"This is chemistry, oaf! If I'd wanted help from a chemist, I'd have asked for it!"

"Are you implying that I know nothing of chemistry, you imbecile? I'll have you know that during my undergraduate years, I minored in the subject and was recruited by all and sundry to pursue that topic instead of physics!"

"If you were all that smart, Fleinhardt, you would realize that the sulfur is bonding with the oxygen, not nitrogen!"

"Neither, Gatsbacher! It's a carbon structure! It's organic!"

Professor Charles Eppes turned his eyes to the heavens, mutely pleading for intercession or perhaps merely a set of expensive earplugs to muffle the din. "Honk if you passed P-chem," he murmured to himself.

The forensics scientist and the physicist were nose to nose, glaring at each other over a rack of bubbling test tubes. The substance, Charlie knew, had been painstakingly scraped up from the floor of the East Burbank National Bank, and portions of the scrapings were currently being subjected to various means of testing. One such was racing its way through the mass spectrometer, and all three of them anticipated that the substance would prove to be chemically identical to the soot found at the earlier bank job as well as the other cases that Don had pointed out to him.

More portions were demonstrating how they reacted to various solvents, before and after the application of energy in the form of heat. This was science that Charlie had had little exposure to; he had dutifully gone through the requisite chemistry courses during his undergraduate years and enjoyed the didactic portion of persuading the chemical equations to equalize, but the lab work with its smells and its tedious and mind-numbing cleaning of glassware had quickly reminded him that his place in the Greater Scheme of Things was first and foremost math.

There was a rack of four test tubes on Gatsbacher's lab bench, all containing the black soot and all appearing to have morphed into a dark sludge that would at any moment emerge and declare its intent to conquer the world through fear and loathing and whatever else dark sludge was wont to do. The bubbles that rose through each tube of sludge were thick, and made small and ominous popping noises, and Charlie sincerely hoped that the tops to each tube were securely fastened. It seemed to be the best way to keep the Powers of Evil in check.

The mass spec beeped at them, and Gatsbacher pounced onto the readout. "Aha! Identical! Look! There's the lithium trace!" As if Professor Fleinhardt's opinion had been that the soot from the previous bank job was a different concoction. "That proves the connection!" Aimed at Charlie himself, and that was another statement that Charlie couldn't fathom. Charlie hadn't objected to that line of reasoning at all; he simply wanted it supported by the evidence.

If the substances were identical—and there was no reason to think that the mass spectrometer was playing a massive and unfunny joke—then the link was growing stronger. However, the pattern was missing, and on that Charlie stood firm and he said so. The crimes had very little linkage, only this bomb scenario, and because of that Charlie would not yet be able to help his brother and his team through statistical analysis. There was no way to predict where the criminals using this scenario would strike next, because the teams of criminals differed. Gatsbacher would have to produce something else in order to enlist Charlie's not inconsiderable talents.

"Hah!" Gatsbacher snarled again. "I suppose this means that I'll have to solve this thing myself, without your help, Eppes."

Charlie had been glared at by far more intimidating persons than Gatsbacher, although even he had to admit that few emitted the same quality of body odor. He had also picked up a few hints from his brother on how to handle the Fiend from Forensics.

"Sounds good to me," he said easily, picking up his case loaded with the unused laptop. "I've got an article waiting for me in my office. It's due in to the editor by the end of this week. I'll get to it. Let me know if you need me." He turned to go—and then it hit him. "You've got lithium."

"Well, duh! What do you think those blinking lights are telling us?"

"That sounds as if you are onto something, Charles." Larry picked up on it. "What does lithium have to do with the problem at hand?"

"Lithium, several years ago, was well-known as a medicine for psychiatric illnesses," Charlie mused.

"Still is, Eppes. It's cheap and effective. If you're going to come up with something, get it right."

Charlie accepted the correction. "The point is, it affects the mind. We've been puzzling over some of the odder aspects of this series of crimes, that there is the two stage bomb that is followed by a period of confusion on the part of the bystanders. Nothing else seems to connect except for those items."

"And a murder victim. And we almost had another one, Eppes: your brother. Remember him?"

"Yes. Well…" Charlie swallowed hard. It had been a close one for Don. The sight of his brother, pale and limp on the emergency room stretcher, a tube thicker than a cigar shoved into his throat with scrub-coated personnel all shouting at each other, trying to get in to work on the slack body…Charlie shoved the memory away and gratefully plunged back into his numbers. "Lithium isn't a common element in explosives. The fact that we're finding it here seems significant."

"Not exactly, Charles," Larry jumped in. "Lithium, in fact, is highly flammable, and was used in the making of nuclear weapons. It's currently useful in the production of rocket fuels, although challenging to work with. If exposed to oxygen, it can react quite strongly and the resulting combustion can be difficult to subdue."

"He's got a point, Fleinhardt," Gatsbacher said thoughtfully, the obligatory cursing remarkably absent. Charlie chose to take that as a sign that Charlie had indeed hit upon something significant. "Nobody uses lithium as a bomb, these days. There's better stuff. So why is the mass spec telling us that lithium is in there?" Delivered in a growl, aimed at the suspect piece of machinery.

Larry too was lost in thought. "If the lithium is not part of the detonation device, then it follows that it must be contributing to the substance that the bomb was designed to distribute via air currents. And since we have observed a heretofore unexplainable mass confusion on the part of the bystanders to the aforementioned explosive device, I believe we can assume that the lithium is part of the substance that was intended for bystander consumption."

Gatsbacher spewed forth a string of words in something that sounded vaguely like French straight from the sewers, and Charlie took it to mean that Gatsbacher agreed with Larry.

Larry moved on. "Let us assume, for the moment, that the lithium is indeed essential to the process. We have determined that most if not all bystanders have been affected by this concoction, and have demonstrated erratic thought processes following inhalation. Let us enumerate the properties: one, it is stable at room temperature." He continued to tick off the points on his fingers. "Two, as a powder it is light enough to traverse the air so as to reach the designated population through the miracle of Brownian motion."

"Try using plain English, Fleinhardt. It turned their brains into mush and it floats."

Larry ignored the interruption. "Three: the powder is likewise stable enough to withstand the secondary explosion which sent it into the air. These properties alone should serve to reduce the number of possibilities."

"And it's organic, Fleinhardt. Don't forget that. That alone makes it almost impossible to figure out."

"Nonsense," Larry scoffed. "All we have to do is get a competent chemist in here—"

Gatsbacher erupted in a torrent of verbal abuse that Charlie decided was either Russian or Ukrainian, and further decided that the difference wasn't worth commenting on.

Larry, having achieved the upper hand, moved on. "In the meantime, let us continue to explore the properties of this substance. We've measured many of its properties, its refractive index, its molecular weight, but we've neglected one of our most important senses: the olfactory organ."

"Larry?" Charlie thought he knew what was about to happen. He stood up in alarm.

Too late. Before either Charlie or Gatsbacher could stop him, Larry uncorked one of the test tubes and sniffed.

A peculiar look came over the physicist. "I know this scent…"

His voice trailed off, and Dr. Fleinhardt went still.

Nervously, Charlie tried to remain clinically detached. Breathing: normal, even a little slower than the peripatetic scientist's usual. Color, unchanged. Did Larry's pupils seem a bit dilated? Charlie wished that he had looked into more eyes, that he might be able to tell whether Larry's were normal or not. The muscles in his friend's arms were relaxed, and his legs were still supporting him. It was if Larry's soul had gone on vacation from his body.

"What an ass," was Gatsbacher's observation.

"…it seems familiar…" Larry was back.

"Larry?" Charlie took his mentor by the arm. "Are you all right?"

Larry blinked owlishly at him. "Of course, Charles. I am quite fine." He blinked again. "Why? Did something happen?"

"You were out like a 40-watt light bulb with the switch turned off, dimwit," Gatsbacher growled.

"I was not," Larry denied. "I was perfectly aware of my surroundings throughout the entire process."

"You'd better sit down, Larry," Charlie urged. "Gatsbacher is right; you went unresponsive for almost sixty seconds."

"From that small whiff? Ridiculous—"

"Yeah, you're ridiculous," Gatsbacher agreed. "What'd'ya find out? What'd it smell like?"

"Like…" Once again Larry trailed off, only this time it was for the purpose of thinking. "I know that scent. I have smelled something like it before."

"So, what was it, Fleinhardt?"

Larry frowned. "It will come to me."

"It better, after such a flat-assed stupid stunt—"

"We now have a two-pronged problem to work on," Larry mused, ignoring Gatsbacher's expostulations, much to the Fiend from Forensics's consternation. "We should devote some small amount time to discerning the origination of the detonation vehicle—and by 'we' I mean our friends upstairs—and then the majority of our efforts can be focused onto deciphering not only the effects but the exact chemical make-up of this substance. I will attempt to recall the circumstances under which I have previously smelled this substance, but the precise chemical make-up has yet to be determined. Think you can handle a simple chemical distillation, Gatsbacher?" he sniped, unable to resist a parting jab.

"Hah! Fleinhardt, you wouldn't know a distillation if it reared up and bit you on the—"

Charlie quietly slipped out of the lab before the next generation of nuclear weapons was born.


Don relaxed on the sofa in his father's house—nope. It was Charlie's house now, not that Don was ever going to be able to remember that—and decided to simply be grateful that no one expected him to offer to get up and serve coffee. It was amazing how such a short period of not breathing could end up with such lethargy. It had been a close thing, Charlie had told him. His father still couldn't bear to say the words but every scared sideways glance that Alan Eppes threw toward his oldest son said more than any phrase.

No, the greatest effort that Don Eppes expected to put out today was to just be able to get up and go to the john, and even that was going to be limited to only when he really needed to go. Allowing his dad to wait on him hand and foot was okay—sort of. Don was a man of action, and after nearly twenty years of living on his own, allowing his father to take care of him just didn't feel right. Don had already decided that tomorrow he would be ready to head back to the office, no matter what the department doc said.

That didn't mean that he wasn't keeping up with the case. No, this one had just become personal for Don Eppes, and for the rest of his team and for a substantial portion of the Los Angeles department. One of their own had nearly died, and the desire for payback in the form of a richly deserved prison sentence had just taken a sharp upturn. The word had gone out: the Feds were on the move, and anyone who didn't want to get trampled had better come up with some pretty good reasons as to why they weren't involved.

"We're not getting much out of forensics, Don," David told him. The team had made a late afternoon visit to check on their boss. David had seated himself in the arm chair facing Don, and Megan and Colby had pulled over chairs from the dining room. "Not yet. Not that Gatsbacher hasn't been cracking the whip over Charlie and Larry. All Gatsbacher keeps saying is that there's lithium in the compound, and a bunch of organic whatever. They're trying to figure out where the bomb components came from, but so far things look pretty mundane. Any backyard kid with access to the Internet could figure out how to put these together."

"Yeah, but this is a two-part detonation," Don argued. "That means that someone has to be thinking about it, what it means and how to get it to work. This has to be someone with a little bit of knowledge."

"All right, so that cuts out half the backyard kids," Colby allowed. "It still doesn't point us in any particular direction, Don."

"What about Charlie? Hasn't he come up with anything yet?"

Megan stepped up. "Charlie keeps saying that there isn't any pattern that he can work out. We have the common link of the two stage detonation, but both the locations of the crimes as well as the groups involved appear completely random."

Don sighed, and imagined that he could feel each individual molecule of oxygen seeping into his bloodstream. "What's the word on the street?"

"Complete and utter confusion," David told him. "Nobody knows where this is coming from. Nobody's getting recruited, none of the criminal ordinance people are being consulted." He grinned, and it wasn't a happy grin. "Even the locals are getting cranky. We're hassling them, and they aren't involved. They're not making a dime off of this. They want this thing stopped as much as we do."

"Good," Don grunted, and set off a spate of coughing. "Thanks," he gasped, sipping at the glass of water that Megan pushed at him. "Damn stuff. There ought to be a clue in it somewhere. What's taking Gatsbacher so long? Two genius-level experts aren't enough help?"

"Yes, David." No question about it; there was almost a hiss of anger in Megan's voice. "Two genius-level experts aren't getting the job done? Why did we request that Charlie and Larry help Gatsbacher? It doesn't seem to be working."

Okay, can't let things get out of hand. Don coughed again, and let the reflex break up the impending fight within his team. Cool water dribbled down his throat, soothing the hot fire.

It hit him. Patterns; that was what Charlie was always talking about. That was what math described. It wasn't that there weren't any patterns in the crimes. It was that they hadn't figured out what would be enough of a pattern to make the math worthwhile.

Don had just figured out a pattern that they hadn't yet looked at. He grinned at his team. "Somebody get Charlie."

"Don?" Colby perked his ears up, as did the rest.

"We've been trying to figure out a pattern of how they do this," Don told them, "and we've been thrown off by the different numbers of suspects in each crime. But what if it's the same people, over and over, but not everyone participates each time? Have we checked out the people involved?"

"They always wear masks…" Colby's voice trailed off.

"Right." David picked up on it. "They wear masks, but they can't quite disguise their body size and shape."

"Camera shots." Megan leaped on the thought. "We don't have much footage from each crime, but we do have a couple of frames before the suspects shoot out the cameras."

"Exactly," Don nodded. "We can compare the frames that we have in each scenario to each other. We can see if we're dealing with one group, or many." He eased himself back against the sofa, satisfied with his efforts. "Let's see if we can give Charlie his pattern."


Charlie grinned. "I can do this." He tapped several keys on his laptop, bringing up the first frame of the East Burbank Community Bank robbery. It showed two men in black masks entering through the main entrance, glass doors swinging, with a third man barely visible behind them. Charlie placed target dots at the top of each head, at the shoulders, around the waist and finished up by placing two more dots at each foot. "I'll take composite readings from each frame," he informed Don, "and come up with a reasonable approximation of each one." He glanced at the tiny time indicator at the bottom of the computer screen with a grimace. "It'll take a while," he sighed. "I've got exams to grade, and they're due back to the students at 10 a.m. tomorrow. This is exacting work," he explained before Don could jump in with any kind of reason why Charlie should pull yet another all-nighter on the FBI chore. "A big piece of this is done by hand, placing the target points on the different spots. Any error gets magnified, which is why it need to be done with a clear head, not one hyped up on caffeine in the middle of the night."

Don slumped back in the chair in Charlie's office, the one that just moments before had held a stack of un-graded papers. That stack looked big, he recalled, refusing to look at it again where it towered on the floor. The top was nearly up to the seat level. "Can't any of your grad students help out? Extra credit, or something?"

"Bailed." Charlie spoke around a pencil in his mouth, peering at the screen. "Something about a sick father back home. Not about to take 'no' for an answer, so it's for real, not that I'd think otherwise. He'd rather do math than go home." He grunted. "This figure, here—no, this one—looks pretty small. A woman?"

Don got up from his chair to look over his brother's shoulder, refusing to acknowledge the initial dizziness that accompanied the move and the wheeze that followed. "Maybe. Or a man who's pretty small. Five foot six, maybe? Can you zoom in, see if there's an Adam's apple on his throat?"

Charlie sniffed. "Not on this set up. This is my laptop, Don, not your fancy digitals at the office. You want to move this project over to them?" he offered innocently. "I'll show 'em what I need, let them stay up all night—"

"That's okay," Don said hastily, knowing that if he tried to get the FBI tech wizards to help that he'd be waiting for another two weeks for an answer. As much as he despised working with Gatsbacher, at least the forensics geek was fast. "Tomorrow will be just fine."

Charlie craned his head around to look at his big brother. "And sit down, Don! You still look like crap. Are you supposed to be working? I thought the docs gave you desk duty."

"This is desk duty," Don pointed out, trying to be reasonable. It helped that the cough that was lingering in his throat was able to be successfully stifled. "I'm sitting in front of your desk. And I'm fine."

Charlie sniffed again, making it clear what he thought of Don's logic, and moved on. "Gatsbacher come up with anything yet? The chemical analysis?"

"Nope." Don shook his head. "It's complex, is the only thing that's coming out. Organic, or something. Whatever that means. Said it may be some sort of plant compound, something created by boiling a bunch of leaves together, which makes it a bitch to decipher. Gatsbacher started cursing at that point, so I left. How about Larry?"

"Good question. Haven't seen him all morning." Charlie placed another target dot onto the frame and hit the enter key. "How many frames do you have? About fifteen per robbery, of which there are now four, making it some sixty frames with a minimum of three suspects to enter the data points onto—"

"Larry?" Don interrupted the complaint.

"Larry thinks he remembers the smell." Charlie's attention was still caught by the computer data. It was clearly more interesting to him than discussing the case with his brother. "He's trying to figure out where he remembers it from."

"Yeah? How's he doing that?"

"Good question. He was muttering something about hypnosis, then regression analysis—"

"That's memory regression, Charles," a new voice butted in. The body followed, carefully closing the office door behind him. "Good afternoon, Don. You look far better than when I last saw you. I trust your health is much improved?"

"Hey, Larry." Don waved at the physicist. "Just talking about you. Remember anything about the smell?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Larry, knowledgeable in the ways of mathematical geniuses, carefully placed another stack of papers, journals this time, onto the forgiving floor in order to free up another seat. Charlie didn't offer any objections, and didn't even notice as he maneuvered the computer mouse over the appropriate juncture on the screen. Larry settled himself onto the chair, a hand going automatically to his chin. "You may or may not be aware, Don, that the monks that I spent time with are experts when it comes to matters of the mind in harmony with the body. All things are inter-related, all memories—"

"Yes, yes," Don interrupted. Larry too could go on forever, and Don didn't have the time or the energy to put up with it. "What did you remember?"

Larry wasn't about to be rushed. "I initially sought them out, hoping that they could use some of their regression techniques—hence, the reference to regression analysis, which, statistically speaking, has nothing to do with the memory regression techniques used by the monks—"

"Larry!"

"—when it hit me." Larry beamed at them.

"What hit you?" It was going to be Don hitting Larry, if the man didn't come up with his answer.

"I have recalled the scent of the unknown substance, Don."

"What is it?" The answer had better come out in under fifteen seconds, or Don would be charging Larry with obstruction of justice. He gritted his teeth.

"The monastery."

"They got it at the monastery? The monks are committing the crime?" This was getting wilder and wilder. "They're giving or selling that damn dust to the criminals? Tell me they didn't realize what they were doing!"

"No; heavens, no, Don!" Larry was amused by the FBI team leader's lack of comprehension. "No, the substance in question recalled to mind similar concoctions that the monks have used as an aid to memory. I started out intending to visit them, to perform a memory regression. As you can tell, I was successful in my quest."

"The monks make it." Don was trying hard to follow Larry's line of reasoning.

"Actually, no, they don't," Larry contradicted. "I pursued that thought, and the monks were kind enough to assist me in my query. We explored some several hundred of their elixirs, without success. The odor that is associated with the detonation device, Don, is not one that is familiar to the monks."

"But you said that you identified it," Charlie pushed.

"I did," Larry confirmed. "The monks do not distill the substance, but they are familiar with it. Once I described the effects of the odor on the brain, that the person exposed to the scent essentially stops, they were able to assist me in the identification."

"Well?" Don demanded, handing the straight line off to Larry.

Larry beamed. "Don, you are an expert in criminalistics. Have you ever heard of the Thuggee cult, of India?"

"Of course." It was standard course work at Quantico. "It's where the word 'thug' comes from. They were supposed to worship Kali, were famous for hijacking caravans across India. Liked to garrote people, if I recall. They were pretty much wiped out during the British occupation." Don cocked his head. "Are you telling me that we have a cult of Thuggee here in Los Angeles?"

Larry shook his head. "No, not in the slightest. In fact, there is no hard evidence that the cult survived the British efforts, the Indiana Jones movie not withstanding."

"Good." Dealing with a long gone murderous cult wasn't something that Don looked forward to.

"There was, however, a small off-shoot of the cult known as the Deshwanee."

"Huh?"

Larry remained oblivious to Don's obvious dismay. "The monks know little about this cult, save that, like the Thuggee, its followers worship Kali—and that they have a strong tradition of using various herbs compounded into powders and potions. One legend has it that the cult diverged in order to study the healing arts, yet another insists that its members use supernatural skills in order to obtain whatever item they desire. I believe the monks mentioned a rather large ruby that belonged to a long dead ruler. It hasn't been seen since the early nineteenth century, and is believed to be still with the Deshwanee." He leaned back in his chair. "The potion, and it is indeed described as a powder, that produces the effect that we have seen is associated with the Deshwanee cult traditions."

"And this is the bunch that is knocking over banks and jewelry stores in Los Angeles? This, this Deshwanee thing?"

Larry waggled his finger. "That, Special Agent Eppes, is for you to discover. My part is complete; I have identified the substance used in the secondary detonation device. And I accomplished it before that twit Gatsbacher, I might add," he sniffed, unable to subdue the smirk that played around his lips. "You might let that get around. Subtly, of course," he added.

"Of course." Don was already lost in thought.

There were gangs, organized crime mobs, and terrorists, all walking the streets of L.A. in freedom with the FBI just waiting for the mistake to be made that would allow the feds to take them down, but this? Who would ever believe that a long-dead cult of Kali-worshippers had emerged in the City of Angels?


David began to tick off the possibilities on his fingers. "We know that someone, somewhere, is making this two stage bomb. That's a given."

"Which means that they're getting the stuff to make them from somewhere," Colby chimed in, joining the impromptu updating of the case. "Not heisting it from the military, that's for sure. There'd be trace additives that we've looked for and haven't found. Not the military," he repeated, leaning back so far in his chair that it looked to be in serious jeopardy of turning over.

Megan agreed. She perched on the edge of Colby's desk. "Even the companies that use gunpowder, ammunition makers and firecrackers; none anywhere in the area have reported any losses. So where does that leave us?"

David had the answer. "With someone who knows how to make it themselves, which then suggests someone with a chemistry or physics background."

"Basically, someone who knows enough not to blow themselves up," Colby added grimly. "That means two categories: scientists, and ex-military ordinance types."

"Sure, but how many of those are likely to be members of this cult that Larry came up with?" David wanted to know. "What was it called again? Deshwanee? Anybody know anything about it?"

Megan shrugged. "Not me, and that's after I had a long talk with Larry. Apparently nobody knows much about them." She gave a bright false smile. "Look at that. We'll be able to say that we're the first in FBI history to arrest members of this cult."

"I could do without the honor," was David's take on it, "and that's assuming that they really do exist, not to mention a little thing called proof of guilt. Let's head back toward the explosive stuff. I don't care how mysterious this cult is, they have to be creating the bombs from something other than sunflower seeds, which means that they're getting the ingredients from somewhere."

Now they were moving into Colby's area. "Simple incendiary, with a fuse. I could make a better bomb from stuff in my kitchen. What makes it interesting is the double explosion approach. That says that we've got a semi-protected shell inside the first. Neither bomb is designed to maim and kill; nobody's yet been seriously injured from the explosions. A few cuts and bruises, but these guys aren't going out of their way to harm anyone."

"Great. A mysterious cult of Kali-worshippers with a conscience."

Colby ignored her. "So we look for sources of the ingredients for the combustibles, like I said. Somebody who knows how to make it. They make the incendiary, they use something for a fuse—even a piece of string will do, soaked in gasoline—and then they make some sort of container for it. Two containers, actually. One inside the other." He snapped his fingers. "Teachers."

"Teachers?"

"Chemistry and physics teachers," Colby explained. "Think about it. You want to draw your students in, so you come up with some experiments that go 'boom'. Charlie does it all the time. Titanium tetrachloride is one of the easiest things to work with; pretty good with smoke bombs, which is what these essentially are. You stick your unknown substance that Larry was talking about inside the inner one. Two poofs later, you got a bunch of people inhaling your substance-laced smoke and taking a nap." He waved his hand at the dark computer screen. "All we got to do is figure out how many people in this area order titanium tetrachloride."

Megan looked doubtful. "It can't be all that many people. I hope," she added darkly. She sniffed. "I'll bet that even Charlie orders that—what did you call it?—titanium whatever. He likes to make things explode."

Colby grinned. "There's our answer. Our consultant, mild-mannered Professor Charles Eppes by day and by night is secretly a member of a mysterious Middle Eastern cult devoted to the…" he trailed off. "What are they devoted to?"

"Making money the illegal way," David informed him dryly. He jerked his thumb in the vague direction of the exit. "Get to work. We've got some titanium tetrachloride to track down."