Like a virus in the bloodstream, Fisher thought.
“You have any thoughts on the North Koreans?” he asked Lambert.
“I do. There are three reasons for them getting involved, I think: one, a sword to hang over our heads; two, a preemptive move for an invasion of South Korea.”
“And the third?”
“Kim Jong-il is nuts, and he just feels like wreaking havoc.”
“I’ve got a fourth scenario,” Fisher said. “It’s a little bit out there, but it may fit.”
“Tell me.”
“North Korea’s found its own oil reserves, but as long as they’re a pariah, they’ve got no chance to exploit them. Then along comes Omurbai. Somehow, somewhere, he’s gotten ahold of this very interesting fungus that does a very interesting thing: It eats oil, which just happens to be the devil’s own invention. He wants to use the fungus, but as long as he’s an outcast from his homeland, he can’t.
“So the North Koreans help him retake Kyrgyzstan, which happens to sit smack-dab on top of one of the world’s greatest deposits, then sit back and watch as Omurbai releases Manas and destroys three hundred billion barrels of untapped oil. The world panics. North Korea announces it just happens to have found its own reserves.”
Lambert considered this for a few moments, then said with a grim smile, “Any other country or leader, and I’d say that’s an exceedingly implausible scenario. Well, since we’re playing doom-and-gloom, try this: North Korea watches Omurbai release Manas in Central Asia, then they secretly do the same elsewhere — in the Middle East, in Africa, in Russia — but North Korea’s fields remain untouched. Omurbai gets the blame, and suddenly they’ve got the only surviving oil source on the planet.”
Fisher caught on, finishing the scenario. “Because, while they were working on Manas, they also found a neutralizing agent for it.”
“You got it.”
Fisher squeezed the bridge of his nose between his index finger and his thumb. “And right now, we’ve got nothing. No leads, no clues, no idea where Manas is — nothing.”
Lambert gave him a weary smile, then stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sam, we’ve had less than that before and still come through the other side.”
Redding arrived twenty minutes later, poured himself a cup of coffee, and joined them at the table. “Who wants to know how Omurbai probably found out about Chytridiomycota?”
Fisher raised a weary finger.
“Remember Oziri, Wondrash’s man Friday?”
Fisher and Lambert nodded.
“Well, Grim asked me to do a little genealogy detective work. Here’s the short version: Oziri was the grandfather of Samet, Omurbai’s right-hand man and second-in-command of the KRLA. My guess, Oziri knew what Wondrash was looking for and had bragged or blabbed to a family member before they headed to Africa.”
“Which means Wondrash had had some inkling of what Chytridiomycota was capable of even before he found the source,” Fisher said.
Redding nodded. “That’s part two. Quantico was able to restore most of Wondrash’s journal you found aboard the Sunstar. He doesn’t describe how they found the cave in the first place, or how he got onto the trail of the fungus in the first place, but he talks about the night they spent inside there. Evidently, some of the stuff must have rubbed off on their gear. The next morning they woke up, and everything made of rubber or plastic had dissolved.”
A few minutes later, Lambert’s cell phone trilled. He picked it up, listened for a moment, said thanks, and disconnected. He walked to the nearest computer workstation, tapped a few keys, and one of the monitors glowed to life. The DCI’s face filled the screen.
“Morning,” he said. “I’ve got Dr. Russo’s report in front of me. She’s confident that Chytridiomycota is a type of petro-parasite.”
Lambert told the DCI about Wondrash’s journal and Omurbai’s link to Oziri.
“Then I’d say that’s proof enough,” the DCI replied. “Russo also sent along a computer simulation. Worst-case scenario. I asked her to make some assumptions — namely that Manas has been enhanced for longevity and reproduction. Take a look.”
The DCI’s face disappeared and was replaced with a computer-generated Mercator projection of the earth. The camera zoomed in until it was focused on Central Asia, then paused. A clock graphic in the right-hand corner appeared and, beside it, the notation, DAY 1. A red dot appeared in the center of Kyrgyzstan, then expanded, doubling in size. The clock changed to DAY 5. The red dot expanded again, doubling again, and then again, and again, until the whole of Kyrgyzstan was covered, and the clock read DAY 11.
Fisher and the others continued to watch as Manas spread beyond the borders of Kyrgyzstan, north into Kazakhstan, east into China, south into Tajikistan, then India…
Thirty seconds later, half the globe had turned red, and the area was still increasing in size.
The clock read DAY 26.
Grimsdottir pushed through the door ten minutes later and stopped short as she saw the three of them sitting around the table. “Did I miss a memo?” she asked.
Lambert shook his head. “The Insomniacs’ Club.”
“Sign me up,” she said, then poured her own cup of coffee, sat down, and powered up her laptop. Lambert briefed her on their discussion so far. She paused a few moments to take it all in, then said to Fisher, “Sam, you’re sure that Stewart died at Site Seventeen?”
Fisher nodded. “Either there or in the water a few minutes later.”
“Then we’ve got a mystery on our hands. I just heard from the comm center. Stewart’s beacon is still active, and it’s transmitting from Pyongyang, North Korea.”
36
Fisher had gotten up at dawn and taken the Metro train to the Rungnado station, where he got off, stopped at a street kiosk to buy some green tea, then walked to a park and found a bench overlooking the Taedong River, which ran through the center of the North Korean capital. Beyond the river’s opposite bank, Pyongyang’s skyscrapers and gray cinder-block Soviet-style buildings spread across the horizon.
The sun was bright, glistening off the dew-covered grass. A hundred yards away, a group of thirty or so teenage boys and girls were practicing hapkido under the watchful eyes of North Korean People’s Army officers. They barked orders, and the students answered “Ye!” Whether the teenagers were bothered by the rigorous early morning training, Fisher couldn’t tell. Each teenager wore the same expression: thin-set mouths and narrowed eyes. Their collective breathing, which itself seemed to have a disciplined rhythm to it, steamed in the chilled, early morning air.
One of the officers barked another order, and the group bent at the waist, en masse, and picked up their rifles, old World War II-era Soviet Mosin-Nagant carbines, and began a drill routine.
The future of North Korea, Fisher thought. And, if Omurbai’s Manas plan succeeded, perhaps the future of the world. Since Lambert had suggested the scenario, Fisher had been trying to wrap his head around the idea of North Korea as the world’s only oil superpower. It was a frightening thought.
From the corner of his eye Fisher saw his escorts, a pair of plainclothes State Security Department officers, which he’d dubbed Flim and Flam, enter the park’s west entrance and take up station at the railing along the river’s edge.