The Janus Reprisal

42

Smith woke to find Russell and Ohnara leaning over him. Russell looked dreadful as opposed to near death, which was actually a gain. Ohnara looked pensive and frightened. Smith shifted his head to gaze around the room. It appeared that he was flat on his back on the floor of a lab. Something soft was bunched under his head as a makeshift pillow, but it wasn’t even close to comfortable.

“Where am I?” Smith said.

“In the Medicon Corporation’s laboratory,” Ohnara said. “Ms. Russell brought you here. How are you feeling?”

Smith rose to a sitting position and groaned. His head pounded, and the world went dark for a moment as the blood failed to rush upward.

“Aspirin,” he managed to croak. Sixty seconds later, a hand holding a cup of coffee was thrust in front of his nose.

“That’s not aspirin.” He inhaled deeply, taking in the heady smell of roasted coffee, and then breathed out. “But I’ll take it. What time is it?”

Russell consulted her watch. “Midnight.”

He sipped the coffee, thought about Nolan, and felt a welling sadness, but he shoved the feeling away. He wouldn’t assume that she was dead. She had her trump card to use against Dattar, and he hoped she’d play it well enough to stay alive until he could find her.

“Thanks for showing up when you did,” he said to Russell, who sat on a stool facing him. “How did you know where I was?”

“Marty called me, as did Klein.”

Smith raised an eyebrow. “Klein?”

“I asked him to keep me informed about any actions taken by the FBI or DHS. He said that Harcourt had asked the CIA to pick you up on suspicion of terrorist activity, and his monitors heard that they had located you and were sending a SWAT team. Marty told me where you were.”

“And Howell and Beckmann?”

“Beckmann is in FBI custody. Howell managed to escape. We don’t know where he is.”

Smith eyed a stool to his right that he would have loved to sit on, but he wasn’t entirely sure that his legs would work yet.

“Need help getting up?” Ohnara said.

Smith nodded. “Yes.” Ohnara lent an arm while Smith struggled upward. When he was on the stool, he leveled a look at Ohnara. “Talk to me.”

Ohnara sighed. “I can’t determine if the avian flu that Ms. Russell contracted was the same that attached to the Shewanella in the swab. It’s extremely difficult to get bird flu without close contact with an infected animal. Ms. Russell’s distance from the refrigerator swab seems to rule that out as a factor. Also, the cholera died, and Shewanella MR-1 does not cause illness.”

Smith looked back at Russell. “Despite all that, you have a hunch that the swab was involved in some way, don’t you?” She nodded. Smith kept sipping the coffee, thinking. “Let’s approach this thing from another angle.” He addressed Ohnara. “Tell me again about the Shewanella. Gram negative, lives underwater in an anaerobic environment, and conducts electricity.”

Ohnara nodded. “It not only conducts electricity but it actually feeds off it. We’re not sure how, but its nanowires attach and communicate with metal or an electric source. And I can’t emphasize this enough, but it doesn’t, as far as we know, cause any disease or illness of any kind.”

“What if it were weaponized?” Russell asked.

Ohnara shook his head. “I don’t see how it could be. Most weaponized substances have, at their core, a toxic capability. Since it doesn’t, it’s a poor candidate for such a use. In fact, it is actually the opposite. It can create energy and because it feeds off metals, it’s used in rivers in a beneficial manner.”

“DMRB bacteria,” Smith said.

“English, please, for the one who’s not a microbiologist in the room.” Russell swung her stool to face Smith. He gave her a small smile and she smiled back.

“It stands for dissimilatory metal-reducing bacteria,” he said.

“Oh, well, that clarifies things,” she said.

“It can be used to reduce heavy metals in water. Iron, things like that,” Ohnara said.

Smith’s head was clearing. He looked around the lab and saw a series of flasks and petri dishes along a counter.

“What’s that?” he said.

“I asked for some more testing,” Russell said.

“It’s the bacteria. I’m growing it both aerobically and anaerobically.”

Smith slid off the stool and stood. He was pleased that his legs felt normal again. He walked to the bottles and stared at them.

“When it’s communicating through the nanowires, what is it doing?”

“Colonizing. It forms a biofilm. We think it breathes without the need for oxygen by using the wires to communicate, one to the other, until finally the portion of the biofilm that is in contact with the air transmits the oxygen down to the lower levels. The nanowire electricity is the conduit that the O₂ travels along.”

Smith took another sip and stared at the flasks. What was he missing? The sound of a ringing phone filled the room. Russell checked the screen.

“It’s Klein. I’ll put him on speaker.”

“Ms. Russell?”

“And Ohnara and Smith,” Russell said.

“Smith? You’re awake?”

Smith shrugged more out of reflex, since Klein couldn’t see him.

“Russell gave me some coffee. It’s helping.”

“I’ve been monitoring both the FBI transmissions as well as the New York City police band and I’ve learned something interesting. The NYPD considers both you and Russell to be criminals: Russell a CIA agent gone rogue who is acting as a mole within the agency, and you a killer of the woman at Landon Investments. A warning has gone out that you are both armed and dangerous. Needless to say, I found this surprising.”

“I have a pretty good idea who started that rumor in motion: Harcourt.”

Russell’s head snapped up and she looked at Smith. “You’ve got to be joking.”

Smith shook his head. “Didn’t Marty tell you? I was staring down Harcourt’s gun minutes before you showed up.”

“All Marty said was that the FBI was mistakenly trying to arrest you.”

“No mistake about it. Harcourt pointed them to us both. He discovered that Marty was using your passwords to access the CIA system. He says the agency assumes that you’re a mole. I think he’s utilizing his close contacts with the NYPD to encourage them to see us as persons of interest; me in the shooting incident at Landon, and you for allowing the CIA system to be hacked.”

“Please ask Mr. Ohnara to step out of the room. I’d like to speak with you both on matters that require clearance,” Klein said.

Ohnara nodded. “I’ll get some more coffee.” He left, closing the door behind him.

“Has he left?” Klein said.

“Yes.” Smith took a sip of his drink.

“This is a sticky situation. I can’t very well explain to the CIA your status with Covert-One, and while I can warn off the FBI with some vague argument about international security and ‘need to know’ claims, I expect that the CIA will quickly countermand that order.”

“So we’re on our own,” Smith said. “Not the first time.”

“And not entirely. Two can play this game. I’ll do my best to suggest that it’s Harcourt that’s the mole and request that he be detained.”

“Anything in those transmissions give us a clue as to where Nolan and Dattar may have gone?”

“Nothing. Only real news is that a subway station on the Upper West Side and now another near Inwood have been shut due to flooding. Apparently some brand-new sump pumps stopped working.”

“Is that so unusual? The New York subway often floods. Old infrastructure,” Russell said.

“It’s dry outside,” Smith said.

“Which doesn’t mean much,” Klein said. “Water is always an issue for the subway. On a daily basis those pumps remove thirteen to fifteen million gallons of water. Now that they’re down, water is accumulating fast. And the sump pumps were brand new. Perhaps it’s nothing, but I thought you should know. Both the electric grid and subway stations are considered prime targets for terrorist activity. I usually keep a close eye on both.”

“Did they close the station?”

“Not only that, but they shut down the third rail. The electricity is off.”

An idea fell into place. Smith put the coffee cup down so fast that liquid sloshed out of it onto the white Formica counter. Russell gave him a piercing look.

“My God, I think I’ve figured it out.”

There was a knock and Ohnara returned, holding a cup of coffee. “May I come in?” he said.

“Absolutely. I have a theory.”

Ohnara stepped closer. “What?”

“The Shewanella isn’t the weapon, it’s simply the conduit. Whoever stole the coolers figured out how to make it pass not only oxygen but a virus through its nanowires. That’s why the avian flu strain is attached. The Shewanella is feeding it upward.”

Russell stood as well. “We just learned that the third rail of a subway line was shut down.”

“What if the bacteria was added to the metal rail? What then?” Smith said. He looked at Ohnara. “How fast can it colonize and how quickly will it travel?” Ohnara turned so pale that Smith thought he would faint.

“On a third rail? In a subway line?” Ohnara swallowed. “I can’t be sure, but under ideal conditions it could double every forty minutes. With a live electrical source as powerful and limitless as a train line, who knows?”

“Where does the line terminate?” Klein’s voice on the phone sounded strained.

“That’s just it,” Smith said. “The bacteria feeds on both metal and electricity. The subway train rail terminates, yes, but the electricity feeding to it continues out to the grid.”

“Where it then continues to every house and building that’s connected to it,” Klein said.

“And the nanowires push the virus up to the air,” Ohnara said. “The mutated version, so that it can be easily transmitted by humans.”

“You have any weapons?” Smith said.

Russell grabbed a set of car keys. “An Uzi, a knife, and a Beretta.”

“That’ll work. Let’s go.”