Blowback

TWENTY-TWO

How am I wrong?” asked Harvath.

“First of all, Emir had no idea what he was working on. That’s why he contacted me,” said Jillian. “And second, his team didn’t engineer anything. What they were dealing with was a discovery.”

Harvath leaned forward over the table. “What kind of discovery?”

“It’s a paleopathologist’s dream come true, but it’s also something that probably should have stayed buried and never been found.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The project Emir was working on bore striking similarities to accounts of a very old and virulent bioweapon.”

“How old?”

“Over two thousand years.”

Harvath thought she was pulling his leg. “They had bioweapons over two thousand years ago?”

“And chemical as well.”

“That’s impossible. You need established, modern science to effectively wage chemical and biological warfare.”

“Tell that to the enemies of the Hittites over three thousand years ago who found themselves beset with human plague bombs. Or how about the soldiers on the receiving end of barbed, poisoned arrows shot by Scythian archers more than five hundred years before Christ?”

“Pretty nasty stuff,” replied Harvath, “but not very scientific.”

Jillian expected as much. Most people had a tremendously naïve view of ancient warfare. It was one of the things that made her field so interesting and yet so very frustrating. She often felt as if she had to be equal parts salesman and scientist. “Were you aware that these same Scythians had perfected a composite reflex bow which allowed them to outshoot any archer of their day by double the distance?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“I’d say being able to project a payload twice as far as your enemies constitutes a pretty technologically advanced delivery system, regardless of its day, wouldn’t you?” Before Harvath could respond, Jillian pressed on. “How about the fact that the Scythians had learned how to agitate human blood to separate out the plasma, which they then used to make their poison arrows even more lethal?”

“But how could a bioweapon over two thousand years old still be viable after all this time?”

“You’d be surprised how long ancient poisons remain lethal. The Victoria and Albert Museum just discovered that the heads of several arrows from India in their collection were coated with deadly substances that are still lethal today, over a thousand years later. If the substance in question here was even somewhat volatile, as long as it was preserved in an anaerobic substance like honey, which was well known to the ancients, or sealed within a container crafted from a nonporous material like faience, gold, or glass, it could remain quite deadly and still be quite dangerous today.”

If what Emir was dealing with was some ancient bioweapon, it was becoming painfully clear why he had reached out to Jillian Alcott for help.

“How these poisons survived is really not what’s important,” she continued. “The point is that for some reason historians all too often choose to overlook the ancients’ skillful manipulation of nature. They’d rather believe that soldiers of old adhered to the highest moral codes in battle, but this just isn’t the case. The ancient world was filled with terrifying precursors to today’s sophisticated chem-bio weapons: from flamethrowers and incendiary devices, all the way to poison gases and dirty bombs. And they did it all without the help of modern science.”

“I’m willing to concede,” replied Harvath, “they had a handle on chemical and biological warfare, but what does this have to do with what Emir was working on?”

“How familiar are you with Islamic science?” asked Jillian.

“If you mean the state of science in the Islamic world, I know a little.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. In the context of what Emir Tokay was doing, the term Islamic science refers to a rather bizarre hybrid of modern science and Islamic mysticism practiced by Muslim fundamentalists.”

At the mention of Muslim fundamentalists, Harvath leaned forward even further and began listening even more intently. She was speaking his language now, and a connection was finally starting to form.

“Many of the people involved with Emir at the institute are Islamic scientists,” continued Alcott. “They believe that things like Ebola, smallpox, and atomic energy all contain powerful, unseen spirits called djinns—from which we take the English word genie. The scientists think that these djinns can be commanded via secret knowledge contained within the Koran. They’re fascinated with things such as Pandora’s box and the plague demons King Solomon supposedly harnessed to build the great temple at Jerusalem and then sealed up within its foundations.”

“This all sounds pretty strange,” said Harvath.

“It is,” replied Alcott, “especially to the Western mind, but it bears scrutiny. There are many fundamentalists, particularly in the Arab world, who are absolutely obsessed with harnessing the power of ancient biological weapons. The older the weapon is, the more powerful they believe the djinn inside it to be. The scary fact is that they are fixated on possessing these ancient weapons and have been on a mad, Indiana Jones — style quest to do so for decades.”

“The David effect,” said Harvath.

“Exactly,” replied Alcott. “A scenario by which a significantly smaller player, with access to the right technology, is able to severely damage a much larger foe, which in this case appears to be the enemies of radical Islam.”

“If this isn’t something that Emir and his group bioengineered themselves, how is it possible that it only targets non-Muslims? Muslims weren’t even around over two thousand years ago.”

“I don’t know,” said Jillian. “Unfortunately, I never got far enough with Emir to figure it out.”

“You said that over two thousand years ago there were accounts of a bioweapon similar to the one we’re seeing today. Where were those accounts from?”

“In a book called the Arthashastra. It was written in India in the fourth century B.C. It urged kings to set aside their conscience and liberally employ diabolical methods to ensure victory against their enemies. It also contained hundreds of recipes for toxic weapons, as well as countless instructions for waging ruthless, unconventional warfare.”

“And this is how you were helping Emir?”

“Yes, I was using my background in paleopathology, the study of disease in antiquity, to help him ascertain what it was he was working with.”

“That’s what Emir thought he was working on? A disease from antiquity?”

“He had his suspicions. He’d heard enough rumors that certain people affiliated with the institute had been searching for ancient diseases and ancient bioweapons to know it was a possibility.”

“What about you?” asked Harvath. “What did you think?”

“Did I think it was possible? I thought it was very possible. In fact, I think that in this case, where the brain of the victim liquefied to a black sludge and ran out the nasal passages, we have a spot-on match for accounts within the Arthashastra.”

Harvath was fascinated, yet underneath it all he sensed a but. “But?”

“But the rest of the symptoms seen in Asalaam — the aversion to light, water, and strong odors, as well as the patient’s aversion to his own reflection and so on — don’t fit.”

“Could Emir’s group have orchestrated that — added it in somehow?”

Jillian shook her head. “From what I gathered, this mystery weapon had been discovered, and Emir’s team was responsible for putting it back into circulation, not improving or modifying it.”

This time it was Harvath who shook his head.

“What?” asked Jillian.

“It’s hard for me to believe that Emir didn’t know what he was working on.”

“According to him, they were duped. They’d been given samples of the weapon, told it was something that had been engineered by the West and that there was a good chance it was going to be used against Muslims somewhere in the world. They had no idea that the reverse was true. Emir Tokay is a good man.”

“As far as I’m concerned, that has yet to be proven,” replied Harvath. “In the meantime, what were they hoping to gain by working with the weapon?”

“Apparently, there was some sort of way to inoculate or build up resistance against it. Emir’s group was supposed to find out how Muslims could be protected from it.”

Immediately, a bell went off in Harvath’s head. “Then this weapon wasn’t bioengineered to decimate non-Muslims, it was engineered to kill anyone who wasn’t vaccinated against it.”

“Vaccination in the strict sense of the word might not be exactly how it works,” said Jillian, “but you’re in the right vicinity.”

“What else can you tell me?” he asked. “I need to know more, especially about the Arthashastra. Maybe there’s an answer in there — a formula or an antidote we can use.”

“It’s a very complicated book.”

Harvath was about to assert that it couldn’t be that complicated if a group of nutcase fundamentalist scientists had figured out how to crack it, when the TV at the front of the pub caught his attention again. Several of the patrons had gathered around to watch some sort of update on the Harvey Nichols shooting. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

He quietly walked up behind the group of customers at the front of the pub and watched as a reporter explained that three people had been shot to death at the upscale Knightsbridge department store — one of them an off-duty London police officer. The reporter then cut to video from the store’s security cameras showing the shooter in action. It was like the al-Karim bazaar all over again. All of the attention was focused on Harvath, and Khalid Alomari was nowhere to be seen. The only thing Harvath had going for him was that none of the footage showed a full shot of his face. Not that it mattered. According to the reporter, eyewitnesses were already working with police sketch artists, and they were confident they would have a composite soon. What they did have now, though, were several shots of a woman police were saying might have been kidnapped by one of the gunmen. Harvath watched as they ran several pieces of video that clearly showed Jillian’s face.

Hurrying back to the table and positioning his body so that Alcott would be less visible from the front of the pub, Harvath asked, “How’d you pay for your meal in the café? Cash? Check? Credit card? What was it?”

“I paid cash,” responded Jillian. “What’s this all about?”

“Good. That means they won’t have your name, at least not right away.”

“Who won’t have my name?”

“The police. They’ve just released images from the store’s security cameras. Apparently, they can’t decide whether I kidnapped you or if you were my willing accomplice.”

“Accomplice to what?”

“To the shooting. Three people back at the store are dead. One of them was an off-duty policeman.”

Jillian didn’t know what to say. “Did you shoot him?”

“Of course not.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because,” replied Harvath, “I know who I was aiming at.”

“Khalid Alomari.”

“Exactly.”

“This is too much,” replied Jillian. “We have to go to the police. Now.”

“I already told you. I can’t go to the police, and neither can you. There’s no time.”

“If Alomari was in that store, then they’ll have footage of him too.”

“He’s a professional. If they do, they won’t have much.”

“But it’s something, a start. They could help us look for him.”

“At this point, Khalid Alomari is one of the last things I’m concerned about. I need to get to the bottom of how this illness works and how and where al-Qaeda intends to use it. I can’t do that, though, without your help. I need to know more about what Emir was involved with.”

Jillian knew she had to do something. She might be Emir’s only hope. Finally, she said, “I’m not the one you need to talk to.”

“Of course you are. You’re the person Emir was speaking with outside the institute.”

“I’m not exactly the only one.”

Harvath looked at her. “If there’s anyone else you think he might have spoken to, you need to tell me. They could be in a lot of danger right now as well.”

“I doubt it,” said Jillian. “There’s no trail connecting them. Emir didn’t even know I was talking to anyone else about his work.”

“You? Who were you talking with?”

Jillian paused for a moment. “Two people who know a lot more about this stuff than I do.”

“Other paleopathologists?”

“They were professors of mine at university,” she replied. “Vanessa and Alan Whitcomb.”

“Where can I find them?” asked Harvath.

“About five hours north of here in Durham. Do you have a car?”

Harvath shook his head.

“Then it looks like we may be sticking together for a little while longer.”