"Christ!" he muttered as he wiped vomit and spittle from his face.
CHAPTER
9
Quantico, Virginia
R. J. Tully watched Keith Ganza process the envelope with the indentation using an ESDA (Electronic Detection Apparatus). He remembered as a kid rubbing the side of a number-two pencil over indentations in a notepad to reveal what had been written on the page that used to be on top. He probably read how to do it in Encyclopedia Brown. He was crazy for those books when he was about nine or ten, long before he even knew what an FBI agent was or did. They had an influence. Made him realize how much he loved solving puzzles. If only Emma read something more than Bride and Glamour. He had no clue what she was interested in these days, although if text messaging became a career skill she'd have that mastered.
It amazed him how much that generation depended on computers. Kids knew how to access e-mail and create MySpace profiles, but logic and ingenuity, even puzzle solving, were foreign concepts. As Tully watched Ganza he couldn't help but think that a lead pencil would do the trick and be quicker. At least they would have known already whether there was something to process. But the expensive equipment didn't destroy the evidence. And that was important.
Ganza adjusted the light on the ESDA. He had the envelope sandwiched between the metal bed and a Mylar overlay. When he was ready he'd pour a mixture of photocopier toner and tiny glass beads over the Mylar. The machine created an electric static charge with the glass beads scattering the toner and attaching it to the indented parts of the paper, almost like inking an embossed image. At least that's how Tully understood it. With the image visible they could then take a picture of it and enlarge it.
Sometimes the images appeared to be only scribbles. But this time it looked like they had more. The envelope had definitely been underneath a piece of paper that someone had written on, pressing hard enough to leave indentations. The solution almost seemed too easy. But even criminals, especially cocky ones, got sloppy. Could they be that lucky?
"You think it's his handwriting?"Tully asked, meaning the guy who left the bomb threat."Or just some accident? Maybe someone at the bakery?"
"He'd never let the note out of his sight or put it in the doughnut box until he was ready to unload it." Ganza handled the transparency with gloved fingertips, placing it on a light box gently as though it would shatter.
He fidgeted with some buttons and suddenly the impression grew and darkened. There would be no further tests needed. The letters looked as if they had been jotted quickly, but they were easy to decipher. The note read:
Call Nathan R.
7:00 p.m.
All the periods and the colon were especially indented from extra pressure.
Tully held up the plastic bag with the original note, trying to make an amateur handwriting comparison.
"Block printing, but not all caps like in the note," he said.
"Almost as if he didn't think he had to disguise this."
"Because he didn't think we'd ever see it."
Just then Ganza's cell phone started ringing. He yanked off his latex gloves and flipped the phone open while walking to the other side of the lab. Ganza barely said hello and Tully's cell phone started chiming like a Chinese dinner bell. He'd hit the button yesterday and accidentally changed his ring tone.The damn thing drove him crazy. He was constantly screwing up settings in his search for missed calls or voice messages. And now he'd have to make up with Emma long enough to get her to fix it.
"R. J. Tully," he said after three chimes.
"We've got a problem." He recognized Maggie O'Dell's voice without an introduction.
Before she could explain the problem, Ganza was rushing across the lab, his eyes locking onto Tully's. Into the phone he said, "We can be there as soon as I get packed up." To Tully, he said, "We've got to go now, before the military gets their hands on the evidence."
"Oh, good," Maggie said in his ear. "You're with Ganza."
"What's going on?" he asked, but Ganza was headed in the other direction again, gathering equipment, the cell phone still pressed to his ear, his long strides almost wobbly like he was hurrying along on stilts.
It was Maggie who finally answered, "We've got a real mess here."
CHAPTER
10
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases Fort Detrick, Maryland
Colonel Benjamin Platt, M.D., didn't question Commander Janklow's order. He was used to taking orders whether they included jumping out of an aircraft into the Persian Gulf while wearing full scuba gear or organizing a biocontainment team and heading out to suburbia. Although back in his jumping days he was a bit younger and much more idealistic. Still, he wouldn't question his orders. Instead, he hurried down the hallways, his stride confident, the heels of his spit-n-polish shoes clicking hard against the tiles, the only indication of nervous energy.
Platt wouldn't question the commander's orders, but he couldn't help wondering if the man might be blowing this situation out of proportion. New to his post with less than three months under his belt, Commander Jeremy Janklow was an outsider, a political appointment that most everyone viewed as a favor rather than a competent leader of USAMRIID (pronounced You-SAM-Rid), one of the most respected research facilities in the world. Platt worried that Janklow had spent too much of the last decade behind a desk. Was it possible the commander was simply looking for a crisis? A fire to put out that might boost his reputation?
One of the lab doors opened before Platt got to the end of the hallway and the stocky, bearded man who emerged waved Platt to the office next door. Neither said a word, not even a greeting, until they were inside and the door closed.
Michael McCathy slipped off his lab coat and exchanged it for a navy cardigan, cashmere and not a speck of dust on it. McCathy was older and bigger than Platt. Any signs of his long-ago days as a linebacker had been replaced by pale skin, sagging jowls, a slight paunch and tired deep-set eyes, magnified by wireless eyeglasses. Platt, on the other hand, was lean from a daily workout that included running five miles and a half hour of lifting weights. His summer tan was only now beginning to fade, his brown hair still lightened by hours in the sun coaching Little League and now soccer. Platt had a frenetic energy about him, almost a complete opposite to McCathy who always moved with slow and deliberate motions.
Even now McCathy was arranging his crisply pressed lab coat on a hanger, placing it on the coat tree in the corner as though he had all the time in the world. Platt watched McCathy's methodical gestures, each grating on his nerves. The man was obsessive-compulsive about everything. He was egotistical, and annoying as hell. Platt could only take him in small doses. But the new commander, Janklow, thought McCathy was a genius and insisted he be included in this mission.
A law enforcement dropout, somehow McCathy had ended up at USAMRIID as a civilian microbiologist, a biohazard expert, apparently content to spend his days with test tubes and microscopes, concocting and speculating terrorist scenarios that might include biological warfare.
Platt and McCathy had little in common except for a shared fascination of biological agents, particularly viruses and filoviruses. Platt had held Lassa, a Level 4 virus, in his gloved hands while inside a makeshift medevac tent outside of Sierra Leone. McCathy had been a bioweapons inspector in Iraq who claimed to have seen and handled canisters filled with biological soup. He insisted there were hundreds more just waiting for a weapons delivery system. He and his team were the last ones that Saddam Hussein threw out before the war and their testimonies were part of the argument used to go to war. Platt respected the work McCathy had done. It didn't mean he liked the man.