Now I really had heard everything. I must've appeared skeptical because Spears said, “Think about it. Something like that would be worth millions, even billions. The sheer volume of human waste is a huge problem. Have you any idea how much sewage a city the size of New York alone produces in one day?”
I visualized eight million New Yorkers sitting down at the beginning of the day with their newspaper. “Lots?”
“In layman's terms, Professor Boyle's role was to look at the organism's genetic makeup, to manipulate it to see if it could be made to live in nonpoisonous environments.”
“But something went wrong.”
“Or went right, depending on your point of view. Boyle created an ionized bacterium that actually secreted hydrogen sulphide.”
“In layman's terms, you've lost me.”
“The DVD you saw was the result of one of Boyle's experiments. He modified the organism so that the airborne bacterium was attracted to electric fields. Where you find an electromagnetic field, these days you'll eventually find computer chips. Once this organism gets onto a printed circuit board, it secretes hydrogen sulphide that literally eats the chip away. The bacterium got into the air-conditioning and shut the building down — every computer chip in MG was turned to mush.”
I got it. “In the wrong hands, that would be some weapon — a biological computer virus.”
“A virus is not a bacterium,” she informed me.
“Whatever.”
“Once the potential of this weapon became apparent, our government became interested. Even if only to make sure no one else got the technology. On the battlefield, if you had the delivery system sorted out and ensured your own systems were hardened against attack, you could win without a shot being fired.”
“A war where no one died. That wouldn't be such a bad thing, would it?”
“You're looking on the bright side, Special Agent. I didn't take you as a glass-half-full sort of person.”
“I'm not,” I said. Pakistan had Boyle, which meant it also had this meltdown bug. “So, Islamabad is lining up India for an atomic weapons strike? That's what all this is about?”
I didn't need to see Spears's nod to already know the answer. That was where Butler and I supposedly came in. “So, this bug — it's ready to go?”
“We don't know. Boyle took everything when he left. But I do know that the delivery system was always going to be difficult. The bacterium was highly successful at digesting our computer systems because, when it got into our air-conditioning, its lethality was pretty tightly directed and controlled. When the NLW is released into the atmosphere, control is lost.”
“Did you just call this thing a nonlethal weapon?”
“Um, yes … why?”
“Something that lets one side launch nukes against another is a nonlethal weapon? That doesn't sound a little oxymoronish to you?”
“That's what the DoD was calling it.”
And all this time I'd been thinking the DoD didn't have a sense of humor.
“A quick lesson in geopolitics, Agent Cooper. Asia is unstable. Not only is there the standoff between Pakistan and India, there's the Korean Peninsula, with the North and South still deeply mistrustful of each other on many levels. There's the considerable friction between the two Chinas — the People's Republic and Taiwan. And then there's the Muslim world to consider. Like Iran and Syria, for example. What would the reaction be if Pakistan attacked India with nuclear weapons?”
“Most likely plenty of back slapping from other Muslims.”
Doc Spears had her face turned toward me. I could see this was one deeply concerned former CEO.
“What's your security like at MG?” I asked her.
“Are you going to question me about those Tasers again?”
“No, but given what I now know was being developed at MG, the fact that your people weren't armed with something that made a more permanent point now seems just a tad restrained. Also, I was wondering how Boyle got the bacterium out of MG.” I knew it was a dumb question as soon as I asked it. “He got it out the night he let the bug loose, didn't he?”
Spears nodded. “I think he let it loose with the intention of knocking out the security. With all our systems down, he could have just walked out with it on a petri dish. And there's another possibility, something no one wants to think about.”
“This can get worse?”
“The genetic changes Boyle made allowed the bacterium to reproduce — multiply. There's the possibility that, released into the atmosphere, the bacterium could rapidly find its way around the globe.”
“And…?”
“Well, that could put every computer chip in the world at risk.”
“Oh, you mean like Y2K?” If the rest of it wasn't so serious, I'd have stifled a yawn.
“No, Y2K was a great marketing exercise — it sold a lot of computers and helped a load of companies sell a mountain of dusty stock. If this does get into the atmosphere… worst-case scenario? It'll take the world back to the age of steam.”
The cab pulled up at Spears's hotel in Lafayette Square and a porter in a monkey suit ran to hold open the car door. “Good afternoon, Dr. Spears,” I heard him say.
I watched as she said hello back and climbed out onto the sidewalk. She and the doorman knew each other.
“You've got the gist of it now,” Spears said, paying the driver through his side window — too much, from the look of the wad she pressed into his gloved hand.
Something occurred to me. “Doc… the CIA man — Chalmers. Do you know how he happened to break his leg?”
“Yeah, I heard someone say it happened aboard the Natusima. He slipped on a pile of soggy cigarette butts, or something. Seemed unlikely to me.” Spears shrugged.
“Well, you know smoking — dangerous habit.”
The monkey suit slammed the door. I gave the driver directions to my apartment. Then I made the guy wait while I changed out of the Class As, and had him drive me across to Andrews AFB.
THIRTY-EIGHT
By the time I made it back to Bragg, my nerves felt like they'd been rubbed with crushed glass. I'd bought a fifth of single malt to keep me company on the return flight, but I left it unopened in my carry-on. Instead I found myself churning over the past few weeks, the brief investigation into Tanaka's murder, and the equally brief inquiry into the death of Ruben Wright. Neither investigation had been concluded satisfactorily. Time was proving to be my biggest enemy. I hadn't had enough of it to resolve my caseload. And now the world was under the gun. If Boyle had perfected his biological weapon, a nuclear war was imminent. Boyle had to be stopped. Only, I was having trouble dealing with the irony that Butler and I were the ones who were going to be working together to stop him. I recalled the phone conversation I'd had with Arlen, the one where he'd sounded out my view on whether Butler was guilty or innocent of murder. I'd told Arlen that doubt about him being the perp had crept in. Had that been enough to clear Butler for this operation?
I picked over the investigation into Tanaka's death. That case might have been easier to resolve — a hell of a lot easier — if I'd been cleared to know exactly what Tanaka and Boyle had been working on. If I'd been aware they had something so valuable, and as relatively easy to sell as a biological weapon, that would have been a plausible motive for Tanaka's murder right there. Boyle wouldn't have been able to move with his research partner hanging around, so he had thrown him to the sharks. I could have — would have — seen it from the start. I might even have been able to nail Boyle before the people paying the bills in Pakistan had pulled off his vanishing act in downtown San Francisco, an act which had cost hundreds of lives. But that was the problem with hypotheticals. Stewing over what might have been did no one any good — not me, and least of all the family and friends of the people who had died in the explosions at the Transamerica and the Four Winds.