“I could just kill you and be done. But you are the most conceited bitch I have ever met. I’m going to enjoy demonstrating just how smart you’re not. You thought the expedition was about finding something in the cave.”
“Wasn’t it?”
She saw a flame and then the red coal of a cigarette tip. “We needed to bring something out. Have you ever heard of Biopreparat?”
“The old Soviet biowarfare lab. A horrible place. Shut down years ago.”
“The law of unintended consequences is a beautiful thing.”
“What?”
“Overnight, they put thirty thousand scientists on the street. Can you even imagine what a million bucks looks like to a hungry Russian?”
“You’re talking about bioweapons?”
“What do you get if you cross Mycobacterium leprae and Streptococcus?”
“Leprosy and strep? Nothing. Vastly different genomics.”
“Come on. Thirty thousand scientists with unlimited budgets? They could have cloned Jesus Christ if Moscow had ordered it.”
“Why would they want to cross those two bacteria?”
“Who knows why Russians do anything? Paranoia and vodka are a dangerous mix.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. The stuff — we call it ‘the Skinner,’ by the way — ate the skin right off some poor Mexican. I saw him.”
“That would be fatal.”
“Fatal, but not quick.”
“But why would you have anything to do with that? You’re not a terrorist.”
In a very different voice, Ely said, “I am a New Patriot.”
“What’s that?”
“Today, no one knows. Tomorrow, the world will.”
20
The Beast stopped. Onlookers crowded against the police barriers that formed a one-hundred-foot perimeter around the president. Laning sat patiently. It always took ten minutes for the traveling security detail to deploy. Agents were responsible for thirty-degree sectors of an imaginary circle, the center of which was the Beast. Only after all twelve agents reported that it was clear did the detail commander instruct the agent in the driver’s seat to unlock and unload.
Two agents opened doors while others formed living walls around the president and her family. When everyone was in position, the whole assemblage moved quickly toward the cathedral’s twelve-foot-high doors.
“Hold up a minute,” Laning said. The detail’s lead agent, a balding, broad-shouldered man named Bob Delaney, started to protest. Laning was already halfway to a white-haired woman in a wheelchair who held a sign that read, “I’m 90 and I vote. God Bless America.” Laning grasped one of the woman’s hands in both of her own.
“What’s your name, ma’am?” she asked.
“Edna Hayes, ma’am.”
Laning smiled, her eyes shining. “God bless you, Edna.” She clasped the woman’s hand a moment longer, then straightened and looked at the other people.
It was hard to keep her face composed. Before taking office, she had known one sure thing: it would be like nothing she had imagined, or could imagine, any more than she could have imagined childbirth. She had been right. Washington was a cauldron, and every day scalded her soul. There were mornings — and she would keep these secret to her dying day — when her first waking thought was Dear God, take me away from this.
But then on days like this she would come out and see the people, her people, their faces alight with joy, and there was magic in them and in her attacked and slandered country, and in such moments she saw other faces, frozen at Valley Forge, bloody at Little Round Top, raging at Belleau Wood and Omaha Beach, stoic at Little Rock, jubilant on the moon, faces of people like these right in front of her, and from them all she took the strength to continue.
An agent whispered, but this was not an easy thing to back away from, all those yearning faces and reaching arms. She reached back, grasped hands, felt the magic — a lovely teenage girl with braces, a man with a burned face, a woman with tears rolling down her round cheeks. A tall man, very handsome, with a black ponytail and shining black eyes.
21
“I never heard of them,” Hallie said.
“Of course not. You only hear about the stupid ones.”
“What do you want?”
“ ‘Come now therefore, and let us slay her, and cast her into some pit, and we shall see what will become of her dreams.’ ”
“Slay who?”
“Use your imagination.”
Something about his use of the word “patriot” triggered it: “The president?” she said. She pushed away the horror she felt, tried to focus on reasoning with him. “You won’t do it with a bioagent. She’s surrounded by dogs and sensors and who knows what else.”
“The Skinner is new to this earth. No referent for dogs and sensors.”
“But you’d still have to get close.”
“People get close when they go to church.”
“Church?” Now she remembered Ely, in his basement, mentioning the cathedral. There had been a lot of news about some special Easter service the president and her family was supposed to attend there. Not only her, but all kinds of political people who were usually at one another’s throats, and religious leaders, too.
Ely was here, which meant that someone else would be there. Suddenly she remembered Redhorse: I’m goin’ to church. Big church. She felt sick, but knew she had to keep Ely talking.
“What will you gain by killing her?”
He chuckled. “You know what they say. A fish rots from the head.”
“Where did you get this thing?”
“The Skinner?” His smile widened. “You brought it back.”
“What?”
“It was in the battery pack.”
God damn him, she thought. God damn that expedition. “You came here to get it.”
“I did, yes.”
Anger got the better of her. “You asshole. Why did you shit in my living room?”
“The police had to think that a real burglar was at work.”
“What now?”
“Laning is going to die a very unpleasant death. And so are you.”
“Like Robin?”
He just laughed.
“You’re going to kill me and make it look like suicide? People get caught doing that all the time.”
“Stupid people do. They don’t bother to learn that hanging and strangling leave different ligature marks on the neck. Homicide 101. It worked fine with Robin.”
He switched on the basement lights. The Ely she had known was pudgy, with long brown hair and a beard. Squinting, she saw a gaunt, clean-shaven man in a white Tyvek hazmat suit with booties and a hood, safety glasses, and heavy black rubber gloves. She thought: No DNA.
“Nobody is going to believe that I killed myself,” she said.
“You’re distraught over the deaths of your expedition team members. You broke up with your boyfriend. The FBI is after you. And your father died, what, about a year ago?” He held up a piece of paper. “If there’s any doubt, this will dispel it. A note, written on your computer and printed here, too.”
“You’re insane.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s time for you to—”
“Do you know what happens to murderers in hell?”
“I don’t believe in hell.” He said this firmly, but she saw his eyes flick to one side. She had touched something.
“Everybody believes in hell. We say we don’t, but way down deep, we all do.”
He frowned. “I had planned to just hang you. Now I think not. But I don’t see what I need. Stay right there.” He went up the stairs.