“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “There’s very little that we know about her … abilities.”
“And he knows you came up to Graniteville,” the sheriff said. “That’s just damn wonderful.”
Gwen put her hand on his. “I called Mr. Stafford, John Lee, remember? At the time, there was no way he could have known why.”
Stafford sat back down. ‘ The cylinder in her drawing meant nothing to me until that response team showed up at the DRMO,” he explained. “And I saw that same cylinder on the PC monitor in one of their trailers.”
The sheriff leaned back in his chair, rubbing that big mustache with his fingers. The bucolic tranquillity of the yard outside was in stark contrast to the tension on the porch. Stafford massaged his aching right arm; he had not done his exercises for a couple of days. “What happens next,” he said, “will depend on what some badly frightened people in Washington set in motion.”
The sheriff absorbed that thought for a moment. “Well, maybe I’m just a dumb-ass country sheriff,” he said, “but I guess I don’t understand why everybody who knows about this isn’t jumping out of his hide trying to find the weapon, instead of all this cover-up stuff.”
“Cover-up is the hallmark of effective government these days, Sheriff,” Stafford replied. “You need to know something else. I’ve already told Gwen this, but let me tell you the real reason I was sent down here in the first place.”
34
“Where the hell did this come from?” General Carrothers asked, waving a piece of paper in the air. Major Mason’s face was grim.
“From Army Criminal Investigation Command, General. I just called them to verify it. They got it from the FBI intelligence division.”
Carrothers examined the spot report again. The first paragraph contained the usual warnings and caveats about protecting sensitive intelligence methods and sources. It was the second paragraph that had his attention, the one reporting that word was circulating among the clandestine international arms network that an individual by the name of Stafford had put feelers out into the market regarding the possible sale of stolen chemical ordnance, for which he was reportedly asking a million dollars. No further identifying data on subject Stafford. The FBI was investigating, and requesting any available corroborating information about missing chemical ordnance from the Army.
Son of a bitch! he thought.
“I assume the implied question there is whether or not we’ve had any weapons stolen,” Mason said.
Carrothers nodded slowly. “Not so, implied, is it, Major? And the technically correct answer is no, we have no reports of stolen chemical weapons. Tell them that at once. Then hopefully they won’t come asking if we’ve lost any CW ordnance. Jesus H. Christ, Mason, if this is true…”
“Yes, sir. Understood, sir. That name, Stafford—”
“No shit. How many Staffords have we encountered recently? And there’s the matter of his evasions on that lie-detector examination. Damn it.
Maybe I fucked up. We should have held him.”
A front-office clerk stuck his head into the general’s office. “A Colonel Fuller is here, General? Shall I have I him wait?”
“No, send him in.”
Colonel Fuller came into the office and shut the door behind him.
“Morning, General, Major Mason,” he said. Then he saw their faces.
“We’re reconstituting the Security Working Group? Has something happened?”
“After a fashion, Colonel,” Carrothers said.
Fuller looked from Carrothers to Mason and back. “Does General Waddell know about this?” Carrothers said nothing, and Fuller nodded slowly.
“All right,” he said.
“Let me guess: You don’t think that thing went into that demil machine, do you?”
“Colonel Fuller, I have a question for you,” Carrothers said. “Why did General Waddell pull you into this thing?”
“Well, Myer Waddell and I go way back,” Fuller began, but Carrothers raised his hand.
“No, I mean why you, a BW expert?
Colonel Fuller sat down in a chair and pulled at his shirt collar. He glanced over at Major Mason, but Carrothers indicated that Mason was staying.
Fuller nodded. “Right. The problem is I have specific orders from General Waddell not to discuss this with anyone, including you, sir.”
Carrothers turned on the frost. “Care for a little temporary duty out on Kwajalein Island, Colonel? I can have you on a plane this afternoon.”
Fuller smiled, then put up his hands in mock surrender. “The Wet Eye weapon is a hybrid, General. It contains a biologic component. An unstable biologic component, if my information is correct.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Carrothers muttered.
“Unstable how, Colonel?” Mason asked, making notes.
“Unstable in that the biologic component may mutate in the absence of the environmental controls provided by its coffin.”
“In other words,” Carrothers said, “we don’t know what the hell might be going on in that cylinder?”
“That’s correct.” Fuller paused, as if he was about to amplify that, but then went on. “Let me give you some history, General.”
Fuller described hqw the United States had come into possession of the weapon, and what the biological weapons program had decided about Wet Eye all those” years ago.
“So this wasn’t even one of ours?”
“No, sir. And this is all archive information on the offensive BW program. That’s all gone now. All we do out at Dietrick now in BW is on the defense side. We develop vaccines to inoculate our troops against the BW programs of the Saddam Husseins of the world, you know, all those upstanding countries who won’t sign the treaties banning this stuff.”
Carrothers got up and started pacing behind his desk. “Major,” he said, “tell Colonel Fuller about that FBI intel report.”
Fuller listened carefully and then shook his head. “Not likely, General,” he said. “The group’s information was that Stafford got there after the containers had come in from Tooele and been destroyed. We checked with DCIS when he popped up at the first response-team insertion.”
“What did they tell you about him?”, “That he blew the whistle on an SES-Two, which, of course, did not endear him to senior officials in DCIS. They hinted pretty strongly that the guy had been shit canned. But they did say he was a first-class investigator. Just has no political sense.”
“In other words, not the kind of guy who’s likely to steal and then try to sell stolen chemical weapons to, say, the Iranians.”
“No, sir. He’s an ex-cop and now a GS-Fifteen federal agent. That’s too much of a reach.”
Carrothers pointed to the intelligence report. “Then what the hell’s this all about? Where’s it coming from? And if this guy Stafford knows something, why in the hell hasn’t he come in to talk about it?”
Mason cleared his throat. “He did, General. In a manner of speaking, that is.” This comment earned him a quick glare from Carrothers. Mason squirmed uncomfortably.
“If we refuse to admit we’ve lost a weapon, where else could the guy go?” Fuller asked.
“To his boss, goddamn it!” Carrothers said. “Major, get that guy I talked to the other night — I think his name was Sparks — on the horn.-He’s down in Smyrna.”
Mason got up and left the office. Fuller was shaking his head. “And tell him what, General? We’ve lost a chemical weapon and we really need to talk to Stafford?”
“Of course not. I’ll tell him we’ve received this report and we wanted to know if It’s credible.”