Binary - Michael Crichton [36]
Nordmann came over to stand by Graves and look down at the street. 'You know,' he said, 'I told the Army four years ago if they kept transporting this crap all around, it was only a matter of time before somebody -'
'You have?' Phelps said into the phone. His voice was excited. 'Where?'
Graves turned. Phelps was nodding, his head bobbing up and down like a mechanical bird.
'Yes, yes... yes... good work. We'll be there in five minutes.' He hung up and turned to Graves. '702 followed the limousine back to Wright's old apartment house. The van split off and went somewhere else, but the limo went back to Avenue B.'
'And?'
'They arrested John Wright as he stepped from his car.'
Graves nodded and tried to feel the same excitement that Phelps so clearly showed. But he still had a nagging sense of defeat, as if he had cheated at the game - or had quit too early.
'Come on,' Phelps said. 'You can introduce him to me.'
At the apartment house two men were standing up facing the wall, guarded by the men from car 702. Phelps and Graves hurried over.
One of the men was George, the chauffeur. He was muttering something under his breath. Wright was beside him, neatly dressed in his English-cut suit.
Graves said, 'You can let them turn around now.' He glanced at Phelps, who had a look of total triumph on his face.
George turned and looked at Graves uncomprehendingly. Then Wright turned, and it was Graves who stared.
'This isn't John Wright,' he said.
'What do you mean?' Phelps demanded.
'I've never seen this man before,' Graves said. 'He isn't Wright.'
'We checked the wallet,' one of the 702 men said. 'He has his identification -'
'I don't give a damn about identification,' Graves said. 'This man isn't John Wright.' The man in the English suit smirked slightly.
'Who the hell is he?' Phelps said.
'That,' Graves said, 'is the least important question we have to answer.' And he ran for his car.
HOUR 3
SAN DIEGO
2 PM PDT
'Take it easy,' Phelps said, grabbing the door handle. Graves took the turn from B onto Third very fast, tyres squealing. 'For Christ's sake.'
'You said it yourself,' Graves said. 'A million people.'
'But we have him, we know the plot, we know how it's going together -'
'We may not be able to stop it,' Graves said.
'Not stop it? What are you talking about?'
Graves raced down Third, weaving among the traffic. He ran the light at Laurel. Phelps made a gurgling noise.
'Wright has been ahead of us all along,' Graves said. 'He must have switched clothes in the airfield hangar and sent somebody else back to San Diego in the limousine. He himself went with the furniture van.'
'Well, if you know where he is now -'
'I know where he is,' Graves said. 'But it may be too late to stop him.'
'How can it be too late?' Phelps said.
Graves didn't answer. With a squeal of tyres he continued uptown, then turned down the wrong way on Alameda Street. Cars honked at him; he pulled over to the kerb on the wrong side, facing the wrong way, in front of a fire hydrant.
Phelps didn't complain. He didn't have time. Graves was already out of the car and running for the building opposite Wright's new apartment house. In front of Wright's building was the furniture van.
All the men in the room were clustered around the cameras and binoculars at the window. Graves burst in and said, 'Is Wright there?'
'I don't know,' one of the men said. 'We heard he was arrested, but somebody in there sure looks like -'
'Let me see.'
Graves bent over a pair of binoculars. It took only a moment to confirm his worst fears. Wright was there, donning another rubber wet suit. He was pulling rubber loops onto his ankles, his wrists, his waist, and his neck. Of course! Those strips - six strips - protected the seams of his suit from gas. As he watched, Wright put on a full face mask and twisted the valve on the small yellow air tank. The other men in the room cleared out.
'What's he doing?' Phelps said, watching through