Brodie looked at the empty hospital bed at the other end of the room. Taylor should have been transferred by now, and a nurse had told Brodie they would bring her here. Maybe by morning.
As for Special Agent David Kim, Tomas Stellmacher had taken Brodie’s threats seriously—or Stellmacher had had a talk with his better angels—and he’d administered the antibiotic to Kim and gotten him out of the bunker and into an ambulance. And because Stellmacher played with plague, he knew exactly where to have David Kim taken for treatment and biocontainment. Brodie had demanded and gotten a full report on Kim’s condition from a doctor at the facility who told Brodie that his colleague, Mr. Kim, had been close to death, but was expected to make a full recovery. A lot of bad things happen in this broken world, but miracles happen too.
The door opened and a tall man stepped in. By the dim night-lights, Brodie could make out a long object in his gloved hand.
Brodie said, “Visiting hours are over.”
Trent Chilcott replied, “That’s why I’m here.”
Brodie tried to see what Chilcott had in his hand. Gun? Hand grenade? “Is that for me?”
Chilcott lifted the object. It was a small bouquet of flowers wrapped in brown paper. “For Maggie.” He eyed the empty bed. “But I guess she’s not here yet.”
“She doesn’t want anything from you.”
Chilcott dropped the bouquet on a nearby table, then walked into the room and stopped a few feet from Brodie’s bedside. “I wanted to congratulate you. And thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He added, “How’s your solar plexus?”
Chilcott ignored that and said, “Reinhard Dorn is dead.”
Brodie didn’t respond.
“He got hold of something sharp in his cell and slashed his wrists.”
“Good.”
“The German investigators don’t feel that way.”
“There’s nothing they could offer a man like that to get him to cooperate.”
Chilcott nodded. “The BKA’s still sorting out who knew what among the detained Titan staff and NordFaust members. But they think only a few people within both organizations knew the full details of the biological attack plan.” He added, “Fortunately, Titan Genetics kept meticulous records, even of the secret operations that were siloed from the legitimate side of the company. Titan has a count of every bacterial colony on every pour plate in their labs, and they recorded how much was deployed in each of their experiments. They even catalogued the bacterial concentration of each of the submunitions in each of the mortar warheads. Reinhard Dorn’s obsessive need for control over his creation will be an Intel bonanza.”
Well, those were the kinds of habits you picked up after years of working in a police state. Brodie asked, “Do I have a need to know this?”
Chilcott stared at him. “I know that once you’re out of here you’re going to try to hunt down the truth, and I thought I’d save you the time. And demonstrate to you that things are under control and need to stay that way.”
There it was. Brodie thought he’d at least be stateside before he got this talk. He said, “I helped bury your shit once and I’m not doing it again.”
“This is not my shit, to be clear.”
“The answer’s the same.”
Chilcott took a step closer. “I’m not asking.”
“Hey, Trent, my leg is fucked up but the rest of me is fine. Come any closer and I’ll show you.”
Chilcott paused a moment and looked like he was trying to keep his temper in check. Then he said, “Let me explain something to you, Scott. Sometimes our best protection against bad actors is their own limited imaginations. Outside of a small circle of people, no one knows that a biogenetic weapon such as the Götterdämmerung plague is even possible. And if it becomes common knowledge that it is not only possible, but feasible, and that there is in fact anexisting straincapable of killing eighty fucking percent of the world’s population…” He trailed off. “This isn’t the Mercer case, Mr. Brodie. This isn’t about protecting people from embarrassment or accountability. This is much, much bigger. Neither of us sets the rules on this one—or has the luxury of breaking them.”
Brodie didn’t respond. Chilcott had dropped his aloof affect and actually looked a little worried. This threat of biological Armageddon really was bigger than all of them, and maybe it dwarfed considerations of pride, ego, or even principles. That was a disturbing thought.
Brodie thought about the late Colonel Charles Granger, who was currently dominating headlines. The American Army traitor who had evaded justice for decades, and who had spent his later years plotting with the most dangerous white supremacist group in Europe to launch attacks against Arab immigrants.
The news had reported on the seized cluster bombs but said nothing about the plague inside of them, and made only a passing mention of Charles Granger’s status as a board member of Titan Genetics, a biotech firm that coincidentally had just been raided by federal police for reasons unknown. The public might theorize about a connection between those two events—or three events now, with the prison suicide of the Titan Genetics founder Reinhard Dorn—but there was not yet enough information to draw any real conclusions. And if Trent Chilcott and his Intel colleagues got their way, there never would be.
Brodie looked at Chilcott. “I’ll see how this plays out.”
Chilcott stared back at him. “That’s not the answer I need from you, Scott.”
