====================== Lost Almost by Lynnette Baughman ====================== Copyright (c)2002 by Lynnette Baughman Wings ePress, Inc. www.wings-press.com Fiction --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- *_Lost Almost_* I looked back to get a better look at the ambassador. Just then another car, a white subcompact, pulled into the narrow area under the restaurant's _porte cochere_, right behind the Towncar. It stopped with a screech of brakes and I saw the driver open his door and dive for the bushes in the center of the curved driveway. "Get down!" I screamed and grabbed Katy by her shoulders, forcing her face down to the seat and slamming my body on top of her. A split second later the white car exploded, and the back, side and front windows of the Volvo exploded inward, shattering the safety glass into a thousand pieces of blue glass. I heard Luis call 911, identify himself and the emergency. I lifted my head to look behind us. The white car was a flaming hulk of metal. The Towncar didn't look too bad, probably thanks to armor plating. But the ambassador, the elegant woman, the chauffeur, and one bodyguard were all on the ground, covered with blood. The woman was crawling toward the door. The other bodyguard leaned on the Towncar, his weapon drawn. Luis leaped out of his car with his gun drawn and yelled to Rick, "Get them out of here!" Before Rick could get around to the driver's side I yanked my door handle and staggered out on rubber legs. "Luis!" I screamed. "Luis! Watch out!" In a split second Luis saw where I was pointing and spun his body in that direction. "He's the driver!" I screamed louder. "He's got a gun!" -------- Wings ePress, Inc. Edited by: Dianne Hamilton Copy Edited by: Marilyn Kapp Senior Editor: Marilyn Kapp Managing Editor: Dianne Hamilton Executive Editor: Lorraine Stephens Cover Artist: Pat Casey _All rights reserved_ Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Wings ePress Books http://www.wings-press.com Copyright (C) 2002 by Lynnette Baughman ISBN 1-59088-128-1 Published In the United States Of America August 2002 _Wings ePress Inc._ P. O. Box 38 Richmond, KY 40476-0038 -------- *_Dedication_* In loving memory Doris M. Mawson Harry H. Luke Ann Pendergrass -------- *_Acknowledgments_* I'm grateful for technical advice, writing advice, and moral support, usually distinct entities, but sometimes it's hard to tell where one ends and the next kind of support begins. For advice on the scientific front, I owe my thanks to the world-class and world-famous scientists in the Bioscience Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, especially Division Director Jill Trewhella, Ph.D.; Paul J. Jackson, Ph.D.; Gerald Ansell, Ph.D.; and Sandra Zink, Ph.D. Thanks also to Karl M. Johnson, M.D., now retired in Placitas, New Mexico, after his distinguished career in studying and battling emerging diseases around the world; and to Al Zelicoff, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at Sandia National Laboratory and member of the U.S. delegation to the Biological Weapons Convention. The experts in Hazardous Materials in LANL's Environmental Safety & Health Division were indispensable and I appreciate their patience and professionalism. In particular I offer my thanks to Larry D. Vaughan. Two experts who were always willing to advise me on issues of physical security regarding weapons of mass destruction deserve my thanks. They are John E. Killeen, General Manager of Protection Technology Los Alamos, and Lowell Preston Little, OCP, CPP, Operations Security Manager, Special Security and Classification Division, Albuquerque Operations Office, National Nuclear Security Administration. Houston Terry Hawkins, Director of the Nonproliferation and International Security Division at LANL, has also been generous with his time and expertise. Thanks as well to Maj. Frank Smolinsky, Public Affairs, and SSgt. Jason B. Golden, Readiness Flight, both at Dover Air Force Base. Thanks also to Rabbi Jack Shlachter of Los Alamos Jewish Center. I appreciate the help I received from Fire Marshal Steve Coburn and EMS Chief Jerome Finn of the Los Alamos Fire Department. Any scientific or technical errors in LOST ALMOST are my own. Members of Los Alamos Writers Group cheered me on with this book as well as my previous novels and nonfiction projects. Thanks, too, to members of Rocky Mountain Chapter of Sisters in Crime; Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America; and SouthWest Writers. Thank you to photographer John McHale of Los Alamos for my author's photo, and thanks to James Robinson for designing and maintaining my website, www.newmexicoauthor.com. I'm grateful for the editing expertise of Lorraine Stephens and Marilyn Kapp, executive editor and senior editor, respectively, of Wings e-Press. Thanks also to Rosemary Benton and Billie Crabb, two readers whose opinions are always right. The two best editors I have (and two of the three best moral supporters any writer could ever hope to have) are my daughters, Sonje Beal and Erika DeSantis. Thanks! And that brings me to the third pillar of my moral support, my husband, Bill Baughman. Maybe I could have written LOST ALMOST without him, but it wouldn't have been the same book, and it certainly wouldn't have been any fun to do. Song credit: "Because You Come to Me" by Guy d"Hardelot, 1902. -------- *One* Wednesday, May 10, 2000 _Los Alamos, New Mexico_ Nine ambulances idled side by side at the west end of Los Alamos Medical Center, their doors closed to keep the smoke and cinders out as long as possible. Ambulance crews from Santa Fe and the Espanyola Valley, called by the State Emergency Operations Center, paced the parking lot, anxious to load their patients and get off the Hill. From the west, red clouds of smoke roiled out of Bandelier National Monument, blocking the sun and gathering strength from the winds gusting to forty miles per hour. It was 5:15 p.m. The three highways leading east out of Los Alamos toward the valley carved by the Rio Grande were clogged with cars full of people and terrified pets. Police sawed the chains off a gate to San Ildefonso Pueblo land, opening a fourth emergency evacuation route at the north end of town. The Jemez Mountains that formed the back and arms of an overstuffed green chair around the town and laboratory no longer offered sanctuary. Instead, the mountains and canyons were fast becoming a cauldron. Soon the winds would gust to seventy-five miles per hour and the fire would breed its own hurricane-force winds. In an hour, temperatures would reach three thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and houses would not just burn, but explode. The battalion chief directing the evacuation of the hospital weighed the dangers. Should he send the ambulances into gridlock with their sirens feeding panic, or move the patients to the hospital's basement? To his immense relief, the traffic cleared and he gave the signal to move out. The drivers and paramedics flew into action. Like a movie running backward, the patients were wheeled past the Emergency Entrance sign and loaded into the ambulances. Meanwhile, the inferno gushed down from the wide funnel where Los Alamos Canyon began into the narrow neck of the canyon spanned by Omega Bridge. Hemmed in by walls of volcanic tuff, the fire paused to consume the huge Ponderosa pines on the canyon floor, then explored for fuel on the canyon walls. Tongues of flame crossed the road to kindle the shrubs that clung to the sheer north wall and to the sturdy pine trees for support. It was as if the parched shrubs were fuses on a massive row of pine tree rockets. Scant minutes later a wall of flame erupted straight up the north side of the canyon, igniting houses on Fairway Drive only a few hundred yards from the hospital. The last ambulance doors slammed shut and sirens wailed away toward the east. The evacuation of the town was complete, with no time to spare. The Cerro Grande Fire was officially out of control and bending its towering flames over Los Alamos like the neck of a dragon. ~ * ~ Arkady Valentin had kissed his wife and daughter good-bye at twelve-thirty. Their wooden house with shake shingle roof sat on the perimeter of the Santa Fe National Forest, at the end of a cul-de-sac in the section of Los Alamos known as North Community. The privacy afforded by acres of Ponderosa pines made the house prime kindling if the wind brought the flames north. Arnie, Leah and Katy had carried armfuls of valued possessions to the Dodge Caravan and firmly shoved them inside. As Arkady wrapped his grandfather's brass menorah in a towel, he had to stop and catch his breath at a thud of pain in his chest, the same kind of pain he imagined Moshe Valentin felt when he packed the menorah in Russia so many years before. Then, too, flames closed on the Valentin family, fires set by a mob intent on driving Jews out of Russia. Leah placed the family's _Haggadah_ on the floor behind the driver's seat. The leather-bound story read each Passover Seder was all that was left of her mother's family, a lone memento saved by a little girl, who was saved in turn by a Dutch couple. "You know where to go?" Arnie said as he carried a box marked "Tax info" to the sliding door and wedged it into the last available space. "We're fine, yes. If they say to evacuate before you get back, Katy and I will go to the Baptist church in White Rock and wait there for you." Leah spoke to him, but her eyes were fixed in a stare toward the smoke clouds to the south. Arnie's eyes were on Leah's face, her skin dry as corrugated paper from the ravages of disease. No, he corrected himself, from the ravages of treatment, one last protracted attempt to kill the cancer cells that had metastasized from breast cancer. Chemotherapy treatments at three-week intervals had been followed by four weeks of radiation. A tan silk turban covered his wife's head, bald for the second time in five years. "What about Ben?" Katy asked indignantly as she marched from the house carrying a pile of schoolbooks. Benjamin, a white poodle-schnauzer cross, whined pathetically and ran in circles around Katy, lest he be forgotten. "There's room for him on top of the computer. See, there's a nice soft rug." Arnie caught Ben in midair as the dog levitated toward the passenger seat. "Keep him in the house until you have to go. There's still a chance they'll stop the fire and we can stay home." His tone of voice invited no argument from his daughter. Katy possessed intelligence far beyond her eleven years. In fact, she was doing college level math in a program for gifted children, but emotionally she was still a little girl, and she was scared. Scared of the fire, scared of her mother's cancer, and scared of the helpless feeling that she'd be left like her mother's mother, alone in the world, one leather-covered book her only possession. But she wouldn't admit to being fearful. Anger was her preferred emotion, a reliable fallback position whenever people and events spun out of control. "You don't care about our house! You won't let us stay and try to save our house!" Arnie ignored Katy's outburst. He knew better than to fight "Nature's Wrath," as a TV show called its thrilling shows about real fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis and volcanoes. Being smart was better than being brave, and being wise was better than being smart. He found room for Katy's schoolbooks and closed the side door of the van. "I'm counting on you to help your mother." Arnie kissed Katy, named Ekaterina after his mother, on the cheek, which was all she would tolerate in her fit of pique, then kissed Leah quickly on the lips. "I'll see you in an hour or two. I've got to take care of something in my lab. You know how it is. If they turn off the power while my project is running, I'll be screwed." _That's not the only way I can be screwed_, he admitted to himself as he backed his old Honda Civic, even older than the Dodge, up the sloping driveway and onto the street. He stopped for a moment, seemingly to wave to Leah, but really to take one more look at his house, just in case it was on the devil's burn list. The mob that forced his grandfather out of Russia had done his descendants a favor. Moshe Valentin's youngest son, Isaac, grew up in Canada and raised his sons, Arkady and Daniel, in upstate New York. Thanks to hard work, their parents' high expectations, and scholarships, the boys had prospered, Arkady in the United States, where he was known as Arnie, and Daniel in Israel. Both did undergraduate work in microbiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then headed west to earn their doctorates at the University of California, Berkeley. Daniel moved to Israel to marry and begin his career, while Arnie did post-doctoral work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, or LANL, as everyone called it, and stayed on as a technical staff member. He'd received the coded e-mail message from Daniel three hours earlier, but couldn't leave the house to drive to the lab until now. He was cutting it closer than he liked and feared being turned away by a guard. The whole facility, Los Alamos National Laboratory, was closed except for personnel needed to secure materials and buildings. There was no danger of the fire going toward the laboratory officials had said that morning on both radio and TV. The facility was closed only so fire crews could move freely on the roads. Well, he needed to secure materials. If he were stopped, he would just explain that to the guard and tell him to call whomever he needed to notify. Traffic wasn't too bad on Diamond Drive, to Arnie's relief. Schools were closed, as well as the Laboratory. Some people had left the Hill Sunday when Western Area was first evacuated, and had elected to stay in motels or with friends away from the smoke. Businesses had been urged not to open. "Keep the streets clear for emergency vehicles," that's what they kept saying on the radio. The newspaper the night before said Wednesday would be the make it or break it day. Arnie saw on TV at 8:00 a.m. that firefighters and bulldozers had slashed a fifty-foot wide fire line west of Camp May Road on Tuesday, and he'd heard at noon that eight hot shot crews were on the scene with support from five air tankers and seven helicopters. He didn't know the latest news on the fire -- couldn't know it, in fact, since his car radio had been broken at least a year. He crossed the Omega Bridge at 1:10 p.m., his mind racing ahead to the work he had to do inside his lab, and wound his way across a maze of roads to a concrete building on the southern perimeter of the main laboratory complex. With his laptop computer clutched tightly, he strode across the parking lot at a brisk pace, showed his badge to the guard inside the building, and hurried to the back staircase. Had he been listening to KRSN at 1:12, he would have heard Mark Bentley passing on the word from Los Alamos Fire Department. "The Cerro Grande Fire has jumped the Camp May Road and is now in Los Alamos Canyon. Police and fire department are ordering an immediate evacuation of the Western Area and the North Community. All homes in those areas will get automated phone calls in the next few minutes on the Community Alert Network System. I repeat, the fire has jumped the Camp May Road." Inside his lab, Arnie plugged in his laptop to preserve the battery. At the same time, he turned on his large desktop computer and logged on to LANL's supercomputer. On his laptop he read Daniel's e-mail message again. The chatty tone, with snippets of news about Daniel's wife and twin sons, cheery inquiries about Leah and Katy, as if Leah faced nothing more onerous than a head cold, rang false to Arnie, as Daniel had intended. "Working hard on the A/Senegal virus," Daniel wrote. "What a bugger that is. Sometimes I fear it's a dead end, but my old friend from Cornell (you remember Russell, I'm sure) encourages me to stay with the project. Although it's awfully complicated, I am making progress." Arnie sorted through the files he had helped create on influenza strains and potential vaccines: A/New Caledonia/20/99-like (H1N1); A/Moscow/10/99-like (H3N2); B/Beijing/184/93-like antigens; and dozens more. As he had anticipated, the so-called A/Senegal was not on the list. He began a search of related databases, gradually immersing himself in the task. When he was working, Arnie nearly always lost track of time. He looked back at Daniel's note again. "I should get at least two papers out of it, co-authored with Russell. Maybe I'll get to present one of them at the virus meeting in New York in August. But I think it's more likely for the spring 2001 conference. Arnie, please send me your detailed schedule. Did you send one to George? Is he planning to join us?" Arnie knew no meeting was scheduled in New York in August; he knew Daniel's "old friend Russell" was the name he always used for the director of the infectious disease section of the research facility where he worked in Tel Aviv. He also knew Daniel wasn't working on any virus with the designation "A/Senegal." The message was really about A/Shenyang, a newly emerging and deadly influenza virus. So far, mankind had dodged all the viral bullets -- hantavirus, Marburg, Ebola, West Nile. Only a handful of scientists knew how long the list was, and how close the human race had come to pandemic, a worldwide epidemic, with each of the killers. _Sin nombre_ hantavirus, first found in northwestern New Mexico in 1993, failed by only microns to cross from the lining of the capillaries to the adjacent air sacs. Had it been transmittable by a cough, the dead would number in the tens of thousands rather than the tens. Arnie Valentin staggered under the weight of his knowledge of infectious microbes and toxins. Increasingly, any crowd gave him vertigo, the feeling he saw clouds of bacteria and virus, billions upon billions of deadly bugs, swirling among the people, who inhaled death with every breath and coughed it out on every surface of the city. He couldn't ride a subway, or a crowded elevator. He drove across country rather than travel by plane and breathe recirculated air. His avowed reason for not traveling to England, Israel, or Russia -- all places where his expertise was requested -- was Leah's health. But the truth was, he'd lost his nerve. His belief in the invincibility of science and medicine was gone. He put up a good front, but deep down he felt defeat. Bitter, acrid, hopeless defeat by the bugs. The crushing burden of his knowledge -- the very thing he'd always believed would help save the world -- was eating him alive. The more he knew about mutations within AIDS, antibiotic-resistant strains of strep and staph, about adenoviruses and cytomegaloviruses and hantaviruses, the more depressed Arnie became. Three things kept him functioning. The first was unfaltering use of antidepressant drugs in a dosage meticulously worked out by Arnie and his doctor. Second was that he had to be strong for Leah, and third he felt he must inspire Katy to become a brilliant and _brave_ scientist, to carry on where he had failed. The message from Daniel, "send me your detailed schedule," told him to download from the laboratory's supercomputer the complex structure of the influenza strain isolated in the lung tissues of a rice farmer in Shenyang, China. The new strain differed enough from all the previously known strains of influenza that no vaccine in existence would fight it. A/Shenyang was an avian flu, a virus harbored for millennia in the digestive tracts of wild ducks, then in the bodies of domesticated fowl, which excreted the virus into water shared by pigs and humans. Inside the pigs, the seven hundred or so proteins on the surface of each virus made a climactic mutation. The hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins that protruded from the tough protein-and-fat armor of the spherical virus underwent an antigenic shift. Had it been just a "drift," previously infected or immunized humans would have some antibodies that matched some antigens. But a shift meant humans had no immunity. The Shenyang flu had the potential to erupt in a killer pandemic. The Spanish flu of 1918, Arnie knew, killed about forty million people. And like his favorite professor at Berkeley used to say, "That was when forty million was a lot of people." The death toll now might be in the billions. And the social fabric of every country on earth would be shredded. First to die would be most of the doctors, nurses, police and firefighters. There was a way to prevent the pandemic. Somewhere in the billions of calculations that the supercomputer had done to digitize A/Shenyang was the structure of the molecules that could defeat it. Daniel had done the dangerous work, handling the rice farmer's lung tissue in a Bioscience Level Three lab. Well, not so very dangerous, Arnie lamented. A Level Three lab wasn't all that big a deal. All medical and veterinary research facilities had them. That an institution the size of Los Alamos National Laboratory did not have such a lab was a source of consternation among staff members in the Bioscience Division. Daniel had naturally assumed Arnie had access to such a facility. Level One described any high school laboratory. Any place technicians drew blood, like a hospital lab, was Level Two. Then there was the highest restriction, Level Four, the places that dealt with such horrors as live Ebola virus. There were only three Level Four facilities in the United States. But the gap between Level Two and Level Four was like the gap between bicycles and space shuttles. There was a lot of work that needed doing in a Level Three lab. Arnie knew from a previous message that Daniel's research on the A/Shenyang flu was going slower than they'd hoped. Roadblocks and glitches at this stage of research and development could be compounded by problems in manufacture. Even if there were no problems, the likelihood of having millions of doses of vaccine ready by the fall of 2001 was remote. Arnie knew that the strain of influenza expected for the coming winter of 2000, a much less virulent flu than A/Shenyang, was proving much harder to cultivate than expected. Four companies had contracted to supply the United States with a vaccine, a combination of three different strains of killed virus. Growing one of the strains in fertilized chicken eggs was so far behind schedule that widespread shortages of flu shots were inevitable. Daniel had sent a sample of the Chinese farmer's lung tissue to Arnie in Los Alamos, ten slides of killed virus for examination with an electron microscope and three grams of tissue containing live virus packed in dry ice. Lacking authorization to work on something so dangerous as the live virus, Arnie had notified the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, but his calls were lost in a labyrinth of menus and voice mail and promises to return his call as soon as possible. He'd ended up locking the tissue, packed inside a plastic box labeled "Biological Material -- Hazardous," in a vault kept at minus ten degrees Celsius. The small box was wrapped in white paper, sealed, and the seal wrapped with waterproof tape. Both outside and inside the box was the address of Beth-el Laboratory in Tel Aviv and the bright red biohazard trefoil against a white background. Only Arnie's group leader, Mitchell Quaid, knew about the tissue. The electron microscope and super-computer work was done without fanfare, too, the cost buried in contract work for the AIDS virus. People tended to leave the "Infectious" guys alone. In Tel Aviv, Daniel was racing the biological doomsday clock to write the recipe for a vaccine to A/Shenyang. Then would come production at a rate and a scale never seen before. If enough vaccine could not be made for everyone, or more reasonably for as many people as possible in every country on earth, then who would get it? Who would make such a god-like decision? Arnie couldn't think of anyone except Daniel that he would trust with such power, but Daniel was human, too. How could he turn his back on his family, his nation, and on Jews in other nations? Of course, in the wrong hands, or what Arnie _had_ to think of as the wrong hands, Jews might be denied the vaccine. World wars had been fought over less. Arnie sighed, determined to repackage the lung tissue for transport and to by-God get the CDC to take it. He logged off the Cray computer and held two disks in his hand. He marveled that something so small could contain so much information. But then, so did each and every virus. He typed a reply to Daniel, a few words about the forest fire and that he'd be out of pocket for a few days, that Leah and Katy were okay, and that he, too, was working on A/Senegal. He added a P.S. "I haven't heard anything from George. I'll send him something today." He smiled as he typed "George." Some secret code! As if no one could figure out that meant Atlanta and the CDC. _Oh well, nobody has any idea what Daniel is working on_. Hardly anybody, he corrected himself. A few scientists in Israel, himself, and Mitchell Quaid. He pressed Send and powered down the laptop. Then he pressed a series of numbers to gain access to the freezer-vault, turned on the light, and held absolutely still. Someone must have moved the white box. He searched rapidly, treating every jar, box and vial with the utmost care. But five minutes later he had to face a fact as cold as the vault in which he stood. _The tissue sample of A/Shenyang was gone._ When Arnie Valentin emerged from the bioscience lab about half past five, he had to force his feet to work in tandem and carry him toward his car. As he fumbled for his key, puzzled by the early sunset, he awoke as if from a trance to the sound of sirens. He whirled around, attempting to fix on the sound, but the wail came from every direction. He turned again, slowly, and stopped with his face to the west. The light, he saw then, was not from a red sun at night, but from a squall line of flames roaring across the forest. He looked north, to where Omega Bridge appeared to float in a shroud of smoke. By chance, he saw the first flames catapult up from the canyon and catch the wind that would ferry fire inexorably into the lush fuel of houses, cars and gardens. He turned his back on the inferno and drove toward White Rock to join his family. He could hear sirens, but the road was eerily deserted. He felt as if his family stood beside an abyss, a crevasse containing pestilence and death, and only by holding each other could they keep from hurtling down into the darkness. -------- *Two* Friday, June 1, 2001 Los Alamos, New Mexico _Patrice Kelsey:_ I breezed into the new office of the _Los Alamos Guardian_ on Trinity Drive, willing myself to be cheerful, or at least poetic. With a nod to the receptionist and to Gordon Wilson, the new managing editor, I raised my arm theatrically and began reciting, "_And what is so rare as a day in June?_" "A day in _February_!" Gordon barked. "And you're _late_." Standing inside the wooden fence that separated reporters, like me, from real people, he crossed his arms and gave me his best imitation of an angry man. I swung the gate open with my hip and pinched his cheek. "I'm so scared." Marian handed me a stack of mail, mostly catalogs and junk flyers. With her eyebrows arched and clearing her throat for emphasis, she set a letter marked _Personal_ on top. My name, Patrice Kelsey, was circled in red, presumably by Marian, and _Personal_ was underlined twice. All the words were typed, and there was no return address. My heart did a little flip-flop when I saw the postmark: Alexandria, VA. "Personal?" I said, mimicking her arched eyebrows. "Does that mean you didn't open it? Or that you resealed it?" "You are wounding me," she said with a sigh. "I'm going to wound both of you if you don't get to work!" Gordon blustered. I leaned closer to him. "I've been meaning to ask, Gordon, how are your hemorrhoids?" "I liked you better when you were afraid to lose this job," he groused on his way to his glassed off cubicle. I dropped the junk mail and press releases onto my chair and followed him. "I think I read about an experiment with mice, or maybe it was prisoners of war, who would adjust to horrible conditions if there was even one tiny hope of reward. When they became totally devoid of hope, their bodies and minds just shut down. Zilch." "I read that, too." Danny Carter, the _Guardian's_ photographer, slumped against the doorframe of the cubicle. "Only it wasn't mice or prisoners of war. It was newspaper reporters." "How's your mother?" Gordon asked as he sat down. Danny had made a break from his hometown when he landed a job at a San Antonio paper, but came back to Los Alamos when his mother had a stroke. She'd improved, thanks to grit and therapy. Her speech was slow because she often had to search for words, but her motor skills were pretty good. The weakness on her left side was noticeable only when she was tired. Now, however, Myrtle Carter was hospitalized with a nasty flu. "Not good," Danny answered. "She's in isolation, and her fever keeps spiking to one hundred three." "I didn't know anybody got the flu, I mean a real, official, 'influenza' in the summer," Gordon said. He rubbed his chin and cheeks roughly as if checking his shave, and his pale skin reddened. He tossed his red hair back off his forehead and rested his arms on the shelf formed by his belly. "Sit down a minute, please. Let's go over the stories coming up next week." I had to wait half an hour until I could open my _Personal_ letter. My impatience was rewarded at last. As I'd hoped, it was from Rick Romero. Previously the managing editor at the _Guardian_ and still the object of my affections, he'd taken a temporary government job in Washington, D.C., at a salary that made saliva seep from the corners of my mouth. He'd moved shortly before January 1, Y2K+1, or as purists called the year 2001, the _real_ new millennium. We were not engaged, either officially or secretly, but I'd say we had an understanding. Actually, I guess we had two understandings. His and mine. Mine was that Rick was leaving the cave in search of meat and that when he returned, smeared with mammoth blood, he would carry me away to a land of milk and honey. I was coming to recognize that Rick's understanding had more to do with paying off his tax liability, his car, and his late wife's medical bills before he made any commitments involving co-habitation, cave or otherwise. Meanwhile, back in the fire-denuded mountains of New Mexico, I've been doing my best to keep busy and pay my rent on time while continuing, like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill, to pay off my student loans. Some women of twenty-nine, my age, are thinking of their biological clocks. That is one of many luxuries I can't afford. I have set a goal: the day before I'm thirty, I'll be debt free. And I'll do it without asking my mother for all my birthday and Christmas presents for the next ten years in cash now. Toward that noble goal, I acquired a roommate. Nancy Kohler, a woman I'd met at the Family YMCA, wanted to share an apartment in name and rent but only occasionally in person, so we'd thrown our resources together and gotten a decent two-bedroom apartment on Rose Street. Nancy spent about one-third of her time at her job at the laboratory. She lived with her boyfriend, Delano, another third, and some fraction of the remainder she was my roommate. I didn't care what she did just so she paid half the rent and kept Delano out of my sight. He treated her like dirt; she loved it. Go figure. Actually, there was one more condition of our joint-renter agreement. When Nancy wasn't there, I had to take care of her pet ferret, Rambo. It was a small price to pay for the comparative luxury and privacy of the ground-floor apartment, after my two years in a studio on the third floor of a concrete building. Rambo was playful, entertaining, and affectionate, which means he was better company than a significant percentage of the people I could think of. I kept a framed photo of Rambo on my desk, his beady eyes so alert, his pink nose so, uh, nosey. The sports editor, Rocco Berini, ambled in wearing his summer uniform, gray cotton running shorts with a drawstring waist and a T-shirt that said "Bandelier Marathon." He didn't actually run that marathon, or any of the twenty, ten, or five-kilometer races so popular with the exercise maniacs of Los Alamos. But he covered the races for the newspaper, and collected the T-shirts like some poor man's graft. When I started working at the _Guardian_, I thought Rocco was a man of very little brain. Gradually I recognized that he was borderline smart but certifiably lazy. Acting dumb was just his cover. "Hey," he called to me as he came through the swinging gate. That was Rocco's all-purpose word. Like the Australians' _G'day,_ "hey" spared him the effort of determining what time it was, and like Hawaiians' _Aloha,_ it spared him the trouble of saying whether he was coming or going. He must have noticed the photo on my desk. "How's Rambo the rodent?" "Rambo is not a rodent. He's a member of the weasel family, same as sports editors." I picked up my purse and headed for the ladies' room, the only place I could read my letter without interruption, but Marian followed me in. "Katy Valentin called while you were in Gordon's office," she said as she entered one of the three stalls. "She's at the hospital with her mother. I've got the phone number at my desk." "Thanks. I already have the number, though. Katy called me at home this morning." I folded the letter, still in the envelope, and tucked it into the pocket of my seersucker jacket. Taking a small brush from my purse and removing the hair clip from the nape of my neck, I quickly redid my hairdo. Letting it grow saved money, but I wasn't sure the aggravation of the in-between stage was worth it. I leaned toward the mirror to reassure myself the odd reddish highlights in my ash blond hair were just an effect from the fluorescent light. Marian emerged and washed her hands with liquid antibacterial soap that she supplied from home. In a solicitous tone, she asked, "Is her mother likely to die soon?" I sighed and met Marian's gaze in the mirror. "Barring a miracle, yes. She's got cancer in organs I didn't even know humans have." "So, will you have to cancel your trip to Washington?" "I just don't know at this point. It's more than a month away, and it's extremely important to Katy. Her mother made her promise she'd go no matter what." I didn't have to add that it was extremely important to me. The free trip to Washington for Katy to accept a national science fair prize included a free airline ticket for me as her mentor. Actually, I'd been her mentor in writing, another of her phenomenal skills and/or talents, but because she couldn't very well travel with Mr. Ullman, her science mentor, I got the "job." Since it meant I'd be able to see Rick, I probably was more excited than Katy. But neither of us was more excited than her father. Arnie Valentin hadn't had any good news in a long time, and he practically obsessed on Katy's going to Washington, meeting professors and researchers from all over the country, and setting the foundation for getting into the best university she possibly could. Marian smiled and shook her head in disbelief as she left the restroom. "It's hard to believe she's only twelve." At last I had five minutes to read my letter, but I devoured it in three flat. Rick made little mention of his job with the Department of Agriculture, a deathly dull but exorbitantly well-paid position deep in the large intestine of the bureaucracy. As expected, that job was coming to an end in three weeks. "However, here's the good news," he wrote. An opportunity had come along to do public relations work for the FBI. It went without saying that having FBI Special Agent Luis Romero for a brother came in mighty handy. "Now, don't think I've gone over to the dark side. There must be things the FBI does well. No, really! Come to think of it, my experience writing about 'organic fertilizer' in the Agriculture Department will probably come in handy. Hey, have you heard of the kids' book _Click Click Moo, Cows That Type_? Two such bovines are my replacements at the Ag Dept. At least it takes TWO. Gotta go now. Luis sends his best. Tell me when your plane arrives. I can't wait to see you." He signed it, "Passionately yours -- etc., etc., etc. Rick" At my desk I made a quick call to Katy to say I would get to the hospital about two o'clock, then effectively tuned out thoughts of my personal life and wrote fast and furiously enough to make Gordon happy. Three hours later I ate a sandwich at my desk and made calls to line up interviews with the chairperson of the United Way and the new County Administrator. While waiting for calls I leaned back and sipped iced tea. Through the partition that separated me from the young lifestyles editor I heard Rocco Berini asking her for a date and Emma politely saying no, she planned to go to Bible study. On my side of the partition hung a collage that Katy made for me. She'd juxtaposed about thirty headlines from a half-dozen newspapers and arched above it the words: PATRICE KELSEY, THIS IS YOUR LIFE. A psychologist looking at the collage would probably recommend therapy for Katy and me both. There were headlines about the devastation of the Cerro Grande Fire and the arrest and subsequent release of laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee. Katy had glued one on a red paper heart: "Ancient Bacterium Gets New Life," and beneath the headline two paragraphs about a two hundred and fifty million-year-old bacterium found in salt beds beneath Carlsbad, New Mexico, revived and merrily reproducing in a lab. She'd drawn a diamond ring with sparkles glued on. Inside the ring was a short article about the ex-chief of detectives in Chicago indicted for masterminding a theft ring that stole four and a half million dollars in jewels all over the United States. There were headlines about the terrorist bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk, fires, floods, famines, and a computer glitch in Los Angeles that left thousands of travelers stranded or delayed. Colorful question marks surrounded "Are We Overdue for a Flu Pandemic?" Katy showed signs of being "disturbed," but I figured anybody who wasn't disturbed about world news was probably taking way too many antidepressant medications. I noticed there were no headlines having anything to do with cancer, either with new fears or new hopes for cures. And there was nothing about the arrest of her father. The United Way chairperson and the county administrator's secretary returned my calls, and I drove to the hospital. No matter how many times I drove toward the mountains that "held" Los Alamos, like a giant holding a board game on his lap, I felt the pain of looking at the square miles of black, dead poles that used to be magnificent Ponderosa pines. Not in my lifetime would these hills be alive with the sound of music or with anything else. All of us who had lived through the fire were emotionally charred. And for Katy and her parents, who had watched in horror as their house burned, live on CNN, then on tape, replayed over and over and over every time they saw a TV screen, the pain went all the way to the bone. Yes, Dr. Arnie Valentin had good reason to obsess on his daughter's glowing prospects. Having almost lost his job in addition to his home in 2000, and with his wife barely hanging on, he needed the good news. -------- *Three* Friday, June 1, 2001 (In the Jewish calendar, 10th of Sivan, the year 5761) _Tel Aviv, Israel_ Around five a.m. Daniel Valentin gave up on sleep. He'd been staring at the ceiling of his apartment since 4:00. He dressed in the bathroom so he wouldn't wake Rachel or their sons. Moshe and Rabin had encountered a problem with sleeping, too, but on the other end of the summer night. The two of them had played soccer until ten o'clock and couldn't settle down and sleep until midnight. "It's going to be a long summer," Rachel had said through a yawn as they sat on their narrow balcony, waiting for the boys to come in from soccer. The twins were "nine, going on sixteen," as Daniel described them in an e-mail to his brother. His "plan" for his sons -- and he put the word in quotation marks even in his head -- was for them to be, first, devout Jews, superb scholars of the Torah. Second, they should be brilliant scholars of science in general and biology in particular. They would be doctors! They could do research, like their father, or specialize in something like surgery, but he was certain they'd be doctors. Moshe and Rabin were equally certain they'd be professional soccer players. "Soccer is ... my life!" Moshe declared with mock drama the evening before. They'd brought home their dirty gym clothes and all the junk from their lockers, ready for a carefree summer. "At their age I was glad for school vacation so I could study more math and science than I got in the school curriculum," Daniel had said to Rachel on the balcony. He flattened a mosquito against his thigh with his open palm and wiped away the smear of his own blood. "Bugger!" Daniel and Arkady, growing up in upstate New York, had been almost as close as twins. Arkady was just eleven months older. Daniel had smiled at the memory, long-forgotten, of being called "Irish twins." When he'd come home from school, irate at the epithet but oblivious to its meaning, his mother had laughed and told his father to take the boys for a walk and explain the birds and the bees. Even with the black curtains Rachel had hung to keep out the early summer sun, Daniel couldn't sleep June first. He dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts, both starched and pressed, with creases the way he liked them, "sharp enough to cut yourself on." He locked the apartment door behind him and walked down the fifteen flights of stairs. He hated elevators, and used theirs only when he had something heavy to carry. He had easily convinced Moshe and Rabin that their legs would be stronger for soccer if they used the stairs, and now they raced each other fifteen floors two or three times a day. He stretched his legs by lunging forward on each one, then doing five deep lunges to each side. With long strides and his back straight as the Israeli soldier he had been for two years, Daniel walked the five-point-three kilometers to his research facility, Beth-el Laboratory. At the door he clicked off the stopwatch on his wristwatch and checked his time. Twenty-eight minutes, twelve seconds. He did the math in his head and resolved to shave thirty seconds off his time on his way home. Rachel and the boys would meet him for lunch. They'd go to an outdoor cafe, right after his boss, the director of Daniel's section of Beth-el Laboratory, gave the four of them flu shots. Daniel could do it himself, but the director, Dr. Rashad Teicher, wanted to make a to-do about the first inoculations with the A/Shenyang vaccine. One of the four strains of influenza that made up A/Shenyang had proved to be very difficult to grow. Beth-el had a small initial supply of A/S four, thanks to long hours of work and dogged persistence by Daniel and his eight assistants. Teicher had combined the strains of killed virus and made up a small supply of Shenyang flu shots. At the same time, Teicher was arranging for mass manufacture of the vaccine. Much of that process was political, vying with other projects for government money. At lunch Daniel would tell Rachel and the boys the great news, that he'd received a tremendous bonus, something they would all enjoy. They would be spending midsummer's eve, the longest day of the year, near the Arctic Circle on a luxurious Baltic cruise. The four of them would see the midnight sun from the harbor of St. Petersburg, Russia. ~ * ~ Through the floor-to-ceiling window four floors above the entrance to Beth-el Laboratory, a man and a woman watched Daniel Valentin check his watch. They knew he would buy a coffee with cream and a flaky pastry at a kiosk on the main floor, that he would buy a newspaper, and enjoy the coffee, pastry and newspaper at a table in the atrium. Thus refreshed and informed, he'd be ready to start the day. Dr. Daniel Valentin was a man of very precise habits. The man said to the woman, "Dr. Valentin says the vaccine will reach its full immunity within the body in two weeks, so June twenty-first gives it an extra six days." The woman looked thoughtful. "Is that enough time for you to be ready?" "Plenty of time, plenty of time," he responded. "I could run the test today. I do admit, however, that twenty more days will be useful. We'll have more virus by then. And you know what they say, the more the merrier." She felt a shiver of revulsion, but her stoic face showed no emotion. _This is for the greater good. That's the only reason he's doing it. And the only reason I am assisting him._ The man, who had also been a soldier, but not in uniform, and not for Israel, left the window and strode down the hall to his office. The woman stayed a moment longer, watching other scientists and technicians arrive for another ordinary day of work. On her lunch hour, she decided, she'd pick up the new luggage she'd ordered. And maybe she'd buy new shoes, as well. -------- *Four* Friday, June 1, 2001 Los Alamos, New Mexico _Patrice Kelsey:_ I hesitated at the open door to Leah Valentin's hospital room. Katy sat on a shelf beside the window, flanked on either side by about a dozen floral bouquets. She'd pulled one knee up to lean her cheek against the glass and gaze eastward down Los Alamos Canyon, away from the burned hillsides. She held a tan silk turban, twirling it around like a wheel in a gerbil's cage. I missed Katy's long black hair. She'd donated it to a group of people who make wigs for cancer sufferers. It would take a long while to get used to her modern spiky look. At the same time, she was shooting up in height, and reminded me of a filly, not quite used to her legs. I probably looked that way at her age, having reached my height, five-eight, shortly after my thirteenth birthday. Katy already came to my shoulder. That is, unless she'd grown in the five or six days since I'd last seen her, a possibility I wouldn't rule out. At the foot of the bed, her father slept in a vinyl chair with his neck at what must be a painful angle. Her mother was awake, but I could tell as soon as she turned toward me that she was drugged. _Thank God for morphine_. Leah Valentin was only forty-seven, but she looked about sixty. She murmured my name and Katy, startled, knocked a thick textbook on the floor. That thud in turn woke her father. His eyes darted around the room at the same time his hands and feet jerked away from his body as if jolted by an electric current. I said, "Sorry, no please -- no, don't get up," as Arnie Valentin stumbled to his feet. His black hair had thinned in the year I'd been acquainted with his family, as if in sympathy with his wife's third hair loss to chemotherapy. This last round was so experimental the chance of success was akin to placing owl feathers dipped in bat blood under her bed and reciting the periodic table backward. White hairs salted what was left, but gained him none of the suave look that blessed some men. He'd let his beard grow, maybe trying to keep the total number of hairs on his head in stasis. It was curly, matted, even grayer than his other hair, and looked like spiders might nest in it. "Did you bring it?" Katy asked with a sidelong look at her mother. Her voice had a surly edge to it that Leah picked up on right away. "Katy," she admonished softly, "Patrice is doing me -- doing us -- a favor by writing my obituary while I can still see it. I asked her to do it. You know that." Katy nodded but her cheeks were quivering and I guessed she didn't trust herself to speak. "Here, you sit here, Ms. Kelsey," her father said. "Katy's having a hard time. Otherwise she would be more polite." He looked at her rather than at me as he said it. "I'm sorry, Patrice," she said. "I know you're doing it to help." She looked at her father and I caught a flash of anger. As she thrust her hands into the pocket of her jeans, she said, "I'm going to go buy a Coke." "I'm sorry," he began. "She's..." "Please, Dr. Valentin, don't apologize. I understand." I handed a typed sheet to Leah. I couldn't think of anything to say. Etiquette books don't have a section on presenting an obituary to the obitu-ee for editing. At least I knew enough to omit the first paragraph, the one that would say "Leah G. Valentin, 47, died on (fill in the date) after a long battle with cancer." "All right, I won't say any more about it then," he continued. "But remember, you agreed to call me Arnie." I had "agreed" under protest, but _Arnie_ sounded terribly casual and I rarely said it. When we crossed paths in matters regarding Katy, I would look right at him when I had something to say, and that way I didn't need to use a name at all. In any business-related setting, Dr. Valentin was the only choice. And, regrettably, there _had_ been occasions I'd had to address him in my job as a reporter. The Valentins were one family among the four hundred and five homeowners and renters who had been left homeless by the Cerro Grande Fire in May 2000. I'd interviewed Arnie Valentin and met Katy for the first time in a shelter in Santa Fe. I remember Katy wiping her tears on her white dog, Benjamin, who whimpered and quivered in her arms. I'd heard and written portions of the gripping experiences of at least a hundred families, in addition to probing for details and retelling the experiences of local firefighters and police, the National Guardsmen, and hot shot crews brought in by the National Forest Service. I still shuddered to think of the county utility workers who'd risked their lives to turn off the gas lines before they blew up. When the power poles burned and all power was lost in North Community, and all water pressure failed in turn, the utility men plus the Guardsmen had moved in generators to power the pumps and save most of the town. The fire was so close the men were stamping out burning grass as they worked at the pump station, knowing that if they failed to get the system on line, their own escape would be cut off. The stories didn't end when the national and international media packed up their video-cams and tripods and went away -- not any more than the damage or the nightmares went away. Left behind were paroxysms of regret over the photo albums and a thousand other family treasures lost forever, things no insurance company or emergency management agency could ever reconstruct. The possibility of floods as summer rains hit the impermeable burned earth on the steep hillsides hung over us all like the sword of Damocles. And when the third scandal surfaced, I'd stood in the mob of reporters hurling questions over each other's heads like grenades, each question aimed at Dr. Arkady Valentin and deflected by his attorney. The first scandal was the indictment of Dr. Wen Ho Lee on fifty-nine counts related to nuclear secrets and China. The second scandal was the two hard drives that went missing from a safe in X Division, each of them a box about half the size of a videocassette and packed with details of nuclear weapons. The two news stories brought a horrendous rain of negative attention to Los Alamos. It got so every time residents saw a TV news van they said, with dismay, "What now?" When the missing hard drives reappeared mysteriously behind a copy machine near the vault where they belonged, and the FBI started polygraphing everyone who had any contact to the drives in any way, I quoted in my article a woman I overheard at a restaurant. "What's next for us?" she asked plaintively. "A plague of frogs?" Dr. Valentin wasn't arrested, _per se_. He was escorted from his "home," one of the mobile homes set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house fire victims, by local police and two FBI agents, and taken to Santa Fe for questioning. The scene taped at FEMAville, as we called the huge mobile home park, was aired over and over and over on TV. Beneath the scene was some variation of the words _Missing virus_ or _Deadly tissue lost from lab._ Once I read: _Lost tissue nothing to sneeze at._ And then there was my choice for the worst -- _Flu-gate: the next scandal at national lab?_ At least he hadn't been handcuffed and shackled. I noticed as he stood at the window of the hospital room how his shoulders stooped. His old clothes were a size too big now. "This is fine," Leah said. "Of course, I wish it read a little differently. Something like: 'Leah Valentin, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, author of a dozen best-selling books, holder of many patents,' and so on. And mostly I wish it could say, 'Leah Valentin, age 99, survived by her husband and daughter, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.'" A sob escaped her husband's lips and set me off like an adjacent firecracker, crying as hard as he was. "No, no, no!" Leah called out, then coughed from the exertion. "Don't cry! I was trying to make a joke." Arnie Valentin handed me a box of tissues and we both blew our noses and sopped up our tears. "Leah, my dear," he said at last, "you are good at many things, but making jokes is not one of them." Katy came in with a can of Coke. "Patrice, do you want a Coke? I should have asked you before I went out. Here, I didn't drink out of this one. You can have it." "Thanks, Katy, no. I'm not thirsty. Really, you go ahead." I looked in the mirror over the sink and rubbed off the mascara beneath my eyes. Hearing a knock on the open door to Leah's room, I turned toward the hallway. Instead of a doctor or nurse, I saw Danny Carter. "Excuse me, please. Patrice, could I talk to you, out here?" His face was ashen. I stepped out of the room and we moved away from the door. "What's wrong, Danny?" "My mom is dying. There isn't anything they can do. She's got pneumonia in both lungs, and her fever is a hundred and five." "There must be antibiotics -- " I said. "No! There's nothing else. The staph infection is resistant to everything, and it's in her blood. They call it sepsis. It all started with the flu. Just the flu!" He shook his head in disbelief. I knew the doctors had been telling Danny, ever since they'd admitted his mother to the hospital, that it wasn't "just the flu." All indications were Myrtle Carter had the new and very stubborn strain of virus that had come in behind the influenza during the previous winter. The flu shots for fall 2000 had been late due to manufacturing problems, which were then compounded by distribution problems. Thousands of people who could not get shots subsequently caught the flu last winter. As if that weren't bad enough, the delay in shots apparently gave the virus time to mutate. People who had missed the first flu outbreaks in their area, whether from luck or a flu shot, were mown down by the second. The vaccine in the fall 2000 shots seemed to offer little or no immunity against its uglier cousin. And by the same twist of fate, people who caught the first flu and crawled back to work and school after as much as four weeks in bed had no immunity to the second. It was almost as if the first flu virus deliberately established a beachhead, and the mutated virus roared in behind it like a second wave of heavy artillery. Numbers of confirmed cases were rising, and so were the number of times people heard the words _Influenza, Infectious Disease, Epidemic_ and _Pandemic_ from Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. In the hospital corridor, Danny turned away from me and coughed, a deep barking cough, like a seal, and I stepped back a half step, unable to mask my fear of what might be in his cough. That's when the question I'd overheard came back to me: _What's next for us? A plague of frogs?_ No, it might be something invisible to the naked eye. And boundaries like county lines, state lines and national borders might not stop it. Nor would FEMA, or FBI, or ATF, or any other governmental gumbo of letters. The enemy had its own alphabet, a code within its RNA that told it how to enter a host, attach itself, and grow -- and how to move on to the next host. Anyone who believed science and medicine could establish fire lines against disease was surely disabused in the sad spring of 2001 by the horrific pictures of hundreds of thousands of cows, sheep and other livestock destroyed to fight foot and mouth disease. It was a bright June day. But when I heard Danny cough, the coming winter seemed perilously close at hand. -------- *Five* Thursday, June 21, 2001 (30^th of Sivan, the year 5761) _The Gulf of Finland at the delta of the Neva River_ Daniel Valentin adjusted his body in the so-called double berth and tucked his knees behind Rachel's. He breathed her lilac scent and kissed her neck. When she adjusted her hips, ever so slightly, he felt the stirrings of an erection and silently cursed the "lovely family accommodations" that placed his sons in upper and lower berths about eight feet from his bed. He kissed her neck again, pretty sure she was awake, and whispered, "You are a vixen to torture a helpless man." He felt her laugh. Turning her face so he could hear her, she said, "Remember when you used to tell the boys you'd dropped a shekel in the back yard?" He hugged her tightly against him and almost laughed aloud. He remembered all right. From the time the boys learned to climb out of their cribs until they got old enough to play down the street without supervision, Daniel had spent a lot of time in a state of unrequited lust. He and Rachel loved their sons, but they both missed the freedom -- and the energy -- to make love anytime and almost anywhere. "Can't we tell them to go outside and play?" he murmured as he nuzzled her shoulder. "In a lifeboat?" She wiggled toward the wall, putting a few inches between them. "If necessary, yes. I'm as horny as Kansas in August." "Is that another one of your American cliches?" "More or less. Do you want to go have breakfast with me?" He noticed her brief hesitation and added, "On second thought, why don't you sleep a while?" He didn't have to suggest it twice. Rachel rolled over to face him, banging their knees together, and kissed his cheek. She was sound asleep again in less time than it took him to slide out of bed and silently dress in cargo shorts and long-sleeve cotton T-shirt. Moshe and Rabin never moved an eyelid. In the elegant salon of the _Baroness_ he poured coffee from a silver pot shaped like a samovar. He spooned some slices of citrus fruit on a bone china plate and sliced open one warm egg bagel, spread cream cheese on both halves, and buried them in lox. Ensconced in a comfortable armchair with his favorite food and a copy of _The London Times_, he felt about as luxurious as a man can be without actually owning the boat on which he sailed the sea. The sun was up -- no surprise, given the date and the latitude. Daniel gazed around the salon, glad to be left alone. Since there were about one hundred eighty passengers, and it was only a four-day cruise, round trip from Helsinki, he allowed himself the comfort of politely ignoring the other people. He spoke only English and gave no indication he was also fluent in Russian, German, French and Hebrew. He didn't care if they thought he was hard of hearing, which he wasn't. He wanted to be alone with his family. And, yes, there were moments, such as the present, when he wanted to be alone, period. The evening before had been idyllic. Moshe and Rabin were intrigued with the captain's massive atlas and globe, and Daniel had spent about two hours in the elegant salon answering their questions about latitude, longitude, and the earth's tilt on its axis. "Look, Dad," Moshe had called, "the latitude of Tel Aviv is almost the same as where Uncle Arnie lives. Tel Aviv is 32 degrees north and Los Alamos is 35 or 36." Rabin discovered that Anchorage, Alaska, and St. Petersburg, Russia, were not only close to the same degree of north latitude, 61 for Anchorage and 60 for St. Petersburg, but the two cities were straight across from each other on a circle of longitude. "So they will have exactly as much sunlight tomorrow night as we're going to have?" Moshe asked. "What if we could go to the Arctic Circle?" Daniel patiently explained that the Arctic Circle, 23 degrees 28 minutes north latitude, was the most southerly point at which the sun would be above the horizon all night on June twenty-first, the summer solstice. He went on to explain how on December twenty-first, the winter solstice, the sun would not rise above the horizon at all, and that each degree of latitude further inside the Arctic Circle meant more days of no sunlight in the winter and no darkness in the summer. "Barrow, right here on the northernmost tip of Alaska, has sixty-seven days without the sun ever rising above the horizon." His sons looked at him in astonishment. "How did you know that?" Rabin asked. Daniel shrugged. "I've got a funny memory. That's what makes me such a deadly _Trivial Pursuit_ player." He'd melted back, leaving them with the atlas and globe. While he read a guidebook to St. Petersburg and planned his route to maximize exposure to architecture he'd long admired and wished to see in person, he listened to his sons plan their route to the North Pole. Greenland had the edge to their way of thinking. Since stepping aboard the _Baroness,_ Moshe and Rabin had taken the opposite tack from their father. They set out to meet as many of their fellow passengers as possible, extracting e-mail addresses and promises to write from no less than twenty-eight children and teenagers. In addition to plotting a journey to the North Pole, they used the globe to map out a round-the-world e-mail network using their new friends from Australia, India, China and South Africa, as well as the sophisticated Dion, the French girl who Daniel thought should be named Lolita. Dion was twelve but, as Moshe whispered to Rabin in the buffet line, "She's got boobs!" She wore makeup because she was a model for magazines in Paris and New York. "Let's let Katy into our network, too," Rabin said enthusiastically as he located New Mexico on the globe. Katy was their only cousin, and held a place of honor since she could be counted on to send them computer games from America before they were available in Israel. "When can we go to Los Alamos, Dad?" Moshe had asked. Daniel looked up from his guidebook. "I don't know when I can get away again. I've been thinking maybe Katy could come to Tel Aviv for a visit before school starts." "Oh, I don't think Uncle Arnie will let her come," Moshe said. "She says he's real scared about the car bombs and stuff. He even thinks we should move to the United States." "Can Moshe and me go to Los Alamos? We're old enough to fly by ourselves." "Moshe and I," Daniel automatically corrected their grammar. "Not this summer. It's too soon after Aunt Leah's death. Uncle Arnie is having a rough time." The boys considered what he said and nodded, then turned back to the globe. "Time for bed," Daniel announced firmly. "Tomorrow will be the solstice and we'll be running all over St. Petersburg." "Can we stay up all night tomorrow?" Rabin asked. "Dion says people party all night long." Daniel thought of summer nights when he and Arnie lay in sleeping bags on a hillside, in upstate New York, trying to stay awake all night to count meteors. Their parents never said they couldn't stay up all night, but sleep always won out over determination. "Yes, you may stay up as long as you want to. You don't have to go to bed at all." Moshe and Rabin grinned, sure they'd secured a great and hard-won concession, and Daniel smiled as well. _Having kids is the next best thing to being one_, he thought. Thursday morning he was engrossed in his coffee, bagel, and an article in _The London Times_ about yet another gruesome car bombing in Israel, when he saw a colleague enter the salon. Of the nearly two hundred tourists on the cruise ship, Dr. Marissa Vengerov was the only person he knew. A senior research scientist at the same laboratory where Daniel was on staff, Dr. Vengerov had also received the Baltic cruise vacation as a reward for excellent research results. He hoped she wouldn't spot him, but after a brief turn about the room to look at the scenery, she headed straight for him. The thought crossed his mind, uncharitably, that he never made time to chat with Vengerov in Tel Aviv, either at work or on leisure occasions, a fact of which she must be aware. So why did she think he wanted to spend time chatting with her on his treasured vacation? "Good morning," she said cheerfully. He made no move to get up. "Are you ready for our foray into St. Petersburg? The captain said the tide has turned and we'll be docking in just over an hour." She wore a linen pantsuit and a bright scarf. She was about his age, forty-eight, but wore her brown hair in a style that reminded Daniel of an American flower child in the 1960s. The sides fell straight from a part in the middle to below her shoulders, and the front was chopped off in severe bangs about a millimeter above her eyebrows. Framing her face with her hair the way a proscenium arch frames a stage was unwise as Marissa had a peculiar mouth. As she talked, one side of her mouth stayed fairly still and the other side did more than its share. Daniel sometimes wondered if she ever looked in a mirror when she talked. Marissa Vengerov was unmarried, which did not surprise him, but if the winks and whispers around Beth-el Laboratory were on target, she was romantically attached to Dr. Rashad Teicher, which surprised Daniel a good deal. For one thing, Teicher was married to a sensational-looking woman, a tall blonde with high Nordic cheekbones and eyes as blue and cold as a glacial lake. Why would Teicher be interested in Marissa? For that matter, why was Teicher's wife interested in him? To add to Daniel's perplexity, Rachel told him she considered Rashad Teicher to be attractive in a dark, brooding, magnetic kind of way. "The more I know about women," Daniel had said in response, "the more I'm glad I study viruses." His colleague studied the knot in her scarf. "I'm sorry, Dr. Valentin. I'm interrupting you." "No, Dr. Vengerov, I'm the one who's sorry. Please excuse me. And please, call me Daniel. Yes, I'm ready to see St. Petersburg, especially the Hermitage Museum. My wife studied art in Italy, and she's been trying to elevate my appreciation of fine art as long as we've been married. Won't you sit down? The coffee is excellent." With a tinge of regret, he folded the paper and placed it on his lap. He caught the eye of an attentive waiter, who immediately brought two cups of coffee and silver cream and sugar bowls on an ornate tray. She sat down in the adjoining armchair and angled her body toward him. "Thank you. And please, call me Marissa." She took a cup of coffee and added a generous dollop of cream. Daniel did the same and thanked the waiter. She stirred her coffee, took a sip, and spoke softly. "I lost family in the _Blokada_, the Siege of Leningrad. An aunt, uncle and a cousin. I never met any of them. They were family on my father's side. Died of starvation." "It was a horrible thing, the siege." Even within the rubric War Is Hell, Daniel knew the nine hundred-day siege of Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then named, was more dreadful than he could imagine in his worst nightmares. More than six hundred thousand people died there while the German army strangled the city from September 1941 to January 1944. "I procured a visa," she went on. "I'm going to stay in Russia a few days, so I won't be returning to Helsinki on the ship. I want to see where my parents were born. It's about a hundred kilometers from St. Petersburg." Daniel and his family didn't have visas, just the limited permission to tour on land that came as part of the cruise. Not needing visas, with all the hassle inherent in getting them, was a major advantage to visiting St. Petersburg via cruise ship. And the best kind of cruise, in Daniel's opinion, was by "small ship," as the _Baroness_ was called. Unlike the behemoth cruise ships that held up to five thousand people and had to dock far out on the Gulf of Finland, then transport their passengers overland to the city, the _Baroness_ would dock a few blocks from the Hermitage. Someday, he thought, he'd like to travel in Russia as Marissa planned to do. He'd like to visit the village near the Ural Mountains where his father's father and mother were born, but there was no time for that at this point in his life. It had been hard enough to get away for the short cruise. His mind drifted to the long hours he'd put in on developing the vaccine for A/Shenyang, and how much work was waiting for him at Beth-el Laboratory. He realized Marissa was waiting for an answer, but he hadn't heard the question. "Please forgive me, Marissa. I've allowed my manners and my brain to go on vacation and they have utterly deserted me. What did you say?" "I asked where your family came from. You are part Russian, are you not?" "Yes, my grandparents on my father's side were Russian Jews. They were born in the same village on the east side of the Urals, and when they married they moved to Sverdlovsk to find work. When my father was five, in 1925, they emigrated to Canada to escape pogroms. Had they stayed, and if my father survived the pogroms -- unlikely -- and then survived what Russians call the Great Patriotic War -- even more unlikely -- he probably would have been killed in the anthrax accident of 1979." Marissa nodded, somber at the mention of Sverdlovsk. The city's name was as recognizable to microbiologists as Chernobyl was to nuclear physicists. From Israel, Daniel and other microbiologists, especially those of Russian lineage, had greedily sought details of the rumored release of anthrax from a biological weapons factory in that central Russian city. The Soviet government insisted there was a small outbreak of anthrax that had been traced to contaminated meat sold by unlicensed vendors. So successful was the government at keeping the lid on the scandal, that when a group of Soviet scientists visited the United States and showed photos and documents to their peers, the American journal _Science_ endorsed the official story. The Sverdlovsk incident had been nothing more than an insignificant outbreak of cutaneous anthrax due to improper handling of contaminated meat. Daniel and Arnie Valentin had never believed that story. Instead, they believed the rumors that it was a particularly virulent strain of airborne anthrax, deliberately manufactured by the Soviet military, and that as many as one hundred people had died. Their distrust of the Soviet Union was ratified when Ken Alibek, deputy director of _Biopreparat_, defected to the United States in late 1992 and exposed the details of the Soviet Union's gargantuan biological weapons program. Not only were thousands of scientists and technicians working to develop hideous strains of deadly diseases, they were manufacturing them and stockpiling tons of products such as tularemia, botulinum toxin, ricin, smallpox, typhoid and cholera. Alibek told the truth about Sverdlovsk, too, stunning the naive scientists of the West. A worker at a biological weapons plant -- located right in the city of Sverdlovsk -- removed a clogged filter at the end of his shift. The supervisor of the next shift failed to replace the filter and started up the production line, spewing anthrax out the building's exhausts. The path of severe illness and, in many cases, death, was a trajectory downwind of the so-called "pharmaceutical laboratory." Not only was it anthrax, a shocking enough fact, but it was a strain selected and amplified for its virulence into a weaponized aerosol form. According to Alibek, in 1953 a leak from the Kirov bacteriological facility leaked anthrax into the city's sewer system. Army workers disinfected the sewer system immediately, and several more times after that, but in 1956 scientists discovered that the rodents in the Kirov sewer had developed a new and more virulent strain of anthrax. Scientists in the Soviet army cultivated the new strain, called Anthrax 836, and weaponized it. Even before Alibek disclosed the secrets of Soviet preparation for biological warfare, scientists at Los Alamos knew what was going on. They obtained tissue samples from eleven Sverdlovsk victims and found, through extremely advanced DNA analysis, that four separate strains of _Bacillus anthracis_ were involved in what the USSR insisted was a minor accident, a natural outbreak. But in nature, to find four strains together was not possible. Daniel noticed passengers gravitating to the windows of the salon. "I think we'll be docking any time now," he said as he placed his delicate cup and saucer on the coffee table nearby. He rose and tucked the newspaper under his left arm, wincing as he used the muscle in that arm. "That flu shot Dr. Teicher gave me really made my arm sore. I haven't had a shot hurt that much since I got a typhus and typhoid shot at the same time." Rachel and the boys had also complained of soreness. "Hmm," she said with her strange one-sided smile. "That's odd. I got a shot the same day, and mine hasn't hurt at all." "Perhaps you're just lucky," he said with a smile. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I must get my sons ready for the excursion." "Of course. And I must finish packing my things for _my_ excursion," she said. "If I don't see you ashore, I'll see you in Tel Aviv. I shouldn't admit it while on vacation, but I'm eager to get back to my project." She shook his hand and moved to a window to watch the palaces of St. Petersburg come into view. With his characteristic military posture, Daniel strode to an exit, his mind marching ahead to the invigorating day in a part of the world he'd always wanted to see. He placed his hand on the polished brass knob, but something made him turn back. He was disconcerted to see Marissa Vengerov in conversation with a uniformed steward, who nodded and pointed toward Daniel. Marissa nodded in turn. When she realized Daniel was observing them, she turned abruptly away from the steward and left the salon by another door. Daniel stayed a moment longer, noting the dark skin and black eyes of the steward. There was something not right about his uniform, a sloppiness that was out of place on the perfectly appointed ship. Daniel was sure he'd not seen the man before. His quick impression was that the man had gypsy blood, or maybe Kazakh. What he noticed most, however, was the arrogance and menace in the steward's eyes as he stared unabashedly at Daniel across the room. Who is he? Daniel wondered. And what does he have to do with Marissa Vengerov? Or, for that matter, with me? -------- *Six* Thursday, June 21, 2001 (30^th of Sivan, the year 5761) _St. Petersburg, Russia_ Marissa Vengerov stood on the dock with her new Italian luggage. She knew it was an extravagance, but Rashad Teicher assured her she would be traveling more as soon as he promoted her to head of the toxin research group. The two of them would have to travel separately for discretion's sake, but in the grand anonymity of Paris, London and New York they could meet as lovers. She sighed and looked around for a bench. Her feet hurt in the new shoes with heels at a height she almost never wore -- had not, in fact, worn for ten years. Seeing nowhere to sit down, she settled for standing on one foot, then the other, giving each foot a brief respite from the dictates of fashion. She checked her watch for the second time in five minutes, annoyed that her guide was late, leaving her to stand on the dock like a lost immigrant. The other passengers of the cruise ship were lining up with their group guides and preparing to paper the city with dollars, pounds and Euros. No one was so dumb as to exchange his money for rubles. She waved to Daniel Valentin and his exuberantly friendly sons. His dull wife scarcely noticed her, in the typical way of wives who cannot, in even the remotest corner of their parochial little brains, imagine their husbands would look with passion at another woman. _Fools!_ Well, Daniel Valentin is not attracted to me, she conceded, but all men have a weak point, a hole somewhere in the armor their wives think is impermeable. Rashad Teicher's wife thinks she leads him around by the nose, but he can't stand her. He married Tatiana for her money, and says now that it was a deal with the devil. With a she-devil, a woman so frigid he swears it's like having sex with a statue. He only does it to keep her from being suspicious. The warmth of Marissa's embrace, Rashad told her, was like being reborn to a manhood he thought had been entombed forever by Tatiana. _You leave me weak_, he had whispered one night in Marissa's apartment. Their lovemaking had been fevered, frantic, and unforgettable. _And yet this weakness,_ he had said, _is a sign of my strength._ Their love affair must not be known to anyone, he insisted, but the subterfuge was almost more than she could bear. She knew of other affairs conducted between laboratory scientists. People spoke of secret sexual encounters in front of her as if speaking in front of a eunuch. _If they only knew,_ she often thought. She'd slipped a time or two, just hinted at her active, though confidential, romance. At Beth-el Laboratory, Dr. Rashad Teicher gave no sign to anyone, including his lover, that Dr. Marissa Vengerov was anything but a researcher. A colleague. Her white coat might as well have been a chastity belt. But his perfect disinterest contrasted so wondrously with his passion that it actually enhanced the tingling sensation Marissa felt so much of the time, as if she held two wires of direct current and became part of the circuit herself, energized but not harmed. _The tingle today is more like a pulsed release from a power station,_ she thought as she watched Daniel Valentin's tourist group board a bus to the select entrance to the Hermitage State Museum. After three hours looking at the world's greatest art treasures, the group would eat lunch, and then board a larger bus. One particular bus. The details were all worked out, she was sure. Rashad Teicher never overlooked a detail. Whatever needed to be ready was ready. _Then why is my guide late?_ she thought with growing annoyance. As if he read her mind, a man materialized from a queue of taxis. "Dr. Vengerov?" he said with a slight bow and a click of his heels. "I am Pushkin. Please come with me." He picked up her two soft leather suitcases and strode down the queue to a black Mercedes. "Please, step in, Dr. Vengerov. Be comfortable." He held the back door open for her then put her suitcases in the trunk. Once behind the wheel, he removed his black chauffeur's hat and left the line of taxis behind. Marissa had told Daniel Valentin the truth about losing relatives during the Siege of Leningrad. They were buried in a mass grave at Piskaroyovskoye Cemetery with hundreds of thousands of their fellows. She thought briefly of visiting the cemetery then dismissed the thought. So much of her life had been bound by duty and weighed down by bitterness. She'd never met the uncle, aunt and cousin, after all. No, she would meet Rashad by the Bronze Horseman as planned, and she'd try to convince him they should travel together to Tallinn, Estonia -- such a beautiful European city -- or even to Copenhagen. No one expected her back in Tel Aviv until Wednesday, the twenty-seventh. Even if Rashad had to be back in Israel by Monday, they could have four glorious days together. Sitting back in the car she gazed without interest on the architecture of the former capital of Russia, and indulged a fantasy she favored, of Rashad and herself naked on massage tables, close enough to hold hands, while two burly masseurs, with towels tied around their waists, dribbled warm, fragrant oil on each of them, working it in. Her masseuse would slide his hands across her back and down under her arms, a little farther each time. Then he'd slip his fingers under her to fondle her nipples and feel them grow taut. Then he would move his hand in firm, pressing circles down to her buttocks and lower still, to explore the inside of her thighs. She would open her eyes and see that the masseur had an erection, and she would send both of them away, and Rashad, who also was aroused by watching what the other man did to her, would climb onto her table and enter her from behind... The driver's intrusive voice made Marissa gasp audibly. "I cannot park any closer to the cathedral, Dr. Vengerov. Would you like to get out here and walk to Decembrist's Square, or would you prefer me to drive around the complex and look for a gate, an opportunity for you to enter the square?" "I don't know," she said, flustered. "I've never been here. Where is the Bronze Horseman from here?" "It's one-hundred-eighty degrees from here, on the far side of the cathedral." She surveyed the enormous St. Isaac's Cathedral and checked her watch. "You were late picking me up. You'd better drive around and get me closer to the statue so I don't miss my appointment." "Very well," he said in a tone that clearly implied she was a prima donna. She took a compact out of her purse and freshened her lipstick. Stuck in traffic, the black car grew unspeakably hot and humid. Her long hair felt like a parka around her face, and she tucked it behind her ears. She was repulsed by the body odor of the driver, but the window wouldn't open. "This is as close as you can get," he said in a surly tone. He pulled over to the curb and made no move to get out. "That will be thirty dollars. No rubles." "I was told you were paid in advance." "No. You owe me the money. Pay now and go before the police order me to drive on," he barked. She had planned to leave her luggage in the car as she thought she would be returning to it with Rashad. She saw now that the driver was no better than the thugs and pickpockets she'd been warned against, and the worst thieves were the police, who thrived like parasites attached to the veins of the _mafiya._ "Get out my luggage first," she said. "You can leave it in the car. You surely don't expect to carry it all over the city," he said. "Yes, I plan to carry it. Set it beside the car, and then I will pay you." He jammed the car into Park and turned off the engine. Muttering dark, angry oaths all the while, he walked around the car, took the two suitcases out of the trunk, and tossed them carelessly on the filthy sidewalk. One teetered and fell sideways into the gutter. He made no move to retrieve it. Marissa opened her door, stepped out, and handed him three ten-dollar bills. He snatched them from her hand and was gone, melted in less than a minute into the stream of black cars. She stuffed her purse into her carry-on bag and stretched the strap of the bag over her head. Quickly, before some hooligan grabbed her bags and disappeared into the park, she hefted the two expensive suitcases with all the new clothes she'd bought for the trip. Waving from side to side from the weight of the bags, and bending her neck to the side under the painful strap of the carry-on, she made her way up a broad expanse of stone stairs. At the top she stood in the narrow shadow cast by St. Isaac's Cathedral and saw in the distance the famed statue of the Bronze Horseman. Her feet were in intense pain by the time she arrived at the statue. The temperature must be 38 degrees Celsius, she thought. Big circles of sweat formed under the arms of her white linen suit, which she guessed must look like she'd slept in it. "Slept in it under a bridge," she muttered aloud. She hoped fervently that she'd find a park bench near the statue, in the meager shade. She did find one, several, in fact, but all of them were claimed by old babushkas and wizened old men who looked like they should start walking to a cemetery to save the expense of a hearse. She searched the square for Rashad Teicher, squinting against the blinding sun. Solar noon on summer solstice. And to think she'd looked forward to this! She moved closer to the massive statue and read the sign, translated to English for the visitors with the mighty dollars to spend in St. Petersburg. Empress Catherine the Great had commissioned the statue in 1768. The gigantic likeness of Czar Peter the Great on a rearing horse took the French sculptor Etienne Falconet eleven years to complete. "Marissa!" She turned when she heard her name, more relieved than she'd ever felt in her life. "Rashad! Darling!" She set her suitcases down gently and held out her arms to him. "Not here, Marissa, my love," he said. "We don't want to draw undue attention." He picked up one of her suitcases. "Let's go to the hotel, over there, where we can get a beer. You must be tired and thirsty. Here, let me carry that." Gratefully, she handed over the other suitcase and adjusted the strap around her neck so it didn't cut into her skin. Being cared for was a luxury Marissa had never enjoyed and had wished for fervently all through her girlhood, her college and professional training, and the twenty years she'd worked with microscopic forms of life, or at least the building blocks of life. It was a paradox to her that the more Rashad treated her like a queen, the more she was his slave. In the bar of the hotel, Rashad shoved her suitcases onto the seat on one side of the booth and slid close beside Marissa on the other side. He kissed her cheek and murmured again how tired she must be. A waiter materialized and took Rashad's order of two beers. "Are you hungry, my dear?" he asked solicitously. "No, not at all," she said, "just thirsty." The truth was that she was hungry, but Marissa had been on a diet for four months, ever since their first date, if having sex on the couch in his office could be called a date. His praise for her appearance increased as she slimmed down, and she hoped he'd be pleased with how she looked in her new black lace negligee. When the waiter brought their glasses of beer, Rashad turned a little in the confines of the booth. Smiling, he asked, "Did you meet the steward, Shanin? And you gave him the package?" "Yes, everything fell in place like clockwork, just as you said it would." She thought of the driver who Rashad was to have paid in advance, but said nothing of how the bastard had extorted thirty dollars from her. "I gave the package to Shanin this morning, an hour before I left the ship, and I made sure he knows who Daniel Valentin is. He assured me he'd have the package on the right bus." "Good, you did a good job. If I didn't already love you, I'd fall in love with you right now. Do you think the incident on the bus has already taken place?" She checked her watch. "No, not yet. The tourist groups had staggered schedules, and the Valentins went to the Hermitage, then to lunch, and then they will board the bus to Peterhof." The trip to Peter the Great's sumptuous palace on the Gulf of Finland was one she hoped to make herself. Not on this trip, but someday. There would be plenty of time. "So, in an hour or two?" "Yes. And they won't know a thing. Shanin assured me absolutely nothing will tie the incident to him, or to me, or to you." "Well, he's being paid enough to make damn sure of that," Rashad said. "Now, I want to be sure I understand how this will work..." "You don't need to know anything about it, my dear. It's a test of the vaccine, in 'field conditions' is how I like to put it. The Shenyang influenza could kill hundreds of thousands of people. We must be sure our vaccine works, and there is no time for the niceties of clinical trials and a big international hullabaloo. It's something we must do to ensure the survival of the nation of Israel. First, we manufacture enough vaccine for Israel. Then we manufacture enough for millions of other people. Not only do Israeli microbiologists save millions of lives, but we make millions of dollars." "What if the vaccinations given to the Valentin family don't protect them?" she sighed. "Oh, I'm sure they will. The Valentins will be fine. But if it didn't work, they wouldn't be any worse off than if they'd caught the Shenyang virus at a soccer match, right at home in Tel Aviv. No, my darling, pray that our formulation is correct, for the Valentins' health, and for our own. You and I, and the Valentins, are the only people vaccinated so far." She started to comment on Daniel's pain from the shot, and on her own lack of discomfort, but dismissed it as unimportant, and certainly not something on which to waste any of her precious time with Rashad. With a sigh, he continued. "What a job it will be, what dedication it will take, to manufacture the vaccine before Shenyang becomes an epidemic. You've seen it in the laboratory, my dear. You know what a killer it wants to be." She nodded soberly, wondering about the other people on the bus. "How will you know the result of this test? The random selection..." "The steward on the ship, Shanin, is making a record of everyone who rides the same bus as the Valentins. They will all return to the ship, and he'll keep a close watch all the way to Helsinki. Meanwhile, he'll send me their names and itineraries, and I'll observe their health -- scientifically, but at a distance. Much the same as we do when we look in a microscope." He signaled the waiter to bring two more glasses of beer. "How long do you think it will take until they exhibit signs of influenza?" she said when the waiter was out of earshot. "I expect significant deterioration, or should I say active signs of infection, before the ship docks in Helsinki. But it is nothing for you to be concerned about. You have done your part, played your part perfectly. I couldn't have set it up without you." He leaned over and kissed her lips playfully. "Will we have time together?" she asked hesitantly. "At least the weekend?" "Of course. I have been looking forward to it. But be gentle with me, my darling tiger." He laughed and leaned close. "I have a room reserved at a very nice hotel, but it's a surprise. I want you to go out in front of this hotel with me, as soon as we finish our beer. I have a car waiting. The driver will take you on a quick tour of St. Petersburg and then to our rendezvous. I'm all tied up until dinnertime. I'll see you then." "Shall we order dinner from room service?" she said, thinking of her black negligee. "Yes, let's do that." Ten minutes later the driver, thankfully not the one who'd treated Marissa so shabbily, opened the trunk and Rashad set her bags inside. Standing beside the open trunk, he spoke to the driver and peeled off several bills from his money clip. The driver bowed deferentially and closed the trunk. Rashad waved to Marissa as the driver closed her door. She sat back and fished a snack out of her carry-on bag. She'd had the foresight to save a bagel from breakfast in the salon, and it was dried out but still satisfying. She hoped she'd get to the hotel in plenty of time for a luxurious bath before Rashad got there. She'd be in her negligee, waiting for him between crisp sheets. She asked the driver what they were going past, and how long they'd be touring, but he clearly spoke only Russian. She wished Rashad had engaged a driver she could communicate with, but shrugged. It didn't really matter. One palace looked just like the next palace. She saw enough to tell her friends in Tel Aviv she'd "seen it all." They wouldn't ever guess that she'd spent most of her vacation looking up at the ceiling of a hotel room, with the director of the infectious disease section riding her like the Bronze Horseman. Well, one friend would guess. Wilhemina Ginsberg, her first name shortened long ago to Villie, was for all intents and purposes Marissa's best friend. Villie had emigrated from Russia, and knew no one in Israel when she arrived. Marissa felt sorry for the woman, the same age as Marissa herself and starting her life and career all over again. Villie was grateful for any kindness, any gesture of friendship. She didn't share their co-workers opinion that Marissa was unattractive and boring -- an opinion Marissa knew by intuition even as it baffled her. By looking up to Marissa, Villie filled a hole in Marissa's universe, and supplied the sympathetic ears for Marissa's late adolescent love affair. Marissa kept her St. Petersburg assignation with Rashad secret until three days before her departure from Tel Aviv, when Villie came to her apartment for coffee and to return three English-language books on tape. She noticed the shopping bag, and somehow Marissa -- in her state of excitement at the coming adventure -- blurted out that Rashad would be meeting her in St. Petersburg. She knew Villie wouldn't breathe a word. Rashad had practically resurrected Villie from the pitiful village of Russian Jews newly arrived in Israel. She owed a lot to him, and had nothing to gain by gossip. In the suffocating heat of the car, Marissa noticed the city had thinned out and the road had deteriorated. As they bounced through potholes she tried again to speak to the driver. She concentrated all her effort on one word, "Hotel. Where is the hotel? The hotel?" He showed no sign of understanding her and kept on driving. At a wide spot in the road, he turned and crossed a canal on a rickety bridge. The road gradually grew marshy. She recalled reading that St. Petersburg was built on a swamp, that tens of thousands of Russian slaves and Swedish prisoners of war had died to build Tsar Peter's European seaport. The Russian noblemen and all diplomats were ordered to move from Moscow to Russia's new capital in 1712. _Well,_ she thought, _I don't like it any better than they did._ They were driving deep into a marshy forest, about as inviting as a Moscow sewer, and every bit as hot and smelly. She poked the driver in the shoulder, harder and harder until he looked around. "No! Go back! Take me to the hotel! Hotel!" With each word her voice grew louder and more frantic. She was leaning forward over the seat, yelling at him as if the problem was not that he only understood Russian, but that he was deaf. Suddenly, he jerked the wheel to the left, pitched the car up and over a log and came to a stop. The jolt threw Marissa backward. When her head hit the window and cracked the cheap glass, she screamed in fury and lunged forward toward the driver. She managed to grab his jacket, but he was on his way out of the car and just shrugged it off. "Now, Jew bitch, you get out." Marissa didn't know which shocked her more, that he called her Jew bitch, an epithet he spat like filth out of his mouth, or that he spoke English. _He knew all along what I was saying!_ "You stinking son of a bitch!" she shouted, yanking up on the door handle behind the driver's seat to get out. Suddenly, she realized how much danger she was in. Terror instantly displaced her anger. Her mind raced. She saw that he'd left the keys in the ignition. _Maybe I can get away,_ she thought. She would step out, point behind him and scream at the top of her lungs, and when he turned to look, she'd jump in, lock the door, and get the hell out of there. It might have worked, had he not pulled a gun from the waistband of his pants. As soon as Marissa emerged from the car, the driver shot her point blank in the head. She fell back against the car, then toppled, face first, into the mud. The driver, who'd always liked American Westerns, pumped two more shots into her back, and aimed the gun toward the sky, right in front of his face. As if auditioning for Hollywood, he blew across the hot barrel of the "smoking gun" and placed it on the front seat of the car. He opened the trunk and took out a chain. Looping it around the log, he wedged it back and forth, rocking until it moved. When it rolled over the body of Marissa Vengerov, impaling her through the back with a truncated limb, the weight was enough to shove all of her, except her legs below the knees, under the mud. The driver stepped delicately on one leg, then the other, forcing them beneath the mud, but stopping short of soaking his own shoes. The last thing swallowed by the oozing muck was Marissa's new shoes, the high heels that hurt so much when she walked. -------- *Seven* Thursday, June 21, 2001 (30^th of Sivan, the year 5761) _St. Petersburg, Russia_ "I think this is the bus to hell," the American man said, "and I think we've reached our destination!" They were stopped beside the highway to Peterhof while the driver looked under the hood and scratched his head. Their guide, a sophisticated young Russian woman named Svetlana, had just stepped out of the vehicle to talk to the driver. The passengers had tried every single window, but none of them opened. In addition to the unavoidable odor of thirty-three sweaty people, and the general dirty smell of the bus, there was an extremely unpleasant smell that reminded Daniel Valentin of formaldehyde. He thought of his brother's paranoia about closed spaces and recirculated air. _Arnie would have leaped, shrieking, from this pesthole by now_. The American who had spoken, Hank Hossman, was as garrulous as his wife, Ellie, was quiet. Daniel pegged him as a salesman within five minutes of their travels on the first bus, the one that took them from the dock to the Hermitage. His first guess of Hossman's product was cars. He could imagine Hank Hossman on American TV. But over lunch he'd overheard Hossman say he worked for Arrow, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Canada. He had started out as a salesman, but was now corporate vice president of sales for North America. Moshe asked, "Where do you live in the United States, Hank?" Daniel was appalled at Moshe's lack of manners. "Moshe! You know how to address adults." Hossman intervened. "Please don't blame the boy, Dr. Valentin. Your boys were totally polite when we met on the ship, 'Mister and Missus Hossman.' But I told them to call us Hank and Ellie. I have grandsons just a little younger than your boys. Is that okay with you, if they call me Hank?" The American's informality annoyed Daniel, but he _had_ let the boys run loose all over the ship, and they attracted friends like magnets in a pile of iron filings. "Well, I suppose it's all right, as long as you suggested it." He didn't go so far, however, as to say, "Call me Daniel. And this here's the wife, Rachel." He'd leave it as _Dr. Valentin._ Hank wiped his face with a handkerchief. They were all baking like buns. "Moshe, we live in Seattle, Washington. Do you know where that is?" "Yes, sir. We've been to America lots of times." Rachel laughed. "Three trips is not a lot of times." She stood in the aisle and fanned herself with a guidebook she'd bought at the Hermitage. "I'm their mom, Rachel Valentin. Have you been to Russia before, Hank?" "No, I never wanted to come. I'd traveled a lot in Europe on business, but I didn't have any interest in Russia, Romania, all those places. I'd rather spend my time and money in the U.S.A., but Ellie talked me into the Grand Tour this summer." He looked over at Ellie, who looked like she might faint from the dreadful heat. "I'll bet you wish we were back in Seattle, now," he added fondly. "I wish we were at the North Pole, now," Rabin chimed in. "This is an outrage!" said a German man, Gunter Bach. "The damn cruise company president is going to hear from me about this. I didn't pay sixteen thousand deutsche marks to have me and my wife dragged out and left for hours in a pigsty by the side of the road." In the same way that a pot of water reaches the boiling point, all at once, the passengers all agreed to write and call the cruise company's headquarters and demand reparations for the ruined day. "It's not like they can make this little inconvenience up to us tomorrow," Bach's wife, Brigid, said petulantly. The two Bachs were equally overweight, and their faces were as pink as pomegranates. "The ship leaves at noon tomorrow." A young Norwegian couple with a toddler, the only baby on the cruise, woke up when he wailed. Rabin and Moshe, who had taken a special liking to little Erik, squeezed past Hank Hossman with a polite "Excuse us, please," and made faces to distract the baby from his discomfort. His mother, Kari, had already removed all his clothes. Even in just a diaper, he was miserable, as evidenced by a spreading heat rash. "What the hell is going on?" Hank said. "I'm going to talk to the guide. This fiasco has gone on long enough." "I'm coming with you." Gunter Bach wiped his neck with a lace hankie his wife gave him. "Moshe, Rabin," Rachel called softly, "come here please." When the aisle was clear of the two big men, the boys returned to their seat behind their parents. Even they were losing their ebullience. The adventure aspect of breaking down on a road in Russia had worn thin. "You may each have two sips of water," she said, handing them the tall bottle of spring water she'd carried since they left the ship. Only one-third of it was left. Daniel looked at his watch yet again. "We've been stuck here almost an hour. I think we'd better all get off the bus and breathe some fresh air." Little Erik's crying increased in volume and intensity, further fraying the nerves of the sweating passengers. His father, Sven, an engineer for an oil drilling company in the North Sea, tried his cell phone again. "Nothing!" he said in English. His disgust would have been evident in any language. At least ten people on the bus carried cell phones, but none of them could get service. Sven strode angrily down the aisle and jumped to the ground. Moshe and Rabin scurried to the window at the front of the bus and peered through the crescent-shaped opening of the raised hood. "Sven is taking the tools away from the driver," they reported like play-by-play announcers on the radio. "The driver is yelling and waving his arms. Now Svetlana is holding onto his arms. Now he's yelling at her. Now Mr. Hossman and Mr. Bach are yelling at him." The boys jumped out of the way as the bus driver climbed into his seat. He turned the key and pumped the gas pedal while Sven did something under the hood. The motor turned over and a cheer went up from all the passengers. Hossman and Bach got in, followed by the guide while Sven closed the hood. When Sven stepped aboard, three British couples traveling together sang, "For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, that nobody can deny," and all the other passengers joined in the chorus. Sven wasn't finished with his repairs to the dreadful bus, though. He rummaged in the toolbox, still open behind the driver's seat, and extracted a crowbar and two large screwdrivers. He directed Gunter Bach where to place the screwdrivers and the two of them forced open every window in the bus. As the bus pulled back onto the highway and a blessed breeze gushed in the windows, Moshe and Rabin led the group in a cheer, "We like Sven, we like Sven." For the remainder of the trip to Peterhof and back to the ship, the boys compiled a manifest of the bus passengers. All of them had e-mails except two elderly American women, Vera Collyer and Frances Young. They gave the e-mail addresses of their granddaughters who lived near them in Utah and said they'd get messages when they talked to the girls on the phone. The Americans were guessing at how high the temperature was outside, nearly one hundred, they agreed, and the humidity was at least ninety percent. They swapped tales of temperatures they'd endured in Dallas and Chicago. "If it weren't for Sven," said Mrs. Young, "we all might have had heatstroke in here. I was getting nauseated, I don't mind telling you." Brigid Bach had suffered heat prostration in Berlin during a horrible heat wave the year before, and she said she was very, very close to that condition this time. Her husband said if she'd died he'd sue the cruise company for twenty million deutsche marks, and Brigid acted insulted. "Oh, is that all you think I'm worth?" "Now you're in trouble," Hank said, slapping Gunter on the shoulder good-naturedly. Daniel was as glad as anyone to breathe fresh air. He kept his concern to himself, but he'd identified the unpleasant smell that had nagged at his memory. It was quite similar to a preservative he used at the lab in Tel Aviv, a chemical that kept viruses alive. "Look, there's the palace!" Mrs. Collyer called, awe-struck. "Have you ever seen anything so magnificent?" "Dad, can we still stay awake all night tonight?" Rabin called. "And see the midnight sun?" He and Leah had planned to take the boys into St. Petersburg after supper on the ship, to walk at an all night street fair and dance festival, but he had an uneasy feeling. It had been fomenting since their tour of the Hermitage, when he'd heard several horror stories among the tourists about armed robbery of tourists by thugs, probably the Russian _mafiya._ And the trouble with the bus had added to his anxiety. "Yes," he said at last, "you can stay up all night, but we're staying on the ship." The boys opened their mouths to protest, but the look on Daniel's face quashed any argument. "Well, I'm going to bed right after dinner," Rachel said, "if I can keep from falling asleep at the table. You can wake me up to see the midnight sun." The boys laughed about how hard it would be to wake her up. Daniel joined in, sounding a lot more light-hearted than he felt. He knew he'd be awake and keeping a watchful eye on his sons every minute of the long summer night. He took one last look around their seats to make sure they had everything with them, and stepped down from the bus. Svetlana was herding the group of tourists toward the palace entrance and beginning her spiel in English, with a repetition in heavily accented German. "I've always wanted to see Peterhof," Ellie Hossman said to her husband with more enthusiasm than Daniel had seen her express on the whole trip. "I will never forget this day." Something about the phrase seemed prescient to Daniel. He shaded his eyes to see the facade of the palace as Moshe called, "Come on, dad, hurry. We're the next ones to go inside." Daniel Valentin smiled at his wife and sons and said to himself, _I will never forget this day._ At a tinny honk from the bus, he looked back. The driver had pulled the bus out from the curb, honked, then stopped suddenly, jerked open the door, and yelled at a taxi driver that blocked his way. _The sudden stop caused a cheap rubber band to snap._ Not satisfied with yelling at a distance, the driver rose and climbed down the steep stairs. As he did, his heavy work-boot struck an object and kicked it clear out the door, into the gutter. _The small, lidless canister, freed by the broken rubber band, rolled a few feet, then settled._ -------- *Eight* _Thursday, June 21, 2001 (30^th of Sivan, the year 5761_) _St. Petersburg, Russia_ As midnight approached, the sun and earth teased the residents and visitors to St. Petersburg with their marvelous solstice trick. The sun appeared to drop out of sight on the southwestern horizon, leaving a lovely sunset and plenty of light. As the earth continued to turn, the brightest point of the sunset seemed to float eastward on the southern horizon, until the sunset metamorphosed into a red dawn, and the sun reappeared for another day of approximately twenty-two hours of sunlight. At the point of least light, but certainly not darkness, Rashad Teicher sat on a balcony in the old czarist capital and poured a glass of ouzo, a strong Greek liquor, for his wife and her brother. The round wrought iron table was so small their knees almost touched. He felt that his toast should be significant, a few words to mark a watershed event, a turning point in human history. It certainly wouldn't be the Jewish toast, _l' chaim_, "to life." After all, they were drinking to its opposite -- not for them, but for a few hundred thousand Israeli Jews and American Zionists. There were excellent reasons for killing three hundred thousand Americans. But they wouldn't have to kill that many to achieve their goals. Americans were notorious for pushing the panic button every time about five people died of one disease in a short period of time or in a confined area, like a small town. The American press inevitably picked it up and wrung every ounce of fear produced by the deaths, and the Americans stampeded all over one another. The hysteria was identical in every respect to the American stock market. Teicher held his glass aloft and gazed at his beautiful wife. He touched his short, rounded glass to hers, and then to his brother-in-law's glass. As Tatiana touched her glass in turn to that of Sergei Kos, Teicher said, "To unity, power, and control." Kos nodded, pleased with the toast. The three of them tossed back the liquor and slammed their glasses on the thin slate top of the table. "Pour again, Rashad," Tatiana murmured. He tipped the bottle, putting about one shot of ouzo in each glass. His wife, radiant in the cool midnight light, lifted her glass. "To the two men I love." She kissed Sergei on the cheek and Rashad on the mouth, teasing him by thrusting her tongue against his, then pulling away. For the occasion she wore a dress she'd bought in Paris, a tight, strapless sheath with matching chiffon shawl, both the same fantastic color as her eyes. Blue -- the shade of blue in lakes formed by melting glaciers. "Once more," Sergei said with one of his rare smiles. Sergei Kos's eyes made Rashad think of glaciers, too, but not serene lakes. He saw instead the black of a bottomless crevasse. He poured a shot for each of them and set the squat bottle in the middle of the table. Sergei lifted his glass and clinked it first against Tatiana's. She kissed Sergei again, this time on the lips, then turned to Rashad, as if daring him to say something. He was used to Tatiana's teasing, and just nodded agreeably as he lightly touched her glass and Sergei's glass with his. His wife's brother would make a lethal enemy, and Rashad did not intend to ever stand in Sergei Kos's crosshairs. Sergei wasn't so much immoral as amoral, a man who stood outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply. Sergei Kos sat motionless, his glass raised. Turning his black eyes toward Rashad, he said, "To Palestine." Shifting his gaze to Tatiana, he added, "To you." He then lifted his glass higher still and said, "To the great American holiday, the Fourth of July." They drained their glasses a third time. Rashad felt his eyes water and a burning sensation at the base of his skull. He wished again that Sergei had brought vodka instead of that godawful Greek mouthwash. Sergei left the suite shortly after their toasts, and Tatiana led Rashad to her bedroom. The liquor and talk of the biological terrorism in store for the United States and Israel had worked as a powerful aphrodisiac on her. Rashad used the bathroom and drank three glasses of water, hoping to clear his head and improve his libido, which was always steamrolled by alcohol. He adored Tatiana, and just the scent of her musky perfume was usually enough to give him an erection like a steel rod, but he feared failure in her bedroom that night. And he knew that the worst enemy of sexual prowess was fear of failure. It was almost a sure predictor. He drank another glass of water and forced the word _flaccid_ from his mind. In the bedroom, he saw that Tatiana had pulled the thick curtains that blocked out the persistent sun and turned the lamp beside her bed on the low setting. The bedspread was in a heap at the end and the top sheet was rolled back. In the half-light, he saw Tatiana lying nude, her head propped up on two pillows, and her long, smooth legs so inviting. He looked down and was never so glad, before that night, to see his penis at a right angle to his body. If he could perform the contortion, he would have kissed it in gratitude. Later, in his own bedroom, on the other side of their suite, he lay still. Gradually, his head cleared from the liquor and his headache surrendered to the five aspirin he'd taken. He thought back to Sergei's toast to the Fourth of July. It would be an important day for their joint causes. Rashad didn't care if Sergei's arm of the Russian _mafiya_ became the most powerful crime syndicate in the United States. And Sergei didn't care if the Israelis were wiped out and all their land was returned to the Palestinians as a homeland. That was Rashad's cause, his reason to live and, if necessary, a reason to die. Born in 1945 in the village of Dayr Yasin, near Jerusalem, Rashad had been a toddler when the state of Israel was declared. His father was a leader, a member of the _ayun_, or notable families. Their village had a non-belligerency pact with the local Jewish forces, so Rashad's Muslim family had not fled from their ancestral homes as hundreds of thousands of Muslim and Christian Arabs had done. But in April 1948 the _Irgun Zvai Leumi_, militant Revisionist Zionists led by Menachim Begin, massacred the Dayr Yasin villagers. Little Rashad was the only survivor of his immediate family, and was taken in, grudgingly, by his father's younger brother. Eban was a weakling, a groveler, and Rashad grew to despise him. Eban had six children, all of them girls, and they made Rashad's life hell. Rashad was an Israeli citizen, but as a non-Jew he had to work twice as hard as a Jew to succeed. His entire education was conducted in Hebrew, and all entrance examinations for university were weighted toward knowledge of western culture. Even while he excelled in school, the boy seethed with hatred for Jews and the Hebrew language. His headache gone at last, he could analyze his plans. _Yes_, he concluded, _by working together our separate goals will be met._ Sergei and his superbly trained and coordinated troops needed Rashad to supply biological weapons of mass destruction and the vaccines against those weapons for the chosen few. At the same time, Rashad recognized his need for Sergei's human assets in virus production laboratories in Iran and inside the United States and Israel to carry out the warfare on a strict timetable. The Fourth of July was the day set for "Nurse" to emerge in New York with the vaccine for Shen II, the artificially mutated and more virulent form of A/Shenyang influenza. Rashad didn't know her real name, or even if "Nurse" was a woman. He didn't need to know. He trusted Sergei with those arrangements. Whoever Sergei sent would meet the six operatives Sergei had selected from his agents inside America, and inoculate them against Shen II. They would return to their cities with enough Shen II vaccine for their small circles of trusted confederates, not more than eighteen people in total. _Sergei says all his agents inside the United States have completed a three-dose schedule of vaccinations for the other disease._ Rashad wondered how many agents that was, but knew better than to ask. From the Fourth of July until the Shen II virus would be released in bomblets all over Israel and the United States would be long enough for Sergei's operatives to be fully immune. Ten days. July 14. Rashad Teicher lay in the dark and thought, for the first time, of the significance of that date. _Bastille Day_. Another day on which patriots struck a blow for their rights. _How fitting_. He drifted off to sleep as the sun climbed into the sky over St. Petersburg. Or, rather, as it appeared to climb. -------- *Nine* July 4, 2001 Los Alamos, New Mexico Patrice Kelsey: _"...O'er the land of the fre -- EEE, and the home ... of the ... brave."_ Like the rest of the crowd at Overlook Park in White Rock, I whooped and clapped, then sat down cross-legged on the quilt Katy had provided. I finished the slice of pizza and Coke I'd bought from Mike Luna and fended off Anita Clancy and her Kiwanis raffle ticket. "What would I do with a Harley-Davidson, for crying out loud?" "Um, you could sell it," Anita said without much conviction. "You could take me riding," Katy added with a lot of enthusiasm. Anita wasn't trying very hard to get $50 out of me. As a vice president of the bank where I kept my meager account, she probably had a feel for my paycheck-to-paycheck existence. In fact, I knew she did, as she'd had to call me about a little ISF problem I'd stumbled into. If you have to ask what ISF stands for, you probably have never had InSufficient Funds. That's one of the things I like about the town of Los Alamos. It's small enough to know your bankers by their first names. Of course, I'd prefer to be known to them by some initials other than ISF. The fireworks, paid for by donation and presented by members of the town's Kiwanis clubs, were accompanied by Sousa marches and _Tchiakovsky's 1812 Overture_ on a loudspeaker. I was glad to see Katy enjoying herself for the first time since her mother's death. Leah Valentin had slipped gradually into a coma two days after I'd shown her the obituary. She died the following day. Danny Carter's mother, Myrtle, died the same day. She succumbed to the raging _Staphylococcus aureas_ infection, but the real cause of death was a mutated strain of the influenza that had affected much of the United States in the winter of 2000. There was a two-day delay before the mortuary in Santa Fe could pick up her body. That was the first I knew about the _overload,_ as the funeral director so delicately phrased it. The number of deaths in early June was higher than anticipated -- even after one factored in the usual highway slaughter. Myrtle Carter, bless her heart, had her affairs in order before she got sick. Danny knew she wanted her body cremated. That was fortunate, as a doctor representing the state department of public health encouraged cremation, though subtly. In late June, seven babies died of _streptococcus A_ in Albuquerque, and some parents were said to be taking extended leave or quitting their jobs outright in order to take their children out of daycare. The bizarre disease that killed four college students, also in Albuquerque, was a rare form of meningitis, the health department announced. Each of them had been in strapping health one day, and dead the next. Thousands of students at the University of New Mexico had been inoculated with gamma globulin, and the public health doctors watched carefully, but no other cases of meningitis had been diagnosed in New Mexico in the two weeks before July Fourth. I knew, however, from the Associated Press wire reports that would be in area newspapers the next day that students had died of meningitis at the University of Colorado, Colorado State, and Arizona State. And all these cases had developed during summer school, when the campuses were ghost towns compared with what they'd be in September. The fireworks display ended in a finale that brought cheers from the crowd. As the streamers of smoke drifted away toward the south like ghosts of jellyfish, Katy helped me fold the quilt and gather our cans and other trash. We moved, in the dark, toward the road to walk out of the park. I recognized Morrie Pongratz just ahead of us. "Great show, Morrie," I called. "I thought so, too. Feels good to have fireworks again." The year before, in the wake of the Cerro Grande Fire, and with fires still raging out of control all over the West, the Kiwanis clubs had opted out of a fireworks display. It did feel good to have them again. "Hi, Mr. Ullman," Katy called to her science mentor. "Katy, Patrice, how are you?" Bob Ullman wasn't bad looking, but he wasn't particularly good looking, either. Katy thought I should be seriously interested in him and one day called him a "catch," but I had looked at her like she was crazy. He was a nerd, a techno-geek, a conehead. Socially, he rated two on a scale of ten, although in the rarified air of Los Alamos I guess I'd have to give him a rating of six. He was single, presumably made an excellent salary, and if he could be considered "sexual" at all, he was heterosexual. He was extremely intelligent, but focused so narrowly on his field of interest, microbiology, that I doubted he knew how to eat with utensils. "Katy," I'd said when she called him a catch, "if you think he's so attractive, _you_ can marry him." "Patrice, I'm twelve years old!" she'd said, her hands on her hips. "Yes, but I have a hunch he'll still be available in ten years. Or twenty." "Are you ready for your trip?" Bob Ullman asked her as we moved with the crowd. I slowed a little to greet a county councilor and her husband and walk alongside them to our cars. I dropped Katy at her new home in White Rock. Her father hadn't been able to face the prospect of rebuilding on their burned lot in North Community and had sold it and bought a house in White Rock. The small ranch needed work, but it was livable, and that was good enough. Arnie Valentin had enough to worry about without taking on home improvement projects. He made a half-hearted invitation to me to stop in for coffee after the fireworks, and seemed relieved when I said I needed to get home. I recognized his sluggish journey through the stages of grief for what it was. I was serving as a surrogate older sister to Danny as he faced the loss of his mother. Katy seemed to be okay, but inside she was aching. I think she was taking on the role of nurturer since her father was having such a bad time. Someday when she and her father least expected it, she'd break down. Grief could be postponed, but never totally avoided. I'd come by my insight the hard way. My father had died in a car wreck when I was four. Of course, I don't remember losing him, but I remember growing up with a constant sense of loss and recurrent dreams of lifeboats where no men were allowed. Lately I'd been having the same dream, and I suspect it showed my fear that Rick Romero was gone not temporarily but permanently out of my life. As troublesome as the geographical space between us was the news that he'd accepted a job doing public relations for the FBI. For an award-winning journalist to swear to preserve, protect and defend the reputation of the agency that arrested Richard Jewell and Wen Ho Lee -- but let Robert Hanssen betray America for fifteen years -- smacked of selling out. I watched the news and tried to push my worries about Rick and the FBI out of my mind. _Plenty of fish in the sea,_ I told myself. _Yes, but I don't want a fish!_ -------- *Ten* July 4, 2001 _Los Alamos, New Mexico_ Arkady Valentin didn't mind the holiday, since he could get a lot of work done at home on his laptop computer. Usually he took its capability for granted, but sometimes he'd marvel at how that little box had more computing power than all the computing machines used to design the first atom bombs during World War II. And with a modem and a password, he could log onto the laboratory's Cray Supercomputer from almost anywhere. This pause to marvel at available random access memory was, to Arnie Valentin, the equivalent of stopping to smell the roses. He'd actually taken a break and gone outside to watch the fireworks for five minutes. And he'd taken another five-minute break at ten p.m. to say hello to Patrice Kelsey and urge Katy to get ready for bed. He had no idea what time a twelve-year-old should go to bed, so he just tossed it out every night when it crossed his mind. It was harder during the summer, since half his incantation -- "because you've got school tomorrow"_ -- _didn't apply. He loved his daughter and was proud of her intelligence and her accomplishments, but the only time he knew what to say to her was when she spoke his language -- science. Specifically, microbiology. Katy spoke several languages -- Russian and German as she'd learned from infancy along with English, and French, which she was taking twice a week after school, and a little Hebrew. She read music and played the violin. And she felt at home with mathematical notation and the periodic table. She also seemed to converse in some garbled form of English peculiar to teenagers. Arnie hoped Leah had taken care of Katy's personal education as a woman, because he couldn't see himself bringing it up. It seemed about ten minutes later, but was more like two hours later, when he tipped his face up to accept her kiss, said good night, and began to compose an e-mail letter to his brother, Daniel, in Tel Aviv. "I am distressed at the statistical occurrence of influenza in the U.K. and Spain..." Arnie was good at compartmentalization. He'd already thought through his concern with the sharp uptick of influenza and what doctors call "ILI," Influenza-Like-Illnesses, in the U.K. and Spain, so typing the letter to Daniel was sort of like downloading through his fingertips. His mind was free to explore new territory. As was the case so much of the time, however, his mind stubbornly returned to familiar, unpleasant terrain. It was like scratching a scab or gnawing a hangnail. Leah, trying always to make the best of things, called their rectangular box a mobile home. Every detail of living through the Cerro Grande Fire and living through the aftermath seemed to hit Arnie twice as hard as it hit Leah. He guessed that Leah's battle with cancer had toughened her. When you want one thing -- _to live! -- _pots and pans and galoshes don't seem so important. But losing their house and every object they owned -- except for the items saved in their minivan -- knocked Arnie down flat. He'd never get over the guilt of not having been there. While he was in his laboratory, the fire lapped at his gate, licked at his eaves, and then devoured his house. If he'd stayed there, if he'd fought the fire with a rake and a shovel and a hose, he might have saved their house. No amount of saying, "Yeah, or maybe you might have died!" seemed to assuage his guilt. He had been in their trailer on North Mesa when the FBI came for him... Leah was sick from her chemotherapy infusion. She was lying on the couch with a wastebasket beside her on the floor. Katy was spending the day in Santa Fe with friends, shopping and going to a movie. Arnie was eating a peanut butter sandwich. There was some leftover chicken enchilada casserole in the refrigerator, needing only three minutes in the microwave, but the smell of any food made Leah violently ill. So he ate his sandwich and read the latest _Scientific American_ while Leah watched a videotape he'd made for her of the Boston Pops. Such an ordinary day. Until the FBI came for him. He had talked to them before. He'd answered every question they had posed about the infectious tissue missing from the refrigerated vault in his lab. Well, not _his_ lab. The biological laboratory within Los Alamos National Laboratory where he and other scientists conducted research. At that point he had not even retained an attorney. He wanted to know where the tissue was as much as they did, and he thought by answering every question he could help discover what had happened. The FBI agents seemed to understand his concern about the lung tissue, that he felt bound to help them. Like a good citizen and a good scientist. The tissue was potentially dangerous. Of course he would take a polygraph. Just a formality. _Of course_, he'd said. _Anything I can do to help._ But when they came to the door of his temporary home, on a Saturday afternoon, they were cold, hostile. His polygraph showed _deception_, they said. _Deception?_ he asked. _Deception about what? What question? Everything I said was the truth._ Arnie's mind raced back over the polygraph. Like a man who realized he'd dropped a hundred-dollar bill in a pasture, he searched -- trying to think of any question that could have triggered a false reading of "deception" by the machine. Four times the examiner had asked him if anyone besides his group leader, Mitchell Quaid, had known about the infectious tissue being in the lab's refrigerated vault. Arnie had answered, "Not to my knowledge," but the examiner said he had to answer _Yes_ or _No_. So he'd said, "No," but he was thinking, _How could I know if someone else knew if he or she found it out without my knowledge?_ The question was illogical. The agents asked him to go with them voluntarily. He recalled the agent Luis Romero saying, like he was a friend, that it was probably a misunderstanding, and they needed to go over a few points, just to "clear it up." Arnie had agreed. He still didn't think he needed an attorney. He called a friend to please stay with Leah, and he'd changed clothes and gone outside with the FBI agents. It seemed to be chance, _unlucky_ chance, that the two agents, one on either side, took him by his arms as he stepped down the narrow steps of the trailer. He was looking down to avoid stepping in mud when he heard someone call, "Dr. Valentin!" He'd looked up just as a television cameraman turned on his videocam. The eight seconds of footage of "Los Alamos scientist, Dr. Arkady Valentin, being taken into custody by the FBI" ran over and over and over and over on TV news. And a still shot from the footage - the instant when Arnie had looked up and the two agents had their hands on his arms - ran in newspapers and magazines around the country. Maybe around the world, Arnie didn't know. Eventually, he'd been cleared. Other biological scientists at Los Alamos, at universities, and biotech labs had jumped to his defense. Mitchell Quaid said he listed the tissue on some documents, papers that would at one time have been classified, but the Department of Energy insisted that too much information was "Classified" and ordered more openness. At least five people had seen Quaid's documented list of the contents of the vault, and for all he knew they each told five more people. Or a hundred. No, Quaid explained, there was no system for signing in and out of the refrigerated vault. There used to be, but the DOE suspended that, too. Once there was enough embarrassment to go around and the FBI wanted nothing more to do with the mess, the subject was dropped. Since Arnie had not been arrested and jailed, as had been the case for Wen Ho Lee, he got no apology from a judge, no redress for his grievance, no televised homecoming. He did his best to get over it, in the current slang phrase. _Get over it!_ He finished his letter to Daniel, pressed Send and watched his modem say it was dialing, connecting, transferring mail. _Transfer successful_. Noting that it was nearly midnight in Los Alamos, the end of the Fourth of July, Arnie calculated the time in Tel Aviv. A little before seven a.m. on July fifth in Israel. Daniel might be reading his letter right now, while Arnie yawned and powered down his computer for the night. The feeling of connection to his brother, separated though they were by a continent and an ocean, made Arnie feel a little better, and _a little better_ was all Arnie Valentine hoped for these days. _Dear God,_ he thought as he turned on the portable fan in his bedroom, _I miss Leah._ -------- *Eleven* July 4, 2001 Los Alamos, New Mexico _Patrice Kelsey:_ I had a good reason to go straight home to my apartment after dropping Katy at her house. Rick had left a message on my answering machine that he'd call at about eleven p.m. my time. I'm a morning person, up with Venus, and I usually am asleep by ten or ten-thirty. But I would certainly be up to see the late news for once. I poured a glass of limeade and turned on the TV. Rambo emerged from his hidey-hole under my bed, visited the litter box, and climbed onto my lap. With a yawn that showed his fearsome teeth, he curled up in a ball and went back to sleep. I thought back a year, to the Fourth of July 2000. I have never been so exhausted, before or since, and I hope never to feel that way again. First, the Cerro Grande Fire kicked us all in the head. We had to evacuate on May 10 and put out the _Guardian_ as a redheaded stepchild of the Santa Fe paper. Every day of the following week felt like invasive surgery. Pain, like the Valentin family's pain of watching their home burn on TV, was simply everywhere. Heroism was a balm, but the pain kept coming back. Rick and I had press credentials to participate in a huge bioterrorism exercise in Denver "sometime in May," the date to be announced only a few days in advance. When the smoke of our Los Alamos disaster cleared, literally, we got the notification. Operation Topoff, for Top Officials of the Justice Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other agencies, would start May 20. Three simulated terrorism scenarios were to run concurrently in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in Washington, D.C., and Denver. We had only enough time to drive to Denver or cancel. The timing for us was awful, but the exercise might not happen again for years, maybe never, so we went. We figured our fatigue going into the exercise was realistic. Natural and man-made disasters don't wait for a good time, when reporters are rested and packed and their replacements are thoroughly up to speed. For Rick, who was applying for jobs in Washington, participation in the exercise was professional gold. For me, it was a chance to hone my skills, and I figure the sharper the better. At the end of three days, however, I was anything but sharp. The exercise started with a simulated release of pneumonic plague at a performing arts center. In spite of closing off the airport and trying to isolate Colorado, the epidemic swept out of control, with 970 deaths and 3,700 more cases of plague going into the fourth day. What I had learned, filtered through a fog of exhaustion,was that in a country where people refuse to give up their civil liberties, and where the political implications of holding people at gunpoint are as outrageous as the act itself, DOOM is not just the name of a game. I scratched Rambo's bulbous belly and watched news segments about a truck chased and stopped by Belen police and found to contain sixteen illegal immigrants. Next was a three-car fatality accident near Grants with beer cans in all three cars. Then, a truck rollover on Interstate 40 in Albuquerque that tied up traffic east of I-25 for three hours. Pretty much the same as every other night's news. I wondered if I'd see Rick's brother, Luis Romero, while Katy and I were in Washington. And I wondered if Katy would recognize Luis. He'd been one of the two FBI agents who had conducted the humiliating escort of her father from their mobile home. Rick's brother had been in Los Alamos so many times in the past two years that he should have left a change of clothes at the Los Alamos Inn to save on luggage. Luis Romero and I had been thrown together before, during my resolute search for the spy code-named Perseus, and we'd come to a genuine, if grudging, appreciation of each other's intelligence. How tenuous was Luis's appreciation of my intelligence became apparent, however, during the Wen Ho Lee scandal. Agent Romero treated me like he treated all members of the press, which is to say, like a stubborn fungus between his toes. He acted like he knew everything in the universe, told us nothing, and was disgusted when I, and other reporters, printed interviews with Lee's daughter, son, defense attorneys, neighbors, and friends raising money for his defense fund. When _60 Minutes_ aired an interview with Dr. Lee that made the government look like a pack of wolves circling a crippled lamb, Luis was livid. Then I made things worse by snapping, in what started as what politicians call _a frank exchange of views_ but turned quickly into a war of words, "If you can't stand the blood, get out of the butcher shop!" He said I was parochial and chauvinistic, that my view of Los Alamos had become, "my town, wrong or right, but my town." Of course I countered with his chauvinism, "my FBI, never wrong, always right." I didn't know whether to be glad Rick had moved to Washington before Luis and I faced off like scorpions, or to wish he'd been here to get in the middle. He might have cooled us down, as he had done before, or he might have been stung from both sides. I guess I'm glad he was gone. I'm the kind of person who doesn't enjoy confrontation, but I don't want to let anyone else fight my battles, either. At last the phone rang. "Hello?" "Boy, it sounds good to hear your voice," Rick said. I could tell he was smiling. "Boy, it sounds good to hear you say that." "Only three and a half days until you get here. Luis wants to take us out to dinner. Katy, too." I doubted that Luis wanted to spend an evening with me. "That's nice of him. I just can't commit at this point. Our schedule will be laid out for us." Not knowing our schedule ahead of time made me edgy, since I like things in my life tidy and predictable. Not that anything actually was. I had planned to earn a degree in journalism at Mizzou, the University of Missouri, and get a good job at a large newspaper in the Midwest. And I did so. But then the paper merged with another daily and forty percent of the staff, yes, _moi_, had to go. I wangled a deferment on my student loans and got another job on another paper, for a slightly smaller salary. This unpleasant scenario repeated two more times. When the music stopped, I was in Los Alamos, New Mexico. "How about we get Luis to take Katy to dinner while you and I have an evening alone?" "Now you're talking." I had muted the TV, but noticed the words "Shooting in Chimayo" on the screen and turned it off with the remote control. "On a much less pleasant note," Rick said, "have you heard about the new computer virus?" "I hope this is the lead-in to a good joke you heard on Jay Leno." "No such luck. This is true. There's a virus hitting computers all over. Luis called to warn me. They're calling it the FLU Bug Virus. It's spreading just like the Love Bug did in April last year. And like that incursion to Microsoft, this garbage appears to come from St. Petersburg, Russia." The wholesale theft of secrets from Microsoft had been announced the previous October, but the downloading had been going on for months. "So how do we avoid getting the virus on our computers?" I sighed. _Isn't there such a thing as GOOD NEWS anymore?_ "Don't open any e-mail with FLU in the name." "Oh, that's easy. Only fifty or sixty percent of the news is about the flu, or influenza, or viruses." "True, the timing of this virus stinks, but it's FLU, all caps, not lower case." "Why do I not feel comforted?" "The FBI is working on it," he said. "I repeat, why do I not feel comforted?" There was an uncomfortable silence and I wished I could retract my remark. "Sorry. Thanks for telling me about the virus. I guess the powers that be at the laboratory know about it? So they don't get infected?" "Yeah. One of the lessons the FBI learned from the Love Bug debacle is to have the home phone numbers of the laboratory director and the head of the computer division at hand. They'll have to take the whole system off-line to prevent anyone opening the e-mail, which then infects the whole system. Same thing has to be done at Sandia and Livermore, and military bases." "FLU sucks," I said with a sigh. "Hey, good headline." I could tell he was smiling again. "I'm glad you still think like an editor." "Even if I've gone over to the dark side?" I sighed again. "It rankles me to admit this, Rick, but I'm not sure which side is the dark side anymore. I'm only sure I want to see you and kiss you and hold you." "Well, don't stop there!" "It's an old show business trick. Leave 'em wanting more," I said with a grin. "Hmm, I see. And it's working. I'll meet you and Katy at the gate at Dulles, Sunday at one-fifteen." We both said good night and Rick added, "Love you!" "Love you, too," I said, hating the thoroughly modern -- and casual -- use of "Love you!" as a parting salutation. It was as far from saying _I love you_ as blowing a kiss across a pool hall was from a breath-taking embrace on a moonlit balcony. I hung up the phone and scratched Rambo behind his ears. He rolled over to expose his belly again, in case I was of a mind to do more scratching. "Not tonight, little buddy. It's past our bedtime. And you're sleeping outside." I picked him up under his front legs and the other three quarters (or seven eighths) of his body hung like a water balloon, dead weight. Behind the apartment I lifted the wooden top of his hutch and set him down gently, then latched the top down tight. "G'night, Rambo. _Love you!"_ Sarcasm was wasted on a ferret, of course. Rambo yawned broadly. -------- *Twelve* July 4, 2001 _New York City_ The young Frenchwoman stood on the hotel balcony and sipped vodka so cold it made her eyes sting. Curious about the American holiday, she looked in the direction the bellman had suggested. She saw a burst of colored light in the river, then another and another. Each flash was followed by a hollow _Pop! Pop!_ that bounced around the city's canyons. The bursts of light in the river were, of course, reflections of fireworks beyond her line of sight, over the Statue of Liberty_. Fire in water_, she mused, _an optical illusion._ She took another sip of vodka, holding it in her mouth to warm it, then letting it flow down her throat like a magic potion that suffused her with super power. She smiled at the image. _Another illusion_. Genevieve Auberge had no illusions of love. The word _love_ simply had no meaning to her. She understood pleasure and its opposite; likewise, she understood power and its opposite. But the feeling of strong connection to another person, the connection she supposed people meant by _love_, no. She grew up in an orphanage and, for various periods of time, in foster homes. Love was not in the curriculum, but she did learn to be self-reliant and detached. She was pretty sure a person couldn't miss what she'd never had. Sergei Kos was her lover, but the word was of no importance. It had nothing to do with love, for either of them. She admired Sergei. She even liked him a little. Most of all she feared him. And fear, in some inexplicable way, was exciting to her. Every time she took a risk, and lived to tell of it, the better she liked the rush of emotion. And being involved with the head of the ruthless Kos _mafiya_ organization was a series of thrills. If working for a crime family was like climbing a mountain, Genevieve was climbing K-2. Sergei inspired his team to a kind of loyalty Genevieve never imagined before she, too, felt it. She liked New York City, and her reward for delivering the vials of vaccine to Sergei's six agents was a week at the Waldorf and the cash and credit to enjoy fine restaurants and pick out some new clothes. She had what Americans would call a charming French accent, which she didn't have to fake. She seemed to be born to wealth, used to shopping with no regard for price. But _that_ she had learned. As she shopped in Versace on Fifth Avenue, no one would guess she'd actually worked at a similar store in Paris. As a common salesgirl! But then Monsieur Rothschild had taken her away for a weekend at his villa in St. Tropez, which led to her becoming his mistress, which led to bigger and better things, even opportunities for marriage to a millionaire-many-times-over. But Genevieve wasn't looking for security. She was looking for thrills, so Sergei's assignment was good. She'd arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport late the night of July second. She couldn't travel under her own name any more, since it was possible Sergei was under surveillance and that her connection to him was known. So instead of a sultry French redhead named Genevieve Auberge, she was a quiet, bookish blonde from Switzerland named Marie Saint-Jean. Her passport, hotel reservation, and credit cards were all in order. Also in order was her lunch reservation for two at The Four Seasons on East Fifty-second Street. She had arrived there at 11:45 on Tuesday, July third. She spoke softly and the maitre d' had to lean close to hear her. "I'm expecting a gentleman to join me, a Monsieur Rompol. It is a business luncheon, and I don't know what he looks like." "I understand, Miss. And he'll be asking for...? "Mademoiselle Marie Saint-Jean. And Monsieur, there is something else," she added. "Yes?" She handed him her credit card. "Under no circumstances is Monsieur Rompol to pay for anything. He is my guest." "I understand, Mademoiselle. I'll instruct your waiter." She was annoyed when Monsieur Rompol joined her and was, in fact, rumpled. Couldn't he get his suit cleaned and pressed before such an important meeting? He was a total dolt at conversation, too. They certainly weren't going to discuss Sergei Kos, or the _mafiya_, or biological terrorism. But couldn't he say more than _Umph_ to her attempts at civilized conversation? She ruled out books, then movies, then restaurants. He perked up a little at the subject of television. At least his eyes were more open and his grunts had a little verve. She felt the eyes of the maitre d' on her and gave a tiny shrug as if to say, _This is how it goes in business sometimes._ She endured the meal, continuing to chat amiably in the direction of the oaf Sergei had assigned to carry his message. As she signed the credit card slip, adding a twenty-five percent tip, she asked Rompol under her breath, "Did you bring me a map of the city?" The dullard looked puzzled, then nodded. "Oh, yeah. They told me to give you this." He took a brochure about the Big Apple out of his inside pocket and set it on the table beside her. She knew that inside the brochure would be the meeting time and place for the vaccinations of Sergei's agents. At least she hoped that was in the brochure. As dim-witted as Rompol was, it might contain the season schedule for pro wrestling. She opened it and appeared, to anyone observing her, to be fascinated by the variety of things to do in New York City. Of course, she was reading about only one thing to do. _July 4, 4 p.m. Museum of Natural History. Use Fifth Avenue entrance. Follow Rompol to a meeting room downstairs. Six men._ She knew the vaccination of Sergei's agents was the first step in a mass infection of Americans with some disease, what it was she didn't know or want to know. She simply folded the brochure and placed it in her seven-hundred-dollar handbag. "I'll go now." Rompol stated the obvious as he rose, tossed his napkin in his seat and left. She nodded to the waiter to pour a fresh cup of coffee and drank it slowly, savoring the silky mocha flavor. July fourth, as instructed, she arrived at the gigantic museum. She had a moment of panic when she saw guards checking purses at random, but Rompol appeared out of nowhere and said, "Last gate on the right." The elderly man at that turnstile waved her in, right behind Rompol, and she followed him to a stairwell. One floor down he walked down a long hall, turned right, then left, and opened a door. Leaving it ajar, he left her there without a word. As Sergei had said, six men waited in the room. Behind them were shelves with dozens of skeletons that might be kinds of cats. The largest she guessed to be a bobcat. The men said nothing, just removed their jackets and rolled up their sleeves almost to the shoulder. Genevieve knew they didn't know her name, either her real name or Marie Saint-Jean. They only knew "a nurse" would be there with shots they needed. One opened what looked like a camera case and set sterile syringes in a precise row on the desk. Another pointed to the rubbing alcohol on the table and cotton balls laid out beside it. Genevieve nodded, said, "Good," and called the names of the six cities the men represented. First was Dallas. A man who looked like a stevedore able to carry twice his weight stood and held his shirtsleeve up to expose his left arm. She set the vials on the desk beside the rubbing alcohol, prepared one syringe, swabbed his arm and jabbed the needle in. "Your arm will be sore for a few days," she said, her look taking in all the men. They said nothing. "San Francisco." A man stepped forward and stood perpendicular to her. She was thinking he was fairly handsome until he smiled and she saw his teeth were crooked and stained yellow, probably from tobacco. She gave him the swab and the shot, then did the same for Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Washington. Each told her how many vials he needed. Their business finished, they left and wandered back upstairs. Genevieve walked up with "Washington," and turned away from him without a word when they got to the top of the stairs. She bought a ticket for the Hayden Planetarium show, but suffered such a feeling of panic as the doors closed that she insisted on getting out. Her arm still hurt from the vaccination she'd been given five days before, and she knew she was unlikely to catch anything, but the idea of being in a closed room breathing the same air with a crowd of people made her hyperventilate. She had taken a cab back to the Waldorf and ordered dinner in her room. She tipped the glass and swallowed the last drops of fine vodka. Bored with watching New York's fireworks reflected in the river, she poured another glass of vodka and turned on the TV. In a short time, she was absorbed in the display of fireworks over the Washington Monument in the American capital. She'd never seen the Americans celebrate their Independence Day. She was visually engaged, but emotionally detached. But when the cameras turned to the rapt faces of children and their parents, waving tiny flags and singing, "God bless America, land that I love," Genevieve turned the television off. The room seemed to close in. Impulsively, she called British Airways and changed her reservation. "That's right. Tomorrow, earliest flight available." She listened while the airline employee told her the flight number and time of departure. "Thank you. That will be fine." Then she called the desk and asked for an early wake up and said she would be checking out, that something had come up that required her to shorten her vacation in the United States. Genevieve Auberge, also known as Marie Saint-Jean, didn't want to see any more American faces, on TV or in person. -------- *Thirteen* July 5, 2001 (14^th of Tammuz, year 5761) _Tel Aviv, Israel_ "I haven't grown at all!" Moshe directed his complaint to Rachel. "Neither has Rabin." Rabin was taking a turn holding a pencil on top of his twin's head, precisely perpendicular to the closet door. The marks of their height were, in fact, exactly where they'd been two weeks before. "Well, don't look at me," she said with a smile. She had flour on her hands as she kneaded challah bread, as well as a smear of flour on her chin. "My responsibility for your height ended when you were born. Besides, didn't you ever hear the saying, 'a watched pot never boils'? Wait longer until you measure yourselves. One of these days you'll be quite a bit taller." Daniel Valentin came in from work at the laboratory in time to hear Rachel's admonishment. He set his laptop computer on the kitchen table and kissed her on the cheek. "Have you boys forsworn soccer in favor of basketball? What's the big worry about height?" "No, Dad," Rabin said. "We just don't want to be called 'shrimp' anymore." "Hey, anybody calls you that, bite him on the ankle. Or her." The fragrant kitchen took Daniel back to his boyhood in upstate New York. He and Arnie had had their hands full defending each other against bullies, and although he made light of it to his sons, he knew how important a few inches were to boys. "Can we use your laptop?" Moshe asked. "Not right now," Daniel said. "I've got to write a note to Uncle Arnie. You guys can use the desktop. Besides, all the e-mail addresses you entered on the trip are on it." "Yeah," Moshe said, "all the ones we entered. Which was about one-third of the ones we should have had." "Not even one-third," Rabin said. "One-fourth. Or one-fifth!" The boys had been quite upset when, soon after they left the cruise ship in Helsinki, they discovered that their carefully compiled list of e-mail addresses was missing. They had tucked it in the inside pocket of Moshe's school notebook, the one he was using as a journal of the trip for a school report. The more Daniel or Rachel said the boys must have taken it out and mislaid it, the more adamant they were that they'd placed it there carefully before they left the ship in St. Petersburg. The only addresses they had were the ones they compiled on the broken-down bus to Peterhof. That list had been in the back pocket of Rabin's shorts, and Rachel had removed it that night on the ship to prevent its accidental laundering. She'd placed it in a bag with sunscreen and given it to them in Helsinki. In addition to the seventeen addresses of people on the bus, they remembered two off the other list, both of them on America OnLine. Dion, the sultry twelve-year-old model, was DIONDION, and Corrina Gonzalez used her father's address, GONZALEZ. "We haven't heard from anybody," Moshe said indignantly, "and we made a list and sent a message to all of them. As soon as we got home." Rabin added, "We got an e-mail from Katy, at least. She said she'd be in our round-the-world network if we can make one. Hey, Dad, did you know Katy's going to Washington, D.C.? She says she's going to the White House and everything." "Oh, yes, Uncle Arnie told me all about it." "Well why didn't you tell me about it?" Rachel spanked the dough into a ball in an oiled bowl and vigorously wiped her hands on a white towel. "You have a memory like a mousetrap but you forget to tell me half the things you hear." Daniel opened his mouth to tell her the idiom was "you have a mind like a steel trap," but the distinction didn't matter. "I'm sorry, Rachel. I got a note from Arnie day before yesterday, and I meant to tell you." Rachel was so consistently even-tempered that Daniel was surprised when she stood up for herself and announced she was angry. She didn't have any family except a rigid Orthodox uncle who she gave only slight affection and from whom she received none. After marrying Daniel, she'd grown fond of his brother Arnie, and she had loved Leah like a real sister. She loved Katy, too, and was annoyed at Arnie for what she felt was too much involvement with his work. Katy needed more from Arnie than praise for schoolwork. She'd lamented, out of the boys' hearing, that Leah had done about eighty percent of the parenting in that family, and it was time Arnie came down from his ivory tower and acted like a father. "Dad, come see how we made the mailing list," Moshe called from the boys' room down the narrow hall. "I'll be there in a minute." Daniel put his arms around Rachel, who stood stiff and inflexible, lowering her face so he couldn't kiss her lips. "Rachel, honey, I'm truly sorry, really. I should have told you as soon as I read Arnie's note. But most of his message was about the influenza problem we're working on. I've been too wrapped up in it." He kissed her forehead and the back of her neck and gradually felt her relax. "Forgive me?" She nodded and gave him a companionable kiss and hug. "Dad," Rabin called urgently. "Dad! The Norwegian lady's baby died!" "What? What did you say?" Daniel dropped his arms and strode quickly to his sons' room. Rachel followed close behind him. They looked over Rabin's shoulder as Moshe already was doing. The note on the screen was from Sven in Norway. "Dear Moshe and Rabin, I am heartbroken to tell you this. Our son Erik, age eighteen months, got very sick on board the _Baroness_, and he kept getting sicker on our way home from Helsinki. The doctors did everything they could, but he passed away in the hospital in Oslo six days after we were in St. Petersburg. Kari sends you both her love, and please tell your mother and father about our little Erik. Your friend in Norway, Sven Viddal." "Oh, God!" Rachel's hand flew to her throat. "Oh, no. Such an adorable little boy. Kari must be crying her eyes out." She placed one hand on each boy's shoulder, and kissed the tops of their heads, the maternal equivalent of _knock on wood._ Daniel, too, felt a wave of compassion for the Norwegian family, but he quickly set emotion aside. "Move over, Moshe. I'm going to write a note to Sven." Moshe stood behind his father and hugged Rachel. "Mom, how could Erik get so sick? He was fine on the ship." Rachel kissed the top of his head again. "I don't know, Moshe. I don't remember seeing the Viddals after St. Petersburg. There were a lot of people on the ship." Daniel rapidly typed a note of condolence and asked Sven what the doctors had given as a diagnosis. "I'm not a medical doctor," he added, "but I would appreciate knowing the details of Erik's symptoms. Did he have any underlying health problems you knew of, such as a heart murmur?" Again he expressed the sorrow of his family for Sven and Kari's loss and pressed Send. The modem clicked and hummed, then disconnected and posted the words, Messages Sent, 1. Messages Received, 5. "You have mail from Katy," Daniel said. He stood to embrace Rachel while Moshe slipped into the narrow chair and opened Katy's message. "She just says she's going to fly to Washington, D.C. on Sunday," he said somberly. "With that lady, Patrice Kelsey." "Don't you have more mail?" Rachel asked, as much to fill the silence as for information. "Four more," Rabin said without his usual enthusiasm for e-mail. "All ads I think. One from Pharmasales. What's that?" "Hey, don't you remember?" Moshe said. "That's Hank Hossman's online name. His business address." Turning to his mother he added, "His home address is Bossman1." Rabin opened the message and read quickly. "Oh no! His wife, Ellie, died! She caught the flu right after their trip, and she got pneumonia. She died in the hospital, in Seattle." His eyes wide with shock, he kept reading. "And he's been sick, too. He says he called the cruise ship company and they said several people caught the flu, and that's not unusual. He wants you to write to him, Dad. He wants to know if we got sick." His voice climbed an octave as he talked. "And he wants us to tell him the other e-mail addresses we wrote down." Moshe stood and clung to Rachel. "Mommy, what's happening?" She couldn't recall the last time either of the boys had called her Mommy. "I'll write to him from my computer," Daniel said. "Moshe, give me the list of addresses." He planned to make inquiries on three or four networks of infectious disease doctors, too. One was official and the others were unsanctioned by any professional association but were extremely effective sources of information. If yellow fever broke out in, say, Bolivia, Daniel expected no official mention of it until about three months after he read it on what microbiologists called the "jungle wire." Under the guise of preventing calumny, the official sites, such as travel advisories from governments, erred on the side of "wait and see" before publishing warnings. A kitchen timer chimed and Rachel returned to her bread. Rabin answered the phone and told his friend that no, he and Moshe didn't feel like playing soccer. Silence hung heavy in the apartment, broken only by the electronic tones of Daniel's laptop modem connecting, and the tap of his keys as he answered Hank Hossman and began an information search of his own. -------- *Fourteen* July 5, 2001 (14^th of Tammuz, year 5761) _Tel Aviv, Israel_ Dr. Rashad Teicher answered the knock on his office door with forced civility. "What is it?" Dr. Villie Ginsberg strode into his office like the man she apparently thought she was. "I'd like to talk to you," she began, but he interrupted her. "I'll be with you in just a moment, Dr. Ginsberg. I must return this report to the technician I have standing by in my lab. Take a seat, please." He picked up a folder at random and left by the side door. He looked into his lab, saw that no one was there, and went into his closet-sized but blessedly private restroom. He didn't want to listen to Villie Ginsberg, didn't wish to spend five minutes with her, in fact. He'd hired her sight unseen as her professional credentials in virology were impeccable and a perfect match for Beth-el Laboratory. She was a walking repository of knowledge on plasmid transference. But as much as he needed her professionally, Teicher loathed her personally for her mannish semblance. He'd heard, through the grapevine, that Villie Ginsberg was a lesbian. He knew as much about lesbians as he did about Lebanese, which was very little. Actually, he thought of lesbians as simply women so ugly they couldn't attract a man. Then he dismissed them from his busy mind. Occasionally he was informed that this or that attractive woman, good-looking enough to earn his interest, was a lesbian, but he didn't believe it. Still, in the same way that he would not eat wild mushrooms -- which might be fine, but might not -- he left such women alone. He had to interact with Ginsberg, however. He needed her expertise at genetic engineering as well as her near-photographic memory of the smallpox project on which she'd worked in Zagorsk, USSR. She had connections through which she had obtained a sample of _Variola major_ -- smallpox -- designated India-1967 when it was brought back to the USSR from India by the KGB. If such a hideous monster as India-1967 smallpox existed, and it certainly did, having been manufactured in the Soviet Union in the 1970s at a rate that ensured a steady inventory of twenty tons, then Beth-el Laboratory had better study it closely and work on a vaccine. Ginsberg was no virgin, scientifically speaking, but she did have enough decency to be ashamed of her involvement with biological warfare. She would only obtain the sample of India-1967 if it were to be studied with the objective of saving lives. Such fastidiousness was wasted on Teicher, but he went along to get along. In any event, he was well acquainted with scientific sluts in Iran who were doing the factory work of replicating the smallpox virus and, in a laboratory some fifty miles away from the first, manufacturing a highly specific smallpox vaccine. The Iranians had state-of-the-art equipment purchased from Germany with their seemingly inexhaustible supply of oil money. And thanks to Ginsberg's colloquia at Beth-el and detailed scientific records of the transference process, Teicher knew how to "mate viruses." It was a delicate process, but he was relieved to see his years as an administrator had not dulled his skill as a hands-on microbiologist. He now knew how to transfer the plasmid of a purely avian flu, to which no human had any resistance, onto the moderately virulent and highly contagious A/Shenyang virus, forming a chimera virus. Like the mythical chimera, a creature with the body of a goat, the head of a lion, and the tail of a serpent, the chimera virus went against nature. And yet nature was probably making such hybrids all the time, Teicher said to Ginsberg, adding that he had of course destroyed the chimera with paraformaldehyde after his experiments. The truth, however, was another story. The Iranians, eager to do business with Sergei Kos and his comrades, had been working with great success on production of the chimera virus, which Teicher had named Shen II. Iranian scientists and their "guests" from Russia were also working on the vaccine to Shen II, but it was extremely complex and progress was slower than Teicher liked. He took his time, scrubbing his hands and looking through his cabinet for a lotion he favored. That made four separate biological materials projects in Iran, all funded by the Russian _mafiya_, and all benefiting Sergei financially and Palestine politically. Shen II virus, and Shen II vaccine. Smallpox virus, and smallpox vaccine. The Iranian leaders would be glad to see Israel suffer and Palestine prosper. Their initial resistance to aiding bio-weapon production withered when Sergei said they could use some Shen II virus to retaliate for Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran in 1988, a grotesquely cruel campaign that ousted the Iranians from positions they'd held for years in the Iran-Iraq war. _Iran probably has more Russian scientists than Russia has_, he thought. For a while in 1999 it had seemed the door from Russia to Iran might close. Thanks to Teicher's close ties to Mossad, he knew of the secret "Gore accord" of 1995, in which then Vice President Al Gore and then Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin agreed that Boris Yeltsin's struggling government could continue shipping conventional arms to Iran -- without punishment by American economic sanctions -- until the end of 1999. The Russians crossed their hearts that they would finish all their scheduled deliveries by that time, and would not enter into new contracts. However, as the Americans are fond of saying, that was then and this is now. Bill Clinton and Al Gore's little secret, tacitly endorsed by the U.S. Congress, which also had no wish to see Yeltsin fall like a Bolshevik statue, was exposed by the _New York Times,_ and the new Russian government of Vladimir Putin used that as an excuse to say they would not comply. Instead, they would damn well send anything they damn well wanted to Iran. It was _chutzpah_ Teicher could not fail to admire. Beth-el Laboratory generally kept a low profile, but Teicher had seen the benefit of good publicity in February 2001 when Daniel Valentin perfected a vaccine against A/Shenyang influenza. The Mossad had acquired the sample of lung tissue from the dead Chinese farmer, and scientists all over the world believed it was the most threatening strain of influenza in four generations. Meanwhile, the CDC in America conducted parallel research on tissue they'd independently obtained from Shenyang, China. "It's 'The Lung that Made Shenyang Famous', "Teicher had joked to Marissa Vengerov. Israel was pouring forty million dollars into production of the vaccine in time for the fall 2001 flu season, and four contracts were awarded to American pharmaceutical companies, for a total expenditure of two hundred million dollars. _And it was all going to produce vast amounts of the wrong vaccine_. It would fight A/Shenyang influenza, Teicher thought, but it would be no match for Shen II. Teicher still felt a wave of anger when he thought of how Daniel Valentin had sent almost half the precious sample of influenza-soaked tissue to his brother in America. _What a self-righteous son of a bitch!_ Fortunately Teicher had a trusted contact in Los Alamos who had retrieved the bio-hazardous material and returned it to Teicher, in Prague. He'd then trusted Marissa Vengerov to courier it, without knowing what it was, to an Israeli military officer in Hebron. _Well, anyway, to someone who appeared to be an Israeli military officer_, Teicher recalled. _Marissa is as naive as a teenager. Or, rather, she WAS._ He did not wish to be reminded of Marissa, but that was exactly what Villie Ginsberg did as soon as he returned to his office. She was on her feet at once. "Have you heard from Dr. Vengerov?" she asked. Teicher would have seen Ginsberg's ramrod stance as simple confidence in a man, but he saw it as aggressive, confrontational, and unforgivably rude in a woman. No preamble such as, "Excuse me, Dr. Teicher," or "Please forgive my intrusion, Dr. Teicher." Just the blatant question. _What a pig,_ he thought. "I told you yesterday, Dr. Ginsberg. Dr. Vengerov returned from her Baltic cruise vacation only long enough to request an immediate leave of absence. She seemed to be under considerable stress, and although I tried, tactfully, to get her to stay, she insisted on the leave. Two or three days later, June twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth, as I recall, I received a letter from her asking me to turn her research projects over to other scientists. I called her landlord, and he said he'd received a note canceling the lease on her apartment. He told me all her personal effects, such as clothes, were gone when he went to the apartment. I expect to hear from Dr. Vengerov, at least second hand, by a request for her employment credentials, but as that has not happened yet, the answer to your question is, no, I haven't heard from her." "I think you should report her missing," Ginsberg stated. Teicher almost exploded at her impertinence. "Dr. Vengerov is an adult and has the right to live her life wherever and however she wants. I have no business _reporting_ her to anyone on any pretext. Nor do you! Is that clear, Dr. Ginsberg?" He stood and leaned on his desk, the veins in his neck stretched taut. Tension in the room was like gasoline vapors, needing only a spark to ignite. Ginsberg backed down with a mumbled, "Of course, Dr. Teicher." With difficulty, he smiled airily and strolled to the window. "I realize her sudden departure impacts the work of other researchers, yourself included. Is there anything specific you need? I'll be glad to track down the information. And I am already looking for a replacement for her." "Then you don't think she'll come back?" Ginsberg persisted. "I run a research laboratory, Dr. Ginsberg, not a hostel. I can't afford to leave positions open as if the work is unimportant. You surely see that." She nodded slowly. "Yes, I see. I am at a disadvantage, however, as Dr. Vengerov and I were co-authoring a paper. The deadline for submission is in one week." He nodded, attempting to build rapport he neither felt nor wanted. "I will retrieve her notes, and then you and I will work it through to a solution." He ushered her toward the door and took his linen sport coat off the coat hanger. "Now then, my wife is expecting me home for a dinner party and I've got to leave." He locked his door before he pulled it shut behind them and dismissed her with, "Have a nice evening." He felt her eyes on his back as he walked purposefully down the long hall that smelled faintly of disinfectant. -------- *Fifteen* Sunday, July 8, 2001 Washington, D.C. _Patrice Kelsey:_ I laughed at a cartoon in _The New Yorker_ of an ant carrying a rock about ten times his size up a hill. It's obvious he's in pain and straining to keep moving, but he says to another ant, "I'll quit when it stops being fun." I showed it to Katy. She smiled, but I could tell she didn't think it was as funny as I did. "I forgot," I said with a sigh. "You've never worked for a newspaper." A flight attendant began her recitation. "Please make sure your seats are in the upright and locked position and that your seatbelts are securely fastened." At the same time, another attendant reached our row with her garbage bag. Katy handed her one last cup and turned her attention back to the aerial view of the Potomac River. "Patrice?" "Hmmm?" "When was the last time you were in Washington?" "Six or seven years ago, when I worked for a newspaper in Chicago. My boss would have gone to cover the swearing in of the new Illinois congressmen, but he had appendicitis, so the paper sent me." "Was it fun?" The attendant walked by again and Katy handed her the _People_ she'd been reading. "Well, I had to act sophisticated, as if I did it all the time and politicians were a bore, but the truth was that I loved it. Every time I walked into the House of Representatives I had to hold my jaw up so it didn't hang open on my chest." I looked past Katy. "Look, there's the Jefferson Memorial." A baby began to cry in the row in front of us. "His ears probably hurt from the air pressure change," Katy said. She wore a three-piece tan jersey outfit, an A-line skirt, sleeveless shell and tunic top. She'd gotten her ears pierced the week before but couldn't wear earrings yet, just the studs that came with the piercing. She had to daub her lobes with rubbing alcohol morning and evening, and twist the studs often. The jet made a steep descent into Reagan National Airport, touched down and bounced twice before hurtling down the runway. The engines roared as we slowed. I took that day's _Albuquerque Journal_ out of the seat pocket and arranged the sections in order. The story on the front page caught my eye again. "Seven killed in Tel Aviv car bomb attack." Katy saw me reading the headline. "I wish my aunt and uncle and my cousins would move to the United States." "Are they thinking about it?" "I don't know. My dad has tried to talk my uncle into it, but he always comes right back with some news story about Americans getting killed at school or while they're just sitting in McDonald's or somewhere. Or by the hundreds in Oklahoma City." Her father had driven us the one hundred miles from Los Alamos to the Albuquerque airport that morning and told us of another concern of Katy's uncle. At least twelve people out of the thirty-five who had been on the same Russian tour bus as Daniel's family had become ill in the sixteen days since the tour. While that number was alarming, the number of deaths was shocking. Five of the twelve had died, in locations all over the world. It was only because Daniel's sons had compiled e-mail addresses that the illnesses and deaths were discovered. "Sadly," I said with a sigh, "they're both right. No place is safe anymore." I released my seat belt, tugged my carry-on bag from under the seat in front of me, and stuffed the newspaper in the side pocket. As soon as the aircraft stopped, the man in the aisle seat jumped up and grabbed his carry-on from the bin over our heads. I leaned toward Katy as the bag, roughly twice the size of the allowable maximum, came down with a thud on the back of the seat in front of me. I squeezed into the aisle behind Mr. Luggage-restrictions-are-meant-for-other-people. Katy followed me, and when the door opened we squirted like toothpaste through the opening to the jetway. I spotted Rick Romero as soon as we emerged into the terminal, about three feet away from me. He turned from the television screen in the waiting area and grinned when he saw me. My heart flip-flopped as he folded me into his arms and kissed me long and hard, like a sailor home from the sea. _So much for sophistication._ "This is Katy," I said, aware that she was being shoved to the side by the emerging passengers. The three of us slid out of the stream of traffic. "Ekaterina Valentin, meet Rick Romero." "Call me Katy." She held out her hand. "Glad to meet you. Congratulations on your science prize. I brought you the _Washington Post_. They have a big article about the fifty-two students here for the event. They made a lot out of your being the youngest prize winner." He smiled. "They'll be disappointed to see you look more like fifteen than twelve." Katy blushed a little at his compliment. "I think it will be fun. Especially the tour of the White House." Rick took our carry-ons and waited while we went to the ladies' room. As we washed our hands and put on fresh lipstick I said, "Now do you see why Mr. Ullman leaves me colder than day-old macaroni?" "I swear I'll never mention him again. Does Rick have a younger brother?" "No," I frowned. "Just an older brother. FBI Special Agent Luis Romero. You'll probably meet him while we're here." I flashed on the memory of Luis and his partner in crime-stopping, Agent Slater, taking Katy's dad away. I knew she'd seen the video footage and the still shot, and I wondered if she'd recognize Luis. I just hoped it wouldn't come up. I tucked my forest-green cotton blouse into my khaki slacks. "You don't sound very thrilled at the prospect," she observed as we headed back toward the concourse. "Oh, I like Luis fine. But I don't think he likes me much." At the exit/entrance we were almost run down by a young mother with an infant in a carrier. I recognized her from our plane. "I'm sorry," she said as she backed up a few steps. "We're having a diaper emergency." "Baggage claim is this way," Rick called, and we stepped into the endless stream of humanity heading to and from planes. His short-sleeved cotton shirt was tucked into his blue jeans. His wide western belt and worn cowboy boots contrasted nicely, I thought, with the suits on most of the men I saw, and the shorts and resort logo shirts on most of the rest. I was a little relieved to see Luis hadn't had any visible influence on how Rick dressed, at least on a Sunday. His black wavy hair was shorter than it used to be, though. I remembered the first time I'd seen Rick's brother. I'd picked Luis up at the small airport in Los Alamos the morning after Rick broke his leg in what we'd first thought was an accident. By the time I called Luis in Washington, while Rick was wheeled into surgery, the police had determined that his climbing rope had been deliberately sliced most of the way through. Luis had arrived dressed like a big city lawyer and looked at me as if to say, _My brother must be desperate to be involved with you._ Luis had met me at my worst, thanks to my broken arm, broken rib, hundred and one bruises, and the impossibility of wearing anything that fit. But the real problem was his pre-formed attitude. He didn't want his widowed brother to get hooked by anyone while in what Luis saw to be an unbalanced emotional state, and he saw me as an opportunist. True, he would have seen any woman that way, but I happened to be the one. At least he couldn't think I was a gold-digger. Rick had no more money than I did. In fact, the medical bills he still owed for his wife's terminal cancer were larger than my student loans. It was the chance to improve his balance sheet that lured him to Washington and away from his high stress/low income job as managing editor of the _Los Alamos Guardian._ When the paper was sold to Gruber Press Enterprises in the aftermath of scandal, Rick had stayed to get it on a sound footing and move into a new building. Then came the Cerro Grande Fire and Rick put his job-hunt on hold for another four months. Finally, Luis helped him find a lucrative government job. My suspicious nature made me wonder if Luis weren't trying to edge me out of Rick's line of sight, with a hope he'd find someone more suitable in a larger gene pool. As far as I knew, Luis hadn't yet found any woman suitable for himself -- if such a paragon existed. Still, if one came along no one would be happier to see Luis married than I would. Instinct told me he'd have less time and inclination to preserve Rick's bachelorhood if he'd give up his own. "Did you get any lunch?" Rick asked as we waited by the baggage carousel. "We had hot dogs in Kansas City," Katy answered. "I never get to eat hot dogs at home. My dad is a microbiologist, and he says hot dogs are full of god-awful bacteria, that if it weren't for being fifty percent preservatives they'd turn green before you got them on a bun." Rick curled his lip. "Sounds good. Your dad must be lots of fun to eat with." "And we had curly fries," I added. "You know, tubers. Sliced thin, coated with salt and monosodium glutamate, and fried in saturated fat." I had my eyes on the conveyor belt that spilled suitcases onto the metal carousel. "Oh, that's my bag, the green one. And Katy's is the gray one coming down the ramp." ~ * ~ If I ever get rich enough to make donations -- I mean other than three one-dollar bills, two quarters and a cough drop to the Salvation Army in December -- I will write a nice check to Women in Science. I've always admired their goals and wished to further their educational objectives for young American women. But I didn't utterly adore them until they made it possible for me to enjoy the best sex of my life. So far. I was Katy's mentor, which was how I'd gotten to Washington at all, and that made me her chaperone. Of course, that also made her _my_ chaperone. But thanks to Women in Science, she had another mentor, a delightful young first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. Katy and I had checked into our hotel and taken the elevator to our room about five minutes before we met the lieutenant. Rick carried our bags up and was about to phone Luis regarding dinner when we heard a knock. Lt. Winifred Blaze introduced herself and opened an information packet that set out Katy's schedule. The only sightseeing that day was the Smithsonian Institution. Lt. Blaze practically begged me to let her escort Katy to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I agreed, trying hard not to whoop, "Yes!" Most of the rest of Katy's time was split between George Washington University, the National Institutes of Health, and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. There would be a VIP tour of the White House, too. She had free time Thursday before our flight home, and we planned to visit the U.S. Senate that morning. New Mexico's previous junior senator, a woman appointed by the governor when one of our two senators died in a plane crash, had served only a few months before resigning. Not much was known about why Senator Cristal Aragon resigned, or rather, not much was known to the general public. I knew plenty, as did Rick, about the scandal that had placed her at the scene of two murders and possibly having inside knowledge of two more. Aragon was persuaded by her party to resign rather than drag them through the mud with her. The new junior senator was also a woman. Unlike Cristal Aragon, who appeared almost out of nowhere, politically speaking, with lots and lots of money, Senator Jean Harding had her shoulder to the Republican Party wheel for years, serving in the New Mexico House of Representatives. There she learned to fight like a man and a Democrat, both groups that outnumbered her but seldom outwitted her. Congress was on its summer break, and unless Sen. Harding had pressing business in Washington, she would be in New Mexico. Katy and I would get a tour of the Senate Chambers, however, with Harding's chief of staff. Katy and Lt. Blaze were gone in minutes, as soon as I made sure Katy had her cell phone on and that the lieutenant knew the number of the hotel and of my cell phone. "I'll call and tell you where to meet us for dinner, Katy. Rick's got to call Luis." In the silence that followed their departure, Rick kissed me. "I'd like to show you my place." And that was how I came to enjoy what I'd dreamed of for so many months: three glorious, uninterrupted hours in the arms of Rick Romero. His apartment was small, efficient, with white walls and no pictures. The second-best thing about it was its location, walking distance to his old job at the Agriculture Department. The best thing was its splendid air conditioning, a great blessing in the hideous Washington heat. The shower was good, too. It wasn't made to hold two people, but we made it work. On the downside, the high-rise apartment complex didn't allow pets inside, so Rick's Dalmatian, Pirate, had to live with Luis in Alexandria. I hoped to see her during my visit but it was unlikely. "You've been working out," I said. Wearing one of his T-shirts and a towel around my hair, I sat on a cane-backed stool beside the breakfast bar and watched him spoon coffee into a filter. "More or less. I've been biking around Virginia. And sometimes I run with Luis, but only when I'm feeling masochistic. He's training for two marathons this month and the Pikes Peak Marathon the middle of next month. Pirate runs with him. She's in top condition, naturally. I see her once a week, at least." "Speaking of Luis, I'd better get back to the hotel and dress for dinner." I looked down and added, "I'd better get dressed, period." Rick looked at his watch and grinned. "No need to rush. The Three Patriots Restaurant is only about ten blocks from your hotel." He walked around the counter and folded his arms around me, kissing my forehead, temples, cheeks, and lips. I wound my legs around him. "Rushing is a bad thing," I whispered. "A very bad thing," he murmured to my throat. "But we mustn't be late." "We won't be late." "Do we have time for coffee?" I asked. "Um-hmm. Plenty of time for coffee." "Good. Let's skip the coffee and use the time to better advantage." We didn't say anything more. At least not verbally. ~ * ~ We arrived at the Three Patriots a few minutes after Katy and Lt. Blaze and just ahead of Luis. After introductions all around and an invitation from Luis to the lieutenant to join us, which she declined, we sat down and ordered. Katy was full of anecdotes about her tour of the Smithsonian, including vivid descriptions of the other science students she'd met. I was afraid Luis would be condescending to Katy but I needn't have worried. He seemed genuinely interested in the project that had won her the trip to Washington. Once Katy really got going on the extremely esoteric math behind her work in radioactive isotopes for early detection of ovarian cancer, I had to hope _she_ wouldn't be condescending to _him._ "Before you ask," she said, holding up her hand toward Luis, "no, I can't prove it will work. But the theory is elegant, and I'm only about five percent into lab experimentation." Rick looked at me in disbelief. "Her day job gets in the way," I said with my palms up. "She still has to go to eighth grade in the fall." "'In the fall, my foot," she said indignantly. "School starts August sixteenth." "Where do you do lab work?" Luis asked. "Well, as you might guess, they won't let me take radioactive isotopes to school." "Ah, rats!" Rick interjected. "Yeah, that's what I say. So I go to the laboratory. That's where my mentor, Mr. Ullman, works. I mean Dr. Ullman." Rick and Luis understood what she meant. The custom of not using "Doctor" in everyday conversation was started by J. Robert Oppenheimer during the Manhattan Project. So many people working on development of the atomic bomb had doctorates that use of the title was shrugged off. The custom stuck. It's not one hundred percent, but usually when someone is addressed as "Doctor" in Los Alamos, he or she can write prescriptions. "But getting me in to areas where radioactive materials are handled and getting time on the supercomputer are both extremely difficult," Katy continued. "That's why it's so important for me to make good contacts here, so I can work on my project part-time at a place like NIH. And use their computers." The waiter came with coffee for the men and frothy _cafes-au-lait_ for Katy and me. Luis asked about our schedules. He was polite, and to Katy he was charming, but I felt a barely perceptible chill when he directed a question or answer to me. "Actually," I said, setting my tall glass cup on its saucer, "Katy and I have an urgent matter to discuss with you, Luis. Specifically because you're an FBI agent." Katy nodded at me to continue. "Have you heard about a bizarre rash of deaths among tourists who spent time together on one bus outside St. Petersburg, Russia?" "No. Go on." "Katy's uncle, Daniel Valentin, is a microbiologist in Tel Aviv." I repeated what Arnie Valentin had explained to Katy and me on our drive to Albuquerque. "None of this would have come to light had Katy's nine-year-old cousins not written down e-mail addresses for everyone on the bus, and then sent friendly notes to them." "Moshe and Rabin want to construct a round-the-world e-mail network," she added. "Were any of these five people who died American?" Luis asked. "Two," I said. "A lady in Seattle and a man in Oakton, Virginia." Luis's set his spoon on his saucer. "That's very close to here. How long ago did he die?" I looked at Katy for the answer. "July first." "Mr. Parker died July first," I said. "Nine days after he was on the bus with the Valentins. The five people died within three days of each other. In the United States, Norway, England, and Germany." Luis stirred his coffee and set the spoon down. "Did anyone get sick and not die?" "At least eight people. There are two older women in Utah that Daniel Valentin hasn't reached, and two couples from England who traveled on to Egypt after the Baltic cruise. And the Russian guide and driver." I added that the addresses the boys got for the Utah women were for their grandchildren. "What were their symptoms?" Rick had taken a small spiral notebook from his pocket and jotted down a few words. "'Consistent with severe influenza' is how Daniel Valentin put it. He suspects A/Shenyang, but without extensive laboratory work he doesn't know. He and his family were vaccinated against A/Shenyang before they went on the cruise," I added, "and they didn't get sick." "I presume he's going through the proper channels, talking to the CDC in Atlanta?" Rick asked. "And who gets the flu in July, for heaven's sake?" I reminded him Danny Carter's mother had died of complications of influenza on June fourth. He nodded. "What about vaccine? Are the pharmaceutical companies going to have it ready before the real flu season? Or do we face the same song, second verse?" We were all aware of the flu vaccine distribution disaster the previous winter, when high-risk people like cancer patients, the elderly -- even nurses and firefighters -- couldn't get shots until January. "I don't know, but everything I've read says the companies manufacturing the vaccine will have it ready by November. Ready and distributed." I paused. "That's no comfort to the people on the bus in St. Petersburg." "So why are you telling me about it?" Luis asked. "It sounds like a public health problem, strictly the business of the CDC." "Unless it was bioterrorism," I said hesitantly, then added what Daniel had told Katy's father about the bus being stopped by the road for an hour, all the windows up, and that the breakdown was a simple thing to fix according to the Norwegian engineer. "Daniel Valentin said he smelled a peculiar odor in the bus. He thinks it was a preservative that's commonly used in health labs that work with viruses. He thinks it was a planned attack, for what reason he can't fathom, and that his family got lucky, about getting their vaccinations." Luis looked up and met my eyes with an intense gaze. "Maybe, maybe, and maybe," he said slowly. "But I don't believe in that much luck. What's Daniel Valentin's phone number?" As Katy recited it from memory, I felt Rick's hand on mine. Luis put his notepad and pen back in his inside pocket. "This kind of flu he's talking about, uh..." he paused. "Is it the same virus that was stolen from his brother's vault at Los Alamos?" I nodded. "Yes. The sample Arnie Valentin had and was trying to get to the CDC was the same lung tissue Daniel Valentin was studying. Daniel has formulated a vaccine that went into production in Israel in February in hopes of heading off a flu epidemic this winter. He and his wife and two sons were vaccinated by the director of the infectious disease section of the research laboratory in Tel Aviv." "You say it's in production in Israel," Luis said. "What about the United States?" "Daniel Valentin says the CDC obtained a sample of A/Shenyang virus a month after he did, and did their own research. Four companies in the U.S. got the contracts to produce thirty-five million doses." I sipped my _cafe-au-lait_, which was just lukewarm by then. Luis paid the bill and replaced his credit card in his wallet. Katy and I went to the ladies' room and joined Rick and Luis at the restaurant's entrance. We walked out into the hot, dense Washington air and Luis gave the receipt to the parking attendant. I felt utterly exhausted and glanced at my watch. "It's only quarter to eight in Los Alamos. Why do I feel as if the time zone change is the opposite? I feel like it's almost midnight." The valet whipped Luis's immaculate silver Volvo around the circular hedge that surrounded colorful flowers and a fountain with changing color lights. We were about to step in when Katy remembered she'd left her conference nametag on our table. She hurried back inside as Luis tipped the valet and slipped into the driver's seat. I watched her tear in and all but collide with a young woman coming out of the restaurant in a big hurry. My comment about the time, that it felt like it was almost midnight, came back to me. _She looks like Cinderella, fleeing the royal ball._ The young woman, wearing a tight black dress with a plunging neckline, looked around quickly, but she didn't focus on us, just turned right and hurried away. It seemed odd that she was alone, and odder still that she left on foot instead of getting a taxi or asking the valet to bring her car around. Rick and I stood by the other side of the car, both doors open. While we waited for Katy, a black limousine with black windows nosed in behind Luis's Volvo. "Looks like somebody important," I said. "If this were Los Angeles my guess would be a rap music star and five bodyguards." The chauffeur emerged, put his hat on as he shot us a combative look for having the audacity to be in his way, and walked around the Lincoln Town Car to the passenger door on the curbside. At the same time, two olive-skinned men in black suits got out the other passenger door and took up watchful, almost threatening positions. "I got it," Katy called as she emerged from the restaurant. "Sorry I made you wait." She darted into the back seat and slid across to make room for me. I hesitated a moment, wanting to see who emerged from the limousine. The chauffeur waved the valet parking attendant back, nodded at the two men I guessed were bodyguards, and opened the door. A woman stepped out first. I noticed her Mediterranean complexion at the same time I noticed her elegant evening suit. She looked around as if to reassure herself that the bodyguards were there, then looked back at the car. A man I recognized from the news, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, stepped out. As he smoothed his suit and stepped toward the woman, I got in the back seat of Luis's car. Rick closed my door and got in the front. Luis checked his side-view mirror and pulled forward slowly. I looked back to get a better look at the ambassador. Just then another car, a white subcompact, pulled into the narrow area under the restaurant's _porte cochere_, right behind the Towncar. It stopped with a screech of brakes and I saw the driver open his door and dive for the bushes in the center of the curved driveway. "Get down!" I screamed and grabbed Katy by her shoulders, forcing her face down to the seat and slamming my body on top of her. A split second later our ears were assaulted by a fierce wave that must have been a detonation. At the same time, the back, side and front windows of the Volvo exploded inward, shattering the safety glass into a thousand pieces of blue glass. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard Luis call 911, identify himself and the emergency. I lifted my head to look behind us. The white car was a flaming hulk of metal. The Towncar didn't look too bad, probably thanks to armor plating. But the ambassador, the elegant woman, the chauffeur, and one bodyguard were all on the ground, covered with blood. The woman was crawling toward the door. The other bodyguard leaned on the Towncar, his weapon drawn. Luis leaped out of his car with his gun drawn and yelled to Rick, "Get them out of here!" Before Rick could get around to the driver's side I yanked my door handle and staggered out on rubber legs. "Luis!" I screamed. "Luis! Watch out!" In a split second Luis saw where I was pointing and spun his body in that direction. "He's the driver!" I screamed louder. "He's got a gun!" The man who had thrown himself over a hedge to safety aimed his automatic weapon at the bodyguard, but before he could fire, Luis blew him right off his feet. "Go on, get out of here," he shouted again to Rick. "There could be more gunmen." "Patrice! Get in!" Rick shouted. Dazed, I half-fell into the back seat, hearing the glass crunch underfoot. Somehow I pulled my door shut, then Katy and I turned to see the scene of carnage once again. Watching the flames streak upward, I thought of what Luis had said about luck, that he for one didn't believe in "that much luck." Well, I believed in luck. More fervently than I ever had before. -------- *Sixteen* Monday, July 9, 2001 (18th of Tammuz, year 5761) _Tel Aviv, Israel_ Daniel Valentin would be late for work, but he didn't care. He sat in his apartment, staring at the newspaper. Even though he'd fasted the day before, in observance of the 17th of Tammuz, he had no appetite. Rachel poured two mugs of coffee and added cream and sugar to hers, cream only to his. "Are you going to Virginia?" He nodded and drank the coffee but didn't take his eyes off the paper. "Dueling headlines." "What?" "There are so many horrors in the world that the newspapers don't know what to put at the top of the front page." He spoke in a monotone. Rachel looked over his shoulder. Like Daniel, she had already heard the news on television. The newspaper had split the top of the front page between _Israeli Ambassador Assassinated in U.S._ and _Six Israeli Children Die in West Bank Violence_. It was no coincidence that both of those terrorist attacks and more bloodshed in the Gaza Strip happened on the 17th of Tammuz, the start of an important three-week period in Judaism culminating every year in the 9th of the month of Av. On that day Jews around the world sadly commemorated the breaking of the walls of Jerusalem that led to the destruction of Solomon's Temple by the Romans in the year 70 on the Roman calendar. "In the United States," she said, "Israeli children wouldn't be on page one. They'd be lucky to be a short item on page four." "Only because the Americans have their own horrors to put on page one. You can be sure Ambassador Meier's death is a headline, though. America has seen very few bombs go off inside its borders, and they'll be shocked. The FBI will go berserk." He set the paper down and drank his coffee. Still standing behind him, Rachel put her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek. "You always say 'they' and 'theirs' and 'the Americans.' But do you really feel so detached? You used to be an American." He tugged gently on her arms to draw her closer, but he didn't answer. He was remembering how they'd met. He'd gone to Israel the summer of 1973, after his sophomore year of college. He'd been disgusted with the United States and the reprehensible Viet Nam war. Thousands of students around him were demonstrating against the war -- and the National Guard shot and killed students in Ohio. Students, and people who just called themselves students, milled about Daniel's campus, many of them high on drugs. Marijuana smoke hung like a haze in dorm rooms and halls. Daniel rejected much of what his parents said, but respect for his mind, his brain, was an absolute. He was studying microbiology, and he never put any substance in his body that would damage his cells. He recalled how restless he had been. Twenty years old, time to be an adult, but he knew less about what he wanted from life than he had at ten. Arnie was only eleven months older, but seemed stodgy and set in his ways. Arnie knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Daniel bought an old Datsun for four hundred dollars and slapped on a bumper sticker that said, "Don't follow me. I'm lost." He thought he might study medicine, or become a research professor. Or join the army and be a medic. Or go to Canada. His parents were formerly Canadian citizens. Or go to Israel. And that's what he'd done. He'd spent the summer working on a _kibbutz_, learning Hebrew, working under the hot sun, building muscles that ached every night. And dancing. That's where he'd met Rachel, at a dance. He'd seen her in the fields, wearing a straw hat for shade and a halter-top over cut-off blue jeans. She was so different from American girls. Muscular, energetic, laughing at jokes in half a dozen languages. Not afraid to sweat. He remembered how she'd taken that last compliment the night he was dumb enough to whisper it. She'd left his bed and thrown on her shorts and shirt before he could even get to his feet. For six days she'd sidestepped his every attempt to talk, until he caught her, alone for once, in the shower. He'd walked in fully dressed and held her until she quit fighting and would listen to him. He poured out his heart as she turned slowly in his arms, allowing the soap to drain away. Always after that they called it their six-day war. He never said again that Rachel was not afraid to sweat, but he loved her natural athleticism. American girls were such ninnies compared to Rachel. Worrying about their deodorants, and their cars, and their grades in French, a language they'd never use once they married well and got their very own all-electric kitchens. Rachel could drive a tractor, and pour cement, and frame a house, and field strip an M-16. "And all before lunch?" his mother had said with a twinkle in her eye when he'd waxed poetic about his intended wife. When the summer was over he'd gone back to New York, back to college. He'd come very close to chucking it all and racing back to Israel that October when the Yom Kippur War broke out. It was his eligibility for the draft in the United States that blocked his way. Any move away from college, and his deferment was gone in a heartbeat. He'd be in uniform, all right, but in Southeast Asia, not Israel. He'd finished his undergraduate work at Rensselaer and his graduate work at the University of California, then moved to Israel. He married Rachel, served two years in the Israeli Army, and settled into research, first at a university on a post-doctoral fellowship, then as a professor, then at Beth-el Laboratory. Now forty-seven, he'd shed most of his idealism about Israel, just as he'd shed most of his idealism about humanity. It was a nation governed by flawed men and women, just as the United States. Daniel felt as unrelated to Hassidim as he did to Palestinian Arabs. He could not dismiss the Palestinians as evil interlopers when hundreds of thousands of them had lived on _his_ land for hundreds of years. Generation after generation. Until the Jews demanded a homeland and took it. The Palestinians had a legitimate grievance, as did the American Indians, and the African-Americans, and the Australian Aborigines, and the Serbs, and God knows who-all-else on earth. The bottom line was always the same: Life is not fair. If he were convinced his family would be safer in the United States, or New Zealand, or Tibet, he'd take them there. But safety was out of reach. They might as well stay in Israel. Daniel heard the boys get up and go into the bathroom. He stood to embrace Rachel and poured another mug of coffee, then made a face when he tasted it. She laughed. "It's been sitting so long it's gotten too strong." "That's okay. I need a jolt of caffeine today. I can't seem to move." "What about Virginia?" she asked again. "When do you go?" "Hank Hossman is a man on fire. He barely left the cemetery in Seattle before he was on the phone to the CDC in Atlanta, and the cruise company, and his senators and congressmen. He's on his way to Utah now to pick up blood samples from the two women, and then he'll be on his corporate jet to Washington, D.C." He added more cream to dilute the coffee and looked at his watch. "I need to leave here at eleven. Plane leaves at twelve-thirty." He sipped the coffee and set the mug down abruptly. "No, I've got to go to the lab on my way. I'll have to leave in forty-five minutes." He would have to ask Rashad Teicher for _permission,_ but he intended to go no matter what Teicher said. Moshe came into the kitchen. "Are you going to see Katy in Washington, Dad?" Before Daniel answered Rabin came in and tore a hunk off the braided challah bread on the table. "What about the ladies in Utah? Have you heard anything more than we knew last night?" "I don't expect to know anything else until late today," Daniel said. "Better eat your breakfast." To Rachel he added, "I've got to shower and pack. Can you drive me to the airport?" "Of course." She unloaded the supper dishes from the dishwasher. Daniel dropped the cotton boxer shorts he called pajamas in the hamper. In the shower, he let his mind scramble over all he knew of the tourists on the bus to Peterhof. The boys' e-mails to the granddaughters of the Utah tourists had gone unanswered. Hank Hossman had tracked them down. One had a very common Utah name, Young, but the other lady's last name, Collyer, spelled with a y, was easier to find. Daniel remembered they lived in Syracuse, Utah, which stuck in his mind since he grew up close to Syracuse, New York. So Hossman got on the phone -- and found out that Vera Collyer had died July first in a Salt Lake City hospital. The diagnosis was pneumonia, but the symptoms sounded like the illness that had killed the other tourists. Through Mrs. Collyer's family, Hossman had reached Frances Young. She, too, had become very ill on her way home from Helsinki. She'd been hospitalized, and her condition had been grave, then guarded, then stable, and now she was resting at home. Mrs. Collyer's son and Mrs. Young signed releases allowing samples of the women's blood to be examined by Dr. Daniel Valentin, or at the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control. Hossman had done more detective work and found the widow of Robert Parker in Oakton, Virginia. First he had to find her son, who he remembered was a detective in the D.C. police department. Hossman told Daniel in an e-mail that the key to finding them -- since the cruise company refused to cooperate at all -- was that he remembered his middle initial. On the bus to Peterhof Robert Parker had said he was Robert P. Parker, not to be confused with the famous writer, Robert B. Parker. And that they'd named their son Robert Z. Parker so he'd stand out. Detective Parker, who said he goes by Zach instead of Robert, told Hossman his father had been hospitalized in Helsinki with some kind of virus that attacked the lining of his heart, but had recovered enough to be flown home by air ambulance. He'd died in Virginia July first, and Zach's mother, Faith Parker, had collapsed at the funeral and been hospitalized ever since. Parker told Hossman to call him as soon as he got to Virginia and he'd help him get the blood samples he needed. Meanwhile, he'd do some detective work of his own to see if any of the people who'd treated and transported his parents had gotten sick. Hossman had tried to reach the three British couples from the bus, but two of them had gone on to Egypt. The other couple, Gracie and Wilbur Johns, had returned to England. Gracie Johns had taken ill and died, becoming the fifth fatality on Daniel's list. Daniel would meet Hank Hossman and Zach Parker in Arlington, Virginia, at the hospital where Faith Parker was being treated. He'd talked to her doctor, who said he was using three antiviral drugs but hadn't seen improvement yet. Daniel and Rachel had started to let the boys stay alone in the apartment for short periods, daylight hours only, and with strict rules about no fighting, no guests, and no cooking. In a couple more years they could stay home with no sitter while their parents went out to dinner, then another year and they could stay home all evening. When they'd discussed the first step in the "home alone" process, Rachel had laughed and said, "They're at a difficult age." "Yeah," Daniel had added, "too old for naps and too young for college." The boys protested having a sitter in the daytime, but Rachel needed to do the grocery shopping after driving Daniel to the airport, which extended the boys' time alone past a comfortable limit. As a compromise, they agreed to stay in the apartment with the young mother next door checking on them three or four times. Rachel drove Daniel to Beth-el Laboratory and drove in a slow queue around the three-block complex while he went in to get as much A/Shenyang influenza vaccine as he could. In the refrigerated vault he removed a plastic square holding thirty-six ampoules, his entire supply, and set it in an insulated carrier the size of a large lunch box, snug in a nest of cotton and plastic pellets. He was about to pack enough ravioli-sized squares of blue ice to fill the box when he remembered Rashad Teicher's two separate boxes of ampoules, the ones from which his family had been vaccinated. Daniel had joked about it being _private stock_ as Teicher filled four syringes and swabbed their arms. Teicher laughed and said, "Nothing but the best." Daniel found the boxes, double-checked the labels on the ampoules to be sure they, also, contained A/Shenyang flu vaccine. They too were in protective honeycomb grids, six by six, with half of one box empty. He carefully removed ten ampoules, packed them with cotton in a small box marked Packing Labels and fit it in his carrier, then filled the remaining space with blue ice. With a black grease pencil hanging by the door, he noted what he had removed from the vault, adding the date and his initials. Back in his office, he took a handful of computer disks, copies of his research on the flu virus, placed them inside his laptop's leather carrying case, and zipped it tight. He told Teicher's secretary he needed to see the director on an urgent matter and was admitted. Teicher was immediately interested in the details of how Daniel, with the help of his sons, had tracked down so many of the people on the bus. "It sounds like Legionnaire's disease," Teicher said speculatively. "Or some related strain. Tell me, did the people who became ill have cabins near one another?" "I don't..." "Another thing to check -- I hesitate to say this, because it's so obvious you've probably already started asking -- but did the people who became ill use a hot tub on the cruise ship? That's made a lot of people sick." "I have a lot of ground to cover," Daniel answered, hoping he'd have time to send Hank Hossman another e-mail before he left. He resisted the impulse to look at his watch. "I'll call you tomorrow from Washington, Doctor. I've got to race now or I'll miss my plane." "Oh, I see. Yes. Go ahead, and do call me tomorrow." Daniel hurried back to his office, picked up the laptop carrier and the insulated case. He was standing by his door, locking it with a key, when he heard someone call his name. He muttered "Shit!" under his breath and turned around. "Dr. Valentin," Dr. Villie Ginsberg said again. "I was hoping to see you today..." "I'm sorry, Dr. Ginsberg, I'm catching a plane to the United States, I haven't a minute to spare. I'll be checking my e-mail, however. I'll be glad to..." "I just wanted to ask you ... here, I'll walk with you." Daniel took long strides down the hall and pressed Down for the elevator. She was still right beside him. "What is it, Doctor?" he asked, unable to mask his annoyance. In the elevator she said, "Have you heard anything from Dr. Marissa Vengerov? You were on the cruise with her, were you not?" _Yes, and one hundred seventy-some other people, too!_ he thought of snapping. "We were on the same ship, yes. I saw her briefly." "After St. Petersburg?" she persisted. "No. I didn't expect to. She got off the ship there to go see her parents' old village or something." The elevator door opened and a crush of people on the ground floor stood back while Daniel and the imposing woman got off. "But since then, you haven't heard a word from her?" Daniel pushed through the revolving door with Ginsberg in the next quadrant. He wondered if she planned to get in his car and ride along to the airport. He searched the busy street for his car but didn't see it. "No, I haven't heard from her. Look, perhaps you are misinformed. Dr. Vengerov and I do not work together. If she isn't here, call her apartment. Maybe she's sick." As soon as he said the word, he regretted his total lack of curiosity regarding Dr. Vengerov's whereabouts. _A lot of people on that ship got sick, and some of them died._ Another thought followed closely on the heels of that one. _But she was vaccinated, same as my family and I, by Dr. Teicher._ "She gave up her apartment, the lease and all," Ginsberg said. "Dr. Teicher says she came back from her cruise and stayed only long enough to tell him she wanted a long leave of absence. Then she went away." "That's certainly unlike her, from what I've observed," he said as he saw Rachel come around the corner, "but not impossible. Ah, here's my wife coming now." "I wrote to your brother," she called as he stepped off the curb. "What? To my brother?" "As you know, I'm hoping to move to the United States. I asked you last month if I might write to your brother for advice on working in Los Alamos." "Oh, yes, I remember." It had been of so little consequence to him that he'd nearly forgotten their conversation. "Fine. Well, here's my wife. I've got to go. Good-bye, Dr. Ginsberg. We'll talk when I get back." He darted in front of the car and jumped in without waiting for Rachel to come to a complete stop. "You're cutting it close," she said as she checked traffic and swung in like a Turkish cab driver. "Not by choice, I assure you. And the airport will be a full-scale zoo of security people after Ambassador Meier's assassination." She pulled onto a highway and wove in and out, twenty kilometers per hour over the speed limit. "What did Dr. Ginsberg want?" "You drive like an ambulance driver," he said as they squeaked between two huge diesel trucks. "I _am_ an ambulance driver," she reminded him. That was her army reserve job. "But, yes, this maneuver is safer with sirens. Now, about Ginsberg?" "She thinks Marissa Vengerov has disappeared. Teicher says she asked for a long leave of absence, canceled the lease on her apartment, and left, destination unknown." He took the computer printout of his reservation, made from home on his computer, out of his pocket and checked the details. "When was the last time you saw her? Did she seem like a woman about to jump ship, as it were?" As they neared the turnoff to Ben-Gurion Airport, Rachel slammed on the brakes behind a taxi, honked, and careered around him. He popped his seatbelt off so he could stretch over the seat and squeeze the insulated carrier into his carry-on bag. "I talked to her before the ship weighed anchor and headed up the Neva River. She said she was leaving the ship there, that she had a Russian visa, and she was going to go see the village where her parents lived. About one hundred kilometers from St. Petersburg. That was the last time I saw her. In the salon where I was having coffee in blissful solitude, and she invited herself to join me. You and the boys weren't up yet." "Here we are. Get going." She turned the car nose in toward the curb. Daniel jumped out with his laptop in his right hand, grabbed his bulging carry-on bag from the back seat with his left, and kicked the two doors closed. There wasn't time for a kiss. "I love you!" he called through the open window. She jerked on the hand brake, jumped out her side, and sprinted to catch up with him on the pad that automatically opened the sliding door. She spun him around, planted a kiss somewhere south of his nose, and said, loud enough to make heads turn toward them, "I love you, too!" He was the last passenger to board the plane. As he fell into his seat, he felt like he'd run a four-minute mile carrying an anvil. The aircraft doors closed but there was a delay in pushing back from the gate, so he quickly powered up his laptop and sent an e-mail to Hank Hossman. _Will arrive DIA 3:45 EDT. Will take taxi to hospital. Did you get Utah samples?_ He was about to disconnect the computer from his server, but paused long enough to send a note to his brother. _I'm en route on United Airlines to Wash. DC. Where is Katy staying? What day does she leave Wash?_ It wasn't until they were airborne and he felt his shoulders sag with relief that he'd made his flight that he thought more about Villie Ginsberg's concern about Marissa Vengerov. He went over the last time he'd seen her, in the ship's salon. She'd seemed excited about seeing St. Petersburg, but so was he. There was a flush in her cheeks he'd never noticed before, but when would he have seen it? She wasn't likely to blush like a woman in love over a petri dish of _Staphylococci aureus._ That was what he'd noticed without really knowing he noticed it. A subliminal message or something. Marissa Vengerov had practically broadcast that she was in love with her breezy tone and shining eyes. A woman would have picked up on it, he admitted to himself. Rachel would have nailed it. But with whom was Marissa involved? There were rumors about Marissa and Dr. Teicher, but Daniel couldn't see it. For one thing, Teicher was married. _Oh Danny boy_, he imagined Rachel saying, _were you really born yesterday?_ For another thing, _he_ didn't think Marissa was attractive. If he said that to Rachel, she'd laugh until her sides hurt. _I know!_ He almost snapped his fingers. _Teicher told her the affair was over, and she went away to get a fresh start. Nothing new about that, when a woman gets involved with a married man. It's too bad, but that's probably what happened._ He allowed himself a moment of smugness at how astutely he'd figured it out. Rachel, who said he had the intuition of a three-toed sloth when it came to women, would have to congratulate him. He leaned his chair back the tiny bit allowed and closed his eyes. Then he opened them suddenly. He remembered the last time he'd seen Marissa Vengerov. And it wasn't over their coffee cups in the salon. He'd turned around at the door from the salon to the walkway. Marissa had been talking to a steward and pointing toward him. The steward, who looked to Daniel like a gypsy or a Kazakh, with black, uncombed hair and a thick mustache, had looked directly at him. Marissa Vengerov seemed startled by Daniel's gaze. She had turned suddenly and left the salon by another door. What was she up to? Daniel wondered. And where is she now? -------- *Seventeen* Monday, July 9, 2001 Washington, D.C. _Patrice Kelsey:_ At 9:45 Monday morning, twelve hours after we'd survived the car bombing of the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Katy felt ready to call her father. I'd called Lt. Blaze before Katy awoke and asked her to pick Katy up at ten-thirty instead of nine. I described what we'd survived and reassured her at least four times that neither Katy nor I had been sliced by glass nor burned. I knew her concern was sincere. Katy and Lt. Winifred Blaze -- Win to her friends -- had already become great friends. In the awe-struck tone most teenage girls would use to say, _Omigod! She knows Britney Spears!_ Katy said, _Win got 1600 on her SATs!_ Recruited by all the top colleges in the country, Win chose the United States Air Force Academy. She said she'd take care of the adjustments to Katy's schedule and stay with her. I couldn't say how long I'd be tied up with the police and FBI. Win insisted I leave Katy in her hands, and I was relieved to accept her offer. Katy came out of the bathroom. "I look sick in yellow! Why did I buy this dumb yellow outfit? All it needs is little duckies on the pocket to complete the effect of _dumb_." She looked at the phone, and then her watch. "Here goes." She dialed the access code on her calling card and her home number. "No answer, just the machine. He must be on his way to the Lab." She hung up and exhaled slowly. "I'll try again in fifteen minutes." Neither of us wanted to have breakfast in the hotel's coffee shop, so Katy went to the Starbucks near the hotel entrance to pick up coffee, hot chocolate, and croissants. I needed to call the FBI at the number Rick had left for me on the message pad, but I awarded myself fifteen minutes of silence. I would make the call, but not until Katy had reached her father. I turned over the _Washington Post_ on the table and again read the headlines and first paragraph. A file photo of Israeli Ambassador Ben Meier was beside a large photo of the remains of the white car after the fire was extinguished. "Ambassador Assassinated in D.C." was followed in smaller type by "Bodyguard, chauffeur die. Rena Meier, second bodyguard wounded critically." I set it down and massaged my temples and forehead with my fingertips as I recalled the monstrous event. Soon I would have to go over and over it _ad nauseum_ with the police and the FBI. When Luis had shouted, "Get them out of here," Rick had sped away from the fire, with Katy clinging to me in the back seat of the windowless Volvo. He drove about a mile from the restaurant and pulled into the entrance of a big hotel on the Beltway. I don't remember what hotel, if indeed I ever knew. "I'll get you two into a cab to your hotel. I've got to go back to the scene." Part of me, the reporter part, knew the police and FBI needed Luis's car there at the Three Patriots for the investigation. When Rick looked over the seat he could see that Katy was shivering uncontrollably. I tried to touch his arm but a tremor in my hand made it wave uselessly in the air. "Good grief, you need to go to the hospital!" He looked from Katy to me and back to her. "Are you bleeding? Did anything hit you?" "No, no cuts," I managed to say. "No cuts. No hospital," Katy added through chattering teeth. I tried again and grasped the sleeve of his jacket. "You stay." He ran his hand through his hair and said nothing for a long moment. "Okay, yes, I'll stay with you. Someone else can come get the car. Come on and get in that taxi." He helped us get out of the back seat and steered us, wobbling on our rubbery legs, into the backseat of a cab. "Wait here a couple minutes," he told the driver. "I'm going with them." I clasped both Katy's hands in mine and watched Rick talk to a bellman and a valet parking attendant as he pointed at the Volvo and at us. The bellman pointed in turn toward a glass cubicle with Bell Captain in gold letters on the glass. Rick stepped inside and picked up a phone. I saw the driver's eyes in the mirror as he looked us over. "What happened? You ladies in an accident?" "Not an accident," I said, sounding a little like a robotic telephone voice. "Car bomb. Big car bomb. We're okay." About five minutes later I saw Rick shake hands with a man in a red and gold uniform and step out of the cubicle. He took off his jacket and got in the back seat of the cab, beside Katy. "Here, let's put this around you." In our hotel room Katy was first in the bathroom for a hot shower. Rick had gone in search of a Starbucks and a liquor store. He returned with two decaf _cafes-au-lait_ and one "lait," a steamed milk. Katy sat in bed, propped up against both pillows, and sipped the hot drink. "Don't call my dad, Patrice," she said firmly. Her teeth had stopped chattering. "I know we have to tell him, but not tonight." I was reluctant, but I said we'd wait until morning. Rick sat beside Katy while I took a long shower. When I emerged in my pajamas, my skin pink from the steam, Katy was asleep sitting up. Rick lifted the cup from her fingers and I woke her just enough to take one pillow away and get her to scoot down and let me cover her. Rick took the lids off our still-hot coffees and added a generous shot of bourbon to mine. "What about you?" I asked. "I'm driving." I laughed like that was the funniest thing he'd ever said. Katy rolled over, almost awakened by my laughter. I whispered, "You don't have a car." "You know, you're right. I don't." He opened the bourbon again and poured a shot into his cup, and a little more into mine. We sipped in silence. Then he gave a big sigh. "I've got to call Luis. I'll go down to the lobby." "You can use the phone here." "No. Even hearing one side of the conversation would be too hard on you. You and Katy were perilously close to being in shock when I stopped the car. If you'd been any whiter, I would have insisted on taking you to the hospital. Tomorrow will be tough enough for you." I nodded, barely able to keep my eyes open. "There's a phone in the bathroom." "I'll be going downstairs in a few minutes anyway. I'll call from there." "I want you to stay here tonight. There are two beds, and I'll sleep with Katy." He started to protest, but I added, "I'm afraid she'll wake up with nightmares, and I'm in no condition to comfort anybody." I thought, but didn't say, I was a little afraid of nightmares that might wait in store for me. While he thought about it, I drained my bedtime potion and crawled in beside Katy. I opened my eyes just enough to see him turn back the covers on the other queen bed and turn out the light. I felt his lips brush my cheek, and then I heard the bathroom door close. I got comfortable on my side, pulled the sheet, blanket and heavy bedspread up over my ear. I fell asleep pretty easily, as exhausted as I was, but it was fitful. My legs cramped and I kept moving them up and down like a bicyclist. It seemed as if I woke up about fifteen times during the night. I was aware of Rick showering, then of his leaving. I had peered, bleary-eyed, at the numbers on the clock radio, 7:09, then rolled over and went back to sleep for about an hour. The clock now read 10:02. I was still sitting at the table, massaging my forehead, when I heard a key card in the lock. Katy brought in two cups and a white bag. "Ready to call your dad?" I asked softly. "I guess so." She took a bite out of her pastry, then dialed. "Dad? It's me. Oh, fine. Well, not really fine. Umm, did you hear what happened to the ambassador last night? Here in Washington?" She nodded at me that yes, he'd heard the news, then went on. "Well, Patrice and I were there, where the bomb went off, but we're not hurt." -------- *Eighteen* July 9, 2001 _Taba, Egypt. A resort by the Red Sea_ Rashad Teicher did his best to look nonchalant as he strolled toward beach chairs set in two rigid rows, facing the water as if the sea were putting on a theatrical performance. Instead of feeling relaxed and unfettered, he felt exposed and foolish in swim trunks and sandals. He noticed the lithe and lovely young women on the white plastic lounges, their eyes masked by sunglasses and their breasts exposed like brown melons, sorted by size and basted with oil. He was not amused by the paradox he felt. When he had on his usual garb, custom-tailored suit, silk shirt, gold cufflinks, and Italian leather shoes, women noticed him. More than noticed him -- showed with their eyes and mannerisms that he was attractive to them. In swim trunks he had no identity. He could be a janitor on holiday so far as the luscious women knew. He forced his face into a pleasant but pre-occupied mien and sucked in his gut. Of course, this nakedness was just what Roun Najoub wanted. Not only did it make them equal, but there was no chance Rashad would be wearing a wire. He supposed he could have been insulted that his boyhood friend, a man as close as a brother to him, would be suspicious. But Roun's caution was understandable, even inevitable in the soupy politics of Palestine. Rashad spread his Hilton Hotel beach towel on a lounge as far from the other sunbathers as he could, and opened the orange and tan umbrella. Rather than lie down, a position he considered too vulnerable, he shoved the back of the lounge to a rigid, upright position. Roun would be there soon, he knew. He was probably nearby, watching. He added up the years that he'd known Roun Najoub. Almost forty. Roun was two years older than Rashad, and had befriended him in high school. Roun had seen the misery in the younger boy and led him to use it to good purpose. Rashad thought of Roun as a lens that focused the diffused anger of Palestinians into powerful action, much like the sun's rays, focused, could ignite paper. Roun nipped Rashad's rebellion in the bud, or rather, redirected it. Roun's dedication to wiping Jews off the face of the earth and establishing Palestine as the nation it should be, instead of a widely-dispersed band of remnants and refugees, became Rashad's dedication as well. Instead of battling Jews with rocks and graffiti like thousands of his fellow Palestinians, or strapping a bomb to his body and martyring himself in a Jerusalem coffeehouse, Rashad studied hard and bided his time. He followed Roun Najoub to university in Sofiya, Bulgaria. Beth-el Laboratory had welcomed him "home" to Israel once he had a doctorate in biochemistry, but he was always aware that as a non-Jew he was a second-class citizen. The remnant of Arabs who had not fled in the late 1940s, some one hundred and fifty thousand, grew to seven hundred fifty thousand by the late 1980s, thanks to the custom of having numerous children. But under Israeli law, these families couldn't build large houses. His uncle had added on and added on to his house in Dayr Yasin as his daughters married and had baby after baby. In one of many vicious crackdowns, the Jews had bulldozed Eban's house. Rashad vowed to make them pay. His hatred for Jews grew, year by year, injustice by injustice. But the time for retribution was close at hand. It was an ironic turn of events that now Roun Najoub was the hothead and Rashad was the one who counseled patience. "Hello, Rasi." To any observer, the man walking for exercise on the beach was surprised to see an acquaintance. "I'm surprised to see you on the beach instead of the golf course!" Rashad stood and the two made a hearty show of handshakes. "Please, join me. Surely you can spare a few minutes?" Roun Najoub let himself be talked into it, with a look at his watch, and a nod. Under the umbrella they maintained their pleasant facades but turned to darker subjects. "I've got to know the timing," Roun said. "When will Sergei Kos have everything in place?" Rashad would not be hurried. "Your people did a good job on the ambassador." Roun shrugged. "We will issue a statement claiming responsibility as soon as I know you have the materials where they belong." Over his swim trunks he wore a matching shirt, unbuttoned all the way. He took two cigars and a butane lighter from the shirt pocket and lit Rashad's, then his own. "Well?" he prodded. Rashad studied his cigar. "You should relax. Everything will fall into place." "I don't trust Kos." "Neither do I, even though he is my wife's brother. Perhaps even less because of that. But he has his goals, and we have ours. He'll do what is in his own best interest, and we'll all get what we want." He leaned toward the flame of Roun's lighter, puffed to light the cigar, then sat back in his lounge chair. He nodded to show he appreciated such a fine cigar, then continued. "The Shen II virus is in America. Kos's people have been vaccinated and will release the virus into subways, the air circulation systems of large buildings, and a few more select locations." He thought with a shudder of Kos's insistence that they spray the virus in as many daycare centers as practicable. "Six cities will be the release sites," he added confidently, but wondered if the virus had been transferred to the cities yet. He had asked, but Sergei wouldn't tell him. Although he'd just told Roun, "The Shen II virus is in America," he wasn't absolutely sure of that either. Sergei was ferocious about holding control in his own hands. "So Americans get sick! So what?" Roun hissed. "Get sick and _die,_ my friend_. Get sick_ and _panic._ They live in a dream world. When they realize their government can't do anything to protect them, they'll go wild." He knew the American press reported that after three years and more than one hundred forty million dollars the Army National Guard had no anti-terrorism teams ready to respond to a biological attack, nor to nuclear or chemical threats. He'd followed news of disaster planning in the United States on the Internet. He and Kos skipped Denver when they chose the six cities because it was the only city to have run a bioterrorism exercise. Of course, since Denver failed miserably in the exercise, it would have been as good a choice as the other cities. "Fine, but what about Israel?" Roun snapped. "The Jews of Israel feed at the tit of American Zionism. The Israelis will be hit, too, with something worse than the Americans, but not until we get vaccine to the mosques and protect Arab Muslims." "Vaccine for what? Another flu?" He examined his own cigar as if it were made of brown wrapping paper instead of fine Cuban tobacco. "No. Not the flu. Something much worse, but I'm not discussing it. It's simply better if you don't know." "And it will kill Jews?" "Oh, indisputably." _And anybody else in its way_, he added to himself. "But it leaves their houses, hospitals, schools, airports, water treatment plants and highways intact. So we get our homeland, Palestine, with billions of dollars of improvements. All we will have to do is dig some big trenches and shove bodies into them." Roun's mouth opened in a grin beneath his black mustache. "As you wish, I won't ask what the toxin is. But when will it be released? When will our people be vaccinated?" "It is no small thing, the vaccinations, my friend. The vaccine is being prepared in Iran, and called at all stages of the process a cholera vaccine." "But it's not cholera?" Roun's grin broadened. Rashad smiled in turn. "That's right. As soon as the vaccine is in place, in the thirty mosques -- I sent you the list -- I will phone you. Then you must immediately spread the word, through Palestinian radio and the mosques, that we have discovered a Jewish plot to infect us with deadly cholera. People will line up for vaccinations. I'll wait five days, then release the germs." He noticed his cigar had gone out. "You'd better go now." Roun nodded but made no move to get up. "How long until the vaccine is ready?" Rashad spoke with more confidence than he felt. "Maybe ten days, maybe fifteen days." "As soon as I get your call, Arafat will die. We are through licking the boots of Zionists." Rashad nodded somberly. He knew Roun Najoub's branch of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, was determined to overthrow Yassar Arafat. Their declared intent was to take back their land and wipe out the state of Israel. They made no secret of their call for _jihad_, a holy war. "Death in jihad is our most sublime aspiration," they wrote in Palestinian newspapers. "The Land of Palestine is an Islamic trust for Muslim generations until the Day of Judgement," they said, and, "No organization has the right to concede any part of Palestine." Rashad and Roun had argued for years and even come to blows over the issue of _jihad_. Rashad saw it as a lie, a tool of the powerful to keep men from thinking. "If I were an enemy of Islam," he'd shouted to Roun one night over a desert campfire, "_jihad_ is exactly the plan I'd foment! Die and go to paradise! Sure. The result as far as the enemy is concerned is one less Muslim alive to fight another day." Roun wouldn't concede the point, but at least he quit arguing in favor of "paradise." He was more inclined now to strategies that kept his people alive and fighting. Roun shook the sand out of his leather sandals and stood. Abruptly, he sat down on the lounge chair again. Leaning close to Rashad, he asked, "What does Kos get out of this?" Rashad shook his head; he wouldn't be drawn into that blind alley of discussion and supposition. "Sergei improves his bank account, as he always does. What he does with his money is not my concern." He almost added, _or yours_, but knew better than to talk down to Roun. Roun stood again and the two old friends shook hands. "We'll talk again." "Give my regards to your brother Khalil." "And give my best regards to your wife." Rashad watched Roun continue down the beach. He wanted to return to his room, dress, and return to Tel Aviv, but he made himself lie back and appear to be on a relaxing vacation. He wished again that Tatiana could have joined him. She had insisted that Sergei needed her help and had flown, instead, to Athens. After an hour of forced relaxation, Rashad rose, draped his towel around his shoulders, and strolled back to the hotel terrace and on to his room. He took a shower and considered having lunch in his room. _No, I've got too much to do to sit on my ass._ An hour later he was on the highway to Tel Aviv. -------- *Nineteen* Monday, July 9, 2001 Headquarters, Metropolitan Police, District of Columbia _Patrice Kelsey:_ As soon as Katy finished talking to her father, I called the FBI and agreed to meet two special agents at MPDC, the metropolitan police department in downtown Washington. Luis Romero was on automatic administrative leave, thanks to his quick reaction in shooting the armed driver the night before. That he was _alive_ was also thanks to his quick reaction. Rick came to the hotel to pick me up and we waited until Win Blaze arrived to take Katy to the National Institutes of Health. "Timing isn't going to work for Katy to tour Annapolis," she said, "but I'm sure we can arrange a tour of the Air Force Academy in September." I stopped at the hotel's front desk on our way to the car and reserved a room for Katy's father and uncle, both of whom were coming to Washington. "That's Valentin," I said, "like Valentine but without the 'e.' Arkady and Daniel." "Katy's call really upset her father," I told Rick as we pulled into traffic. "She says he hasn't been on an airplane for years, that he hates to fly. But he said he'd be on a plane this afternoon. And he said he'd just received e-mail from his brother in Israel, saying he's already on his way here. He thinks Daniel must be looking into the deaths of people on the tourist bus in Russia." "Have you called Gordon in Los Alamos? I'm sure he'd like to know his star reporter is an eyewitness to an assassination." "I haven't had time to call him," I sighed. "I don't feel like going over it all if I don't have to, which of course is the case with the police and FBI. And I'm not certain that I want my name in any headlines along with the word 'eyewitness'." "At least the killer you could identify is already dead." He stopped for a red light and smiled. "And Luis is alive to tell the tale, thanks to your warning him about the shooter." "The woman!" I said suddenly. "At the restaurant!" "What woman?" The light turned green and a millisecond later the driver behind us honked. "When Katy went back in the restaurant to get her nametag, she almost ran into a stunning young woman in a big hurry to leave the area. She didn't get a car or a taxi, just took off on foot. I forgot until now." Thirty minutes later I sat in a room with no windows, no discernible ventilation, and a cup of coffee so strong it could etch glass. The people who had been in a house-afire-hurry to talk to me were now tied up in meetings. Rick had dropped me at the entrance to the police station and gone to work. Even if he'd had time to come with me, parking was impossible. The MPDC headquarters on Indiana Northwest was a stone fortress the size of ten Super Wal-Marts stacked five on five. There were "greeters" at the door, too, like at Wal-Mart, but they were armed, they stood by metal detectors, and they didn't care whether I had a good day or not. I felt lucky to get inside without a strip search. I cooled my heels in the room for about fifteen minutes, breathing through my mouth to keep from smelling the fetid air. Then I opened the door, strode down the hall as if I knew my way around, and headed toward the bank of elevators. I rode down with six well-dressed men who talked of indictments and writs. On the main floor I swam with the school of attorneys toward the main entrance and drifted outside. A clock in the massive lobby said it was 10:40. Across the street I flagged a cab and gave the driver the address of the Three Patriots Restaurant. En route, I clipped my press badge to the pocket of my light green cotton jacket and called Gordon Wilson on my cell phone. "I've got an exclusive story for you, Gordon. You can run it beside the Associated Press coverage of the assassination of the Israeli ambassador." With the difference in time zones, I figured, Gordon could still get it on the front page of the _Guardian,_ which came out in the afternoon. I spewed out the events of the night before, automatically speaking at the rate Gordon could type. He said the headline would read, "Local reporter and student witness assassination." I promised to call him again by 6:00 p.m. Los Alamos time. When police blocked the cab four blocks from the restaurant, I paid my fare and got out. "Ma'am," an MPDC officer called, "you can't go any closer." I spotted a satellite van for the NBC affiliate parked two blocks inside the cordon, utterly blocking the narrow street. I waved my badge to the officer and called, "WRC, channel 4. My camera crew is already here." I didn't wait for an answer, just dashed in like I'd seen a hundred TV reporters do during my years as a print reporter. _Rules are for fools_, one of them told me over lunch in Albuquerque. _It's easier to say you're sorry later than wait around for permission._ The brazen audacity of TV reporters always reminded me of my senior year in high school, when my bra size went from A to C and I got my braces off. I'd finally gotten pretty and popular, and I was a shoo-in -- _a shoo-in_! -- to be homecoming queen, until a ditsy California girl named Star landed like a damn alien and took over the mealy minds of every boy in school. Naturally, the pod people voted _en masse_ for Star. _Gag!_ I'll never forget the sight of Star in the parade, on the float labeled Royal Court, waving like Glinda the Good Witch at all the little people. That's how I felt about TV reporters. Or, as they preferred to be called, "on-air talent." I darted past the satellite truck and made it to the next barricade, about one hundred fifty feet from ground zero, marked by the shell of the formerly white compact car. Now it was a sub-sub-compact car. A wrecker was backing up to load it on a flat bed. The ambassador's limousine was already gone. It was a zero business lunch day for the restaurant. Maybe by dinnertime they'd have the broken glass swept up and get the damaged areas screened from view. As I expected, Luis was on the scene, not as an investigator but as a witness and major player in the horrific event. A burly African-American police officer named Grouch held out her hand like a meaty stop sign. "That's far enough, Ma'am." "I'm with Special Agent Romero. He's right over there." "I don't care if you're with J. Edgar Hoover. You're not setting foot on this crime scene." I had to settle for standing behind the sawhorses and calling, "Luis! Over here!" Flapping my arms, I looked like a bake-off winner with an apple pie for Al Roker. He turned toward me when he heard his name, but I could see I was not the answer to the question, "What person do you most want to see right now?" He said something to the man he was talking to and walked over to me. "I thought you were talking to the police and the Bureau, downtown, this morning." "You know, it's funny, I thought so, too. But -- they were too busy. As it happens, I'm a pretty busy person myself. So, here's the thing. I thought of something, I mean I remembered something from last night that might be important. I think we should ask the restaurant staff about a person I observed right before the bomb went off." The officer had edged closer as I talked and I got a better look at her nametag. She was Officer _Crouch._ "What did you see?" Luis asked. "I'll have an agent check it out." "Umm, no." "What?" I fingered my press badge. "I can 'check it out' more effectively myself. Now, or later. If I do it now, you might learn something useful and timely. And if it's a dead end, we won't waste time on it." I saw Officer Crouch roll her lips in to keep from laughing. "The bottom line, Luis, is I am very stressed by nearly being blown up last night, and I am eager to cooperate with the police in this homicide investigation, but I'm not stupid. And I won't sit alone in a room at police headquarters unless I'm under arrest." I considered going on to mention the place of a free press in a free society, but thought better of it. I decided to give him a count of five before I turned my back on him and the crime scene. Actually, I gave him an eight count. Nobody ever said I wasn't a good citizen. "Come on," he said with a notable lack of enthusiasm. I shook hands with Special Agents Stephanie Claas and Monroe Jefferson, and the agent in charge of the scene, Dick Nobell. Luis murmured to me that Claas and Jefferson both had doctorates, Claas in chemistry and Jefferson in physics. They were there to look for traces of the explosive and start calculating its power. "Ms. Kelsey was in my car last night," Luis explained. "She was watching as the white car came into the area, and she saw the driver roll out, clutching a weapon, before the car exploded. She had the good sense to warn me before I ran in front of him." He paused, apparently shaken by recall of the single instant he'd had to react. "Uh, she just told me she remembered something else about the event." I described the young woman who was in a hurry to leave the restaurant right before the car exploded. "How much time elapsed?" Claas asked. "And please point out where you were standing when you saw her." "Katy turned to run in at the same moment the valet brought Luis's car. I watched her go through the automatic door and almost collide with the woman, who was wearing a tight black dress with a plunging neckline. Very high heels with no back strap. They looked awkward as heck." "And she went where?" Jefferson asked. "Did she see the limousine pull up?" I thought about it. "I can't be positive, but I think she would have seen it coming around the circle. It stopped behind Luis's car maybe ten seconds after Katy turned to run inside. Luis took the keys and tipped the valet, but we weren't in a hurry to leave. We were waiting for Katy. I remember the chauffeur gave us a dirty look for blocking his access to the red carpet. I had enough time, standing by Luis's car, to see the chauffeur get out and walk around the car, and the two bodyguards step out, and the lady. Then Katy hurried past me into the back seat and I got in, too. I watched out the back window and saw the ambassador step out, then three seconds later the white car sped in, stopped, the driver rolled out, and it exploded. It all happened about as fast as I'm able to tell it." "We'll want you to work with an FBI sketch artist," Dick Nobell said. "She's the best in the profession. Tell her everything you remember about the woman. Meanwhile, I'm going to ask the maitre d' and the servers, the valet parking guy, and the cashier about your mystery lady." I wanted to go inside and ask questions myself, but I'd pushed as far as I should. _At least I'm on the team. I don't have to be the quarterback._ -------- *Twenty* Monday, July 9, 2001 _Memorial General Hospital, Arlington, Virginia_ Daniel Valentin always felt a rush of joy when he arrived in the United States, followed instantaneously by guilt. Israel had been his home, his land, his country for some twenty years. But inside the man was the little boy who had stood with his class every day and placed his hand on his heart. _I pledge allegiance, to the Flag, of the United States of America._ He'd come to know, over the years, that decisions made by the mind of a man might overrule the heart of a boy, but they can't eradicate it. After the leg-cramping flight from Tel Aviv to Washington, it felt good to stride down the concourse at Dulles International Airport. He showed his identification at U.S. Customs to explain why he was bringing "drugs" into the United States. For once the system worked, and a call to the customs agent's supervisor confirmed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were working with Dr. Valentin. His biological clock was out of kilter, telling him it was midnight in Tel Aviv, where he'd gotten up that morning. But the day still had a long journey into night in the eastern United States. Ideally, he could check into a hotel, have a light meal, and sleep. _But if things were ideal, I would be sitting home in Tel Aviv._ Daniel, Hank Hossman, Detective Zach Parker, and Patrice Kelsey had been on the phone in pairs a dozen times, coordinating their meeting time and place. Meanwhile, Patrice had served as "information central" for Arnie Valentin, Katy, Lt. Win Blaze, Luis Romero and other FBI agents, and Rick. Rick offered to pick up Daniel's brother at Reagan National Airport, but Patrice relayed that Arnie Valentin preferred to rent a car. As Daniel told Patrice when he called from the baggage claim area at DIA, nobody could predict how much they'd each be on the move. Another car was essential. Now, in a conference room at the hospital, Hank Hossman wrapped Daniel in a bear hug. The scientist and the big American from Seattle had exchanged two dozen e-mails and talked by phone, but their meeting the afternoon of July ninth was their first face-to-face since June twenty-first in St. Petersburg. Since then, Hank's wife Ellie and at least seven other travelers on what Hank had called "the bus to hell" had died. The count was now eight dead and eight more crawling back from serious illness. Four passengers, including Hank Hossman, had been sick for a week to ten days but not sick enough to be hospitalized. Seven people had stayed completely healthy -- Daniel's family, an Asian lady from California named Leesan Bo and Kari and Sven Viddal, the couple in Norway whose infant son died. That left four bus passengers from the cruise ship unaccounted for, plus the guide, Svetlana, and the driver, for a total of thirty-three souls on the bus. "This is Zach Parker," Hank said as he tugged a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his eyes and nose. Daniel thrust out his hand to shake, but had to clear his throat in order to speak. "Glad to know you, Detective. I'm sorry to hear about your father. How is your mother?" "Thanks, Dr. Valentin. I spent an hour with her earlier this afternoon, and I think she's improving. The illness on top of losing my dad has been a double whammy for her." "I understand. And please, call me Daniel." "Okay, I will -- if you call me Zach." If Daniel had been asked to describe Robert P. Parker, the man he'd met so briefly on the bus to Peterhof, he would have drawn a blank. But as soon as he saw his son, Detective Robert Z. Parker, he remembered the attractive and lively Robert and Faith Parker clearly. Their silver hair was as premature as it was striking. While killing time on the bus, Faith had asked Moshe and Rabin about their soccer team in Israel, adding that she was a soccer grandma and never missed a game when her granddaughters played. On board the cruise ship, Daniel had noticed the Hossmans and Parkers playing bridge in the salon before the bus tour. He couldn't recall seeing them after the day in St. Petersburg. "I've been on the horn lining up laboratory space and equipment like you asked for," Hank said. "We can move right into a top-flight lab in Herndon, just a few miles from here." "Good," Daniel said. "Have you got ice for my material?" He removed the insulated container from his duffel bag, opened it, and discarded the tough plastic squares. Hossman lifted a Coleman ice chest onto the conference table and tucked handfuls of ice around Daniel's vials and ampoules. "How are Rachel and the boys?" he asked. To Zach he added, "Daniel's got a couple of fine boys. Your mom took a liking to them. Your dad, too." "They're fine. None of us has been sick a minute, which makes me suspect our vaccinations for A/Shenyang influenza, which we got on June first, saved us. It's not scientific, just a guess based on inadequate data, but it's a starting point." He closed the lid on the insulated container. "Does the lab we're using have an electron microscope?" "It's got everything. The president of my company got on a conference call with the president of PXC Technologies, and we've got the key to the front door for as long as we need it. Compare that to the government, which will still have its collective thumb up its collective wazoo until the last dog dies, and you've got the picture." Although Daniel was having trouble picturing a collective wazoo, he nodded. However Hank Hossman wanted to phrase it, they were ready to conduct research, and that was all that mattered. "I've been working the Meier assassination," Zach said, "joint operation with the FBI, of course, and I met your friend, Patrice Kelsey." "I haven't actually met her yet, myself. She's a friend of my brother, Arnie, and his daughter, in Los Alamos. I've talked to her maybe four or five times today, once from the plane and then on the ground, trying to coordinate Arnie's arrival from New Mexico." "She's an eyewitness to the assassination," Hank added. "Lucky to be alive, from what I hear." "That's the truth," Zach said. "The FBI, as usual, is trying to own every inch of the investigation, and she's getting jerked around. She seems like a smart lady." "When will your brother get here?" Hank asked. "He's been delayed in Kansas City. Big cell of thunderstorms has tied up air traffic across the Midwest. He might not get to the hotel in Washington until midnight." Zach Parker looked at his watch. "Let's go see my mom for a few minutes. Then I've got to get back to D.C." "You already got her blood sample?" Daniel addressed his question to both of them. Hank picked up a smaller ice chest. "I'm a walking blood bank. Or flying, as the case may be. I arrived in Washington with blood from my wife and me, and the two ladies in Utah. An hour ago a courier gave me the samples for Xian Bo and his wife in La Jolla, California, and Mickey and Victoria Castner in Sacramento. I've also got Zach's mom's sample, and his dad's." Daniel knew Xian Bo had died, and that his wife, Leesan Bo, had remained healthy. He also knew, thanks to a phone call from Hank Hossman to Rachel, relayed to Patrice, and finally to him, that the Castners of Sacramento had both been very ill but were expected to recover. "Okay, good. Sven and Kari Viddal are sending samples of their blood and of little Erik's blood, from Norway. And Brigid Bach, Gunter's widow, is sending their two samples from Germany. Both packages should arrive at the airport tomorrow morning." Daniel placed his hand on Hank's broad shoulder. "Let's go see Mrs. Parker." -------- *Twenty-one* Monday, July 9, 2001 Washington, D.C. _Patrice Kelsey:_ So many men came to my hotel room the afternoon and evening of July 9 that I have probably been designated _persona non grata_ by the Marriott Hotel on 12^th Street. Oh well. Each of the men, and the one woman, preferred that I travel to their separate power stations, but after my experience at the MPDC that morning -- I show up, they're too busy -- I said, _No thanks. I'll be at my hotel drinking excellent coffee and resting my feet. Come if you care to._ The police artist, Priscilla Smith, was almost psychic the way she transferred the picture in my head to paper. The young woman I'd taken to calling Cinderella, the one who rushed away from the restaurant just before the car bomb exploded, appeared on Priscilla's sketchpad stroke by stroke, each line the answer to a question Priscilla posed. Were the woman's eyes close to her nose, or more widely spaced? Did she have bangs, or was her long hair all one length? Did it fall to both sides from a part? Did one or both sides hook around an ear? What about earrings? About the plunging neckline on her tight black dress -- was she flat chested, or voluptuous? Did her breasts jiggle as she ran, or did the mounds look more like implanted grapefruit? When Priscilla's drawing was complete, Cinderella looked just like I'd seen her the night before. Thin legs, bony knees, big feet, and torso skinny as a model, with grapefruit implants. Blond hair, dark roots, blunt cut to shoulder length, center part. The hair on the right side of her face fell forward; she'd tucked the left side behind her ear as she swept her eyes back and forth. I had no clue about her eye color, but I seemed to recall she blinked like a contact lens wearer. After nearly two hours of having my brain probed by Priscilla, I felt drained. Mentally, that is. I'd consumed enough coffee that I was anything but drained. The hotel operator had held my calls at Priscilla's insistence, except for one from Daniel Valentin, forty thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean. His insistence was greater than Priscilla's. When she left, I took a quick shower and, with trepidation, called the front desk. As expected, there were more than twenty messages, about half from the press. I made a quick call to Gordon in Los Alamos, just to say I had no news to report, then I began whittling the list of messages, returning FBI calls one through six, MPDC calls one through seven, and the media calls one through eleven. When I called the media, I was sly enough not to identify myself as Patrice Kelsey. Instead I said, very quickly, that Ms. Kelsey was doing everything she could to help the FBI and the DC police, and that Rick Romero, public information specialist with the FBI, would have a statement from her in two hours. Each call to a law enforcement agency started with a demand that I come right away to that agent or officer's bailiwick. And each time I said, "No." I told the agent or officer that I was willing, even eager, to cooperate, but I could cooperate better with all of them if I stayed put. I don't know where they all thought I'd find the taxi fare to race all over Washington and eastern Virginia, let alone find the time and energy. As the afternoon wore on, they were all annoyed with me -- or worse -- but my intransigence was rewarded. They brought their toys to _my_ house. Meanwhile, I stayed in touch with Katy and Win Blaze by cell phone. Dick Nobell, the FBI agent who I'd met at the scene of the car bomb, was the easiest cop -- federal or otherwise -- to talk to. By himself he wasn't enough to make me love the FBI, but he raised the bar high enough to limbo under. He arrived with Luis and two more agents, Tom Brickman and Harry Rible. _Tom, Dick and Harry_. I restrained my urge to sing it. They didn't look like the type to recognize, much less appreciate, Broadway musicals. Brickman and Rible said maybe 10 words each, but they were chatterboxes compared to a representative of the Secret Service who arrived five minutes later. I found out his name only by insisting on seeing identification. Walker W. Wurth. I opened my mouth to make a remark about him being all over the world wide web, but figured, one, he'd heard all the www jokes before and, two, he probably hadn't laughed since the Nixon administration -- if then. I gathered, by telepathic processes, that Wurth was there because the event was an assassination, and the Secret Service gets mighty edgy about the "A" word. When Agent Nobell said I was a newspaper reporter, Wurth reacted pretty much as I expected he would -- with revulsion. I felt like shouting, _Hey, that doesn't make me any less a citizen of the USA. I don't even have a criminal record!_ "You were right about Priscilla Smith," I told Dick Nobell. "She got Cinderella down on paper like a camera." It occurred to me I'd feel pretty dumb if they tore the nation's capital apart and found a woman who had simply walked out on a rude date. Even if that were the case, however, she might have seen something useful. M_aybe I'm sending everyone on a wild chick chase_. I put my hand on my forehead. "How are you feeling?" Luis asked. He looked so concerned about me I felt like hugging him. Especially when I considered what he'd been through in the past twenty hours. I felt like a lace curtain clawed by five cats, and all I'd done was watch a horrible event. Luis Romero had faced a killer with an automatic weapon and lived to tell the tale. I wished everyone would go away so I could just talk to Luis, and to Rick. No such luck. "I'm okay," I said. There weren't enough chairs for everyone, and I couldn't see the FBI and Secret Service guys kicking off their shoes and sitting cross-legged on the two beds like a co-ed slumber party. _Manners be damned_, I told myself. _I'm tired!_ So I propped up the pillows on one bed and made myself comfortable. Their comfort, or lack of it, was their problem. Dick Nobell took a chair and settled in. Luis sat on the other bed, and the other three men stood. I'd only answered three or four questions when someone knocked on the door. To my relief, it was Rick, there in his official capacity as public information guy for the FBI. I answered two more questions. Another knock. I felt as if I were on stage at the start of a play and all the other actors meandered in late. Detective Zach Parker of the Metropolitan Police of District of Columbia, another investigator I'd met that morning at the scene of the bomb, slipped into the hotel room. When we shook hands in front of the restaurant Parker had said, "Dr. Daniel Valentin is on his way here, from Tel Aviv." Now he extended his hand again and said in an undertone, "Daniel Valentin has arrived. I just came from meeting with him." "Before we continue," I said, "is anybody else coming?" Another knock and the entrance of Trey Garrett and Sol Solomon answered my question. Neither of them was inclined to tell me anything beyond their names, so I figured they were spooks. Maybe CIA or one of the CIA's foreign cousins. I went through a recitation of everything I'd seen in front of the restaurant the night before. Priscilla Smith returned with copies of Cinderella's picture for each of the men. Dick Nobell and Zach Parker pulled out their notebooks and planned their next move. Sol Solomon took a folder out of his briefcase and showed me a photo of a beautiful redhead. "Have you ever seen this woman?" "No, I'm sure I haven't. She'd be hard to miss." I took a quick look at the back and read _Genevieve Auberge._ He showed me another photo of a woman, a blonde with high cheekbones, but wearing dark sunglasses. I said I couldn't tell enough from the photo. The third photo was labeled underneath, _Sergei Kos_. He, too, had high cheekbones, but his dark, piercing eyes stared right out of the photo. His skin looked rough and he had a scar above one eye that made it look as if his eyebrows weren't even. He looked like he ate red meat, and it didn't have to be dead first. "Who's he?" I asked. Sol ignored my question. "Have you seen him?" "No. I haven't." Then he stacked the glossy tourist magazine and the leather-bound guide to hotel services at the back of the round table. Placing six eight-by-ten color photos on the table, he turned on the hanging lamp above them and asked me to look at them. It was obvious they were Palestinians, or at least some category of Arabs who supported Palestine. I couldn't read the script, but the pictures of Yassar Arafat held aloft on sticks behind three of the men pinned it down pretty well. We weren't looking at members of the Irish Republican Army. Or a band of militant Lutherans prepared to storm out of Sweden and gain world domination at any price. I took my time. The six had a lot in common. Black eyes, bushy mustaches, anger so palpable it almost shot off the paper. There was a certain sneer, a derisive look in their olive-skinned faces. One stood out, though. "I've seen this man. Last night." Sol nodded. He seemed pleased. "That's right. He was the driver." He turned to Dick Nobell. "The Al Aqsa Intifada has taken credit for the assassination of Ambassador Meier. It's being released to the press as we speak." "How is his wife?" I asked. "And the second bodyguard?" "We think they'll pull through," Sol said. "She's listed as critical but stable, and he's stable." One pager went off, then two more. When two more went off in quick succession, the eight men and Priscilla Smith all grabbed cell phones out of pockets and briefcases. Whatever they heard made them stampede for the door. Sol stopped just long enough to stuff his gallery of rogues into his case and give me his card. Under "Solomon Consulting" were four phone numbers. Nothing else. I guessed if one had to ask, _consulting about what,_ he or she had no need to know. I reached into the herd of men crowding the door and tugged gently on Rick's arm. "What's going on?" Rick and Luis exchanged dark looks, the encompassing communication I'd observed between them on other occasions. Their eyes spoke volumes, but only to each other. Luis turned away and followed Dick Nobell out of my room. "Rick! What's going on?" I said again. He sighed. "I can't talk about it. I'm sorry, Patrice. You know I would if I could. All I can say is that threats have been received, threats to public safety in the United States." He sighed again and ran his hand through his hair. "The assassination last night was only the beginning." In a heartbeat I was in his arms. We just had time for a hug, a kiss, and another hug before he said, "I'll call you later tonight." -------- *Twenty-two* Monday, July 9, 2001 _Washington, D.C._ The digital clock above the "Arrivals and Departures" kiosk read 11:50 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Dr. Arkady Valentin dropped his empty Calistoga Springs Water bottle in a trash receptacle and sighed. He'd arrived before midnight, but not by much. He shuffled forward, glad to finally be at the front of the slow line. As he waited by the velvet ropes for his turn to proceed to the counter, he rubbed a hand over his scratchy chin and cheeks. What had been a five o'clock shadow at three o'clock was almost a beard now. He was standing at the Budget Car Rental booth at Dulles International Airport. Like each of the tired travelers ahead of him, Arnie was supposed to be at Reagan National Airport -- about eight hours ago. The young man working graveyard at Budget was flummoxed by these people's reserved _cars_ sitting at Reagan, and the _people_ sitting, or in this case, standing, at Dulles. He'd poke a few keys on his keyboard and palpate the chrome stud that protruded a quarter inch from his lower lip while he read whatever came up on his computer screen. He did it over and over until Arnie felt like shouting, but of course he didn't. As his brother Daniel had said of him before, Arnie was polite to a fault. He was bone tired; his nerves felt like eighteen inches of catgut on a twenty-inch bow. He'd been stuck in Kansas City for about five hours, waiting for the thunderstorms to move out, and waiting for the diverted planes to land. Finally the airline squeezed him and most of their other Washington-bound passengers onto later flights. "Next?" the young man said, then inexplicably left the booth. Arnie moved to the counter and set his suitcase, carry-on bag, briefcase, and laptop computer on the floor beside him. He smiled and waved as he saw U.S. Senator Jean Harding leave the Alamo Car Rental booth, keys in hand. He had, of course, recognized her boarding the plane in Albuquerque. During the hours they were held hostage by the weather in Kansas City he had introduced himself. She was friendly enough, but he could see she had a heavy load of work with her, so he intended to chat just a few moments and then excuse himself. Sen. Harding knew immediately who Arkady Valentin was, thanks, he felt sure, to the notoriety of his televised escort by the FBI for questioning about the missing infectious tissue, but she said nothing about that. Instead she complimented him on Katy's science award. "I think Katy and her mentor, Patrice Kelsey, plan to tour the Senate on Thursday," he'd said. "Ms. Kelsey said you didn't expect to be in Washington, though." "The assassination of the Israeli ambassador has major ramifications for national security, as you must know," she'd said, bending her head toward him. "Quite a few senators and congressmen are returning to Washington." "My trip is also a result of the tragic death of Mr. Meier," he said. "Ms. Kelsey and my daughter were just a short distance from the bomb that killed the ambassador and the others. I think I'm still in shock at coming so close to losing Katy." She placed her hand on his and gave a gentle squeeze. "Oh, Dr. Valentin, I had no idea of this! Were they injured at all?" "They say no, but I must see for myself." He looked around to see if anyone appeared to be listening, then leaned closer to her and lowered his voice to hardly more than a whisper. "Senator, my brother, who is an Israeli citizen, is also en route to Washington." He looked at his watch. "If his air travel has been smoother than ours, he is already there." He paused to rub his chin. "Senator, my brother suspects, with very good reason, that he and his family were aboard a bus on which deadly biological agents were released. He can't begin to imagine why they were the targets." Jean Harding didn't move perceptibly, but Arnie sensed her withdrawal just the same. "I'm sorry, Senator, I know that makes me sound like a crackpot. I wish to God that none of it were true, but at least eight people, out of thirty-three, died between the ninth and sixteenth days after they traveled on the bus. At least eight more have been hospitalized." "Where was this bus?" "St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 21. The travelers were from several countries, and three days after the exposure they went their separate ways. So the deaths might not have been remarked upon at all were it not for my nephews, who obtained e-mail addresses for almost all the travelers. My brother, who is a microbiologist as I am, became a central point for information about the deaths and illnesses." An airline employee announced boarding for their flight just then and the senator quickly stowed her paperwork in her large briefcase. Before she snapped it closed she removed two cards from a slot in the leather divider. "Dr. Valentin, I want you to call my chief of staff tomorrow, Paul Keddy. Here's his card, and tell him what you've just told me. Where can I reach you?" "I will be at the Marriott on 12^th Street," he answered, relieved at her sincere interest. "Patrice Kelsey and my daughter are already there, and my brother Daniel will be there as well." He rose and shook her hand before they both loaded up like urban Sherpas with an assortment of carry-on bags, briefcases, laptop computers, and shopping bags with magazines, newspapers and bottled water. "Good luck, Doctor. Please give my best wishes to Katy. We're all proud of her." "Thank you, Senator. I will pass your message along to Katy. And I'll call Mr. Keddy in the morning." Even after they boarded, they sat on the ground another hour. Arnie had gotten a little sleep between Kansas City and Washington, but it was fifteen minutes four times instead of one hour straight. With the rest of the horde of exhausted travelers, he dragged himself past the metal screens of closed bookstores, sports memorabilia stores, and frozen yogurt stands. While he waited for the young man to return from the nether regions of car rental hell, Arnie took the senator's two cards from his inside coat pocket, looked them over, and tucked them safely back in the pocket. A word caught his attention and he turned to see a television screen suspended from the ceiling to shower its news and, more importantly, its _paid advertising_ on a highly coveted demographic -- travelers passing through an international airport. Arnie Valentin had read somewhere that the words most likely to turn a man's head toward a television were _emergency, football_, and _Wall Street_. For women it was something like _wedding, birth_ and _Wall Street._ But the word Arnie locked on was _pandemic._ An attractive brunette was looking into the camera with an earnest tilt to her perfectly coifed head. Beside her face on the screen was a graphic of a syringe and the word _Influenza._ "Doctors at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta are asking the question, 'Is a flu epidemic on the way?' Dr. Milo Gatlin tells CNN the chances are better than fifty-fifty that the United States, Canada and Europe are facing a pandemic of influenza, a worldwide outbreak similar to the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918, which is estimated to have killed forty million people." The woman's face and luxuriant hair disappeared along with the syringe. Instead Arnie was looking at a pale, pasty-faced man with light bouncing off his bald head. As he spoke he wiggled a finger in his left ear to seat the microphone. Beside him and the same size as his face was a pink ball, the surface covered with short spikes. It looked like a cross between a floating mine and the planet Jupiter. The label told the audience it was _a virus_. "We think of flu season as January to March," the man, identified on screen as Dr. Milo Gatlin, was saying. "But in 1957, the pandemic of Asian flu hit in the fall when schools opened. Seventy thousand Americans died in that pandemic, and about one and a half million more around the world." The brunette and the syringe took back the screen and she said, with a smile that showed she was reading words without thinking about them, "Experts say in an average flu season, about twenty thousand Americans die of influenza. Turning now to sports, Tiger Woods is one hole back..." "Sorry," the young man said, returning to the Budget Car Rental desk. "It's been crazy tonight. Now, please spell your last name." Half an hour later, Arnie left the purple Dodge Neon in the hotel garage and packed his inventory to the front desk, then the elevator, and on to his room on the fourteenth floor. Daniel lifted his head from his pillow long enough to groan a greeting to his brother, but was clearly willing to do as Arnie told him and go back to sleep. As he rolled over to face the window in the queen-sized bed closer to the outside wall, he mumbled something that sounded to Arnie like, "Talk in the morning." -------- *Twenty-three* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _A villa on the island of Salamis, near Athens, Greece. 10 a.m. [3 a.m. EDT]_ Beside the swimming pool, Tatiana Teicher lay nude on a foam pad covered with an oversized beach towel. She'd chosen the spot to catch the morning's soothing sun. Lying on her stomach, her arms draped over her pillow, she'd drifted back to sleep. At the edge of the private hillside patio, Sergei Kos looked down on the beach, still shaded by the rocky promontory. He placed one bare foot on the low wall made of whitewashed stucco and tossed his cigarette into the rocks. The deep azure of the Aegean Sea was studded with white sails. He raised his binoculars to examine a rainbow spinnaker, then turned back to his coffee and a newspaper delivered by motorbike an hour before. The coffee was fresh, but the news was stale. He knew much more of world events than the fools who printed a newspaper once a day and then went home to dandle their children and coddle their wives. _And fuck their lovers_. Just over the low wall, a large satellite dish picked up more of what passed for "current news." Anchored in the black lava beside the extravagant villa, the white bowl looked like a calla lily tucked behind the ear of a beautiful woman. Still asleep, Tatiana rolled onto her back. Sergei paused a moment to admire her bronze body. In cities, Tatiana carried herself erect and icy, like royalty. But in Greece she thawed and showed her sensual nature. Many people thought Sergei and Tatiana to be devoted to one another as brother and sister. Others -- perhaps even Tatiana's husband -- suspected they crossed the line into incest. Sergei smiled what Tatiana called his _Siberian Tiger smile_. Anyone who thought they were sexually entwined was correct, and Sergei let people think that he and Tatiana lived beyond rules declared by society, that their embraces were risky, wild, taboo. The truth was more mundane. Tatiana was the lovechild of his stepmother, fathered by a Russian author sent to the Gulag for his crimes against the state. Sergei's widowed father married the beautiful young woman six months before Tatiana was born. The couple later had a child together, a half brother to Sergei through his father, and a half brother to Tatiana through her mother. Sergei padded barefoot into the tile-clad kitchen and poured another cup of coffee, then returned to his king-sized bed. Propped up against the headboard in the cool darkness, he made one short phone call, to Genevieve Auberge, and turned on the television with the remote control. He watched a brunette on CNN talk about a possible pandemic of influenza, then segue to a doctor as pale as a Finn in January. Dr. Milo Gatlin of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia -- the other Georgia, Sergei had to remind himself -- said, "In 1957, the pandemic of Asian flu hit in the fall when schools opened. Seventy thousand Americans died in that pandemic, and about one and half million more around the world." Sergei muted the sound and made another phone call. Like his call to Genevieve, it was routed on a labyrinth of circuits, from Greece to Turkey to more than one city in Russia, and then by satellite to Berlin, and on to the United States -- to New York, where it was just after three a.m., Eastern Daylight Time. Sergei was sure, however, that someone would answer the phone. His message the evening before had told the man when to expect his call. A woman with a dry, raspy voice said, "Mr. Johnson's office." "This is Paladin," he said. He'd chosen the name thinking of the twelve paladins, the legendary knights of Charlemagne. When he heard that Paladin was also the name of the hero on an old American TV Western, _Have Gun, Will Travel_, he was so amused he smiled broadly, but he didn't laugh. Sergei Kos never laughed. The woman stuttered the name, Paladin, and Sergei heard her call, "Mr. Johnson! It's him!" There was a pause and Sergei imagined the scene at the staid editorial office of _The New York Times_. His call didn't go to a machine, or to some stupid operator. It went to the office of the editor-in-chief, just one secretary between him and the mighty Nance Johnson. Sergei was sure that by now the office had a full complement of FBI goons with their wires and earphones. Johnson would already have his instructions: keep Paladin on the line as long as possible. Since he knew they couldn't trace his call past Berlin, Sergei was not pressed. However, he had other fish to fry, as Americans were fond of saying. He would be brief. "This is Nance Johnson. Who is this?" he blustered. "Paladin. I represent the true nation of Palestine. The days of dominance by Israeli Jews and their American dogs are ended. We have the power to kill hundreds of thousands of Zionists, and we will use that power." "Now, look, you can't -- " "Don't interrupt me!" Sergei spat out the three words like venom. "A virulent strain of anthrax will be released today on six airplanes. All the planes will be en route to Washington, D.C." The bluster was gone from the editor's voice. "Don't! Don't kill innocent civilians. My government wants to talk to you about Palestine." There was a pause and Sergei heard someone speaking in the background. "We're sure you have room to negotiate," Johnson went on. "Give us a chance to talk, to see how we can work." "That time is past," Sergei said, enjoying the conversation. "The assassination of the ambassador was the first shot in the final war." He hung up, still visualizing the editor's plush office in his mind's eye. He didn't know exactly what it looked like, but he knew enough about American corporations to be certain the editor-in-chief of _The Times_ would spare no expense to express his power. He drank his coffee while it was still warm, then placed another untraceable call. He would be waking up Rompol. And Rompol would be waking up the other six men, but so what? They would all be glad to wake up and carry out their instructions. As Americans say, _That's why I pay you the big bucks._ "Yes?" said a voice in heavily accented English. "_Bon jour,_ Rompol. It's time to make some phone calls regarding air travel. Call my lovely young friend when you've reached all the men." Again he hung up. Tatiana strolled in and stretched out beside him on the bed. He unmuted the television and listened to Milo Gatlin explaining a chart of deaths from the winter of 2000 flu season, a number of deaths that was lower than expected even with the big delays in getting the vaccine delivered and used. However, Gatlin went on, the number didn't drop off much as it should have around late February. Deaths from influenza could still be charted into the early summer. He said that fact was due to a mutation in the strain of virus. Dr. Gatlin answered a question about possible deaths from A/Shenyang in the coming flu season. He said flu season usually referred to winter, but possibly could begin in the fall. He said, as he had before, that the four pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the vaccine were right on schedule for early fall 2001, and that distribution problems of fall 2000 had been examined and were being remedied. "It's later than he thinks," Sergei said, leaning over to kiss Tatiana on one taut nipple, then the other. "Mmm. You taste like coconut. Just what I wanted for breakfast." "I thought we were going to go to the village for breakfast," she said in mock petulance. "Oh, we will. But I want some coconut first." "Umm. Whatever Sergei wants, Sergei gets?" "What you say is very true. And today is the day I want a very great deal." Their lovemaking was passionate and over quickly. Tatiana stepped into the shower, a tiled enclosure four times the size of the shower in her Tel Aviv apartment. Sergei lazily watched the TV news from Paris, then switched back to the American CNN. He dozed until the phone rang. "Yes?" "Sergei, my love, your friend asked me to call you _immediatement._ He says he reached your six friends and they are all _actif_." Genevieve was brief, businesslike. "_C'est bon, merci_. I will see you _bientot."_ He hung up without further conversation. Picking up his Rolex from the bedside table where he'd placed it so it wouldn't scratch Tatiana, he calculated the time in the eastern United States. Then he took a sheet of stationery from the drawer and scribbled some numbers. _If Boris did his job exactly as I told him to, the material for the next phase was delivered yesterday_. Like the other five men, who worked as mechanics, caterers or baggage handlers at the American airports, Boris was a trusted comrade. And he'd wiggled his way into the ideal job to carry out his assignment. He was a pest control specialist, with canisters of chemicals and handy nozzles. Tatiana came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a soft Turkish towel. Sergei rose to shower. Soon they would dress in shorts and the matching cotton shirts Tatiana bought in the village, and they'd race their yellow motorbikes down the steep road. At the bakery they'd sit outside and enjoy strong coffee laced with milk and slices of fresh baklava. As the warm water washed over him, he thought through the events he'd set in motion with his phone call to Rompol. _The flight from Dallas to Washington, boarding about one p.m. Dallas time -- will be the first one. That's in Kolya's hands._ His men in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York would choose the other afternoon and evening flights. Meanwhile, Boris would do his work in the capital city of America -- not on an airplane, but in a truck with an ugly termite painted on the side. Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. That made five planes. Of course, he'd told the editor the anthrax would be on six planes. _And it would_. Six planes and a little lucky bonus in a plastic tube, wrapped carefully and shipped in an envelope. He'd see to that himself. -------- *Twenty-four* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _Paris, France. 2:00 p.m. [8 a.m. EDT]_ Dr. Villie Ginsberg hoped to get a non-stop flight to Washington, but the best she could do on short notice was get a flight to Paris and change planes. If Rashad Teicher knew she was going to the United States to try to get a job, he'd be enraged. He acted like he owned her. Yes, he'd helped her; she would readily admit that. When she was living in a crowded hovel on the West Bank and wearing clothes donated by some snooty Hadassah women in Connecticut, he'd given her a good job. Without his help she would have gone crazy. The combination of poverty and inactivity was so horrible she didn't even think about it anymore. But he'd tricked her, used her, and she was determined to get out from under his control. Why did he want all that information about India-1967 smallpox? She shook her head, trying to rid herself of suspicion too dreadful to imagine. Of course, shaking her head didn't cleanse her thoughts any more than dropping coins in a fountain made wishes come true. The phone call the night before, from Anna Lepyoshkin had set off alarms inside her brain, the urge to flee, to run like a lemming off a cliff. But, no, she must do whatever she could do to stop Teicher. The trouble was, she didn't know who she could trust. She couldn't just look in the phone book under Mossad, dial, and say, "Hello?" She would have told Daniel Valentin, but he was gone. She tried to call his home before she left, to ask how to reach him, but all the phones in that part of Tel Aviv were out of order. At Ben-Gurion Airport, she heard two guards discussing it in a Russian dialect she'd known since girlhood. "A bomb," she heard one guard say. "A bus blew up, and an apartment building, and a power station. At least fifty dead, they say. Right in a nice part of Tel Aviv." Anna Lepyoshkin, like Villie, had worked at Zagorsk. When Villie emigrated to Israel, Anna had stayed, believing the Americans' promise of turning the biological weapons plant into a peaceful pharmaceutical lab. But the money the Americans poured in went, instead, to Sergei Kos and his stinking _mafiya._ Anna Lepyoshkin, the sole support of two children and her elderly parents, had gone to Iran to work for a year. The money, she'd written to Villie, was great, and for the first time in her life she was warm all the way to her bones. But something had happened to frighten Anna, something so bad she left Iran and returned to her family in Zagorsk. "There are worse things than starving," she'd told Villie in the midnight phone call. There had been an accident, Anna said. A spill of the virus they were told was a "beneficial virus" that would increase wheat's resistance to disease, and would revive the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union. "When was the spill?" Villie asked. "How many people were effected?" "June twenty-sixth," Anna said. "Some of my friends were exposed. Six. It happened on the night shift, and they cleaned it up and told no one. But two days later all six had high fevers. They were in isolation at the infirmary, but my friend Gennaya phoned me. He said they had fevers and a rash. He was so frightened -- he made me promise to tell his daughter he loved her. I said I would tell her, but he'd be well soon and he could tell her himself." She blew her nose. "Then, on the seventh day after the spill, he called again. He said they all had pustules all over their bodies. All over. On the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet. Villie! You know what that means!" Yes, she did know. In the first few days of smallpox, the disease looks like chickenpox. But with chickenpox, pustules are never -- _never -- _seen on the palms and soles. "Villie," Anna said, so softly Villie could barely hear her. "They are all dead." "Where was this place?" Villie asked, afraid they'd lose the connection at any moment. "Anna, where?" "Neyshanbur. It's in the desert east of Mashhad." "What about vaccine? Didn't anybody give them vaccine?" Villie knew that the only chance to save someone exposed to smallpox was to administer vaccine within three days after exposure. "No!" Anna said bitterly. "There is vaccine in Iran, at Quchan, I heard the medical doctors talking about it. But they couldn't get permission to get it for the six men. They're only stupid Russians, that's what they said." The phone went dead, then to a dial tone, and Villie had no idea in the world how to reach Anna again. She sat for a long time, holding the receiver, wondering who she should call, who she _could_ call. At last she set the phone on the cradle and went to bed. In the morning she was waiting at the bank when it opened. She withdrew her savings from the bank in cash; she'd made airline reservations before she left her apartment. She already had a tourist visa, since she wanted to be ready to visit Dr. Arkady Valentin in New Mexico if he said there might be a job for her there. "Look, Mom!" A boy pointed to the television in the waiting area for Air France in the Paris airport. "I think that's our house!" Villie saw the screen and noted the fire and under it "Tel Aviv." The boy had a twin, a mirror image, and they were both panic-stricken. Tears welled in their eyes and spilled over on their cheeks. The attractive woman tugged them close to her and murmured that it would be all right, that it probably was not their apartment building. Villie recognized her then as Daniel Valentin's wife, the lady who picked him up outside Beth-el Laboratory. Had that been only the day before? Yes, though it seemed longer. "Excuse me," Villie said in Hebrew, "forgive me for intruding, but I can't help but wonder. Are you the wife of Daniel Valentin?" Rachel looked so startled that Villie hastened to add, "I am a colleague of Dr. Valentin. I only wish to say hello. My name is Dr. Villie Ginsberg." Rachel recovered her composure. "Yes, Dr. Ginsberg, my husband has spoken of you. How do you do? These are my sons, Moshe and Rabin." "What fine names," Villie said with a warm smile. "You are named for heroes of Israel, I think." They stood politely, embarrassed that she'd seen them crying. "Please, sit down, Dr. Ginsberg," Rachel said. "Moshe, move your case to the other side, to make room. Are you going to the United States?" she asked. "Yes. In fact, I am traveling to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to visit with Dr. Arkady Valentin. Your husband gave me his brother's address, and we've corresponded about possible research opportunities at Los Alamos National Laboratory." "You're not happy in Israel, then?" "That is a difficult question to answer. Israel took me in, which I do appreciate, make no mistake about that, and Dr. Teicher gave me a job. I am also appreciative of that." "You don't have to explain your wishes to me." Rachel placed her hand on the older woman's arm. "We live in a world of contradictions and change. I don't even know where I want to live anymore." Lowering her voice, she added, "Or whether I have a home to return to. I had to get my boys out of Israel, with the violence escalating so awfully." Villie nodded. "Yes, the news is terrifying." She knew perfectly well what it was like to be a child and have no home. When her father was arrested, during one of Stalin's purges, she and her mother had been thrown into the street. Villie never saw her father again; her mother died of pneumonia six months later. She grew up in a hideous orphanage, where the manager ate well and the children barely survived. Rachel looked puzzled. "My brother-in-law is not in New Mexico at present. Did he say to meet him anywhere?" Villie was at a loss for words. She'd certainly overstated her "invitation" to Los Alamos. Arkady Valentin had been vague about when any jobs might open up, and he certainly didn't know she'd be on the next plane out of Tel Aviv. With a sigh, she explained her situation to Rachel, making no mention of her suspicions concerning Rashad Teicher. "Have you heard anything from Dr. Vengerov?" Rachel said. "My husband said you seemed terribly concerned about her welfare." "No, I haven't found a trace of her. And yes, I'm very concerned." She described how Teicher had dismissed her worry as groundless. "But he didn't change my mind. Marissa Vengerov would never, absolutely never, have given up her apartment and gone away without a word to her friends." She thought, but didn't add aloud, that if Marissa had decided to move away, she would have allowed Villie to sublet her apartment. Villie lived in a disgusting building where roaches paraded like they owned the place, and Marissa Vengerov had a lovely, clean apartment. It would be years before Villie would qualify for such a nice apartment. Marissa knew what a treasure she had, and she wouldn't have given it up so easily. "My husband's brother must not have had time to notify you of his change of plans," Rachel said. "Actually, he has made a sudden trip to Washington, D.C. His daughter, my niece, is in Washington, and she was very close to the car bomb that killed Ambassador Meier. Arkady, we call him Arnie, flew to Washington last night." Villie thought that through. "Mrs. Valentin, I must talk to your husband. It's extremely urgent." She looked around and leaned closer to Rachel. "I have information about biological..." she paused, feeling sweat gather on her forehead. "I have information of possible biological terrorism, and I must tell someone I trust. Your husband is the only person who meets that description at this time." A nasal voice intoned, in French, that their flight was boarding. "All I can do is take you to see him in Washington," Rachel said. "I haven't been able to reach him myself. Just an hour ago I left a message for the young woman who is traveling with my niece, telling her that we're coming and please to tell Daniel. I'll call again from the airplane phone and tell Patrice Kelsey to add you to Daniel's surprise." -------- *Twenty-five* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _Herndon, Virginia. 10 a.m. EDT_ After a harrowing drive from Washington, D.C., to one of its Virginia suburbs, Arnie Valentin parked his rental car in the lot of PXC Technologies. His anxiety about Katy had been relieved by a hurried breakfast with her and a brief phone conversation with Patrice Kelsey. He took his laptop computer and briefcase from the back seat and locked the doors, noticing that the purple Neon was even uglier in the daylight. All the people he saw as he hiked across the vast lot were more dressed up than people in Los Alamos at a wedding. He pondered on how they could do any real work at all, then concluded they must exchange their suits and ties, their skirts and jackets, for disposable clothes for laboratory work. It seemed a ludicrous waste of time and money to dress so fancy just to impress somebody in the parking lot. The building was an architectural extravaganza, brushed steel and bronze outlining the sharp corners and windows, nothing plain and square, no right angles, nothing that said "box." The curved brick courtyard at the entrance framed a sculpture at least one story tall, made of interlocking circles and boomerangs of brushed steel and chrome. What it represented, besides a statement that PXC Technologies had money to burn, Arnie couldn't imagine. In the entryway he looked up two, almost three stories, to a light fixture that looked a lot like the boomerang monstrosity in the courtyard. Probably it was a thing of beauty, in someone's eye, and was meant to inspire awe, but Arnie had two thoughts about it. One, he hoped it was anchored in the ceiling by a hook the size of a Buick, and two, he would hate to pay the heating and air conditioning bill for the entry lobby, which housed a total of one desk. A lady in a black suit with pewter buttons rose from the desk and greeted him. He followed her across an interior patio to another wing of the huge complex. In the courtyard he saw another three dozen people moving this way and that, all dressed like anchorpersons on the TV news. That thought reminded him of the hullabaloo on the morning TV news shows about a potential flu epidemic looming over America. He'd stood, half-dressed, thinking they'd say more about the flu, but the subject abruptly shifted to a CNN correspondent in Tel Aviv reporting on a new wave of violence on the west Bank, the Golan Heights, in Jerusalem, and even in Tel Aviv. He had wondered, fleetingly, about the phrase, "a new round of violence." In the Middle East, who could say when one round ended and a new round began? It all looked like perpetual warfare to Arnie. The reporter had been standing on a street in Tel Aviv when a bus close to him exploded, catching an apartment house on fire. The words _Earlier Today_ were at the top of the screen, but with the time zones and the fact that CNN aired dramatic footage again and again it was impossible to say just when the explosion had occurred. Arnie hoped Daniel was not watching TV. Other than the mumbled greeting, the two had not exchanged a word yet, except on paper. Daniel, whose biological clock was seven hours ahead, had risen at 3:00 a.m. Washington time. His note, taped to the bathroom mirror, said, "I'm going to PXC Tech. to get started on the lab work. Map to PXC (Herndon) on the desk. See you there. Shalom." Beside a hand-drawn map of a section of Herndon, Virginia, Arnie found a tourist map of the District of Columbia and its Maryland and Virginia nutshells. In red ink, Daniel had drawn an oval around Dulles Airport and Herndon. In the margin: _Take I-66 to Leesburg Pike._ On the interstate, Arnie had wished for compound eyes like an insect, or at least for eyes in the back of his head. Although the radio reporter said traffic westbound from D.C. was light, no delays to report, he felt like a neutron in a reactor. At any moment a car might crash into his Neon, and it would hit another car, which would hit another car, until the reporter in Sky 7 would say, "Uh-oh. Looks like we've got a chain reaction on I-66." He'd made it at last to Herndon, wondering, _how can people do this every day?_ With regret at leaving the fresh air and sunshine of the patio behind, Arnie followed the receptionist into the extravagantly appointed "Salk Wing" of PXC Technologies. A bronze bust of Dr. Jonas Salk was bathed in light from a skylight directly above it. "Right in here, Dr. Valentin," the receptionist said. "If you need anything at all, just dial seven-seven." Daniel turned from his work when he heard the woman's voice. He greeted Arnie with a long, crushing, but wordless hug. They could read each other's minds, Daniel knowing how desolate Arnie was since Leah's death, and Arnie knowing his brother understood the unremitting pain of that loss, pain he couldn't express in words to anyone. Gradually, they released one another and wiped their eyes. Daniel turned back to the centrifuge and stopped the spin. As he removed the blood samples from the slots in the instrument, he brought Arnie up to speed on the number of deaths and serious illnesses among the bus passengers and the number of blood samples he and Hank Hossman had obtained. "We don't know, and probably never will, whether the guide and bus driver got sick," Daniel said. "But Luis Romero, the FBI agent who was with Katy when the bomb went off, found out that the four British tourists who traveled on to Egypt were all hospitalized and one died. Patrice Kelsey is meeting the plane at Dulles airport to get the five blood samples from Norway and Germany. We tried to get a sample from the woman who died in England, Gracie Johns, but the red tape was impossible. We'll have plenty to do with what we already have and what Patrice is picking up. It won't take her long to get here once she's got them." "Yes, I ate breakfast with Katy this morning and talked briefly with Patrice," Arnie said as he rolled up his sleeves. He'd been taken aback at Daniel's casual mention of Luis Romero. Apparently no one had told Daniel that Luis Romero was one of the two agents who had "escorted" Arnie from his home. _No, I've got to put that out of my mind_! He turned his attention to the equipment arrayed before him, relieved to see PXC put money where it mattered as well as where it didn't. "Show me what you want me to do." Daniel walked into the massive stainless steel refrigerator and showed Arnie the honeycomb grid of thirty ampoules of A/Shenyang vaccine. "I've used most of six ampoules to run the tests for antibodies." Removing the top of a box labeled _Packing Labels,_ Daniel showed him a separate supply of ten more ampoules, each wrapped in cotton, and explained that they were from Rashad Teicher's supply of vaccine. "Of course, they're exactly the same as the others." He closed the refrigerator door, checked the thermometer on the outside, and led Arnie to a long counter against one wall. "I've spun the blood samples down to serum," he said, "and used the vaccine. I'm just about ready to check the results." He held one vial up to the light. "This one contains my blood serum. My guess is the vaccine will react with my serum, demonstrating I have antibodies to A/Shenyang from my vaccination. I further postulate that the vaccine will react with the blood serum of the people who died or became seriously ill but lived, demonstrating that they were infected with A/Shenyang." "When will vaccine be available for mass inoculations?" Arnie talked while he tugged on latex gloves and cleared his area to prepare slides for microscopic examination. "Four companies in the United States received contracts, but so far I haven't gotten a straight answer to that question. Hebron Pharmaceuticals got the contract in Israel to make four million doses of the vaccine I developed. They insist it will be ready by September. For now, all I have are the doses in the refrigerator. Rashad Teicher has about forty more in Tel Aviv." They worked quietly, each engrossed in the task at hand. An hour later Daniel pushed away from the microscope, peeled off his gloves, and shook his head. "It doesn't make sense." Together they puzzled through the process, checking every step, but at last Arnie also shook his head. "None of the serum samples contain antibodies to this vaccine. Not serum from the people who got sick, nor from you. None of these people had A/Shenyang influenza." "Okay..." Daniel sorted facts in his mind like a grocer would shelve cans. "...okay. But what are the odds that four people who were vaccinated against A/Shenyang did not catch a disease that made at least twenty-four out of thirty-three people mildly sick, or very sick, or dead? Seven people stayed healthy; two unknown." "Seven healthy," Arnie repeated. "Four of them vaccinated." He shook his head again. "We're missing something. We must be. The four of you were vaccinated with _this_ vaccine?" he held up the last of the six ampoules Daniel had removed from his honeycomb grid. "Yes! Well, Teicher vaccinated us, and he used vials from his separate supply. I'm sure they're identical." "You're sure because you're _sure?_ That doesn't sound like a very scientific basis to me." Their eyes met. "You run clean blood samples in the centrifuge while I get the other ampoules," Daniel said. Quickly, he donned new gloves, went in to the refrigerator, and returned with the box marked Packing Labels and laid the ten ampoules on a soft towel. "We'll do this in two steps. First, see if my serum reacts to Teicher's vaccine. Call it vaccine T. Then we'd know that vaccine T contains specific antigens that are different from the vaccine I prepared. To put it another way, we'd know Teicher's vaccine and my vaccine are not the same product." "And the pharmaceutical company in Israel is manufacturing which one?" "Four million doses of the vaccine I developed." "What's the second step for us?" Arnie asked. "We test vaccine T against the blood serum of other passengers. First I'll use blood from Ellie Hossman and from the woman who died in Utah." While he talked he prepared a slide with his own serum and specific neutralizing antibodies for the microscope. Placing the slide under the scope, he said to Arnie, "You look." Silently, Arnie adjusted the focus and examined the scene in the field of light, then slowly straightened his back. "Your serum has antibodies to this vaccine. This proves the two vaccines are not the same." The phone on the wall rang just as Hank Hossman entered the lab. "I'd better get that," Daniel said. "Hank, this is my brother, Arnie. Hello? Daniel Valentin speaking." To Hank and Arnie he said, "It's Zach Parker." Deliberately lowering his naturally booming voice, Hank asked Arnie how his daughter was doing after the big scare. "Thank you for asking. I saw her a short time this morning. She was due at the National Institutes of Health with the other science students. But she seems to be fine." The thought flitted across his mind that he _never_ knew how Katy was feeling, and he accepted that as normal for fathers and daughters. The thought made him miss Leah even more, if such a thing were possible. "It's been a bunch of years since I scratched a swab of bacteria in that seaweed jelly stuff you biologists grow germs in," Hank said, "but I'm willing to wade in here if there's anything I can do to help." "We'll ask Daniel to task it out." "Anthrax?" Daniel shouted. "On what planes? What is the FBI doing? What the hell is going on?" As he listened the blood seemed to leave his face. "No, I can't leave here. Not yet. I'm in the middle of a test. My brother got here from Los Alamos, and Hank Hossman is right here, too." He listened again, said, "Yes, yes ... of course. We'll be there as soon as we can." His knees buckled, and he would have slid down the wall onto the floor had a chair not been handy. "What is it, Daniel?" Arnie's mouth felt as dry as if a dentist's suction tip was stuck inside, removing any trace of saliva. He could hardly form the word. "An ... Anth ... Anthra..." "The FBI has received a threat, through _The New York Times_. Somebody who claims to speak for the Palestinians says they have anthrax on six planes. 'A virulent strain of anthrax,' was how the caller put it." The room was silent. "It might be a hoax," Daniel said at last. "Zach says there have been about thirty hoaxes about NBC weapons in Washington that he knows of himself, in the past year alone, and the FBI tells him it's been more like ten a week across the country." He noticed Hank's blank look and spelled out the acronym. "Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. 'N-B-C.' Zach says there were at least five anthrax hoaxes in New York City for New Year's Eve, Y2K. The FBI thinks this could be a more elaborate presentation of the same thing, but a hoax just the same." He paused and scratched his chin. "But then, they probably didn't think the Israeli Ambassador to the United States would have his guts blown all over a red carpet, either." Arnie remembered the look of polite disbelief on Sen. Jean Harding's face the evening before when he said his brother and family had survived some sort of biological hazard in what looked like a planned exposure. He felt in his shirt pocket for the two cards he'd dropped in before he left the hotel. He pulled them out as he asked his question, "What are they going to do? It might be true." "They're doubling and tripling security at airports, especially for any flights headed to Washington. The caller said the anthrax will be on six flights, all headed for Washington, and all today." "International?" Hossman asked. "The man making the threat didn't say, or anyway the FBI isn't saying." He stood and moved quickly to the centrifuge. "Let's get this running so we can get to the NIH. That's where they're setting up a task force. One there and one at FBI headquarters, and, of course, at USAMRIID. And they're quietly calling in soldiers who've been vaccinated against anthrax, stationing them at all the major hospitals in the D.C. area." "What's that, uh, u-sam-something?" Hank asked. "USAMRIID," Arnie answered. "It stands for United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases -- at Fort Detrick, Maryland. If there is any infectious material found, if it's not another hoax, that's where they'll take it. Has to be a Bioscience Level Four lab." The phone rang again. With a heavy sigh, Daniel answered. "Daniel Valentin. Yes, Patrice. You're at Dulles?" To Hank and Arnie he said, "She's got the blood samples from the Viddals and the Gunthers." He told Patrice, "Good! I think it will take you about thirty minutes to get here." He listened, impatient at first to get back to work, then said, in a barely audible voice, "Today? And it's too late to stop them?" He sat down as he had before and listened again. "When will they get here? I see. No, it's not good news, not today. I can't go into it over the phone ... Sure ... When you get here." He stood slowly and put the phone on the hook without looking at it. "What's the matter?" Arnie asked. "Or should I say, what _else_ is the matter?" "Rachel and the boys are on their way to Washington. Bombs are going off all over Tel Aviv, even in our neighborhood. They couldn't reach me, so they called Patrice." _They're flying here today?_ Arnie almost shouted. Instead he said, calmly, "This anthrax threat is probably a hoax. Let's get on with our work, and we'll go to the National Institutes of Health." He had a reason besides medical science to want to get to the NIH as soon as possible. Katy was there, and he wanted to keep her close beside him. What he really wanted to do, even though he was shamed by the thought of it, was to get Katy and run, to run far away from Washington and airports and ambassadors and away from weapons -- all kinds of weapons. "We'll go to the NIH," Arnie said again. "We'll do whatever we can to help." -------- *Twenty-six* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _Paris, France. 4 p.m. [10 a.m. EDT]_ Genevieve Auberge hated the way her blonde hair looked. It had been seven days since she'd had the color touched up at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, and already she had dark roots showing. The blond had gone brassy, too. In another week she would look like a waitress in a cheap dockside bar. First thing that morning, after her important phone calls, she'd gone to the salon in the Ritz-Carlton. Even though the beautician said that to color it again so soon, even to go darker, would further damage her hair, Genevieve said to do it. She'd produced a good photo of herself with red hair, and signed a waiver, the only way the beautician would agree to work on her hair. She had not planned to cut her hair, but had to admit, once the color was tolerable, that the lower two inches looked like steel wool. A trim was needed, the hard-eyed manager of the shop insisted. Genevieve reflected as she saw her hair fall to the floor in chunks that she should have foreseen this. The manager, an ugly woman, had shared a look with the beautician, another ugly woman. A trim, indeed! More like a scalping. Genevieve would have wept at the sight in the mirror, but she didn't want to give the women the satisfaction of knowing how heartbroken she was at her folly. When she stepped from the taxi at her apartment, she saw a tall, deeply tanned man standing by the railing of the apartment stairs two doors down from her. He was smoking and talking with a skinny mulatto in a short skirt and cotton head-wrap. The woman sat on the steps, her knees up as if she invited any passersby to see if she wore underpants. Genevieve felt their eyes on her as she paid the driver and, by habit, tossed her luxuriant hair back from her face. Of course, all she tossed was a short mop she'd dubbed "revenge of the ugly women." "Genevieve!" the man called. "We've been hoping to see you before we had to leave." She was certain, absolutely certain, she'd never seen either of them before. Their familiarity frightened her at the same time that it disarmed her. Had Sergei sent them? She decided to wave but act as if she were in a tremendous hurry to get into her apartment. She did her best to appear sorry; she even called out "_Excusez-moi!"_ with an exaggerated shrug. The man covered the distance to her entry stairs in about five strides of his long, muscular legs. "Genevieve! _Ma chere,"_ he said like a close friend or relative as he swung over the wrought iron railing and landed, like a gymnast, on the stair landing behind her. With a move so swift she didn't guess it was coming, he took her key from her hand, unlocked the door, and propelled her into the apartment. The skinny woman slipped in behind him as stealthy as a stray dog and shut the door. "Genevieve," he moaned her name like a lover in the throes of passion, "you've been a naughty girl. Isn't that right, Carmen?" "Who are you? What do you want?" She tried not to sound afraid, but failed. The phone rang. Once, twice. "Isn't dat always de way?" the black woman said in a lilting Caribbean accent. Three rings, four. They heard the click of her answer machine turning on, then silence while the caller heard the robotic message in French: "The person is not available. Please leave a message." Genevieve held her breath, but no message was left. "Check for caller ID," the man ordered. "_Mais oui,_" Carmen replied as if it were a very amusing trick. "It's right here." She wrote it down on a pad beside the phone and handed it to the man. "Let's all sit down," he said as if he were the host and Genevieve the guest. "I am Charles. Easy to remember, _non_? Think of Charles de Gaulle. Carmen, let's have some wine, eh? No, sherry. Mademoiselle Auberge is fond of sherry. Or should I say Mlle. Marie St. Jean?" At that Genevieve began to quiver, especially her lips and hands. There was still a chance "Charles," or whoever he was, was connected to Sergei Kos and that he'd taken it into his stupid head to scare her. But she felt less hopeful as the minutes dragged by. When Carmen held out a highball glass with sherry, Genevieve said, "No." "Drink up," Charles said. "I insist." His tone was malevolent. "Drink every drop, Genevieve. Then our conversation will begin, and I am certain it will be worth my time." "What do you want?" Her teeth chattered as she spit out the question. "Information. Actually, I should say, more information. Carmen and I, and our excellent friends in Israel, already know a lot about you and Sergei Kos. We want to know more about your vacation. You know, in the United States." "Are you Americans?" Genevieve steadied her voice. "I will answer your question as soon as you drink your sherry." He took a handgun from the pocket of his pleated shorts and aimed it at Genevieve. "Drink up." She did so, making a face at its foul aftertaste. "All right. Are you Americans?" "No. I am a citizen of Israel, and Carmen is ... British?" He said it as if he weren't sure. "If I were an American, I would be so worried about the law, and your rights, and the proper procedure. Hell, I'd be too worried to even be here, uninvited. But I am an Israeli, and I am a soldier. I have no concern about your rights, because you don't have any." Time passed in slow motion. Genevieve felt as if she were underwater, but she could breathe. Carmen took her shoes off and told her, _Lie down_. She looked up at the ceiling. The bad taste of the sherry filled her nose as she exhaled. "Genevieve," the man said. It seemed as if his voice was inside her head. "Genevieve, tell me about your vacation in New York. Why did you go there? Who did you talk to?" An hour later he made a phone call to an Israeli soldier in Washington D.C. It was 5:00 p.m. in Paris and 11 a.m. in Washington. "Sol? There were men from six cities: Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, New York and Chicago. She only knows the name of the man in Dallas. Kolya, probably a first name. Rompol is their contact, as you guessed." He listened. "Wait, there is one more thing. The sixth plane going to Washington is an Air France flight from Paris. A man named John Kos is handling it. Sergei's brother." He listened again. "Carmen will stay with her until my people come pick her up. Meanwhile, I'm on my way _immediatement_ to De Gaulle Airport. I will call you as soon as I have John Kos. _Shalom_." Neither Sol Solomon nor Charles wasted any time notifying French authorities that Charles and "his people" were taking Genevieve Auberge and, as soon as possible, John Kos, into custody. The French were not above making millions of dollars selling atomic reactors to the enemies of Israel. And the Israelis were not above carrying out what intelligence services called _wet work_ against their enemies on French soil, or Russian soil, or any soil. The survival of Israel as a nation depended on the nerve of its soldiers, not the mealy-mouthed French police. When it came down to Israel's safety versus diplomacy, soldiers like Sol and Charles agreed: _diplomacy could go take a flying fuck._ -------- *Twenty-seven* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _Apartment in Chicago. 11:00 a.m. CDT_ Alexander Kagan sat with a cup of hot coffee in front of a small overworked air conditioner. He'd been up for an hour, but he still wasn't completely awake. At 10:00 a.m., he woke up to an insistent ringing sound. He rolled over and picked up the phone receiver, but the ringing continued. He swore and switched his radio alarm clock from _Alarm_ to _On_. Without opening his eyes, he put the phone back on the hook. He lay in the curtained bedroom and listened to the news on the Russian language radio station. In a monotone, the announcer talked about a suspected outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in the former Soviet Union. He tuned the radio to an English language station, the ABC affiliate in Chicago. Also in a monotone, the newscaster told about power outages all over the West and brownouts all over the Midwest, including Chicago. Temperatures were expected to reach one hundred, and without air conditioning, hundreds of people might die. Chicagoans were urged to check on their neighbors, and to help each other in any way they could. Alex nudged the radio control from _On_ to _Off_, then staggered out of bed and turned his lousy air conditioner from medium to high. It made no difference. _I won't be helping any neighbors, that's for sure._ Alex Kagan prided himself on being the kind of man who wouldn't toss a flotation device to his own mother if she fell off a ship. Especially to his own mother. Many times in his thirty-four years, Alex heard himself called a "son of a whore." He knew that when Americans called somebody a "son of a bitch," the insult was directed at the man as a liar, thief, card cheat or whatever. The insult to the man's mother as a bitch or a whore was just tossed out for emphasis, like a verbal exclamation mark or a door slam. But in his case, the insult was on the mark, and that stirred the coals of his anger. The hotter he felt, the quieter he got. And the quieter he got, the worse it was for the mudslinger. No one called Alex Kagan a _son of a whore_ with impunity. Nor did such a fool die for his indiscretion. That would defeat Alex's purpose. Just as a flat, gutless squirrel cannot pass on what he's learned about tires, a dead fool couldn't teach his fellows to respect Alex Kagan. As a boy, Alex taught the lesson with his fists and a boiling anger that made up for any size or skill deficiency. As a man, he'd learned that a knife was better. He knew right where to put a knifepoint to generate maximum fear. Apologies spilled from the mouths of the toughest men. It was almost comical. One such learner everyone called Nickle had gotten Alex a union card and a job at United Airlines and had warned his co-workers what Kagan had and what he lacked. What he had was a bad temper and tight connections to the Russian _mafiya_. The name _Sergei Kos_ was whispered. What he lacked was a sense of humor, a sense of decency, so far as Nickle knew, and fear. Alex Kagan had a weak spot, though. Vera Mitrokhin. Vera was only fourteen and a virgin when her stepfather sent her to America. She thought she would be a nanny and that she'd live with a wealthy American family. But her stepfather had sold her for hard currency. That was her bad fortune. Her good fortune was that Alex Kagan won her first night -- her virginity -- in a poker game. Had Vera been a whore by choice or habit, Alex would have used her and discarded her like a fifty-cent condom. But at fourteen, Vera was a little girl. Malnourished, she looked about eleven. Alex took the weeping child to his apartment, gradually calmed her and convinced her she would not, then or ever, have to be a whore. To make the promise a fact, he'd gone back to the man who owned Vera, or thought he did, and who had wagered her first night in lieu of three thousand dollars cash. Alex persuaded the man that not only did he not own the girl, but he'd never even heard of Vera Mitrokhin. Six months of good food, kindness, and instruction in ESL, English as a Second Language, gave Vera a chance to blossom into a lovely girl. Through her language instructor at the Girls & Boys Club, she got a job as a sitter, then as a live-in nanny, for a family she almost worshiped. The father and mother were both doctors. The little girl, Emily, was three, and the baby, named Alexander after Vera's "uncle," was five months old. People might think Vera, fifteen, was too young to be a nanny, but she was an "old soul." Dr. Gavin White and Dr. Lynn Harper enrolled Vera in a home-study course, and she was soaking up a high school education by computer the same way she soaked up affection from Emily and baby Alex and their parents. Occasional visits with her Uncle Alexander rounded out her life and improved his in a way the tough Russian wouldn't admit to a living soul. It was better for him that she lived with the family of Dr. White and Dr. Harper. At the airport he worked rotating shifts, and he didn't want Vera left alone at night. Also, from time to time he had to travel. On the Fourth of July, for example, he'd had to go to New York City for a few hours -- fly in, fly out. Had to get a shot and pick up some vaccine for his three buddies in Chicago, men who, like Alex, made an excellent living by doing what Sergei Kos said to do. If Sergei said to go, to come, Alex Kagan would go or come. If Sergei said to slice and dice, Alex would do so. The current order, to place a disposable eight-inch-square baking pan with one kilogram of blue-gray powder, fine as talc, in the ventilation system of a flight to Washington, D.C., was a done deal as soon as Sergei said, "Do it." Alex had been ready, mentally, since early June when he'd completed a series of six anthrax vaccinations. And he'd been ready to act since the fifth of July, when he got a call from the South Chicago Animal Clinic to pick up the ashes of his dog, Czarina -- only he'd never had a dog. Even though he was vaccinated, he had no desire to open the box of "ashes." He would do it when he had to, not before. Like a kid getting a lollipop after a measles shot, Alex had received a bonus with his sixth anthrax shot. He'd taken the key and the note to the downtown bus terminal. In a ratty suitcase in locker number 6819 was a set of armor, modern-style. Instead of a metal helmet, it had a gas mask that covered his whole head, and instead of silver, it was desert camouflage. A month after he got his sixth shot and his biohazard suit, he'd made the round trip to New York. One more shot, Sergei had said, against the flu, which seemed to Alex an over-dramatization. But, as Vera said in her American slang, _whatever._ So he got his shot on the Fourth of July, and his poor old dog's "ashes" on the fifth. And he'd been ready and available, and as sober as necessary, ever since. Now, on the tenth of July, he'd gotten the call from Rompol. _Yeah, I got the call. At two-fucking-thirty in the morning!_ After working a ten-hour shift the day before, and stopping for a beer before his long bus ride home, Alex was worn out. He dragged into his hot apartment a little before midnight, grilled himself a burger, and watched _Guns of Navarone_ on TV while he drank three cold beers. At two he showered and went to bed. He'd probably been asleep all of fifteen minutes before Rompol woke him. _Asshole._ Seemed like a couple hours later when the damn alarm went off, at 10:00 a.m. -- same as it did five, and sometimes six, other days of the week. He sat on the toilet, smoking a cigarette, planning the day. He'd make some coffee, get dressed, eat some cereal, and do what he had to do. Same as the other guys Sergei was counting on. _I'll go in to work, put the powder in the pan, and put it in the ventilation shaft where already filtered air will pick it up._ The unlucky flight would be number 1814. He always worked on that one. But the phone rang a few minutes after eleven. He'd been sitting with a cup of hot coffee in front of his small, overworked air conditioner, and he'd just poured his Honey Nut Chex in a plastic bowl. "Uncle Alex," Vera said in English. She was determined to use English so much that she would think in English. Already, she'd told Alex over pizza, she had dreamed in English two times. "I'm going to Washington, D.C.!" "When?" He was dressed in his United Airlines Maintenance uniform and almost ready to leave for work. He poured milk on his Chex. He had only mild interest in Vera's "family." As long as she was happy, they were okay by him. "Today! Dr. White is getting an award, and we're all flying there today. Well, tonight, really. Our plane goes at five minutes past six o'clock." Alex froze, the spoon halfway to his mouth. United flight 1814 left at five minutes past six. "United?" he asked. "Yes! Your airline." "No!" "Oh, I know it's not really your airline..." "No! You can't go." "What's wrong? I really want to go with them and we're going to stay in a hotel and -- " "I'm worried about the weather. I don't think it's safe. There could be a tornado, I think." "Do you want to talk to Dr. Harper? She's here." Vera sounded puzzled. "Let me think," he muttered. _There must be another flight that would work just as well for my assignment. Later than the 6:05. Or maybe earlier, the five o'clock flight. The sooner I get this over with, the better._ "I'll get Dr. Harper," Vera said. "No, Veruschka, no," Alex said firmly. "I'm just a worrier. You go on to Washington and have a good time. Will you call me tomorrow?" Her relief was apparent. "Sure. I'll call you tomorrow, before you go to work. I love you!" "I love you, too." In a hurry now, he gobbled down his soggy cereal and opened the cardboard box from the animal clinic. He removed the cylinder marked "hermetically sealed" and placed it inside a Quaker Oats Quick Cooking Oats box. Then he put it in his big lunch box. Five minutes later he chased the city bus two blocks and jumped on, panting and sweating in the extreme heat. "Brother, you gonna have a heat stroke running like that," the woman driver said. "Don't want to be late to work." He dropped a token in the receptacle and swung his bulk into the seat directly behind the driver. "I hope United Airlines appreciates what a dedicated employee they have," she said as she turned the big flat steering wheel and swung the bus back into heavy traffic. Alex Kagan couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he just made a noncommittal "Umph" sound. He kept his lunch box on his lap, with both hands tight around it. He looked at his watch. It read 11:25. His shift started at noon, but he had a long way to go, two bus transfers, until he got there. And he wanted to be early to check the flight schedule. "How 'bout them Cubs?" the driver asked. "Got a chance at the pennant?" "I dunno," he said. He wasn't sure what sport she was talking about_. Hockey? Football? Baseball?_ "Whaddya think?" "I think they'll break my heart again, just like they always do." Alex nodded, as if agreeing with this sage forecast, and made up his mind to find out what the Cubs were and what a pennant was. He smiled and said, in a heavy Russian accent like the comedian, Yakov Smirnoff, "What a country!" It never failed to get a laugh, though he had no idea why. "That's the Lord's truth!" the driver said, and chuckled. "What a country!" At O'Hare International Airport, Alex made it to the time clock at United Airlines with no time to spare. _Ka-chunk_. As he put his lunchbox in his locker he thought about Vera traveling to Washington, D.C. _Of all days, why did it have to be today?_ So, instead of the 6:05 flight, he figured he could put the ash-like powder on the 5:00 flight, or the next one after the 6:05. Rompol told him at 2:30 that morning that Sergei said to make sure the powder was on a flight that day -- Tuesday, July 10. Any flight so long as it left Chicago on Tuesday, that's what he said. Spinning the combination lock on his locker, he called to Fats McCoy, a big Irish guy he often worked with on jobs requiring heavy lifting. "So, whaddya think about them Cubs? Gonna win the pennant, you think?" "Them heartbreakers?" McCoy's laugh sounded like low notes on a string bass. "Cubbies win the pennant, there could be Stanley Cup finals in hell." -------- *Twenty-eight* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _Paris, France. 7:00 p.m. [1:00 p.m. EDT]_ At roughly the same time Alex Kagan stuck his time card into a time clock in Chicago and heard the machine go _ka-chunk_, another of Sergei Kos's henchmen was hearing a similar sound in Paris. _Ka-chunk._ John Kos watched the metal door swing closed and heard the deadbolt latch. Time recorded by the computer that latched the door was 19:05. On John's Rolex watch the time was 7:05. A few hours earlier, Sergei's half-brother had been cocky about the probability he would be picked up for questioning by the French police. He'd notified an expensive and powerful French lawyer, already under retainer, that he would probably need his services that night. He'd dressed in evening attire, right down to 24-carat gold and onyx cufflinks in his stiff French cuffs. He was handsome, and he knew it. He had the dark hair and sinewy strength of his brother, and the cold blue eyes of his beautiful sister, Tatiana. Like both Sergei and Tatiana, John Kos was tall, had Nordic cheekbones, long, thick eyelashes, and a presence that attracted attention and, at the same time, discouraged confrontation. And, like his siblings, he was smart, clever, and self-confident. Growing up in Sergei and Tatiana's double-dark shadow, John found it a challenge to rise to their level, but he'd done it through education. John was the one who handled the complicated transfers of currency across international borders. His was the brain behind some of the biggest frauds in the FSU, the former Soviet Union. His was the brain behind Tatian Laboratories in lovely Herndon, Virginia. But things did not go as John Kos expected in Paris that warm summer night. When he walked out of his townhouse, intending to drive his Jaguar to an early supper with a beautiful French film star, he was rudely grabbed by both arms and stuffed into a dirty van. While he was correct that he had nothing to fear from the French police, he had plenty to fear from the four men dressed in the filthy uniforms of garbage collectors. The rough cloth bag they pulled over his head smelled of rotten beef. He thought of Mad Cow Disease and puked. Someone swore in English, and Kos felt the bag tighten around his face, forcing him to close his eyes and mouth against his own vomit. The room they dragged him to, once they'd thrown him out of the van onto asphalt, was hot enough to singe meat and as noisy as a foundry. The garbage men lifted the bag off his head and laughed at the stinking mess on his face, ruffled shirt and white dinner jacket. As they left, a Hassidic Jew in black suit, black flat-rimmed hat, and prayer apron had walked in. He had the customary long beard, and curly hair draped from his hat to the front of his shoulders. He pressed a small black button on the wall beside the door and listened, as Kos did, to the deadbolt shoot home at 7:05. _Ka-chun_k. The Jew turned to face the prisoner. Kos got his feet underneath himself and struggled to a standing position. He tried to free his hands, tied behind him at the wrists, but succeeded only in coating the rope with blood. He twisted his shoulders, trying to wipe vomit from his mouth and chin, but it was useless. He stood still, taking shallow breaths. Kos was speechless, and felt something totally unfamiliar in his gut. He didn't need a doctor to tell him the sick feeling was fear. And it only got worse when the tall Jew removed his hat and lifted his long hair with it. For a moment he had short hair, black and curly, and a long, bushy beard. Then he peeled off the beard, too. With fastidious care, he hung his coat over a chair and folded the prayer apron into a tiny bundle. Kos watched intently. Neither man said a word. Suddenly, the man punched John Kos in the face, solar plexus, crotch, face again, and the back of his neck. It had taken maybe fifteen seconds. John Kos -- smart, clever, self-confident, and the brains behind some of the biggest frauds in the FSU -- lay on the floor, mewling like a kitten and cupping his fiery testicles in his shaking hands. "My name is Charles," the man said in English. "Genevieve sends her love. She told us every detail she possibly could, but the flight number of the plane to the United States was not something she knew. I have to insist that you tell me about the plane. And I am in a dreadful hurry." Kos looked up at the face of the tall, deeply tanned man, then down at something shiny in his right hand. He hadn't heard the switchblade snap open. "What is the flight number, and what is the airline?" Charles asked. He waited about five seconds, then squatted beside Kos. His movement was quick and decisive, putting the tip of the knife through Kos's right hand and into the base of his pitiful, shriveled penis. Kos screamed in agony and Charles pulled his knife free. "I'll-I'll tell you!" Kos panted. "It's an Air France flight..." -------- *Twenty-nine* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. Just after 1 p.m. EDT _Patrice Kelsey:_ I had scarcely dashed in the door of the lab at PXC Technologies in Herndon, at 12:15, before I joined Daniel and Arnie Valentin and Hank Hossman in a change of venue. "An emergency," Arnie said. "We'll explain later." Even though I was meeting Daniel and Hank for the first time, no one wasted time or breath on formalities. Daniel took the blood samples from me, placed them in a white paper sack, and stapled the top. Jotting the date and time and his initials in black marker, he placed the bag in the refrigerator. Arnie and Hank were doing the same with small racks of slides and a box of vials. The only thing that set the white bags apart from a typical lunch sack was the red and black biohazard symbol on the front and back. _Forget peanut butter and jelly_. Since all three men had their hands full, I answered the phone. "Lab. Patrice Kelsey." "Ms. Kelsey, this is the concierge at the Washington Marriott. We received a message for you and I'm glad you left alternate phone numbers. It's from the same lady as the other message." "Good, thank you." To the men, all watching my face to see which of them the phone call was for, I said, "It's the concierge, for me." I had received Rachel Valentin's first message almost four hours after she left it, and only because I called the hotel and asked for messages, then asked them to double check. Thanks to a transposed room number, her message had been lost in space. Rachel said that she and the boys were at Ben-Gurion Airport, waiting for a morning flight to Paris and an afternoon flight to Washington. The concierge continued. "Ms. Valentin called from an Air France flight and left this message: 'Patrice, please tell Daniel that Dr. Villie Ginsberg is on our flight. She must talk to him on an urgent matter regarding infectious disease.' Oh, just a moment, there is a further note. Please hold." I listened to a taped ad about the hotel's fine dining, which reminded me I'd had just a granola bar for lunch. _Tender prime rib, crisp salad, succulent -- _ I was left to wonder what succulent item was on the menu when the concierge returned. "Ms. Kelsey? I'm sorry for the delay. I had to check the handwriting on the note. Rachel Valentin said her plane, Flight 28, is scheduled to arrive at Dulles Airport at 4:10 p.m., Eastern time, but they left Paris late, delayed more than an hour by weather. She will call when they arrive." "Thank you very much." I hung up the phone and told the men what Rachel had said. Almost in unison, Daniel and Arnie said, "Villie Ginsberg?" As Arnie walked me to my car, he explained the anthrax threat, stressing that it was probably a hoax. In the parking lot, we waited for Daniel and Hank, who had to stop in at the office of the company president to tell him that they'd left some material in the refrigerator and that they would be back. I asked Arnie what might be the scenario if anthrax was, in fact, on six airplanes. "Most air in an airplane cabin is recirculated," he said. "A small percentage of fresh air is added to the mix, but energy used to heat the air is energy lost to the engine and money lost to the airline. If a terrorist had dry anthrax spores two to six microns in diameter, the size that would go directly to the lung alveoli and from there to the blood stream, it would only take about eight thousand spores to kill you." "That sounds like a lot," I said hopefully. He shook his head. "It's a few nanograms. Eight thousand make a speck. Making the spores small enough is extremely difficult, but I'm not wasting any hope that these terrorists are doing high school science." He cleared his throat. "If treatment is delayed until symptoms appear, inhalation of anthrax is nearly one hundred percent fatal." I couldn't ask anything else then. Hank Hossman gave us all a quick summary of where we were heading in case we got separated. Daniel, Arnie, and I, in our Easter egg rental cars, a blue Hyundai, a purple Neon, and a green Daewoo, followed Hank's white Oldsmobile Aurora. Our convoy arrived at the National Institutes of Health at 1:25 p.m. Hank, possibly the most efficient human I've ever met, phoned ahead on his cell phone and knew exactly where to get off the Beltway, where to park at the NIH, and what the person waiting for us at the front door would be wearing. I was in a fog, trying to process the news of an anthrax threat, not "someday," or "next year," but _today_. The FBI was not releasing a word to the public, Arnie had said, and _The New York Times_ was under a gag order to prevent a deadly panic. I took a close look at Daniel Valentin as we got out of our cars in the parking lot. He looked about as queasy as I'd expect a man to look under the circumstances. My cheerful announcement that his family was on its way to Washington triggered his fear that Rachel and his sons might be victims of bioterrorists. At that very moment they might be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, inhaling anthrax spores. Inside the NIH our cadre rushed through a hall, up some stairs, through a hall, down some stairs, across a rotunda, through another hall, up more stairs to a desk where a guard wrote down our names. Our guide was an Indian doctor with a twenty-syllable name. He laughed after saying it twice and said, "Just call me Dr. Bopa." When we burst into an enormous conference room I felt relief to see Rick and Luis Romero among the thirty-some men and women talking on phones and adding information to computers, some of which was projected on a white screen. About half the people in the room wore military uniforms. A man in front of the screen held phone receivers to both ears at once. His white shirt bore large circles of sweat under his arms, and his bald head displayed part of the map meant for the screen above and behind him. I knew from my participation in Operation Topoff in Denver that every phone in the room was a network to other rooms full of military, medical and political honchos. Topoff showed that each agency involved in an emergency wants the command center on its own turf. But Denver's pneumonic plague scenario, spinning out of control in three days, showed that turf issues had no place in a national emergency. Three steps inside the door I almost collided with Special Agent Dick Nobell on his way out. He paused just long enough to say, "Patrice, we found Cinderella. Great lead you gave us." Rick smiled and winked; Luis gave me a thumbs-up. I squeezed around the table and took an empty chair next to Rick. "What about Cinderella?" "She's the American girlfriend of a man known as Rompol. We don't know his whole name yet, or whether Rompol is any part of his real name. He has been under surveillance for six months and is definitely part of the Russian _mafiya_," he said. "Was he in the restaurant that night?" I asked. Luis answered. "No, the girlfriend was there with another woman. But she got a phone call from Rompol about five minutes before the explosion. As you could see, she was hauling ass, just like she knew something was coming. As it turned out, nobody in the restaurant was injured, but she didn't know that would be the case. And, she wouldn't want to be seen and questioned." I must have looked doubtful, because Rick interjected, "Sure, it's circumstantial, but she's been photographed with Rompol before. Your description and the sketch artist's work was dead on and it was enough for the FBI to grab her home phone and cell phone records. They were already close to having a warrant for Rompol's records, and that came through last night. He's been in touch with -- " He stopped in mid-sentence when the bald man at the front of the room said, "Let me have your attention, folks. Rompol made six calls between three and four a.m. today. Five were to numbers in Dallas, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The sixth call was to France, city unknown, number unknown. So far the French police won't help us." I heard four or five people mutter, "No surprise, there," and a cherub-faced man in a Mickey Mouse tie said, "Goddamn fuckin' frogs!" "Who's he?" I asked Rick, my eyes on the bald man. "Assistant Deputy Director Picarello. He's in charge until the associate director gets here." "We've got agents en route to the five in-country locations," Picarello went on. "If we find the person or persons who received the phone calls, and if we find the anthrax, and if it's not already dispersed into the lungs of -- worst case scenario -- two thousand of our citizens and visitors, we have a chance." "We've got the usual two chances," the Mouse man said to the woman on his left, "slim and none." She looked at him as if he had offended her and leaned away. "What about the sixth plane?" Luis spoke up to be heard by Picarello at the other end of the room. "Do we have any clue were it's coming from?" "I thought the FBI thought this was probably a hoax," I whispered to Rick. Picarello paused, looked around the conference table, and settled his gaze on Luis. "No, Agent Romero, we don't have a clue." "What about Solomon? Is he working on this?" Luis persisted. "Of course. The minute the asshole told _The New York Times_ this was about Israel and Palestine, Sol was on it like lox on a bagel. He's at the Israeli Embassy now, is what I'm told by the Director." "Are hospitals on standby?" A woman near the front of the room asked the question. Picarello shook his head. "No. Dr. Bopa, will you explain, please?" Bopa spoke loud enough to drown the hum of conversations all over the room. "With anthrax your problem isn't the spread of disease from person to person, it's identifying every person infected within forty-eight hours of exposure and hitting him, or her, with vaccine and antibiotics in massive doses. For this reason, hospitals will probably not be used. Victims need to be isolated for efficacy of treatment, but hospitals cannot and should not take in what might be several hundred otherwise healthy people." "Col. Vewer from USAMRIID has vaccinated military personnel meeting every plane that lands in Washington, no matter where it's from," Picarello added. "Before any person deplanes, the cabin air is tested for pathogens. So far, so good." Daniel looked relieved. I saw immediately the advantage of holding passengers on board until the all-clear signal was given. Even if Rachel and the boys were infected by anthrax, it was medically possible to save them. Every hour saved in diagnosis increased the medical odds in the patients' favor. A young Marine sergeant said something in Picarello's ear and handed him another phone. Picarello said, "Excuse me," and put a hand over his other ear while he listened. His shoulders slumped, he nodded several times as if the person on the phone could see him, and gave the phone back to the Marine. "New information, people." He didn't have to raise his voice to get everyone's attention. All eyes were on him already. "It looks like anthrax is on Air France Flight 28 to Dulles. This still may be a hoax, an elaborate hoax, but everyone has to treat it like the real thing. The plane is one hour out from the coast and is being diverted to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware." I spun my head toward Daniel in time to see him go white and stagger to his feet. Just then Dick Nobell returned to the room and the meeting came to a screeching halt. "May I have your attention, please. Associate Director Stephen Springer has ordered all discussion of this threat to cease immediately at this location and by unsecured telephones or other transmission. This includes e-mail. Only personnel cleared by the associate director will participate in this threat assessment and threat reaction in any way. Is that clear?" No one answered. The only sound was the chirring of cell phones, left unanswered. "This meeting will reconvene at fourteen hundred thirty hours at USAMRIID. Only personnel cleared for USAMRIID or individuals cleared personally by the associate director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, will be admitted to the meeting. Everyone else is to cease and desist any mention of this incident in any context to any person." He added again, "Is that clear?" I had no illusions that Hank Hossman or I would be cleared for any activity or knowledge inside the hallowed and heavily guarded gates of Ft. Detrick. What I didn't know until we filed out of the room like zombies was that Luis, Rick, Arnie, and Daniel were excluded, too. I heard Dick Nobell tell Luis he was sorry, but the associate director said to enforce his administrative leave. I was a little less surprised when Nobell told Rick he didn't have clearance yet and couldn't go. I was enormously surprised, however, when Nobell told Arnie and Daniel Valentin they couldn't go. Daniel because he was a foreign national, which seemed pretty arbitrary, and Dr. Arkady Valentin because his security clearance was still being reviewed by the FBI. "I'm sorry," Nobell said. I didn't doubt his sincerity. From my first dealings with him at the scene of the car bombing I had sensed he was too good to rise in the bureaucracy. He was probably going to get his butt kicked for letting any of us in the room at the NIH. We were a dispirited group as we retraced our steps toward the building exit. I recalled, with a twinge of guilt, that I was in Washington to be with Katy, and I'd practically grafted her onto Lt. Win Blaze. "I'm going to ask where the science students are," I said to Rick. "In a complex this size, they may be in another time zone. Good luck." Like a flock of geese, we'd formed a wedge with Luis at the point and Daniel and Arnie trailing by two steps. We crossed the rotunda, went down a flight of steps, and Luis stopped suddenly by a room marked _Men_. He looked up and down the hall, then gestured to Rick, whispered something in his ear, nodded to Daniel, and darted in the door of the restroom, followed at once by Daniel and Arnie. Rick, Hank and I stood there without saying anything. I hate to miss an opportunity, so I said, "Don't leave without me," and dashed into the women's restroom. When I returned, Rick suggested Hank and I go to the parking lot so we didn't form quite such a phalanx. "I'll wait for them," Rick added with a nod of his head toward _Men_. It felt good to be out in the sunshine. I could almost believe all was right with the world, but I knew better. Knew too much, in fact. Finding Katy and Lt. Win Blaze was, as Katy put it, eezy-schmeezy. We just used our cell phones and kept describing our locations to each other, until we were in sight of the same flagpole. Then we converged. "Pretty good," Win said. "Poor woman's GPS," I laughed. "Lt. Win Blaze and Katy Valentin, this is Hank Hossman." "Glad to meet you," he said as they shook hands. "I've heard a lot about you," he added with a smile to Katy. She smiled politely and turned to me. "Where's my dad?" "Hey, I just barely know where I am. Don't overtax the system." I looked around, trying to remember where I'd parked my rental car, and what it looked like. "Look for a grotesque purple Neon." "Oh, please," Katy said. "It's not mine. It's your dad's. Mine is parked next to it." "You mean my dad is here? At the NIH? Why?" I quickly considered three or four answers, none of which was true, and none of which would wash with Katy. "Umm, your dad and your uncle were asked to come help the government sort through a mess." I met Win Blaze's questioning glance and looked away quickly. _And then they were ordered to butt out, same as I was._ "This is all about the stuff that made people on the bus in Russia get sick, isn't it?" Katy asked. "I know that's why Uncle Daniel came to America. Is it a terrible disease that might be an epidemic?" "Well..." I stretched it out. "It doesn't look like this problem is related to the bus, no. Hey, big news. Your aunt and your cousins are coming to Washington. I got a message that they were in Paris, then another message that they're on their way here." "My dad didn't say anything about it to me this morning," she said slowly. "It came up suddenly," I said. "Even Daniel didn't know." I didn't add that her uncle was terrified at the news that his family was on board a plane headed toward Washington, a plane that might be full of deadly spores, nor did I say Rachel and the boys had fled bombs in Tel Aviv. Katy's face lit up. "Hey, I wonder if they can all come to Los Alamos for my _bat mitzvah_? Wouldn't that be great?" Hank looked up at the building and got his bearings. "Our cars are in that lot over there." "Mine, too," Win said. "Katy is finished until the banquet tonight. Shall I take her back to the hotel?" "You've given up too much of your time already, Win. Katy can ride with me, or with her dad." Just then the foursome emerged from the building. I thought Luis's dark expression lifted a little when he saw Win Blaze. "Lieutenant! Glad to see you again." "Uncle Daniel!" Katy threw her arms around him and he lifted her off the ground. "I see you defied the odds and found your pup," Rick said with a wide smile. "I've got to go, Katy," Daniel said. "Patrice told me the big news, about Aunt Rachel and Moshe and Rabin coming. When will they be here?" Daniel and Luis exchanged looks. "There's a problem with their plane, nothing serious, but they have to land at a different airport. I'm going to meet them there. I don't know if we'll be here tonight or not." Katy's smile faded. "Where do you have to go?" "An airport in Delaware," Daniel said. "Do you need a ride?" Win Blaze asked. "I'm familiar with that airport." "Thanks, no. I'm getting a ride with a friend. You remember Sol Solomon, don't you Patrice?" I did remember Sol, a man I'd guessed was a foreign spook. Sol had joined the men in my already full hotel room the night before and showed me glossy pictures of the beautiful redhead, and Sergei Kos, and the Arabs demonstrating with Yassar Arafat signs. Just then I noticed the _whap whap whap_ of a helicopter approaching. A small blue chopper with yellow trim hovered overhead, swung back as if it were leaving, then abruptly settled on the lawn. Dirt and grass blasted into our eyes, mouths and hair. _Whap ... whap ... whap_. The pilot cut the engines and Sol hopped out with his hand on the bill of his cap. Once I'd blinked enough dirt out of my eyes to see again I read the words on the side of the chopper. _See D.C. Tours._ "Getting there the fast way, through the wild blue yonder," Win said approvingly. "Always my first choice." Katy hugged Daniel impulsively and said, "Give them this from me. And hurry back." Daniel kissed Katy on the cheek, shook hands with Hank, Win Blaze and Rick. He reached out to shake my hand and gave me an awkward hug instead. He nodded to Arnie and Luis. "Sol wants to talk to you before we go." Sol walked about twenty yards behind the helicopter and lit a cigarette. Daniel, Arnie and Luis walked over to him. From the looks on their faces, I could tell it wasn't a light-hearted get together. After four or five minutes, Sol ground out his cigarette in the sand and shook hands a second time with Arnie and Luis. Daniel squeezed into the back seat of the helicopter and Sol sat in front with the pilot. We shaded our eyes with our hands and watched the chopper bob off toward the northeast. In a few minutes Daniel would be looking down at the Chesapeake Bay. Win said she had work to take care of at Andrews Air Force Base but would meet Katy and me at the banquet in Arlington. "Seven o'clock. Dressy if you want. Just Class A uniform for me, not mess dress." She shook hands with the men, and Luis sort of casually walked her to her car. I watched them stand there, smiling and talking, after she unlocked the door. "Okay, here's what we're up against," Arnie said. "The FBI, et cetera, are dealing with airplane problems and have no time to listen to anything Daniel and I try to tell them about a rash of severe illness and death among tourists in Russia. Sol Solomon, God bless him, wants us to get answers as soon as possible. So I'm going back to PXC in Herndon. Hank, will you see if your friend there, the CEO, can lend me six top technicians?" "Sure thing, Arnie. The boss there told me, 'anything you need, let me know.' So I'll give him the chance to make good on his generosity." "Is it anything I could help with?" Rick asked. "I got an A in biology in college. And I follow directions well." Arnie thought a minute. "Katy can help with slide preparation. The three of you," he nodded to Rick, Hank and me, "can track down samples of the flu vaccine currently in production. Let's go. I'll explain it when we get to Herndon." He stopped, looking to his left, then behind him. "What is it?" I asked. "Just two problems," he sighed. "I don't remember where my car is, and I don't remember how to get to Herndon." "I've got that covered," Hank said with his booming laugh. "Follow me." -------- *Thirty* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _Over Chesapeake Bay. 2:45 p.m. EDT_ The noise inside the helicopter served as a deterrent to conversation. Sol used the break to stay on top of events by ranking needs and dealing with them in order instead of watching helplessly as the crises cascaded. He'd been leaving messages for Daniel Valentin to call him since about one o'clock when he'd heard that Kos's girlfriend had vaccinated his agents in the United States against some kind of flu. So he hadn't been surprised to get a call from Daniel. But he was certainly surprised to hear that Daniel was calling from a _Men's_ room at NIH with his brother, a microbiologist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, and FBI Agent Luis Romero. They'd been ordered by the associate director of the FBI not to speak to anyone about the anthrax threat, but, as Daniel so aptly put it, "I'm a foreign national, not considered good enough to work on the crisis, so I'm just calling my embassy." Sol was stunned at Daniel's announcement that his wife and two sons were on board Air France Flight 28. As soon as Sol had learned that Sergei Kos's brother had put suspicious powder, possibly _Bacillus anthracis,_ on Flight 28, he'd notified FBI headquarters. But the plane was already over the Atlantic Ocean. By now the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Agency as well as the pitiful remnant that called itself the United States Department of Public Health were fully aware of the danger on Air France Flight 28. The Airbus 340, series 200, with 242 souls on board had been diverted to Dover Air Force Base by order of the chief of air traffic control on the East Coast. The pilot of Flight 28 had been told the change was purely precautionary, that it was a public health issue, that no one on board was in any danger, and that more information would be forthcoming. Sol gave thanks to God that Air France had used the smallest A-340 today. There could have been as many as 400 people on Flight 28 from Paris. He looked down at the Maryland shore and north to Baltimore, but scarcely noticed the scenery. He was recalling the evening before. He'd been standing in Patrice Kelsey's hotel room, asking her what she'd observed immediately before the car bomb killed the Israeli ambassador. Then his pager had gone off, alerting him to a message from the terrorist called _Paladin._ He'd shared a cab with Luis Romero and his brother. That's when he heard of Daniel Valentin's theory that bioterrorists has released some kind of deadly flu virus on a bus in St. Petersburg. Luis said Daniel thought it might have been a test run, and that more was coming. Within two hours of the 3:00 a.m. threat by phone to _The New York Times_, the FBI and the Mossad had cooperated to analyze the voice of Paladin and identified it to be Sergei Kos. By dawn on the East Coast the FBI was sifting its records of Russians inside the United States, looking for any people associated with Sergei Kos or his known companions. They also looked for Russians in the United States who worked for an airline or had any connection with airports. At 11:00 a.m. EDT, Sol had been working in a lead-lined room inside the Israeli Embassy. A waxy green room deodorizer labeled "Sea Breeze" hung from the knob of a radio, but it was useless against the odor that pervaded the room. For even though the room was a chilly fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit for the benefit of the electronic equipment, the men and women who manned the secure equipment still sweated. It was the nature of the work. By secure phone to Charles in the Paris apartment of Genevieve Auberge, Sol urged his fellow Israeli to discover everything Genevieve knew of Sergei Kos and his henchmen. Half an hour later, Charles called him back. "Sol, she vaccinated six men in New York on four July. Rompol directed her to them at the Museum of Natural History. She only knew them by their cities, not their names, except one. The man from Dallas she recognized as 'Kolya,' probably his first name. The other cities were San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Washington." "What kind of vaccination? Anthrax?" "No. She says they were all vaccinated against anthrax well before she went to New York. She gave shots of a flu vaccine, and she gave them twelve more ampoules to use on their buddies." The word flu gave Sol a jolt. He remembered what Luis Romero had told him the night before, and he made a mental note to find Daniel Valentin as soon as he got off the phone with Charles. He needed to know every detail of Daniel's suspicions regarding the bus in St. Petersburg. "Sol?" Charles cleared his throat. "Now for the bad news." Sol muttered under his breath. "Ah, shit." "Right you are. Genevieve got an expected call from Rompol today about ten a.m., Paris time. Following instructions, she made two calls. The second one was to Sergei Kos. She thinks he's in Greece." "And the other?" "Before she called Sergei to say everything was proceeding according to his plan, she called John Kos, Sergei's brother. He's in Paris, working for Air France. She told him to carry out his assignment." "Is that all you have?" Sol wanted to get out of the room, away from the foul smell, but knew he'd probably take the odor with him. "I'll have more within the hour." By the time Sol knew exactly which plane John Kos had contaminated, the Airbus was over the Atlantic Ocean. He typed what he'd learned and prepared to notify the FBI, CIA and the United States Air Force. He paused for a moment, looking for precise words to convey an imprecise feeling in his e-mail message. There was something wrong, something Sol felt he was missing in Sergei Kos's claim that he, _Paladin_, represented Palestine. Sol would bet his last shekel that Kos would wipe Palestine off the face of the earth if he stood to increase his fortune by the act. There was no such thing as honor among thieves, but there was always some kind of internal logic to criminal behavior. That was what Sol was looking for but coming up empty. Citing the connection between the anthrax threat and Paladin's threat against Israel, he finished his message by requesting that the Americans keep him apprised of anything they learned. Then he pressed Send. Of course they would keep him informed, the American agencies replied. _Of course we will._ But _of course_ Sol didn't trust the FBI to tell him everything they ascertained. And he'd learned the hard way not to tell the FBI everything he discovered through whatever means he used to gather intelligence. The FBI thought they'd plugged all their leaks when they arrested Robert Hanssen five months earlier, but Sol was certain they had another mole. At least one. He typed another message, this time alerting the Mossad, the FBI, and Interpol to the possibility "that one JOHN KOS -- possibly in Paris, possibly connected with Air France -- was wanted for questioning in a possible release of infectious agent ANTHRAX on a commercial aircraft. If apprehended the suspect JOHN KOS must be assumed to be carrying deadly infectious material and a BIOHAZARD team must respond. Law enforcement agents should put PUBLIC SAFETY first." Sol typed his contact numbers, then the numbers for the high and mighty at the FBI. From a slim laminated phone list that never left the communications sanctum, he added the phone numbers of the top expert on anthrax at USAMRIID. Before pressing Send, he added: "CONTAINMENT OF ANY INFECTIOUS MATERIAL IS OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE." Now he looked down at sailboats on Chesapeake Bay and then back at Daniel Valentin. His watch read 3:18 p.m. The threat from Kos was twelve hours and eighteen minutes old. The Airbus jet would be on the ground at Dover in five or ten minutes. The helicopter would get there in fifteen. Sol's access to Dover had been guaranteed by the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, a man he had worked with on many occasions over their respective years of military service. In his call from the _Men's_ room, Daniel had also told Sol that Dr. Villie Ginsberg was also aboard Flight 28, adding, "I don't have any idea what she's doing on a plane to America." Daniel also had stressed that he was professionally qualified to enter a hot zone, in a Level A suit, to conduct a test for pathogens. "Sol, listen to me. I've got to get to Dover Air Force Base! I've got to get on board that aircraft!" "Here we are," the helicopter pilot shouted to Sol and Daniel. "Prepare to land." As they approached the field and the pilot talked to the military air traffic controllers, Sol spotted the Air France plane beside a hangar, appearing small beside three C-5's and looking uncomfortably elegant, like a swan at a convention of California condors. -------- *Thirty-one* Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _Washington, D.C. 4:00 p.m. EDT_ The capture of the six Russian men in the United States believed to be comrades-in-harm of Sergei Kos had to be swift and decisive. The FBI and all the other agencies sweating blood over the anthrax threat had to keep any of the six from contacting Sergei, or Rompol, or each other. At the same time, they had to be prevented from releasing anthrax on commercial aircraft in the now-believable plot to kill hundreds, maybe even thousands of innocent civilians, nearly all of them American citizens. The last resort, if law enforcement personnel were too late to stop the release of the anthrax, was to ascertain precisely what plane or planes were infected, and when they would land anywhere. The assumption was that any plane with anthrax was heading for Washington, D.C., but no assumptions were safe. Intelligence, skill and luck all went the right way for the FBI in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Dallas. At 1:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, FBI and local police snatched Yuri Dolbin on his way to work at Delta Airlines in San Francisco and Pavel Bruslov on his way to work at American Airlines in Los Angeles. At the same time, 3:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time, Kolya Gorky's promising career with American Airlines in Dallas came to a dead end. In all three cities, firefighters trained in biohazards and wearing white moonsuits, each with protected air supply, found the supply of anthrax intended for the lungs of unsuspecting men, women and children. In New York City, the FBI, police and firefighters found Goose Gouzenko's supply of anthrax in his locker at John F. Kennedy Airport. Gouzenko didn't show up for work and his three roommates at an apartment in the Bronx said, convincingly, that he was in a car wreck two days before and was too "messed up" to go to work. He had returned to the apartment Sunday night with stitches all over his forehead and his left hand. He'd called in sick Monday and spent the day in bed. One of the three thought he remembered the phone ringing "way early" that morning, Tuesday, and Goose mumbling in Russian. The roommates left for their jobs between 6:00 a.m. and noon. The last man out, a shuttle bus driver, said Gouzenko was still in bed at noon, moaning and swearing about the pain in his face and hand. None of them knew where he'd gone after that, whether he went to work, or back to a doctor, or where. Sure, they said, they would call the police when they saw him. In the meantime, police circulated photos of G.S. "Goose" Gouzenko, with stitches added on the forehead and swelling around the eyes, in New York bus stations, train stations, airports, hospitals, and all border crossings to Canada. During the shift change at the Chicago police precinct closest to Alexander Kagan's apartment, the priority message about finding Kagan was inadvertently set aside. By the time the captain in command of the new shift found it, two hours later, and told a patrolman to look for the big Russian, Kagan had already left his apartment. The patrolman was on his way to United Airlines, Kagan's place of employment according to his landlord, but he'd gotten involved instead with a hostage situation that resulted in a homicide and a three-alarm fire. Returning from the emergency, the patrolman stopped into the captain's office and asked if anybody had picked up the big "Russkie." The captain held up the receiver, said he had a call in to security at O'Hare. Actually, he was on hold listening to Frank Sinatra singing, _My Kind of Town._ He was still tapping his toes along with Ol' Blue Eyes when the patrolman returned. "Excuse me, Cap'n. Man out front says he's with the FBI. Says we gotta find Alex Kagan ASAP or we can kiss Chicago good-bye." ~ * ~ Goose Gouzenko was already having a shitty day. The painkiller he'd gotten by injection at the hospital emergency room on Sunday night had worn off by Monday morning. The Jew doctor who stitched him up gave him a packet of twelve pain pills, but they were long gone by Tuesday noon. When he heard the last of his roommates leave, he thought about taking a shower, then thought, "Ah, why should I?" He got dressed, putting his swollen left hand through the armhole of his shirt with tender care. He had bus fare in his pocket, and he'd hidden a ten-dollar bill somewhere in the flat. He stood in the kitchen like a man in a hypnotic trance, ticking off likely hiding places in his mind. That was how he'd hidden it in the first place. He'd thought of a dozen places and considered whether or not they were safe from accidental or intentional discovery by his roommates. Under the curling linoleum? No. In the dirty light fixture? No. Taped to the back of the flatware drawer? Better, but still no. With a smile of recognition, he spotted the ballpoint pen wedged at the back of their communal six-book library. He tugged it free and twisted it open. Instead of an ink cartridge, which he'd extracted and tossed away himself, he was delighted to see a tightly rolled piece of green paper. Ten bucks. Enough for some of Mother Russia's painkiller. There was a bar just two blocks away, but Goose owed money to too many men he might see there, so he invested fifty cents on a bus to a Chinaman's bar where all the English they knew was whiskey, beer and vodka. That was all they needed to know. They could jabber to each other, those Chinamen, Goose didn't care. _Just leave me alone. Give me a glass of vodka, double, and leave me alone._ It all would have been fine, too, had not a Chinaman cop come in, a cop who'd seen the picture of G. S. Gouzenko at the police station, and under the photo the words: _Wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigations._ At roughly the same time, at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, Alexander Kagan had awarded himself an extra coffee break and gone up a freight elevator to the gate area of the terminal. He was just in time to see his little Vera with her family, in line for early boarding. He returned to the employees lounge for a quick cigarette before the supervisor, Clifford, could tell him to get his ass back to work. He'd just lit up when Clifford walked in. He was not alone. Kagan held the smoke in his lungs, savoring the lift the nicotine gave him. "That's him," Clifford said. "Alexendar Kagan," said one of the two men in dark blue suits, "you're under arrest." ~ * ~ In the nation's capital, Detective Zach Parker felt like a man running to get on a flat merry-go-round that was speeding up. And covered with axle grease. Finding the "sixth man" was a problem for the FBI and about a dozen law enforcement outfits in Virginia. Boris Fitin was their problem, not his. And while he knew he should be grateful, he wasn't. Because as tired as he was, physically and emotionally, Zach Parker still wanted a piece of the action. Ever since his parents had returned from their fortieth wedding anniversary trip, their dream cruise to St. Petersburg, Russia, he'd been running on fumes. His father had returned by air ambulance from a hospital in Helsinki and had died two days later, on July first. His mother held herself together until the funeral, then collapsed and had to be hospitalized as well. He'd been encouraged by her improvement the day before, when he took Daniel Valentin and Hank Hossman to see her. Her temperature, even in the late afternoon, was only 100.2, the best it had been since she was admitted on July fifth. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall clock. 4:15. _We oughta make the clock say a.m. or p.m.,_ he thought as he scratched the stiff hairs trying to form a beard from his sideburns to his chin. He hated not having a window. When he had to work in his office, he had more in common with prisoners in the jail than he wanted to admit. 4:15 p.m. 10:15 p.m. in Paris. The Air France flight from Paris must have landed at Dover by now, he thought. Those poor bastards. Two hundred thirty-one passengers and eleven crew. How would I feel if I were on the plane? First the news that the plane was diverting to a military airfield. Then seeing HAZMAT guys in moonsuits come aboard and tell me to strip down to my skivvies. And how would I feel if I were Daniel Valentin, knowing my wife and kids were on the plane? Zach shook his head and answered the phone. "Yeah? Parker here." "Hey, Zach, this is Sweeney. I've got some business for you down here, corner of 4^th and G Southeast. Bar named Capital Tymes. Just off the three ninety-five by Garfield Park." "What've ya got?' "Guy wasted a fifth of Jim Beam." "That's a crime?" "It is if he wasted it over the head of a bartender. Place is a mess of bourbon and blood. Victim is dead, suspect is under arrest. Had to read him his rights in Russian." "I hope he doesn't have diplomatic immunity." Zach got to his feet and put his service revolver in his holster. "I don't know. You ask him. That's why they pay you the big bucks." "Thanks, Sweeney," Zach said sarcastically. "I'm on my way. But if the suspect's name is Vladimir Putin, I would rather know now and save myself a heap of trouble." "Nah, this guy is a nobody. Says his name is Boris Fitin." -------- *Thirty-two* Tuesday, July 10 _Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. 4:30 p.m. EDT_ Staging for the HAZMAT, short for Hazardous Materials, emergency was under way when Chief Master Sergeant Adam Teller escorted Daniel Valentin and Sol Solomon into the hangar. Two forty-foot-long trucks with Hazardous Materials Emergency Response lettered on their sides were parked inside. A portable decontamination unit the size of a small moving van was being hooked up to thick power cables. At the same time, the last of four units that looked like big U-Haul trailers was being uncoupled from its heavy-duty pick-up truck and shoved backward while a female airman called, "Come on back, come on, another six feet. There. Hold it." As soon as they were satisfied with its placement, two airmen and a technical sergeant opened the wide doors at the rear of the unit and started carrying out plastic hosing and thick, wide rolls of plastic. Two more airmen moved inside and carried out a portable conveyor belt. Three belts of metal rollers just like it were already set up in a line down the center of the hangar. "I need more hoses," the tech sergeant called to the airman dragging an electrical cable to the fourth conveyor belt. "They're in the pick-up, Sarge. I'll get 'em right away." Chief Master Sergeant Teller asked the two visitors to wait beside one of the HAZMAT trucks while he notified Colonel Leland, chief of Air Force Security Forces on the base, that they had arrived. He added that Senior Fire Chief Holt, a civilian, had served as On-Scene Commander at first, but had handed over responsibility to Colonel Leland as Disaster Control Group Commander. "Leland is the best," Sol said to Daniel. "We couldn't hope to have a DCG commander who knows more than he does. I've met him professionally and socially. His son and my daughter are in high school together." Colonel Troy Leland approached, shook hands with Sol Solomon and asked how Sol's daughter was doing. "Good, thanks. She's been offered a scholarship to Brown and is thinking it over. Colonel, this is Dr. Daniel Valentin of Tel Aviv. As I told you on the phone, he has family on the plane." "I'm qualified for emergency response." Daniel spoke rapidly, his mouth dry and numb. "I'm certified in Level A suits as well as B and C. I'd like to go aboard the aircraft." "I appreciate that, Dr. Valentin, but I have a limited number of suits and air tanks. The best I can do is let you help in the warm zone, but I think you'll be better off waiting in the cold zone. We'll have your family and everybody else off the aircraft in approximately ninety minutes. Excuse me, please. I have two men ready now to go on board. Master sergeants Opal and Salazar are highly trained in Emergency Preparedness. The best." Leland turned on his heel, closing the discussion, and spoke to two men in bulky Level A suits. They stood on a flat luggage carrier attached to an electric cart. Each was fully encapsulated in a yellow suit of impermeable Dupont Tychem fabric. Daniel knew the zipper was encased in butyl rubber and every seam was reinforced three times. Opal and Salazar peered out through a sheet of not-quite-clear plastic, something like a windshield from their foreheads to their chests. Respirators held in place by rubber straps further obscured their faces. A SCBA, self-contained breathing apparatus, was attached to what looked like a black proboscis where each man's mouth ought to be. They had humps on their backs, all the way down to their buttocks, where the suit enclosed a tank of compressed air. Since their air supply was limited, Leland wanted to get them on board as fast as possible. "You men have the swabs to gather samples?" Leland asked. They patted the boxes they wore like purses over their shoulders. "Good. The chopper is standing by to take the samples to Ft. Detrick, so make it fast. Use the long tongs to hand out the samples, inside their vials, into the small green barrel we've already placed on the top of the stairs. The captain has patched me in so I can communicate with the passengers. I'll do that in..." he looked at his watch, "two minutes. The cart driver will approach the portable stair unit from the rear of the plane so people don't panic at the sight of you." He smiled. "Nothing personal." They waved their thick rubber gloves, attached by tight seal to their suits, at Leland and held on to the support bar on the front end of the carrier. One of them made a wide, comical circle with one glove and pointed toward the plane. "That's it," Leland said, "head 'em up, move 'em out!" "Have you determined anything yet?" Daniel asked. Leland kept walking toward a communications table as he answered. "Yes. By talking to the captain shortly before they landed, we arranged to hand a kit up to his window, and he walked through the cabin with two ticket samplers. They are positive for a pathogen, probably anthrax." He didn't have to explain to Daniel that a biological ticket was a small collector that would give a quick visual answer, sort of like a test with litmus paper, or a home pregnancy test. "These folks are going in to collect air and surface samples from three spots in the cabin," Leland continued. "People at USAMRIID are standing by to test the samples and say what it is and dictate the treatment. Meanwhile, we are going to decontaminate the passengers." Daniel and Sol walked double-time to keep up with Leland. "Thank you, Colonel," Sol said. "Now, gentlemen, please excuse me while I talk to the civilians on the aircraft and get their cooperation. This won't be easy." A female tech sergeant named Nguyen stood at attention as Leland reached the table covered with electronic equipment. "Is the captain on the line?" "Yes, sir. The pilots' names are Captain Neuve and Second Officer Giroux." "Very good, Sergeant. Prepare to translate what I say into French." "I'm ready, sir." Leland sat on a nylon web stool and tugged the headset on, adjusting the soft earphones for length. A senior airman, Evans, sat across the table from him, also with earphones. Evans gave the colonel a thumbs up. "Captain Neuve, Second Officer Giroux, this is Colonel Leland again. Please put my voice through to the cabin." He waited. "Thank you, gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen on the aircraft, this is Colonel Leland of the United States Air Force. I know you are alarmed at the unexplained diversion of your airplane, but I will explain everything now." He waited while Tech Sergeant Nguyen said it again in French. "We have a public health situation here. With the help of your pilot and second officer, we tested the air in the cabin, and there is, uh, something very unhealthy in the cabin air." Another pause for translation. "Two men highly trained in biological situations such as this are coming up some stairs that have been placed at the back door of the plane. At this time, I need a flight attendant to open the door and admit the men." Pause. "Please pay close attention to what I say now. They are wearing bulky yellow suits and breathing from tanks inside their suits. Do not be frightened, and prepare any children on board so they will not to be frightened." He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Daniel figured the temperature in the hangar was about forty-three degrees Celsius, or one hundred ten degrees Fahrenheit. The massive fans were off to keep from dispersing anthrax spores if, indeed, _Bacillus anthracis_ was the verdict from USAMRIID. Leland explained to the passengers that the two men had to gather some samples, set those samples outside the plane, and then they would immediately begin escorting people off the aircraft and down the back stairs. At that point people in other strange looking outfits would escort them on a bus to the hangar. He instructed all passengers to remove their shoes at this time, as they would have to step in a footbath of a weak bleach solution as soon as they stepped off the bus as the first step in decontamination. Leland listened, then said, "Thank you, Captain Neuve," and turned to Sol, Daniel and five Air Force personnel. "Our men are on board. Airman Evans, you stay in communication with Opal and Salazar." "Yes, sir." Leland wiped his forehead, cleared his throat and continued speaking to the passengers and crew in an authoritative but kindly voice. Inside the hangar, he explained, they would put their personal property such as rings, watches and billfolds, in small plastic bags. They would get a tag with their name, address, date of birth, and any medical emergency medical information that could apply. "Colonel," Airman Evans said, "Sergeant Opal says they have placed the samples in the barrel outside the plane and the lid is on tight." Leland nodded, took a deep breath, and continued instructing the passengers. "You will then need to disrobe in a screened area that has complete modesty protection." He waited for Nguyen. "I am very sorry, but your clothes have been contaminated, and we must place them in plastic bags. You will be given a garment to wear after you shower." "This will be a shower of warm water and soap only," he added. "No chemicals are needed to remove any germs from your skin." He went on to say, three times in all, that everyone must leave everything else on the plane. "This means computers, purses except for a wallet or billfold, all luggage, hats, and toys. If you get off the plane with a teddy bear or a book, it will have to be dunked in a bleach solution. Please, everyone, give us your cooperation. Leave everything else on the plane. There is an excellent chance that everything will be returned after the plane's interior is decontaminated." He paused, said, "Yes, Captain Nueve, go ahead," and listened. Leland wiped his forehead again. In the heat and humidity of the hangar, his handkerchief was no dryer than his face. With two fingers he covered the black foam microphone attached to his headset and spoke to Evans. "We have a possible cardiac arrest on board. Woman, heavyset, age about sixty. Tell Opal and Salazar. Priority, get her off the plane." He removed his fingers from the mouthpiece. "All right, Captain, we'll get her out first. Clear the aisle, get everybody back out of the aisle and put her on a blanket to transport her to the door. Drag her gently but very quickly down the aisle on the blanket. It will be faster than trying to lift her. I have medical personnel standing by." Dropping the headset down around his neck, Leland ordered another sergeant to get two more men in Level A suits. "Opal and Salazar will have to come out with the possible cardiac victim and the new men will have to coordinate the evacuation. Passengers are starting to panic." Daniel backed away from the command station and moved along the outside wall of the hangar to the wide open doors. "Let's move, people," said a female senior airman with the nametag "Waller." She was dressed in BDUs, the usual camouflage battle dress uniform. "Get the stretcher on the cart and let's go!" As someone else set a nylon stretcher on the luggage carrier behind the electric cart, she zipped a Level B coverall up to her neck, pulled her air-filtering respirator down over her head and tugged the rubber straps tight. Over the straps she plopped a bright blue hard hat with the word Medical in white letters. The driver of the cart strapped on his respirator and blue hardhat, and Airman Waller squatted on the flat carrier. With one gloved hand she held on to the metal rail of the cart, and with the other she steadied the stretcher. Daniel sprinted across the tarmac and tumbled onto the carrier behind her. Waller, facing the airplane, had no peripheral vision in her respirator and didn't see him. The driver sped toward the back end of the Air France jet and came to a screeching halt at the bottom of the moveable stairs. Waller ran up the stairs, set the stretcher on the landing at the top of the stair unit and banged four times on the door. On her way down the stairs she spotted Daniel, who had jumped off the carrier and stood a few feet from the stairs, under the airplane. Under other circumstances she would have yelled at him, "Sir! Clear this area immediately!" and bellowed for the security forces. Since she couldn't be heard more than five or six feet from her face, Daniel had the advantage and paid no attention to her. She looked back up the stairs and saw the airplane door open inward. One of the men in a Level A suit leaned out and grabbed the stretcher, disappeared inside for a moment, then backed out holding one end of the litter. It sagged under the weight of a female patient, the one Daniel heard mentioned by Colonel Leland. The two men in cumbersome suits, and carrying heavy metal gas canisters on their backs, tried to make it down the stairs with the litter, one man going backwards while trying to keep the woman from sliding toward him. Halfway down they were unquestionably having trouble balancing the patient. Airman Waller and the driver scrambled up the stairs and took over the stretcher and its heavy patient. They made it back to the tarmac, followed by one of the men in shiny yellow. The other one stayed at the door and spread his arms to keep the crush of people from coming out and racing down the steps. Airman Waller and the driver set the stretcher and patient on the flat luggage carrier, the sergeant in the Level A suit knelt beside her and hung on to the rail, and the four of them sped toward the hangar. At the same instant, Daniel spotted another cart leaving the hangar with two more men in fully encapsulating suits. Daniel knew that before a doctor could work on the woman as a cardiac patient she would have to be rolled through the center aisle of the decontamination station. Her clothes would be cut off and she'd be doused with water, soaped with sponges, and doused again. When she got to the other end of the conveyor belt, they'd start CPR and defibrillation if indicated. Daniel saw Colonel Leland and several other men come out of the hangar, flailing their arms and gesturing in his direction. Unimpeded by a respirator, Leland's shout of "Son of a bitch!" was clearly audible across the concrete. Ignoring the colonel as decidedly as he'd ignored the airman, Daniel bolted up the stairs. Forcing his way in the open door, he shoved the startled people backwards and muscled the door toward its oval opening. Opal or Salazar, Daniel didn't know which sergeant it was, was on the stair landing and unable to make any quick movement. The door shut tight with Daniel on the inside and the sergeant outside. "All right," Daniel shouted, his years of training in the Israeli Army coming back, everybody sit down and shut up! Everyone! Now! Sit down!" He was actually a little surprised at how quickly they moved out of the area of the door and into the rows. They didn't exactly sit down, though. They sort of hunkered so they could keep watching him at the back of the cabin. "Dad!" shrieked Moshe. "It is! It's Dad!" Rabin echoed. Daniel knew his hold on order in the cabin was tenuous and he sharply ordered his sons to sit down. He took the microphone from the shaking hand of a flight attendant and spoke. His voice was calm, firm, and authoritative. "I am Dr. Daniel Valentin. I am a microbiologist. I am an expert on the infectious agent that is probably in the air of this plane. Notice two words I just said. I will repeat them. I said 'probably,' and I said 'infectious.' We are not positive that the agent is in this air, but we will treat it as if it is. That way we will all live. I am in exactly as much danger as you are, and I am not afraid. I know the worst thing that will happen is that I get some shots and swallow some pills, vaccine and antibiotics. That is _if and only if_ the infectious agent is on this plane. A sample of the cabin air is on its way by helicopter to experts and we should have an answer in about two hours. In the meantime, we will all get clean. Yes, it's inconvenient, but it's a lot better than being dead, so I don't want to hear any whining. Is that clear?" He waited. No one said a word. "I said you should notice two words I said. One was probably, and the other is infectious. Listen carefully to what I say now. The agent that is probably on this plane is an infectious agent. That means something that can infect the human body and cause disease. But it's not contagious. Neither I nor anyone else can pass the disease along to another person except by carrying the agent on our clothes and skin and hair." He paused, taking a moment to look in the direction of his sons. Rachel was staring at him, her eyes still wide with fear. "How many people here want to live?" Hands shot up, but there wasn't a sound. "Well, those people out there want to live, too, and they're risking their lives to decontaminate every one of us. Actually, every one of you. They're pissed as hell about me." A shaky laugh rippled around the cabin. "Now, let's do this in an orderly way. Take off your shoes, jackets, sweaters. Carry only your wallet or billfold -- no purses. Line up in the aisle, stay with your family. Ready? All right, we're going out the door, down the stairs, and we will wait at the bottom of the steps for the bus. As soon as the bus is full it will take the first load to the hangar and come back for the next load. Any questions?" "Can we take our cell phones?" a woman near him asked. He thought it over. "Cell phones don't last long in a shower. Leave all of your cell phones in these back two seats, and I'll ask the colonel in charge to decontaminate them and return them to you as fast as possible. Ready? Okay, here we go." At his signal, the flight attendant opened the door again. He asked her to go down first and direct people onto the buses, adding, "I'll be the doorman up here." An ambulance left the far side of the hangar, lights on but no sirens. Daniel guessed the woman carried out of the plane was decontaminated and on her way to the base hospital. He was relieved to see no press, the advantage of being on an Air Force base rather than a commercial airport. News of the flight diverting to Dover was undoubtedly on radio and television already, thanks to the many cell phones on board, but at least there would be no pictures to further kindle fear in the public. The people walked down the stairs in a steady line, barefoot or in pantyhose or socks. On the hot asphalt they hopped in surprise and hurried onto the bus. Whoever drove the bus out there had returned to the hangar. In his place was a HAZMAT technician in a Level A suit. He and the other technician, who assisted people onto the bus, had ridden out there on a cart. Silently, he motioned to the plane passengers to keep getting on, sitting and standing, until the bus was completely full, then the driver whisked the passengers to the hangar. The bus returned in five minutes to load again. Then again, and again and again. On the last trip the bus was half full. In addition to Daniel and his wife and sons, the last three flight attendants and the pilot and co-pilot were aboard. They had to wait another fifteen minutes until the lines of men on one side and women on the other side thinned enough to let them through. Three or four people who couldn't walk through on their own had already gone down the middle aisle like the cardiac patient. Even in the oppressive heat, Rachel and the boys clung to Daniel until Rachel moved to the women's line. At the far end of the shower lines they toweled off and dressed, like everyone else, in paper clothes. Four blessedly air-conditioned buses waited to ferry the now clean passengers and crew of Air France Flight 28 to a billeting office where they would be assigned to quarters. Daniel watched out the back of the bus as the decontamination crew began to clean themselves, removing their rubber aprons and spraying each other with the required one-half percent solution of bleach. Daniel heard the question here, there, repeated from person to person, but he left it unanswered. It was for the people in charge to say the word anthrax, not him. Whatever the determination and whatever the result, he was in it with his family. By the time the last bus arrived at billeting, the TLFs, temporary living facilities used for military families in the process of moving, were full. With his family checked into a small apartment in the Visiting Officers' Quarters, Daniel at last had time to hug and kiss the three people so precious to him. Then he went down the hall to another apartment to hear what his colleague had to say. What was so important that Villie Ginsberg told Rachel it was a matter of life and death that she talk to Daniel? He knocked, and entered at her invitation. In the humidity, her hair was still almost as wet as it had been when she emerged from the communal shower. She stayed seated at the table and kept her arms crossed in front of her chest. Daniel thought she had a sad, weary look, even more than the other passengers, who all looked embarrassed and bedraggled in their disposable clothing. "Dr. Ginsberg?" Daniel said gently, "my wife says you are frightened and don't know who to trust. I appreciate your confidence in me, that you want to talk to me. Now, what is it you must tell me?" "It's about Rashad Teicher. And Marissa Vengerov, and ... about..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. She was almost as white as the paper clothes she wore. "It's about smallpox." -------- *Thirty-three* Tuesday, July 10 _Washington, D.C. 9:00 p.m. EDT_ Detective Zach Parker had been a good son for all of his thirty-nine years. He had to remind himself of that as he suffered a withering look from Nurse Ellen Nye. His mother had been extremely nauseated all day, Nurse Nye reported. She had vomited so much that she had to be placed back on intravenous saline solution to prevent further dehydration. Her fever had returned in the afternoon, after two days of steady improvement, and her lungs were badly congested. "She insisted on holding off on medication that would help her sleep," Nurse Nye said with what Zach would swear was a snort of derision directed at him, the Son Who Didn't Visit His Mother. "Finally we had to give her something for the agitation and anxiety. She's sleeping now." Her voice made it clear that his poor mother had suffered all that agitation and anxiety because of him, the Son Who Said He Would Come But Didn't. "I will just look in on her," he said with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances. He almost said he had been working on a homicide case, _the kind of work that doesn't schedule itself neatly around my personal plans,_ but shrugged it off. Standing by Faith Parker's bed, he placed his hand lightly on her forehead. She was warm, warmer than normal, but not as hot as she'd been a few days before. And she was resting comfortably. Every few seconds he heard a faint click from the IV unit beside the bed. He walked to the corner of the room, as far as he could move from her without leaving the room, and called his home on his cell phone. _Busy._ They'd gotten a separate phone line for the computer modem, and added call waiting to the regular phone line, and he still couldn't get through. His pride in his daughter, Chloe, was diluted by his annoyance that she tied up the phone so much. She liked call waiting because she could talk to two friends in rotation, checking "he said" against "she said" with almost no time lapse. Zach called his wife's cell phone, which was probably on the kitchen counter, turned off to conserve the battery, and left another message. His travels and travails since he'd last talked to Melanie, around lunchtime, were probably filling up the memory on her phone. He tried Hank Hossman's cell. Knowing how loud Hank spoke, he held the phone about an inch from his ear. "Hank Hossman." "Hank, this is Zach Parker. I'm at the hospital in Alexandria." He answered Hank's questions about his mother, then proceeded. "Have you heard from Daniel Valentin?" "Not since seven o'clock. He'll be staying at Dover for a few days. He and his family were just about to get in line for their first shots against the anthrax." The TV news had been awash with news of the bioterrorist attack on the Air France flight. Emphasis was heavy on the successful reaction of the FBI and the Air Force. No news had leaked about the successful intervention of FBI and police in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas and, finally, in New York and Chicago. The only _Bacillus anthracis_ introduced onto an American plane had been in Chicago, where Alexander Kagan had placed the deadly powder, in a shallow pan, in the air circulation system of a United Airlines jet. When the FBI agents placed Kagan under arrest, he seemed almost relieved. The jet he identified, one scheduled to leave thirty minutes after Vera's flight, was pulled out of service and the passengers in the terminal were told only that their flight was delayed forty-five minutes by a mechanical problem. A new jet wheeled up to the terminal, and nothing more was said. Zach understood from Dick Nobell, in the D.C. office of the FBI, that the jet in Chicago and the Air France jet would be decontaminated pretty easily with paraformaldehyde. "Has Arnie made any progress on the virus or whatever was on the bus in St. Petersburg?" Zach watched his mother as he spoke to Hank. A small cough expanded into what must have been a painful coughing spell. He moved to her bed and gently rubbed her arm. He had to avoid all the bruises left by continual punctures for blood tests and insertion of IV tubes. Her coughing slowed and stopped and she slept on. "Arnie Valentin has turned into a wild man, won't stop working. He even talked the CEO of PXC Technologies into letting three of PXC's employees work all night if necessary." Hank paused. "I just met a courier at Reagan Airport, about an hour ago, and I took the vaccine sample he brought back out to Herndon. I'm on my way to the hotel now, gonna get some rest." "So does Arnie have samples of vaccine from all the American labs that are making it?" "Two out of four. Merck and Pharmacia. Concordia in California will have it here tomorrow about nine a.m. Nobody can get ahold of anybody at Tatian Labs, and it's the closest." He tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. "Patrice and Katy are at the banquet for the science students. I think they're going out with Rick and Luis Romero afterward." Zach's phone clicked to show he was getting another call. "I've got to go, Hank. I'll talk to you tomorrow." He pressed _End_ and switched over to the incoming call. He hoped it would be his wife, but the phone number displayed was the MPDC homicide department. "Detective Parker." "Zach, this is Steiner." Ralph Stein had been with MPDC since Zach was in high school. He was always "just about ready to retire," but never quite went so far as to put in his paperwork. "I'm ready," Steiner would say about retirement every Friday at the Lighthouse Bar. "Yeah, you better believe I'm ready. All it's gonna take is one bad day in a row." "Yeah, Steiner. I'm over in Alexandria, at the hospital." "How's your mom doing, Zach? I never can get over there to see her, you ought to kick my butt." Zach thought of Nurse Nye. Now there was a woman who could kick butt with the best of them. "She had a real bad day, Steiner. She's back on IV, the whole nine yards. She's getting great care over here, though. The best. What've you got?" "Maybe nothin.' Maybe somethin.' You know that receipt we found in the Russian's pocket? That guy Boris Fitin?" "From the vet?" "Yeah. You noticed right away it seemed pretty odd for a guy in a fourth floor walk-up to have a vet bill. Maybe he's got a dog, or a cat, but the veterinarian was way out in the Virginia suburbs." "So, did you get hold of somebody out there?" He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He wished he hadn't. "Yeah, called the lady vet at home. She never heard of him, but she called her office girl. That's what took so long. Girl's a ditz. I mean a real 'hire the handicapped' case. Anyhow, she finally remembered the Russian. He came to pick up the ashes of his dog. They were shipped here from someplace, Europe maybe, she can't remember. She thinks Europe is a country." "Ashes," Zach said slowly. "You got any clue what he did with poor old Rover?" "No sign of the ashes or the canister she says ashes come in, or the box she says it was all wrapped in. The Hazardous Materials guys looked everywhere for germs or toxic substances in the apartment before you and I went in. After I talked to the ditz I went back in. Like I said, no sign of the ashes or the container. Oh, HAZMAT said to tell you they're not through with Fitin's truck yet. Prob'ly haven't started." Boris Fitin's truck was lettered on the sides with _Paddy's Pest Control_. The D.C. HAZMAT guys took one look inside, said it looked like a moving violation to environmental ordinances in two states and the District of Columbia, and impounded it for ease and safety of examination. The team leader had shrugged at Zach's question, "When?" and said he'd look at the list of pending work and call Zach later to give him a heads-up. "You might as well get some rest. Tomorrow looks to be a bitch, too." Zach didn't add that he was hours away from rest himself. He wanted another talk with Boris Fitin. Maybe he'd open up about his poor old dog. Must have been mighty attached to old Rover to pay $146 shipping fee to get his ashes. Steiner said goodnight and asked Zach to "give my best to your mom." Zach used the restroom, washed his face and hands, and combed his hair, which didn't do a thing for his stubble or his bloodshot eyes, but made him feel slightly better. Then he checked his notebook. "Ummm," he mumbled. "Uhm-hmmm." He found the note he'd jotted down about the receipt from Vienna Veterinary Hospital. The receipt taken as evidence when Boris Fitin was arrested was safe in a plastic envelope in the evidence room, but Zach had examined it first. Seems the package Boris picked up weighed almost twenty pounds. From what Zach knew of cremains, and even allowing for the weight of a container and box, it sounded more like the ashes of a horse. _Yes. I'd better have a chat with Boris about old Rover._ He turned out the bathroom light, went over to his mother, and kissed her on the forehead. He smiled about how many times he'd used the cliche, _Gotta see a man about a dog._ This time it was the truth. -------- *Thirty-four* Tuesday, July 10 The Washington Marriott. 11:30 p.m. _Patrice Kelsey:_ July 10, 2001, might go down in history as the only day to last fifty hours. It got my vote, anyway. I felt like a pinball careening through the day, spinning from Good News to Bad News, back to Good News, then slamming again into Bad News. As midnight approached I sat in the bar of the Washington Marriott drinking a decaf Irish coffee. Katy was asleep in our room, Luis Romero was at the Officers' Club on Andrews Air Force Base getting better acquainted with Lt. Winifred Blaze, and Rick was on a pay phone outside the bar. An outbreak of _Bacillus anthracis_ had been narrowly averted in five cities and isolated to 242 people on the Air France flight. No, I corrected myself, 243 people. Daniel Valentin had exposed himself to the infected air inside the plane in order to control what could have been a disastrous panic. His brother proved his mettle as well, taking charge of the influenza threat assessment even though no one in the government thought that there was a threat or that he knew what he was doing. The brothers Valentin had a lot in common when it came to nerves-of-steel. Arnie had called Paul Keddy, Senator Jean Harding's chief of staff, and hung on like a bulldog on a bloody bone until he convinced Keddy that millions of American citizens were in danger of infection by what might very well be a deadly influenza. After our forced ejection from the anthrax threat investigation by Associate Director of the FBI, Stephen Springer, we dragged our sorry butts back to Herndon. Arnie got back to work on the blood samples and the vaccine Daniel had brought from Tel Aviv. He directed technicians from PXC Technologies and Katy in every step of the process of looking for antibody/antigen reaction to Daniel's vaccine for A/Shenyang influenza or to Teicher's different vaccine. He put Rick, Hank and me to work tracking down samples of the vaccine in production at four American pharmaceutical plants. Arnie made a dozen calls to the FBI, trying to convince them that the influenza threat had the potential to kill more people than the anthrax, but everyone referred him to the office of Associate Director Stephen Springer, which proved again and again to be a dead end. "I don't know if it's my name, or if they're just stupid!" He held his arms up in an expression of frustration. Since the name _Arkady Valentin_ was a reminder of one of the FBI's very public blunders, I thought it might be his name that made them deaf. Then again, stupid was a likely choice, too. I heard Arnie on the phone with Paul Keddy, explaining the crisis and asking for the senator's help. Fifteen minutes later, Senator Harding called Arnie and offered to do whatever she could. I could tell from his end of the conversation that she was praising the bravery of his brother. By the time Katy and I had to leave for the hotel, our team had only reached one of the four pharmaceutical companies. Rick and Hank said they'd keep at it as long as it took. Arnie told Rick to call the senator and get her help. The companies were getting about fifty million dollars each for the crash program to manufacture vaccine in time for the winter flu season. They ought to take calls from a U.S. Senator, even if they were too busy or self-important to talk to us. I finished my Irish coffee and told the waiter I didn't care for more. The clock was creeping toward midnight. Rick returned from his phone call outside the bar and kissed me. "Daniel said he can't talk to you in the morning. He's under tight restrictions, not from the American government, but from the Israeli government. But he promised to give you an exclusive interview as soon as he can talk to anyone." "He's quite a man. So is Arnie," I added. Rick put his hands on mine. "I have something to tell you, and something to ask you." "Okay." "First, I am an unemployed person. A man with no visible, or invisible, means of support. Nothing to fall back on but a certain facility with the written word." I said nothing, but my eyes must have widened in surprise. "No, I wasn't fired. I quit. I faxed my letter of resignation to the FBI at..." He took a paper from his jacket pocket and squinted at the top of it. "At 6:56 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time today. Tomorrow I'll start looking for a job, back on the free side of 'free press'." "That's a pretty big leap of faith," I said softly. "Hah! You think that's a big leap. Wait until you hear my question." "Yes? Go ahead." My eyes widened in surprise again as he stood, then dropped to the floor on one knee. "Patrice, I think you know I love you. I hope you know I love you. Will you marry me?" I started to rush ahead with practical questions like, _Where would we live? What would we live on? What if we don't get jobs in the same town?_ Fortunately, however, I had the good sense -- for once in my life! -- to give practicality a rest. Only a one-word answer was called for, not a string of questions that can _never_ have an answer, because none of us know for certain what the future holds. That's why the preacher says, _For better, or for worse_. "Yes. Yes, I will." -------- *Thirty-five* Wednesday, July 11, 2001 _Richmond, Virginia. 7:00 a.m. EDT_ Sergei Kos was so angry he could have choked five men to death and had anger left over. Five specific men in five American cities to whom he'd assigned an important task. By the time of his arrival at the Richmond Airport, south of Washington, D.C., the news should have been non-stop hysteria about anthrax. Instead, there was a forty-second spot at the top and bottom of each hour about an "unsuccessful" attack on one aircraft by unknown bioterrorists. A photo of an Air France jet, hardly more than a computer-generated logo, was shown on the screen while the same twelve seconds of an inane phone interview with a woman from Dubuque, Iowa, replayed. "We were, like, really scared," she said. "We, like, didn't know what was going on. And now we have to get shots." It took all Sergei's self-control not to swear aloud when he first watched the television in a bar in the Detroit airport. He was traveling under a false passport but even so it was better to enter the United States from Canada, and to use an out of the way airport like Detroit. It had been twenty-eight hours since _Paladin_ had called the big shot at _The New York Times._ Sergei hadn't planned to travel to the United States just yet, but he had a bad feeling that his precisely planned attack might not have worked as well as he expected. He talked Tatiana into going with him to Montreal, entering the United States separately, and meeting again in Richmond, Virginia. He paid for his drink and strolled to the gate listed for Tatiana's plane. She was due to arrive in fifty minutes. He couldn't risk trying to phone his men in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Washington. No confirmation -- no contact of any kind, in fact -- had come from Genevieve or from Sergei's brother, John Kos. Of course, he reminded himself, the fact that the news told of an attempt to infect the passengers on an Air France flight, an attempt that had resulted in more than two hundred people getting shots in order to save their lives, meant that John had completed his task. Then again, it was still possible that the anthrax was on one or more American planes as well, and that the government either didn't know or didn't recognize the danger. Planes infected with anthrax spores may have landed, undetected, and the people were off to see the Lincoln Memorial without knowing they carried death in their lungs. Yes, he thought. That was not just possible, but likely. And Boris Fitin's work with Shen II virus would not bear fruit for several days. Boris was probably driving around Washington at that very moment, spraying his "pest control chemical" at schools and daycare centers, and inside the United States Capitol. Fitin's packages marked _Vaccine_ were already in the five other cities, thanks to the super-efficient American delivery system called FedEx. Sergei looked at his watch with its outer ring of numbers set on Paris time and the watch face reading Washington time. Boris called Genevieve in Paris a little less than twenty-four hours ago, he calculated. Then Genevieve's immediate call to him meant the packages in Virginia, which contained Shen II virus, were ready and FedEx would pick them up soon for overnight delivery. So, Sergei thought dismissively, Boris made sure the five packages went overnight to New York, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. And now he is out spraying virus around Washington, D.C. Sergei looked at his watch and corrected himself. No, Boris is probably sleeping off a hangover at this hour. He'll be on the job around nine. Or ten. A lot of America had rubbed off on Boris, but the famous American work ethic didn't stick. If you want a job done right, Sergei told himself with a sigh, do it yourself. He'd done what he could through Rompol and Boris Fitin. The projects in their hands had a high probability of success. But Sergei had another pathway to pursue, another plan. It wasn't as big or splashy as the anthrax on the airplanes, just a little mouse hole of opportunity. He took a cardboard envelope from a low shelf at a FedEx machine. Printing neatly, he addressed it to John Smith at a Florida address. The name was made up, but his trusted friend would receive it, sign for it, pay for the shipping, and know exactly how to use the "gift" inside. He opened his shaving kit and removed a plastic tube. Sealed inside was a tube with the words Styptic Pencil on the side. Anyone who looked in his case would have seen it as a substance used to stop bleeding from small cuts, perfectly normal to find in a man's travel kit. Placing the envelope on the top of the FedEx machine, he slipped a square of bubble wrap from his shaving kit, wrapped up the plastic tube and slid rubber bands on to hold the wrap in place. Then he tucked the tube inside the envelope, sealed it, and dropped it in the FedEx receptacle. Such a small amount of powder, and yet so powerful. Just a tiny puff of the powder inside an envelope, mailed to an enemy, and vengeance was at hand. And if "John Smith" enclosed a written threat, anything with the word anthrax, what panic might ensue? Sergei continued toward Tatiana's gate, stopping to kill a half-hour in a newsstand. At seven-thirty he strolled to the gate where a plane was arriving from Louisville, Kentucky. With the ho-hum affection of an old married man, he greeted Tatiana. She didn't return even his minimal warmth. Anyone watching might think they were having a fight. Tatiana Teicher had little patience under the best of circumstances, and her visit to three airports in the heartland of America had done nothing to soothe her. From Montreal she'd gone to Columbus, Ohio, then Louisville, then Richmond. She was stiff from riding in coach class, which Sergei insisted she do so as not to stand out. Moreover, she was behind in her sleep, and she was hungry. Sergei held out his hand to take her carry-on bag and she shoved it against him. Her fit of temper did nothing to calm him. For the sake of not drawing notice, he ignored her rudeness and said, "You're tired, dear. Let's pick up the rental car and go home." In the Mercury Grand Marquis, Sergei took a quick look at his map of Virginia. "We have time to eat here in Richmond. It's one hundred ten or fifteen miles to our destination." Tatiana sat in stony silence. Finally she sighed. "I'm sorry, Sergei, my love. I'm just so terribly tired." He gently massaged her shoulders with his right hand. "I know. But just help me today, and I promise you a lovely time in Nassau. I wasn't going to tell you, I wanted it to be a surprise, but I see you need cheering up. I have a yacht completely outfitted, waiting for us." Her eyes brightened. "It's about time we enjoyed some of our money. You're such a slave driver." It occurred to him that if he really were a slave driver, there would be one hell of a lot more about anthrax on the news. "How long do we have to be here?" She frowned. Sergei wagged a finger at her. "Do you know, Tati, that sometimes you look just like you did when you were a little girl? Your lower lip sticks out like you're just daring anyone to be cross with you. And of course, they never could. I still can't." "You're very funny, Sergei, but you haven't answered my question." Her frown wavered and became a smile in spite of her intent. "I have to make sure the Shen II virus is in place and that my people are ready to disperse it as I directed. I can make calls from the plant and if anything is wrong, I can jump in and fix it myself. I couldn't do that from Greece. Especially when you kept walking around nude and distracting me." "So, how long?" she persisted. "If I tell you an exact number of hours, you'll be upset if it takes longer. No, I'll just say I will do everything as quickly as possible. One of the things I must do in Washington is get some cash to a man who has been a great help to us, as you know. A man I expect to continue to help us." He pulled into the parking lot of an International House of Pancakes. "The more I think about it, the more I think you should take him the money." She sighed. "If it means we'll be in Nassau any sooner, I guess I'll do it." She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "He's such a greedy bastard." "Ah yes, Tati my darling," Sergei sighed as he opened his door. "But he's _our_ greedy bastard." -------- *Thirty-six* Wednesday, July 11, 2001 _Washington, D.C. 8:00 a.m. EDT_ Sol Solomon waited on the line until the connection was free of static. "General, it's good to hear from you," he said in Hebrew. Sol could easily picture the room in which Ehud Mizrahi sat in Tel Aviv. Lined with lead to block electronic eavesdropping, it was pretty much a duplicate of the one in which Sol sat in Washington. The time in Israel was 3:00 p.m. Mizrahi, a powerful force in the Israeli cabinet, doubled as a general in the Israeli Air Force. His Hebrew was flawless, but he frequently tried to use American idioms, which he garbled to Sol's amusement. Bringing Sol up to date on the involvement of the prime minister, Ehud commented on Ariel Sharon's age. "He's no fried chicken," he sighed. "True," Sol said, "but he'll outlive us all." "You're right," Ehud agreed. "He's tough and healthy." Sol had spent the night at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He'd slept on a cot outside the communications room, waking only when the younger intelligence personnel really needed his input. Once his report on smallpox, the information Daniel Valentin had coaxed from Dr. Villie Ginsberg and passed on to him, had set the wheels of Israeli defense into action across the Atlantic, there was little more Sol could do. ~ * ~ Zach Parker had been vaguely aware of Melanie getting up, but couldn't dredge himself out of the deep sleep-hole he'd fallen into at two a.m. At 8:15 his alarm chirped, then stopped. At 8:30 it chirped insistently and he crawled to the crumbling edge of the sinkhole, opened his heavy lids, and hauled himself out of bed to face the day. He scratched at the thick stubble on his jaw. He wished he had the next two weeks off. He'd indulge his wish to grow a beard. Maybe canoe the Boundary Waters, or kayak Chesapeake Bay. Maybe just stay home and sleep 'til noon for fourteen days running. But definitely he wouldn't shave. _Dream on,_ Melanie would say if she could read his mind. He ran hot water in the sink and put a new blade in his razor. "Somebody named Daniel Valentin called while you were in the shower," Melanie said when he strolled into the kitchen. His dog, Laddie, was stretched out in front of the refrigerator, as usual. When they got him at the pound, they thought he'd be a small dog. Now six years old, he was seventy pounds of flab and red-brown hair that shed everywhere he went. Laddie's second choice for a sprawling place was the hardwood floor between the kitchen and the dining room, where he controlled access like a hairy troll. The sedentary mutt heard the two words together so often that Zach said he probably thought his name was "Move, Laddie!" "Got his phone number?" He poured coffee in his favorite mug and nudged the dog with his foot. "Move, Laddie." He got out the carton of half-and-half and closed the refrigerator door. "Right there on the pad by the phone." "Thanks." He kissed her. "I tried and tried to call you last night. I wish you'd leave your cell phone on when Chloe ties up our phone." "I'll start doing that. I got your messages before I went to bed. That's scary about your mom." "Don't I know it. I'll call Daniel and then call the hospital." He sliced his bagel and dropped it in the bagel toaster. "Just like you said would happen, the crazies are coming out of the woodwork, leaving packages marked Anthrax all over the city." Melanie sipped her coffee as she read the paper. "Shit! The HAZMAT guys must be going bananas." He couldn't help but worry that Boris Fitin's van would move even further down the priority list. While highly trained teams picked up packages with powdered sugar, and flour, and even sand, real criminals could move forward with their nefarious schemes. He sat down in his office, a room off the kitchen the size of a laundry room. It would be the laundry room, but Melanie agreed to leave the washer and dryer in the garage so he could have a room for a desk, one file cabinet, a chair and a wastebasket. "Dr. Valentin? This is Detective Zach Parker. How is your family?" Zach had heard about Daniel's bravery/insanity or insubordination at Dover Air Force Base, noting that the description of Daniel's leap onto the Air France jet depended on who was telling it. "We're going to be all right," Daniel said. "We're already sore and achy from the shots, though, and we have a lot more shots to go. The government is keeping everyone from the plane here three more days, then letting people go if they show they'll be under a doctor's care at their destination, and that their private doctors are in touch with the doctors here at Dover. It's going about as smooth as one could hope, but it's been less than twenty-four hours since the incident. People may go berserk yet." "I understand. Have you heard about the packages and envelopes showing up all over?" Daniel snorted in disgust. "Yeah. Why do people do that?" "I don't know the answer, but it does answer the question, 'Why does the FBI hush up about ninety percent of hoaxes?' There are people who go off on this stuff like pod people, activated by alien space ships. My mother used to say, 'All the world is crazy save thee and me, and I'm not so sure about thee.'" "How is your mother, by the way?" "Not doing well, I'm afraid." He repeated what he knew from the previous night. "I'm going to call the hospital in about half an hour, try to talk to the doctor." "Sure, good idea. Let me get to the point here." Daniel paused. "Sol Solomon is at the Israeli Embassy. He needs some help, but he doesn't trust the FBI. I think you might be the right man to talk to." -------- *Thirty-seven* Wednesday, July 11, 2001 (20^th Tammuz, the year 5761) _Tel Aviv, Israel. 9:00 p.m. [2:00 p.m. EDT]_ Dr. Rashad Teicher was as jumpy as a man with Saint Vitus' Dance. He dreaded every ring of the phone, but grabbed it like a lifeline at the first _trr-ing_. He'd walked home from Beth-el Laboratory with a sense of foreboding, but that was not unusual. He'd been nervous, paranoid, in fact, since he'd learned that Dr. Villie Ginsberg was gone. The only person he called, Morrie Goldman -- _Goldie_ to old friends like Rashad -- spoke briskly, saying only that Dr. Ginsberg was in the United States, and that questions were coming hard and fast about the whereabouts of Dr. Marissa Vengerov. Rashad turned into his street and saw about ten men and women in army uniforms, guns slung over their shoulders. He kept walking to a bus stop. Three miles away, after two buses and transfers, he let himself in the back door of a pottery shop owned by Roun Najoub's brother. Kahlil Najoub was unwrapping a shipment of Turkish tiles and setting them in his front window. "Kahlil, my friend," Rashad called, "how is your family?" Had there been customers in the store, Rashad knew Kahlil would have mirrored his jovial tone, but they were alone. Kahlil said nothing, just glared at Rashad. Feeling defensive in the face of Kahlil's hostility, Rashad adopted a gruff tone instead. "I'll be staying here for a while. Call Roun, tell him to come see your new tiles or something." "Call him yourself." Kahlil locked the front door, locked his cash register, and left by the back door. Rashad was shocked into silence by Kahlil's caustic tone. He locked the back door behind Kahlil and snatched a bottle of water from under the cash register. He took a long drink and calmed himself, then dialed Roun's home number. It rang five times. Rashad almost hung up, but heard Roun's voice in time. "Mr. Najoub, the tiles you ordered came today in a shipment. Shall I deliver them, or do you want to pick them up at the shop?" There was an uncomfortable silence, then Roun answered. "How late will you be open?" "The shop is closed, but I'll be here until -- very late. Just knock." "It's very inconvenient for me tonight." Roun paused. "All right, I'll pick them up about eight o'clock." Rashad was sweating profusely as he laid the receiver back on the body of the phone. His mind raced helter-skelter over what incriminating information might be found in his apartment if those soldiers were looking for him. The code he'd devised to mask phone numbers of friends in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Iran had seemed clever when he'd written the numbers down in his kitchen and stuck them to his refrigerator with a magnet. Hide in plain sight, he'd said aloud. A duplicate of the coded list was in his briefcase. He removed it. _Damn!_ The code was about as obscure as red crayon on wallpaper. He shook his head. No, it's not that bad. If anyone asks, I'll just say, It's a list of credit card charges I need to ask my wife to confirm. _God knows I have the bills to make anyone believe that._ Using the key he'd memorized, he extracted from the "credit card charges" the phone number for Peter Fedotov, a highly reliable chemist working in Neyshanbur, in the Iranian desert east of Mashhad. The phone clicked and buzzed and finally rang. The quality of the line was something like orange juice cans strung together with wire. "Fedotov here." "Peter, so good to hear your voice." He switched to French, which was inferior to his English, but infinitely better than his Russian, and asked if the material had been shipped on schedule. "When will my scientists be paid?" Fedotov asked. Rashad was appalled. First Kahlil, then Roun, and now Fedotov talked to him like he was a tailor who made three-legged pants. "Answer my question!" he barked. "Was it shipped?" "It was packaged here. One box was shipped to Washington, nine or ten days ago." "Washington?" Rashad sputtered. "To where? Where in Washington? Who told you to send any of the material to Washington?" "I'm not paid well enough to remember that much. In fact, I'm not paid well enough to remember anything." _You stinking son of a sow!_ Rashad thought. He forced himself to remain calm. "What about the rest of the material?" "Iranians came Saturday with a truck. Picked up the rest. Looked like papers from Sergei Kos. I assume it's in Palestine, as you ordered." "You assume?" Rashad spit the words out. "When will we be paid?" Rashad pictured the civil year calendar in his head. Like everyone in Israel, he had to live on two calendars. "Today is July 11. Money will be in the account on July 13. As soon as Sergei and I know the material is delivered, your bonuses will be deposited as well. Just as we agreed." Fedotov snorted to show his disgust. Rashad decided at that moment to tell Sergei to have Fedotov killed. He could not be trusted. "Six of my people died!" Fedotov said. "People blame me for not telling them the virus was lethal." "Tell them to blame themselves for being so careless. The families of the dead men will be compensated." Rashad was furious that Fedotov was controlling the conversation. "I hope the material was delivered on time and with no mistakes. If so, you will get your money. You can tell your people to return to Russia, and to keep their mouths shut. Is that clear?" "Why don't you stuff your virus up your ass?" Fedotov hung up. Rashad had never -- _never! -- _been so shocked. Everything in his orderly life was falling apart. He didn't even know how to reach his wife or her brother. They'd disappeared. He rearranged his "credit card charges" in his head and called another number in Iran, this time a lab in Quchan, about fifty miles away from Neyshanbur. He had a better relationship with the woman in charge at that lab. Gail Ovak answered, as he'd hoped she would. He had to be sure the smallpox vaccine had been delivered to Hammas headquarters in Palestine. He could oversee its division into thirty packages, and get Roun's people to deliver it to the thirty mosques overnight. He didn't even care to know what the status of Shen II virus and Shen II vaccine was. _Let Sergei worry about that._ He spoke in English. "Gail, this is Rashad. I'm in a rush here, so forgive me for talking so quickly. Gail -- " He heard her direct her voice away from the phone. "It's Rashad Teicher." "Gail, my dear, listen, I only have a minute -- " "Rashad, listen to me," she said. Her voice was strangely flat. "The vaccine is all in the hands of the Israeli Army." Instead of Gail's voice, a man's voice filled Rashad's ear. "We have the smallpox vaccine. And in slightly less than thirty minutes the factory at Neyshanbur will be obliterated." Rashad slammed the phone down, drained the bottle of water, and left by the back door, carrying only his briefcase. He had to get out of Israel, with or without Tatiana_. Hell,_ he thought bitterly, _she's probably in Switzerland, cleaning out our bank account._ He boarded a bus, headed for the West Bank. He'd helped a lot of the Russian immigrants. They would help him get to Bulgaria. ~ * ~ A phone rang in Tel Aviv. "General Mizrahi." Ehud Mizrahi listened, nodding silently. "Yes. We will find him. You can be certain of that. Yes, I will place the call to Neyshanbur myself. And Colonel, thank you for a job well done. No, there will be no problem with the Iranian Air Force. The Iranians want the virus destroyed as much as we do. They stopped a truck that was en route to the laboratory to pick up canisters of the virus. That was very helpful, to make sure all the virus is still inside the three buildings in the complex. Our fighters know their target, and will incinerate it all at one time." Mizrahi disconnected the call, listened for a dial tone, and called a second colonel. "Launch the aircraft. The Iranian Air Force will meet our planes at the border and escort them to Neyshanbur. The Iranian pilots will not interfere in any way. Tell me when they are approaching the strike zone." Again he disconnected; again he dialed. This time he spoke in English. "Is this the laboratory at Neyshanbur? Good. This is General Ehud Mizrahi of the Israeli Air Force. F-16 aircraft will be over your location in approximately ten minutes. The laboratory will be destroyed. You'd better get your people out fast. Do I make myself clear?" Peter Fedotov croaked, "Yes," and dropped the phone. Mizrahi heard him shrieking, "Get out! Get out! Everybody get out! Run! The lab is going to blow up!" Nine minutes and fifty seconds later Mizrahi took a call, said, "Yes, carry on. The building has been evacuated. I'll stay on the line." Two minutes and forty seconds later he said, "Excellent. Congratulations. Return to base." He then picked up another phone on the cluttered desk. "Mr. Prime Minister? This is General Mizrahi. Yes, the mission was a complete success. No, Rashad Teicher is not under arrest yet, but I'm sure he will be in custody very soon." He listened. "Thank you, sir. I'm honored to have been of service." On a third phone, he called Sol Solomon at the embassy in Washington. "Sol, this is Ehud. I'm very happy to tell you, the laboratory in Neyshanbur is bottoms up!" He listened a moment, then laughed. "Of course. That's what I meant to say. Belly up!" -------- *Thirty-eight* Wednesday, July 11, 2001 Washington, D.C. 3 p.m. EDT _Patrice Kelsey:_ PXC Technologies in Herndon seemed as good a place to meet as anywhere. Katy and Lt. Blaze had played hooky from the last lap of a tour of laboratories at George Washington University. I couldn't blame them. How could they keep their minds on anything but the present emergency? Also present at our convention of disheartened volunteers were Hank Hossman, the brothers Romero, and the brothers Valentin -- Daniel having gotten dispensation to leave Dover Air Force Base for a few hours. Luis was on the phone to Sol Solomon at the Israeli Embassy. Mostly, he listened, saying, _Uh-huh_ again and again. We perched on stools, counter tops, and chairs; our eyes focused on Luis like vultures watching a lame raccoon cross a busy highway. When Luis said, "Good-bye, for now anyway," I couldn't stand the suspense any longer. "Well? What's going on?" I blurted. "Has anyone found Dr. Vengerov?" Daniel asked. "What about Tatian Labs?" Arnie was obsessing on the one lab that had not provided samples of the A/Shenyang influenza vaccine. Since the other three cooperated completely, and since all three were alike -- and none of them were the same as Dr. Rashad Teicher's "private stock" of vaccine -- I didn't see that it made much difference whether we tracked down the Tatian Labs staff today, tomorrow, or next week. It didn't change the frightening fact: if the new influenza virus, the deadly variant of A/Shenyang for which no vaccine was available, were unleashed on the public, America was in serious, serious trouble. I had an appointment at Tatian Labs at 4:30 p.m., but I expected nothing. I could get in the front door, thanks to Paul Keddy's persistence and his boss Sen. Jean Harding's political pull, but that's as far as I'd get. I knew it. They knew it. Somebody needed to get in there with a warrant or something is what I really thought. Paul Keddy told me he was trying to get the FBI to investigate Tatian Labs, that the whole fifty million-dollar vaccine deal stunk to high heaven. But the associate director, Stephen Springer, just blew him off and was "out of the office" when Sen. Harding called him five minutes later. "Have they arrested Teicher?" Daniel asked. He'd told us how Teicher had manipulated Dr. Villie Ginsberg and gotten information about India-1967 smallpox. Ginsberg also said Marissa Vengerov had admitted to her in Tel Aviv that she was going to meet Rashad Teicher in St. Petersburg on June twenty-first. Luis held his hands up to forestall our questions. "Hold on a minute. First, there is no sign of Marissa Vengerov. The last time anyone saw Dr. Vengerov was June 21 in St. Petersburg. She took a car from the cruise ship to St. Isaac's Cathedral to meet someone, then disappeared. The trail stops there." He paused, then continued. "From Sergei Kos's lover in Paris, Sol's people found out Teicher and his wife were with Sergei Kos in St. Petersburg. Kos happens to be the brother of Teicher's wife and the brother of John Kos, who put the anthrax spores on the Air France jet." "So nice to see a family work together," I muttered. The phone rang and Luis answered. It apparently was Sol Solomon again. "So, you've got him? Great! What else? In the United States? How did they get in? Where?" He looked stunned. "And you called, and, uh, nothing?" He listened a while, said "thanks," and hung up the phone. "Sol just got an update from Israel. The Israeli police arrested Rashad Teicher. He gave them the expected load of bull about not knowing Sergei Kos was anything but an honest businessman. After a while he wanted to make a deal, but he had very little to deal with. The Israelis already have control of the smallpox vaccine, and they napalmed the laboratory full of smallpox virus. From the scientists at Quchan, Iran, they got the locations of the Iranian laboratories where Teicher's influenza virus and its specific vaccine were made. He named the virus Shen II, by the way." "So, the emergency is over?" I asked. Luis shook his head. "Not at all. The Shen II vaccine was all shipped to Russia, apparently to some place Sergei Kos controls." He thought about it for a moment. "Sergei Kos is a multimillionaire, but he's not a billionaire, like the Russians known as the oligarchs. The FBI has suspected for almost a year that he wanted to move up." "Okay, he has the Shen II vaccine. But what about the Shen II virus?" Arnie asked. "Can they incinerate it like they did the smallpox?" "They don't know where it is," Luis answered. Daniel's jaw dropped. "What?" "What were you saying about somebody getting into the United States?" I asked. Luis stood up and worked stiffness out of his knees. "Sergei Kos and Tatiana Teicher came into the United States from Canada during the night. Sol says they arrived separately, although it's a good bet they joined up at some location. Sol has no idea where they are now." Detective Zach Parker walked in and Luis brought him up to speed. "I may have part of this puzzle," Zach said. We waited expectantly. "I've been down at headquarters talking to Boris Fitin. He's the pest control guy who squashed the bartender like a bug. Seems he doesn't want to get out of jail. Any talk of bail and he quivers like I'm holding snakes in his face. It's like this. He had a big assignment from the Russian _mafiya_ and he blew it. He's more afraid of them than he is of us. Naturally, I tossed out the name Sergei Kos. Whoa! Scared him spitless." Hank nodded. "So, where was he supposed to carry out this assignment?" "At Tatian Labs in Herndon," Zach said, crossing his arms. "With his truck. Paddy's Pest Control wagon. I've got it outside." ~ * ~ "We need a better idea of what the place looks like," Luis said. "A bird's eye view. And I know just the bird." He logged onto an FBI insider's site and downloaded a map of the square mile of Herndon that included the Tatian Laboratories complex. He also downloaded an aerial view and showed us a nifty map on the computer monitor that turned the scene on its ninety-degree axis and showed us a computer-generated look at the building from all sides. It wasn't like a photo, with windows and doors, just a box. In this case, because the walls were curved, it looked like a hatbox. "This is the result of satellite photos at different times of the day," Luis explained. "A computer looks at the various shadows and computes the height of the building." With all of us crowded around him, he took us on a virtual tour of the exterior of Tatian Labs. "The front gate is out here, a good hundred yards from the building, on the northwest side of the property. It's controlled either by a guard in this shack, or from inside the building. The delivery entrance is on the southeast side." He leaned in and enlarged the image of the southeast side on the screen. "The fencing cuts in and lines the extra-wide driveway and connects with the building, which is only, oh ... about fifty feet from the street. So this industrial garage door completes the barrier." "What about the street?" Rick asked. "Is access blocked to the street outside the fence?" Luis zoomed out and around, making me dizzy. "No, it's a service road that dead-ends at the east corner of the complex. Down here at the south end of the complex it's open to Herndon Way, which opens here onto Industrial. So that's the way in for delivery or pick-up." "But getting on the service road doesn't get us inside Tatian Labs," Hank said. "Not to worry," Zach said with a smile. "Boris Fitin has a door opener for Tatian in the truck." "Any idea what we're looking for there?" Luis asked Zach. "Boxes packed for shipping. Fitin was supposed to send them FedEx day before yesterday. He thinks they're full of 'chemicals or something,' is how he put it. The same stuff he says he's supposed to be spraying all over Washington." "This sounds like a job for HAZMAT," Hank said. "Or at least for people in protective gear." Arnie spoke up. "We have excellent detectors here. PXC has state of the art equipment." "As long as we're borrowing," Daniel said, "let's borrow protective gear." Lt. Blaze and Katy would serve as our communications staff, Katy at PXC and Win Blaze, with two cell phones, in her car outside Tatian Labs. With all our cell phones, we probably had more phone numbers than Patton's Third Army. Arnie and Daniel went to a storage closet and came back with two big boxes. While we opened them they went back for two more. They made two more trips each to bring out what looked like scuba tanks. Since scuba stands for self-contained _underwater_ breathing apparatus, the only difference was these were to be worn on land. Another difference was, no water helped you carry the weight. I knew how heavy the buggers could be, having undergone simplified Hazardous Materials training in Los Alamos, suited out in a Level A suit while observing a competitive exercise between HAZMAT teams from Los Alamos and three other towns. When the trainers strapped the thirty-pound air tank on me, I'd come pathetically close to falling over backwards. After they'd enjoyed their hearty laugh, they strapped a twenty-pound tank on me instead. "These are Level A suits," Daniel explained, holding one up. "Also called bubble suits. They are a total bitch to work in, hot and awkward. Arnie and I should be the ones to suit up and go inside Tatian Labs. We can use our cell phones inside our suits as a two-way radio. We'll be out of touch with the rest of you, though, except visual cues. Unless we're close enough to hear you, of course." He paused a moment and continued as if thinking out loud. "Actually, Daniel or I could break our open line and phone out, but it would be very awkward with all our gloves." "I don't like it," Zach said. "You won't have any defense. What about weapons?" Daniel smiled. "Carrying a gun inside a Level A suit is the ultimate stupid move. Automatic nomination for the Darwin Awards." "I hate to be a wet blanket," I said, "but does anybody have a warrant or something?" "We're just looking around," Daniel said. "Kind of like window shopping." Luis crossed his arms. "I already know we won't get a warrant. Somebody inside the FBI blocks any inquiry regarding Tatian Labs. Sol Solomon talked to me and to Daniel, no one else. He's pretty sure Sergei and his sister had help getting into the United States, and that they have reason to expect help while they're here." "Who?" I asked, incredulous at what Luis was saying. "Do you have any idea who would help these killers? My God, we're talking about weapons of mass destruction!" "I have an idea, but I'm not sure. Sol thinks the manipulated virus, a highly infectious, even deadly, influenza, is already in the hands of Kos's people in at least six cities. But what Zach says, about Boris Fitin putting off delivery of packages to FedEx, and then getting thrown in jail where he couldn't do it at all, makes me think, I should say hope, we can get it to safety before it's too late. I am positive, absolutely positive, that if we notify the FBI, my own employer, there will be a delay. And that delay could kill thousands of people. So I'm going into Tatian Labs. I know I'm kissing my career good-bye, but it's better than digging mass graves." He looked embarrassed at his speech. None of us could doubt his sincerity. "If the two of you are still willing to suit up, that will make three of us," Luis concluded. Rick and Hank offered at the same time, but Daniel said no, three was enough in suits. "I have an idea, though," Luis said tentatively. "Patrice has an appointment in Tatian's front office at, what, 4:30? Why don't you go with her Rick, and the two of you might be able to distract attention from the back end of the plant." "How 'bout the old fire alarm trick?" I asked. "An oldie, but goodie," Rick said with a smile. "Let's get in and see how it looks. It might be the whole plant empties like a government office at five o'clock." "Hank, you drive the pest control wagon inside Tatian Labs," Zach said. "We'll rig up a cover story for why Boris sent you. Daniel and Arnie and Luis and I will be in the back. We'll decide our moves once we get in." I looked at my watch. "Hey, all this is fun, but I've practically promised my firstborn child to get that interview, and I've got ten minutes to get there!" "You can make it," Zach said. "Move out. We'll be on the way as soon as we load the truck." "I'll be right behind you," Win said to me. "Watching your six o'clock position." "Good luck," I said, taking in Daniel, Arnie, Zach and Hank with my glance. "And please be careful. I'd just hate it if you opened a box in there and wiped out life on earth." "Bummer," Rick agreed. In the parking lot we paused a moment to stare at the panel truck with the termite painted over the words _Paddy's Pest Control_. "What it needs," I said, "is a giant plastic cockroach strapped to the top." Win laughed. "You think?" -------- *Thirty-nine* Wednesday, July 11, 2001 Herndon, Virginia. 4:30 p.m. EDT _Patrice Kelsey:_ I drove my rental car up to the front gate at Tatian Labs and looked over at Rick. He rested his right arm outside his open window. The only way he could have looked less threatening on whatever camera monitor was watching us would have been by holding a teddy bear. We could see a vast parking lot, totally empty. "Say, Rick," I said quietly, "is it a holiday and nobody told us?" I rolled down my window and pressed the intercom button on a black metal post. "Yes?" a woman's pleasant voice came from the post. "I'm Patrice Kelsey. I have an appointment with, uh, Mr. Morgenthal." The post was silent. I waited almost a minute and pressed intercom again. "I'm still here," the woman snapped. "Sorry." I was glad I wasn't there for a job interview. "Mr. Morgenthal can meet with you briefly, Ms. Kelsey, but he said to tell you he has to catch a plane. Could you do this next week instead?" "I think the best thing would be a brief meeting today, whatever time Mr. Morgenthal can spare, and then perhaps we could talk again next week. In fact, Senator Jean Harding might want to join us next week, and she told me the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is interested in coming, too." Again the post said nothing, but the wrought iron gate swung open. I started to wave to Win, whose car was parked across the street from the gate, but thought there might be a camera trained on me. I watched in my side mirror as the gate swung closed behind me. I crossed the deserted parking lot and drove to the front of the building, being the side with the big flagpole. Only two cars were parked in the front, spaces reserved for important people. Mine was the only one in the designated visitors' lot. "Weird," I murmured to Rick. I speed-dialed Win and told her we were going in the front entrance, and that the place was all but deserted. "I think a fire alarm would be redundant," Rick said as we stepped out of the car. I smoothed my light blue skirt as he handed me my navy blue cotton blazer from the back seat. "Don't forget your camera." "Thanks." He looped the strap of Katy's Nikon automatic over his head. We strode purposefully across the concrete that ringed the flagpole and a modest circle of flowers. Inside was quiet as a church on a Wednesday, which it was. Wednesday, I mean. _Reception_ was spelled out on a decorative oak door to our right, so we headed that way. A woman at a large desk made of black lacquered wood looked up. Her reddish-orange hair was wound into an elongated bun fastened in a loose wad on the very top of her head. It looked like a yam. She wore a teal pantsuit with the large collar of a white blouse overlaying the lapels of her jacket. Her nameplate said she was Eleanor Edmonds. She looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. "You must be Ms. Kelsey." _Good guess, Sherlock_. "This is Richard Romero. He was kind enough to join me." She flicked her eyes over Rick, noted his camera, and said to please take a seat, that Mr. Morgenthal would be with us shortly. Instead of sitting down I moved closer to her desk. I'm very good at reading upside down, and I could tell she was adding bills of lading to a legal length manila folder. I saw the words Tel Aviv on the top sheet. I cleared my throat. "Excuse me, is it a holiday? Your parking lot is almost empty." She smiled, or maybe that was a gas pain. "We gave all the technical staff a day off. Just cleaning personnel worked today. They're nearly all gone, too." She closed the top manila folder and straightened the two-inch-thick stack. From her top right desk drawer, she hooked one of her manicured fingers through a red plastic key ring, and placed it on the folders. The intercom on her desk buzzed and she said, "You may go in." G. T. Morgenthal rose about half out of his chair when we entered his office. He gave a perfunctory handshake to Rick and an even weaker one to me. "My secretary explained that I have to catch a plane." It wasn't a question. He looked down at a PalmPilot and poked a few buttons. Eleanor Edmonds had walked in right behind us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her unlock a wooden file cabinet that could pass for fine hardwood furniture. She set the folders in the top drawer, locked the cabinet again, and twirled the red key ring on her finger as she left his office. She didn't bother to close the door, as if to remind us that our stay would be short. I sat down even though Morgenthal had not offered us a seat, and Rick did the same. As I took a small notebook from my purse, I studied our unwilling interview subject. "Mr. Morgenthal," I began, "Dr. Arkady Valentin is doing scientific research on the influenza strains most likely to affect America in the coming flu season. As part of that, he needs a sample of the vaccine you are producing here under contract for the U.S. Government." _To the tune of fifty million dollars._ "I had my senior scientist send the sample today. Dr. Valentin should get it tomorrow." "I see. Well, so we can alert Receiving at PXC Technologies, how was it sent? FedEx?" The idea of putting something so important, so urgently needed, in some form of the mail, to wander the greater metropolitan area, made me crazy. PXC was nine and one-half minutes away by car. "I don't know precisely, and my scientist is gone for the day. I'll have Ms. Edmonds check on it tomorrow and call Dr. Valentin. I'm afraid that's the best I can do. Now, I really have to go." With that, he stood to his full six feet four or five inches. Sliding his suit coat off a coat tree, he draped it over his arm, picked up his briefcase, and opened the door. He waited pointedly until we rose and walked slowly back into the reception area. Or in this case, the "anti-reception" area. Eleanor Edmonds dropped the ring of keys into her top right-hand drawer, took her purse out of the bottom drawer, and was on her feet with a _Here's your hat, what's your hurry?_ look on her face. I stopped at the water cooler and extracted a paper cup of water. I drank it slowly. "Good-bye, Mr. Morgenthal," she said. "Have a good trip." "Yes, thanks. See you Monday." He was out the door without a glance at Rick or me. Ms. Edmonds stepped into her boss's office to turn off the light, but suddenly said, "Oh, no! Your ticket!" With what looked like an airline ticket in her hand, and dismay on her face, she shot across the room, opened the door, and sprinted across the large open area of the foyer. "Does this strike you as a bustling center of pharmaceutical research?" I said. "Or a front?" "You know the answer to that one." Rick answered. "I'd like to take a look at those files." "You and me both." I handed him the car keys. "I think she'll be leaving very soon. How about I hide out in the ladies room while you leave? When she's off the property, you come back, I let you in. What's not to like?" He didn't have time to think it over before we heard her high heels clicking on the tile floor. "Let's go." We stepped out of the room and all but bumped into an out of breath Ms. Edmonds on her way back. "Thanks for your time," I said, gratitude dripping from my tongue like honey. At the big glass door I looked back over my shoulder, saw that the door marked Reception was closed, and took a sharp detour down a hall to the left. Rick kept walking out the door toward the car. The hall had a typical false ceiling of large acoustical tiles set on a metal grid. The floor was made of carpet tiles. All the doors on both sides were closed and the offices with glass windows had venetian blinds covering them on the inside. The only light in the hall was from a green fire exit light about fifty yards away and residual light from the entryway behind me. I made out the word Women on the third door on the left and went inside. As soon as the door closed behind me, I turned on the light. The tiny anteroom had a vinyl couch and chair. The room beyond had three stalls and a two-hole sink. I turned off the light and sat on the couch. The carpeting and acoustical tile that muffled my trip down the hall would do the same for anyone else. I hoped Ms. Edmonds didn't need to use the restroom before she left, or that she'd use another one. My phone rang, making me jump like a marlin on a hundred-pound line. "Yes?" "Morgenthal made a U-turn and went back in the gate," Rick said. "Win saw him talking on the phone as he came out. Hold on, there's another car coming." I waited. "It's a man and a woman in a Mercury Marquis. I can't see them anymore. Stay on the line, Win is calling me." I opened the restroom door about five inches and tried to see into the entry way without sticking my head out. I couldn't see anything, but after a couple minutes of silence I heard Morgenthal and the receptionist arguing. "I don't want any more of your excuses," he was shouting. "Get that piece of Russian shit on the phone and find out where the hell he's been for the past two days. Sergei will remove our livers and feed them to us on toothpicks if he..." I couldn't hear the rest. I let the door fall closed against my shoulder. A click on the line told me Rick was back. "Patrice? Win is on the other phone with Sol Solomon. From what he says, the man and woman might be Sergei Kos and Tatiana Teicher." "Morgenthal is yelling at Ms. Edmonds. Something about Sergei serving their livers on toothpicks." "You better lie low." I said nothing, just gently leaned on the door to open it five inches, then ten, then enough to put my head out. Morgenthal's voice was so close I pulled back in to a five-inch opening. "Come in," Morgenthal said in a hearty, chummy voice. "I wasn't expecting you until Monday. I was on my way to the airport when I got the call, in fact." I heard a man's deep voice say, "...my sister," and a woman's voice say, "...the restroom?" I jumped back, preventing the door from slamming by holding one finger against it. Into the phone I said, "They're inside, and the woman is his sister." I pressed _End_ and _Off,_ dropped the phone in my jacket pocket, and darted into a bathroom stall. I locked the door, put the lid down and stood on the toilet seat. My eyes were accustomed enough to the darkness to see the ceiling. And luckily, the bathroom was old fashioned enough to have a tank against the wall. I took off my shoes, pressed my hand against the big acoustic tile overhead, lifted it, and slid it to the side. I set my shoes and purse overhead on an adjacent tile and gingerly placed one foot on the tank. Holding onto the metal grid overhead, I slowly trusted my weight onto my foot on the tank, hoping it was made of thick porcelain, until my head and chest were above the grid and into the vast space above the false ceiling. Like a gymnast on o-rings, I slowly lifted myself high enough to place a knee on the grid and drag myself up and over. I knelt there, my heart pounding and my breath so fast I was close to hyperventilating. Thank goodness Tatiana hadn't been in a really big hurry to get to the restroom. I heard the restroom door open and saw light beneath me. Slowly, making no noise, I set the large but lightweight tile back in place. My plan, insomuch as I had a plan, was to wait until she was gone, lower myself back down, and ... and? That was pretty much it. To my surprise, however, the area above the tile ceilings wasn't in total darkness. A ring of widely spaced skylights illuminated the sheet metal ducting that snaked over the offices and, presumably, some labs -- although I wouldn't bet the farm that Tatian had any operational lab facilities. From my vantage point, I could see the joists and insulation that formed the entryway and the two skylights that made it feel so open and airy. It was easy to figure at least approximately where the reception room and Mr. Morgenthal's office would be. I recalled his office had a window onto a grassy berm with a scraggly tree, so it was an outside wall. If the whole ceiling had been acoustic tiles, I couldn't have moved about, but the grids and tiles formed square and rectangular islands all over, set off by solid wood two by fours and boards. I held onto a crossbeam above me and slowly made my way to the solid path. I put my shoes back on, glad I hadn't had time to change from my good old dependable loafers to high heels before Rick and I raced off to Tatian Labs. My purse was pretty useless and didn't have a strap I could use to carry it while keeping my hands free, so I put my wallet in my pocket, my notepad, pen, lipstick in the other pocket, and abandoned my $19.95-plus-tax purse to the critters. I thought of cute little mice joyfully discovering my faux-leather bag and converting it into a condo. _I have definitely seen too many Disney movies._ I turned on my cell phone and set it to _vibrate_ instead of _ring_ and crept forward at a steady pace toward Morgenthal's office. Finally I heard voices beneath me and stopped. First I heard a woman's voice, not that of Ms. Edmonds. "Sergei, my darling, you said yourself we had to come here just in case something had gone wrong. So let's fix it and leave." "It's not that simple!" a man said. "You heard what she said. Boris Fitin is in jail, and the packages are all sitting in the loading bay, going nowhere!" "Mr. Kos, good news. Ms. Edmonds was able to reach a highly reliable employee. He has a truck, and he's on his way. He'll pick up the packages and go to a FedEx office that's open all night, near the airport. You and I can go through the plant to the loading bay and meet him there." Morgenthal hesitated. "On second thought, it's a long walk. Maybe we should all drive around to it." They dickered a little, and Tatiana said she'd rather ride. Sergei said he wanted to see what his money had bought, so he and Morgenthal would walk and Eleanor would take Tatiana by car. As soon as I heard the office door and the outer door close behind them, I dialed Win Blaze. "Yes?" "Win, it is Sergei Kos and his sister. They know Fitin is in jail and I heard Kos say the packages are still in the loading bay here at Tatian Labs. An employee is coming in a truck to pick up the packages and ship them out at an all-night FedEx place. Kos and Morgenthal are on their way to the loading bay on foot and the receptionist is driving Tatiana around the building. Tell Luis and Zach!" I didn't wait for her reply, just pressed _End_, dropped the phone in my pocket, and crawled forward to the ceiling over Eleanor Edmond's office. I peeked under the corners of three tiles until I was directly over her desk. Moving the tile completely out of the grid, I lowered myself to the top of her desk. I turned on the green banker's lamp and lifted her key ring out of her top right-hand desk drawer. I turned off the lamp, crept into Morgenthal's office and closed the door tight. I took a step away, reconsidered, and stepped back to press in the lock button. I turned on the overhead light and dimmed it with the switch, then took a close look at the file cabinet. One lock apparently controlled all four drawers, so I tried keys until one worked. I looked in them from the bottom up. One was empty and two were of no interest. The top drawer was the treasure trove. I took folders out, three at a time, and glanced through them. They seemed to be bills of lading of chemicals and equipment received. I didn't find anything about employees, however. A plant that size should have three or four hundred people working. I couldn't understand why nothing about them was in the office of the man in complete charge of the facility. And every paper was dated 2001, as if the company just came into existence this year, or maybe all records before 2001 had been placed elsewhere. I put all the folders back but three. One was labeled, in pencil, "Boris." One was a series of computer printouts, clamped at the top that said "Shipping Records." On top of the computer sheets were about twenty FedEx pink sheets. The top five sheets were all dated two days before, and the destinations were addresses in Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Knowing what I knew about Sergei Kos, it was an ominous discovery. With my hands shaking, I opened the sliding metal bracket that held the sheets in the folder, removed the top five, and put them in my pocket. Quickly, I replaced the bracket and dropped the folder in the drawer. The folder labeled "Boris" was a collection of Post-It notes. One caught my eye: "India '67 in box marked Etiologic Agents: BioHaz. From Paris. In freezer vault. Locked." The third folder was labeled "Insurance." There were no papers in it, just a padded Tyvek envelope the size of a CD, held inside the folder by a strip of masking tape. I wiggled it free of the tape, put the envelope in my jacket pocket, and put the three folders back in the drawer. As soon as I got the cabinet locked I tried the drawers on Morgenthal's expensive cherrywood desk. None had anything that looked important. I turned off the light and returned to Ms. Edmond's office. In the dark I tugged at her top right drawer, which was stuck. I tugged harder and it came halfway out of the desk. I turned on the banker's lamp and looked inside. When I saw the small handgun, I thought, why not? Checking to make sure it was loaded, I dropped it in my right pocket and moved my wallet to the left pocket with my lipstick, notepad and pen. I guessed that made me ready for anything. _In for a dime, in for a dollar._ I gave about ten seconds of thought to my next move. Looking around for something to make me taller, I clambered back onto the desk. I couldn't lift myself back through the hole I'd already created, but I spotted a very sturdy looking lawyer's style bookcase with glass covers for each shelf. I left the light on so I could see where to place my hands and feet. Then I hiked my skirt up to my pantyline and crawled from the desk to the top of the bookcase. From my higher perch it was a simple thing to move another section of ceiling tile and revisit the vast space above the offices. I replaced the tiles I'd disturbed and sat down to catch my breath. I felt my phone vibrate and answered. "Yes?" It was Katy. We'd left her manning the phone at PXC Technologies. "Patrice!" She sounded more out of breath than I was. "I've been on the phone with Sol Solomon. He's going to Tatian Labs in a helicopter. While all of you are having grand adventures, I've been searching for information about Tatian Labs on the web." 'What've you got?" "Well, they incorporated in Virginia eighteen months ago. At the same time, they bought the whole Moxol Pharmaceuticals plant in Herndon. Says here 'turnkey,' whatever that means." "It means they bought it lock, stock and barrel. Everything stayed right where it was, down to the toilet paper, and they got a key to the front door." "Oh. Sol told me how to look on the web for a blueprint of the Moxol plant. I'm working on it." "You're a mind reader! I'm inside, climbing around above the false ceiling, and I need to know where the loading bay is." "Okay, I'll call you back." I put the phone back in my pocket and crawled to the solid wood pathway that I'd used before. I alternately walked, crawled, and waddled like a duck, stopping occasionally to climb over ducting. I was miserably hot and getting thirsty. My phone vibrated again. This time it was Win. "Patrice, where are you? When are you going to get out of there? Rick is parked behind me and he's threatening to go over the wall after you." "I'm in the attic and I'm going toward the loading bay. Did you reach Luis and Zach about the people all headed toward them?" "Yes. Daniel and Arnie found the boxes and Arnie phoned Zach to say they are dangerously hot. I mean biologically hot, of course." "Where's Luis? Are all three of them in the loading bay? In bubble suits?" "Luis is in a suit but he's still in the pest control wagon." She paused. "Hold on." While I waited for Win to come back from call waiting, I had another click on my line. I wondered what was the maximum number of calls that could be tied up by call waiting if every person took his second call. I kept moving, making good time as I got more accustomed to the two by fours and intersections of ducting and cables. "Yes?" "It's me," Katy said. "Getting blueprints in the commonwealth of Virginia was easier than I expected, especially in this age of the Internet. What do you want to know?" "Are there any stairs or elevators going anywhere around the loading bay?" She was silent for a minute. I remembered Win was waiting to talk to me. "Katy? I'll be right back." To Win I said, "Yes, I'm here." "I don't know what's going on!" she said. "That was Zach calling, but he said, 'They're here!' and hung up." "Okay, keep your line available." I switched back to Katy. "Can you find anything?" "There's one elevator. Apparently at the back of the building there's storage space above the loading bay and a basement, too. The blueprint says, 'freight elevator'." "In relation to the front entrance, which is my only point of reference, where is it?" "Okay, picture the building as a clock with the front entrance at six o'clock. At ten o'clock there's a wide hallway leading to a separate building, which is square and roughly one-third the size of the round building. The freight elevator is in that building. The back of the building has the big outside door to the service road." "My phone battery is low, I've got to go," I said. Instead of setting it on vibrate, I turned the power off. Better to have some power available for an emergency call if I needed it. I took a left at the next major intersection of beams and ducts and went toward "ten o'clock." -------- *Forty* Wednesday, July 11, 2001 _Herndon, Virginia. 5:20 p.m. EDT_ Two young women sat in the playground area of the beautiful suburban park. One had long auburn hair, caught up in a ponytail that began high on her head and cascaded below the nape of her neck. The other had blond hair in a buzz-cut so short she appeared at first glance to be bald. Both of them wore shorts, which made sense in the sweltering late afternoon, and both of them wore sweatshirts, which did not make sense. Each woman kept a proprietary hand on a stroller. Both strollers were in the seat-reclined position and had light blankets draped to shade sleeping babies. An older model Subaru station wagon pulled into the parking lot. The words WASH ME were drawn by finger on the rear panel on the passenger side. A tall man in a gray jogging suit that matched his hair got out of the driver's seat and locked the door. On the sidewalk, he busied himself with a stretching routine. At the same time, he looked around the park, toward the playground to his right and toward the enormous duck pond in front of him. Several families were at the fence about fifty yards from the parking lot and the jogging path. They all seemed to be throwing food to the ducks, geese and swans, which waddled around like they couldn't eat another bite but took the bread, popcorn and lettuce anyway. The man bounced at the waist, touched his toes, straightened up, and jogged down the trail to his left. He appeared to be following the trail toward a grove of oak trees that shaded about one third of the pond. At the same time, two men in filthy blue coveralls stepped down from a garbage truck at the far-left end of the parking lot. Carrying black plastic garbage bags, they headed across the grass toward the jogging trail. The only thing odd was that they walked pretty fast for men paid by the hour. The two women abandoned their strollers and broke into a run toward the shady grove. The sanitation workers and the young women converged on the duck pond from opposite ends of the path. All had weapons drawn and at the ready. The tall man in the gray jogging suit was on his knees beside a Japanese-style lighting fixture, one of his hands extended beneath it as if retrieving something he'd dropped. Or something someone else had dropped. The smaller woman, the one with auburn tresses, got to him first. In a voice that belied her size, she snarled, "FBI! You are under arrest. Get up slowly and keep your hands away from your body!" "Do you know who I am?" he barked as he stood to his full height and glared down at her. His hands were on his hips as if the woman's order was too outrageous to be taken seriously. One of the sanitation men answered for all of them. "Yeah, we know who you are, you piece of horseshit." "Agent Hahn," said the blonde, "you should show more respect." "To him?" Hahn asked incredulously. "No, Agent Hahn," she said as if hating to explain the obvious, "to horses!" Hahn smiled at her, then aimed his gun and his icy stare at the tall man. "Now, lie down on the ground. Flat and fast! Arms spread way out." This time the man in the gray jogging suit did as he was told. "Good job, Agent Hahn," said the blonde. "Now, would you do one more thing?" "What's that?" She waved one hand in front of her face. "Please stand downwind." -------- *Forty-one* Wednesday, July 11, 2001 _Herndon, Virginia. 5:25 p.m. EDT_ Arnie Valentin pulled his left hand out of the heavy rubber glove attached to the sleeve of the Level A suit. He still had two layers of gloves on his hand, but they were fairly pliable. He grasped the gauge for his air supply and held it up and forward so he could read it. _Five more minutes of air. Seven if I can slow my breathing rate, less than five if I panic._ His biologic agent detector, a handheld unit that looked like a really big flashlight, showed that one of the five packages, the one addressed to Alex Kagan in Chicago, was leaking. Daniel found an empty fifty-five gallon drum and tipped it over about halfway to the floor. Arnie set the white package inside, Daniel righted it, and together they pounded the top on to seal it as best they could. Arnie heard someone call his name and looked toward the pest control truck. Zach Parker and Hank Hossman were inside pointing behind him. Slowly -- the only way he could move in any event -- he turned and saw Luis Romero, also suited out. Luis waved his bulky arms to get Daniel to look at him, too. "Someone is coming. Sergei Kos and someone else. Follow me." He headed for the freight elevator, behind stacked fifty-five gallon drums. The elevator door stood open. Arnie shouted through his respirator, "We are out of time! We have to get out of these suits." The exertion of pounding the lid on the drum and walking fast to the elevator had taken his air down to the red mark on his gauge. He was sure Daniel couldn't be more than a minute behind him. But their suits were biologically hot, to what degree he didn't know. If they removed them and simply breathed they'd inhale contaminated air. They needed to get hosed off, then remove the suits, then go through a rigorous body shower to completely decontaminate. To Arnie's shock, a gash suddenly appeared in Daniel's suit, then another. Daniel was cutting his way out of his suit with a large pocketknife. In seconds, Daniel's upper body was free of the suit and he was tugging at the zipper on top of Arnie's head. "Hold your breath!" he ordered. Arnie took two more breaths from his compressed air tank and did as Daniel ordered. With his hands free of gloves, Daniel was able to open Arnie's zipper all the way to the thigh, then dropped to his knees and tugged his brother's heavy boots off. "Go on, both of you, get on the elevator." Arnie wanted to argue, to demand, to question, but he couldn't even dare to take a breath. Clad only in boxer shorts and paper booties, he stepped aboard the elevator at the same time Luis did. Daniel released the straps on Arnie's respirator and lifted it off him. Seeing the sheer terror in Arnie's eyes, Daniel said, "Don't worry! I've been vaccinated against Teicher's flu virus, remember?" Not losing another second, he pressed "B" on the elevator, which closed the doors and took Arnie and Luis to the basement. The sound of the elevator was lost in the noise made by the industrial garage door going up. Daniel turned, saw the bottom half of a white sedan outside the loading bay. At the same instant, he heard the voices of two men already inside the bay. They must have come in from the building and opened the roll-up door from a control inside. He snatched up the shoulder of Arnie's bubble suit, with the air tank inside, and carried it into a maze of boxes and storage drums behind the elevator. There he finished extricating himself from his suit and boots. He had on khaki shorts, a T-shirt, paper booties -- and a pocketknife. _Even for a former Israeli soldier_, he thought ruefully, _I'm in deep shit_. Holding his body tight against the elevator column, he leaned forward enough to see the pest control wagon. There was no sign of Zach or Hank. Since they knew they couldn't get out and breathe safely, Daniel figured the two of them must have hidden in the back of the truck. "This is the loading bay," said one of the men who'd entered from the building. From the sound of the voice, the man was closer than Daniel expected, so he squeezed his body back behind the elevator. "What the hell is Boris's truck doing here?" said the other man, in English with an unmistakable Russian accent. Daniel thought he sounded more annoyed than alarmed. "Maybe he loaded the packages already," the first man said. "Damn it! That stupid woman is blocking the driveway. Eleanor! You're blocking..." he called loudly. "Excuse me, Sergei, she doesn't hear me. I'll go out and move her car to make room for the truck." "I'm going to look in Boris's truck," said the other man, the one Daniel now knew was Sergei Kos. Daniel moved silently away from the elevator column, inched forward, and squatted to see between two boxes. He watched Sergei try the driver's door, the passenger door, and then disappear behind Paddy's wagon. "Locked!" Sergei called. "If I have to, I'll break a window. Let's see if the packages are still in the loading bay." "Come on back ... back ... back, hold it." The other man directed a panel truck to back into the loading area. The back half of the truck was inside the building. "Here are four packages," Sergei called. "Where the hell is the fifth?" Daniel heard two car doors close and saw two women walk into the loading bay. One was a tall, deeply tanned blonde. He recognized the Nordic goddess as Rashad's wife, Tatiana. As she stepped into the building, she lifted her dark sunglasses and tucked them on top of her hair. Even at a distance Daniel could see her brilliantly blue but cold eyes. Her face, especially the set of the jaw, was equally cold, almost fierce. If Tatiana Teicher was a female deity, Daniel concluded, she was the goddess of war, not love. "Eleanor," the other man said, "there should be five packages ready to go. We only find four." "I never come out here, Mr. Morgenthal," Eleanor answered. "I typed up mailing labels for five, and gave them to Mr. Fitin on Monday." Eleanor was a plain woman, Daniel noted, made plainer by her severe hairstyle -- and by standing within thirty yards of Tatiana Teicher. "Load these," Sergei ordered. "I'm going to look for the other package." ~ * ~ Arnie, wearing next to nothing, and Luis, still in full Level A equipment, stood in the basement. Arnie had quickly examined the panel inside the elevator on their way down and saw how to make it stay in the basement, with the door open. He stood half in, listening intently. He could tell a Russian man had arrived, probably Sergei Kos, and another man, but he couldn't make out their words. He could also tell another truck had arrived. He heard someone call, "Eleanor! You're blocking..." so he was sure a woman was upstairs in the loading bay, too. Moving away from the door so his voice couldn't carry up the shaft, he pointed to his watch. Luis took one arm from its sleeve and checked his gauge. "Twenty minutes," he said. Arnie got close to Luis's face window and said, "Let's save it." Luis nodded and Arnie began unzipping him. At the same time, Luis turned off the air supply to his respirator and freed his face. "Air never felt so good before!" he said in a low voice. "What's going on up there?" ~ * ~ Inside Paddy's Pest Control wagon, Zach and Hank lay on the floor to stay out of sight if anyone looked in through the windshield. They shared their last bottle of water to replenish themselves for the sweat lost in the oven-like truck. For the fourth or fifth time, Zach checked his gun. Hank's phone vibrated and he whispered into it. "Hossman here." ~ * ~ _Patrice Kelsey_: While still in the main building of Tatian Labs, the round one, I moved pretty quickly and mostly in an upright position on the wide joists that formed an architectural wheel. When I got to what Katy had described as the ten o'clock position on the circle, I was glad to find the arm that connected to the other building. It was about thirty feet wide, a good solid passage, but the high attic space that made my trek easy ended there. I dropped to my knees and peered forward. To get to the loading bay I would have to crawl beside the ductwork. And what would I find when I got there? I had a scary picture in my mind of coming to a grating high on the wall of a huge warehouse room, with no way down. In that case, I thought philosophically, I'd crawl backward like a crab and drop down through the ceiling in the main building. And then I'd ... I couldn't guess that far ahead. Hiking my skirt up again, I crept on my hands and knees into the aptly named crawlspace above the walkway. When I reached what had to be the square building, I was glad to find that the opening from my tunnel had no covering. I looked out into a cavernous building with a steel roof. It looked exactly like I'd expect a warehouse and loading bay to look: all useful space, no frills. It was just a four-foot drop from the crawlspace to the surface of the second floor. Before I wiggled out from beside the ducting and jumped down, I peered over the edge to get my bearings. The floor, four feet beneath me, was more of a mezzanine than a real second floor, because I could look down to my right and see the railing that marked its edge. I couldn't see anything on the main floor, but I could tell I was looking at the wide driveway outside. A giant roll-up door was folded into the ceiling, leaving the back of the building open from the ground almost to the roof. The reflecting sunlight on concrete was hard on my eyes after a half-hour in a dim attic. My uncomfortable perch was near the back of the building, maybe fifty feet from the back wall and maybe three hundred feet from the roll-up door at the front. My odd perspective made it difficult to say for sure, but it appeared the mezzanine extended from the back wall over about two thirds of the main floor. To my left against the back wall I saw the door to the fire stairs. Since I could tell there was no one on the second floor and I presumed no one on the main floor could see me, I squeezed out of the utility space and lowered myself to the floor. My hands and knees were black and my skirt was ripped all the way up one side seam. It was also missing a swatch on the back that caught on sheet metal and tore loose. I was glad to just lose part of the skirt and not skin. I kept my back rigidly against the wall and inched forward almost to the railing until I had a good view of the loading bay. I saw the pest control wagon, the back half of a panel truck, its back doors open, and five people. I spotted Morgenthal and Edmonds and I recognized Sergei Kos and Tatiana Teicher from the photos Sol Solomon had shown me two days before. From the proprietary way the other man leaned on the truck, I guessed he was the driver of the panel truck. Slowly, I sat down and scooted sideways against a barrel. It moved a little, so I deduced it was empty. I didn't like my exposed location, so I returned to my hands and knees and crawled toward the back of the mezzanine. Finally, I felt far enough removed from sight that I stood and tiptoed behind a solid column that I figured must house the freight elevator. Then I crept forward again on the other side of the elevator shaft, dropped to my knees, and inched toward the railing. Looking down from that side of the second floor, I immediately noticed a patch of yellow among the grayish-green barrels and plain brown boxes. As I stared at it, the yellow, which might be fabric or rubber, moved farther into the barrels. Probably one or more of our guys, I surmised, either in or out of a bubble suit. I heard a man's voice right beneath me in the loading bay, a voice with a distinctly Russian accent. "I don't have time to waste looking for the fifth box," he snarled. "Have you got the others loaded?" "Yes, Sergei. The driver is ready to leave as soon as you give the signal." Morgenthal had sounded lordly when he spoke to Rick and me in his office. Now he sounded like a drooling sycophant. _Yes, Sergei. Shall I lick your boots, Sergei?_ "Where is your ... I mean where is _my_ freezer? I have another package to pick up. The one that arrived from Paris. Oh, crap! Just a minute." He called in a louder and infinitely kinder voice, "Tatiana, we've got to have our car here. She can drive you around to the front to get it." I lifted my head enough to see Sergei walk over to Tatiana in the front of the bay and put his arms around her, whispering something in her ear. She shrugged, nodded, and walked out into the sunshine. Ms. Edmonds scurried along behind her like a porter. "Eleanor, find a spare key to this piece of junk." Morgenthal strode into the front of the bay and called loudly enough to get her attention. "To what?" Standing beside her car door, she looked puzzled. "To the truck Fitin drove. It belongs to the company. Find a spare key!" He gestured toward the pest control wagon. I wondered if anyone was still in it. "The freezer is in the basement," Morgenthal said to Sergei as Edmonds backed out onto the service road. He was again playing the role of the genial host. "We'll use the elevator." Since they were on the main floor, only about twelve feet away from me as the dead crow flies, I heard them muttering angrily that the elevator was stuck in the basement. Sergei demanded to know where the stairs were. I heard Morgenthal say, "Over here," and then I heard a door open, probably the metal door to the fire stairs. I couldn't hear Sergei or Morgenthal anymore, because the driver got in his truck and turned on the radio. I put my head out from the "choir loft" and said "Psst, psst." Daniel peeked around the corner of a stack of boxes and waved at me. I was about to say, "Where is everybody?" when a sudden noise stunned me into silence. Too soon for Sergei and Morgenthal to have reached the basement and done anything to the elevator, it clanked and groaned and began to rise. My heart stopped, then beat faster to make up for the time it had lost. The industrial-strength elevator banged to a stop and the door creaked open on my floor, the huge loft. Arnie and Luis, wearing very little, crawled out. Arnie spotted me, tapped Luis on the shoulder and pointed. I pointed down and to my left and mouthed, "Daniel." The three of us, on our feet but hunched over, regrouped away from the elevator in case the men in the basement came up to look around. After about two minutes the elevator doors closed and it clanked down to its default location, the main floor. "Why aren't you guys in bubble suits?" I couldn't help adding, "or clothes?" "Two of them are out of air. Daniel's got them. The other one is hidden in the basement, in a barrel behind the elevator shaft," Luis said. He was clearly embarrassed about standing there in Jockey briefs and paper booties. "One of the five boxes Daniel and I found was hot," Arnie said. "We put it in a barrel, over there." "I heard Sergei say he's getting a package from Paris out of the freezer, in the basement," I said. "In the office I found a note that said 'India-67 arrived in a package from Paris.' It was in a folder marked 'Boris'." Arnie muttered an oath in Yiddish. "India-1967 is smallpox! The most virulent strain known on the planet, cultivated in Russia thirty years ago! What the hell is it doing in America?" "Do you have a phone?" Luis asked. "Ours went dead. We left them in the suits." "I turned mine off to save what little battery is left. Probably has enough juice to make one call." I handed it to Luis. "Better make it a good one." "Is Win still out in front of the building?" He turned on the power. "Don't tell me you're going to use our one phone call to make a date!" He glared at me in mock fury. I added, "Sol Solomon is on the way by helicopter. In fact, I can't think why it's taking him so long to get here." The elevator banged and groaned again, the noise retreating from the main floor to the basement. Luis speed-dialed and held the phone to his ear. "Win? This is Luis. Arnie and Patrice and I are on the second floor of the loading bay. Daniel's on the main floor, and Zach and Hank are stuck in the wagon. The place is mildly hot with a biologic agent, and Sergei has smallpox virus. I repeat smallpox virus. Call out HAZMAT and the police and FBI." He looked at the phone in his hand, said, "Another dead soldier," and handed it back to me. "I hope Win heard all that." The elevator began its noisy ascent, stopping again at the main floor. "Tell the driver to deliver the other packages," Sergei was saying as the door opened. "I'm keeping this package with me. Where's the material Boris was supposed to be spraying around Washington?" I couldn't hear Morgenthal's answer. "Tatiana can drive the car. I'll take this piece of shit downtown and finish Boris's job." He kicked a tire on the pest control truck. They walked over to the panel truck and Morgenthal said something to the driver, who started his engine and pulled out of the loading area. At the same time, Ms. Edmonds and Tatiana returned, in two cars. Edmonds walked over and gave a key to Morgenthal. Sergei walked outside and put a package in the trunk of the car Tatiana drove. He said something to her and she drove the Mercury Marquis inside the loading bay. Just then I was pretty sure I heard the helicopter. I pointed up and Luis nodded. Our first concern was the safety of Zach and Hank in the wagon, and our overriding concern was that Sergei and Tatiana not get loose in Virginia and Washington with weapons of mass destruction. Arnie, Luis and I had only a moment to plan our actions -- if "create chaos" could be considered a plan of action. Arnie went left and Luis went right. I darted to the elevator, jumped on and pressed B for basement. I was sure Sergei and Morgenthal would turn away from the wagon toward the elevator. From opposite corners of the upstairs, Arnie and Luis yelled, "Hank, Zach, get the wagon out of here, _GO-GO-GO!"_ Inside the descending elevator, I heard a gunshot and the crash of empty metal storage drums from the second floor to the concrete main floor. Unfortunately, I also heard the sound of the huge garage door lowering. Hank and Zach were probably trapped inside the warehouse -- as we were -- and now Sergei knew they were there. Our situation was bad, but we outnumbered them six to four. Hank and Zach were out of Sergei's reach for the moment, and he didn't know about Daniel, still hidden on the main floor, or me, in the basement. The only weapons we had, however, were in the wagon with Hank and Zach -- plus one in my pocket. ~ * ~ Zach Parker's body was roaring with adrenaline. He'd heard the elevator move and recognized Arnie and Luis yelling for him to _"go, go, go."_ He'd been in mid-leap to the front seat of the wagon when the garage door started coming down to block their escape. He grabbed the door opener he'd left on the sun visor in their hurry to hide. He pressed Up to stop the descending door and get it to reverse. His cell phone battery was deader than a slow gunslinger, and Hank had maybe one more call on his. "It's time! Call 911," Zach said. "We're busting out of here." He waited about ten seconds, his head below the dashboard, just time for Hank to tell the 911 operator _Tell the cops not to shoot at us,_ then he turned the key, stuck the gearshift in reverse, put his head up to see where he was going, and floored the gas pedal. "Stay down, he yelled to Hank. A bullet shattered the windshield, but Zach couldn't tell where it came from in time to return fire. He heard another barrel hit the floor and another gunshot. Thanking Arnie and Luis for creating a diversion, he shot backwards out of the loading bay. ~ * ~ Arnie saw Daniel stand up and hurl a metal air tank at the car where Tatiana sat, frozen like a wax statue. The tank broke the windshield but fell back. Tatiana screamed and Sergei fired toward Daniel's position, but Arnie could see that Daniel had rolled to safety. While all this happened -- in the space of three or four seconds -- the pest control wagon shot backward, peeling rubber and clearing the still rising garage door by about an inch. Arnie saw past the truck through the now-open door and spotted about five police cars and a SWAT team. Since SWAT teams consider all guys to be bad guys until proven otherwise, they quickly shot out the tires of Paddy's Pest Control wagon and took up positions behind their cars, weapons aimed at the wagon. His view of the SWAT activity was blocked by the garage door, which Morgenthal managed to send down again by hitting the control inside the loading bay. In a state of hysteria, Eleanor Edmonds ran past Morgenthal and headed through the walkway toward the main building. Arnie saw Sergei retrieve the white package from the trunk of the Mercury. "All right," he called, "I know there are three of you in here. I'm going to give you a chance to be heroes, a chance to save the world." His voice bounced off the metal walls. No one moved; no one made a sound. "I know you can hear me," Sergei went on. "I have in this box enough smallpox virus, the India-1967 strain, to infect several thousand people, with ninety-nine percent lethality. Of course, each of those people will infect dozens more before he or she dies." He held up a knife. "My sister and I have been vaccinated." "What do you want?" Luis called from upstairs. "I want to drive downtown to the Russian Embassy, where my sister and I will arrange to safely leave this country. In return, I will leave the box inside this car. You can have your hazardous material experts dispose of it. A very good deal for your country." He paused, "So, I want all three of you potential heroes to come out here with your arms up, and I will choose one of you to go outside and set up a communications link for this very delicate negotiation." "And if we don't?" Luis called from his hiding place. "Then I will go to the roof of this building -- yes I know how to get there, it's very simple -- and I will empty the box into the wind. You can explain later that you could have stopped me but chose not to risk your personal safety." Arnie had heard of pissing contests, but this was beyond description. He thought of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people in eastern Virginia, the District of Columbia, maybe as far downwind as the Maryland shore. Unlike anthrax, which would only kill the people who breathed the spores, a smallpox outbreak in a totally unprotected population, an accurate description of the United States in the twenty-first century, would spread and spread and kill and kill. The people who inhaled micrograms of the powder Sergei Kos held in his hands would be the first wave of the sick, but the virus would grow in each victim's body and the disease would spread exponentially. The second wave would be health care professionals. The third wave would be the families of first wave and second wave victims. And then on and on. Arnie thought of Katy. "I'll go!" he said. Stepping forward with his hands up, he walked to the railing and looked down at the man with a box in his arms. Arnie Valentin didn't know so much contempt existed in the world as he felt for Sergei Kos. "Come down on the elevator," Kos said. Arnie rode down, fighting a wave of panic. Funny that he'd always hated elevators because he didn't want to be inside with germs. Right now the elevator was safe, and the worst germs in the world were waiting for him outside of it. He emerged from the elevator, his hands still in the air. "I'm coming, too," Luis called from the second floor. He walked to the elevator, staying in plain sight of Kos, pressed the button and waited. Less than a minute later he stood beside Arnie. They had on nothing but undershorts, having gotten rid of the booties. "Well," Sergei said, amused, "I see that you have nowhere to conceal a weapon. Very good, gentlemen. Now, as soon as your comrade musters enough manhood to come out we will move forward with Plan A. Actually, I have to admit this is not Plan A. Things have not gone so well as I expected." Arnie worried first that Daniel would come out, then that he wouldn't. _If only Sergei hadn't known there were three of them!_ But Daniel's throwing the oxygen tank at the car had helped Zach and Hank escape. And they'd all had a chance to see outside, to know the building was surrounded. "I have an idea," Sergei said. "If 'number three' doesn't come out by the time I count to three, I will shoot 'number one' or 'number two.' Tatiana, my darling, you can choose. Which one will it be?" He aimed the gun at Arnie. "Number one?" Then he aimed it at Luis. "Or number two?" "I'm coming out," Daniel called. Like the others, he walked out with his hands up. "Well, this one is over-dressed for the occasion," Sergei said. "Check him over, my dear." Tatiana felt his pockets, removed the pocketknife and his wallet, and shrugged. "That's all, Sergei." Sergei became all business. "All right, you," he gestured at Daniel, "go outside and arrange our escort to the Russian Embassy. Your comrades are going with us as far as the gates of the embassy. And I'm sure you don't want anyone to do something stupid like shoot out our tires or otherwise cause me to spill the box." Arnie met Daniel's eyes and nodded. He understood what a mess they were all in, but there was no one he'd rather have trying to save his life than Daniel. "Go with God," he said softly. _"Vaya con Dios,"_ Luis added. ~ * ~ _Patrice Kelsey:_ After my ride to the basement while we generated chaos, I'd climbed the fire stairs. From the stair landing on the main floor, I'd held the door to the main floor open about an inch, and I'd heard the whole dreadful drama unfold. Sergei Kos didn't know I was there, but I couldn't see how I could turn that fact to our advantage. He held all the trumps, and every one of them was the Death card. When I heard Sergei tell Daniel to go outside to the police and set up negotiations and tell the police that Arnie and Luis had to stay with him all the way to the embassy, I closed the door slowly, soundlessly. I took the gun out of my pocket and chambered a round, made sure the safety was on, and set it back in my pocket, and returned to the basement. I looked around, my mind racing for a way to stop Sergei and Tatiana. On a metal rack near the elevator I spotted four pairs of white coveralls and a baseball cap. On a workbench behind the elevator shaft I found rolls of clear packing tape, scissors, and knives. I also found very large empty boxes. I selected two about three feet high and one about one foot high and wide. I looked inside three packing barrels. All empty. In the fourth I found the Level A suit Luis had hidden. I worked slowly and silently for eight, maybe ten minutes, with the boxes and tape, then crept back up the stairs to the main floor. I opened the door a tiny crack and heard Sergei. "No, you listen to me," he was saying loudly. "You have fifteen minutes to arrange our safe transportation. Because if you don't, I am going up on the roof and before you can do anything to stop me, I will release all the smallpox organisms in this box, right into your nice prevailing west wind. I am out of patience. All the deaths that result, and there will be thousands, make no mistake about that. All those deaths will be on your hands. Because you can prevent it." "You have fifteen minutes!" he said again. I closed the door again, looked at my watch, and went back to the basement. ~ * ~ Daniel Valentin and Sol Solomon stood outside the building, behind the SWAT barrier, and listened to Sergei Kos's ultimatum. Daniel spoke to the FBI agent in command of the incident and the negotiator. "Kos knows if he waits any longer than another fifteen minutes we'll have HAZMAT people here, and that they'll go in for him and the smallpox. Stalling for them to arrive won't work! He'll do it! He'll go on the roof and release the smallpox virus in fifteen minutes flat." The negotiator ignored Daniel. Walking away, out of Daniel's hearing, he leaned close to the incident commander. "The guy is a civilian," he said. "He's just been a hostage. He can't see the big picture." The incident commander, a veteran of many standoffs and many hoaxes, nodded. The negotiator put his headphone back on and signaled his assistant to place another call to Sergei Kos. He felt cool, confident. All his years of training taught him that time is on the side of the law enforcement people outside_. Just keep the crazies talking, that's the best remedy._ ~ * ~ _Patrice Kelsey:_ Maybe Sergei Kos knew the way to the roof, and maybe he didn't. But I did, and I had surprise on my side. If he headed for the ladder beside the fire stairs, and he was trying to carry the box, I would have one chance to grab it. I would have to race the clock to be ready. Then again, he might do something totally different. Get the box safely was my goal, but _get the box any way I could_ was the bottom line. Don't let him leave the building with the smallpox. Getting into a Level A suit is tough even with assistance. I wracked my brain to remember how I'd done it during my training in Los Alamos, then improvised. I propped the compressed air canister on a box at chest level and backed up to it, hooking my arms through the straps. I already had the lower half of the suit on, including the boots, and had pulled the pants legs down over the boots. I'd tugged the zipper up to my waist. Once I had the tank on I tightened the straps like putting on a parachute so the tank was snug against my back, with its weight distributed to my shoulders. I put the respirator on, checked my valve to make sure I had unobstructed airflow, and hooked up the air hose to my facemask. Holding onto the zipper tag on the inside of the suit, I inched it closed at the top of my head. I looked at my watch. Three minutes to go on Sergei's deadline. With my gloved hands, I scooted the three empty cardboard boxes I'd selected close to the elevator. I had already stacked them, two boxes on the bottom and a smaller one on the top, and secured them with packing tape. I made final adjustments to the coverall strapped to one side of the two big boxes, and patted the baseball cap I'd secured on top of the small box. My lightweight "partner" was about my height. I told myself to breathe slowly or I'd fog up my window. I pressed the button for the elevator to come and listened to its clanking, the sound muffled by my suit. I imagined the consternation in the loading bay when the elevator suddenly moved as if alive. It arrived at the basement and the doors wheezed open. I shoved my dummy inside and turned my buffalo head to see where the button for the second floor was. Holding the door open with my shoulder, I pressed "2" and quickly moved away. Even before the doors closed I was on my lumbering way to the stairs. ~ * ~ On the main floor, four pairs of eyes locked on the elevator. Its doors closed with a metallic slap and it dropped out of view. "Move," Sergei hissed. "Both of you. Over there." Arnie watched Luis back up and did the same. "Faster! Back up over there!" They weren't sure how far to go, but guessed, correctly that he wanted them in his gunsight without having to take his eyes off the elevator. The seconds ticked by. Then the sound increased as the elevator rose again. Sergei aimed his gun toward it, but it didn't stop. He had moved closer to the elevator column while getting in position to shoot anyone on it, and had lost the advantage of seeing onto the second floor. Arnie could see that if Sergei backed up to see upstairs, and if someone with a gun were on the elevator, Sergei might be shot before he got a shot off. "Tatiana," Sergei said. "Get behind the car. Tell me if anyone gets off the elevator." She moved quickly almost to the garage door, her eyes on the upper floor. Arnie could hear the doors open. No sound of footsteps. Tatiana said nothing. The doors closed again and the elevator was on its way down. It would either go straight to the basement, or it would stop on the main floor, whether by design or default. The sound of the cables was a dead giveaway. It was stopping on their floor. The doors opened. ~ * ~ _Patrice Kelsey:_ Sergei fired his gun, getting off three shots into the elevator before he realized he'd shot a biohazard dummy. I thought he'd bolt for the ladder, and I was ready, watching through the glass rectangle in the metal fire door. All I'd need was a moment. Instead, to my horror, I saw him aim his gun at Arnie and I slammed open the metal door. He jerked his hand slightly as he fired, just enough to miss Arnie on the first shot. From one step inside the main room at the top of the fire stairs, I got off three shots before he realized he'd been hit by one of them. We all watched, speechless and breathless, as Sergei Kos's head hit the concrete floor. The white box lifted upward from his hands as he plunged toward the floor, seemed to defy gravity for a second or two, and then dropped onto his body and tumbled off, softly, onto the concrete. _Unopened._ Tatiana ran to her brother and spoke to him in Russian. I stood there with the gun in my hand and a hole in my suit. Loud enough for Arnie and Luis to hear me, I called, "You guys better go tell them we need a HAZMAT team in here." -------- *Forty-two* Los Alamos, New Mexico Saturday, September 1, 2001 _Patrice Kelsey:_ Gordon Wilson said it was a good thing my wedding was on a Saturday. Especially since Monday would be a national holiday. "You can honeymoon until Tuesday morning, 8:00 a.m." He crossed his arms and rested them on his doughy front porch. It was his way of reminding me I had used every hour of my vacation time and he was tired of covering my beat himself or paying someone else to do it. His tough-guy stance was a hollow threat, and he knew it. As soon as I got a job at a newspaper or magazine in or near Washington I'd be leaving Los Alamos and the _Guardian_. Rick had left "public relations" and returned to its polar opposite, the press. We knew we'd never make a lot of money, but -- hey. What's money but something to lose in the stock market? I'd met my goal of paying off my student loans before my thirtieth birthday -- just barely. And my shooting of Sergei Kos didn't disrupt my life nearly as much as I feared. He died, which was a good thing, because I didn't have to testify at a hideous trial with some lawyer like Johnny Cochran making Kos out to be Christ on a cross. Everyone around me, Rick included, thought I might suffer some kind of breakdown over the trauma of the shooting, but, call me callous, the world was better off with Kos dead and I felt pretty good about the whole thing. If he'd killed Arnie, or Daniel, or Luis that day, or -- God forbid -- let loose the deadly virus in his Pandora's box, _that_ I would not have gotten over. Ever! Even had I lived, which was a highly unlikely outcome. The FBI and all others charged with public safety were glad he died, too. A trial would have dragged every ugly detail of his plot out. Both plots. The one to infect thousands of Americans with Shen II virus, causing panic and social disruption. And the plot to extort billions of dollars by releasing "a little" smallpox virus and making it clear he had control of more where that came from. I felt torn about the "right thing" in the case. While it was right to expose him, America in 2001 seemed all about copycat evil. Extensive coverage of school shootings resulted in tears, teddy bears at makeshift shrines, candlelight vigils -- and more school shootings. To show how we dodged the biological weapons bullet by an inch with Sergei Kos might be just what the next insane megalomaniac needed as a blueprint. Israel would deal with Rashad Teicher and his Palestinian militant friends. Sadly, the lot of the Palestinians would probably be worse thanks to Teicher. Actually, Sergei had three plots. And I was all for exposing the third one. He'd used blackmail and secret donations to land the contract for A/Shenyang vaccine for his fake company, Tatian Laboratories. The government had been in such a panic to get the vaccine ready in time that they'd tossed caution to the winds and thrown four contracts for fifty million dollars each to four companies. Three were good companies, and if the real A/Shenyang influenza comes, we still have a fair chance of averting an epidemic. Due far more to dumb luck and Boris Fitin's drinking problem and bad temper than to expert emergency management, the Shen II virus was contained inside the loading bay at Tatian Labs and inside the truck Morgenthal had called in for the pick up. The panel truck driver left the loading bay bound for FedEx with four packages, but was stopped by the SWAT team on the service road. At least insofar as concerns the United States the Shen II virus was contained. At least three-fourths of the virus was shipped to Russia. Daniel and Arnie Valentin, and Sol Solomon, are involved in trying to seek and destroy it. The Russian government appears to be cooperating, but who can say for sure? Tatiana Teicher is still being held in jail in Virginia, charged with extortion. Luis says when she returns the fifty million dollars, she'll be released and deported. I rather hope the Israelis get their hands on her. No price could buy my silence on the criminal complicity of Stephen Springer, the associate director of the FBI, in hiding Tatian Lab's extortion in the vaccine contract. I blew that one wide open in the _Los Alamos Guardian_. The eruption of yet another scandal in the FBI, and so soon after the Robert Hanssen spy case, made Luis sick at heart, but I say they reap what they sow. And in Los Alamos they've sown a lot of sorrow. The Tyvek envelope I'd lifted from the office of Tatian Labs, the one taped into a manila folder marked "Insurance," was a veritable gold mine of details on Springer's collaboration with Sergei Kos. Four FBI agents had caught Springer picking up a bag of money in a Herndon park, but the computer disk in the Tyvek envelope was the key to the prison cell he so richly deserved. "I always knew you'd be a beautiful bride." My mom held up my veil, shoulder-length tulle attached to a simple circle of pearls. It was borrowed, and so special to me. Leah Valentin had worn it at her wedding, and someday Katy would wear it, too. My dress was simple, as well. Mom and my stepdad, William Meyer, offered to pay for a gown, but I chose a white silk dress instead. The top is sleeveless, with a scoop neck, and the skirt is full and lined with crinoline. The _Guardian's_ lifestyles editor, Emma, told me it's tea-length. Danny Carter stayed in Los Alamos until the end of June to settle his mother's affairs, then returned to a job he loves at a San Antonio newspaper. He came back for the wedding, though, as a groomsman, and gave me a bouquet to carry. Yellow roses. Daniel and Rachel, along with Moshe and Rabin, came for Katy's _bat mitzvah_ August seventeenth and stayed for the wedding. They haven't said for sure, but I think they'll move to the United States. Daniel is looking around for a research and teaching position. Villie Ginsberg protested mightily that she would be out of place at the wedding, but at my request Daniel and Arnie convinced her she should come. She'll be returning to Israel in a few days. With Rashad Teicher in prison, Beth-el Laboratory needs Villie's scientific help. The wedding will be in the Rose Garden of Fuller Lodge, a short service conducted by Pastor Charles McCullough of White Rock Baptist Church. He told us he'd talk about how marriage creates a "new thing." No longer will I be "Patrice alone" and no longer will Rick be "Rick alone." Instead we'll be part of a new creation. _Patrice and Rick._ Something brand new in the world. I like that. The guests will stand in the garden for the wedding service. My mom will be my matron of honor, and Katy will be bridesmaid. Candace Magner will sing one song _a capella_. I chose an old song, one you don't hear at weddings much these days. "Because you come to me with naught save love..." Then we'll all walk over to Fuller Lodge for the reception. Juanita Madland and Donna Smith will play the two grand pianos. Rick chose the song for our first dance. "Could I Have This Dance, for the Rest of My Life?" I look around my apartment, ask Katy if she's got her bouquet. "It's time to go," Mom says. "William has the car out front." "Okay. Wait a minute, I don't have on my garter. I put it right here on the bed." I see the face of a furry little bandit peek around the corner. "Rambo, you thieving varmint! Give me back my garter!" "I'll get it," Katy says. She stoops and reaches between the bed frame and the bedside table. "Here it is." I slip it on, then look in the mirror as Mom fastens my veil on my head with clips, and we're in the car. We only have a few blocks to drive. William parks near the garden, comes around and helps out Katy, then Mom, then me. I hold his arm and look down the white cloth that forms an aisle. Through my veil I see the minister and, to the right, Rick, Luis and Danny. Sitting erect and proud between Rick and Luis is Pirate, dressed for the occasion in a new red collar. Her rose boutonniere is attached to the collar with florist's wire. I can't see Candace yet, but I hear her start to sing, and I watch Katy walk toward the rose arbor, followed by my mom, both of them elegant in coral lace over taffeta. "Because God made thee mine, I'll cherish thee... I concentrate on the words as Candace sings, glad I took Mom's advice to use such a lovely old song, and I smile at Rick. Holding tight to William's arm, I walk up the aisle. I feel William step back as Rick steps forward. And I feel my hand in his, and know I am right where I belong, as Candace's voice soars to the ending of the song. " ...Because ... God made thee mine." -------- *_Meet Lynnette Baughman_* Former newspaper editor Lynnette Baughman is widely recognized for her bestselling espionage novel, A SPY WITHIN, set in her hometown of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and THIN DISGUISE, a mystery set in Las Vegas, Nevada. A native of Bremerton, Wash., and graduate of New Mexico State University, Lynnette lives in Los Alamos with her husband. -------- *Look For These Other Titles* _From_ Wings ePress, Inc. *_Romance Novels_* Double Moon Destiny by *lizzie starr Follow Your Heart by Barbara Woodward Love Through A Strangers's Eyes by Jan Springer Michael; A Gift of Trust by Margaret B. Lawrence Out Of Her Dreams by Anita Lourcey Tooke The Reluctant Landlord by Susanne Marie Knight _*General Fiction Novels*_ Lost Almost by Lynnette Baughman Deadly Diamonds by Judith R. Parker *Coming In September 2002* A Change Of Plans by Ann B. Morris A Deadly Agent by Sue Sweet Designing Heart by Patricia Prendergast Heros And Hunks by Christine Poe Lately Of England by Sara V. Olds and Roberta O. Major Keeper Of The Singing Bones by Marilyn Gardiner Secrets by Judi Phillips _*General Fiction Novels*_ Endless Place by William J. Calabrese Be sure to visit us at http://www.wings-press.com for a complete listing of our available and upcoming titles. ----------------------- Visit www.wings-press.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.