“You got a nice dog, Kelly.”
Danielson kept the knife tight against my skin as he took a seat and switched on the desk lamp.
“How’d you get into my apartment?” I said.
“I almost grabbed your girlfriend. Thought she was you, but the perfume gave it away. You gonna be quiet?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“They still out there?”
“Sure.”
Before I could move, a gun had replaced the blade in his hands. It was black, with a black suppressor attached.
“You don’t look so good, Danielson.”
His skin looked stretched under the pale light. His hair was heavy with grease, and his eyes were a little too bright for their own good.
“What’s going on out there?” he said.
“What do you know?”
“Give me your gun.”
I pulled my piece off my hip. Danielson took it and got up from his chair.
“Keep your hands on the desk.”
I did. The Homeland Security agent drifted into the shadows and returned a moment later.
“I’ve been keeping up to date.” Danielson put his laptop down between us. Then he pulled out a set of cuffs. “I can’t work this and keep an eye on you.”
I held out my hands. Danielson cuffed me and pocketed the keys. “I got most of the stuff they’ve been streaming to DC about the release.”
“They haven’t shut you out yet?”
Danielson sharpened his cheekbones into a grin, teeth shining like a couple rows of tombstones. “I put a keystroke device on one of their laptops. Access codes change every hour, but this program sweeps them up automatically, so I’m always in the loop.”
“Good for you. What happened yesterday?”
Danielson cocked his head and stopped typing. “So you don’t think I intentionally released a bioweapon into the subway?”
“You’re not very bright, and you’re a patriot. That’s a dangerous enough combination.”
“Fuck you, Kelly.”
“What happened?”
Danielson was reading a screen of text and whistled. “Going all-out.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? They just put up an internal map of potential quarantine zones. Gonna separate Oak Park from the West Side. Protect the white folks. Smart.” Danielson turned the laptop around so I could see. “They won’t go public until the troops are in place.”
“Troops?”
“National Guard. Sprinkled in with Chicago’s finest. They’re all gonna be dressed up in NBC suits so it won’t make a damn bit of difference.”
He flipped the screen around again and continued scrolling through pages of text. “Gonna call it ‘convenience sheltering.’ Got a nice ring to it, no? But the real question is why.”
“You said it yourself. There’s been a release.”
“Yes, but if it’s anthrax, there’s no real danger of person-to-person transmission.” Danielson snapped his laptop shut. “So why not just evacuate? Why the quarantine?”
“I want to know about the subway.”
Danielson checked his watch and picked up his gun. “You’re right. We don’t have a lot of time.”
I wondered for a moment if he wasn’t just going to put a bullet in me and be done with it. Instead, he kept on talking.
“You already know about Katherine Lawson. For the record, that was a sanctioned thing. She knew about the lightbulbs being lifted from Detrick. Was snooping around the subway trying to find them. I tried to warn her off.”
“Then you popped her twice in the head with a twenty-two.”
“Me? No. Like I said, it came from Washington.”
“Then what?”
“I knew both bulbs were harmless. Had rock-solid confirmation on that.”
“Tell that to the corpses they’re collecting down at Cook County.”
“The bulbs were harmless, Kelly. After Lawson, Washington ordered me to pull them out of the subway and turn them over to Brazile’s lab for disposal.”
“So?”
“So I got cute. Went off the playbook and sat on things for a couple of weeks.”
“And Brazile went along.”
“She trusted me.”
“Her mistake. What were you waiting on?”
“I fucked up.”
“How?”
“I had a line on some bad guys. A possible sleeper cell in Chicago, looking to buy materials.”
“For an attack?”
Danielson shrugged. “It was sketchy. Bio, maybe chemical. Maybe a load of bullshit. Anyway, we leaked information about Lawson’s death. Let them believe the bulbs were alive and still in place underground. Be just the thing guys like that cream over. I figured I’d give it a week or two, see if they made some inquiries. The home run would have been if they took a shot at the subway themselves.”
“And you were certain the bulbs were harmless?”
“Before I set up the sting, I went down into the subway myself.” Danielson gestured back into the shadows. “Detrick gave us an ultraviolet light. When you hit the bulbs with it, there’s an ID marker that glows. Took me maybe an hour to find both bulbs. I pulled one and gave it to CDA for testing. Left the other one where it was.”
“And?”
“Stuff was irradiated. Harmless. Hundred percent.”
I sat back in my chair and thought things through. Maybe Danielson was lying, but I couldn’t figure why. Or why he was in my apartment in the first place.
“If the bulbs are a red herring, what’s really going on?”
“Now you’re asking the right questions.” Danielson waved the barrel of his gun in my face and belched lightly. I got the first whiff of what might have been gin. “What really happened? If you know the game, it’s simple.”
“And you know the game?”
“Not well enough, apparently. The bad guys must have gotten wind of my little sting and turned it around. Used the lightbulbs as cover to release their own pathogen. Only they were using the real thing.”
“You think it was the guys you targeted in the sting?”
“Not likely.”
“How do you know?”
Danielson cracked his teeth together in a second graveyard grin. “Fourth one told me.”
“The fourth one?”
“Tracked them down around five this morning. Fourth watched the first three die. After that he told me everything I wanted to know.”
“Then joined his buddies in Nirvana?”
“No one’s crying. Fact is, they had nothing to do with this. Of course, there are plenty of other assholes out there.”
“Why use the lightbulbs as a cover? And if it was a terrorist group, why haven’t they gone public? Taken all the credit. Made some demands or something.”
Danielson shook his head at yet another stupid question. “Whoever decides to use a bioweapon isn’t likely to go public. Too much heat from their own people. In fact, they’ll run from it.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Blackmail. Today’s textbook. Limited release. Maybe five hundred, a thousand people dead in Chicago. We shake our fists, bomb the shit out of a few more countries, and erect memorials. The world feels our pain, but mostly worries who’s next. Meanwhile, the terrorists stay quiet. Somewhere down the road, they tap us on the shoulder. Tell us they got another load of something and are gonna use it. Chicago again. New York, LA. We believe they’ll use it because the fuckers already have. So we cave. Pandora goes back in her box. Bad guys get what they want. And no one in DC has to look bad. That’s how bioweapons really work. At least, the politics of it.”
“So this is the first shot?”
“Could be.”
“And what are we supposed to do?”
“You and me?” Danielson looked around the room in case I might have been referring to someone else.
“Yes, Danielson. What do we do?”
“We die, Kelly. Like everybody else. Only quicker.”