50
Most people knew of
Quantico as the nation’s premier Marine training facility, but it
was also the location of the FBI training Academy—and more. The
CIA, NSA, and Secret Service all had training facilities and
intelligence gathering units at Quantico.
Thanks to John Van
Rankin, Mark and Gwen received visitor’s passes immediately,
although they had to pass through several checkpoints before
arriving at the Secret Service facility. Gwen knew her way around
since, in her capacity as epidemiologist, she’d been on the base a
few times since 9/11 to consult with intelligence officials on the
subject of bioterrorism.
As she was about to
knock on Van Rankin’s door, an explosive “Gwen!” nearly bowled her
over.
“I haven’t seen you
since your Christmas party last year,” said the
forty-eight-year-old deputy director of the Secret Service base.
“And this would be Mark Stern, I presume. Your face is on the side
of a lot of buses in this area, Mr. Stern, ever since you started
writing a column for the Post.”
Mark smiled and
shook hands with Van Rankin before the three of them sat in the
deputy director’s office.
Gwen immediately
informed Van Rankin of Jack’s condition.
“I’m terribly sorry,
Gwen. You know that a lot of people here owe their lives and
careers to Jack. The two of you have a lot of friends here and
always will. We may not be the Marines, but as you know, the Secret
Service has its own kind of Semper Fi.”
“I know, John, and
I’m very appreciative of your offer. It might be good for some of
Jack’s old friends to stop in and see him.”
Suddenly, Gwen saw
her opening and took it.
“In fact, John, I
think Jack and I might be in danger. I’d like it if you could post
a twenty-four hour detail at the hospital.”
“Of course, Gwen,
but tell me what this is all about.”
Gwen proceeded to
tell her host of how she and Jack had become suspicious of certain
adverse health patterns across the nation. “We’ve been under
surveillance for a couple of weeks now, and a good friend at the
CDC has dropped out of sight. I myself was reassigned to AE files
at Rockville.”
Mark shifted
uneasily in his chair. Gwen knew that he hadn’t expected her to be
so forthright in her explanation, but Gwen knew immediately that
she could confide in Van Rankin. Sometimes you just had to go on
instinct.
“So you suspect that
someone inside the FDA or CDC is trying to conceal something?” Van
Rankin asked.
“Or perhaps inside
the government,” interjected Mark.
Van Rankin leaned
back in his leather desk chair and smiled.
“You’re true to
form, Mr. Stern. I’ll give you that much. But I don’t have to
remind you both that there are probably many good reasons why the
government might want you to step back from a sensitive issue that
becomes more of a matter for the intelligence community than public
health.”
Gwen was already
nodding. “I know, John, but all I really want to say at this point
is that hundreds—maybe even thousands—of people are dying, and that
the Public Health Service should be more proactive. There are
patterns of seizure episodes all over the country, and for everyone
who has died, thousands of others are having seizures but
surviving.”
Van Rankin looked
troubled. What Gwen had just described was more than a sensitive
issue that intelligence might want to keep under its hat. Indeed,
if a nationwide health threat existed due to terrorist activity, he
himself might well have been notified. If it were a case of some
causative agent in food or drugs, then Gwen was right—the Public
Health Service would be actively involved, with thousands of
workers attempting to find answers.
“I have to admit
that you’ve piqued my curiosity since I can’t explain what’s going
on. I can ask around and see what’s—”
“Please don’t do
that,” Mark broke in.
“Mr. Stern, I should
warn you that—”
“He’s right, John,”
interrupted Gwen. “Think about it. If you start asking questions,
then you might be sending out signals to some very dangerous people
operating with impunity inside the government. We’d prefer to
gather further data.”
“And you think I can
be of help in gathering this data?” asked Van Rankin.
Mark took the coffee
bean from his pocket and tossed it on the Deputy Director’s desk.
“For now, we’d like your lab to analyze this.”
Van Rankin leaned
forward, elbows on his desk, as he stared at the bean with
incredulity. “That’s it? You want my technicians to analyze a
coffee bean?”
“I’m asking for a
bit more than that, John,” said Gwen. “I’m asking for your trust. I
know what it looks like from your perspective. We come in here with
almost no advance notice, spin a tale of conspiracy, and back it up
with … that.” Gwen pointed to the bean. “But please, do it for Jack
and me. There’s something going on, John, and whatever it is, there
are people doing some very unorthodox things to hide this from
public health officials. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Just do an
analysis to see if this bean is different from any other coffee
bean.”
Van Rankin looked at
Gwen, then Mark, then back at Gwen again.
“I don’t suppose
you’ll tell me where this bean came from.”
“We’d rather not,”
stated Mark. “I’ll be the first to admit that we can’t fill in all
the pieces right now.”
Van Rankin sighed
heavily. “I’ll do it for friendship’s sake, Gwen. There’s no harm
in an analysis, though I wish you’d share more of your suspicions
with me. But for now, I won’t press. With Jack in the hospital,
I’ll cut you some slack. Later, I may ask for more. And Jack will
certainly get a round-the-clock detail. It will be very low-key. No
one will know of our presence inside the hospital.”
“Thank you, John.
You don’t know how much this means to us.”
Van Rankin stood.
“How can I get in touch with you?”
“We’ll get in touch
with you,” Mark said. “I’m fairly certain that our phones aren’t
secure.”
“Very well, but
remember—I’ll only go so far with this before you’ll have to be a
little more candid.”
Mark and Gwen left
and drove back to the bed-and-breakfast. He’d just sat down in
front of his laptop when the elusive fact he’d been trying to
recall hit him.
He smiled and
reached for his cell phone. It was time to ask Charlie Nicholls up
at the Journal for another
favor.
The Fed Ex packages
from Nicholls arrived at the bed-and-breakfast the following
morning. Mark opened the slim packet and looked at the photographs
that Charlie had gotten from Anh Nguyen. They were Polaroid
snapshots of Anh’s two daughters, Tuyen and Mai. Nicholls had
apparently managed to communicate with Nguyen personally since he
had scrawled the names and ages of the daughters on the back of
each snapshot. Mark sifted through the two dozen pictures until he
found the most recent. There were four that he plucked from the
pile and arranged in a row on the edge of his worktable. Two of the
photos had the ID of “Tuyen, age 29” and “Tuyen, age 34.” The other
two read “Mai, age 30” and “Mai, age 34.”
What Mark had
remembered was Randall’s penchant for lovely Asian beauties, and
Tuyen and Mai had indeed grown into lovely young women with long
black hair, high cheekbones, and devilish, sexy smiles. They
appeared to have had cosmetic surgery since they were a bit fuller
of figure than most Asian women were.
The other package
Charlie had sent contained copies of pictures and notes, archived
at the Journal, that Mark had used when
doing his profile on Gregory Randall shortly after the CEO’s father
died. There had been an abundance of material on “Junior,” as Mark
had called him while working up the piece, and most of it amounted
to what reporters called deep background. Randall’s attraction to
Asian women had naturally not made it into the profile—it wasn’t
really germane to anything Mark had to say—but there, before him,
were the pictures he was looking for: Randall squiring women to
various galas and parties for the ultrarich—Randall on a yacht,
Randall at a Long Island home, Randall at the ballroom of a
luxurious hotel. Several showed either Tuyen or Mai on his arm
during the past three years.
It wasn’t exactly a
math problem—if A=B, and B=C, then A=C—Gregory Randall adored Asian
women, Tassin worked for Randall, and Tassin had been in the
business of procuring female sex slaves for men.
It seemed quite
feasible that at some point during his acquaintance with Randall,
Tassin had returned to New York and procured the grown daughters of
his former Vietnamese wife. Indeed, it would have been far too
coincidental for Tuyen and Mai to have gravitated to Randall on
their own. There was obviously more to the story—for example, when
exactly had Randall first met Tassin, and how had Tassin later
coerced the daughters away from Anh? Mark Stern knew what the
bottom line was: Tassin, chief roastmaster at Pequod’s, served his
master well. If this were the case, to what extent would Tassin go
to satisfy his boss in matters relating to Pequod’s
coffee?
Mark reflected for a
moment, recalling Tassin’s remark near the roasting chambers about
Hansel and Gretel. Assuming Tassin was an unusually spry man in his
late seventies or early eighties, he could have been a German
soldier in his late teens toward the end of World War II, a soldier
who may not have orchestrated the horrors of the Holocaust, but one
who would certainly have seen them firsthand, and may well indeed
have been stationed at one of the death camps. It would be all but
impossible to trace Tassin back to the war, but he would ask
Charlie Nicholls to see what he could find. Either way, Mark knew
that Tassin was a thoroughly evil man simply by what he’d seen in
Marci’s file and by the correlation of Anh’s snapshots with the
pictures in the Journal’s
archive.
And by the fiendish
look Tassin had given him in Seattle.
Mark felt certain
that Tassin’s diabolic plans were somehow being implemented across
the country, though the exact mechanism for killing people was as
yet still an unknown.
And what of
kindhearted, smiling Billy Hamlin, Mark wondered. How did he fit
into any of this?
There was still so
much to learn.