Viral

Charlie ate the breakfast room service had left in the hallway—fruit, toast, black coffee. Then he showered and dressed, thinking about where the day would take him. Out of Chicago, on a flight south. And then to Africa.

He logged on to his computer before leaving the hotel, skimmed through his messages, and was surprised to see that there had been a communication overnight from Richard Franklin. Another coded message. Something not part of his agenda.

Franklin wanted to see him again.

Charlie had already decided that he wasn’t returning to Washington. Time was too critical now. He needed to block out everything else, to stay with the questions. When is it going to happen? Only one circumstance could draw him back to Washington—a detail that would change the nature of what he was chasing.

He watched a plane taxiing on the shiny pavement, a Delta 747. Saw it begin to accelerate, roaring down the runway—zero to 170 in thirty seconds. The aerodynamics of airplane flight still fascinated Charlie. He watched as the movement of air across the two-hundred-foot wingspan created an upward force greater than the force of gravity keeping the plane on the ground. Saw the eight-hundred-thousand-pound machine lift off the runway and into the gray-blue sky, tucking in its landing gear.

Charlie turned back to the room. He had played a hunch the last time he’d met with Richard Franklin; that was all. The odds, he knew, were against him.

The message from Franklin consisted of six words. Number 6 was a meeting place in the city, not a safe house. An eight-story government-leased building downtown. A central location that housed offices for several of the various American intelligence branches, including the Special Activities Division of the CIA.

This implied a more urgent summons than the others.

But the rest was still up to him.

THE FIRST MORNING flight from O’Hare to Reagan National arrived in the capital at 11:27. Charlie bought an aisle seat, carrying his only bag. He was traveling under a different name now, leaving James Robert Dawson behind in Chicago. He had three more names still. Only three more. From the airport, he rode the Orange Line Metro train to McPherson Square. Found the Prius parked on Q Street in an unmetered space, key under the passenger seat. He drove it through the busy afternoon traffic across Pennsylvania Avenue, and down into the garage on Twenty-Third Street. Allowed his eyes and right-hand fingerprints to be scanned. He parked by a private elevator and waited. A minute later, at 1 P.M., the doors slid open. Charlie pressed the button for the seventh floor. Franklin was in 702, what from the outside looked to be a conference room, door ajar. Charles Mallory knocked and entered, pulled the door closed.

“Hello,” Franklin said, looking up from his laptop. He was seated at one end of the table, wearing reading glasses and an expensive-looking, slightly rumpled blue dress shirt. He seemed drawn, older-looking.

“Richard. Surprised to hear from you again.”

Franklin closed the computer, showing no expression. Through the picture windows Charlie saw other government buildings, the university law school, dormitories, a statue he recognized—of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. A small park where several students sat in the shade on benches. He saw the faint coating on the glass, knew that from the outside the window was mirrored.

Franklin had papers and file folders neatly stacked in two piles on the table. He nodded for Charlie to sit.

“How did you know?” he said.

“You found something?”

Charlie took a seat opposite Franklin, studying the CIA man’s alert hazel eyes.

“Not conclusive. The San Francisco medical examiner said it appeared to be acute myocardial infarction.”

“Heart attack.”

“Mmm hmm. No final report yet. We had him sent to Womack Medical Center at Fort Bragg.”

Charlie waited, not sure yet what Franklin was talking about.

“What happened? Can you give me details?”

“Not much.” He lifted a file folder and pushed it across the table. Charlie opened it, skimmed the page: an incident summary, compiled from other reports—from the San Francisco Police Department, the city medical examiner’s office, and the Womack Army Medical Center doctor who performed the autopsy in North Carolina.

Details: Russell Ott had collapsed on a footpath while walking through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park at about 3:30 P.M. on Monday, September 21. A jogger named Elizabeth Tuley found him several minutes later, attempted to give assistance, then called 911 on her cell phone.

Russell Ott was pronounced dead at San Francisco General Hospital at 4:27 P.M. on September 21.

Eight hours and thirty minutes after Charlie had watched him walk away from a window booth at the Wayside Grille and Donut Shoppe in Sunnyvale, probably thinking he had just beaten death.

“Not much to say. He was by himself in the park. Collapsed.” Franklin cleared his throat. He fixed Charlie with a look. “Were you involved in any way?”

“No.”

Other than the fact that I met him that morning.

Franklin eyed him over his glasses. Finally, he nodded, letting it go.

“They found traces of ouabain, then,” Charlie said.

“Yes.” Ouabain. The word he had typed out on the Underwood typewriter at the house in Virginia and then handed to Franklin. “Traces. The Army doctor didn’t know what it was. He probably wouldn’t have identified it if you hadn’t said anything.”

Charlie looked out the window, the implications beginning to sink in. Everything changes now, doesn’t it? This was confirmation of what had only been a theory before.

He took a deliberate breath. “In a way, I was right about Ott,” he said. “He was hired to set up the surveillance on Frederick Collins. But I don’t think he really knew what was going on. Or even who he was working for. It’s highly compartmentalized.”

That was its strength. And, maybe, its weakness.

“And—?”

“And?”

“What do you think happened to him?”

Charlie sighed, still pondering. “Not sure. I think maybe it’s what used to be called an NDBI.” Franklin watched him, showing nothing. “Something that was developed at Fort Detrick in the 1960s. Refined in the 1970s.”

“The bio-warfare program?”

“Yeah. Part of what came out in the Church Committee hearings, back in ’75.”

Franklin brushed an imaginary crumb from his hand and nodded, urging him to go on. Both men knew the history. In 1975, then-CIA director William Colby had made headlines during the Church Committee congressional hearings with his revelations about clandestine weapons systems; it was the first time the public had learned of the CIA’s attempts to assassinate several world leaders, including Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba, Ngo Dinh Diem, and Rafael Trujillo.

“Okay,” he said. “And so what does that have to do with Russell Ott? I don’t know this one. NDB—?”

“Non-discernible bio-inoculator, they called it. It’s just jargon. A biological dart, basically. In its earlier incarnation, it was dipped in toxin, fired using a pressurized air cartridge or an electric gun. The dart was so small, about the width of a hair, and so fine that it was able to penetrate clothing and skin and then dissolve, leaving no trace. It was developed at Fort Detrick with darts dipped in paralytic shellfish toxins. Tested on sheep. Killed them instantly. More recently, I suspect it’s being done with ouabain.”

Franklin gazed at Mallory. “I looked up ouabain,” he said. “It’s a substance found in the ripe seeds of certain African plants.”

“That’s right.”

“Used on spears in tribal warfare in some places.”

“Yes. Including Sundiata. In the right concentration, the effects can mimic those of a heart attack.”

“Mmm,” Franklin said. “So I don’t get it.”