"Max believed that he needed to find out what DeMille was doing," she finally said.
"So he was spying on Dr. DeMille?" Cris persisted.
"Look, it isn't as easy as all that. It's not black and white." She was getting angry now. "I mean, knowledge is precious, and sometimes you form strange alliances to mine certain truths that you'll ultimately be able to use for the betterment of mankind. Sometimes people like Dexter DeMille have to be temporarily part of that equation."
"But if USC was getting military funding, along with all those other universities like Sam Houston and the University of Texas, then wouldn't Max be part of the decision-making process if he ran the Microbiology Department?"
"No!" she said. Now she was angry. "You just will never be able to understand how difficult it is to balance the need for funding against the moral equation. Max did that dance better than anybody!"
Cris realized that he had become annoyed at Stacy's worship of her dead husband. He wondered if he was subconsciously trying to tear down his memory because she was so obviously still in love with him. Cris was suddenly ashamed of himself. "You loved him," he said sympathetically.
"I adored him," she said, then fell silent as the train slowed for Harpers Ferry.
Cris knew that they would have to get off the passenger train in about ten minutes. Already the sleek ten-car varnish was slowing for the station. The ragtag buildings that seemed to announce every new town were now drifting past the car they were blinding on. On the outskirts of town were leaning, unpainted shacks with tar-paper roofs. Soon those structures were replaced by small boxy industrial brick buildings with low-slanted eaves, announcing that they were getting closer to the yard.
"We fought about just what you said the night before he left," Stacy continued softly. "I didn't want him to go. I was afraid of the research, where it was going. The last night he spent at home we argued about Dexter DeMille." She was speaking so quietly that he could barely hear her over the grinding metal brake shoes on the slowing train.
"We have to get off. You got everything?" Cris said, changing the subject.
She nodded and grabbed a small backpack she'd purchased in Shreveport. Then she shrugged her shoulders into the straps.
"Let's go," he said, as the train slowed to less than five miles an hour, and they easily dismounted the metal strip that was on the back of the baggage car.
Cris and Stacy moved away from the tracks and down into a gully. They crouched in the tall grass until the train was out of sight, moving very slowly into the yard.
"It's about a ten-mile walk into Frederick," Stacy said.
"How far is the Fort from there?" Cris asked.
"Not far. Just on the outskirts of town."
"If Fannon came here, he and DeMille must be collecting something from the base," he reasoned. "A military installation that big should be fed by rail. We oughta be able to catch a supply train into the property."
They climbed down a long, sloping hillside to a spot where they could see the two-lane highway slanting across the valley.
"I think I can get us in through the front door of the Fort without sneaking in," she said. "I left Max's ashes there, in Colonel Chittick's office. He said he was going to ship them, but what if we just show up to collect them?"
"I don't like it," Cris said. "I think it's dangerous for them to know you're on the base. After what happened last time, somebody will call Admiral Zoll and you're gonna be sitting in some interrogation room trying to talk your way out again."
"So, what do we do?"
"Let's head over there and I'll check the rail line that feeds the Fort. Somebody along the track oughta know what time the rail deliveries are made. It's probably once or twice a day."
They moved down to the two-lane highway and walked along the shoulder, heading northwest. It was a perfect day, cool and crisp. A fall wind was beginning to gust leaves across the road; they danced and flipped along in their orange and gold colors like nimble circus acrobats.
Cris found the rail heading into Fort Detrick, more or less by instinct. Most experienced hobos could look at the general terrain of an area and discern where the track would be; railroad engineers would shun any grade that exceeded twenty degrees and didn't allow for a switchback. After looking at the shape of the valley, Cris thought the rail leading into the Fort would most likely lie on the eastern slope, so he and Stacy headed that way. Before noon they found the spur leading into Fort Detrick and began walking alongside the track.
Ever since Shreveport, Cris had been feeling his old energy coming back. He got the rhythm into his stride, swinging his arms and legs, moving briskly until he could hear Stacy huffing behind him.
His lean body glistened with sweat, and he glowed with newfound purpose.
Around eight-thirty A. M., they arrived at the perimeter fencing of the Fort, near where the trains entered. The terrain was wooded, and a few hundred yards past the fence his view was obstructed by a dense growth of trees.
"It's surprising nobody is guarding this entrance. At the front gate they have Marines with automatic weapons," she said.
"Rail tracks are the back door to the twentieth century," he said, somewhat poetically. "A freight train is a very efficient transportation system, but it doesn't fit in with the jet age. It's still used, but strangely forgotten."
They found an old hobo sitting under a nearby tree. He was eating a peach, the juice running into his white beard. His face and clothes were grimy. Cris moved over and squatted in front of him. "Howdy. I'm Lucky," he said.
"Don't have t'tell me that, not with a pair a' shoes like them you got on," the old 'bo said.
"What time's the feeder train come through?" Cris asked.
"Two of 'em. First one's already come through, goes by at nine ever' night. It was the military train, fulla shit from the Pentagon. Anytime from now on, ya got yer supply train, food, soft goods, stuff like that. They're both pushers. Hard t'get on, not that y'wanna. Line stops a few miles in. They got patrols all over… ridin' in jeeps. Ya can hear 'em runnin' around all the way out here."
"Those the only two? The nine-o'clock olive and the supply train?" Cris asked, looking at his watch.
" 'Cept fer yesterday night. Damnedest thing I ever saw came through here… Sum'bitch was evil-lookin', cold an' mean as a pale ghost." Then the old man gave Cris and Stacy a description of the White Train, with its two low-flying black helicopters.
"What's it for?" Cris asked.
"Beats the shit outta me, but it probably ain't here deliverin' cookies," the old 'bo said.
Chapter 45
Dexter was scared shitless. He stood in the basement lab of the Devil's Workshop, in his white coat and gloves, looking into the deranged gray eyes of Fannon Kincaid.
"Okay, get goin'. Do yer magic," the crazed Messiah ordered.
Dexter had already taken the two metal vials of Pale Horse Prion they had retrieved from the bottom of Vanishing Lake over to the rack of acids and bases and set them down next to the pH meter that read the DNA markers. He had just finished setting up when suddenly Fannon moved over to him and stood very close. The voice in his ear was a hollow whisper, like a sour wind blowing into a dry well.
"Back in Vietnam, when we caught us a zip officer and we was debriefing him, we always had us a problemHow d'ya know if the scummy dink bastard is lyin' or not? It was a big problem, 'cause I hadda send men into battle based on intelligence gleaned from them zipperheads. I developed my own pain interrogation technique that was more accurate than a fuckin' lie detector. Did you know, Mr. DeMille, that on a dolorimeter pain threshold scale of one to ten, a normal man can only stand a level eight for less than twenty seconds before passing out? Women can generally go for almost a minuteGo figure that one." Fannon's tobacco breath was rancid and dank. "When a man comes out of it, he's in a state of mild shock and psychosis, which is not unlike hypnosis. He's conscious, but it's kinda like a dream state. Only lasts about four minutes. Then the man wakes all the way up, and he's so fucked he'll start screamin' an pukin'. Strange thing I discovered was, in this state of agony and semi-consciousness, even the bravest men don't lie. And the few who try, I can look in their eyes and know when they're shittin' me. Are y'with me here, bub?"