PART FIVE. Threat Escalation

1

While Jamie drove, Kline sat next to her. Cavanaugh was in the back, his pistol under a newspaper on his lap, ready to shoot through the rear of Kline's seat if Kline did anything to justify it.

A hundred miles west of Washington, the Virginia countryside was lush and hilly, with fewer towns and more fields and wooded areas as they went along. Occasional farmhouses, stone fences, and ponds were visible along the tree-lined two-lane road. The prevailing impression, though, was of large estates and horses grazing.

At four in the afternoon, there was little traffic. As Jamie guided the Taurus into a hollow, up a slight rise, and into another hollow, Cavanaugh asked Kline, "How far?"

"Another five minutes."

"You're certain the two men you left here to watch for me have gone?"

"You heard me phone and tell them to leave. You made it clear: You'll shoot me if you catch even a glimpse of them. I assure you, they've gone. I gave them no warning."

Jamie drove past a sign that read bailey's ridge. "Where's the town? I don't see any buildings."

"It's not a town," Kline said.

"Then what is it?"

"A site where a Civil War battle occurred."

Past the sign, a plaque showed a map and an historical note. Jamie stopped next to it.

The map was in bas-relief, dramatizing the contour of the wooded hills in the area. Arrows indicated where Union and Confederate soldiers had fought one another in a battle that had destroyed most of a farm owned by an Irish immigrant, Samuel Bailey, killing his wife and daughter. The battle had concluded when Bailey put on a fallen Union soldier's jacket, grabbed a rifle, and led a company of Northerners across a ridge above his farm, outflanking their opponents. Bailey went on to receive a field commission as a captain and to fight in numerous other battles, eventually dying from diphtheria, never again seeing his farm and the graves of his wife and daughter.

"Well, that's enough to ruin my day," Cavanaugh said.

"Mine already was ruined," Kline said. His wrists remained tied together beneath his leather jacket. "Two hollows from here, there's a lane on the right."

Jamie drove on, went up an incline, and descended into the first hollow.

"Take this lane," Cavanaugh told Jamie.

"No, that's not the one," Kline said. "I told you two hollows."

"I know what you told me," Cavanaugh said, "but we're trying this one."

Jamie pulled off the road. Flanked by dense bushes and trees, two shadowy weed-choked ruts in the dirt were blocked by a wooden gate, the white paint of which had faded to the color of dirty chalk. What attracted Cavanaugh's attention was that the weeds in the lane looked crushed, as if a vehicle had recently gone over them.

"I don't see a lock," Jamie said. After a cautious glance around, she got out of the car and unhooked a rusted chain from the gate, swinging it open. She drove through, stopped, and took another wary glance around before she returned to the gate and shut it behind her.

"It's so flimsy," Jamie said, getting back into the car, "if we have to when we come back, we can always ram through it."

"Park where the undergrowth conceals us from the road. We'll walk," Cavanaugh said.

After warning Kline to be quiet, Cavanaugh made him lead the way up a potholed lane that twisted through trees and bushes. He had his pistol out, following Kline at a careful distance.

Overhead branches shut out the sun. Then the branches opened, and the steep rise brought them to knee-high grass in a clearing where old weather-grayed picnic benches looked down on a valley half a mile wide. The area down there was completely devoted to pasture, no shade trees anywhere, which was odd if the pasture was intended for horses, Cavanaugh thought, but not odd if the trees had been leveled to create an unobstructed line of fire and to remove places in which an intruder might be able to hide.

A wooden sign attached to a post had faded yellow letters that might once have been orange: welcome to bailey's ridge.

"Looks like one of the locals tried some kind of tourist thing several years ago," Cavanaugh said.

He glanced down at indentations in the long grass, where a vehicle had recently been parked. Then he motioned for Kline to walk along a furrow in the grass toward the picnic benches. A trampled area around one of the benches attracted his attention, as did cigarette butts, the paper of which looked fresh.

"This was where your men watched for me, right?" Cavanaugh asked. He peered down at the paved road that went through the pasture. "From here, they could see pretty much everything that happened down there. Yesterday, what made you think I'd use the next lane?"

"It's the only area where the trees have been cut back from the road. Until a month ago, a chain-link fence used to be there. The dirt was disturbed when they ripped the poles out. The sanitiz-ers tried to smooth the dirt and put in bushes, but it's obvious the landscape's been changed. Every other lane that seems to go nowhere is made of dirt and has weeds and potholes. That lane's as smooth and weed-free as can be. Beyond the trees, it becomes paved."

"How did Prescott and his controllers get permission to block off a historic site?" Cavanaugh asked.

"Prescott didn't need permission. This property's historic, but it isn't owned by the government. It's his."

"Is it safe to go down there?"

"Nobody's around. The lab was abandoned as soon as the project was terminated."

"But where's the lab?"

Kline pointed toward the valley.

"I don't see anything except a burned-out farmhouse," Cavanaugh said.

2

"The first time Bailey's farmhouse was destroyed was in 1864," Kline explained as they drove along the road through the pasture, approaching the burned structure. "After your Civil War, the new owner-an industrialist who'd made a fortune selling munitions to the government-bought most of the land around here and had a mansion built where Bailey's house had stood. The original cellar was incorporated into the design. Stones from the original house were used in the walls."

"You should have been a historian."

"My father was." Kline's voice was filled with regret.

They reached the scorched, collapsed building and got out of the Taurus.

Despite the devastation of the burned timbers and the blackened stones from the fallen walls, Cavanaugh was able to get an idea of how impressive the mansion had been in its heyday. He imagined pillars and two long porches, one above the other, people standing on them, waving, as horse-drawn carriages brought brightly dressed visitors. "It's a shame Prescott's controllers had to destroy it."

"They didn't destroy it," Kline said. "Prescott did."

Cavanaugh and Jamie looked at him.

"Prescott's controllers confined him to the mansion when they terminated his project," Kline said. "A man doesn't devote himself to researching fear unless he identifies with it. If he's paranoid, he's going to become more so when he sees signs all around him that people consider him a liability."

"Fear's his primary emotion," Cavanaugh agreed. And now, thanks to him, it's mine, he added silently.

"To protect himself, Prescott did something his controllers could never have anticipated, given how proud he was of this property," Kline said. "One night when his fear became especially intense and he was certain he was about to be killed, he burned the mansion down. Because he looked so heavy and out of shape, his controllers had misjudged him, putting a few guards on him, while the majority were devoted to keeping intruders such as myself off the property. In the confusion caused by the flames, he was able to slip away into the darkness. The fire was only half of his tactic, however. He also released the hormone as the mansion burned. Under its influence, the guards panicked and shot at what they thought were attackers coming through the flickering shadows. Several got killed by their own men-another mess that had to be cleaned up. The shots brought the guards from the perimeter. Meanwhile, Prescott stole one of their vehicles and smashed through a fence at the back of the property. He abandoned the vehicle in a nearby town, where he had a car stored in a garage that he'd rented under another name."