“He’ll find out for sure at the lab. But look. All the shells had signs of recent tampering. And VX isn’t like sarin. It’s not a gas. It’s a liquid, like oil or honey, so it would be easy to pour inside. Then it needs a heat source to vaporize it. Like the reaction that would produce the colored smoke. And the smoke would then help to dissipate the poison. You couldn’t find a system better suited to dispersing VX if you spent the rest of your life searching. Is that a coincidence?”
“Seems unlikely. No wonder your guy is excited.”
“I can see the cogs going round in his head. He’s thinking about the papers he’s going to write. The law enforcement conferences he’s going to speak at. But that’s not all that got his bell ringing. He also found something hidden away in the electronics. A third way to detonate the bomb. On top of the timer and the cellular.”
“What kind of a third way?”
“A transponder. A common enough doodad, apparently. But not generally used this way. I know he’s an asshole. But this Dendoncker must be a hell of a creative guy. And thorough. A defensive coating of VX and three systems to do one job? Talk about leaving nothing to chance.”
Wallwork hung up, leaving me feeling a little guilty for not telling him that Dendoncker didn’t build the bomb. Michael did. He was the thorough, creative one. Ordinarily the TEDAC guys would have figured that out when they fed the details into their database. Aside from the last-minute addition of the VX, the components and the construction techniques would match the ones from the first bomb Michael had made. Which also had a transponder. With his fingerprint on it. Only TEDAC wouldn’t make the connection this time. Because Fenton had destroyed the older evidence. I guess keeping quiet made me an accessory to some kind of federal crime. I didn’t think it mattered too much, though. Michael’s bomb-making career was over. And if the FBI followed through, Dendoncker’s soon would be, too.
Fenton was anxious to get moving but I convinced her to wait while I made one more call. To Dr. Houllier. On his cell. I didn’t know if the medical center was staffed 24/7 and I didn’t want to show up with Michael and find there were no doctors in the place. Dr. Houllier said he would make sure someone was there. He sounded cagey so I pressed him and he admitted he would come and treat Michael himself. He confessed he was already back in town and offered to come for us in an ambulance. That was tempting. My only concern was the risk involved. Someone could see him and inform Dendoncker. Reprisals could follow, depending on how long he remained on the loose. But a more immediate problem was that we had no other transport. Only the Chevy that should still be parked outside the house. Which we had no keys for. So I told Dr. Houllier about the place. Gave him the address. And said I’d call him when we were ready to be picked up.
Dr. Houllier set us up on the pediatric floor. That was a thoughtful move. Instead of regular rooms they had a series of little suites. The kind of places that enable parents to stay with their sick kids. A couple of nurses helped Dr. Houllier get Michael squared away in the hospital bed. They hung extra IV bags. Took his temperature. Blood pressure. Peered into his eyes and ears with special machines. Daubed him with creams and lotions. And prodded and poked him in all kinds of different places.
Eventually Dr. Houllier said he was happy. He said it might take a while but he was sure Michael would be OK. He warned us that someone would come by every hour to do some observations. Then he left us to get comfortable. Fenton took an armchair. She shoved it close in at Michael’s side and curled up, knees to chest. I took the other bed. It was close to five a.m. I’d been up for twenty-two hours. I was exhausted. But I was feeling quietly satisfied. Fenton was safe. Michael wasn’t dead. The bomb was defused and on its way to be studied by the experts. I figured that things were basically good in the world.
It’s funny how wrong a person can be.
Chapter 51
I got woken up at a minute to seven. By my phone. I was dead asleep one moment. Wide awake the next. Like a switch being thrown. Some kind of instinctive response to anything unnatural. Or threatening.
I figured the electronic howl qualified as both.
I answered the call. It was the FBI. One of the special agents who Wallwork had rounded up to guard Michael. Her team had reached the outskirts of town and she wanted to know where we should rendezvous. I gave her directions. Then lay back down and closed my eyes. An argument was brewing in my head. The thought of taking a shower on one side. The appeal of not moving on the other. Both were persuasive. But neither got the chance to carry the day. Because my phone rang again. It was Wallwork this time.
“News,” he said. “Huge. The pictures and samples my guy sent in from Dendoncker’s bomb? One already hit the jackpot. The transponder? There was a fingerprint on it. They have an ID. The TEDAC guys say it’s solid. Good enough to survive any test in court.”
I said, “Michael Curtis, right?” I figured the day was about to go downhill for Fenton and her brother. Fast. So I might as well get out ahead of it.
“Who? No. It was Nader Khalil.”
“I don’t know who that is.” That was true. Although I had heard the name. Dendoncker accused me of working for the guy.
“Khalil’s a big fish. Very big. I’m told the system lit up like a Christmas tree when it came back with his name. He’s a terrorist. Out of Beirut. One of a family of terrorists. His father was one. He got killed by the police. His brother was one. He got killed, too. A more notorious death. He was driving the truck that carried the Marine barracks bomb. Nader himself has been linked to a dozen different atrocities. But there was never any evidence. Until now.”
It was a strange detail from the past. That Khalil’s brother was driving the barracks truck bomb. He must have died yards away from me. But there was something about the present that didn’t add up. If Michael made the bomb, I couldn’t see how someone else’s fingerprint wound up on part of it.
Wallwork wasn’t done. “A manhunt has started for him. Worldwide. Unlimited resources. The guy’s toast. It’s just a question of when.”
Maybe Khalil had supplied the parts Michael had used, I thought. That could be how his fingerprint got to be there.
Wallwork kept going. “The manhunt is worldwide. But there’s another concern. Closer to home. The TEDAC guys are worried that Khalil is still in the States.”
Or maybe Dendoncker had stolen the parts, I thought. Or refused to pay. Or ripped off Khalil in some other way. That could be why he was expecting a reprisal.
Wallwork continued. “The TEDAC guys are scared that Khalil is ramping up a bombing campaign. Here. And they figure Dendoncker’s helping him. His family was from Beirut, too, remember. His mother was, anyway.”
“They think this on the strength of one fingerprint and a vague connection to a foreign city?”
“No. On the strength of this being the second of Khalil’s bombs that they found.”
“Where was the other one?”
“I’m not sure where it turned up. It was a dud. It was taken to TEDAC. A few weeks ago. It was analyzed. And it had enough identical features for them to be certain it was made by the same person.”
“Did it have a transponder?”
“No. And it didn’t emit gas. But the components came from the same source. The wiring techniques were the same. The architecture was the same. There are enough hallmarks for them to be convinced. More than enough.”
This is the problem when a lie gets too much oxygen. It grows. Even a lie of omission. The smoke bomb had been made by Michael. So if the TEDAC guys had connected it with another one made by the same person, it must be the last bomb Fenton worked on. The one Michael made and sent to her as an SOS. Only the TEDAC guys didn’t know there had been a transponder in that one, too. Or that Fenton had destroyed it. Because of Michael’s fingerprint. If they had known, they’d have reached a different conclusion. I had no doubt about that. I was about to tell Wallwork. Ask him to bring the TEDAC guys up to speed. To correct their misconception. But something stopped me. The nagging at the back of my mind. It had started when Fenton told me about finding Michael’s message. With the card and the condom. It had grown louder with Dendoncker’s weird responses. Now, with all the talk about the Khalil guy, it was practically deafening.