Dez exhaled a ball of dead air that she’d been holding in her chest, and then nodded. She and JT grabbed hold of Diviny and half dragged, half carried him down the hill. The moment had become orderly, but the day was still impossible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Lorne McMasters, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, looked at the name on his phone’s screen display. He smiled as he picked up the receiver.
“Colleen,” he said brightly, “how are you? How’s Ted and the—”
“Lorne,” interrupted Colleen Sykes, “this is a Livewire Protocol. ”
McMasters took a half beat on that, then punched the scramble on his phone. “Confirm. What’s on the window sill?”
“Bluebird,” she said, giving the first part of the day code.
“And in the tree?”
“Yellow kite. ”
“What’s the other thing?”
“Foxhounds. ”
“Confirmed,” said Lorne. “What’s happening, Colleen?”
Colleen Sykes was deputy director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. Only once before in her career had she made a call of this kind. The first situation had been resolved quickly and with minimum fuss, and no trace of it had reached the news radar.
“I just received a report that the ‘devil is out of the bag,’” she said.
McMasters opened a screen on his intranet browser and typed that in. The name Lucifer 113 popped up, followed by bullet points about the science, the dangers, the key players, and the in-place pro
tocols. In the upper right corner of the screen was a coded threat status icon. Not the same color codes that Homeland used. Blue was the lowest level of threat, black was the highest. This file was coded black.
“Christ,” he snarled. “Tell me. ”
Sykes told him what Oscar Price had told her.
“Has this entered the population yet?” demanded McMasters.
“We have no direct confirmation, but there is a suspicious incident developing at the mortuary where Gibbon’s body was taken. We’ve gotten conflicting reports of a double homicide, but follow-up reports indicate that the ‘victims’ may not have been dead. One allegedly attacked a responding officer who was apparently compelled to use lethal force to defend herself. The other suspected victim is missing, having apparently left the scene of the crime under his own steam. ”
“I’m still a half-step behind you on this, Colleen. What does that mean? Dead people don’t attack cops and they don’t get up and walk away. ”
Sykes paused. “Actually, Lorne … if you open report sixty-three in the translations of the ‘Soviet Strategic Implementations’ folder you’ll see that this is in keeping with predicted effects. It is, in point of fact, the primary reason that the entire research line was ultimately scrapped by the Russians. ”
McMasters read through the data. He could feel the blood draining from his cheeks. “This is … Good God, Colleen, are you telling me that we let someone continue this project?”
“No we didn’t,” Sykes said firmly. “Dr. Volker was under express orders not to go anywhere near this project, or anything remotely related to it. ”
“Then how did he gain access?”
“His handler believes that Volker did not so much gain access as ‘re-create’ the research … and then take it forward an additional few steps. Volker is a brilliant scientist. At his request we set him up as a prison doctor, and unfortunately it looks like he played us. The security buffer we provide, plus the additional security at a secure correctional facility, made it harder for Price—or anyone, for that matter—to keep tabs on everything the doctor was doing. Lucifer 113 is not an expensive project, and many of the components are neither controlled substances or on watch lists. Volker took his time—decades, really—and he fooled everyone. ”
McMasters was seething. “If he’s so fucking smart then how did he lose control of this thing? It’s not like letting your dog off his leash so he can fuck the neighbors poodle, goddamn it. ”
“I know. ”