“Jonathan—”
“Dammit, this isn’t fair! I just want my wife back! Why can’t anyone understand that?”
Tanner leaned forward in his chair and waited until Root met his gaze. “I do understand, Mr. Root. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. Here’s what I think: You know who took your wife, why they did it, and why they made you come halfway around the world to get her back. The sooner you tell us what’s really going on, the sooner we can get her back.”
Root squeezed his eyes shut; tears dripped from their corners. “Oh, Jesus …”
“Tell me,” Briggs whispered.
“I know Svetic — Risto Svetic — and I know what he wants.”
“What?”
“Kestrel. God help us, he wants Kestrel.”
32
“I assume you’re not talking about the bird?” Tanner said.
“No,” Root replied with a humorless chuckle. I’m talking about the Root family secret — the secret we’ve been keeping for over eighty years. Kestrel consumed my grandfather’s life, then my father’s, and now mine. Kestrel is what Risto Svetic wants, and it’s what I don’t dare give him.”
“You’ve lost me. Please explain.”
And Root did.
“My grandfather’s name was Simon Horatio Root, In 1917 he landed in France and was given command of a special unit that later became known as the Havocs. They were trained to fight behind enemy lines, conduct reconnaissance, gather intelligence — those sorts of things.
“In January, 1918, he and his team were in the Dinaric Alps in Bosnia. The Central Powers had mostly been driven out of the area, but there were reports of stay-behind units conducting guerrilla operations. Everyone assumed they were Bulgarians, since they’d done most of the fighting in the Balkans. At the time, the allies were considering opening a second front with landings along the Adriatic coast. My grandfather had been assigned to survey the area.
“He had sixteen men on his team: twelve soldiers, three squad leaders — Pappas, Villejohn, and Frenec — a Greek, a Frenchman, and a Hungarian. Their scout was a Herzegovinian boy named Anton. He was their unofficial mascot.
“On their ninth day in the mountains they came across a bunker. It shouldn’t have been there. None of the Bulgarians they’d come across had been holed up. Most were hit-and-run teams — always moving, sleeping in whatever hole they could find, nipping at the enemy but never fully engaging them. To find an occupied bunker like this was unheard of. Even stranger was who they found guarding it: Germans.
“Simon ordered in his team. The guards were dispatched and my grandfather led his men inside. On the upper level it was just like any other bunker: sleeping quarters, mess rooms. There was another level, though. As was his style, Simon took the lead. He went down first, followed by Frenec, Pappas, and Villejohn. The rest of the team stayed on the main level.
“They reached the bottom of the ladder shaft and started looking around, expecting to find more soldiers, more supplies … more of what they’d found on the main level.
“There wasn’t a soldier in sight. That section of the bunker was designed differently than any bunker they’d ever seen. It was laid out like three squares in a line, each square connected by a single passage. There were heavy, airtight doors, intricate plumbing, generators and backup generators, air pipes and hoses leading every which way …
“Eventually they found some men hiding in storage rooms — seven Germans and one Russian, all civilians, all unarmed. Simon rounded them up in the mess room, left Pappas and Villejohn to guard them, then took Frenec to have a better look around.
“The section they were in — the signs read ‘Der Bereich Eine’—Section One — was mostly sleeping quarters, latrines, and larders. Der Bereich Zwei contained more storage areas, but they were mostly medical supplies like drugs, bandages, and surgical equipment. They’d found a hospital, Simon thought.
“The last area—Der Bereich Drei—was altogether different. It was divided down the middle by another passageway, this one wider than the connecting tunnels. To the left they found what looked to be laboratories with Bunsen burners, distillers, microscopes.
“To the right, set into the wall, were three windows, each ten feet long. Beside each of these was a steel door. The windows were dark, so Simon hunted around until he found a junction box, then started flipping switches. One by one, the lights came on.
“Behind each window were ten hospital beds — thirty total. All of them were full. There were old men, women of all ages, children — all chained to their beds. Most appeared to be unconscious, but when the lights came on a few of them stirred and looked toward the windows. Some cried out in Bosnian. The windows were thick and Simon’s Bosnian wasn’t very good, but it was clear they were pleading with him.
“On the wall of each room was a sign that read, ‘Keimfrei Krankenzimmer.’” Root paused and looked at Tanner. “Do you know what that means?”
Briggs searched his memory, trying to piece together the words. When he did, he felt a chill on his scalp. “Sterile Sick Room.”
Root nodded. “That’s right. All of those people had been quarantined. You know, by the time he’d found that bunker, my grandfather had seen the worst war can offer, but nothing had prepared him for what he found there.
“He was no doctor, of course, but it didn’t take one to know those people were very sick. Some were as thin as skeletons; others horribly bloated. Others were covered in running sores, tumors, or rashes that left them looking like hamburger. A few were seizing so violently their bodies arched off the bed until only their feet and heads touched the mattress. There was vomit and blood and feces on the floors and walls. It was a nightmare.
“My grandfather’s first instinct was to go in and try to help them, but he stopped himself. This was no ordinary hospital, and those were no ordinary patients. There was something very wrong with what was going on. He and Frenec returned to the mess room. Having realized the Germans and the Russian were doctors, he started asking questions. They refused to talk. He locked them in a storage room and went to find his own answers.
“The doctors had been meticulous in their documentation. The file rooms were filled with case histories, experiment notes, private journals — it was all there. Over the next day and a half they pieced together what the Germans had been up to.
“Eighteen months earlier a Bulgarian Army platoon came across a village in the foothills named Doljani. They found half the inhabitants dead, the other half deathly ill. Under questioning, the villagers claimed that a week earlier an illness had taken hold in the local elementary school. Two days after that it had spread to half the village: a day after that, everyone had it. The symptoms were routine — what we’d call a common cold — but none of the villagers had been able to fight it off. A week after the first case, the entire village was dead — nearly three hundred people, gone.
“The unit’s intelligence officer was actually a major in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He sent word back to his commanders in Graz, who dispatched a team of German specialists. You see, at that point in the war the Central Powers knew the tide was against them. Germany had already used gas attacks on the allies — mustard, chlorine, phosgene — and had been experimenting with cholera, anthrax, and smallpox, so this outbreak at Doljani caught their attention.
“By the time the team arrived, half of the Bulgarian soldiers were sick. Assuming the rest would follow, the Germans knew they had to find a place to quarantine whatever the illness was. The Bulgarian commander offered them a solution.