The conference call commenced half an hour later, at 10:30 P.M. local time. It was 8:30 back home in Colorado, and exhaustion already showed on the faces of men and women who weren’t about to get any sleep in the foreseeable future. The live display was divided into quadrants, with Algren featured in the upper left, the ATF team in the upper right, the DHS contingent in the lower left corner, and Layne in the bottom right. She sat at the medical examiner’s desk, with her laptop in front of her and the wall of framed degrees and awards as a backdrop. Mason was sprawled on the couch running along the wall, his laptop open and primed to view his amassed information all at once.
“I want to keep this briefing concise and to the point,” Algren said. “With as many seemingly disparate investigations as we’re currently juggling, we need to do everything in our power to delineate and compartmentalize each. Let’s start with the forensics report. Special Agent Layne?”
“I trust you’ve all had at least a few seconds to familiarize yourselves with case file number charlie sierra four one-two one-eight dash one-six,” she said. There was a lag between the sound of her voice beside Mason and the movement of her lips on the screen. “The important part here is the identification of the victims recovered from behind the false wall at the slaughterhouse. DNA profiles were generated and compared against local, federal, and international missing persons databases. Ultimately, the samples matched those submitted by relatives of Israeli nationals Nitzan Chenhav and Yossi Mosche—a microbiologist and biochemist, respectively—who were purportedly killed on El Al Flight 1086 from Bern, Switzerland, to Tel Aviv, Israel, on November twenty-fourth, 2001.”
“That opens up a whole new can of worms, doesn’t it?” Becker said. The ATF agent sat directly in front of his laptop camera, a paper cup of steaming coffee to his right. Johnson sat on the edge of the bed, the painting on the wall behind her the kind of landscape that hung in every motel room in the world.
“The way I see it,” Layne said, “we’re dealing with four distinct lines of inquiry. First: What were both men doing in Bern at the same time? Second: How did these men survive a crash that killed everyone else on board? Third: Where have they been for the last twenty years? And fourth: What was the nature of their involvement with the flu virus and the Novichok agent being developed in the building above where they were entombed?”
“Of the four,” Algren said, “the last question is of the greatest consequence.”
“We’ll run with that one,” Addison said. She nodded to Salazar, who sat beside her at a wooden table. They’d exchanged their DHS uniforms for T-shirts with the Federal Protective Service logo. Stools were stacked upside down on a hotel bar behind them, the wall above it lined with shelves overflowing with bottles of liquor.
Layne cast Mason a sideways glance before speaking.
“Mason thinks he might be able to dig up some background on them.”
“I don’t want the two of you getting bogged down with tasks that can be handled remotely,” Algren said. “You’re on point out there. I need you unencumbered in the field, at least until I arrive.”
“You’re coming out here?”
“The attack on you and Special Agent Mason tonight represents an act of aggression against this strike force. I’ve already made arrangements for ASAC Hooper to take my place here while I transition into my new role. Agents Addison and Becker will be joining me; their partners will stay behind to ensure investigational continuity. Local intelligence operatives and tactical units will be provided by the Joint Terrorism Task Force under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Again, Layne glanced back at Mason, who sat up and leaned into the frame behind her.
“Have you been able to figure out the route the trucks took to get here?” he asked.
“We acquired them outside of St. Louis on I-Seventy,” Addison said. “And one final time on Highway Seventy-six between Morgantown and Philadelphia.”
“Did they still have their payload?”
“Affirmative.”
“What about physical evidence inside the farmhouse?” Layne asked.
“We collected two distinct sets of fingerprints,” Algren said. “One set belonged to Cavanaugh, as one would expect, but the other doesn’t match any in the NGI. The UNSUB must have known his biometric data wasn’t in the system.”
“Do we have IDs or COD from the Yuma County ME yet?” Mason asked.
“It’s a small office unprepared to deal with a case of this magnitude,” Addison said.
“Then transfer the remains to Locker’s lab.”
“That’s precisely what we intend to do once the ME finishes her examination.”
“We don’t have time to wait around for her,” Layne said. “Have her send us what she has so far and we’ll take it from there. At least we’d be able to establish a little forward momentum.”
Layne’s computer chimed to alert her to incoming mail. She abruptly stiffened and turned to face Mason, her eyes wide and a smile on her face.
“We just received the profile from Behavioral.”
Mason glanced over her shoulder and saw the name of the sender. He recognized it immediately. Xavier Christensen. While his boss might have been a pro at separating his personal life from his professional, he apparently had no qualms about calling his son, a highly respected behavioral analyst, to expedite their profile.
“What does it say?” Algren asked.
“Give me a minute to read through it and I’ll summarize,” Layne said. “You should all be receiving a forwarded copy right about … now.”
“We’ll come back to you, then. Where do we stand with the precursor chemicals?”
“None of the registered suppliers reported any purchases out of the ordinary,” Addison said, “let alone in the kind of quantity we’re talking about, but we’ve subpoenaed their records to verify their claims.”
“What about the signature of the IED?” Algren asked.
“There is no signature,” Becker said. “We believe the UNSUB is just a very smart man who took advantage of the items he had on hand. Not a pro, but certainly not an amateur, either. With as much raw fuel as he had in that cellar, he could have easily launched that house into orbit.”
“That was never his intention, though,” Mason said. “The blast was localized to inflict maximum damage on whoever opened that door. He wanted us to be shocked by the carnage when we arrived.”
Again, Mason was reminded of the cruelty of the trap in the knocking pen. Had he arrived any later, he would have found Alejandra with her spinal cord severed and a bolt halfway through her forehead.
“I agree, but we lack physical evidence to support that assertion,” Algren said. “It’s little more than a theory that presupposes we have the slightest idea of what’s going on inside his head.”
“Which brings us to our profile,” Layne said. “Behavioral’s reluctant to say he’s of Japanese origin based solely on the characters carved into the tree. Traditionally, the Japanese have a much different relationship with their elderly than we do. More respectful. They revere their aging population as a source of wisdom and knowledge. They say it’s possible the UNSUB could have developed a kind of animosity that caused him to seek out elderly victims, but such a specific emotional response likely wouldn’t cross over to a different ethnicity. If he hated his elders, he would have sought out victims who most closely resembled them.”
“Assuming he was of Japanese origin in the first place.”
“Exactly.”
“Were all of the victims Caucasian for sure?” Becker asked. “Anyone of Japanese descent would definitely blame white men of a certain age for the internment camps during World War Two. And, you know, the whole atomic bomb thing.”
“As far as we know,” Algren said, “but we can’t say conclusively without the autopsy report.”
“Which we should have had by now,” Mason said.
“What else?” Algren asked.
“We’ve got your standard troubled childhood. Liked to torture animals. No overt elements of sexual aggression, although they’re unable to completely rule out a sexual component without confirmation from the ME.”
“We need to see if we can at least get preliminary findings.”
“We’re still out here in Wray,” Becker said. “I’ll follow up in person on my way to the airport.”
“A couple other things stand out,” Layne said. “They don’t believe his overt demonstrations of cruelty are for our benefit alone. He draws immense personal satisfaction from hurting other people. It makes him feel powerful. And they all but confirmed what we were thinking. He displayed his victims in the cornfield because he fully intended to reveal his completed design when the time was right.”
“Do they agree that the display is meant to convey a message?” Mason asked.
“It appears so, but they’re unable to even speculate as to what that message is or who he hoped would receive it.”
“What about the Japanese characters themselves?” Addison asked. “Kuebiko. What’s their take on that?”
“The scarecrow motif speaks to him on a personal level. In the modern context, it’s simply a human decoy meant to scare birds from a field, but it could also represent either a literal or metaphorical straw man. A being that looks alive from a distance but is actually dead inside. Or if we stick with the Japanese allusion, the scarecrow first appeared in Kojiki, the oldest surviving book in Japan. An all-knowing deity named Kuebiko assumed its form. Maybe he’s trying to convey the message that he knows something other people would rather he not. Whatever the case, the scarecrow plays prominently into his message. He left the carving on the tree for us, the responding officers, but his victims were the message he meant to deliver to a specific faction privy to the confidential details of this investigation, one that already knows his true identity but he’s certain won’t divulge it. He has absolutely no fear of being caught.”
“They’re suggesting our investigation is compromised,” Algren said.
“Not in so many words, but the implication is clear.”
Algren’s expression clouded and for the first time betrayed her age.
“What about the arrangement of the victims?” Mason asked.
“That’s where the profile breaks from that of a traditional serial killer,” Layne said. “The circular nature of the display and equal distance between bodies implies a finite number of victims. This isn’t a man who intended to keep on killing until we eventually stopped him. They speculate he was going to kill three more people—two to complete the outer ring, and one, presumably the victim of the highest personal value, to be his centerpiece—and then he was going to sit back and watch the reaction from afar. In fact, they still believe he’s going to do just that.”
“So they’re confident the victims were specifically targeted and not crimes of opportunity,” Addison said.
“If you’re willing to read between the lines a little.”
“Which means that right now there are potentially three specific individuals who know that this man is coming for them,” Mason said.
“What does any of this have to do with four thousand gallons of Novichok?” Becker asked.
“They believe he has a background not just in chemistry but in chemical engineering specifically. He’s directly responsible for its manufacture, which he sees as his job. He doesn’t care about where it’s released or how many people die. It’s the fulfillment of a contractual obligation. Like punching a clock. It’s the other murders that matter to him on a personal level.”
“So if we find these three men,” Mason said, “we find the UNSUB.”
“And the Novichok,” Algren added.
“That’s their theory,” Layne said.
“Have we had any luck identifying the men from the photographs inside the farmhouse?” Mason asked.
“With their eyes scratched out, our techs hold out little hope, but they’re still running the images through every available database and praying for a miracle,” Algren said.
“I saw that wall before it exploded. Those pictures were like trophies to him. The men in that field? They were in those pictures. I’m sure of it. If we could identify them and subtract them from the picture, the remainder would hopefully give us at least one of our three intended victims.”
“Again, the autopsies are the holdup,” Layne said. She looked pointedly at Mason, who realized she finally understood what he’d been saying all along about Homeland. “We need to figure out who those men are.”