The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Roscoe picked it up: “‘Two Russians? Senator, I don’t have much of a memory,’ et cetera.”

Waldron, still laughing, reached into another drawer of his desk and came out with two somewhat grimy glasses and a bottle of The Macallan twelve-year-old single malt Scotch whisky.

He poured.

“Nectar of the gods,” he said. “Only for good little boys and naughty little girls.”

They tapped glasses and took a sip.

“That’s not going to happen, Roscoe,” Waldron said, “unless we make it happen. And I’m not sure if we could, or even if we should.”

“In other words, let it drop? I wondered why you brought out the good whisky.”

“I didn’t say that,” Waldron said. “You open for some advice?”

Roscoe nodded.

“Don’t tell anybody what you’re doing, anybody. If there’s anything to this, and I have a gut feeling there is, there are going to be ten people—ten powerful people—trying to keep it from coming out for every one who’d give you anything useful.”

Roscoe nodded again.

“I can see egg on a lot of faces,” Waldron said. “Including on the face of the new inhabitant of the Oval Office. He’s in a lose-lose situation. If something like this was going on under his predecessor, and he didn’t know about it, it’ll look like he wasn’t trusted. And if he indeed did know there was this James Bond outfit operating out of the Oval Office, stealing Russian defectors from the CIA, not to mention strangling Russians in Vienna, and doing all sorts of other interesting, if grossly illegal, things, why didn’t he stop it?”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“One thought would be for you to go to beautiful Argentina and do a piece for the Sunday magazine. You could call it, ‘Tacos and Tangos in the Southern Cone.’”

Roscoe nodded thoughtfully, then said, “Thank you.”

“Watch your back, Roscoe. The kind of people who play these games kill nosy people.”

[THREE]

U.S. Army Medical Research Institute

Fort Detrick, Maryland

0815 4 February 2007

There were three packages marked BIOLOGICAL HAZARD in the morning FedEx delivery. It was a rare morning when there wasn’t at least one, and sometimes there were eight, ten, even a dozen.

This didn’t mean that they were so routine that not much attention was paid to them.

Each package was taken separately into a small room in the rear of the guard post. There, the package—more accurately, the container, an oblong insulated metal box which easily could have contained cold beer were it not for the decalcomania plastered all over it—was laid on an examination table.

On the top was a black-edged yellow triangle, inside of which was the biological hazard indicator, three half-moons—not unlike those to be found on the tops of minarets of Muslim houses of worship—joined together at their closed ends over a circle. Below this, black letters on a yellow background spelled out DANGER! BIOLOGICAL HAZARD!

Beside this—in a red circle, not unlike a No Parking symbol—the silhouette of a walking man was bisected by a crossing red line. The message below this in white letters on a red background was AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!

This was apparently intended to keep curious people from opening the container to have a look at the biological hazard. This would have been difficult, as the container was closed with four lengths of four-inch-wide plastic tape, two around the long end and two around the short. The tape application device had closed the tapes by melting the ends together. The only way to get into the container was by cutting the tape with a large knife. It would thus be just about impossible for anyone to have a look inside without anyone noticing.

Once the biological hazard package was laid on the table, it was examined by two score or more specially trained technicians. It was X-rayed, sniffed for leakage and the presence of chemicals which might explode, and tested for several other things, some of them classified.

Only after it had passed this inspection was the FedEx receipt signed. The package was then turned over to two armed security officers. Most of these at Fort Detrick were retired Army sergeants. One of them got behind the wheel of a battery-powered golf cart, and the other, after putting the container on the floor of the golf cart, got in and—there being no other place to put them—put his feet on the container.

At this point the driver checked the documentation to the final destination.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “It’s for Hamilton personally.”