Dead Man's Rule (39 page)

The hot wind from the blast swept over Elbek where he lay in the ditch beside the access road. The shock wave rolled him over and brought him back to consciousness. His skull throbbed, and blood matted the hair above his left ear. As he reached to touch the wound, he realized that he must have struck his head on the hard, gravelly ground when he was thrown from the exploding van.

He tried to stand, but pain shot through his right leg and he fell. Ignoring the electric jolts of agony, he pulled up his pant leg. He felt his leg with the rough, expert hands of a veteran soldier—one who knows pain and has learned much practical medicine in the field. He found no broken bones. Based on the pain and swelling, he guessed that it was a severe sprain. He could force himself to walk with that, but not fast.

He scrambled up the side of the ditch and into the cover of the long grass. He then crawled parallel to the road for about twenty yards, which he judged was far enough from the crash site to avoid being found by police searching for bodies and evidence thrown off by the collision and explosions. He lay flat and looked around, assessing the situation. He heard shouts and glimpsed running figures. A group stopped by the still-burning vans but looked at them only cursorily and left a lone guard before running on. They were probably hunting fugitives or going to find the group trapped in the factory—or whatever was left of them.

Elbek thought furiously. If he could get just one container out of the wreckage of the vans and escape, it would be enough. He could start over, maybe in Chechnya or the lawless mountains of Afghanistan. Or he could go to O’Hare and walk past the check-in counters in the domestic terminals, dispersing an army of unwitting plague-bearers throughout America.

But how could he get to the vans? Even with his bad leg, he could probably eliminate the guard quietly, but then what? The area was swarming with every free police unit from Elmhurst and the surrounding towns, and all of them would be looking for Chechens.

“Looking for Chechens,” he murmured to himself. The germ of an idea took root and began to grow. He smiled. Then he started back toward the ruined Caravans, silent and deadly as a panther.

“Lord, please don’t let us die in here, not like this,” whispered Ben as he looked around. The flames crowded toward them, marching mercilessly down the rows of cubicles. Everyone now choked on the hot fumes from the burning acrylic carpet and plastic office furniture. Their eyes streamed.

The fire alarm suddenly fell silent as the flames melted the wiring, causing a short, but Elena still had to shout to be heard over the roar and crackle of the flames. “We need to stay low! We can breathe down there!”

There was no longer any question about moving Will. They pulled him out of the car, and all four of them lay flat on the thin gray office carpet. The air wasn’t quite as hot down there, and they could breathe without gagging on chemical smoke. But they were still no closer to escaping.

“Now what do we do?” asked Noelle.

A huge explosion drowned out Elena’s reply and shook the whole building. A split second later, a scorching wind roared through the broken windows, shrieking over their heads as they lay in the shelter of the wrecked car.

A few seconds after, they heard a deep groan followed by a sound like an avalanche. A six-foot-wide piece of masonry smashed through the burning ceiling and landed a few yards in front of them, followed by a hail of bricks and concrete chunks. Then the wall in front of them vanished beneath the collapsing warehouse. A cloud of dust and debris swept over them like a gray wave, leaving them coughing and blinded.

A chill breeze now blew through. It partially cleared the air, and they could see the devastation around them. Wide mounds of rubble lay where the edge of the building had once stood. Pockets of flame flickered here and there in the ruins, but the falling warehouse had mostly snuffed out the inferno in front of them—though the fire continued to rage behind them. Girders and wires hung down from the torn ceiling. Beyond that, they saw a field of ruins where the brewery and warehouse had once stood. It looked very much like old film clips Ben had seen of bombed-out London streets during the Battle of Britain.

They could hear voices shouting outside—and thankfully they were shouting in English.

“Over here!” Ben yelled. He climbed onto the heap of broken brick and waved his arms. “Hey! We’ve got an injured man in here!”

Thirty seconds later, two police officers from nearby Lombard appeared out of the darkness. Within five minutes paramedics were treating Will as he lay on a stretcher in the parking lot outside the factory.

Elena talked to one of the police officers while Ben and Noelle stood together watching the shattered factory burn. Noelle shivered, and Ben put his arm around her. “Do you want me to see if I can track down a jacket or something?” he asked.

“That’s okay,” she replied. “For once, I don’t mind feeling cold.”

“So when do the biohazard guys get here?” Sergei asked the EMT who was bandaging and splinting his left arm.

He reloaded his gun one-handed while they talked. He wasn’t expecting more action, but he had long ago developed the habit of always keeping his firearm loaded when it was in its holster—whether he planned to use it or not.

“They’re over there.” She pointed to the lot across from the roadblock. A group of figures in blue “space suits” gathered around the captured minivans and SUVs, which were surrounded by a wide cordon marked with black-and-yellow police tape. “I heard those are packed with biological weapons. Is that true?”

“Yeah, and so are those two there.” He gestured to the two burned-out wrecks in the middle of the access road. “Someone ought to put a police line around them. There’s some really nasty stuff in them.”

“I’ll call my supervisor and let her know.”

“Thanks.” Sergei thought he saw something move in one of the vans and craned his neck for a better view. Given the number of different units at the scene and the general chaos, it was very possible that not everyone there knew the danger involved. What if a take-charge police detective started searching the vans, found a container full of suspicious-looking powder, and decided to open it?

A pair of headlights momentarily silhouetted the vans, clearly showing a figure inside one of them. Sergei pulled away from the EMT and ran toward the scorched hulks. “Hold it!” he yelled as he ran. “Hey buddy! Get out of there—that’s a biohazard area!”

He arrived just as the figure carefully backed out of the wreckage. As Sergei had suspected, it was an overly independent cop, probably from the Elmhurst department, judging by the uniform, though Sergei couldn’t be sure in the gloom.

“Just checking for unexploded ordnance,” the man said, his voice nearly drowned out by an approaching helicopter. He had a slight accent and his voice was vaguely familiar. Sergei couldn’t quite place him, but thought nothing of it. He knew lots of police officers, and he had met a lot more tonight.

“Okay, just—” Sergei began. But as he spoke, a helicopter’s searchlight swept over them. They recognized each other in the same instant. A split second later, their guns blazed simultaneously and they both fell to the pavement.

The gunshots brought officers running, and the searchlight came back to them. In the harsh white light, Sergei could see Elbek Shishani grabbing for his fallen weapon with one hand while he clutched his chest with the other. No blood welled through his fingers, so Sergei knew he also wore body armor.

Pain burned through Sergei’s chest where Elbek’s bullet had struck, but he brought his gun up and fired into the Chechen’s right arm just as he picked up his gun. Elbek dropped the gun and gave a stifled cry. He glared at Sergei with rage-filled eyes and gathered himself to charge. Sergei shot him in the leg and he collapsed again.

Sergei got to his knees as a group of officers arrived. One kicked Elbek’s gun away as the others trained their weapons on him.

“It’s over,” Sergei said as more officers ran up. “It’s all over.”

“No.” Elbek pulled himself up onto his one good leg. His hand held a small bottle. With a quick movement, he hurled it to the street at Sergei’s feet. It shattered—and a cloud of extremely fine dust suddenly swirled through the little crowd. “
Now
it’s over!”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

A R
ITE FOR THE
D
EAD

Elbek lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He silently recited Koran verses as he waited to die. His nose itched, but he could not scratch it because his arms were tied down with the soft, unyielding restraints used on psychotic patients. If he turned his head, he could catch a glimpse of soldiers standing guard outside the double sets of locked, airtight doors. His room, of course, had no windows to the outside.

He had considered trying to escape, but decided not to bother. Allah would take him soon enough no matter where he was.

The figure in the blue biohazard suit leaned forward and tried again. “Do you really want to die of this Ebola-smallpox hybrid?” The voice was muffled and tinny as it came through the suit’s respirator.

Elbek ignored the question and went on reciting scripture.

“Do you know what it will be like?”

Silence.

“First you will develop a fever. Then blisters will form all over your body, literally tearing the top layer of your skin off. The blisters will be on both the outside and the inside, even in your stomach. The Ebola virus will go to work, eating away your tissues and causing massive bleeding. The blisters will fill with blood and begin to bleed. Then you will start to bleed internally and from your orifices. Even your eyes will bleed. Every moment will be agony, and it will take you days to die.”

None of this was news to Elbek. He continued to lie in calm silence. He knew they were lying when they implied they could save him if only he talked. Dr. Umarov had been quite certain that this disease could not be cured. If he told them everything he knew, they might be able to prolong his life and ease his passage to Paradise, but that was all. Besides, Elbek could bear a few days of agony much more easily than a lifetime in an American prison.

“All of your men are dead or in custody. Your weapons lab is destroyed, and all of your bioweapons are accounted for. The only thing you accomplish by not talking to us is to make it impossible for us to treat you.”

Elbek remained still and expressionless.
No, you’re wrong. I also make it impossible for you to treat that filthy Russian and his American friends, and that’s worth accomplishing.
He went back to his meditations.

Ben picked up the ringing phone. “Hello. Ben Corbin.”

“Hello,” said a subdued but familiar voice. “This is Mikhail Ivanovsky. I would like for you to be my lawyer again. I would like for you to come to my room at the hospital now.”

At least he’s not telling me I
must
come,
thought Ben.
That’s a start.
Still, he had to stick to his guns. “I’m sorry. I can’t represent you unless you’re willing to cooperate with the government. We talked about that last time.”

“Yes, I remember this talk. I think maybe I will speak to FBI and CIA persons now.”

“Maybe?” replied Ben cautiously.

There was a brief silence, then a sigh. “I will speak to them.”

“Then I’m on my way.”

Ben arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes later to find Elena and Agent Gomez waiting outside Dr. Ivanovsky’s room. “He insisted on having you here before he would let us in,” explained Elena.

“Of course he did,” said Ben with a good-natured smile. “Remember who you’re talking about.”

They went in and found Dr. Ivanovsky sitting up in bed. Most of his bandages were gone, and he appeared to be in much better health than when Ben had last seen him. “Thank you for coming, Ben,” he said. “It is very, very good to see you.” He turned to the FBI agents and eyed them suspiciously, but without hostility. “So, okay. Now my lawyer is here. Ask me these questions.”

“Some individuals were exposed to Variant D,” Elena said urgently. “We need to know how to treat them, and you know more than anyone in the world about how this organism affects humans.”

“I know no treatment. What are their symptoms?”

“They don’t have any yet.”

“No symptoms?” asked the scientist, arching his eyebrows in surprise. “When were they exposed?”

“Three days ago.”

“Not one has symptoms?”

Elena shook her head.

“Then this is not Variant D,” he said definitively.

“We are certain that it is,” countered Agent Gomez, who had worked with the team that analyzed the powder. “We—”

“Then it has lost virulence,” replied Dr. Ivanovsky with unshaken confidence. “You have cultured it?”

“Yes. The cultures all show a fast-growing genetically modified variola major,” answered Agent Gomez, referring to the scientific name for the most lethal strain of smallpox.

Dr. Ivanovsky sat silent for a moment, his brows furrowed in concentration. He looked up. “You have cultured the exact sample from the exposure?”

“No,” admitted Agent Gomez. “That sample was lost. We got ours from one of the other vehicles we captured. We assumed it would be identical, but . . .” He stopped. “There might be some residue left on the container. We’ll check that.”

“This is sloppy. There must be no sloppiness with such organisms!” Dr. Ivanovsky chastised with the air of a senior scientist rebuking a lab assistant. He thought for a moment. “This sample, was it exposed to chemicals or heat?”

“It most likely came from a burned-out minivan,” said Elena, who had heard the whole story in detail while visiting Sergei. “So it was probably in a fire for a while.”

“This fire is wonderful news!” Dr. Ivanovsky beamed.

“Why is that?” asked Ben.

“High heat kills the smallpox,” Dr. Ivanovsky explained. “Especially Variant D because it is engineered chimera organism, so it is not very stable. I do not think you will need to treat these persons.”

After a few more questions, Elena and Agent Gomez broke off their interview with Dr. Ivanovsky. Agent Gomez had some urgent supplemental research to perform. Elena went to talk to the team treating Sergei and the police who were exposed.

When they were alone, Ben turned to Dr. Ivanovsky. “So, why did you change your mind? Was it because the government managed to get Variant D on its own?”

“This is one part,” Dr. Ivanovsky began hesitantly, “but there is more. Those things you said to me—they made me very, very angry. So when Father Ivan from Saint Vladimir comes to visit me next, I speak to him about this. I do not speak of Variant D, but I tell him enough of this story to understand. Then I tell him what you said.”

“And what did he say?” asked Ben.

“He says, ‘Mikhail, did you read
The Brothers Karamazov
?’ I say, ‘Yes, when I was in school I read this book.’ So he asks me, ‘Do you remember it?’ Have you read this book, Ben?”

“I started it in college, but I got bogged down and never finished it,” admitted Ben.

Dr. Ivanovsky nodded sympathetically. “It is a long book with much talking and depression. I tell Father Ivan that this is all I remember. He says, ‘There is a very interesting story that one character tells. Would you like me to tell it to you, Mikhail?’ I say okay, so he tells me the story. It is about this man who is grand inquisitor in Spain. He is a very important man in the church there. Another man comes to him and tells him that there is a prophet making miracles and healing sick persons in the villages, so the grand inquisitor says he must speak to this man, and the soldiers bring the prophet to him. The grand inquisitor speaks to this prophet alone and he discovers that this is Jesus.”

“You mean someone pretending to be Jesus?”

“No, no. It is really Jesus, who has come back from heaven to earth. So the grand inquisitor kills him.”

“What? Why?”

“Because the grand inquisitor has a secret,” answered Dr. Ivanovsky.

“What was his secret?”

“He does not believe in God.”

“But I thought you just said he knew the prophet was Jesus,” objected Ben. “How can he not believe in God?”

“I asked this same question to Father Ivan. He says to me, ‘This grand inquisitor thinks he is the best one to take care of the poor persons. He thinks his way is best and Jesus will make problems for him. He trusts only him. He does not trust God, so how can he believe?’

“Then he says, ‘Mikhail, maybe it would be good for you to trust God more and you less.’ I say, ‘Okay. I trust God. I do not trust these government persons.’ And he says, ‘Maybe God works through other persons and not just you. Maybe you should listen to them and trust them some.’ Then he says I should pray about this thing and think about it. So I did, and . . .” His voice faltered, and he stopped for a moment. “And I begin to think of Mr. Simeon, who is dead; and Mr. Conklin, who will not walk again for his whole life; and all the police who are dead or hurt. Then I think that maybe Father Ivan is right and maybe it was not so good that I did these things alone and did not trust you one hundred percent. So then I called you.”

“I’m glad you did,” said Ben, smiling warmly. “There are many words that describe representing you, but
boring
isn’t one of them.”

Dr. Ivanovsky laughed. “This is true, but maybe I will try to be boring next time.”

“Don’t start thinking about next time just yet. I’ve got a feeling we’re not quite done with this case.”

Snow fell on Elena and Noelle in big, soft flakes that clung to their hair and coats. They stood on Washington Street watching the State Street Macy’s Christmas window displays. This year, the displays showed scenes from
A Christmas Carol
, complete with an astounding set of mechanical figures dancing together at the Fezziwigs’ Christmas party.

“So, what are you giving Sergei for Christmas?” Noelle asked.

“I haven’t decided. Any ideas? What do you think he needs?”

“A car.”

Elena laughed. “Yes. He’s actually trying to get his insurance company to give him that. Apparently, his policy does not explicitly cover damage caused by terrorist attacks. They may cover it anyway, though—they’re starting to get bad publicity.”

After the well-attended gunfights, fire, and explosion in Elmhurst, most of the events of the past two months had been widely reported. The intelligence agencies had managed to keep the exact source and nature of Variant D secret, but pretty much everything else had become public knowledge. All the main participants were minor celebrities now. Sergei in particular had been lionized because a news crew had arrived at the industrial park just in time to film his final confrontation with Elbek, which had been conveniently spotlighted by the police helicopter.

“How’s he doing, by the way?” asked Noelle. “Ben says he’s been kind of quiet since he got out of the hospital.”

“He has been . . . thoughtful. Two times in the past month he thought he was going to die, and all he could do was wait for death. That will have an effect on anybody.”

“Is he okay?”

“I think so,” replied Elena. “Sometimes I’ll catch him just staring into space with a kind of sad look. I ask him what’s wrong, but he says it’s nothing and then he’s himself again—except that he seems a little more serious. He’s also reading a lot of books about religion and philosophy.”

“It sounds like he’s searching.”

“Maybe he is,” replied Elena. She turned away from the window. “And I’m still searching for a gift for him. Any suggestions—other than a car?”

Noelle decided to drop it. If her friend didn’t want to talk about spiritual issues, she wasn’t going to push. Besides, she wasn’t done fishing for information. “Well, that depends on how close you two are. If you like him, but you’re not that serious, I’d go with a pen-and-pencil set or something like that. If you’re serious, cologne or a sweater. And if you’re
really
serious, talking-about-buying-a-ring serious, then you should get him something for his kitchen. Single men never have enough stuff in their kitchens, and what they have is always cheap—like those frying pans that always burn food. Then once you’re married, they don’t want you to buy new ones until the old ones actually break.”

Elena laughed. “Noelle, you would make an excellent investigator.”