“Okay, Chief,” Dez said and then punched JT on the arm. “Come on, Hoss.”
“Hey,” said the chief. “Nobody here talks to the press. Nobody calls home and tells their family and nobody fucking puts this on Twitter. This is a family matter now, so let’s keep it indoors until we know where we all stand.”
They all looked at one another and slowly nodded. Even the younger cops.
Dez exhaled a ball of dead air that she’d been holding in her chest, and then nodded. She and JT grabbed hold of Diviny and half dragged, half carried him down the hill. The moment had become orderly, but the day was still impossible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lorne McMasters, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, looked at the name on his phone’s screen display. He smiled as he picked up the receiver.
“Colleen,” he said brightly, “how are you? How’s Ted and the—”
“Lorne,” interrupted Colleen Sykes, “this is a Livewire Protocol.”
McMasters took a half beat on that, then punched the scramble on his phone. “Confirm. What’s on the window sill?”
“Bluebird,” she said, giving the first part of the day code.
“And in the tree?”
“Yellow kite.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“Foxhounds.”
“Confirmed,” said Lorne. “What’s happening, Colleen?”
Colleen Sykes was deputy director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. Only once before in her career had she made a call of this kind. The first situation had been resolved quickly and with minimum fuss, and no trace of it had reached the news radar.
“I just received a report that the ‘devil is out of the bag,’” she said.
McMasters opened a screen on his intranet browser and typed that in. The name Lucifer 113 popped up, followed by bullet points about the science, the dangers, the key players, and the in-place protocols. In the upper right corner of the screen was a coded threat status icon. Not the same color codes that Homeland used. Blue was the lowest level of threat, black was the highest. This file was coded black.
“Christ,” he snarled. “Tell me.”
Sykes told him what Oscar Price had told her.
“Has this entered the population yet?” demanded McMasters.
“We have no direct confirmation, but there is a suspicious incident developing at the mortuary where Gibbon’s body was taken. We’ve gotten conflicting reports of a double homicide, but follow-up reports indicate that the ‘victims’ may not have been dead. One allegedly attacked a responding officer who was apparently compelled to use lethal force to defend herself. The other suspected victim is missing, having apparently left the scene of the crime under his own steam.”
“I’m still a half-step behind you on this, Colleen. What does that mean? Dead people don’t attack cops and they don’t get up and walk away.”
Sykes paused. “Actually, Lorne … if you open report sixty-three in the translations of the ‘Soviet Strategic Implementations’ folder you’ll see that this is in keeping with predicted effects. It is, in point of fact, the primary reason that the entire research line was ultimately scrapped by the Russians.”
McMasters read through the data. He could feel the blood draining from his cheeks. “This is … Good God, Colleen, are you telling me that we let someone
“No we didn’t,” Sykes said firmly. “Dr. Volker was under express orders not to go anywhere near this project, or anything remotely related to it.”
“Then how did he gain access?”
“His handler believes that Volker did not so much gain access as ‘re-create’ the research … and then take it forward an additional few steps. Volker is a brilliant scientist. At his request we set him up as a prison doctor, and unfortunately it looks like he played us. The security buffer we provide, plus the additional security at a secure correctional facility, made it harder for Price — or anyone, for that matter — to keep tabs on everything the doctor was doing. Lucifer 113 is not an expensive project, and many of the components are neither controlled substances or on watch lists. Volker took his time — decades, really — and he fooled everyone.”
McMasters was seething. “If he’s so fucking smart then how did he lose control of this thing? It’s not like letting your dog off his leash so he can fuck the neighbors poodle, goddamn it.”
“I know.”
“Is Volker a terrorist?”
“Unknown, but unlikely.” She told him what Oscar Price had told her about Volker’s motivations.
“Sweet suffering Jesus,” said McMasters. “I’m going to have to brief the president, and he’ll need to contact the governors of Pennsylvania and Maryland.”
“Possibly Ohio and West Virginia, too. Maybe even Virginia.”
“Tell me you’re joking, Colleen.”
“I wish I could, Lorne.”
“Okay, okay … give me some talking points for my call to the president. Where do we stand and how bad can this get?”
“Lorne … I’m not sure you looked closely enough at the Soviet strategy stuff. The only limit to the spread of this thing are natural barriers and direct sterilization.”
McMasters closed his eyes.
“Mary, Mother of God,” he whispered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Billy Trout followed a crazy zigzag of back roads and side roads to find Selma Conroy’s place. It was deep in the heart of the county’s endless farm country. Though the town of Stebbins was small, the county was huge, composed mostly of a patchwork of enormous fields of wheat, barley, potatoes, apples, peaches, and corn. Cut between these were tracts of grazing land for cattle and sheep. Houses and farm buildings were scattered around, but the farmlands were so broad that each house looked like a lost island in a vast sea of waving green.
When Marcia called, Trout pulled onto the shoulder of the road and put her on speaker.
“What’ve you got?” he asked.
“Half the job,” she said. “Dr. Volker’s taking some time, but I think I got just about everything on Selma Conroy. You want all of it now?”
“E-mail me everything but for now give me the bullet points.”
“Okay,” said Marcia, and they could hear her tapping computer keys. “Selma Elsbeth Conroy is eighty-two years old, born in East Texas. Dinky little place called Red Lick near the Arkansas border. Moved to Stebbins in 1969, and even though she had family here in Pennsylvania, the move was apparently along the lines of being run out of town on a rail. Her mother was a similar paragon of virtue. Six kids, five fathers. Class. Want to guess what one of the father’s names was?”
“If you say Gibbon I will kiss you.”
“It is Gibbon and do I get to pick where that kiss lands?”
