When she did not answer, he decided to take a concrete step forward. He took out the damaged passport and his phone. Dourado might be able to backtrack the document’s owner and figure out if Van Der Hausen was involved, and who, if anyone, he was working with.
Before he could snap a photo of the passport page however, he saw that he had missed a call from Gallo. He debated calling her back but decided it could probably wait. Only one call and no voicemail message. How serious could it be?
He took the photo. The built-in flash briefly illuminated the woods, showing the creeping advance of the vines only twenty yards away. Instead of radiating outward uniformly in all directions, there was a pronounced bulge directly in front of Pierce, as if the plants were intentionally trying to reach him and Carter.
A moment later, he had Dourado on the line. After briefly explaining the situation, he sent her the picture of Van Der Hausen and instructed her to make it a top priority.
“Already on it,” she told him. He could hear her tapping on her keyboard in the background. “Is there anything else I can do? Should I alert the Liberian authorities?”
Pierce relayed the question to Carter, who shook her head. “Let me analyze it first. Figure out how best to kill it. The last thing we need is the army descending on this place with flamethrowers, burning the whole jungle down and inadvertently spreading it further.”
“Cintia, I’m going to put Dr. Carter on the line. Get whatever equipment she needs and have it overnighted to Monrovia.” He held out the phone to Carter. “Whatever you need,” he told her. “Sky’s the limit. You can even get an espresso machine, if you want.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m going to come work for you.”
“No strings attached. Except, of course, that I do expect you to save the world from that.” He pointed to the infested zone.
Carter regarded him with a mixture of admiration and wariness, but she took the phone and rattled off the names of a few pieces of equipment. Pierce got the impression that she was holding back, asking only for a bare minimum, perhaps still harboring some distrust about the gift. When she was done, she handed the phone back to him. “Thank you.”
He nodded and spoke to Dourado again. “I’ll be wrapping things up here as soon as I can. Do me a favor and let Augustina know. Tell her I’ll call as soon as I can.”
“Will do. And I will call back as soon as I have more information about Van Der Hausen.”
He hung up and activated the phone’s built-in flashlight. He aimed the light at the forest, a beacon to guide Bishop and any other survivors to safety. In the ambient glow, he could see red splotches on his hands. Chemical burns, though nowhere near as bad as the level of pain led him to expect. The enzyme was a slow-acting acid. The vines were the real threat, since they immobilized victims, allowing the plants to digest them over the course of hours, perhaps days.
A few minutes later, he heard shouts from the forest and saw a group of people running toward them, with the gigantic form of Bishop in the lead, literally plowing a path to safety with the blade of a shovel. A partially vine-wrapped figure was slung over one shoulder. Cooper.
Pierce allowed himself a relieved sigh. He didn’t know if his guide was still alive, but he was glad that the man had not been left behind to be devoured by the jungle.
“They all made it,” Carter whispered. “Thank God.”
“Thank Bishop,” Pierce murmured.
“Don’t call him that,” she warned. “He goes by Lazarus now. Or just Erik.”
“Lazarus.” Pierce nodded. The resurrected man. Of course. As if to keep him from commenting on this, Dourado chose that moment to keep her promise.
“Prompt as always,” he said into the phone. “What have you learned?”
“I have some information about Van Der Hausen.” Dourado’s tone was unusually subdued. “And there’s something else.”
“Van Der Hausen, first.”
Dourado related the salient facts about the passport and the man, a genetic engineer who had volunteered to work in Liberia during the early days of the Ebola outbreak. He had returned to Europe and started his own boutique gene-splicing company. “Some of his working capital came from Cerberus shell companies.”
“Cerberus is behind this?” Pierce said it more loudly than he had intended. His outburst did not go unnoticed by Carter. Pierce covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “I think we found our culprit. And you were right. It’s an engineered species.”
Dourado spoke again. “Until we know more about Cerberus, it’s impossible to say exactly what role they played, but yes, there does seem to be a connection.”
“Keep digging. Whether or not this has anything to do with Kenner, we need to stop Cerberus.”
“Dr. Gallo is not responding.” Dourado said. “Not by computer or telephone. They are not in the citadel. The door was last accessed more than eight hours ago.”