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Columbus, Ohio, USA
8th of April, 1:30 p.m. (GMT-4)
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After waiting more than thirty minutes for a rental car, Lukin breathed a sigh of relief as the John Glenn Columbus International Airport was finally behind him. His first priority was to get eyes on Forester, and the tracker on his Honda pegged the car around the backside of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. Lukin took this as a good sign—if Forester was at the zoo, that meant he was planning another attack, which gave Lukin another shot at obtaining the objective. He entered the coordinates of Forester’s car and followed the GPS on his phone rather than use the rental car’s; it looked like he was going to be in the States a little longer, and it never hurt to be cautious.
Lukin had a bad feeling as soon as he saw the flashing lights and road barricades. Local traffic was being diverted through a detour, and Lukin followed the line of cars crawling through the squeeze. Everyone was rubbernecking, so his curiosity didn’t seem out of the ordinary, but the string of Russian expletives he muttered under his breath was gloriously graphic. In his rearview mirror was Forester’s obsidian blue pearl Honda CR-V, crawling with FBI.
He turned on the radio and searched for a local news station. He got a weather report and traffic update, but nothing about the zoo. Lukin found his way back to the highway and headed to a hotel to regroup. He was about to turn off the DJ prattle when a newsbreak came over the air about a federal raid at the Columbus Zoo. Lukin turned the knob up instead of off. “Federal investigators apprehended a suspect at the Columbus Zoo earlier this morning. Special Agent James Fischer of the Columbus Field Office has released a statement that ‘the nature of the threat is isolated and has been neutralized.’ The zoo has closed for the rest of the day, but Columbus Zoo and Aquarium representatives want to reassure the public that visitor and animal safety is their top priority and they have every intention of opening tomorrow for normal business hours. Traffic around the zoo continues to be slow due to street closures and detours.”
Lukin shook his head and swore, “Zhizn’ ebet meya.”
*****
Stephen Forester sat stone-faced, staring at his reflection in the one-way mirror. Rogers found the cold blank stare disturbing, and wondered what sort of mind was working behind those sunken eyes. Lee opened the door and joined Rogers with an update. “The lab received the blood and tissue samples from UCLA before lunch. The salt licks have been entered into evidence and are being taken to the lab for processing, as well as the empty bottles found in Forester’s motel room.” Lee looked through the glass at their still suspect. “Has he said anything?”
“Not a word, and it’s freaking creepy,” Rogers answered.
“Has he asked for a lawyer?”
“Nope. Just sits there, glaring.” Rogers took a sip of his cup of late afternoon caffeine. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered.
“Why is that?” Lee asked as a matter of routine while he flipped through the file in his hand.
“If you were hell-bent on revenge for a wrong that happened over twenty years ago—so much so that you flew back into the country for the first time since you left—why would you use animals? A straight-up assault, plus or minus a weapon—sure—but animals? They are unpredictable, with a will of their own.”
“Crazy is as crazy does,” Lee adapted the Gump-ism to match the determined scientist on the other side of the glass. As far as Lee was concerned, it was highly unlikely that Forester was a stupid man. “Let’s go in and introduce ourselves; see if we can’t get a few answers.”
Rogers stood and threw his empty cup in the trash. Even though he had changed out of his zoo uniform and back in his suit, he couldn’t do much to remove the smell of animals and hay that lingered on him. Lee entered first, taking confident strides to the opposite side of the table from Forester. Rogers followed and closed the door behind him.
Lee dropped a thick file on the table before unbuttoning his jacket and taking a seat. Lee was a good agent, and he had a unique way of breaking the recalcitrant with the weight of his disapproval, expressed not only in words, but tone, body language, and demeanor. The act even put Rogers on edge the first few times he had seen it. For Lee, it was easy; he merely impersonated his Korean father-in-law—it worked every time.
“I am Agent Jeremy Lee. This is my partner, Agent Kyle Rogers. This interview is being recorded. For the benefit of the recording, I am reminding you of your right to legal counsel and that you have previously waived this right. Could you please verify that you have been offered and declined a lawyer?” Forester didn’t break his gaze at some fixed point behind them.
Lee continued, “Are you Stephen Elliot Forester, PhD of Biology and Department Head at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine?” Forester twitched at the sound of his credentials, but remained mute. Lee produced a copy of Forester’s US passport and fingerprints that verified his identity.
“Dr. Forester, what brought you to the restricted area of the Columbus Zoo this morning?” Lee produced photos of Forester entering the delivery gate and stealing the golf cart, black duffle bags in plain sight. Again, there was no answer.
Rogers spoke up, “Mr. Forester, things will go better for you if you cooperate with us.”
“It’s Dr. Forester,” the suspect broke his silence. “I didn’t achieve the pinnacle of my field to be addressed as ‘mister.’” Lee chuckled to himself—Rogers always had a knack for finding people’s buttons.
“My mistake, Dr. Forester,” Rogers apologized. “Why don’t you tell us what’s in the salt. Our lab is analyzing it as we speak, so it’s only a matter of time before the jig is up.”
Forester’s impassive mien broke into uncontrollable laughter, light and lyric at first but it quickly turned bitter and mocking. “Your lab? You think some FBI lab flunkies can even begin to comprehend my work?!”
Lee leaned in and pried his way into the crack Rogers had made in the facade. “Why don’t you enlighten us, Dr. Forester?”
One thought kept rolling through Forester’s mind in the hours since his arrest at the zoo: It’s over. At first, he was indignant—how dare they interrupt his magnum opus? Then, he was angry—he was so close to finishing what he’d started! Soon, his analytical mind kicked in and he clammed up. If he said nothing—gave them nothing—they would flounder in the dark. Alas, he was unaware of the case that had been built against him even before he arrived in Columbus.
Now it was dawning on the good doctor that there would be no getting out of this, no second chance for him. There would be no way to make the past right, but there was still time to explain. “If I answer your questions,” Forester started with a calculated pause, “can I get a phone call?”
“You can have a phone call now if it is for legal counsel, Dr. Forester,” Lee reminded him.
A short snide jeer escaped Forester. “No, I don’t want a lawyer. They won’t do me any good. I want to call my daughter, explain to her what happened in my own words.”
Lee sat back and dropped his hands into his lap, relaxing his stance to draw Forester in. “I think that can be arranged, Dr. Forester, but first, we would also like to hear what happened. In your own words.”
Forester thought for a moment. He was so tired. He was a dead man walking—did it really matter what he said or didn’t say? He would spend more time in hospice than jail. “It’s a rather long story and I’m a sick man. If you could recover the medication taken from me earlier, the one for nausea, it will make this easier.”
Lee nodded his head, signaling to someone on the other side of the one-way mirror. “It will take a moment, but consider it done. Tell us about the salt, Dr. Forester.”
*****
Lukin paced up and down his hotel room, cracking his knuckles. With Forester in custody, there wasn’t going to be another animal attack. He considered returning to Russia and calling it an operational failure, but Lukin was fully aware of how unfavorably the Interior Council viewed nonsuccess. Which left him few options.
He had a notion and delved back into the dark web for information—he knew his idea was foolhardy, but he wanted to see if it was possible. After hunting down the necessary schematics, blueprints, and protocols, Lukin made an executive decision—if the Ivory Tower wanted something from Forester, they could get it out of him themselves. The steep cost and high risk did not appeal to him, but it was the mission objective that ended his time in America.
The Russian took a look at the map and made arrangements for later tonight, putting an offer price high enough to compensate for the short notice. Once he found his takers, he closed his Tor browser and fired up his banking app, scheduling a large transfer for tomorrow to a children’s orphanage he patronized. He was going to burn through a lot of karma in the near future.