Chapter Forty-two

THE MEN IN the white NBC suits – nuclear, biological and Chemical – worked methodically inside their translucent silver dome. Mobile generators and sophisticated filters carried away the smell of dank earth and raw quicklime, replacing it with purified air kept at an unwavering sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite their slow progress, it took the technicians and their supervisors only a few hours to decide there was no nuclear material on the mountaintop.

This discovery didn’t do much for Keating’s reputation – or his career prospects. ‘An alarmist’ was about the kindest thing anyone in the chain of command had to say, before they pretty much lost interest in the entire exhumation. The general consensus among the hazchem crew was that some drug courier had decided to bury a couple of horses – either his own or, more likely, those belonging to some rival. When it came to feuds, everyone agreed, the Afghans were in a league of their own.

But there was one detail they couldn’t sneer away, and that was the quicklime. It was what sustained Keating throughout those hard days – that and his overwhelming belief there was something badly awry, something deeply sinister in the jumble of buildings. Adding that feeling to the village’s isolation and its spectacular view, he even gave it a name: the Overlook hotel, he called it.

Then the men inside the dome found the first charred body. Or at least what was left of it. They established that it was a woman and, though they had no evidence, they were certain that deeper down they would find two more dead – one Japanese and one Dutch. What sort of kidnapper dumped the uptake into a lime-filled pit without even making a ransom demand?

Beside the body, deep in a chemical sludge, they found what was left – barely two inches square – of what looked like a saddle blanket. They didn’t know it, but on the last night of her life the woman had clutched it to her face and tried to asphyxiate herself to stop the relentless flood of pain. As a result it contained her saliva, blood, strands of tissue and a complete panel of genetic material from the blisters that had formed in her mouth and throat.

The blanket was still locked in her partly burnt hand, protecting it from the worst of the flames when the Saracen used the horses to drag her into the pit. Another hour and the quicklime would have destroyed it completely.

Worried now, and forced to acknowledge it might not be a kidnapping at all – instantly rehabilitating Keating’s reputation and career prospects – the NBC team and their supervisors greatly accelerated the workrate. Their first task was to discover exactly what they were dealing with, so they sealed the small square of blanket into an airtight bio-hazard container, secured it within another lead receptacle and sent it, first by helicopter and then on a special overnight jet, to Fort Detrick in Maryland.