USAMRIID and CDC's databases, and from all the other databases worldwide had been more time consuming. But the hardest task proved to be erasing the item from the telephone log at Fort Detrick. She had been forced to call in favors from high-level phone company contacts who owed her.
Curious, she had attempted to comprehend the reason behind the blackmailer's demands, but there seemed to be no common ground among the items she deleted except that most dealt with a virus. There had been hundreds of other research reports flying back and forth over the electronic circuits among a dozen Level Four research institutions worldwide, and her blackmailer had shown no interest in those.
Whatever he had wanted, her part was successfully completed. She had not been discovered, had left no trace, and would soon be free of her financial problems for good. She would never get in so deep again, she promised herself. With fifty thousand dollars in cash, she could go to Vegas or Atlantic City with enough to recoup everything she had lost. With a carefree smile, she quickly decided she would begin with a thousand on the Capitals to win tonight.
She almost laughed aloud as she left the restaurant and turned the corner toward the bar where her favorite bookmaker had his private booth. She felt a fiery surge that told her she could not lose. Not now. Not anymore.
Even when she heard the screams behind her, the screech and rumble of rubber and metal, and turned to see the big black SUV careening along the sidewalk directly at her, she had a wide smile on her face. The smile was still there when the SUV struck her and swerved back onto the street, leaving her dead on the sidewalk.
Smith pushed away from the computer screen. There were five reports from the Prince Leopold Institute, but none had arrived yesterday or early today, and none reported anything but more failure to classify he unknown virus.
There had to be a report with new information in it ? at least one fact important enough for Sophia to be inspired in some new line of investigation she had chronicled as a full-page note last night. But he had searched Detrick's database, CDC's database, and tied into the army's supercomputer to search every other Level Four lab in the world, including the Prince Leopold itself.
There was nothing.
Frustrated, he stared at the uncooperative screen. Either Sophia had made a mistake, put the wrong code on her designation, and the report had never existed, or ?
Or it had been erased from every database in the world, including its source.
That was difficult to believe. Not impossible to do, but hard to believe someone would go to such trouble over a virus when it was in everyone's best interests to investigate. Smith shook his head, trying to dismiss the idea that there had been anything critical on that missing page, but he could not. The page had been cut out.
And by someone who had gotten on and off the base unseen. Or had they?
He reached again for the phone to find out who else had been in the lab last night, but after speaking to the whole staff and Sergeant Major Daugherty, he was no closer to an answer. All of Daugherty's people had gone home by 6:00 P.M. while the scientific staff had stayed until 2:00 A.M., even Kielburger. After that, Sophia had been here alone.
On the night desk, Grasso had seen nothing, not even Sophia's leaving, as Smith already knew. At the gate, the guards swore they had seen no one after 2:00 A.M., but they had obviously missed Sophia staggering out on foot, so their report meant little. Besides, he doubted anyone skilled enough to cut out the page without leaving a trace to the naked eye would have drawn attention to himself as he entered or left.
Smith was at a dead end.
Then, in his mind, he heard Sophia gasp. He closed his eyes and saw once again her beautiful face, contorted in excruciating pain. Falling into his arms, struggling to breathe, yet managing to blurt out, “…lab… someone…hit…”
Dr. Lutfallah was annoyed. “I don't know what more we can find out, Colonel Smith. The autopsy was clear. Definite. Shouldn't you take a break? I'm surprised you can function at all. You need some sleep…”
“I'll sleep when I know what happened to her,” Smith snapped. “And I'm not questioning what killed her, only how it killed her.”
The pathologist had reluctantly agreed to remeet Smith in the hospital's autopsy room. He was not happy to have been pulled away from a perfectly good Tanqueray martini.
“How?” Lutfallah's eyebrows shot up. This was too much. He made no effort to keep the scathing sarcasm from his voice. “I'd say that'd be the usual way any lethal virus kills, Colonel.”
Smith ignored him. He was bent close to the table, fighting to keep from breaking down again at the sight of his vibrant Sophia so pale and lifeless. “Every inch, Doctor. Examine her inch by inch. Look for anything we missed, anything unusual. Anything.”
Still bristling, Lutfallah began to search. The two medical men worked in silence for an hour. Lutfallah was starting to make annoyed sounds again when he gave a muffled exclamation through his surgical mask. “What's this?”
Smith jerked alert. “What? What do you have? Show me!”
But it was Lutfallah who did not answer this time. He was examining Sophia's left ankle. When he spoke, it was a question. “Was Dr. Russell diabetic?”
“No. What have you found?”
“Any other intravenous medications?”
“No.”
Lutfallah nodded to himself. He looked up. “Did she do drugs, Colonel?”
“You mean narcotics? Hell, no.”
“Then take a look.”
Smith joined the pathologist, who was standing on Sophia's left side. Together they bent close to the ankle. The mark was all but invisible ? a reddening and swelling so small no one had noticed, or perhaps it had not been there before, a late manifestation of the virus.
In the center of the reddening was a single, tiny needle mark for an injection, as expertly administered as the page had been cut from her notebook.
Smith stood up abruptly. Fury enveloped him. He gripped his hands in white-hard fists as his head pounded. He had guessed it. Now he knew it.
Sophia had been murdered.
Jon Smith slammed into his office and stalked to his desk. But he did not sit. He could not. He paced the room, back and forth, a wild animal in a corral. Despite the turmoil in his body, his mind was diamond sharp. Concentrating. For him right now, despite the needs of the world… there was one single goal ? to find Sophia's killer.
All right, then. Think. She must have learned something so dangerous she had to be killed, and all physical evidence of what she had learned or deduced eliminated. So what else did researchers in a worldwide scientific investigation do? They talked.
He grabbed the telephone. “Get me the base security commander.”
His fingers tapped a tattoo on the desk like a drummer beating eighteenth- and nineteenth-century regiments into battle.
“Dingman speaking. How can I help you, Colonel?”
“Do you keep a record of incoming and outgoing phone calls from USAMRIID?”
“Not specifically, but we can get one of a call made to or from the base. May I ask what in particular you're interested in?”
“Any and all made by Dr. Sophia Russell since last Saturday. Incoming, too.”
“You have authorization, sir?”
“Ask Kielburger.”
