“Why are you looking at me?” Laurie questioned. “Play if you want to play. Just don’t leave me without a car. I might look into the Pilates. Is it a daily activity, Bob?”
“I believe so.”
“Of course I wouldn’t leave you carless,” Jack said. “I’ll bike into town. How far away is the Hiram House?”
“About four miles,” Bob said.
“A piece of cake,” Jack said. “Sure, I’ll be happy to play.”
“I thought that would be the case,” Bob said, “To be truthful, I took the liberty of already telling a number of people to be at Bennet Park at fivep.m. I’m sure there’ll be a decent turnout. By the way, one of the better players who will be there for certain is named JD. Since he was a close friend of Ethan Jameson’s, he would be able to answer any general questions you might have about his friend’s habits if that might be helpful for tomorrow morning’s autopsy. Although JD’s not the most career-minded twentysomething, he’s quite personable. He also happens to be one of the founders of the Diehard Patriots along with the late Ethan Jameson, which is why over the last month or so he’s often brought one of the Netherlander militia fellows named Alexei to our pickup games. Alexei’s not a bad player, although aggressive and occasionally a little hot under the collar. He might even be there this afternoon if you are interested in learning more about the mysterious Netherlanders,provided you can get him to talk. I never could, and I tried. He’s not a particularly personable individual.”
“I can’t imagine why I would be interested,” Jack said with a short, ironic laugh. “Right-wing militias are not one of my personal schticks.”
“Nor mine,” Bob said with a similar chuckle. “On a final note: I drew a map of the area with the location of the Hiram House along with some of the more popular local hiking trails and mountain bike routes.” He handed one to Laurie and a copy to Jack. “I also listed and located some stores you might find handy, like the drugstore and liquor shop. There’s also a surprisingly good grocery store here in town. Unfortunately, it’s on the small side. If you prefer a supermarket, you have to drive the ten miles to Indian River. We lost our supermarket when the Bennet factory closed. Anyway, it’s all on the map.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” Laurie commented after glancing at the map and the list.
“Okay,” Bob said getting to his feet. “If you follow me, I’ll drive you out to the Hiram House.”
“Let’s do it,” Jack said following suit.
Chapter 9
Wednesday, July 23, 2:00p.m.
Bennet Estate
Hamilton County, New York
Alexei Ivanov disconnected the call he’d been on with JD Daniels and experienced a sudden flash of anger. He’d been aware since he was a child of five, some twenty years previously, that he tended to be what his mother described as “volatile,” and the stress and isolation of being in Essex Falls was wearing on him, as were the personalities of the three people he’d been essentially imprisoned with for almost six weeks. His general impatience and barely suppressed rage had been made worse because Sunday night—while trying to stay alive shepherding seventeen imbecilic, uneducated, American males, all drinking beer and shooting AR-15 rifles in the dark—he’d believed that he’d be on his way back to his beloved Russia Monday afternoon. Being informed that he’d have to do yet another prion harvest instead had been a devastating blow.
Although the anger Alexei felt from JD’s call came from being stuck in godforsaken Essex Falls without even a definitive ideawhen they were going to leave, the rush of concern came from something else entirely. JD had invited Alexei to play basketball, an opportunity which Alexei truly appreciated as it was the sole extracurricular activity he’d been allowed by the commander under the very specific rules to limit their engagement.
The usual biweekly basketball had been a psychological lifesaving release for him from the boredom of being otherwise confined to the Bennet Estate. The worry, of course, from Viktor and Nikolai’s position was that it could lead to someone questioning the group’s origin, which would raise some eyebrows.
With exasperation, Alexei looked over at Viktor and then at Dmitry Volkov and finally at Nikolai Petrov, the lieutenant. All were in the Bennet barn toiling away in their makeshift biomolecular laboratory, setting up a final prion harvest to cap off their already totally successful proof-of-concept trial of theta prion as a consummate bioweapon. Although they all had been busy, it was Alexei who’d done the lion’s share of the real work since he was the microbiological technician.
Although Viktor and Nikolai did indeed make the prion gene vector initially, from that point on it was all Alexei’s work. First he’d used the vector to transform the yeast he and Dmitry had gotten in Albany, then he separated out the transformed yeast using the appropriate antibiotic, and finally he charged up the commercial fermenter, which they were using as a bioreactor, with the transformed yeast along with the required amounts of nutrients plus galactose necessary to turn on the inserted gene. It was now up to the yeast to reproduce itself and then, thanks to recombinant technology, produce the theta prion protein. How long it was going to take was up to the specific culture of yeast cells that had been transformedby gene vector and their specific bio-characteristics. At that point there was little else to be done but monitor and control the temperature, pH, and carbon dioxide concentration and keep all three within certain narrow limits to let the yeast cells do their thing, which they were generally very capable of doing.
Racing around Alexei’s mind and raising his blood pressure was what and how much to tell the others about what JD had innocently mentioned during his call. Following the usual details involving the time and location for the afternoon basketball, JD had casually mentioned that the organizing doctor, who Alexei knew as Dr. Bob, was particularly interested in a decent turnout of good players because another doctor friend of his from New York who was a well-known forensic pathologist was in town and was a good player himself. “I don’t know what the hell a forensic pathologist is,” JD had said, “but I’m guessing Dr. Bob wants to impress the guy.”
As a microbiological technician who’d spent some time in hospitals earlier in his career, Alexei knew all too well what a forensic pathologist was, and what immediately reverberated around inside his head was the disturbing chance this visiting doctor’s arrival might possibly have something to do with Ethan Jameson’s death. There hadn’t been any fallout from Alexei using the Novichok Monday morning as Viktor had originally feared, but was that about to change? The possibility had Alexei’s heart racing, making him wonder if he might be forced to use the Novichok again to give the group time to get out of the country.
“What the hell are you thinking about?” Viktor questioned with concern, yanking Alexei out of his momentary trance to find the commander intently staring at him. “What’s wrong? Is something amiss with the fermenter?” Viktor shifted his gaze from Alexei tothe apparatus’s gauges while giving it several pats with an open palm. It was an expensive but well-made fermenter costing more than six thousand US dollars.
“No, there’s nothing wrong!” Alexei repeated nervously. “The fermenter’s fine.”
“That’s a relief! But I have to confess; you had me worried there for a moment. You looked momentarily terrified. To be honest, you are still a little pale. Who were you talking with? JD?” From their first arrival in Essex Falls, Alexei had been the main contact between Ethan Jameson, John Daniels, and the Diehard Patriots.
“Yes, it was JD,” Alexei said, debating what to say to Viktor and what not say. On Monday both Viktor and Nikolai had seriously berated him for using the Novichok without their authorization, reminding him over and over it had been brought only for extreme emergencies because if it was recognized by the US authorities it could cause a firestorm by implicating Russian involvement.
For the rest of the day, the self-styled Netherlanders had all nervously waited to see if there was to be any fallout, preparing to leave on a moment’s notice if there was. Luckily there hadn’t been, and they had all been extremely relieved when JD finally called Alexei later that afternoon to inform him that the death had occurred and pesticide self-poisoning was considered the likely cause, which was what Alexei had suspected would be the case. Alexei had known Ethan regularly used organophosphate pesticides similar to Novichok but a thousand times less potent.
“Did he say anything additional about Ethan Jameson’s death?” Viktor asked.
“Not a thing!” Alexei said. “He was calling to invite me to play basketball this afternoon.” Alexei silently and rapidly debated whether to reveal that a forensic pathologist was visiting the localdoctor. Quickly he decided to stay mum, thinking he’d play basketball and learn what he could about whether there was need to worry. On top of that, with as wound up as he was, a good game of basketball would be enormously therapeutic, mentally and physically, and he didn’t want to deny himself.
“How did you respond?” Viktor asked.
