While we waited, I turned to Violin. “Okay, spill.”
She spilled.
Arklight spies had gotten wind of a hitherto unknown cell of Red Knights operating out of the Philly suburbs. It was unclear if the cell was preparing to strike Philly or if they were simply using the city as a base for recruiting and training. The Knights preferred cities that had elaborate subways and tunnel systems.
“Why Blue Bell?” I asked. “The subway doesn’t come all the way out here.”
She shook her head. “They have a contact here at Marquis Pharmaceuticals. A developmental chemist named Ryerson.”
“And what’s Ryerson doing for the Red Knights?”
“I don’t know. But my mother did a thorough background check on him. Ken Ryerson is forty-one, unmarried, no family, no apparent politics, has not voted in any recent elections, no police record.”
I waited. She wouldn’t give me that much if there wasn’t more. Violin liked a little drama.
“Mr. Ryerson gambles.”
“Ah,” I said.
That was it. She laid it out for me. Ryerson had been a three-times-a-year gambler when Atlantic City was the only place you could lay down a legal bet unless you flew to Nevada. Then the Native Americans opened casinos in the Poconos, and that made him a once-a-month man. A few years ago they turned the racetrack in Bensalem into a casino, twenty minutes away on the Turnpike. Ryerson started going once a week, then three times a week. He wasn’t a card player. From the way Violin described him, it was doubtful the man knew a straight flush from a toilet flush. Ryerson needed a more constant and predictable fix. He played nickel slots. A lot of nickel slots. Started getting later and later on his utility bills and car payments. The third time he was late on the rent, he had to move to a smaller apartment in a less attractive suburb. He gave up the leased car and bought a hooptie. Ate a lot of cheap takeout food. Didn’t stop plugging nickels into the one-armed bandit, though.
As she talked I thought about what it must be like to be Ryerson. What specific bit of damage makes a man tear off tiny chunks of his life and feed them into a machine that everyone knows is specifically designed to give a debit on any long-term investment? Old ladies play the slots out of boredom and because they socialize with the other pensioners. The uninformed play them because the casino hype yells about the million dollar jackpots. Guys like Ryerson have to know that there’s no happy ending because even a jackpot on the nickel slots is small change, comparatively speaking. This man was either a loser or he was sick, and he almost certainly knew it.
The first digit pinged on the combination.
“So what changed?” I asked, knowing that there had to be a second act to this sad story.
“He bought a new car,” she said. “He cleared all his credit card debt. And he booked a vacation in Las Vegas.”
“I’m guessing that he didn’t win big at the slots.”
“His largest jackpot to date is forty-eight dollars and fifty cents. However over the last month, he’s made five cash deposits between twenty-five hundred and forty-five hundred dollars.”
“Ah,” I said. Banks are required to report deposits over a certain dollar amount. “Why doesn’t he just take out an ad in the paper saying he’s been bought?”
“He might as well have,” she agreed.
“Bug,” I said, “take a look at this guy Ryerson. See if he looks good as our informant. Hit me with anything that comes up.”
“Copy that.”
The second number pinged. Four to go.
“Why were you looking at him in the first place?” I asked Violin.
She shook her head. “We were looking at this facility. At everyone here. It’s been on our list for years because two of the shareholders have business ties to known members of the Red Order. Strong ties. One of those shareholders also owns points in BioDynamics out of South Africa.”
I nodded. I knew that from our own intel. Without the BioDynamics connection, our people might not have taken the nameless informant very seriously. But you can’t ignore that kind of red flag.
If you don’t remember the story, it was four years ago. BioDynamics made a name for itself by developing technologies that allowed groups like Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization to collect and process biological samples while still in the field. That was a godsend because it allowed the doctors to identify diseases and classify disease mutations without the time lag of sending samples to labs in Europe or America. Lives were saved every day because of that technology.
Here’s the kicker, though: the biosampling equipment was also collecting a great deal of information about virulent strains of exotic diseases and storing it in concealed clean compartments within the machine housing. When BioDynamics techs went into the field every few months to collect the machines and replace them with fresh units, all of those samples were taken back to the main lab in Modderfontein, in the Gauteng province of South Africa. There, the diseases samples were processed, studied, weaponized, mass-produced, and sold to groups who intended to distribute them in the poorest black towns throughout the country. The strains they tried to release were designed to resist all known antibiotics. The goal? Win back South Africa for a small ultraextremist group of whites by simply eradicating the majority of the blacks. Simple, direct, utterly ruthless, and very effective. Similar distribution plans were in the works for Somalia and other countries with a high percentage of black Muslims.
It would have been effective if not for a joint action taken by the DMS, Barrier — the UK counterpart of the DMS — and a hotshot Recces team from the South African Special Forces Brigade. The facility was seized, and the staff arrested and put on trial for a list of crimes that was so long that the world court judges asked the prosecution to summarize. The courts had to make an example of the perpetrators because to not do so would be to ignite the fuse on a global race war.
It didn’t surprise me that Red Order members were involved. They pretty much invented the concept of hate crimes back in the thirteenth century. Freaks.
The third and fourth digits pinged at the same time.
I went through my habitual self pat-down, quickly and lightly touching the handle of the Beretta 92F snugged into a nylon shoulder rig, the rapid-release folding knife clipped to the inside of one pocket, the BAMS unit hanging from my belt.
The fifth light pinged.
I glanced at Violin as I pulled my hazmat hood into place.
“You’re underdressed for this party.”
“I hope not.”
“Hey, I’m serious, Violin,” I said. “Maybe you don’t know what I’m hunting down here.”
“Protocols for developing a weaponized viral hemorrhagic fever. Arklight has been aware for some time of plans to sell a developed protocol along with viable samples of a crude prototype to several terrorist groups, including the Knights.”
I stared at her. “You think you’re down here to steal some computer files?”
“Sure.”
“You do realize that MindReader is currently hacked into that system and whatever they have, we now have.”
“You have MindReader, Joseph,” she said, “but Arklight doesn’t. And the Oracle system Mr. Church gave us is a poor substitute.”
“Horse shit. Oracle is the second-best hacking system in the world. Besides, if you’d have brought this to us, Church would have Bug on this.”
Violin’s eyes shifted away, and I suddenly knew why she hadn’t reached out.
“Your mother didn’t want to ask Church for a favor,” I said.
“No,” she said, and sighed.
There is apparently a very long and complicated history between Mr. Church and Lilith. It is, however, a tightly closed subject. Also…given her history, I would imagine that it would gall Lilith to ask for help from any man. I did not blame her one bit.