The early hour wasn’t the only reason he didn’t tell Perez what he was going to do. Acutely aware his friend regarded him as delusional on the subject of the ACF, Logan preferred to not even imagine how he’d react to a snap predawn decision to take off for Washington, D.C.
Picking up his car at the lot on Eleventh Avenue where he had long-term parking, Logan headed into the Lincoln Tunnel just as dawn was breaking. Doing seventy-five most of the way, stopping just once for gas, he made it to downtown Washington in less than four and a half hours, pulling up before the FCC Building on M Street just after ten.
Too late. The sidewalks, which only moments before had been alive with government functionaries hurrying to work in the boxy, nondescript office buildings lining the broad avenue, now were nearly empty.
Logan wheeled around a corner and headed right, toward Pennsylvania Avenue and his alternative destination: the National Archives.
What he needed was a volume called The Martin Allen Directory of European SS Arrivals, 1890–1940, Port of New York. He’d learned the day before, ironically enough in the New York Public Library, that it was available only here.
“Are you looking for a particular voyage?” asked the officious young man who handed it to him.
“Actually, I’m looking for a specific name. I don’t know the date they sailed, or even the exact year.”
The young man gave a tight smile. “I hope you have a lot of time.”
Since the book provided just a record of departures and arrivals—the individual passenger lists being available only on microfilm—Logan was reduced to playing probabilities. In all likelihood, German-Jewish refugees exiting Germany would have left via Hamburg, the country’s principal port. It was also probable—assuming the cause of their departure was the rise of Nazism—that they’d have left between January 1933, when Hitler was named German chancellor, and late 1938. And though there were several companies that had worked the route between northern Germany and New York, Logan decided to concentrate on by far the most prominent: the Hamburg-Amerika line.
Still, throughout almost the entire period, Hamburg-Amerika had three ships running out of Hamburg simultaneously—the Potsdam, the Bremen, and the Lübeck, each making approximately fifteen round trips annually. The sheer volume was staggering. Worse, when he requested the first microfilm reel bearing passenger rosters, he discovered that the lists, numbering as many as fifteen hundred names apiece, were handwritten—and not in alphabetical order.
It was the very definition of tedium, reading down those long columns of names, hour after hour; individuals and family groupings by the thousands, the tens of thousands, all but indistinguishable from one another. He’d chosen to work ship by ship, starting with the Bremen. More than once, aware that his attention had wavered—that his eye had seen but his brain not registered—Logan had to go back to the top of a list and begin again. He could not take the chance that he’d missed the single name he was after.
Falzheim.
Working through the morning, he did not find it. The closest approximation, which he dutifully jotted down, was Pfaltzstein, Ernst.
By midafternoon, having moved on to the Potsdam, he was up to August 1934, when he made note of a second name that seemed close. Forcheim, Leopold; immediately followed by Forcheim, Hilda and Forcheim, Greta. A whole little Forcheim clan, he realized, and pressed on.
An hour later, dizzy with fatigue, he took a break and dialed the lab.
“You’re in Washington?” exclaimed Perez. “What the hell for?”
“Look, just do me a favor. Do you have that phone book handy?”
“Oh, Christ, man. You went down there for that?”
“I just want to try a couple of names on you. You got a Pfaltzstein? With a P?”
“What?”
He spelled it.
Logan heard the pages rustling. “No way. You know something, I oughta have you locked up.”
“How about Forcheim? With an F.”
He sighed. “Hey, yeah—I got one.”
“Where?”
“Up in my neighborhood, Washington Heights. 802 W. 190th St.”
Logan wrote it down. “Good. Thanks.”
“You gonna keep looking?”
“I think so. I’ll give you a call when I get home.”
But it was already past four o’clock. In less than half an hour, Logan headed from the building and hailed a cab. He couldn’t chance missing her again.
He had the driver let him off at the Foggy Bottom Metro station on Twenty-third Street and moved around a nearby corner. The spot allowed him an unimpeded view of pedestrians approaching the station from the direction of Amy’s building on M.
He waited about ten minutes, and there she suddenly was; moving briskly but, as he had hoped, alone. He began walking slowly toward her.
“Amy?” he said, feigning delight at a chance encounter.
Startled, she reflexively smiled. “Hi.” Then, she recognized him; and to his surprise, the smile turned genuine. “I had a feeling you were coming.”
Taking his elbow, she led him briskly back around the corner.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m trying to figure out where we can talk.”
“I got the idea you didn’t want to.”
“You caught me at a bad time—at home.” She glanced over her shoulder.
“What, you think you’re being followed?”
“I don’t know. Probably we should just keep walking.” She laughed uneasily. “You can tell I’m not very good at this.”
“Amy, what happened to John?”
She said nothing, merely increased her pace, making a left onto L, then another onto Twenty-second; then turning quickly to look behind her again. “What’d Atlas say to you?”
“That they found him in his office. That he’d done it with pills.”
“That’s what they told me too.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I guess I do.” She looked deeply pained. “Dan, you knew John, did he ever seem the suicidal type to you?”
“No. That’s what struck me.” Hell, he’d rarely known anyone so astonishingly unburdened by self-doubt or moral unease—even when he should have been.
“I don’t know, I don’t know what to believe.” She said nothing for half a block. “They were after him for information. About Compound J. They were pushing him really hard.”
Logan’s blood went cold. “Stillman?”
She nodded. “They wanted to know how the stuff worked, things he just couldn’t tell them. Because—let’s face it—he hadn’t been that involved.”
“Right.” Logan could almost see it: the cocky, insecure Reston—that jerk—eager to give them what they wanted, desperate to play the big man, but powerless to do so. He tried to make the question sound innocuous. “Why did they want to know?”
She shrugged. “But obviously, they thought more of Compound J than they pretended. And you know John, that’s how he got back at them.”
“What do you mean?”
“He challenged them about it, taunted them.” She smiled mirthlessly. “At least that’s what he told me. He might have been exaggerating.”
Having walked five blocks, turning corners apparently at random, they suddenly found themselves on busy Connecticut Avenue.
Now that she’d let it all out, Amy was visibly more relaxed. Even her apprehension about being trailed seemed gone. She indicated a nearby bar-restaurant. “I think I need a drink.”
But the conversation had had the opposite effect on Logan. Though years of medical training had taught him to maintain a calm front, his mouth was dry and he felt weightless on his feet. “Not me, I’ll take a rain check.”
She started to turn away. “Don’t be too hard on him, Dan. He was a bastard, but he never hurt anyone intentionally.”
What the hell did that mean? “See you, Amy. Watch yourself.”
“Funny, I was going to say the same thing to you.”
As soon as she’d disappeared into the bar, he jerked around, scanning the busy street. Nothing—but how would he know otherwise?
It was early evening now. This was a hip area, lots of nice shops and good restaurants. Couples fresh from work were everywhere; the men with loosened ties, many of the women having exchanged their work shoes for comfortable running shoes. Without thinking about it, he darted into a bookstore.
At least he’d be safe here. But abruptly he thought of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident murdered by the KGB in London. He’d read a good deal on the case: how they’d stuck him at a bus stop with the point of an umbrella, using a plant lectin called ricin, almost undetectable by traditional forensic techniques. What, he wondered, had they used on Reston?
What had Atlas fed him?
It could have been anything. Toxins distilled from near-extinct Amazonian plants, retrieved by botanists contracted by the ACF to scavenge for new anticancer drugs. Materials so rare and poisonous that millionths of a microgram could kill, and yet leave no apparent trace. He knew full well higher-ups at the ACF had readier access to such compounds than any intelligence branch of any government on earth.
Logan walked quickly from the shop. His car was still in the underground garage by the National Archives. When the cabbie dropped him at the entrance, he ran to it without looking back.
Seated behind the wheel, he tried to collect himself. This was crazy, he wasn’t doing himself any good.
Maybe it was simply his state of mind, but suddenly he knew what he had to do.
It took him no more than twenty minutes to reach Seth Shein’s home in Arlington. Pulling up before the large Tudor, he saw Shein’s red Range Rover at the head of the driveway. The car, seemingly so out of character, was a source of immense pride to the senior man.
Heading up the walk, Logan knew he still wasn’t thinking clearly. What did he expect to come of this? An honest explanation? Reassurance of some kind?
He was still considering when Alice Shein opened the door. He saw her shocked dismay. “Seth,” she shouted. “Seth, come here!”
“What the hell is it?” Logan heard him shout back. “I’m busy.”
A moment later he appeared at the door in baggy trousers and a work shirt, hammer in hand. Seeing Logan, he recoiled—but recovered immediately. “Logan, you look like shit.”
Just for an instant, the younger man was overwhelmed by doubt. “I need to know what’s going on,” he said, fighting for control.
“With you?” Shein replied. “Not much, from the looks of it.” He looked his visitor over contemptuously. “Don’t think I’m gonna ask you in. No one invited you here.”
Defiantly, Logan elbowed past him into the house, then wheeled on him. “What happened to Reston?”
“You’re trespassing, Logan,” Shein said mildly. “And you still look like shit.”
“What happened to Reston? What’d they give to him?”
“Reston finally figured out what a nothing he was and did something about it. End of story.” He snorted. “We’re all better off without him, including him.”
“Why’re they killing my lab animals?”
“Killing your lab animals?” Shein laughed out loud. “You got it wrong, Logan—you killed those animals. What the hell’s happening to your mind, you’re embarrassing yourself!”
Logan’s response was spontaneous, almost primal. “You motherfucker!” he shouted. “You say you’re interested in helping people! You don’t give a fuck about anyone but yourself!”
“So what? Look at you—obviously, you don’t even give a fuck about that.”
The sight of Shein standing there with that smug smile was too much; abruptly, Logan snapped. Knocking the hammer from his hand, he slammed Shein against the open front door. “You bastard,” said Logan, breathing hard. “You wreck people’s lives and don’t give it a second thought!”
Pinned tight against the door, Shein was still smiling. “Untrue. I only wreck ’em if it’s the most attractive alternative.” He looked into his eyes. “What are you gonna do, Logan, beat me up? That’s your whole problem, you’re outta control. You’re worse than just a loser, you’re a crybaby.”
Logan’s fingers dug into Shein’s arms as he tightened his grip. Shein winced—but his voice didn’t waver. “Accept it, Logan, you just weren’t good enough.”
“You fucker. You know damn well that Compound J works!”
“My God,” taunted Shein, “I never thought my judgment could be so off—you’re pathetic.”
“Why else are you still interested? Why else was Stillman after Reston about it?”
“You’re outta your head, Logan, you’re a fuckin’ maniac.”
Logan shook him violently. “Tell me, goddamn you!”
“Let go of me,” he shouted.
Logan did so.
“Good,” said Shein, rubbing his upper arm. “Now get the hell outta here and crawl back in your hole. I got a kitchen cabinet to fix.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me the truth!”
“Alice,” he suddenly called out.
Looking up, Logan saw Mrs. Shein standing at the top of the staircase, terrified.
“Call the cops,” instructed Shein. “No, make it the federal marshals … tell ‘em we got a psycho here threatening a guy with security clearance.”
Quickly, Alice darted into another room.
“I swear,” said Logan softly, “you’re not going to get away with this.”
“Of course I will. Some of us are just winners.”
Suddenly, Logan lashed out with his fist, hitting him square in the face. Shein crumpled to the floor, a thin stream of blood trickling from his nose.
“Nice,” said Shein, wiping his nose deliberately with his sleeve, “a sucker punch. You’re as honest in a fight as you are in the lab.” He called again to his wife. “Tell ’em to hurry. Also that he’s driving a beat-up white Ford—a real piece of crap.”
Turning, totally spent, Logan walked quickly out the door.
Shein remained on the floor, watching Logan drive off.
But now, staggering to his feet, he headed for his office. Did he have the home number of the ACF pharmacist in his address book?
Yes, there it was! Seizing the phone, Shein punched it in.