By the time Dmitry pulled up to the back of the Bennet House, he’d gotten the whole story and was now as agitated as Alexei. Even before he’d had time to turn off the engine, Alexei was out of the cab, heading for the door. As quickly as he could, Dmitry followed. A moment later they burst into the kitchen.
As they’d expected given the hour, Viktor and Nikolai were at the fancy, commercial-sized, modern cooktop. Both men thought of themselves as gourmets, and Viktor even more than Nikolai considered himself an accomplished chef. For him, cooking had been the main diversion to pass the isolation time required for the prion operation. Although he insisted that Alexei and Dmitry do all the food shopping at the supermarket in Indian River, he spent hours on the shopping list most every day and demanded the highest quality foodstuffs available. Every night, he and Nikolai would make dinner. For them it was the high point of the day and that night was no exception, with Viktor busy with his favorite dish, beef Stroganoff, while Nikolai was making his mother’s version of borscht. Both menwere intent on what they were doing with little conversation. A low-volume Rimsky-Korsakov symphony floated out of a speaker.
“We’ve got one hell of a problem!” Alexei called out to get the two commanders’ attention as he rushed up to the central island.
Viktor didn’t respond verbally but rather merely raised his hand as if to say what he was currently doing was far more important than anything Alexei might have to report. He then turned his attention back to the stove while he added his carefully seared beef tenderloin strips to the sour cream, onions, and mushrooms.
With obvious frustration, Alexei exchanged a quick, disbelieving glance with Dmitry along with a shake of his head. Dmitry responded by rolling his eyes. Alexei leaned against the kitchen island and tried to calm his racing heart.
“All right,” Viktor said once he had his beef Stroganoff simmering to his liking. “Let’s hear about this supposed problem.”
Nikolai had also adjusted the temperature on his soup and was now leaning against the stove with his arms folded, facing Alexei.
“It’s bad,” Alexei said ardently. “There is a husband-and-wife team of forensic pathologists in town. They are going to autopsy Ethan Jameson tomorrow morning.”
“Calm down,” Viktor said in a soothing voice.
“You know what a forensic pathologist is, don’t you?” Alexei added with alarm.
“Of course I know what a forensic pathologist is,” Viktor responded, at first taking issue with the suggestion but quickly calming himself. “Is that it, or is there more?”
“There’s more, but isn’t that enough?” Alexei questioned with growing alarm, fearful that Viktor was missing the point and not recognizing the seriousness of the threat. “With forensic specialiststhe chance of Novichok being recognized becomes a near certainty. When that happens, there’s going to be a major investigation, and it wouldn’t be just by the ridiculous local policija. We’ve got to get out of here. We should have left Monday when we planned.”
“No Russian!” Viktor ordered.
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” Alexei burst out, throwing his hands up in the air. “What the hell difference does it make at this point?”
“It makes a lot of difference,” Viktor snapped back. “We are doing one more release. End of story! We’re not giving up on that plan because of a couple of visitors. What else did you learn? You said there was more.”
“The husband-wife forensic pathology team are staying in the only house we can see from our porch, meaning they’re sharing this same isolated, private lake.”
“Well, isn’t that a helpful coincidence,” Viktor said with a devilish smile. “That raises possibilities. Maybe we can think of some way to just have them disappear overnight. We’re certainly more than adequately armed thanks to all the guns and ammunition the Diehard Patriots left for our approval.”
“If it was one forensic pathologist, maybe there’s a ghost of a chance of something like that working,” Alexei said, calming down an iota. He was pleased that at least a serious discussion was ensuing. “If he and his wife were to both disappear, I’m afraid it would cause almost as much of an uproar as the discovery of Novichok, and with us being the only other people on the lake, we’d be in the crosshairs either way.”
“Maybe you are right,” Viktor conceded. He glanced briefly over at Nikolai, and Nikolai nodded in agreement. Turning back to Alexei, Viktor asked if there was more.
“There is more,” Alexei said, “and this might be equally as bad.The two pathologists are also going to be consulting with the local doctor maybe even tomorrow morning after the autopsy, about the recent Alzheimer’s-like deaths he’s seen that tested negative for Alzheimer’s. That’s obviously our handiwork, and we expected to be long gone before the authorities had any suspicions.”
“That doesn’t worry me in the slightest,” Viktor said with a wave of dismissal.
“And why not?” Alexei asked with surprise.
“Because relating the outbreak of Alzheimer’s-like dementia to outside contamination of the town’s domestic water system is an enormous if not impossible epidemiological challenge. It’s going to take months even under the best of circumstances, and to be honest, I’m not convinced it will ever get done. By the time it even occurs to someone to test the municipal holding tanks where you and Dmitry have been dumping the theta prion, the concentration will be so minuscule as to be undetectable. And this is on top of how difficult it is to detect prions in the environment in the best of circumstances, which is part of the reason they make the perfect bioweapon. That and how damn stable they are.”
For several beats, Alexei stared back at Viktor. Thanks to his technical training, he knew the commander was undoubtedly correct. They didn’t have to worry about being caught out for the real purpose of their mission no matter what these visiting pathologists did or said and, in all likelihood, the West wasn’t going to learn about the technology of using prions as a bioweapon until they were told, if they were going to be told. Alexei wasn’t even sure of that. In fact, he admitted as did his co-conspirators that they had no idea what the Russian FSB or the GRU intended to do with the capability once they had in hand the proof of concept that it worked superbly.
“It seems to me,” Viktor said, breaking the extended silence, “we’re really facing only one short-term problem and that problem has a solution. We need to prevent this upcoming autopsy so we can finish the harvest, do the final release, and head for home.”
“What do you have in mind, Viktor?” Nikolai asked.
“There’s not much choice,” Viktor said. “If we’re restricted in our ability to make the forensic pathologists disappear, then I suggest we make the body disappear.”
“That sounds like the best suggestion so far,” Nikolai said. “Do we know where the body is?”
“I was told the autopsy was going to be in the local doctor’s office,” Alexei offered.
“There you go,” Viktor said. “That means the body has to be there and would have to be kept cool. In fact, if that’s where he does his autopsies, there’s got to be some kind of cooler. You can’t have one without the other. Alexei and Dmitry! It seems that you two have a bit of work to do this evening. Are you up for it?”
