Dead Man's Rule (29 page)

Ben wouldn’t budge from the line, which was finally starting to move now that the old man had remembered the steel pin he had in his leg. “No offense, Steve, but I really don’t have time. Put your best offer in writing and I’ll discuss it with my client and get back to you.” He moved forward with the line, leaving a startled Steve Rocco several feet behind him.

Not to be deterred, the prominent attorney followed Ben, little lines of irritation showing around his mouth. “Ben, the window of opportunity on this offer is very short. I need an answer from your client today. I’m sure your meeting is very important, but it can wait ten minutes. Now, if you’ll just step over here, we can—”

“Actually, it
can’t
wait,” interrupted Ben as he reached the checkpoint. “I’m sorry, Steve, but I’ve got other things on my mind right now. Send your offer to my office and we’ll look at it. I’ll try to get back to you today, but I can’t promise anything.”

Two weeks ago, he would have spent the whole afternoon analyzing Rocco’s offer and planning how to respond. Now he had forgotten about it by the time he stepped out of the elevator.

He walked into the lobby of the FBI offices, a small room with two receptionists behind bulletproof glass and locked doors that had to be buzzed open. Ben gave his name to the receptionists and paced nervously as he waited for Elena to come get him. A large glass case lined one wall of the lobby. In it were the pictures and names of agents from the office who had died in the line of duty. Ben skimmed over the names and faces, wondering if any new ones would be added after this case was over.

Elena buzzed Ben in and whisked him into a conference room where two men waited. One was a heavyset, dark-skinned man with a large turquoise ring. The other was a small, pale man in a dark suit. “Ben, I’d like you to meet Oleg Ignatev of the CIA and Alberto Gomez of the HMRU, the Bureau’s Hazardous Materials Response Unit. We’d like to talk to you about Dr. Ivanovsky, but first I wanted to let you know that we found Sergei. He’ll be all right, though he’ll need to spend a few days in the hospital.” She briefly described her rescue of Sergei and what he had told her about his captors.

“That’s great news!” Ben said when she had finished. It was the first good news he’d had all day. “I’d begun to think I’d never see him again.”

He glanced at the two CIA men. “I’ll bet Sergei’s kidnapping had something to do with the Ivanovsky matter. Am I right?”

“We think there might be a connection,” acknowledged Agent Gomez. “Sergei told us that you asked him to investigate whether the CIA had a file on a Mr. Zinoviev. Why did you do that?”

“For the reasons I mentioned in the voice mail I left for Elena. Dr. Ivanovsky told me a very disturbing story about a CIA employee named Zinoviev. My client said Zinoviev had stolen biological weapons and committed over a dozen murders in the process. It would have been awkward—and possibly unethical—for me to just call Elena and repeat the whole thing to her. So I decided to try something less direct. Sergei and I figured that if the story was true, you’d have a file on it and ask us the question you just asked me. If it wasn’t true, my client’s story was wrong and there was nothing to worry about.”

“What precisely was your client’s story?” asked Agent Ignatev. He had no accent, but enunciated with the careful clarity of someone for whom English is a second language. “Please be as specific as possible.”

Ben repeated what Dr. Ivanovsky had told him on the day he’d lost the summary-judgment motion. They had a tape recorder on the table, but Ben noticed that they also took notes occasionally while he spoke, as if they knew most of the story already, but not all of it. Neither man betrayed any surprise or emotion.

Ben’s frustration mounted as he spoke. When he finished, he leaned forward and looked each of them in the eye. “So if this is all true, what took you guys so long?”

“We can’t comment on that, Mr. Corbin,” said Agent Gomez. “This matter is highly classified.”

“But it
is
true, right?” persisted Ben. “Maybe not all the details, but the basic story is accurate, isn’t it? Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t comment on any of that.”

Ben clenched his jaws and looked each man in the eye. “I have a right to know what’s going on. My client and my detective are both in the hospital. Everyone else who has stood in the way of the Brothers and these Chechens has either died or vanished. How do I know I’m not next?”

After a brief pause, Elena said, “We can protect you.”

“Thanks,” said Ben, “but you can’t tell me what’s going on?”

Agent Gomez smiled and spread his hands palm up. “I’m afraid not.”

“Can you at least tell me who you’re protecting me from? I know something about the Brothers, of course, but who are these other guys? I’ll sleep better at night if I know.”

“No, you won’t,” replied Agent Gomez.

“How do you feel?” Elena asked.

Sergei lay on his stomach on the hospital bed, an IV needle in his arm and long, narrow bandages on his back and legs. “Like a steak that got left on the grill a little too long. I look like one too, don’t I?”

Elena laughed. “I wasn’t going to say anything. Seriously, though, you look a lot better than the last time I saw you.” Four hours ago, he had been in the back of an ambulance, semi-delirious with fever, dehydration, and the aftereffects of two minor concussions. He’d spent the whole trip to the hospital telling her in rambling detail all that he could remember about his captors.

By now, the powerful antibiotics coursing through his blood had taken effect, and he had been steadily drinking electrolytes to rehydrate his body. His CAT scan had shown no evidence of brain damage, and the neurologist doubted that Sergei would have any nerve damage from his torture.

“I feel a lot better too. They’re planning to release me tomorrow, and the doctor says I’ll be fine, though I may have some scars.” He pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the bed, moving slowly and gingerly. “But it could have been much worse.” He paused, and his warm brown eyes held hers. “Thanks.”

Elena pulled a chair close and sat down, her knees a few inches from his. “I’m just glad I got there in time.”

He smiled and winked. “Me too. So, any new developments?”

“We just finished interviewing Ben,” she replied. “I can’t give you any classified information, of course, but there’s going to be a protective detail guarding him and Noelle within the hour.”

“Good. How about the Brothers? Have you found them yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Think you will? My guess is they’ve disappeared, either voluntarily or involuntarily.”

She nodded. “These Chechens play pretty rough, and the Brothers probably know that. If I were them, I’d leave Chicago and go to ground somewhere, maybe in Russia.”

“That would be smart,” said Sergei. A shadow passed over his face. “I wish I’d done the same thing.”

“I know.” Elena laid a hand on his arm. “It must have been awful for you.”

“It was no fun.” His face turned grim as he remembered his torment. “The worst part actually came after they’d stopped shocking me. The guy held up that syringe and told me he was going to kill me right then.” He dropped his eyes from hers. “I started to lose it when he said that.”

“Of course—I think most people would lose it in that situation.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve come close to death or had someone threaten to kill me. I’ve never been afraid of death. It’s always seemed like a challenge—or an enemy to be outwitted. But when I sat tied to that chair staring at that syringe, I was convinced that I was going to die. I had to face death head-on, and I was scared out of my mind. It wasn’t so much the thought of
dying
that scared me—you know, how much it would hurt and everything—it was the thought of
being dead
, of . . . of being gone, not existing anymore. Or maybe being someplace else. I felt completely unprepared for whatever would come next.” He fell silent for a moment. “It’s tough to put into words.”

“It will probably take a while for you to put it behind you,” Elena said, feeling awkward. “You’ve been through a lot.”

He fidgeted with his sheet. “Yeah. I just wish . . . I don’t know. Maybe the best thing is not to think about it anymore.”

She wanted to comfort him somehow, but didn’t know what to say. She’d never really thought about what lay on the other side of death, and the topic tongue-tied her.

After a few seconds, he looked up and made a dismissive gesture, as if he were shooing away a fly. “But enough about me.
You
were amazing. A rescue like that almost makes the whole thing worthwhile.”

She felt herself blush and shrugged modestly. “Well, we’re all trained for situations like that. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Any one of us could have done it.”

He smiled. “You were trained not to go into that building without backup. Not that I’m complaining.”

She smiled back. “I’ll try not to screw up next time.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

He put his hand on hers and looked at her, his eyes deep wells of feeling. Then he leaned forward and kissed her.

A letter from Steve Rocco awaited Ben when he arrived back at his office. It was three pages, single-spaced, but the gist was that Rocco’s clients were willing to pay five million dollars over five years in return for a full release and a paid-up license to use Circuit Dynamics’ technology. That would mean half a million to Ben personally, but he was still convinced that the case was worth a lot more.

He brought Rocco’s letter into Noelle’s office and handed it to her. She skimmed it and then looked up at him. “So they’re finally serious, huh?”

“Yeah, but not serious enough,” replied Ben. “I’m going to advise Fred Schultz to stand pat at twenty-five million—at least until they come up to ten. Otherwise we’ll take them to trial.”

She handed the letter back to him, not even bothering to bring up the cost of trial or what a settlement would mean for their finances. “Now tell me how things went with the FBI.”

“Eggs?” Elbek said in confusion. He stood in front of three industrial-size egg incubators full of unnaturally shiny chicken eggs. “What are you doing with all these eggs?”

Dr. Umarov turned to him, his face impossible to read inside the respirator and hood of his biosafety “blue suit.” “We are creating death from life. Smallpox only grows in living cells. In the Soviet Union, we used cell cultures from green monkeys and human fetuses. These cannot be bought easily and without attracting attention. So where do we get cells? Eggs. Fertilized chicken eggs are excellent virus factories. We dip the eggs in paraffin, inject them with smallpox, and wait while it multiplies inside them. Then, when the virus concentration is at its highest, we crack open the eggs into this fermenter”—he gestured to a large vat equipped with pipes, valves, and gauges—“and cook them according to my secret recipe.”

He paused for a laugh that didn’t come.

“That stabilizes the weapon and makes it more virulent,” he continued. “Then we dry it in here”—he pointed to a commercial bread oven—“and grind it into powder with this.” He gestured to a large milling machine before continuing. “In the Soviet Union, we had another machine to treat the powder so that each particle would repel the others, making the dispersal area larger. But this machine will still make a very effective weapon.