“Bastards,” Silver said. “They took it all. Some of that was legit.”
“You know how it works,” Forsyth said. “The government seizes all evidence and assets and sorts it out later.”
As Silver descended via a metal ladder fixed to the wall, Forsyth stepped to the lip and looked past him to the refashioned service pit. Silver had applied his ingenuity by installing stainless-steel shelving and tables. Forsyth could imagine it full of flasks, trays, electron microscopes, computers, and gooseneck lamps. Silver settled into the metal office chair as if he were opening up shop again, the star of the show in the circle of Scagnelli’s spotlight.
“So this is where Halcyon and Seethe were reborn,” Forsyth said from above.
“Seethe?” Silver said.
“Dr. Morgan’s formula.”
“Bitchin’ name. I like it.”
“The good news is the drugs you were manufacturing for Dr. Morgan aren’t illegal,” Forsyth said.
“‘Alleged,’ dude. My lawyer said make sure the feds always use the word ‘alleged.’ Or did they take ‘innocent until proven guilty’ out of the Constitution while I was in the loony bin?”
Forsyth smiled. Darrell Silver was beginning to grow on him in a way. A spiritual entrepreneur. Maybe we’re not so different, after all.
“The bad news is that the drugs can’t ever exist, if you understand my meaning. They must remain our little secret.”
In the orb of Scagnelli’s spotlight, Silver’s eyes narrowed as if embracing the existential possibilities. “Heavy.”
Quietly to Scagnelli, Forsyth said, “Rig a recording device. Then call Dr. Morgan and invite her over. I want to get her and this knotty-headed hippie talking, to see how much they know.”
“What about her husband? The guy who don’t like cheese?”
“He’s itching to explode. Once he hears she’s been sneaking around behind his back, that’s one less corpse for you to deal with.”
“And then I deal with him?” Scagnelli squeezed his bony knuckles together in anticipation of revenge.
“No, I’ll handle this end. Silver’s already in my pocket. You have two CIA agents to put out of my misery. I don’t want the senator to find out we’ve been cutting in line at his all-you-can-eat buffet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Get out your scorecard, Chief,” Gundersson said into his Sectera Edge, a clumsier but better-firewalled version of a cell phone. Gundersson normally relied on the device for e-mails and text messages, but the security classification of the Sectera rated higher for audio communication.
Plus, he wasn’t sure he could have typed the entire message on the tiny keyboard without his fingers cramping.
Gundersson sat on a stump by the small ring of stones in which he’d built a fire of dry wood to minimize smoke. His camp was half a mile inside the Unegama National Wilderness Area, in a clearing that hadn’t seen a chainsaw for nearly a century. His ankle throbbed after the long hike from the cabin, but it wasn’t broken or he’d never have made it that far.
Roland and Wendy hadn’t invited him to stay, not that he’d expected it. After all, having a federal agent walk out of the woods would make anybody a little wary, and if Roland’s story was true, the couple had every reason to distrust him.
“What do you have?” Harding asked from his cramped NCS office in DC, sounding like his acid reflux was acting up.
“This is more than just busywork. Another agency is investigating, and the targets have received threats. Apparently it’s connected to some secret drug experiment involving Burchfield.”
“Did you say Burchfield? The senator?”
“Might be a smear job, right? But these guys swear Burchfield was behind several murders and a cover-up last year. Apparently Burchfield and CRO Pharmaceuticals were backing development of a drug that helped suppress memory.”
“Shit, that’s already been invented. It’s called scotch.”
The forest was settling into the first phase of dusk, with the birds falling quiet and a few insects issuing their high-pitched trills. Faint stars appeared through openings in the bright green canopy, and the dying sun cast a pinkish light over the clouds. It didn’t look like rain, which relieved Gundersson, because he’d packed lightly and would have had to wear his poncho inside his tent.
“Doyle apparently got some e-mails with NCS as the sender. I told him I was with the CIA in order to get on his good side. I told him we were looking out for rogue elements in the NCS. Playing on all the interagency suspicion.”
“A double agent within the same agency. Did he fall for it?”
“Enough. He opened up, but I don’t know how much of it to believe.”
Gundersson related Doyle’s tale of how the couple and four of their college friends had been involved in a fear-response experiment eleven years earlier, where one of them had died. Then, last year, Sebastian Briggs had tried to recreate the experiment, testing a drug he’d discovered that caused the brain to shed its inhibitions and revert to primal functioning. According to Doyle, Burchfield was there when Briggs was killed, but nobody remembered what happened because Briggs had a different drug that caused short-term amnesia.
“That sounds like the biggest heap of steaming donkey malarkey I’ve heard since the WikiLeaks mess,” Harding said in response. “Even if half of it is true, I’d guess Doyle was using that ‘amnesia’ card as an out.”
“I don’t know, Chief. These people don’t really have anything to gain by lying. If they were players, why would they be hiding out in a hillbilly hollow?”
“I ran a background on Sebastian Briggs and not a whole lot comes up. That first experiment is on the books, and one of the subjects died, but it was apparently unconnected. Briggs was bounced from the UNC faculty, though, and he worked the fringe with some drug companies as a researcher, and then a whole lot of nothing. It’s like the last five years of his life were erased.”
“Big surprise. But there’s one red flag.”
“What?” Harding was growing impatient, annoyed that the job had gotten bigger and more complex than he’d counted on.
“No fake background was filled in for the last five years of Briggs’s life. People who wipe out files usually put in some vanilla dates and places so the hole isn’t so obvious.”
“So whoever is behind this is either new to the game or is so goddamned big that they don’t care who finds out.”
Gundersson propped his sore ankle on a stone so it could cool. “And if somebody’s playing connect-the-dots and wants to add more blank pages to the Seethe and Halcyon story, it’s only a matter of time before they show up here.”
“Or maybe they’re already there.”
The comment caused Gundersson to look around the forest, which already seemed wild and primal and threatening. “I better sign off, Chief. It’s not so easy to recharge a cell phone by rubbing two sticks together.”
“Okay. I’ll dig from this end and find out who set up this mission. Be careful out there.”
Right.
Gundersson hobbled to his tent and secured the Sectera in his pack, checking the clip in his Glock. He had been so engrossed in playing predator that he hadn’t considered someone might be watching him watch them.
He made his way back to the fire. Even though it was April, the night was cool, with mist hanging low in the trees. Every snapping twig or flapping limb evoked images of a hunter creeping up on his camp.
He’d chosen a level clearing, preferring it to the rocky clefts and granite recesses on the ridge, thinking he might have to move quickly. Now he wondered if he’d left himself vulnerable, because he’d be exposed to anyone watching from the forest. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.
Just the fox. Maybe even a black bear, but my food’s suspended in a plastic sack. Nothing here to attract any nocturnal creatures.