The hospital coffee shop was only about half-filled. When Jack walked in, he was a few minutes early for his meeting with Special Agent Westenson. He spotted a table toward the rear of the shop and sat down. A minute or so later, he saw Westenson and Barbier walk through the door.
“We apprehended the suspect this morning,” Westenson said. “I wanted to come over and thank you in person for your help.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Westenson, but other than to inform you about the call, I really didn’t do very much.”
“It was your call that led us to him,” Barbier said. “We knew he was in South Florida, but we didn’t know exactly where. He had acquired a significant number of forged documents, which would have made locating him a nightmare. We knew why he was here so we figured he’d attempt to draw you or Dr. Sinclair out.”
“No offense intended, but what was your plan if he decided just to wait outside the hospital and shoot me?”
“That probably wouldn’t have worked. You see, Dr. Wyatt, you’ve been under pretty tight surveillance for the past several days.”
“He was very convincing on the phone. If you hadn’t warned me, I probably would have met him at his hotel. If you can share the information with me, I’d be interested in knowing who he turned out to be.”
“I can’t tell you very much. Suffice it to say he’s a highly trained scientist. Unfortunately, he’s also criminally psychotic. For reasons yet to be determined he became wildly delusional about GNS to a point that he believed he had masterminded every detail of the outbreak. From what we can decipher from his notes and computer files, he believed he was working for Russia as a bioterrorist.”
“The first time we spoke, you didn’t give me too many details. Why do you think he was after me?”
“We didn’t at first, but we did have strong reason to believe he intended to kill Dr. Sinclair. I met with Dr. Sinclair the same day you and I spoke. I made the same request of him that I made of you.”
“And?”
“He told me the entire FBI was out of their collective minds for pursuing a bioterrorism possibility. A few days ago, we discovered Vosky had managed to penetrate hospital security and get into the crisis center. He was in the room when your team met to discuss the state of your research on the flu vaccine. It wasn’t too hard to figure out why he became focused on you as the person who would destroy his plans to continue to spread GNS.”
After Barbier and Westenson left, Jack returned to the ICU. In all honesty, he had never given much thought to his conversation with Westenson at the restaurant. As soon as he reported the call to Westenson, he dismissed the entire matter from his mind. Jack was pleased the man was in custody, but unfortunately, his incarceration would do nothing to stem the rising death toll from GNS.