Lethal Expedition

14

Hallie awoke fuzz-brained and thirsty. She looked at the bedside clock: 6:13 A.M. What day? Sunday.

In the kitchen, she fumbled a glass from one of the cabinets, reached for the faucet, and suddenly somebody was hugging her from behind. Only one person had a key.

“Stephen!” she yelled, struggling to free her arms. “Let me go. This isn’t funny!”

A hand pushed the back of her head forward into the V created by a forearm and bicep. The hand pressed harder and the V tightened, compressing her carotid artery and jugular vein. Her vision grayed, and her skin tingled, and she heard buzzing like a thousand bees swarming in her head.

15

The Secret Service started screening people at six A.M. for an eight o’clock service. It was not a quick process. Every attendee passed through five layers of security. Metal detectors were first. Then stand-in-place threat-detection systems, augmented by dogs sniffing for explosives and biological agents. Concealed face-recognition scanners analyzed every visage. Specially trained agents watched for “tells”—physical manifestations of unusual levels of stress, anxiety, anger, or fear.

Backer had seen it all before and took little notice.

As head verger, he worked hard to prepare for the service. He and the other vergers had already laid programs on every seat. They had made final adjustments to the lavish floral arrangements flanking Bishop Newberry’s Canterbury Pulpit and the Holy Eucharist table. Checked the sound system. Straightened the altar candles. Set out chalices, wine vessels, plates of wafers.

Everything was in order by six forty-five. He dismissed the undervergers. It was time to make himself ready, as well.

16

Hallie struggled toward the light. Pain. Good: pain meant she was alive. Something was around her neck. Too tight. Rough, cutting her skin, pulling against her throat. She was sitting down, but couldn’t move her arms and legs.

It was dark, and she was bound to a heavy, solid chair. Towels covered her forearms and lower legs like soft casts, and duct-tape overwraps bound them to the chair’s arms and legs.

She remembered someone behind, squeezing her neck. A queer buzzing, then passing out. Waking up here in her own basement with what felt like a noose around her neck.

Once she had been trapped in a cave passage that held her like a stone straitjacket. Her arms were extended straight out in front, her legs behind, and she had been inching forward by pushing with her toes, pulling with her fingertips, and keeping her lungs deflated. But then the passage ceiling dropped another half inch, sharp projections stuck down behind her shoulder blades and up under her chin, and she was jammed. The panicked urge to flail and writhe was almost irresistible, but the only way out was to relax, soften, make herself smaller. No one could help — hauling her back with a rope would have shredded her flesh. Only she could save herself. It took two hours and utter control of mind and body, but she did it.

This new entrapment, she understood, would take the same kind of control. And she was not sure even that would be enough.

17

On this day of days, all had to be right for the eyes of the Lord. Henry Backer fastened the top button of his new black cassock. His shoes, socks, and shirt were also new. His room contained no mirrors; he thought they bred vanity. He didn’t need them to brush gray strands straight back from his forehead and shave his cheeks glass-smooth.

The Bible stood upright on his table. As Kurt Ely had instructed, he put on a surgical mask and latex gloves. Then he poured the contents of the aluminum cylinders into a glass bowl. Backer had been curious to see what the pathogen would look like, but it was just clear, viscous liquid with no odor. He used a new one-inch Purdy brush to paint the liquid on the front and back covers of the Bible, making sure — as Ely had instructed — to use every drop. It dried to invisibility as he watched. The Bible looked new, clean, and shiny.

He put everything but the Bible into a plastic bag and dropped it into his wastebasket. Later it would go to the Anacostia Refuse Station’s incinerator.

He rolled the cuffs of the latex gloves down and put his white clerical gloves on over them.

It was time.

18

For Justine Laning, the novelty of traveling in a vehicle with five-inch armor, smoke grenade launchers, a supply of B-negative blood, and a Remington shotgun under the front seat had worn off after the first few weeks. Daughters Amica and Leanna put on their best blasé faces during trips around Washington, but Laning knew that traveling in the Beast was still like an amusement park ride for them. The First Husband usually dozed off within ten minutes; car rides did that to Paul. Right now, he was nodding, the girls were laughing and pointing out the windows, and Laning was enjoying a rare moment of doing exactly nothing.

She watched the city stream past as the Beast and its flock of red-blinking, siren-wailing security escorts sped north on Wisconsin Avenue. Washington in April was as beautiful as any city on earth, not only to see but to smell, with apple and cherry blossoms, hibiscus and gardenia, roses — a kaleidoscope of fragrances. They were mostly a memory now, because she was always shielded from anything the Secret Service thought could harm her, which meant just about everything. Not even light reached her untouched. The Beast’s windows were so thick, filtering out so much natural light, that interior fluorescents were needed.

19

“Those ties aren’t too tight, are they? We can’t have them leaving any marks. That’s why I used the towels.”

There was a strange rustling. She recognized the voice and the cigarette reek. “Kurt?”

“Hi, Hallie.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“You didn’t really, not anymore. You talked to that bitch Taylor. Broke into my house. Called my Mexican friends. That was your big mistake, let me tell you.”

“What’s going on?”

“I could just kill you and be done. But you are the most conceited bitch I have ever met. I’m going to enjoy demonstrating just how smart you’re not. You thought the expedition was about finding something in the cave.”

“Wasn’t it?”

She saw a flame and then the red coal of a cigarette tip. “We needed to bring something out. Have you ever heard of Biopreparat?”

“The old Soviet biowarfare lab. A horrible place. Shut down years ago.”

“The law of unintended consequences is a beautiful thing.”

“What?”

“Overnight, they put thirty thousand scientists on the street. Can you even imagine what a million bucks looks like to a hungry Russian?”

“You’re talking about bioweapons?”

“What do you get if you cross Mycobacterium leprae and Streptococcus?”

“Leprosy and strep? Nothing. Vastly different genomics.”

“Come on. Thirty thousand scientists with unlimited budgets? They could have cloned Jesus Christ if Moscow had ordered it.”

“Why would they want to cross those two bacteria?”

“Who knows why Russians do anything? Paranoia and vodka are a dangerous mix.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it. The stuff — we call it ‘the Skinner,’ by the way — ate the skin right off some poor Mexican. I saw him.”

“That would be fatal.”

“Fatal, but not quick.”

“But why would you have anything to do with that? You’re not a terrorist.”

In a very different voice, Ely said, “I am a New Patriot.”

“What’s that?”

“Today, no one knows. Tomorrow, the world will.”

20

The Beast stopped. Onlookers crowded against the police barriers that formed a one-hundred-foot perimeter around the president. Laning sat patiently. It always took ten minutes for the traveling security detail to deploy. Agents were responsible for thirty-degree sectors of an imaginary circle, the center of which was the Beast. Only after all twelve agents reported that it was clear did the detail commander instruct the agent in the driver’s seat to unlock and unload.

Two agents opened doors while others formed living walls around the president and her family. When everyone was in position, the whole assemblage moved quickly toward the cathedral’s twelve-foot-high doors.

“Hold up a minute,” Laning said. The detail’s lead agent, a balding, broad-shouldered man named Bob Delaney, started to protest. Laning was already halfway to a white-haired woman in a wheelchair who held a sign that read, “I’m 90 and I vote. God Bless America.” Laning grasped one of the woman’s hands in both of her own.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” she asked.

“Edna Hayes, ma’am.”

Laning smiled, her eyes shining. “God bless you, Edna.” She clasped the woman’s hand a moment longer, then straightened and looked at the other people.

It was hard to keep her face composed. Before taking office, she had known one sure thing: it would be like nothing she had imagined, or could imagine, any more than she could have imagined childbirth. She had been right. Washington was a cauldron, and every day scalded her soul. There were mornings — and she would keep these secret to her dying day — when her first waking thought was Dear God, take me away from this.

But then on days like this she would come out and see the people, her people, their faces alight with joy, and there was magic in them and in her attacked and slandered country, and in such moments she saw other faces, frozen at Valley Forge, bloody at Little Round Top, raging at Belleau Wood and Omaha Beach, stoic at Little Rock, jubilant on the moon, faces of people like these right in front of her, and from them all she took the strength to continue.

An agent whispered, but this was not an easy thing to back away from, all those yearning faces and reaching arms. She reached back, grasped hands, felt the magic — a lovely teenage girl with braces, a man with a burned face, a woman with tears rolling down her round cheeks. A tall man, very handsome, with a black ponytail and shining black eyes.

21

“I never heard of them,” Hallie said.

“Of course not. You only hear about the stupid ones.”

“What do you want?”

“ ‘Come now therefore, and let us slay her, and cast her into some pit, and we shall see what will become of her dreams.’ ”

“Slay who?”

“Use your imagination.”

Something about his use of the word “patriot” triggered it: “The president?” she said. She pushed away the horror she felt, tried to focus on reasoning with him. “You won’t do it with a bioagent. She’s surrounded by dogs and sensors and who knows what else.”

“The Skinner is new to this earth. No referent for dogs and sensors.”

“But you’d still have to get close.”

“People get close when they go to church.”

“Church?” Now she remembered Ely, in his basement, mentioning the cathedral. There had been a lot of news about some special Easter service the president and her family was supposed to attend there. Not only her, but all kinds of political people who were usually at one another’s throats, and religious leaders, too.

Ely was here, which meant that someone else would be there. Suddenly she remembered Redhorse: I’m goin’ to church. Big church. She felt sick, but knew she had to keep Ely talking.

“What will you gain by killing her?”

He chuckled. “You know what they say. A fish rots from the head.”

“Where did you get this thing?”

“The Skinner?” His smile widened. “You brought it back.”

“What?”

“It was in the battery pack.”

God damn him, she thought. God damn that expedition. “You came here to get it.”

“I did, yes.”

Anger got the better of her. “You asshole. Why did you shit in my living room?”

“The police had to think that a real burglar was at work.”

“What now?”

“Laning is going to die a very unpleasant death. And so are you.”

“Like Robin?”

He just laughed.

“You’re going to kill me and make it look like suicide? People get caught doing that all the time.”

“Stupid people do. They don’t bother to learn that hanging and strangling leave different ligature marks on the neck. Homicide 101. It worked fine with Robin.”

He switched on the basement lights. The Ely she had known was pudgy, with long brown hair and a beard. Squinting, she saw a gaunt, clean-shaven man in a white Tyvek hazmat suit with booties and a hood, safety glasses, and heavy black rubber gloves. She thought: No DNA.

“Nobody is going to believe that I killed myself,” she said.

“You’re distraught over the deaths of your expedition team members. You broke up with your boyfriend. The FBI is after you. And your father died, what, about a year ago?” He held up a piece of paper. “If there’s any doubt, this will dispel it. A note, written on your computer and printed here, too.”

“You’re insane.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s time for you to—”

“Do you know what happens to murderers in hell?”

“I don’t believe in hell.” He said this firmly, but she saw his eyes flick to one side. She had touched something.

“Everybody believes in hell. We say we don’t, but way down deep, we all do.”

He frowned. “I had planned to just hang you. Now I think not. But I don’t see what I need. Stay right there.” He went up the stairs.

There is slack in every rope. Houdini had said that, Hallie had once read it, and while they were talking in the dark, she had been twisting and pulling against the towels as much as she could without making noise. Now she redoubled her efforts, listening to him opening drawers, shuffling contents. She heard him say, “Just the thing.”

He came back downstairs holding an ice pick.

22

President Laning reached for the handsome man’s hand to shake it, but it disappeared for an instant and reappeared holding something. The sun was behind him, it was hard to see clearly, but there was a flash in that bright painful light and she thought, A gun, and wanted to dive away, but it was all happening faster than she could move, faster than thought, and then something touched her hand, not a bullet but a white thing, and the man disappeared beneath a wave of Secret Service agents and another wave was washing her back to the Beast.

23

“Hanging ruptures the eardrums,” Ely said. “So we’ll have a little fun in there first. Nobody will know.” He gazed down at her. “Which ear? I guess it doesn’t matter.” He put his left hand on her head and leaned in, raising the ice pick.

With a last screaming jerk, she yanked her right arm free, grabbed a handful of his hood, and slammed his forehead with all her strength against the end of the wooden chair arm. She thought she heard something crack, his skull or the wood, maybe both. He grunted and collapsed facedown on the cement floor.

Her left arm first. Then, with both hands free, she loosened the rope and pulled it over her head. She started unwrapping her legs. Ely had been thorough — they looked like the puttees of old uniforms. She freed her right leg, started on her left. Ely groaned and moved his head. She picked it up, slammed his forehead down onto the concrete floor, and he lay still.

Freeing her left leg took longer, but finally she was loose. She stood up and fell to her hands and knees. Her legs had fallen completely asleep. She staggered up, stamped her feet, felt agonizing pins and needles, stumbled toward the bottom of the stairs.

A hand grabbed her left ankle, yanked back, and she fell forward. Ely had come around. He grabbed her other ankle. The man was stronger than she’d realized. He hauled her toward him and drove the ice pick into the back of her thigh.

24

Strong arms stuffed Laning, Paul, and the girls into the Beast, and Agent Delaney was about to order its driver to lock and go. Laning said, “Stop,” in that brain-snapping voice.

Addressing Delaney directly, she said, “Robert, we came here to worship, and we shall. Do what you need to, and quickly. I want to be out of this vehicle and moving toward the cathedral in three.”

The agent shook his head, stone-faced. “Madame President, my responsibility is to—”

“Make it happen, Agent Delaney.”

And they did. When the massed people saw her get out of the Beast, there was an astonished silence. Then they screamed and cheered and kept cheering long after she and her family disappeared through the massive cathedral doors.

A thousand heads swiveled to see the president and her family. Somebody clapped, and then everybody was clapping and cheering, and it lasted as they strode up the nave aisle four abreast, preceded and followed by twice the usual number of sweating agents.

Bishop Newberry, aloft in the magisterial Canterbury Pulpit, marveled at the appearance of the most powerful woman on earth in her church. The grand organ boomed, and the choir filled the cathedral with heavenly harmonies.

25

Hallie screamed and kicked Ely in the face with her other foot. Kicked again, dragged herself away, pulled the ice pick out.

They scrambled up at the same time. He crabbed sideways, putting himself between her and the stairs, and picked up a hammer from the workbench. An ice pick was a poor match for a hammer. She grabbed the only thing in reach: a broom.

He came at her, swinging the hammer. The safety glasses were gone — that cracking she’d heard — and she jabbed the broom’s stiff bristles at his eyes. He snatched at the broom, and she stabbed his hand with the ice pick. He screamed, let go, kept coming. He was stronger, but she was quicker, and they danced around in a flurry of hammer swings and ice-pick stabs and broom thrusts. She threw a box of nails, then flung a screwdriver at his face. The exertion was getting to him — betrayed by ravaged lungs, he was gasping for breath.

But also enraged. He threw the hammer at her head. She dodged, but it hit her left shoulder, and that whole side went numb. The broom fell out of her hand. She dropped the ice pick, grabbed a can of WD-40, and sprayed a burst through the long red straw into his face. That backed him off, so she kept spraying until the can was empty. She threw it, hit his head, but did no real damage.

Blinded briefly, Ely still managed to stay between her and the stairs. She picked up a long plumber’s snake and whipped its barbed end at his face, making him dance away. She knew that there was one chance for her, and to seize it she had to keep him moving.

Sooner than she’d foreseen, Ely bent over, hands on knees, gasping like an asthmatic. His diseased lungs could not deliver enough oxygen. Hallie picked up the hammer, fully intending to smash his skull. But the human brain is hardwired against killing its own kind. Despite herself, she hesitated, betrayed by evolution.

It was enough. Ely lunged, tackling her around the waist. She landed on her back, and her head smacked down hard on the concrete floor. The hammer went flying. She was too stunned to fight as he straddled her and put both hands around her neck.

“Not what I planned, but dead is dead,” he gasped.

He squeezed harder, and pain faded as her mind darkened. She had been clawing at his face. Her hands fell away and lay on the floor, fingers twitching with the last impulses of life.

26

The front pew on the left side of the nave was reserved for the president and her family. Amica and Leanna slipped in first, then the First Husband. President Laning took her place of honor at the end of the pew, on the aisle. She had noticed a petite, very pretty, and very pregnant woman in the pew behind. The expectant mother had on a pale blue maternity suit and wore her blond hair in a prim bun. Laning turned and asked softly, “When are you due?”

The young woman blushed bright red. Then, recovering her composure and smiling shyly, she said, “Next week, Mrs. President. Ma’am.”

“Good for you. Best thing I ever did.” Laning started to turn back, then said, surprising even herself, “All this”—she touched her chest with one hand—“will end. Family never does.”

Newberry stood in the pulpit, smiling, and hyperalert Secret Service agents spoke into their lapels, heads swiveling, and a thousand chests breathed out at once. Newberry looked toward a door in the gray stone wall opposite the far end of the presidential pew. It was time for a verger to enter with the commemorative Bible. The door in the wall swung outward, and Henry Backer stood in its frame.

He knew that every eye in the cathedral was focused on him. For the briefest moment he closed his eyes and felt light filling his chest, coursing out through his veins to the farthest reaches of his body. The glory of God, he thought. Hallowed be thy name, my heavenly Father.

27

Hypoxia takes sight first, then hearing, motor control last. Hallie’s left fingers touched something small and hard. She recognized the familiar feel of a gun in her palm. Just a cheap little pocket gun that Ely must have been carrying and that had fallen from a pocket. But a gun nevertheless. She tried to cock the hammer, but her left thumb didn’t work. Ely, crushing her neck, watching the life fade from her eyes, took no notice.

She heard that deep voice: Die before you quit.

Drew the hammer back, pressed the barrel against Ely’s side, and pulled the trigger, expecting the sound of a gunshot. Instead there was a whoosh! as Ely’s WD-40–coated suit exploded in flames. He screamed, threw himself onto the concrete floor, and started rolling.

Staggering up and away, Hallie had enough mind left for two thoughts. She could let Ely burn. Probably no one would fault her. But he might well take her house with him. Not a good trade. She picked up her box of climber’s chalk and poured its contents over him, smothering the fire. Ely lay there moaning and gasping, face blistered, melted Tyvek oozing over his body.

Adrenaline took her that far, but the choking had done something. A high, shrill note sang in her ears, and her heart felt flighty and fragile. Her neck, where Ely had tried to crush it, would not turn her head. Thoughts tangled and died. She needed to do something, but remembering was like grabbing smoke.

Finally: Call police.

She staggered up the stairs, almost fell near the top, struggled on, and grabbed the telephone receiver, heavy as a yellow brick. She had to squint to see white numbers on gray buttons.

She pushed 9.

Aimed her forefinger at the 1, missed, tried again, got it.

Her vision blurred, clarified. She poked toward the 1 again but lost her balance and staggered to one side. It saved her life. Ely, staggering himself, only grazed her head with the hammer. He shoved her down onto her back and straddled her. She saw him raising the hammer with both hands, and she raised her own in flimsy defense. She had one last thought:

I am going to die. But I didn’t quit.

It came like an explosion, and then there was nothing at all.

28

The verger’s antechamber was dark. Henry Backer, in a black cassock and framed by the lightless doorway, stood invisible to Newberry and the congregation except for his gloves. Then he stepped into the light, carrying the shining new Bible in his white hands.

He walked toward the end of the presidential pew. When he was ten steps away, he made eye contact with President Laning. She smiled, and he smiled back. Newberry, seeing this, was delighted. It was the first time she had ever seen Henry Backer smile.

In fact, he was very afraid, but he armored himself with prayer: I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee and it shall devour thee.

At the end of the pew, Backer turned left and approached the high altar, where Bishop Newberry stood, having descended from the pulpit. He placed the Bible on the Holy Eucharist table before her. Newberry said the prayer of blessing, made the sign of the cross over the Bible, and nodded at Backer.

When he retrieved the Bible, Backer was still smiling. Newberry noted an odd radiance in his eyes, which seemed to be looking not at her but at some bright vision only he could see. He lifted the Bible and turned toward the president.

29

Hallie was dreaming that Stephen Redhorse was kissing her. His scent was sharp and sweet, like cinnamon, and rich with something close to wood smoke. She came awake and realized that it was not a dream. Someone was kissing her. And it wasn’t Stephen Redhorse. She pushed the man away. It took a second for her blurred vision to clear.

“Agent Luciano?”

He was beet red, either from embarrassment or the effort of CPR. “You had stopped breathing,” he panted, rocking back on his haunches. Another agent, the man she had seen in the Buick, was on her other side. “Agent Scott was doing compressions,” Luciano said. She saw that Scott, too, was blushing. She tried to sit up, and Luciano eased her back down. “Stay there for a while,” he gasped. “We’ve called the paramedics.” He looked around. “What the hell happened here?”

She looked left and saw Ely lying on the kitchen floor, his head in a dark red pool. “He dead?” she croaked.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I shot him,” Luciano said, going from red to white.

“It was a right shooting,” Scott said. “That hammer was on its way down. Another half second and …”

“Why … why are you here?” Hallie’s throat felt like she had a bad case of strep.

“We have a warrant for your arrest.”

“On Sunday morning?”

“The law never sleeps, Dr. Leland. And judges move at their own chosen speed. When one signs, we go.”

“That man tried to kill me.” She pointed at Ely.

“Yeah, we saw. Why?”

She started to explain, but then remembered. She sat up straight. “Can you communicate with the Secret Service?”

“Of course. Why?”

“You need to call them. Now!”

Luciano helped her stand. He patted her shoulder. “You need to take it easy, Dr. Leland. It’s obvious that—”

Something in Hallie snapped. She shoved his hands away. “Listen to me! The president may die unless we alert the Secret Service. NOW, goddamnit!”

His eyes went vague and she knew he was looking down the long road of his career, maybe ten years done, ten to go. It could be an easy cruise to a sweet pension and a West Palm condo. Or he could embarrass the Bureau and end up chasing Eskimos in Juneau.

He looked at Agent Scott, and she could almost feel the gears clicking in their heads. Luciano’s eyes went blank. A siren, approaching. “I think the medics are here,” he said, and started to turn away.

She had one last shot. “What if President Laning dies? Can you live with that, Agent Luciano?”

30

The petite pregnant woman put a hand to her ear and went wide-eyed. She vaulted over the back of Laning’s pew, knocking the president aside, and tackled Henry Backer, pinning his arms. The Bible fell from his hand.

“Do not touch the book!” the clandestine agent screamed. She hooked her heel behind Backer’s leg and dropped him, smacking his head on the marble floor. He was unconscious even before other agents swarmed over him. The female agent’s bun was in disarray, but otherwise she was fine. She stood up, shed the prosthetic belly, and turned to apologize for hitting the president on her way over the pew.

Too late. A wall of bodies already surrounded Laning and her family. An agent shouted, “Go!” and the whole mass moved like a great centipede, not to the distant main entrance but to a designated door behind the choir gallery. In practice drills, the fastest they had managed this emergency extraction with a presidential stand-in was nine seconds. This time, the last agent cleared the door in seven point four.