Dr. Gant was reporting that VX had been stockpiled by the U.S., Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and North Korea, and could be manufactured by any industrial power. It was bought and sold on the international black market and was known to be in the hands of terrorist organizations.
'I don’t get it,' Tess said to Tennant. 'Why wouldn’t you want our squad in on this deal? We know Mobius. I know him better than anybody. I’ve been after him for nearly three years.'
'That’s exactly why.'
'Meaning what?'
'We don’t have three years, Agent McCallum. We may not have three days. Your methods, and those of the other members of your squad, have failed. I can’t afford failure in my operation. I’m not going to import failure or build on it or incorporate it into my plans.'
She got hot. 'You’re implying we haven’t caught him because we’ve screwed up.'
'Right.'
'There’s another possibility. Maybe he just hasn’t allowed himself to be caught.'
'Criminals make mistakes, Agent McCallum. All criminals.'
'Not Mobius. Not yet. He has a script, and he sticks to it. But maybe not this time.'
'What’s different now?'
'The VX wasn’t in the script. It’s an unplanned development. It means he has to improvise. He may slip up. He can be caught.'
'When he is, we’ll call you and let you know.'
'I’m not leaving this case.'
Tennant simmered for a moment, then dismissed her with a shrug. 'Fine. Stay involved. Feel useful. Be a contributing member of our effort.' He moved off, then added over his shoulder, 'Just keep the fuck out of my way.'
Tess watched him as he returned to the front of the room.
'I don’t like that guy,' she murmured.
'Really?' Andrus smiled. 'I find him rather charming.'
Dr. Gant concluded his remarks, and Tennant went back to the microphone. He motioned to an ATSAC technician, who replaced the central image on the video wall with an aerial shot of a military base.
'Beginning in the mid-1950s, the U.S. government was a major manufacturer of VX and other chemical weapons. By treaty, these weapons are now scheduled to be destroyed. Pending their elimination, they have been stored in a handful of Army depots, including this seventeen-thousand-acre facility in Umatilla, Oregon. Officially the incineration of these weapons is ongoing, with their complete eradication expected by 2005.
'Unofficially, matters are different. Needless to say, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified and must not go beyond this room. The international ramifications of making this information public would be severe. But the fact is that after the September 11 atrocities, there was a reevaluation of U.S. military policy in this area. In the context of a new global war against terrorism, no weapon-no class of weapons-can any longer be ruled out. Trouble is, existing stockpiles of VX are aging and unreliable.
'Accordingly, last year the government secretly contracted with a private chemical laboratory to resume production of VX.
'The laboratory is located in Hermiston, Oregon, only a few miles from Umatilla, where a quantity of older VX remains in storage inside specially constructed warehouses called igloos.'
Another video image, captioned UMATILLA K-BLOCK, showed rows of earth-covered, rounded buildings inside a double cyclone fence topped with barbed wire.
'The plan is to use these igloos to store new stockpiles of VX as they are manufactured. The first delivery of VX to the Umatilla depot had been scheduled for next month. Approximately fifty tons of the agent were to be moved via convoy from the lab to the Army base. Because the movement of VX was expected to be a clandestine operation, the convoy would have been small and only lightly guarded.
'One month ago, foreign intelligence sources informed our office of unusual activity among black-market arms dealers. It appeared someone was offering to reveal details of the convoy operation in exchange for a seven-figure cash transfer to an offshore account. In other words, someone familiar with the VX shipment was willing to set up the convoy for an ambush, thus allowing a substantial quantity of nerve agent to fall into the wrong hands.
'Subsequent investigation identified the likely suspect as Amanda Pierce.' A photo of Pierce, possibly from her driver’s license or an ID card, appeared on the video wall. 'Pierce was an officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency before entering the private sector as a security consultant. She was hired by the Hermiston lab as chief security officer for the manufacture and transfer of VX. She was the only person possessing both detailed knowledge of the security procedures and the necessary sophistication to contact arms brokers working abroad. Pierce tested normal on psychological evaluations at the time of her DIA service, but through interviews with former friends and associates we discovered a more complex personality profile with pronounced sociopathic elements. She was evidently one of those people who can fake normal on standardized tests.
'Two days ago, on Thursday evening, Pierce drove out of the Hermiston area, heading south. Because she had scheduled Friday as a vacation day, we’d anticipated that she would take advantage of the holiday weekend to make her move. We also knew from our foreign intel sources that the liaison with her unknown contact was to take place in Los Angeles. Thus we were in position to follow her as she drove into California. She stopped for the night at a motel in Salem, Oregon, then continued her drive the next day, arriving in the Los Angeles metro area on Friday night.
'Unfortunately, after entering LA, Pierce executed a variety of countersurveillance maneuvers. It was at this point that she broke containment. In simpler language, we lost her.'
' You lost her?' one of the city councilmen said from his seat next to the mayor.
'Yes, sir. I did. It was my fault exclusively. I take full responsibility.' He added, 'I fucked up.'
Tess almost had to admire him for that. He had not survived three decades in the bureau by playing cover- your-ass politics, at any rate.
There was silence for a moment, and then Tennant went on.
'Pierce was not reacquired until early this morning, by which time she was dead. Evidently she had some very bad luck. She appears to have allowed herself to be picked up by a locally active serial killer who previously operated in Denver, killing four people there. He uses the name Mobius. He took her to his hotel room, which he’d charged to a phony credit card. He had sex with her, and he killed her-his usual MO. Then he left, and now he’s in the wind.
'So Pierce is dead, another notch in Mobius’s knife. Which we might say was just as well-even that he did the world a favor this time-except for one thing.
'In order for Pierce to establish her bona fides and seal the deal, she was supposed to hand over a sample of the VX produced at the Oregon lab. The lab had earlier confirmed to us that seven hundred and ten ccs, or twenty- four ounces, of the nerve agent were unaccounted for. It’s a safe assumption that Pierce smuggled out this quantity of VX, probably in its original packaging-a metal canister approximately ten inches long and two inches in diameter. The total package-cylinder and contents-would weigh two pounds. When she traveled to LA, she would have brought it with her, most likely in her suitcase.'
'You could have intercepted this woman at any time,' the mayor interrupted to ask, 'isn’t that correct?'
'Yes, sir. We were holding off until she met with her contact. We wanted to collar them both.'
'But you didn’t, and now she’s dead, and the VX…?'
'Is gone.'
'Taken by this man Mobius?'
'We think so, yes.'
'A serial killer.'
'Yes.'
'A serial killer who’s now armed with a weapon of mass destruction. A weapon that can kill ten thousand people.'
'That’s it in a nutshell, sir.'
The county sheriff put in a word. 'Have you considered the possibility that her contact killed her and made it look like the work of this Mobius just to throw us off?'
Tennant hesitated. For the first time he was stumped.
