“This is what the Bureau is thinking?” I ask. “That someone targeted two different people in two different places with what’s basically weaponized electricity?”
“Like a particle beam, a laser, a rail gun that uses energy instead of projectiles. The technology’s out there. It’s been only a matter of time before something terrible happened.”
“And the delivery system in these two cases?”
“Something like a long-range laser gun. A manned aircraft. Or much more problematic would be a UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle converted into a weapon of assassination or mass destruction.”
“As in a drone you can buy off the Internet?”
“This is what we’ve been anticipating, and you’ve been hearing me say it for a while, Kay. A drone is going to take out a major passenger jet, a government building, a world leader. Sufficiently weaponized, a drone could take out a lot more than that. We’re waiting and watching because it’s a certainty when the capability is there.”
“And unfortunately drones are everywhere. Not a day goes by when I don’t see them somewhere,” I reply, and it gives me an uneasy feeling that I spotted one earlier today. “Even when I was walking to meet you, even in this heat, there was one flying around,” I add.
“Did it seem to be following you?”
“I didn’t think that at the time. But as we’re talking about it I remember being aware of one at the Square when Bryce was holding forth through the open car window before I went inside The Coop. And then there was the drone as I was walking through the Yard afterward. But I can’t say it’s the same one, and it didn’t come close.”
“Depending on how technically sophisticated the device is, it might not need to get close if it’s being used to spy or stalk,” he says. “Did you notice how many props it had? Was there anything about it that caught your attention?”
“It looked like a big black spider against the sun. That’s the only impression I recall having because I didn’t pay attention to it. I imagined some kid hanging out in his dorm room and having fun flying the thing. I honestly gave it almost no thought.”
“Kids are high on our list for this very problem, only we’ve been expecting homemade weaponized UAVs—drones armed with explosives, with firearms, pipe bombs, poisonous chemicals, even acid. But there are worse things to fear. Especially if the objective is to terrorize,” and as he talks I remember what Marino said a little while ago:
… If you think about it, Doc, a bolt out of the blue is a tail-end Charlie …
“You’re right,” I tell Benton. “You wouldn’t want the public to know you’re asking questions like this. People would be afraid to leave their homes if they thought they might get attacked from the sky while they’re swimming or riding a bicycle. What about burns? Do we know if Briggs has them?”
“There’s a burn on the back of his neck. A round one about the size of a dime.”
“Round?”
“Yes, and it’s red and blistered,” he says as I think of the skull pendant Elisa Vandersteel was wearing.
“Do we have any idea what caused this round burn?” I ask.
“No, but it must be something he came in contact with while he was in the pool.”
“What about jewelry, anything metal he had on?”
“Nothing except the copper bracelet he always wore. The one that turned his wrist green.”
“If it has alloys mixed in with the metal, it might have been magnetized.”
“It was very weakly when the death investigator from the medical examiner’s office thought to check. Apparently electrocution was top on the list because the pool clearly had malfunctioned for one reason or another,” Benton continues telling me what the police have said.
When they checked they discovered the pump, the wiring to the lights, everything was fried, and I envision the gray 30-amp breaker subpanel on the back of the house, 50 amp, to the left of the door that led into the kitchen. I tell Benton I’m fairly certain the pool was the only thing on it, and he replies that the breaker was thrown.
Then I ask about the main breaker panel outside the house. Was anything thrown in there, and he says no. This suggests the possibility of a transient high-voltage electrical source that came in contact with Briggs or the pool while he was swimming. And this sounds much too similar to what we’ve been saying about the Vandersteel case.
“Something that was there but isn’t now,” I follow what Benton is considering. “Something like manufactured lightning—or a directed-energy weapon, a DEW in other words.”
“Imagine if the water became electrified, and you have a pacemaker,” Benton adds, and my thumb finds his wedding band, a simple platinum one, as I’m reminded of Marino’s refusal to wear jewelry because it’s dangerous.
I ask if Briggs had on anything else metal. Was there anything on his person or around him that could have completed the circuit if he’d come in contact with an electrical source?
“Just the bracelet,” Benton says. “He wasn’t wearing his wedding band or his dog tags.”
“He wouldn’t have been. He always took them off when he swam. The last time I stayed with them he’d place them in a dish on the kitchen table,” I recall.
“That’s where they are in photographs I’ve seen.”
“Everything seems pretty normal.” I stop again to shake another small rock out of my shoe. “He did what he usually does, and yet you instantly suspect foul play? I don’t care that he’s a three-star general with a top-level security clearance. Even spies can drown or have a heart attack. What did you say that got your employer sufficiently interested to mobilize this fast?”
“Literally all it took was one phone call,” and Benton brings up the one he got from Washington, D.C., as we were leaving the Faculty Club.
IT WASN’T HIS DIRECTOR or the attorney general on the line.
My husband was being spoofed. He says he got the same type of call that Marino had gotten minutes earlier, and I don’t know how Benton found out about that. Possibly Lucy told him. But as I replay what happened as we were leaving our untouched dinners, I realize that Marino was on the phone telling me about Interpol contacting him even as Benton answered his own bogus call.
“Someone supposedly from the National Crime Bureau, the NCB.” Benton unlocks his phone, and the display is dimmed sufficiently so that it’s hard to see from a distance. “And this person said he’d e-mailed me a photograph, and sure enough he did.”
He holds his phone so I can see the picture, and I try to remember anyone acting oddly, perhaps loitering near us some ten days ago on Saturday night, August 27. I search my memory for someone who might have paid too much attention, staring or hovering, especially showing undue interest in General Briggs when we had dinner with his wife and him at the Palm in Washington, D.C., not even two weeks ago. The restaurant was packed with mostly a business crowd, and I remember it was loud.
“You weren’t aware of anybody taking photographs, and haven’t a clue who might have …?” I start to say as Benton shakes his head, no.
On the phone’s display, Briggs is all smiles but the picture has been Photoshopped to include a heavy black X over this face. His arm is around Ruthie as they sit across from Benton and me. We’re raising our glasses in a toast at our booth surrounded by cartoons of Dennis the Menace, Spider-Man, Nixon.
It was a festive evening with plenty of shoptalk mixed with pleasure, and Briggs and I discussed our talk. We enjoyed several Scotches as we fine-tuned logistics about tomorrow night’s event at the Kennedy School. As I look at the photograph I find it gut-wrenching and stunning that a happy moment captured in time would turn into something like this.
“Obviously someone was in the restaurant or near a window at some point while we were eating dinner,” I say to Benton. “Do you think it was Carrie Grethen?”
“Frankly yes. I think she or someone directed by her were nearby or passing through, depending on what technology was used. But someone obviously and delibera
tely took the picture of us and I was none the wiser either.”
“And the point?”
“Destablizing us is certainly a big part of it,” Benton says. “Keeping herself constantly at the center of our focus is important. She wants to remind us of her presence and that she’s smarter than we are, always one step ahead. Never forget this is a competition.”
But I do forget. I can’t possibly spend my waking moments thinking about something like that. I’ve never understood people, including my own sister, who devote most of their resources to besting someone, to winning a match that’s one-sided and imagined.
“She wants our attention and our fear,” Benton continues to tell me what Carrie craves, and I’ve been hearing it forever. “Most of all she has to overpower us, to get in the last word. Control and more control.”
“Who do you think you were actually talking to when you saw the 202 area code for D.C. and took the call?” I ask. “Did you assume it really was an NCB investigator?”
“I wasn’t sure what was going on at first. The person sounded male and reasonably credible until he launched in about the developing Maryland investigation. That was the language, and I had no idea what investigation he was talking about. So I listened, and I asked why he was calling me specifically and how he got my cell phone number. He said I was listed as the contact person on the case.”
“What case specifically?” I look down at my shoes, and one of the heels is coming loose.
“In hindsight, obviously Briggs, who I wouldn’t know about until a little bit later. But at the time this so-called NCB investigator was vague. When I pushed him on details he was in a hurry. He gave me a phone number that turns out to be the desk of the Hay-Adams Hotel.”
“And since that’s exactly what happened to Marino,” I reply, “it can’t be a coincidence.”
“I agree. Two bogus phone calls within minutes of each other, both supposedly from NCB about two different cases that have barely happened yet, mysterious sudden electrical-type deaths occurring almost at the same time hundreds of miles apart,” Benton says, and I remember him in the drawing room of the Faculty Club, on the phone near the grand piano.
“When this so-called investigator was talking to you, did you notice if he coughed?”
“It’s interesting you would say that. Yes, he sounded like he might have asthma.”
It’s possible Carrie is utilizing voice-altering software, and I wonder if she’s sick or maybe her accomplice is. Benton may have been talking to one of them and had no idea. It’s even more bizarre to think Marino might have been. I touch the left arrow at the bottom of the phone’s display to go back a screen to see who e-mailed the photograph.
Tailend Charlie sent it to Benton’s FBI e-mail address some four hours ago, last night at eight P.M. This was an hour and fifteen minutes after Ruthie discovered her husband in the pool, and maybe forty-five minutes after the twins discovered Elisa Vandersteel’s body here in the park and helped themselves to her phone, calling 911.
“We’re supposed to know Briggs was a hit,” Benton says. “That’s why I got the photograph. It’s a way of claiming responsibility. Calling Marino was a way of doing the same thing about the case here in Cambridge. It’s what terrorists do, and never forget that’s what Carrie Grethen is. She and whoever she’s in league with are terrorists who won’t stop until they’re eliminated.”
“I’m glad she’s telling us what she thinks we need to know.” I feel a prick of anger.
“If she took out Briggs herself, and I believe she did,” he says, “then that could place her in Bethesda some six or seven hours ago.”
“Depending on how she did it,” I remind him. “If you’re talking about something like a laser gun fired from an unmanned aircraft? I’m assuming that can be done from the desk of someone sitting thousands of miles away.” Even as I say this I know where Benton is headed.
He and his colleagues will be going south to Maryland. But I won’t be going with them. They’d be wise not to ask.
“I’m supposing she might be in the D.C. area because of the photograph taken of us in the Palm,” Benton confirms what I suspect. “And if the ultimate goal of what we’re seeing is some coordinated attack using UMVs on a massive scale, then I can see her spending time in the Washington-Baltimore area,” and there can be no doubt where this is going.
Or more precisely, where it’s already gone. Over the next few hours, Benton will be on his way to D.C. or Baltimore. I’m supposed to be with him as FBI agents begin arriving at my headquarters, which conveniently will be missing its director and chief. Elisa Vandersteel’s autopsy and virtually everything else will be witnessed and micromanaged.
We’re about to be invaded. At least I’ll be prepared, thanks to Harold, and I’m hoping Anne is already at the office.
CHAPTER 36
SHE ANSWERS HER CELL phone on the first ring, and I can tell she’s expecting my call.
“I’m pulling into the parking lot now,” Anne’s voice is in my earpiece, and she doesn’t bother with hello.
“Any sign of visitors yet?” I ask.
“Not so far.”
There may be a lot of people in and out, and it doesn’t matter if we didn’t invite some of them, I tell her. It’s of no consequence if we don’t like them or completely understand who they are. They must be taken care of properly. So we need beverages, especially coffee, and most of all we need food.
“Not much is going to be open at this hour if you’re hoping for something decent to eat,” Anne’s easygoing voice says as I begin to make out John F. Kennedy Street through dense trees up ahead, and I don’t see any traffic.
“That’s why we have the locked freezer in the break room,” I begin to explain confidentially as if I’m telling her how to access Fort Knox. “There should be pizza I keep for emergencies. Meat, vegetarian and vegan. Gluten-free and regular.”
“Seriously?”
“What did you think was in there?”
“The last lawyer you didn’t like. I don’t know.”
“I’m still at the scene but heading back. Benton is dropping me off.” I keep my voice down.
I glance back at him, and the hulking shape of the tent looms in the dark distance behind us like a flattened thunderhead. He’s politely walking some distance away because he doesn’t want to overhear what I say. If he doesn’t hear it he doesn’t have to tell anyone, and it won’t be Benton who pulls the evidence out from under me. But he won’t stop it from happening either. That’s assuming I don’t beat his colleagues to the draw.
I’m suddenly alert and in overdrive as I explain to Anne that I need Ernie Koppel to come in right away. I’ll also require someone from the histology lab to prepare specimens for him. We’re about to be interfered with, overtaken, and if we don’t begin testing evidence immediately there’s a good chance it will all end up at Quantico, at the FBI crime labs.
We talk about this obliquely. Nothing is to be put in writing, and we’re very careful what we say over the phone. Hopefully, by the time the government makes its official requests, I’ll have done most of the analysis. I’ll have done everything I possibly can to answer questions that I worry might languish otherwise or never be asked. Elisa Vandersteel needs me to finish what I’ve started.
She deserves the best I can give her, and the first order of business will be the CT scan. I suggest to Anne that whatever left the odd linear burns might have deposited microscopic evidence in the wounds.
“Lightning wouldn’t do that.”
“You’re exactly right,” I reply. “It wouldn’t.”
“But an electrocution might.”
“And if so?” I ask her. “Electrocuted by what? What looks like lightning but isn’t? We need to find out exactly what happened to her if for no other reason than to make sure that it doesn’t happen to somebody else.”
“And while we may care about that? No one else will,” Anne says, and I know what she’s really saying.
I
f the evidence ends up in Quantico, we have no control over who finds out what. The Feds have their own agenda, and it’s not the same as mine.
“He’ll be autopsied in Baltimore tomorrow. Well actually today.” Benton has wandered back and slides his hand out of his pants pocket, glances at the luminescent dial glowing on his wrist. “Christ. It’s already half-past midnight. How did that happen?”
“I assume you’ve talked to Doctor Ventor or someone has.”
The chief medical examiner of Maryland, Henrik “Henry” Ventor is one of the finest forensic pathologists in the country, both of us affiliated with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, the AFMES. Briggs trained us, was our commander, our boss.
“Yes, and he’s already been in touch with the police,” Benton says.
“I assume that’s where you’re headed after you drop me off,” I add.
“I took the liberty of getting Page to grab your bug-out bag from the hall closet at home, and we have it with us. Any other items hopefully you can pick up at the office. I realize you need to get out of your scrubs and clean up a bit. Then we’ll head out.”
“I’m not going with you, Benton.”
“We’d like you there.”
“Even if I didn’t have responsibilities here, I wouldn’t get involved. I don’t need to tell you why that is.”
“We could use your help, and the other doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It shouldn’t matter but it could. Imagine what it would do to Ruthie if I got asked the wrong thing under oath.”
“I promise you won’t get asked.”
“That’s a promise you can’t possibly keep, Benton. I can’t be helpful in Maryland right now but I could do some harm. And I need to finish this case. I’m not about to walk off in the middle of it. So I’m staying put.”
He goes on to remind me that the Army CID, the Pentagon, the FBI and various intelligence agencies want Briggs’s autopsy witnessed by at least one other senior forensic pathologist, preferably a special reservist with the Air Force who’s affiliated with the AFMES. In other words, ordinarily that senior person would be me, he says as if I didn’t just tell him no several times.