Knightly finished prepping the coffeemaker and fired it up. “We have to compare notes on this Iraqi thing. I have to tell you that I just got fed up with these SOBs after about mid-November and told them that they had to clean up their act. Even doing that was a hassle and a half because they refused to come in and see me, or to answer my phone calls. But when I did get through to them, they were insolent, and I got really pissed. So I went to the feds to see about getting them kicked out of the country, and I got cobwebbed. And when I complained about that, I was finally told, confidentially, some shit about how there might be difficulties for our students abroad if we got tough here. And that’s about all I know of my own knowledge, though Fazoul here has filled me in on the botulin thing.”
“I’ve been following them around town,” Clyde said. “Sometimes I do it on my days off, and sometimes I do it when I’m on shift, if there’s nothing else going on. But I just keep coming up dry. None of them ever changes his movements. They get up, they go to the university or the vet-path lab, they come home at the end of the day.”
“What do they do during the day?” Knightly said.
“All of them work in buildings that have key-card entry systems,” Clyde said, “because of the animal-rights protesters. So I can’t follow them in. But I don’t imagine they’ve got their factory built inside one of the campus buildings. So I can’t figure out who’s tending the factory, wherever it may be.”
An inspiration came to Knightly. “They’re using the goddamn steam tunnels! All of those buildings are connected by steam tunnels. Those boys must know you’re tailing them. When one of them wants to go to the factory, he goes to work like it’s a normal day, then slips down into the steam tunnels and emerges half a mile away, hops on a bicycle or something, and goes wherever.”
“That sounds believable,” Clyde said. “But if that’s true—if the students we’ve been watching are the ones doing the work—then they have to shut down the operation soon. Because I just watched most of them graduate. They have to be out of the country within seventy-two hours.”
“I agree,” Knightly said. “So the question is, are they going to release the toxin here in the States, as a terrorist operation—or threaten to do so—or ship it back to Iraq somehow?”
“We think they are going to ship it,” Fazoul said. “They have been making transport arrangements within the last few days. One of those who received his Ph.D. today went directly to Ryder after the ceremony and rented a flatbed semitrailer rig. The Iraqis and their various front organizations have leased several shipping containers designed for transporting bulk fluids.”
“I’ll bet it’s a shell game,” Knightly said. “They’re all decoys. They’re not going to ship the stuff out of the States.”
Clyde found Knightly’s theory perversely encouraging, because it suggested that Desiree would be safe. “Why do you say that?”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Knightly said, pouring out mugs of coffee. “Why would they make it here and then ship it to Iraq? Why not just make it in Iraq? The technology is nothing special.”
Fazoul shook his head no. He seemed very sure of himself. “It was out of the question for them to build it in Iraq. If they did, word would get out to the Israelis, who would bomb the facility and send tons of botulin toxin into the air.”
“But it’s a tiny thing! Couldn’t they just hide it under a gas station or something?”
This seemed logical to Clyde. It had occurred to him before, in fact. Knightly wouldn’t stop pressing Fazoul until he answered: “The Iraqi ministry responsible for this research has been penetrated and compromised by a hostile organization. No matter where in Iraq they concealed the facility, word would be sure to leak out—Israeli and American military planners would soon have the precise coordinates.”
Knightly laughed. “A hostile organization. The Vakhan Turks, maybe?”
Fazoul wouldn’t say. Knightly laughed again. “Did it ever occur to Ayubanov that if he weren’t so goddamned good, he wouldn’t force people like the Iraqis to hide their bioweapons facilities among innocent bystanders out in the middle of fucking Iowa?”
Fazoul cringed at Knightly’s mention of the name Ayubanov. He did not laugh at Knightly’s good-natured but sharply pointed heckling. Finally Knightly gave up. “Shit,” he said, “Mo Ayubanov. What a guy I picked to owe favors to.”
They sat and sipped coffee and ate doughnuts for a while.
“That’s a very important piece of information—what you just told us about the ‘hostile organization,’” Knightly said. “Has Mo considered passing that along to someone in Washington?”
Fazoul blanched at this suggestion.
“Because the people in Washington are probably in the same boat that I was until you enlightened me just now,” Knightly continued. “They see no reason to believe the Iraqis would build such a thing in Iowa. If Mo made one phone call and set them straight, maybe they’d take some goddamn action!”
“I doubt it,” Clyde said. He sketched out the vague understanding of the Washington situation that he’d got from Hennessey. When Clyde mentioned the interagency task force, Knightly rolled his eyes and moaned. When he mentioned the inspector general, Knightly set his coffee down, put his face in his hands, and remained in that position until Clyde was finished.
“Jesus,” he said, “I know how those Washington people operate. We’re really fucked now.”
Chapter Fifty-One