Immune (7 page)

The reason for the rattle became immediately apparent as he lifted the lid. The box contained a sealed envelope and a small locked jewelry box. The packing around the jewelry box was insufficient to keep it from sliding back and forth in the shoe box, at least if dropped on the floor.

Freddy Hagerman rubbed his chin. Damn odd. The envelope was a white velum of intermediate quality, the type used for thank you cards. Across the seal, two capital letters had been printed: AA. Freddy slit the envelope along the upper edge, extracting the folded card with two fingers. The pre-printed “thank you” was the only writing on the outside of the card.

His first glance inside startled him so badly that he almost dropped the card. The note was short:

Dear Mr. Hagerman. My name is Abdul Aziz. Since you have received this package, I am already dead.

This means I have failed to deliver my message to the world, so I must rely on you, postmortem. I picked you because you are too talented and have access to too many unusual resources to be where you are today. I need your desperation.

As you are no doubt aware, I have come into some information about the Rho Project. Unfortunately, if I told you what I have learned, you would be obliged to immediately hand over the classified information to your government. Instead, I will provide clues that should allow you to discover the story for yourself.

In the small jewelry case I have placed two items and an address. The first of these items is a specimen slide. Take it to a medical examiner you can trust.

The second item was in the possession of one of the Rho Project’s experimental subjects, a man who called himself Priest Williams. The effects of the Rho Experiment on his mind will become self-evident. Go to the address. There you will find the answers to all your questions. There you will find your Pulitzer Prize.
Inshallah
.

At the bottom of the note, a small key was taped to the card with a piece of tape. Freddy stared down at the key, his eyes moving to the locked jewelry box, which now sat on the kitchen table. The whole thing was probably a hoax, something designed to humiliate him. Perhaps one of the enemies he had made from his gossip column had come up with an ingenious way for him to make a fool of himself. Of course, he couldn’t really make that judgment unless he looked in the jewelry box, now could he?

Removing the tape that held the key, Freddy slid the key into the small lock and twisted. The catch released with a click. For a moment, he considered the possibility that the box might contain a bomb. But that made no sense. If the sender had wanted to kill him, he could have done so when he opened the outer box. And why take the trouble to write the note?

Despite the logic of the thought, Freddy found his hands shaking as he raised the jewelry box lid. Inside, a scrap of yellow paper wrapped a microscope slide, held in place with a red rubber band. Unwrapping the paper, he noted that it contained a New Mexico address and a set of latitude and longitude coordinates. Although he did not have a microscope to examine the contents, Freddy held the glass slide up to the kitchen light. A thin slice of translucent red material lay sandwiched between the plates.

Disappointed, Freddy turned his attention to the last item in the jewelry case, a black plastic bag, the top tied into a knot. Since the knot seemed unlikely to yield to gentler measures, he grabbed the sides of the plastic bag and pulled, spilling the contents out onto the tabletop as the bag ripped open.

Freddy scrambled backward, knocking over his chair in his sudden panic. There on his kitchen table, sprawled across his white tablecloth, lay a necklace of severed female fingers, the nails all neatly polished in red.

"Mr. Vice President. There's something on CNN you will want to see."

Carl Palmer's voice caused George Gordon to glance up from the intelligence briefing papers. His chief of staff rarely interrupted him. The fact that Carl did so now meant George probably wasn't going to like what he was about to see.

As the flat-panel television came to life, the voice of CNN’s Robert Collins provided the running commentary, but the pictures alone were enough to confirm the vice president's premonition. A large crowd of Native Americans had gathered around the front of a small building and appeared to be in an ugly mood. Working to keep them back, a group of FBI agents in stenciled windbreakers blocked the entrance. As Robert Collins continued his report, the reason for the demonstration became clear. The FBI was in the process of searching the Santa Clara Tribal Police Headquarters pursuant to a federal search warrant.

At the moment, Collins was in the midst of an interview with Tribal Police Sergeant Pino.

“Officer Pino, is it true that this raid is related to the fact that you were the first person on the scene of the terrorist attack that took the lives of two Los Alamos Security people two weeks ago?”

The Indian policeman was striking, both in appearance and demeanor. He was dressed in a manner common to local police in the Southwestern United States: black, broad-brimmed cowboy hat, police uniform, and cowboy boots. His long, straight, black hair hung almost to his belt, framing a rugged face, worn by years spent outdoors. Pino's black eyes flashed with a thinly controlled anger.

“I was the first on the scene.”

“But is this raid connected to that incident?”

“The FBI is here for only one reason. I’m a Navajo cop.”

“So you are saying it has nothing to do with the recent terrorist attack along the Los Alamos Highway?”

Sergeant Pino pointed to the surrounding crowd and the FBI agents gathered outside the modest building that contained the Tribal Police headquarters. “Oh, it’s connected to the incident. But ask yourself one thing. Would the federal government have come into any non-native police station in this manner?”

A loud chorus of agreement from jostling bystanders momentarily drowned out Collins’ attempts at further questions.

“But why the search warrant? The FBI must suspect you of something.”

“Ask them.”

“I did. They refused to comment about an ongoing investigation.”

“And I’m sure they wouldn’t want me commenting either, so I will. An FBI agent showed up here a few days ago, asking me questions that implied I screwed up the crime scene. I took offense at his tone and sent him on his way. This search warrant sends a message. I’ll let you and your audience decide what it means.”

As the interview continued, Vice President Gordon's alarm grew. Not only did the tribal policeman make a damn good case that the FBI had overstepped its bounds with its heavy-handed intimidation tactics, but the man was a dynamic television personality. There he stood, tall, proud, and indignant, his long black hair blowing out around his shoulders in the stiff breeze. And all the while, the camera drank him in.

Great. Backdropped by the increasingly agitated and growing Native American crowd, the situation appeared to be rapidly spiraling out of control.

"God damn it, Carl!" Gordon's voice was loud enough to echo down the hallway outside his office. "Get me the FBI director. I want him on the phone now!"

Carl Palmer stepped out of the office without closing the door. In less than a minute, he returned. "He's on the line now, sir."

The vice president picked up the phone. "Bill, what the hell is going on in New Mexico?"

"Mr. Vice President, I'm looking into that right now," Bill Hammond responded.

"You'd better get a handle on this quick. When the president sees this, he is going to have someone's ass."

The pause before the FBI director answered made it clear he knew whose ass George Gordon was talking about. "As I said, I'm looking into the matter now."

"Well you'd better do more than look. You know what this looks like? It looks like another government cover-up of something related to the Rho Project. That's not exactly the type of press coverage the old man wants right now."

"Mr. Vice President, I know my job." Hammond's voice cracked with indignation.

Vice President Gordon smiled to himself. Now he had the man's attention. "Which is why I called you, Bill. I didn't want you to be blindsided when you get the call from the president."

"I appreciate that. Now, if you don't mind, I have some calls to make before that happens."

As he hung up the phone, George Gordon glanced up at his chief of staff, who stood awaiting the instructions he knew would follow.

"Carl, give Andy a buzz. The president probably already knows, but his chief is going to want to orchestrate the White House response to this incident."

Watching his chief of staff disappear down the hall, George Gordon shook his head. The moron who came up with the brilliant notion of rousting the Indian police was probably some FBI regional office director. Well, whoever it was would soon find him or herself in charge of the most out of the way shit-hole Bill Hammond could come up with. Of that, the vice president had no doubt.

Freddy Hagerman lurched in his seat, praying that the rusty undercarriage of his 1989 Subaru didn’t fall out on the rutted dirt road. It would make for one hell of a long walk back to the highway. But the old girl hadn’t let him down yet. It was why he had nicknamed her The African Queen, after the boat in one of his favorite old Bogart movies.

In an odd way, he felt like Bogey right now, lurching along this rough New Mexico dirt road as the sun sank toward the western horizon. He hadn’t seen any rattlesnakes yet, but surely they were out there waiting for him, coiled under bushes and rocks, every bit as menacing as the leeches that had awaited Bogey in that African river. His sense of isolation was heightened because Freddy hadn’t seen a house, car, or person since he had left the county road an hour ago. And Freddy didn’t even have a bossy Katherine Hepburn to keep him company.

The thought of bossy women reminded him of his ex-wives. Maybe solitude wasn’t that bad after all.

He glanced over at his satchel, sitting on the passenger seat beside him. Inside it, along with his Nikon camera, rolls of film, and his tape recorder, was the letter that had sent him scurrying to New Mexico as fast as the old car could carry him. Two days of hard driving had brought him to Taos. From there, it had taken a number of stops at courthouses to find the exact location of the spot he was looking for. Even with the GPS device, his one surrender to modern digital technology, it had taken most of the rest of the day to find the right set of barbed wire gates to get this far.

The letter had come via overnight mail. In all the years he had known the retired New York City medical examiner, Freddy had never gotten anything from Benny Marucci that wasn’t sent at the cheapest postal rate possible. Yet there it was: an overnight, registered letter, with its Little Italy postmark.

Benny was one of the few old Italians left in what had once been the heart of Italian New York City. Now, for all intents and purposes, it was a part of Chinatown. Most of the Italian families had long since departed, including Benny’s. But not Benny Marucci.

His father had been a mob boss. His three brothers had risen through the ranks of the family business from low-level enforcers to high-ranking crime figures. Two of them had died under a hail of bullets in Morris Park and the other died in prison. But somehow Benny had served thirty years as a New York City M.E. while eating Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with the mob. Having survived numerous investigations by Internal Affairs and a couple of hit attempts, Benny had just kept on working until he hit the mandatory retirement age.

Benny Marucci was a bulldog of a man, even now, late into his seventies.

The letter had confirmed that the fingers strung onto the necklace had been cut from the female victims while they were still alive with a guillotine-style cigar cutter. The fingers were from five different women, each of whom had been reported missing in northern New Mexico in the last year. Benny had included pictures and short bios of each. All of them were in their twenties, beautiful, and rich.

But it was the contents of the microscope slide specimen that had caused Benny to send the response with such urgency.

It was a razor-thin slice of human heart tissue. By calling in a few old debts, Benny had gained access to the DNA record of one Carlton “Priest” Williams and had verified that the sample was, in fact, his. The man’s records after joining the military were only partially available, indicative of a highly classified position. His discharge under other than honorable conditions in 2002 did not elaborate on the reasons.

What made the sliver of heart pressed between the glass slides so astounding was the blood. It was infested by something that Benny could not identify, other than to say that it contained a high concentration of microscopic machines of unknown manufacture and purpose. Benny had never seen anything like it and didn’t seem to think anyone else had either.

The letter had ended with just three words. “Be careful,
paesano
.”

Unfortunately, careful wouldn’t get it done for Freddy. These last few years had been filled with a growing sense that he was buried under circumstances beyond his control, doomed to a life of mediocrity in Hicksville, USA. Now he had been handed a chance to dig himself out, and he wasn’t going to give that up in the name of caution.