“You said yourself it was because they found out something,” the man pointed out.
“Yeah, sure, but what? I ran the tapes of their conversation.” He noticed the expressions of the others. “The place was bugged, of course. After Spiegelman you think I’m that much of an ass? Our opposition knew it, too, or suspected it—which is why they weren’t collared until they were out into the halls. Well, enough of that. Their conversation indicates that the NDCC computers had a number of variations of the Wilderness Organism already in their memory banks. Once Spiegelman figured out the nature of the beast, he asked the right questions and, instead of a lot of possibilities coming up, the computer gave him precisely what he asked for. Obvious conclusion: somebody in NDCC had used the computers to create the Wilderness Organism.”
“You mean it was created right here?” The woman agent gasped. “Oh, my god!”
He nodded. “Sure. The easiest place to work treason is within the civil service. One in eight people work for the government, you know. True, they couldn’t get to the military computers, but a can opener’s a weapon in the wrong hands. Someone who really knew his or her stuff got the NDCC bio computers to whip up a nicely complicated Wilderness Organism, complete with variant recipes. This was then passed to our terrorists, who found a lab capable of whipping the buggers up. Much easier to make them than to design them. Now, the question is how this person knew that Spiegelman got those results so quickly—and the answer tells us a lot about where our bigwig is.”
The young man’s eyebrows rose. “Sure! A biggie in NDCC, of course! They could plug into the computer, maybe program it to flag them when and if Spiegelman or, later on, O’Connell and Bede stumbled onto anything.”
Edelman nodded. “True enough, but let’s take it further. First, why wasn’t the information erased from the computer? Why was it left there to incriminate somebody? And, second, who in NDCC has the authority to have CIA or whoever. it was on hand, order them unquestioningly to snatch these two and get them out under our noses in an operation tight enough that these people wouldn’t leak it to our own contacts?”
They saw what he meant. “I used to do some computer work,” the woman said. “With the newer types with fully integrated logic you might be too intrusive if you tried to erase certain types of basic work. That is, anybody going into that area would immediately see that things had been tampered with. Easier to take the very good chance that nobody will ask the right question.”
Edelman nodded again. “That makes sense. An alternate explanation is that it was left there to be found, but it was found much too soon. But, we’ll let that pass for now. How about the second question? Who at NDCC has the authority to call in the cloak-and-dagger boys?”
The young man shook his head. “Nobody, really, unless it was done with GSA security staff, and I’d seriously doubt that. It would have to be one of the Pentagon boys at the very least, and they wouldn’t necessarily have monitoring capabilities for the computer.”
The senior agent took out a cigar and lit it, letting out a huge cloud of blue-gray smoke. “Okay, then. I agree military’s in on this, but I doubt if that’s the direct link. Too obvious. We need the go-between. What agency would be able to coordinate the NDCC stuff with some of the Pentagon boys?”
They saw it and they didn’t like it.
“The White House,” the woman said, amazed.
Edelman looked satisfied. “Okay, then. That’s our boy. Now it’s time for our computers to go to work. We want a rundown of the top-level White House staff—we already did security checks on all of them. We need a key scientist at NDCC who owes his or her position to somebody in the current administration, and likewise somebody in the top brass, probably military intelligence, we can link to this same person in the White House.” His expression turned suddenly grim. “I hope you realize that we’re battling against time here. With the state of emergency on and getting more and more pervasive, this top-level agent we want will become more and more impregnable with each passing day. If we don’t find out who the son of a bitch is pretty quickly, when we do finger him we might wind up disappearing ourselves.”
That was the most unsettling thought of all.
“Now we have the next question. Why not just bump O’Connell and Bede off’?” Edelman continued. “Ideas?”
“Maybe because they didn’t have to, or they needed them for something,” the woman suggested. “After all, with Spiegelman they had no choice.”
Their boss nodded agreement. “Okay, so they have some kind of plans for the two of them, or some need, that called for taking the risk of icing them. So, if you were using the government to subvert itself, where would the government stash two such hot properties?”
“Mental hospitals,” the young man answered. “Military or VA, probably. Anyplace else and you run the risk of somebody from NDCC or with NDCC experience bumping into them. Besides, we all agree it was a military-style snatch despite their IDs.”
“Okay, then, get on it,” Edelman told them. “But —remember. Since we’re dealing with a diabolically clever traitor at the White House level, that person’s going to be watching us like a hawk. Tread softly and assume you’ve got the enemy looking over your shoulder. Use our special teams of reliables and stay out of the general Bureau hierarchy as much as possible. Somebody around here probably owes this SOB a favor, too.” He growled slightly, looking down at the sheaf of papers. “I want this bastard. I want this person bad.”
According to the military guard’s records before him, the chief agent with the laundry cart had been an FBI agent named Jacob Edelman.
FOURTEEN
Sam Cornish could hardly believe his eyes when he saw Suzanne Martine up there, lecturing. But then, of course, a corner of his mind told him, if she were still alive this was where she’d be, and if this place was in fact the center of the mysterious virus attacks on the United States she would quite naturally, almost as a law of nature, be in the center of it.
She had changed, of course; she was older, face more firmly set and somehow tougher, too. She was still very small and thin; her voice was still incongruously deep, brassy, commanding when it wanted to be.
He sat through the whole thing without really hearing a word she was saying. He wished he knew if she knew he was here. The thought both excited and scared him; they had once been lovers, but Suzy knew him better than anyone, and was the greatest threat to him on this base.
And now it had ended, and they’d marched out, and through the next few hours and, in fact, the next few days there was no sign that she had noticed.
Still, to be here, in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly find her again, to know that she was around, that any chance might bring them together, was ever on his mind. He couldn’t help dwelling on what would happen if they did meet, and was chided several times by the sergeants and some of his own comrades for daydreaming.
Life in the camp pretty much resembled all those movies he’d seen on Army basic training. A lot of lectures, many political in nature, and a lot of physical training—running, jumping, doing obstacle courses and the like. Some of the old-timers were having a really rough time of it, and several simply gave up along the way, refusing to get out of their hammocks in the morning. No one said anything to them about it, but when the group returned at the end of the day they and their effects were gone.