Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

He watched the whole operation from start to finish, saw the bodies, the dead face of Foley. He’d have recognized him anywhere, like the man said. There was a sense of satisfaction in seeing that lifeless form; Foley had dreamed up the airplane job, Foley had planned it.

And now the blue cylinders, and some tape-to-film of the Wilderness Organism itself.

“There’s no question that the perpetrators are former radicals, fugitives from dozens of places over the past few years. They’ve been stagnating, waiting for a cause, a charge to action again, and this is providing it,” the FBI man explained.

Sam Cornish felt violently ill. All those faces, all those innocent people. The agent seemed to understand.

“You can’t run away from that plane crash, Mr. Cornish,” he said as gently as he could. “And they’re doing it again. You’ve tried to run and it’s no good, it’s inside you.”

“What’s the bottom line on all this?” Cornish asked brusquely. “Get to the point.”

“They’re your old people, Mr. Cornish,” the agent explained. “They know you and you know them. They’re recruiting. The word’s out. You probably heard it yourself.”

Yes he had, he thought. Not what for, just that they wanted old pros for a new and massive operation.

“We want your help in making sure there are no more crippled and hollow innocents,” the man continued. “We can’t seal the borders. We can try, but any good pro can get in and out. We’ll catch some now, of course, now that we know what we’re dealing with, and who. But not all. Not most. Their toll is already in the thousands, all innocent men, women, and children. Not even soldiers or cops or big-shot capitalist leaders. Just random mass-mutilation. We need you, Mr. Cornish. We need you to help us save those people.”

He was sick, disgusted, and not a little scared. “What would you have me do?”

“Put the word out you want to get active again. Let them recruit you. Get in with them, join them. Find out who’s behind this if you can, and what the object is. Find out where this terror will strike next. Get the information to us if you can. We want you to save lives, Mr. Cornish. Nothing less.”

He shook his head. “I—I can’t,” he protested. “Damn it! I just can’t! ”

The agent looked at him squarely, a grim expression on his face. “There are still over nine hundred cylinders unused. Nine hundred.”

He thought of the faces he’d seen, the small children and babies cheated, cheated of life not merely by senseless violence but by Jim Foley.

“They’ll never accept me,” he protested. “I ran out on them. Left them, deserted them. I wouldn’t even help in the plane thing. I just couldn’t do it.”

The agent smiled. “We’ll take care of some of that. Don’t worry so much. Remember only one thing—remember that, in a worst-case situation, it’ll be you there with a blue cylinder, or helping others with them. It’ll be the plane thing all over again.”

He nodded glumly. “I been thinking of that. I guess it’s what I’m scaredest of.” He stared at the FBI man with haunted eyes. “I could have stopped them, you know. I could have stopped them but I didn’t.”

The other man returned the nod. “That’s why we nicked you,” he said softly.

“In thirty-one years in law enforcement,” Jacob Edelman muttered, “I have never once had to solve a murder.”

Sandra O’Connell looked at him in wonder. She still hadn’t gotten over Spiegelman’s death, but she was as much angry as sad. She wanted whoever had done this caught. “Isn’t that what policemen do?” she asked.

He smiled a crooked smile under his enormous nose. “Policemen, yes. But the FBI is not a police force, not in the sense of your local police or something like Scotland Yard. Our powers, and the crimes we investigate, are strictly limited by law to those local powers could not handle. Murder isn’t usually one of them, except in a case like this.”

“Connected to espionage, you mean,” she guessed.

He shook his head. “No, that just complicates it. Crime on a government reservation, it’s called. Mostly to do with stuff on military posts and Indian reservations. But this one’s my baby all the same—and what a way to begin at my age. The ultimate locked room.”

She frowned and looked puzzled. This strange little man was impossible to understand. “Locked room?”

He nodded. “It’s clear you don’t read murder mysteries. I do. A lot of ’em. Takes my mind off the job.” He shifted, punched a dictation-style cassette in a small player built into the security desk. “Like this one. There’s no way anyone could have gotten into A-complex. No way to get out, either.” He punched play.

There was a ringing sound from the speaker which seemed to last a very long time, then a click and she heard her own voice say, “O’Connell.”

“Sandy? This is Mark,” Spiegelman’s voice responded. “I figured you’d still be out. Good girl. Now get over to the labs here as soon as you can.”

“What’s happening?”

“I—I can’t tell you right now. Something nasty. Something I stumbled on by accident. Just—well, get over here quick as you can, okay? I’ll be in my cubbyhole.”

“All right, Mark.”

Click. Click.

Edelman looked at her sheepishly. “You think with the Wilderness Organism we weren’t going to tap the phones? Don’t worry, it’s legal. National security warrant, government phones and all that.” He sat back in the chair, lost in thought. Suddenly he shot forward in his chair with a suddenness that startled her.

“Question one: why couldn’t he tell you over the phone?”

She thought about it. “I don’t know, really—unless it was something to do with the Wilderness Organism. He wouldn’t compromise it. I suppose he knew the phones would be tapped. I suppose I did, too, except it just didn’t occur to me.”

He nodded approvingly. “So we assume he knew the phones were tapped. The question then becomes, what was he afraid to have listened to? If he started to compromise anything we’d have broken the connection and knocked quickly on your door. He could only call a few people on that phone, anyway. So, either what he had to say was in the really classified range, or he didn’t want to say anything because he didn’t know who might be listening.”

She considered it. It seemed absurd. “But that would mean a—a spy or something, right there in A-complex! That’s ridiculous. There isn’t anyone there without the highest of security clearances, and they’ve worked for NIH and NDCC for years. All top professionals!”

Jake Edelman sighed. “Many years ago, in England, a fellow named Kim Philby became the head of the British version of the CIA. Good family, all the right schools and connections, top clearance. Except that he was a Russian—not merely an agent, but a Russian! And he was caught only by accident.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting…” she began, but couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Edelman keyed the digital memory on the recorder. Again Spiegelman’s voice came out of thin air.

“I—I can’t tell you right now. Something nasty. Something I stumbled on by accident.”

“Something nasty,” Edelman repeated. “Something he stumbled onto by accident. Except for some sleep up here, he’s been a prisoner down there since the Wilderness Organism came in. He seemed normal when he went back down, and he didn’t call you until after four in the afternoon, right?”

She nodded. “Four-twelve exactly. I remember it because I noticed the clock and thought how much I’d overslept.”

Edelman was thinking again. “He confided in you. You were more than his boss, right? A good friend?”