He parked on the street — a necessity since Brick's driveway was filled with several Lincoln Continentals in various stages of repair. Or, as Chaney often mused, demolition. And once more it occurred to him that the big ex-marshal possessed shockingly little in the way of culture or taste.
He knocked on the door and Brick answered in seconds, already dressed for work in white painter's pants and white T-shirt. He waved as he led Chaney inside, wiping his hands on a towel. "Hey, kid, I was expecting you last night."
"Got held up." Chaney sat down at the table. Without invitation he began finishing an omelet.
Brick looked back. "Want some coffee?"
"Sure." Chaney chewed a moment. He hadn't been aware of how hungry he was.
"So, you ready for a couple things?"
"Sure," Chaney said. "I stumbled over a few things myself. Maybe some of it'll add up. For once."
Brick grinned. "This little adventure up north, it's military, but not really. The military is only present for contingencies." He belched. "Seems that the NSA has been utilizing abandoned army radio posts near the lower half of the Arctic Circle. World War II stuff, mostly. They were closed for a long time, then opened one after the other about six years ago."
"Yeah, but what were they reopened for?"
"Well…" Brick paused, looked thoughtful. "I heard some street talk. Don't know how reliable. Not my regular people."
Chaney waited. "And…?"
"Well, I hear that they were doing something that needed some serious isolation, in case of some kind of accident." He looked dead at Chaney "Could be germ warfare, biological warfare, that kind of shit. Maybe some new anthrax or smallpox. Bacteria. Could've even been somethin' dealing with nerve gas or toxic agents, but it was somethin' that they didn't want getting away from 'em in a populated area."
"So," Chaney mused, "that could account for why they wanted these stations as far away as possible. They screw up and they can vaporize any * mistakes with a couple of fuel air bombs. Not much collateral civilian damage."
"Oh, hell no," Brick responded heartily, "you could fry twenty square miles up there and not hit anything but caribou and trees. Then call it a forest fire, which is what it would be, and play stupid." He grunted. "They'd get away with it."
"Okay" Chaney leaned back. "They wanted containability. But to contain what? What else could they have been trying to contain besides the bacteria or virus stuff?"
"Got no idea."
"Well, hell, Brick, take a guess. You know this business."
Brick sniffed, frowned a little. "Well, everything seems to point to the germ stuff but I can't say for sure. Nobody's talking. So I pieced a lot of this together from gossip." He paused. "Okay, we know the NSA runs the scam, which tells us exactly nothing. 'Bout like usual. I knew that going in. So I checked with a buddy of mine who works the air logs at some airbases up there. I asked him to go back and look at the logs and see what kind of stuff was flown into those areas during the time when the facilities were being reopened. Took him a little while, but he got back to me. Seems there was a company that had a lot of special shipments, and to each facility. That's nothing definite, there were some others. But one of 'em in particular caught my attention, for damn sure."
"What was it?"
"It's called MEAM. Don't know what it stands for. But my buddy tells me that they were shipping…oh, just weird stuff. Nothing that made any sense."
"What do you mean?" Chaney was intrigued.
"Well." Brick took a breath. "The orders say they were sending perishable stuff that had to be, and this was stressed, 'handled with care.' But the manifests say it was always something like 'office equipment,' or wiring or construction materials. Well, you know right off that that's bull. These goons weren't shipping hubcaps and coffeemakers and marking 'em 'handle with care.' So I did a run on them, and found that MEAM is just a big-ass multi-mother company. Then I asked my buddy to see where the flights originated from, and he finds out that all the special-care flights— and remember that each facility was stocked by these flights — originated from Kansas City."
Chaney knew where it was going. "So what does MEAM own in Kansas City?"
Brick smiled. "I taught you well." He laughed. "Okay, so they only got one place in Kansas City. And you're gonna love this. It's a big-time medical manufacturing company called Bio-Genesis. And they do it alclass="underline" drugs, hospital equipment. Hell, they supply hospitals and universities throughout the country. There ain't nuthin' they can't get their hands on if they don't make it themselves."
Chaney shook his head a moment before looking away. "Those sons of bitches." He paused. "What about seismological equipment? Do they manufacture stuff to monitor the motion of tectonic plates, maybe subterranean X-ray equipment?"
Brick scowled. "Earthquake stuff?"
"Yeah."
He shook his head. "I don't know. If they do, they can't make too much of it. Seems like they're mostly a medical equipment manufacturer. Drugs. Some of that fancy electron microscope stuff. A first-class outfit."
Chaney knew Brick had probably discovered half of this stuff with a quick trip to the public library. He had simply accessed the variety of electronic services and examined annual corporate reports.
Brick himself didn't even own a computer, considering them unnecessary and intrusive. But when he had to he was a master at obtaining information electronically. And a library was the best place to do it because, if the company was watching closely enough, it would be tracing the identity of the tracker. Now all they would have would be an unknown user at a public library in Washington, a far cry from knowing a particular identity and home address. He took a minute before Chaney spoke, trying to set one piece of information against another, and it didn't fit at all with what he'd already discovered, so it was pretty clear; somebody was lying.
"This thing is ugly, Brick."
"Yeah, kid, I figured that out already." The big man squared off. "Listen — and you know this, but I'm gonna tell ya anyway — sometimes the right answer is the one right in front of you, but you don't see it 'cause your brain is looking for something complicated. It's stuck in grandma' low like an old Lincoln with a bad transmission. So listen to me. What if this is just a legit government enterprise to develop some serums for bacteria or something like that? And somebody wants what they cooked up, up there. So they try and get it covertly, can't do it. Then they try by force, hence all the dead guys. Now, I'm not saying that that is the answer. I'm just saying don't go running off caught up in some big conspiracy theory unless you can back it up with facts."
Brick was probably right; he generally was.
Behind that brutal face, Chaney had learned long ago, was a mind as quick and efficient as a world-class computer. He took a little more time as Brick glanced at his watch; the big man gave no indication he was in a rush. He waited patiently until Chaney spoke.
"Well, I just can't buy it, Brick. I know what you're saying, but something here doesn't make any sense. Why is a medical manufacturing company supplying equipment for what is supposed to be a station monitoring seismic activity?"
"Is that what you heard they was doing?"
"Absolutely," Chaney said hotly. "I was at Langley and that's exactly what the head of the program said."
"Well." Brick paused. "I didn't look up everything they sold. There might be a division like that. Or they might have gotten some of that stuff on other flights. Even if they did, they still have to have some reason to be ordering all this bio-med stuff. Anyway, it does back up the street talk, for what that's worth."
Yeah, Chaney thought, it did. Sort of.