Stafford entered the room. “Call for you, Governor. A Mr. Krestinski.”
Ducharme glanced at Cilla. “I’ll take it here.” He picked up the telephone and waited. The call clicked through. “Norman Ducharme.”
He listened. “May I put this on speaker, Mr. Krestinski? Cilla is here with me...” He lifted his head. “Close the door behind you, Stafford.”
His aide went quietly.
The FBI agent’s voice came through clearly. “Cilla, I just told the Governor it’s bad news, good news. We found the ambulance at Phoenix airport.”
“Blood?” The word came flatly from Cilla.
“None. The bad news is we got a print and know more about who Frank is.”
“Tell me.”
“Franklin Scoggins was a guard at a US biological weapons disposal facility. You may remember that in nineteen sixty-nine President Nixon shut down all American research on biological warfare weapons. If you can believe it, the disposal is still going on today. In the meantime, what hasn’t been deactivated, or whatever you do to get rid of the stuff they made, the material is kept closely guarded in a number of secret sites.”
“What happened to Scoggins?”
“He was let go. `Missing supplies’ is the reason given by the Army.”
“What supplies?” asked the Governor.
“So far the Army doesn’t consider the FBI has sufficient clearance to be told.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Ducharme, who had on occasion had similar difficulty getting information out of his own departments.
“It’s what’s worrying. If whatever it is he took is so bad they won’t tell us...” There was no need to finish the sentence. “Look, you know how these things work, Governor. They’ll tell us sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Haven’t they been getting our reports? Or even listening to the damn TV? It’s been out all day!” Ducharme had started to pace. “My God, don’t they realize how little time we’ve got?”
“I have two men outside General Crosby’s door waiting on the conference they’ve been in since seven this morning.”
“You’ll call us when they come out?”
“Couldn’t we call them?” asked Cilla. “Let them know how important it is?”
“They know, Cilla.” Krestinski sighed at her naiveté. “People don’t just telephone the Pentagon like calling a plumber. It sounds like these people are sweating. They know they’re going to take a tumble, be demoted or worse. Even the President of the United States would have trouble getting their attention right now.”
“I bet the Commander-In-Chief wouldn’t,” said Ducharme.
The phone was silent for a moment. “Can you open that door?”
“You’d be surprised what people in New Hampshire can do.”
He hung up.
Cilla looked the question.
“Payback time. John Montego wouldn’t be President if he hadn’t won the New Hampshire primary. He considered it little short of a miracle that in his big, first-in-the-nation test, a northern New England state would come out so strongly for a Hispanic from New Mexico. He had trouble getting the New Mexicans’ vote at the convention.”
“How did he win?”
“In all modesty, me. I ran his campaign here. You must have watched it. With his mustache shaved, some gray in his hair and his tie off he could have been a...selectman from Bartlett.”
“I doubt it, he looks too Indian. Call him. I’ll wait outside.”
It isn’t quite as easy as that to get the President of the United States on the telephone, even for the governor of a state who’s owed a big one, but the nation’s Chief Executive was being updated hourly on the New England crisis. So Norm Ducharme of Bedford, New Hampshire spoke privately for five minutes with Jack Montego of Roswell, New Mexico, was on hold for another ten and listened for five more. When the receiver was replaced in Concord it was by Governor Ducharme. He buzzed for his aide, who hurried into the office.
“Get Colonel Grafton of the National Guard,” he ordered. “Call my wife and cancel lunch. Have Cindy and Lois come in for emails. Call the Council for a four o’clock meeting and have Mark Phillips of the State Police here on the double.”
“Who first?” Stafford was scribbling furiously.
Ducharme stopped in the middle of dialing. “What?”
“You want me to get Colonel Grafton on the phone first or have Cindy and Lois come in?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake! Whichever! Never mind I’ll call Grafton, you get Phillips.”
Cilla, waiting in the Council Chambers that abutted the governor’s office, saw Stafford coming out on the dead run. She stood and made as if to go in. The aide grabbed her shoulders.
“You can’t go in there now,” he cried, not realizing how close he came to writhing on the floor in agony. “All hell must have broken loose! I’ve never seen him like this.”
Cilla, showing great restraint, merely knocked his hands aside and asked, “Did he reach the President?”
“Yes! That’s what set him off!” And off was the aide, running down the State House corridor.
Cilla opened the Governor’s door. He was on the telephone. He waved her to come in and sit.
“Far and away the most important. Then the Connecticut, though that will be a major part of Arthur’s job...Look, George, we better get it laid out on a map...I know, not near enough. Do your best and get back to me no later than three o’clock.”
He hung up and turned to Cilla. “It’s bad, Cilla. I’ve just two minutes to talk. And nothing I say can be repeated outside this room. You were right on rivers, but not for drinking. The Army came up with a bug that is deadly but leaves no trace in an autopsy. So, provided no one was caught during transmittal, the target country would have no one to blame, would probably be wiped out thinking it was a homegrown disease. Not wanting to create something that could injure its own troops or civilian population back home, the Army scientists engineered a bug that only lasts a few days when exposed to the open air. The problem was the delivery system: how to inject it without being caught. Winds were considered, and they were still studying this possibility when they came up with the idea of freezing it in tiny capsules or pods, that could be dropped into rivers upstream of population centers. Water above freezing would defrost the protective coating as they drifted downstream, releasing the bugs to the air, presumably just as they arrived at the city.”
“That’s what Frank stole?”
“They hadn’t finished researching the pods and weren’t sure how long they would take to defrost and release the bugs. If the temperature of the water wasn’t just right, the frozen bugs could be fifty miles downstream of a target zone before they opened.”
“How much of this stuff did Frank get?”
“If he actually has it, six tanks.”
“What does that mean? They aren’t sure he took them?”
Ducharme shook his head. “Oh, he took them. They felt the frozen pods could have melted on him, and what was left in the tanks had become benign. They’re man-size tanks that require cold storage rooms the Army had built specially for them. They say Frank likely wouldn’t have had access to a comparable facility for long-term holding. The Town of Stewart says he found a way.”
There was a knock at the door. When Ducharme responded, two women came in carrying notebooks.
“That’s it, Cilla. It’s my job from here in. My God, New Hampshire has hundreds of miles of rivers, and we’ve got to search every one! Go back to Bartlett. There aren’t enough people up there for them to be interested in it any more.” He turned to the women and began dictating instructions.
Cilla stood for a moment, watching. Then she went out, closing the door.
“You’re not giving up?” asked Wallace Carver.
“In the ashram we spent long hours every day meditating. It’s time I got back to it.”