I am.

Unfortunately, the Gordons' lab was a bust, and we continued on.

We spoke to a dozen scientists who worked with or for the Gordons. It was obvious that (a) everyone loved Tom and Judy; (b) Tom and Judy were brilliant; (c) Tom and Judy wouldn't hurt a fly unless it advanced the cause of science in the service of man and beast; (d) the Gordons, while loved and respected, were different; (e) the Gordons, while scrupulously honest in their personal dealings, would probably screw the government and steal a vaccine worth its weight in gold, as someone phrased it. It occurred to me that everyone was reading from the same script.

We continued our walk and climbed a staircase to the second floor. My bad leg was dragging, and my bad lung was wheezing so loudly I thought everyone could hear it. I said to Max, "I thought this wasn't going to be strenuous."

He looked at me and forced a smile. He said to me softly, "I get claustrophobic sometimes."

"Me too." In truth, it wasn't claustrophobia that was troubling him. Like most men of courage and action, myself included, Max didn't like a danger he couldn't pull his gun on.

Dr. Zollner was going on about the training programs that were conducted here, the visiting scientists, graduate students, and veterinarians who came from all over the world to learn and teach here. He also spoke of the facility's foreign cooperative programs in places like Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Canada, and England. "In fact," he said, "the Gordons went to England about a year ago. Pirbright Laboratory, south of London. That's our sister lab there."

I asked Dr. Zollner, "Do you get visitors from the Army Chemical Corps?"

Dr. Zollner looked at me and commented, "Whatever I say, you see something to question. I'm glad you're listening."

"I'm listening for the answer to my question."

"The answer is it's none of your business, Mr. Corey."

"It is, Doctor. If we suspect that the Gordons stole organisms that can be used in biological warfare, and that's what got them murdered, then we have to know if such organisms exist here. In other words, are there biological warfare specialists here in this building? Do they work here? Experiment here?"

Dr. Zollner glanced at Messrs. Foster and Nash, and then said, "I would be less than truthful if I said no one from the Army Chemical Corps comes here. They are extremely interested in vaccines and antidotes for biological hazards… The United States government does not study, promote, or produce agents of offensive biological warfare. But it would be national suicide not to study defensive measures. So, someday, when that bad fellow with the can of anthrax paddles his canoe around Manhattan Island, we can be ready to protect the population." Dr. Zollner added, "You have my assurances that the Gordons had no dealings with anyone from the military, did not work in that area, and in fact, had no access to anything so lethal — "

"Except Ebola."

"You do listen. My staff should pay as much attention. But why bother with an Ebola weapon? We have anthrax. Trying to improve on anthrax is like trying to improve on gunpowder. Anthrax is easy to propagate, easy to handle, it diffuses nicely into the air, kills slowly enough for the infected population to spread it around, and cripples as many victims as it kills, causing a collapse of the enemy's health care system. But, officially, we don't have anthrax bombs or artillery shells. The point is, if the Gordons were trying to develop a biological weapon to sell to a foreign power, they wouldn't bother with Ebola. They were too smart for that. So put that suspicion to rest."