“Only this one didn’t suck his blood,” someone behind them said. The voice belonged to Chad Fordham, who had just come in. “I just talked to my toxins specialist. Drucker was poisoned. We’ll have to confirm this in the lab, but based on Ellis’ description of facial paralysis followed by respiratory failure, taken together with an early blood sample, they’re 90 percent sure that little robo-fly injected him with a botulinum toxin.”
Ellis scratched her head. “Isn’t that stuff in Botox?”
Fordham nodded. “In its purest form, this is the deadliest toxin on the planet. Couple bags of this stuff, and a smart delivery mechanism, and you’ve got a bioweapon capable of mass eradication.”
Ellis tried to imagine the people standing around them and seated at the bar. Lots of little black dresses. Lots of men in conservative dark suits. Typical Washington crowd. Nobody stood out.
Her head was spinning. Maybe the FBI hadn’t felt Drucker was worth following up with in the past 12 years, but someone else did. “We’re going to need to look at all the hotel camera footage. Maybe we can catch somebody operating this from their mobile device.”
Speers pulled Ellis aside. “We’ve been assuming Drucker was the target. We have to consider the possibility that the target was you.”
She had been thinking the same thought all morning. “Drucker had a crazy vibe,” she said. “But if half the stuff he told me was true, he could have been dangerous.”
“Dangerous to whom?”
She sat on a barstool and summarized all the madness Drucker had spewed in regards to the Fellowship World Initiative and its headquarters, Eden. Then she told him what little Drucker had said about its enigmatic leader, Sebastian Wolf.
Speers nodded, recognizing the name. He had met Wolf, years ago, at the Council on Faith luncheon. “I can hear about that later. Right now we have to assume that someone saw you two together. You can work from McLean until we know more.”
If there’s anything that can protect you from a killer fly, Ellis thought, I’d like to see it. But she couldn’t think about herself right now. Someone had killer Drucker, presumably because he had agreed to discuss an article he had published more than a decade ago. She had to get her hands on that book of his before someone else did.
“I’ve got to get to Drucker’s condo,” she said. “It’s in Silver Springs.”
Speers’ glare could have wilted sunflowers. “Are you deaf? I just finished saying I want you out of the field until we know who did this.”
“Who’s going to go, you? This isn’t something you can just delegate. The president said she wanted to keep the team small. Besides, I’m the only person that knows what we’re looking for.”
Speers reached into his pocket grudgingly. “I’ll drive.”
Nathan Drucker Residence
Silver Springs, Maryland
A curvy 20-something office manager wearing yoga pants and a hoodie staffed the leasing office where Nathan Drucker had lived. After agreeing to let Ellis and Speers into the deceased journalist’s condo, she led them up the building’s stairwell. “This isn’t my career,” she volunteered, although they had not even asked about her ambitions. “I’ve got a degree in communications from Duke. I had an internship last year, but it didn’t pay. I’m just doing this until I can get into something more permanent.”
“I’m sure something will turn up,” Speers offered as they came to Drucker’s third-floor condo.
“Getting a job must’ve been way easier in your day,” the manager said as she fumbled through an enormous set of keys. Speers let the age comment go. He was just happy the girl didn’t ask them to get a warrant.
The extent of Drucker’s paranoia was evident by two bulky cameras mounted over the front door, holdovers from before the era of miniaturization. No less than four dead bolts secured the entrance.
“The building association must have loved those,” Ellis said, motioning to the cameras. “Did Drucker live alone?”
“He’s got two kids that visit every now and then, but they live with the ex-wife.” The girl unlocked the second deadbolt, and then turned. “Hold on. Why are you talking about him in the past tense?”
Ellis shot her boss a glare before rolling her eyes.
“I’m afraid Mr. Drucker is deceased,” Speers said with a note of awkward finality.
“Oh my God. Is his body in there? Are we about to see a corpse?”
“No,” Speers said. “Look, I need to ask you to keep this under your hat. We haven’t even notified family yet.”
Rattled, the girl unlocked the last two deadbolts. The apartment was completely dark. Out of habit, Ellis held Speers at the entrance as the manager walked in to flip on the lights. She used the other hand to open her purse and grope for her SIG. In Iraq, her unit had a couple of nasty experiences during home invasions. It was amazing what naughty things people could do with a little trip wire and basic explosives.
All seemed to be quiet. Satisfied that the spacious condo was still secure, Ellis went in, noting that the place had not been ransacked. She counted them lucky. If someone had taken the time to kill Drucker in a public place, it was only a matter of time before they showed up here.
They went from room to room until they found Drucker’s study. The converted bedroom would have scarcely been wide enough to hold a queen-size bed. The walls held Drucker’s UCLA degree, as well as framed movie posters for ‘All the President’s Men,’ ‘State of Play’ and the George Clooney movie about TV journalist Ed Murrow, ‘Good Night, and Good Luck.’ All movies about heroic journalists. That figures, Speers thought. Drucker probably thought they’d make a movie about him someday. But journalists never died in the movies.
There was a computer, a printer, and also an old-fashioned analog typewriter. “This would look cool in my office,” Speers said, admiring the Smith Corona’s sleek black curves.
“It might look like a museum piece, but I think Drucker was actually using it.”
“I don’t understand those analog sentimentalists. Like those people who play vinyl records. It’s just backwards.”
“In this case, it was a security measure. A typewriter is the literary equivalent of paying cash for everything. It’s not digital, it’s far less likely to be traced, found or stolen.”
Speers unplugged Drucker’s computer and began boxing up his papers for analysis back at the office. Ellis searched through two tall filing cabinets, discovering nothing. She then went back to the living room, where the office manager had her feet up on Drucker’s coffee table and was peering into her phone. “How much longer?” she said without looking up.
“As long as it takes.” Ellis went back to the study. She climbed atop the rickety desk while Speers steadied her legs, then pushed open one of the ceiling panels and, fearing a chance encounter with a rat trap, used a plastic back scratcher to poke around in the unseen darkness. Moments later she hit something. She reached in with her hands, pulled, and was soon holding a rectangular box filled with something heavy. Behind it, she found two more that were identical. She handed the boxes one by one to Speers, grunting a little with each heave.
Then she climbed down and opened the first box. It was filled with several legal pads, as well as a bunch of old mini-cassette tapes. “I’d venture a guess that these are…”
“Interview transcriptions,” Speers confirmed after taking a quick look at the content.
He opened the second box. In it, he found a two-inch thick pile of typewritten paper. There was no cover sheet. The double-spaced type started on the first page, and it was crowded with handwritten annotations.
The third box contained a manuscript printed in bluish text, with margins that had tiny holes in it. “This came out of a dot matrix printer,” Speers said. “We actually had one of these things when we were kids. They were really noisy.”