Resurrection Day by Glenn Meade Page A

on duty again for the Post until tomorrow. And you've still got a couple of days off work. So we've got the entire afternoon and evening together. We can take a drive, maybe have some lunch. In fact, there's somewhere special I'd like to take you — it's kind of a surprise. And then I can tell you my news.'
     
    Sunday, 11 November 8.55 a.m.
     
    In the confines of the underground laboratory in Maryland, Tom Murphy, the head of the FBI's Counter-Terrorism Division, felt like shit.
    In fact, he'd just spent one of the worst nights of his life, staying awake through the early hours, drinking coffee by the barrel-load and trying to fend off the crushing need for sleep that threatened to take him to the edge of collapse. Before the business at the Union Station that morning he'd worked a straight fourteen hours at the FBI's Washington headquarters and hadn't seen his wife in almost two days. Shit happens, he told himself, but somehow it always seemed to happen to him.
    As he stood in the glass-fronted office, sipping coffee, the door opened behind him and an FBI agent from the HMRU — Hazardous Materials Response Unit — poked his head round.
    'They're almost done, Tom.'
    'How much more time?'
    'A couple of minutes, according to Professor Fredericks. Says he'll be right with you as soon as he's got the final result. Then I guess we can all go home and get some rest.'
    'Let's hope so. Right this minute, I'd sleep in a kid's stroller.'
    The agent smiled and left, closing the door. Murphy poured another cup of coffee from the percolator beside him, spooned in two sugars, and took a long sip, hoping the caffeine would keep him awake. He had passed the pain barrier about 7 a.m. and right now it seemed he was operating on autopilot, feeling a little woozy and barely hanging in there. His eyelids drooped, and his aching body felt as if a couple of toughs had worked him over.
    The source of his sleeplessness and irritation was out there in the laboratory beyond the glass-fronted office: the package found in locker number 02-08 at Gate C, Union Station. Bright light flooded the lab area; it looked like a scene out of a sci-fi movie. Technicians walked around in white biohazard suits wearing glass-bubble helmets with airlines attached to them. The Biological and Chemical Research Laboratory in Maryland was one of the most frightening places in the world, Murphy reckoned.
    Samples of every bacteriological strain, every gas or poisonous substance known to man, were contained there in platinum-sealed containers, kept a hundred feet below ground in pressurised vaults. And it didn't end there. The entire structure was built on spring-loaded piles, to protect the building from nuclear shock. Which wasn't really surprising when you considered that there were enough deadly samples stored in the vaults to wipe America off the map.
    Murphy rubbed his eyes to stay awake. The package from the station had been X-rayed, revealing a sealed vial inside. Shaped like a laboratory test tube, four inches long, it looked as if it had nothing inside. But whatever it was, his superiors had decided that this was one for the experts. Within half an hour, a team from the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit had arrived in a special transporter and taken the package away in a sealed, cushioned container. Murphy had followed in his car with two of his senior men, and almost five hours later he was still at the laboratory, patiently awaiting the analysis results. Professor Fredericks, the lab director, had told him that on visual inspection the sealed vial was made of thick shatterproof glass and appeared to contain a minute trace of brown, viscous liquid. That was all the information Murphy had so far.
    The door opened and a small, gnome-like man with a heavily stooped back entered, wearing a white lab coat and carrying a sheaf of papers. Murphy drained his paper cup, crushed it in his palm and tossed it in the bin. 'What have you got for me,