Cause Of Death

Chapter 12

THAT NIGHT I WENT HOME BECAUSE I NEEDED clothes, and my passport was in the safe. I packed with nervous hands as I waited for my pager to beep. Fielding had been calling me on the hour to hear updates and air his concerns. The bodies at Old Point remained where the gunmen had left them, as best we knew, and we had no idea how many of the plant's workers remained imprisoned inside.

I slept restlessly under the watch of a police car parked on my street, and I sat up when the alarm clock startled me awake at five A.m. An hour and a half later, a Learjet awaited me at the Millionaire Terminal in Henrico County, where the area's wealthiest businessmen parked their helicopters and corporate planes. Wesley and I were polite but guarded as we greeted each other, and I was having trouble believing we were about to fly overseas together. But it had been planned that he would visit the embassy before it was suggested that I should go to London, too, and General Sessions did not know about our history. Or at least this was how I chose to view a situation that was out of my hands.

"I'm not sure I trust your motives," I said to Wesley as the jet took off like a race car with wings. "And what about this?" I looked around. "Since when does the Bureau use Learjets, or did the Pentagon arrange this, too?"

"We use whatever we need," he said. "CP amp;L has made available any resource it has to help us resolve this crisis. The Learjet belongs to them."

The white jet was sleek, with burlwood and teal green leather seats, but it was loud, so we could not speak softly.

"You don't have to worry about using something of theirs?" I said.

"They're just as unhappy about all this as we are. As far as we know, with the exception of one or two bad apples, CP amp;L is blameless. In fact, it and its employees are clearly the most profoundly victimized."

He stared ahead at the cockpit and its two well-built pilots dressed in suits. "Besides, the pilots are HRT,- he added. "And we checked every nut and bolt of this thing before we took off. Don't worry. As for my going with you-he looked at me-"I'll say it again. What happens now is operational. The ball has been passed to FIRT. I will be needed when terrorists begin to communicate with us, when we can at least identify them. But I don't think that will be for several days."

"How can you possibly know that?" I poured coffee.

He took the cup from my hand and our fingers brushed.

"I know because they're busy. They want those assemblies, and there are only so many they can get per day."

"Have the reactors been shut down?"

"According to the power company, the terrorists shut down the reactors immediately after storming the plant. So they know what they want, and they are down to business."

"And there are twenty of them."

"That's approximately how many went in for their a] leged seminar in the mock control room. But we really can't be sure how many are there now."

"This tour," I said, "when was it scheduled?"

"The power company said it was originally scheduled in early December for the end of February."

"Then they moved it up." I wasn't surprised in light of what had happened lately.

"Yes," he said. "It was suddenly rescheduled a couple of days before Eddings was killed."

"it sounds like they're desperate, Benton."

"And probably more reckless and not as prepared," he said. "And that's better and worse for us."

"And what about hostages? Is it likely they will let all of them go, based on your experience?"

"I don't know about all of them," he said, staring out the window, his face grim in soft side lights.

"Lord," I said, "if they try to get the fuel out, we could have a national disaster on our hands. And I don't see how they think they can pull this off. Those assemblies probably weigh several tons each and are so radioactive they could cause instant death if you got close. And how will they get them away from Old Point?"

"The plant's surrounded by water for purposes of cooling the reactors. And nearby, on the James, we're watching a barge we believe belongs to them."

I remembered Marino telling me of barges delivering large crates to the New Zionist compound, and I said, "Can we take it?"

"No. We can't take barges, submarines, nothing right now. Not until we can get those hostages out." He sipped coffee, and the horizon was turning a pale gold.

"Then the best-case scenario is they will take what they want and leave without killing anybody else," I supposed, although I did not think this could happen.

"No. The best-case scenario is we stop them there." He looked at me. "We don't want a barge full of highly radioactive material on Virginia's rivers or out at sea. What are we going to do, threaten to sink it? Besides, my guess is they'll take hostages with them." He paused. "Eventually, they'll shoot them all."

I could not help but imagine those poor people now as fright shocked every nerve cell every moment they breathed. I knew about the physical and mental manifestations of fear, and the images were searing and I seethed inside. I felt a wave of hatred for these men who called themselves the New Zionists, and I clenched my fists.

Wesley looked down at my white knuckles on the armrests, and thought I was afraid of flying. "It's only a few more minutes," he said. "We're starting our descent."

We landed at Kennedy, and a shuttle waited for us on the tarmac. It was driven by two more fit men in suits, and I did not ask Wesley about them because I already knew.

One of them walked us inside the terminal to British Airways, which had been kind enough to cooperate with the Bureau, or maybe it was the Pentagon, by making two seats available on their next Concorde flight to London. At the counter, we discreetly showed our credentials and said we had not packed guns. The agent assigned to keep us safe walked with us to the lounge, and when I looked for him next, he was perusing stacks of foreign newspapers.

Wesley and I found seats before expansive windows looking out over the tarmac where the supersonic plane waited like a giant white heron being fed fuel through a thick hose attached to its side. The Concorde looked more like a rocket than any commercial craft I had seen, and it appeared that most of its passengers were no longer capable of being impressed by it or much of anything. They served themselves pastries and fruit, and some were already mixing Bloody Marys and mimosas.

Wesley and I talked little and constantly scanned the crowd as we held up newspapers like every other proverbial spy or fugitive on the run. I could tell that Middle Easterners, in particular, caught his eye, while I was more wary of people who looked like us, for I remembered Joel Hand that day I had faced him in court and had found him attractive and genteel. If he sat next to me right now and I did not know him, I would have thought he belonged in this lounge more than we.

"How are you doing?" Wesley lowered his paper.

"I don't know." I was agitated. "So tell me. Are we alone or is your friend still here?"

His eyes smiled.

"I don't see what's amusing about this."

"So you thought the Secret Service might be nearby. Or undercover agents."

"I see. I guess that man in the suit who walked us here is special services for British Airways."

"Let me answer your question this way. If we're not alone, Kay, I'm not going to tell you."

We looked at each other a moment longer, and we had never traveled abroad together, and now did not seem like a good time to start. He was wearing a blue suit so dark it was almost black and his usual white shirt and conservative tie. I had dressed with similar somber deliberation, and both of us had our -lasses on. I thought we looked like partners in a law firm, and as I noticed other women in the room I was reminded that what I did not look like was anybody's wife.

Paper rustled as he folded the London Times and glanced at his watch. "I think that's us," he said, getting up as Flight 2 was called again.

The Concorde held a hundred people in two cabins with two seats on either side of the aisle. The decor was muted gray carpet and leather, with spaceship windows too small to gaze out. Flight attendants were British and typically polite, and if they knew we were the two passengers from the FBI, Navy, or God knows, the CIA, they did not indicate so in any way. Their only concern seemed to be what we wanted to drink, and I ordered whiskey.

"It's a little early, isn't it?" Wesley said.

"Not in London it's not," I told him. "It's five hours later there."

"Thank you. I'll set my watch," he dryly said as if he'd never been anywhere in his life. "I guess I'll have a beer," he told the attendant.

"There, now that we're on the proper time zone, it's easier to drink," I said, and I could not keep the bite out of my voice.

He turned to me and met my eyes. "You sound angry."

"That's why you're a profiler, because you can figure out things like that."

He subtly looked around us, but we were behind the bulkhead with no one across the aisle, and I almost did not care who was at our rear.

"Can we talk reasonably?" he quietly asked.

"It's hard to be reasonable, Benton, when you always want to talk after the fact."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I think there's a transition missing somewhere."

I was about to give him one. "Everyone knew about your separation except me," I said. "Lucy told me because she heard about it from other agents. I would just like to be included in our relationship for once."

"Christ, I wish you wouldn't get so upset."

"Not half as much as I do."

"I didn't tell you because I didn't want to be influenced by you," he said.

We were talking in low voices, leaning forward and together so that our shoulders were touching. Despite the grave circumstances, I was aware of his every move and how it felt against me. I smelled his wool jacket and the cologne he liked to wear.

"Any decision about my marriage can't include you," he went on as drinks arrived. "I know you must understand that."

My body wasn't used to whiskey at this hour, and the effect of it was quick and strong. I instantly began to relax, and shut my eyes during the roar of takeoff as the jet leaned back and throbbed, thundering up through the air. From then on, the world below became nothing but a vague horizon, if I could see anything out the window at all. The noise of engines remained loud, making it necessary for us to continue sitting very close to each other as we intensely talked on.

"I know how I feel about you," Wesley was saying. "I have known that for a long time."

"You have no right," I said. "You have never had a right.

"And what about you? Did you have a right to do what you did, Kay? Or was I the only one in the room?"

"At least I'm not married or even with anyone," I said.

"But no, I shouldn't have."

He was still drinking beer and neither of us was interested in canapes and caviar that I suspected would prove the first running of a long gourmet game. For a while we fell silent, flipping through magazines and professional journals while almost everyone else inside our cabin did the same. I noticed that people on the Concorde did not talk to each other much, and I decided that being rich and famous or royal must be rather boring.

"So I guess we've resolved that issue then," Wesley started again, leaning closer as I picked at asparagus.

"What issue?" I set down my fork, because I was lefthanded and he was in the way.

"You know. About what we should and shouldn't do."

He brushed against my breast and then his arm stayed there as if all we had said earlier was voided at Mach two.

"Yes," I said.

"Yes?" His voice was curious. "What do you mean, yes?"

"Yes about what you just said." With each breath I took, my body moved against him. "About resolving things."

"Then that's what we'll do," he agreed.

"Of course we will," I said, not entirely certain what we had just agreed to do. "One other thing," I added. "If you ever get divorced and we want to see each other, we start over."

"Absolutely. That makes perfect sense."

"In the meantime, we're colleagues and friends."

"That's exactly what I want, too," he said.

At half past six, we sped along Park Lane, both of us silent in the backseat of a Rover driven by an officer of the Metropolitan Police. In darkness, I watched the lights of London go by, and I was disoriented and vividly alive. Hyde Park was a sea of spreading black, lamp smudges of light along winding paths.

The flat where we were staying was very close to the Dorchester Hotel, and Pakistanis pooled around that grand old hotel this night, protesting their visiting prime minister with fervor. Riot police and dogs were out in numbers, but our driver seemed unconcerned.

"There is a doorman," he said as he pulled in front of a tall building that looked relatively new. "Just go in and give him your identification. He will get you into your accommodations. Do you need help with your bags?"

Wesley opened his door. "Thanks. We can manage."

We got out and went inside a small reception area, where an alert older man smiled warmly at us from behind a polished desk.

"Oh right. I've been expecting you," he said.

He got up and took our bags. "If you'll just follow me to the lift here."

We got on and rose to the fifth floor, where he showed us a three-bedroom flat with wide windows, bright fabrics and African art. My room was comfortably appointed, with the typical English tub large enough to drown in and toilet that flushed with a chain. Furniture was Victorian with hardwood floors covered in worn Turkish rugs, and I went over to the window and turned the radiator up high. I switched off lamps and gazed out at cars rushing past and dark trees in the park moving in the wind.

Wesley's room was down the hall at the far end, and I did not hear him walk in until he spoke.

"Kay?" He waited near my doorway, and I heard ice softly rattle. "Whoever lives here keeps very fine Scotch.

I've been told we are to help ourselves."

He walked in and set tumblers on the sill.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" I asked.

"It's never been necessary in the past."

He stood next to me, and we drank and leaned against each other as we looked out together. For a long time we spoke in small, quiet sentences, and then he touched my hair, and kissed my ear and jaw. I touched him, too, and our love for each other got deeper as kisses and caresses did.

"I've missed you so much," he whispered as clothing became loosened and undone.

We made love because we could not help ourselves. That was our only excuse and would hold up in no court I knew.

Separation had been very hard, so we were hungry with each other all night. Then at dawn I drifted off to sleep long enough to awaken and find him gone, as if it all had been a dream. I lay beneath a down-filled duvet, and images were slow and lyrical in my mind. Lights danced beneath my lids and I felt as if I were being rocked, as if I were a little girl again and my father were not dying of a disease I did not understand back then.

I had never gotten over him. I supposed my attachments to all men had sadly relived my being left by him. It was a dance I moved to without trying, and then found myself in silence in the empty room of my most private life. I realized how much Lucy and I were alike. We both loved in secret and would not speak of pain.

Getting dressed, I went out into the hall and found Wesley in the living room drinking coffee as he looked out at a cloudy day. He was dressed in suit and tie, and did not seem tired.

"There's coffee on," he said. "Can I bring you some?"

"Thanks, I'll get it." I stepped into the kitchen. "Have you been up long?"

"For a while."

He made coffee very strong, and it struck me that there were so many domestic details about him I did not know.

We did not cook together or go on vacations or do sports when I knew we both enjoyed so many of the same things.

I walked into the living room and set my cup and saucer on a windowsill because I wanted to look out at the park.

"How are you?" His eyes lingered on mine.

"I'm fine. What about you?"

"You don't look fine."

"You always know just the thing to say."

"You look like you didn't get much sleep. That's what I meant.

"I got virtually no sleep, and you're to blame."

He smiled. "That and jet lag."

"The lag you cause is worse, Special Agent Wesley."

Already traffic was loud rushing past and punctuated periodically by the odd cacophony of British sirens. In the cold, early light, people were walking briskly along sidewalks, and some were jogging. Wesley got up from his chair.

"We should be going soon." He rubbed the back of my neck and kissed it. "We should get a little something to eat. It's going to be a long day."

"Benton, I don't like living this way," I said as he shut the door.

We followed Park Lane past the Dorchester Hotel, where some Pakistanis were still taking their stand. Then we took Mount Street to South Audley where we found a small restaurant open called Richoux. Inside were exotic French pastries and boxes of chocolates beautiful enough to display as art. People were dressed for business and reading newspapers at small tables. I drank fresh orange juice and got hungry. Our Filipino waitress was puzzled because Wesley had only toast while I ordered bacon and eggs with mushrooms and tomatoes.

"You wish to share?" she asked, "No, thank you." I smiled.

At not quite ten A.M., we continued on South Audley to Grosvenor Square, where the American Embassy was an unfortunate granite block of 1950s architecture guarded by a bronze eagle rampant on the roof. Security was extremely tight, with somber guards everywhere. We produced pass t, ports and credentials, and our photographs were taken. Finally, we were escorted to the second floor where we were to meet with the FBI's senior legal attache, or legate, for Great Britain. Chuck Olson's corner office afforded a perfect view of people waiting in long lines for visas and green cards. He was a stocky man in a dark suit, his neatly trimmed hair almost as silver as Wesley's.

"A pleasure," he said as he shook our hands. "Please have a seat. Would anybody like coffee?"

Wesley and I chose a couch across from a desk that was clear except for a notepad and file folders. On a cork board behind Olson's head were drawings that I assumed were done by his children, and above these hung a large Department of Justice seal. Other than shelves of books and various commendations, the office was the simple space of a busy person unimpressed with his job or self.

"Chuck," Wesley began, "I'm sure you already know that Dr. Scarpetta is our consulting forensic pathologist, and though she does have her own situation in Virginia to handle, she could be called back here later."

"God forbid," Olson said, for if there was a nuclear disaster in England or anywhere in Europe, chances were I would be brought in to help handle the dead.

"So I wonder if you could give her a clearer picture of our concerns," Wesley said.

"Well, there's the obvious," Olson said to me. "About a third of England's electricity is generated by nuclear power. We're worried about a similar terrorist strike, and don't know, in fact, if one hasn't already been planned by these same people."

"But the New Zionists are rooted in Virginia," I said.

"Are you saying they have international connections?"

"They aren't the driving force in this," he said. "They aren't the ones who want plutonium."

"Who specifically, then?" I said.

"Libya."

"I think the world has known that for a while," I replied.

"Well, now it's happening," Wesley said. "It's happening at Old Point."

"As you no doubt know," Olson went on, "Qaddafi has wanted nuclear weapons for a very long time and has been thwarted in his every attempt. It appears he finally found a way. He found the New Zionists in Virginia, and certainly, there are extremist groups he could use over here. We also have many Arabs."

"How do you know it's Libya?" I asked.

It was Wesley who replied, "For one thing, we've been going through Joel Hand's telephone records and they include numerous calls-mainly to Tripoli and Benghsli made over the past two years."

"But you don't know that Qaddafi is trying anything here in London," I said.

"What we fear is how vulnerable we would be. London is the stepping-off point to Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East. It is a tremendous financial center. Just because Libya steals fire from the U.S. doesn't mean the U.S. is the ultimate target."

"Fire?" I asked.

"As in the myth about Prometheus. Fire is our code for plutonium."

"I understand," I said. "What you're saying makes chilling sense. Tell me what I can do."

"Well, we need to explore the mind-set of this thing, both for purposes of what's happening now and what might happen later," Olson said. "We need to get a better handle on how these terrorists think, and that, obviously, is Wesley's department. Yours is to get information. I understand you have a colleague here who might prove useful."

"We can only hope," I said. "But I intend to speak to him."

"What about security?" Wesley asked him. "Do we need to put someone with her?"

Olson looked at me oddly as if assessing my strength, as if I were not myself but an object or fighter about to step into the ring.

"No," he said. "I think she's absolutely safe here, unless you know otherwise."

"I'm not sure," Wesley said as he looked at me, too.

"Maybe we should send someone with her."

"Absolutely not. No one knows I'm in London," I said.

"And Dr. Mant already is reluctant, if not scared to death, so he's certainly not going to open up to me if someone else is along. Then the point of this trip is defeated."

"All right," Wesley reluctantly said. "Just so long as we know where you are, and we need to meet back here no later than four if we're going to catch our plane."

"I'll call you if I get hung up," I said. "You'll be here?"

"If we're not, my secretary will know where to find us," Olson said.

I went down to the lobby where water splashed loudly in a fountain and a bronze Lincoln was enthroned within walls lined with portraits of former U.S. representatives.

Guards were severe as they studied passports and visitors.

They let me pass with cool stares, and I felt their eyes follow me out the door. On the street in the cold, damp morning, I hailed a cab and gave the driver an address not very far away in Belgravia off Eaton Square.

The elderly Mrs. Mant had lived in Ebury Mews in a three-story town house that had been divided into flats. Her building was stucco with red chimney pots piled high on a variegated shingle roof, and window boxes were filled with daffodils, crocuses and ivy. I climbed stairs to the second floor and knocked on her door, but when it was answered, it was not by my deputy chief. The matronly woman peering out at me looked as confused as I did.

"Excuse me," I said to her. "I guess this has already been sold."

"No, I'm sorry. It's not for sale at all," she firmly said.

"I'm looking for Philip Mant," I went on. "Clearly I must have the wrong…"

"Oh," she said. "Philip's my brother." She smiled pleasantly. "He just left for work. You just missed him."

"Work?" I said.

"Oh yes, he always leaves right about this time. To avoid traffic, you know. Although I don't think that's really possible." She hesitated, suddenly aware of the stranger before her. "Might I tell him who dropped by?"

"Dr. Kay Scarpetta," I said. "And I really must find him."

"Why of course." She seemed as pleased as she was surprised. "I've heard him speak of you. He's enormously fond of you and will be absolutely delighted to hear you came by. What brings you to London?"

"I never miss an opportunity to visit here. Might you tell me where I could find him?" I asked again.

"Of course. The Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road." She hesitated, uncertain. "I should have thought he would have told you."

"Yes." I smiled. "And I'm very pleased for him."

I wasn't certain what I was talking about, but she seemed very pleased, too.

"Don't tell him I'm coming," I went on. "I intend to surprise him."

"Oh, that's brilliant. He will be absolutely thrilled."

I caught another taxi as I thought about what I believed she had just said. No matter Mant's reason for what he had done, I could not help but feel slightly furious.

"You going to the Coroner's Court, ma'am?" the driver asked me. "It's right there." He pointed out the open window at a handsome brick building.

"No, I'm going to the actual mortuary," I said.

"All right. Well that's right here. Better to walk in than be carried," he said with a hoarse laugh.

I got out money as he parked in front of a building small by London standards. Brick with granite trim and a strange parapet along the roof, it was surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence painted the color of rust. According to the date on a plaque at the entrance, the mortuary was more than a hundred years old, and I thought about how grim it would have been to practice forensic medicine in those days. There would have been few witnesses to tell the story except for the human kind, and I wondered if people had lied less in earlier times.

The mortuary's reception area was small but pleasantly furnished like a typical lobby for a normal business.

Through an open door was a corridor, and since I did not see anyone, I headed that way just as a woman emerged from a room, her arms loaded with oversized books.

"Sorry," she said, startled. "But you can't come back here."

"I'm looking for Dr. Mant," I said.

She wore a loose-fitting long dress and sweater, and spoke with a Scottish accent. "And who may I tell him is here to see him?" she politely said.

I showed her my credentials.

"Oh very good, I see. Then he's expecting you."

"I shouldn't think so," I said.

"I sec." She shifted the books to another arm and was very confused.

"He used to work with me in the States," I said. "I'd like to surprise him, so I prefer to find him if you'll just tell me where."

"Dear me, that would be the Foul Room just now. If you go through this door here." She nodded at it. "And you'll see locker rooms to the left of the main mortuary.

Everything you need is there, then turn left again through another set of doors, and right beyond that. Is that clear?"

She smiled.

"Thank you," I said.

In the locker room I put on booties, gloves and mask, and loosely tied a gown around me to keep the odor out of my clothes. I passed through a tiled room where six stainless-steel tables and a wall of white refrigerators gleamed.

The doctors wore blue, and Westminster was keeping them busy this morning. They scarcely glanced at me as I walked past. Down the hall I found my deputy chief in tall rubber boots, standing on a footstool as he worked on a badly decomposing body that I suspected had been in water for a while. The stench was terrible, and I shut the door behind me.

"Dr. Mant," I said.

He turned around and for an instant did not seem to know who I was or where he was. Then he simply looked shocked.

"Dr. Scarpetta? My God, why I'll be bloody damned."

He heavily stepped off the stool, for he was not a small man. "I'm so surprised. I'm rather speechless!" He was sputtering, and his eyes wavered with fear.

"I'm surprised, too," I somberly said.

"I quite imagine that you are. Come on. No need to talk in here with this rather ghastly floater. Found him in the Thames yesterday afternoon. Looks like a stabbing to me but we have no identity. We should go to the lounge," he nervously talked on.

Philip Mant was a charming old gentleman impossible not to like, with thick white hair and heavy brows over keen pale eyes. He showed me around the corner to showers, where we disinfected our feet, stripped off gloves and masks and stuffed scrubs into a bin. Then we went to the lounge, which opened onto the parking lot in back. Like everything else in London, the stale smoke in this room had a long history, too.

"May I offer you some refreshment?" he asked as he got out a pack of Players. "I know you don't smoke anymore, so I won't offer."

"I don't need a thing except some answers from you," I said.

His hands trembled slightly as he struck a match.

"Dr. Mant, what in God's name are you doing here?" I started in. "You're supposed to be in London because you had a death in the family."

"I did. Coincidentally."

"Coincidentally?" I said. "And what does that mean?"

"Dr. Scarpetta, I fully intended to leave anyway and then my mother suddenly died and that made it easy to choose a time."

"Then you've had no intention of coming back," I said, stung.

"I'm quite sorry. But no, I have not." He delicately tapped an ash.

"You could at least have told me so I could have begun looking for your replacement. I've tried to call you several times."

"I didn't tell you and I didn't call because I didn't want them to know."

"Them?" The word seemed to hang in the air. "Exactly who do you mean, Dr. Mant?"

He was very matter-of fact as he smoked, legs crossed, and belly roundly swelling over his belt. "I have no idea who they are, but they certainly know who we are. That's what alarms me. I can tell you exactly when it all began.

October thirteenth, and you may or may not remember the case."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Well, the Navy did the autopsy because the death was at their shipyard in Norfolk."

"The man who was accidentally crushed in a dry dock?" I vaguely recalled.

"The very one."

"You're right. That was a Navy case, not ours," I said as I began to anticipate what he had to say. "Tell me what that has to do with us."

"You see, the rescue squad made a mistake," he continued. "Instead of transporting the body to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where it belonged, they brought it to my office, and young Danny didn't know. He began drawing blood, doing paperwork, that sort of thing, and in the process found something very unusual amongst the decedent's personal effects."

I realized Mant did not know about Danny.

"The victim had a canvas satchel with him," he went on. "And the squad had simply placed it on top of the body and covered everything with a sheet. Poor form as it may be, I suppose had that not occurred we wouldn't have had a clue."

"A clue about what?"

"What this fellow had, apparently, was a copy of a rather sinister bible that I came to find out later is connected to a cult. The New Zionists. An absolutely terrible thing, that book was, describing in detail torture, murder, things like that. It was dreadfully unsettling, in my view."

"Was it called the Book of Hand?" I asked.

"Why yes." His eyes lit up. "It was, indeed."

"Was it in a black leather binder?"

"I believe it was. With a name stamped on it that oddly enough was not the name of the decedent. Shapiro, or something."

"Dwain Shapiro."

"Of course," he said. "Then you already know about this."

"I know about the Book but not why this individual had it in his possession, because certainly his name was not Dwain Shapiro."

He paused to rub his face. "I think his name was Catlett."

"But he could have been Dwain Shapiro's killer," I said.

"That could be why he had the bible."

Mant did not know. "When I realized we had a naval case in our morgue," he said, "I had Danny transport the body to Portsmouth. Clearly, the poor man's effects should have gone with him."

"But Danny kept the book," I said.

"I'm afraid so." He leaned forward and crushed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table.

"Why would he do that?"

" I happened to walk into his office and spotted it, and I asked him why in the world he had it. His explanation was that since the book had another individual's name on it, he wondered if it hadn't been accidentally picked up at the scene. That perhaps the satchel belonged to someone else, as well." He paused. "You see, he was still rather new and I think he'd simply made an honest mistake."

"Tell me something," I said, "were any reporters calling the office or coming around at this time? For example, might anyone have inquired about the man crushed to death in the shipyard?"

"Oh yes, Mr. Eddings showed up. I remember that because he was rather keen on finding out every detail, which puzzled me a bit. To my knowledge, he never wrote anything about it."

"Might Danny have talked to Eddings?"

Mant stared off in thought. "It seems I did see the two of them talking some. But young Danny certainly knew better than to give him a quote."

"Might he have given Eddings the Book, assuming that Eddings was doing a story on the New Zionists?"

"Actually, I wouldn't know. I never saw the Book again and assumed Danny had returned it to the Navy. I miss the lad. How is he, by the way? How is his knee'! I called him Hop-Along, you know." He laughed.

But I did not answer his question or even smile. "Tell me what happened after that. What made you afraid?"

"Strange things. Hang-ups. I felt I was being followed.

My morgue supervisor, as you recall, abruptly quit with no good explanation. And one day when I went out to the parking lot, there was blood all over the windshield of my car. I actually had it tested in the lab, and it was type butcher shop. From a cow, in other words."

"I presume you have met Detective Roche," I said.

"Unfortunately. I don't fancy him at all."

"Did he ever try to get information from you?"

"He would drop by. Not for postmortems, of course. He doesn't have the stomach for them."

"What did he want to know?"

"Well, the Navy death we talked about. He had questions about that."

"Did he ask about his personal effects? The satchel that inadvertently came into the morgue along with the body?"

Mant was trying to remember. "Well, now that you're prodding this rather pathetic memory of mine, it seems I do recall him asking about the satchel. And I referred him to Danny, I believe."

"Well, Danny obviously never gave it to him," I said.

"Or at least not the Book, because that has turned up since."

I did not tell him how because I did not want to upset him.

"That bloody Book must be terribly important to someone," he mused.

I paused as he smoked again. Then I said, "Why didn't you tell me'? Why did you just run and never say a word?"

"Frankly, I didn't want you dragged into it as well. And it all sounded rather fantastic." He paused, and I could tell by his face he sensed other bad events had occurred since he had left Virginia. "Dr. Scarpetta, I'm not a young man.

I only want to peacefully do my job a little while longer before I retire."

I did not want to criticize him further because I understood what he had done. I frankly could not blame him and was glad he had fled, for he probably had saved his own life. Ironically, there had been nothing important he knew, and had he been murdered, it would have been for no cause, as Danny's murder was for no cause.

Then I told the truth as I pushed back images of a knee brace as bright red as blood spilled, and leaves and trash clinging to gory hair. I remembered Danny's brilliant smile and would never forget the small white bag he had carried out of the cafe on a hill, where a dog had barked half the night. In my mind, I would always see the sadness and fear in his eyes when he helped me with the murdered Ted Eddings, whom I now realized he had known. Together, the two young men had inadvertently led each other a step closer to their eventual violent deaths.

"Dear Lord. The poor boy," was all Mant could say.

He covered his eyes with a handkerchief, and when I left him, he was still crying.

WESLEY AND I FLEW BACK TO NEW YORK THAT NIGHT, and arrived early because tail winds were more than a hundred knots. We went through customs and got our bags, then the same shuttle met us at the curb and returned us to the private airport where the Learjet was waiting.

The weather had suddenly warmed and was threatening rain, and we flew between colossal black thunderheads lighting up with violent thoughts. The storm loudly cracked and flashed as we sped through what seemed the middle of a feud. I had been briefed a little as to the current state of affairs, and it had come as no surprise that the Bureau had established an outpost along with others set up by police and rescue crews.

Lucy, I was relieved to hear, had been brought in from the field, and was working again in the Engineering Re search Facility, or ERF, where she was safe. What Wesley did not tell me until we reached the Academy was that she had been deployed along with the rest of HRT and would not be at Quantico long.

"Out of the question," I said to him as if I were a mother refusing permission.

"I'm afraid you don't have a say in this," he replied.

He was helping me carry my bags through the Jefferson lobby, which was deserted this Saturday night. We waved to the young women at the registration desk as we continued arguing.

"For God's sake," I went on, "she's brand-new. You can't just throw her into the middle of a nuclear crisis."

"We're not throwing her into anything." He pushed open glass doors. "All we need are her technical skills.

She's not going to be doing any sniper-shooting or jumping out of planes."

"Where is she now?" I asked as we got on an elevator.

"Hopefully in bed."

"Oh." I looked at my watch. "I guess it is midnight. I thought it was tomorrow and I should be getting up."

"I know. I'm screwed up, too."

Our eyes met and I looked away. "I guess we're supposed to pretend nothing happened," I said with an edge to my voice, for there had been no discussion of what had gone on between us.

We walked out into the hall and he pressed a code into a digitalized keypad. A lock released and he opened another glass door.

"What good would it do to pretend?" he said, entering another code and opening another door.

"Just tell me what you want to do," I said.

We were inside the security suite where I usually stayed when work or danger kept me here overnight. He carried my bags into the bedroom as I drew draperies across the large window in the living room. The decor was comfortable but plain, and when Wesley did not respond, I remembered it probably was not safe to talk intimately in this place where I knew at the very least phones were monitored. I followed him back out into the hall and repeated my question.

"Be patient," he said, and he looked sad, or maybe he was just weary. "Look, Kay, I've got to go home. First thing in the morning we've got to do a surveillance by air with Marcia Gradecki and Senator Lord."

Gradecki was the United States attorney general, and Frank Lord was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and an old friend.

"I'd like you along since overall you seem to know more of what's been going on than anyone else. Maybe you can explain to them the importance of the bible these wackos believe. That they'll kill for it. They'll die for it."

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "And we need to talk about how we're going to-God forbid-handle the contaminated dead should these goddamn assholes decide to blow up the reactors." He looked at me again. "All we can do is try," he said, and I knew he referred to more than the present crisis.

"That's what I'm doing, Benton," I said, and I walked back inside my suite.

I called the switchboard and asked them to ring Lucy's room, and when there was no answer, I knew what that meant. She was at ERF, and I could not call there because I did not know where in that building the size of a football field she might be. So I put on my coat and walked out of Jefferson because I could not steep until I saw my niece.

ERF had its own guard gate not far from the one at the entrance of the Academy, and most of the FBI police, by now, knew me pretty well. The guard on duty looked surprised when I appeared, and he walked outside to see what I wanted.

"I think my niece is working late," I began to explain.

"Yes, ma'am. I did see her go in earlier."

"is there any way you can contact her?"

"Hmmm." He frowned. "Might you have any idea what area she'd likely be in?"

"Maybe the computer room."

He tried that to no avail, then looked at me. "This is important."

"Yes, it is," I said with gratitude.

He raised his radio to his mouth.

"Unit forty-two to base," he said.

"Forty-two, come in."

"You ten-twenty-five me at ERF gate?"

"Ten-four."

We waited for the guard to arrive, and he occupied the booth while his partner let me inside the building. For a while we roamed long empty hallways, trying locked doors that led into machine shops and laboratories where my niece might be. After about fifteen minutes of this, we got lucky. He tried a door and it opened onto an expansive room that was a Santa's workshop of scientific activity.

Central to this was Lucy, who was wearing a data glove and head-mounted display connected to long thick black cables snaking over the floor.

"Will you be okay?" the guard asked me.

"Yes," I said. "Thank you so much."

Co-workers in lab coats and coveralls were busy with computers, interface devices and large video screens, and they all saw me walk in. But Lucy was blind. She really was not in this room but the one in the small CRTs covering her eyes as she conducted a virtual-reality walk through along a catwalk in what I suspected was the Old Point nuclear power plant.

"I'm going to zoom in now," she was saying as she pressed a button on top of the glove.

The area on the video screen suddenly got bigger as the figure that was Lucy stopped at steep grated stairs.

"Shit, I'm zooming out," she said impatiently. "No way this is going to work."

"I promise it can," said a young man monitoring a big black box. "But it's tricky."

She paused and made some other adjustment. "I don't know, Jim, is this really high-res data or is the problem me?"

"I think the problem's you."

"Maybe I'm getting cyber sick," my niece then said as she moved around inside what looked like conveyor belts and huge turbines that I could see on the video screen.

"I'll take a look at-the algorithm."

"You know," she said, making her way down virtual stairs, "maybe we should just put it in C code and go from a delay of three-four to three hundred and four microseconds, et cetera, instead of whatever's in the software we got."

"Yeah. The transfer sequences are off," said someone else. "We got to adjust the timing loops."

"What we don't have is the luxury of massaging this too much," another opinion sounded. "And Lucy, your aunt's here."

She briefly paused, then went on as if she had not heard what the person just said. "Look, I'll do the C code before morning. We gotta be sharp or Toto's going to end up stuck or failing down stairs. And then we're totally screwed."

Toto, I could only conclude, was the odd bubble head with one video eye that was mounted on a boxy steel body no more than three feet high. Legs were cleated tracks, arms had grippers, and in general he reminded me of a small animated tank. Toto was parked to one side, not far from his master, who was taking off her helmet.

"We got to change the bio-controllers on this glove," she said as she began carefully pulling it off. "I'm used to one finger meaning forward and two meaning back. Not the other way around. I can't afford a mix-up like that when we're in the field."

"That's an easy one," said Jim, and he went to her and took the glove.

Lucy looked keyed up to the point of being crazed when she met me near the door.

"How'd you get in?" She wasn't the least bit friendly.

"One of the guards."

"Good thing they know you."

"Benton told me they'd brought you back, that HRT needs you," I said.

She watched her colleagues continue to work. "Most of the guys are already there."

"At Old Point," I said.

"We've got divers around the area, snipers set up nearby, choppers waiting. But nothing's going to do any good unless we can get at least one person in."

"And obviously, that's not you," I said, knowing that if she claimed otherwise I would kill the FBI, the entire Bureau, all of them at once.

"In a way it's me going in," my niece said. "I'll be the one working Toto. Hey, Jim," she called out. "While you're at it, let's add a fly command to the pad."

"So Toto's gonna have wings," someone cracked.

Good thing. We're gonna need a smart guardian angel."

"Lucy, do you have any idea how dangerous these people are?" I could not help but say.

She looked at me and sighed. "I mean, what do you think, Aunt Kay? Do you think I'm just a kid playing with Tinkertoys?"

"I think that I can't help but feel very worried."

"We should all be worried right now," she said, drained.

"Look, I got to get back to work." She glanced at her watch and blew out a big breath. "You want a quick overview of my plan so you at least know what's going on?"

"Please."

"It starts with this." She sat on the floor and I got down beside her, our backs against the wall. "Normally, a robot like Toto would be controlled by radio, which would never work inside a facility with so much concrete and steel. So I've come up with what I think is a better way. Basically, he'll carry a spool of fiber optic cable that he'll leave behind like a snail's trail as he moves around."

"And where is he going to move around?" I asked. "Inside the power plant?"

"We're trying to determine that now," she said. "But a lot will depend on what happens. We could be covert, such as in information gathering. Or we could end up with an overt deployment on our hands, such as if the terrorists want a hostage phone, which we're banking on. Toto has to be ready to go anywhere instantly."

"Except stairs."

"He can do stairs. Some better than others."

"The fiber optics cable will be your eyes?" I said.

"It will hook right into my data gloves." She held up both hands. "And I will move as if it's me going in instead of Toto. Virtual reality will allow me to have a remote presence so I can react instantly to whatever his sensors pick up. And by the way, most of them are in that lovely shade of gray we made him," She pointed to her friend across the room. "His smart paint helps him not to bump into things," she added as if she might have feelings for him.

"Did Janet come back with you?" I then asked.

"She's finishing up in Charlottesville."

"Finishing up?"

"We know who's been breaking into CP amp;L's computer," she said. "A woman graduate assistant in nuclear physics. Surprise, surprise."

"What's her name?"

"Loren something." She rubbed her face with her hands.

God, I should never have sat down. You know cyberspace really can make you dizzy if you stay in it too long. Lately, it's almost been making me sick. U.- She snapped her fingers several times. "McComb. Loren McComb."

"And she's how old'?" I asked as I remembered Cleta saying that the name of Eddings' girlfriend was Loren.

"Late twenties."

"Where is she from?"

"England. But she's actually South African. She's black."

"Thus explaining her poor character, according to Mrs. Eddings."

"Huh?" Lucy looked bizarrely at me.

"What about a connection with the New Zionists?" I asked.

"Apparently she got associated with them over the net.

She's very militant and antigovernment. My theory is she got brainwashed by them the longer they communicated."

"Lucy," I said, "I think she was Eddings' girlfriend and source, and in the end, she may have helped the New Zionists kill him, probably by way of Captain Green."

"Why would she help him and then do that?"

"She may have believed she had no choice. If she had assisted him with information that could have hurt Hand's cause, she may have been convinced to help them or they may have threatened her."

I thought of the Crystal Champagne in Eddings' refrigerator, and wondered if he had planned to spend New Year's Eve with his girlfriend.

"How would they have wanted her to help them?" Lucy was asking.

"She probably knew his burglar alarm code, maybe even the combination to his safe." My final thought was the worst. "She may have been with him in the boat the night he died. For that matter, we don't know that she wasn't the one who poisoned him. After all, she's a scientist."

"Damn."

"I'm assuming you've interviewed her," I said.

"Janet has. McComb claims she was on the Internet about eighteen months ago when she came across a note posted on a bulletin board. Allegedly, some producer was working on a movie that had to do with terrorists taking over a nuclear power plant so they could re-create a North Korea situation and get weapons-grade plutonium, et cetera, et cetera. This alleged producer needed technical help, for which he was willing to pay."

"Did she have a name for whoever this was?" I asked.

"He just always called himsel. "Alias,' as if to imply he might be famous. She bit big time and the relationship began. She started sending him information from graduate papers she had access to because of her graduate assistantship. She gave this Alias asshole every recipe you might think of for essentially taking over Old Point and shipping fuel assemblies to the Arabs."

"What about making casks?"

"Right. Steal tons of the depleted uranium from Oak Ridge. Have it sent to Iraq, Algeria, wherever, to be made into the hundred-twenty-five-ton casks. Then ship them back here where they're stored until the big day. And she went into the whole bit about when uranium turns into plutonium inside a reactor." Lucy stopped and glanced over at me. "She claims it never occurred to her that what she was doing might be real."

"And was it real to her when she began breaking into CP amp;L's computer?"

"That's one she can't explain, nor will she supply a motive."

"I expect motive is easy," I said. "Eddings was interested in any phone calls to Arab nations that certain people might have been making. And he got his list via the gateway in Pittsburgh."

"You don't think she would have realized that the New Zionists wouldn't appreciate her helping her boyfriend, who happened to be a reporter?"

"I don't think she cared," I angrily said. "I suspect she enjoyed the drama of playing both sides. If nothing else, it had to make her feel very important when she probably had not felt that way before in her quiet academic world. I doubt reality hit until Eddings started poking around NAVSEA, Captain Green's office or who knows where, and then the New Zionists were tipped that their source, Ms. McComb, was threatening the entire operation."

"If Eddings had figured it out," Lucy said, "they never could have pulled it off."

"Exactly," I said. "If any of us had figured it out in time, this wouldn't be happening." I watched a woman in a lab coat maneuver Toto's arms to lift a box. "Tell me," I said, "what was Loren McComb's demeanor when Janet interviewed her?"

"Detached. Absolutely no emotion."

"Hand's people are very powerful. "I guess so if you can help your boyfriend one minute and they can get you to murder him the next." Lucy was watching her robot, too, and didn't seem pleased by what she was seeing.

"Well, wherever the Bureau is detaining Ms. McComb, I hope it's where the New Zionists can't find her."

"She's secluded," Lucy said as Toto suddenly stopped in his tracks and the box thudded heavily to the floor.

"What have you got the shoulder joint's rpm set at?" she called out.

"Eight."

"Let's lower it to five. Damn." She rubbed her face again. "That's all we need."

"Well, I'm going to leave you and go on back to Jefferson," I said as I got up.

She got a strange look in her eyes. "You staying on the security floor, as usual?" she asked.

"Yes." I

"I guess it doesn't matter, but that's where Loren McComb is," she said.

In fact, my suite was next to hers, but unlike me, she was confined. As I sat up in bed for a while trying to read, I could hear her TV through the wall. I listened to her switch channels, and then recognized "Star Trek" sounds as she watched an old episode rerun.

For hours we were only several feet apart and she did not know it, I imagined her calmly mixing hydrochloric acid and cyanide in a bottle, and directing gas into the compressor's intake valve. Instantly, the long black hose would have violently jerked in the water, and then only the river's sluggish current would have moved it anymore.

"See that in your sleep," I said to her, though she could not hear me. "in your sleep for the rest of your life. Every single goddamn night." I angrily snapped off my lamp.