She realized with a chill that Kells was right. FBI negotiator Raleigh was playing her, talking the talk. He was stalling.
“Why don’t you give me the names and addresses of everyone there,” Raleigh continued.
The act of registering their identities with a higher power was supposed to comfort her, but it was just paperwork in place of real action. Rebecca turned to the hopeful faces watching her. Kells remained behind, arms folded, studying the fire.
“We can contact your families for you,” Raleigh went on, through the silence. “Let them know you’re all right.”
“We have telephones here,” said Rebecca. “We can call them ourselves.”
“Right. Of course.” He felt her cooling off. “But please impress upon the others the danger involved. The prisoners will be monitoring the media. You don’t want to tip them off that you are still inside the town.”
“No,” she agreed, her spirit sinking.
“Let me give you a special direct phone number.” Rebecca copied it down dutifully on a scorecard with a green-leaded golf pencil. “Just sit tight and stay low,” FBI Special Agent Raleigh concluded, “and I’ll get back to you shortly.”
“Right,” she said, numbly, hanging up the telephone.
Fern watched with a hand at her cheek. Rita was clutching Bert’s arm, and Mia’s eyes were wishing for the best while expecting the worst.
“They’re not going to help us,” Rebecca said.
Dr. Rosen’s defeated gaze drifted to the floor. Mia just stared.
“They won’t do anything to upset the prisoners,” Rebecca went on. “They want us to sit here and wait.”
“You weren’t forceful enough,” said Terry. “You’ve got to tell these people exactly what you want. You’ve got to be explicitly clear.”
His reaction shamed the others. Rebecca was furious. “You call him back,” she said. She threw the phone number at him and the scorecard hit his chest and fell to the floor. “Call him back yourself and be explicitly fucking clear.”
“Okay,” said Bert, stepping in. “Let’s not fall apart here.”
Rebecca went over to Kells, emboldened by her anger. “How did you know?” she asked.
Kells was infuriatingly even-tempered. “The FBI is out of it now,” he answered. “This is a national security situation now. Department of Defense.”
“Enough,” said Terry, still near the reception desk, shaking. “I’m a bonds analyst. He’s a doctor, she’s an innkeeper, we have a social worker, a thriller writer, the rest. Who the hell are you, and how do you know so much about this, and why do you carry a gun?”
“I’m a government employee,” said Kells. “I work for the Pentagon.”
Terry kept pushing. “And what do you do for them?”
“Special investigations for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.”
“The ‘Doomsday’ Agency,” said Rebecca.
Kells was mildly surprised. “That’s right. We deal with weapons of mass destruction and unconventional warfare. Primarily the development of NBC weapons outside the dissolved Soviet Union. That’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical.”
“You’re a physicist,” she said. It was all she could remember about the agency.
“Not me. Just a street agent. That incident in Montana, the ricin exposure? The ex-con bled out in quarantine with the rest, but the FBI traced his movements back to a ranch outside Mesa, Arizona. There was a small factory in a work shed there on the property. Inside they found a partially constructed delivery device and nearly four pounds of ricin stored in coffee cans, baby food jars, thermoses. That’s when I came onto the case. We don’t get many domestic investigations, but the ex-con was carrying thousands in cash, semiautomatic rifles and ammunition, even a surface-to-air missile launcher. His intended target was never identified. Every lead dead-ended. I was delving deep into the con’s background, which is how I wound up here. He had done some time in Marion with Trait and wore a Brotherhood of Rebellion tattoo on his arm.” Again, he looked at Rebecca. “But even a government official on a special investigation couldn’t get in to talk to Trait.”
Much of the antagonism had evaporated and the others paid Kells careful attention now. “So — this ricin,” said Bert.
“It’s real and deadly, everything Trait says it is and more. But most importantly for us, the government will treat it as such. Gilchrist is this country’s nightmare scenario. No one, certainly not the president, is going to put a couple of thousand of innocent lives on the line for us or for these cons. The prisoners are going to use the media to hold the entire country hostage in a high-tech, high-stakes blackmail, and it’s going to work.”
Rebecca said, “How can you be so certain?”
“Trait doesn’t need to take out a million people. Probably couldn’t. Variables such as wind, climate, transmission. But this is psychological warfare more than biological. There is no precedent for this. Doomsday always knew something like this might happen, we’ve discussed it, we’ve planned for it, but we’ve never had to deal with actual human lives. Trait’s gambit here is solid. The best the FBI can possibly do is to maybe exploit the information chain. People other than Trait have to know the names of the targeted communities, including at least a few people on the outside. The FBI will be kicking in the doors of every Brotherhood of Rebellion ex-con out there.”
“I don’t understand,” said Rebecca. “How can the prisoners be so organized? Trait’s been in isolation all this time. And he’s a killer, not a terrorist.”
“Obviously he had help on the outside. Anyone remember the name Errol Inkman?”
Rebecca did, vaguely.
Kells said, “Resigned from the CIA in the early nineties, two years before Aldrich Ames. Inkman had been passing information to Libyans and other terrorist nations. He was arrested and held for months but never prosecuted. He’s in his late-fifties now, thinner and worn, but still with a European mien. Graying hair. Bushy eyebrows.”
“You don’t mean,” said Fern, with a start, “Mr. Hodgkins?”
“I didn’t put it all together until last night,” said Kells. “I thought I recognized him at dinner — I did recognize him — but could not place the face. Unlike Ames, Ink man’s treachery hadn’t resulted in the loss of any lives, so rather than risk airing the agency’s dirty laundry in a public trial, the CIA quietly let him go.”
Rebecca remembered the worn, particular man at dinner that first night. “Why would he bother springing a killer like Trait?”
“Just because they didn’t prosecute doesn’t mean they let Inkman off scot-free. He betrayed the United States. I’m certain they pulled his life apart brick by brick. Bankrupted him with lawsuits, scared away potential employers, harassed his friends, searched his home. I know his wife left him, and he started drinking. I imagine now he’s a very bitter man with an intense anti-American grudge. As the former second-in-command of the CIA’s counter-terrorism station, he’s got a lot of specialized information lying fallow. Now he’s putting that expertise to work. He is one of those people who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, whose latent genius went underappreciated and unacknowledged. A large ego in a marginalized man. I don’t know how he could have gotten involved with Trait and the Brotherhood of Revolution. I do know that, in order to pull off something of this magnitude, he needed absolute secrecy and unwavering dedication of the men involved — something perhaps only Luther Trait could deliver.”