Mason nodded. “Good. While you guys are getting started on that, I think I’ll go have a talk with Suzanne and see if I can’t find out more about why she decided to betray us and everything that we stand for.”
Lauren asked, “Is there anything a professor of archaeology who knows next to nothing about chemistry or medicine can do to help?”
Shirley took her arm. “Come with me dear, and I’ll show you how to grind up plants like an expert.”
When Mason got to the ICU cubicle, he saw that Suzanne had recovered from her faint and was busily pacing back and forth in the small room.
He unlocked the door and entered the room, holding out a cup of Shirley’s steaming coffee. “Here,” he said. “It looks like you could use this.”
She glanced at him with a bleak expression and sat on the hospital bed in the center of the room. He handed her the coffee and she took a sip, and then her eyes watered.
“Cream with two sugars, just like I like it. You remembered.”
He sat on a stool in the corner of the room. “Of course I remember, Suzanne. We’ve been teammates for almost five years.” He hesitated, and then he added, “And I thought friends for at least that long.”
She stared at him with a strange expression on her face. “Friends… yeah, I guess you could say that.” She had no intention of further humiliating herself by letting on how much and for how long she had loved him over the years.
He pursed his lips. “Suzanne, the team and I are having a hard time understanding why you did what you did. Would you care to tell me about it?”
She took a long swig of the coffee and then let out a sigh. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
She glanced down at the wedding ring on the third finger of her right hand. “You never asked me why I wear this ring.”
“I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
“It belongs to my brother.” She looked up at him. “His wife left him when he came home from the Gulf War suffering from Gulf War syndrome. He threw it in the trash the day she left, but I saved it so that I would never forget.”
“Forget what?” he asked, puzzled.
She took a deep breath. “Okay, I guess you deserve the full story. I’m an army brat, Mason. My father was a distinguished army physician who served in the Vietnam War. When he came home several cancers ate the flesh right off his bones. The army blamed it on Agent Orange, but I never believed that.”
She paused to finish her coffee. “I read up on it and found that Agent Orange was studied up one side and down the other and there was never any sign that it would be carcinogenic.”
She shook her head. “Hell no, it wasn’t Agent Orange that killed my dad. I believe the Vietcong must have used some sort of chemical or biologic agent against our troops over there. One that we never found out about… or at least, one that we were never told about.”
He stared at her, beginning to see where her obsession with biological and chemical warfare must have come from.
She glanced at him and gave a sad smile. “And that’s not all. The army brass has always tried to say that Gulf War syndrome is due to the pollutants in the air from the burning oil wells of Kuwait.”
She wagged her head. “I don’t believe it for a minute.”
He took a deep breath, realizing she was on the verge of being a paranoid psychotic. “So, it is your contention that your brother’s illness was also caused by biologic or chemical weapons unleashed by Saddam Hussein?”
“Of course. Don’t you see, Mason. If all the other countries arrayed against the United States have already or will in the future unleash these weapons, then we must stay in the game ourselves and develop our own biologic and chemical weapons to combat theirs.”
“So, you were willing to let a third of the world’s population die, almost a billion and a half people, just so Colonel Blackman could get a cure and a vaccine against this anthrax so he could use it as a weapon?”
Her eyes widened and she looked like he had slapped her in the face. “Of course not! He promised me that once we had the formula for the vaccine and the cure he would make all of it the world needed and would stop the plague in its tracks.”
“And you believed him? An evil megalomaniac who thought nothing of having anyone who stood in his way murdered?”
She paled. “He… he gave me his word.”
He stood up and took the coffee cup from her limp hands. “Oh, Suzanne, you are so naive and so, so misguided.”
Without looking back, he exited the room and locked the door behind him.
He took out his sat-phone and called the CDC. When he was connected with Dr. Battersee, he said, “Have the samples and specimens arrived yet?”
“Yes, they just got here. I’ve already put them in the pipeline for full analysis.”
“Grant, I need you to call your contacts at the army and tell them that Colonel Woodrow Blackman has installed a spy onto our team and has been working against us to delay us from finding a cure or vaccine for the plague.”
“I know, Mason,” Battersee said, surprising Mason. “Congressman O’Donnell called me while you were on your jaunt down the Mexican river and filled me in. He got his information from the spy, Janus, who evidently feared for her own life from Blackman.” He chuckled, “In fact, it was O’Donnell who managed to get the Navy to come to your rescue, not me.”
“So, you probably also know he was responsible for the black-ops team sent into the Mexican jungle to kill us and steal our specimens before we could get back to civilization.”
“Yes, O’Donnell filled me in on that, too, and he has instituted a full congressional investigation into both Blackman and General McGuire.” He hesitated, and then he added, “But Mason, I guess you haven’t heard. Colonel Blackman was just found dead in his office. Preliminary indications are he took his own life.”
Mason smiled and shook his head. Bear, he thought. The man certainly didn’t let any grass grow beneath his feet.
“Well, Blackman certainly didn’t do this on his own, and it sounds like this McGuire might have been in on it, too. If you don’t mind, Grant, keep me informed of what O’Donnell finds out. I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulders until this is finished.”
“Okay, Mason, if you think it’s necessary.”
“And Grant, be extremely careful who you talk to from now on. We have no idea how far up the chain of command the rot extends — McGuire might not be the end of it and whomever else is involved might try to cover his tracks by getting rid of those of us directly involved in searching for the cure to the plague.”
At that moment, General Mac McGuire was in his armored staff car on the way to check out Colonel Blackman’s office. He’d ordered the entire office sealed off as a possible crime scene so that he would have time to get there and sterilize anything in the office that might implicate him in the plot to steal the cure for the plague. He had no idea Janus had already given his name to Congressman O’Donnell, or that the congressman had already launched an investigation in which his name figured prominently.
About two miles from the army base, they rounded a corner and his driver slammed on the brakes to avoid a car that was crosswise blocking the road.
When they’d come to a full stop, General McGuire leaned over the seat and told his driver to get out and see what the problem was.
Alone in the car he heard a roaring like an approaching freight train.
He whirled in his seat and looked out the rear window of the staff car and saw a driverless eighteen-wheeler bearing down on him at forty miles an hour. He just had time to scream before the gasoline tanker plowed into his car, exploding and engulfing both the auto and General McGuire in a horrendous wall of flames.