Biowar

14

The blow to the side of Dean’s head had been meant to persuade him to cooperate, not to knock him out. But Dean decided that he might learn more about what was going on by playing possum and had collapsed against the side of the railcar. This generated an argument between his two abductors in what Dean thought must be German. The thug who had hit him propped him up and tried reviving him; Dean remained slumped over even when the car stopped. After a brief discussion, his abductors produced a bottle of whiskey and poured some onto a cloth, rubbing it in Dean’s face. The sharp stench turned Dean’s stomach, and he began mumbling, then decided the time was ripe to come to before they drenched his clothes.

“Cooperate,” hissed one of the men as Dean shook himself. “You won’t be harmed.”

“Let go of me.” Dean pushed his shoulders back and walked on his own. They took a turn and headed onto a moving walkway. At the edge of the terminal was a bus, just taking on passengers.

“Where are we going?” asked Dean.

“No questions.”

Dean hadn’t heard from the Art Room since his abduction. He reached up and adjusted his glasses, pressing the right side rim twice, which was supposed to send an alert back to the runner — basically asking for instructions. But nothing happened. Dean tried again.

“My glasses,” said Dean out loud.

“What about your glasses?” said one of the thugs.

“They seem crooked or something.”

“Get on the bus,” said the man.

Dean climbed up, shuffling toward the back. He tried to think about the character he was supposed to be. How would a lifelong lab assistant act?

Geeky. Scared, or at least apprehensive.

Geeky was tough, but he could do apprehensive. He got on the bus, jerking his head back and forth, wondering how close Lia was.

While Lia made her way to the airport by taxi, Rockman worked on figuring out where Dean was heading. He located the booking by guessing that it had been made in a block of three seats; he tapped into the reservation systems at the airport and got an answer so quickly Lia suggested it was a ruse: a Lufthansa flight to Hamburg boarding in ten minutes.

“If it’s a blind, at least I have a credit card and names,” said Rockman. She could hear him pounding the keys, entering different databases at will — some with permission, some decidedly not. The men came up as Irish nationals with no known files at Interpol or anywhere else, but the credit card they used was from an active account in Austria, and Rockman began plumbing for information about it.

“They’re going to Alitalia,” said Telach.

Lia, stuck in traffic a good distance from the airport, fumed.

“Wait — here they go over to Lufthansa,” said Rockman. “You owe me five bucks, Marie.”

“Just tell me where to go and shut up,” Lia snapped.

The taxi driver turned around.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she told him. “I’m Joan of Arc. I hear voices. Now get me to the airport before you start hearing them, too.”

Lia arrived at the terminal ten minutes after the plane cleared the runway. She booked a seat on the next flight to Hamburg, which didn’t leave for another two hours.

She started to walk away, then came up with another idea. Lia reached into her pocketbook and pulled out her satellite phone, pretending to use it so she wouldn’t be grabbed as a bag lady.

“I can take a flight into Austria,” she told Rockman. “It boards in ten minutes.”

“Austria?”

“That’s where they’re going.”

“How do you know that?”

“The credit card.”

“I doubt it,” said Rockman.

“They probably chose Austria because of the banking laws,” explained Telach. “The records are held in strict confidence. The red tape’s incredible.”

“If I’m wrong, I can catch another plane from Vienna. It’ll be faster than waiting around here.”

“Not necessarily,” said Rockman. “By the time you change planes and—”

“I got to go,” she said, spotting a bobby at the other end of the waiting area.

The policeman walked off in the other direction without noticing her, but Lia realized there was no way in the world she could wait here for two hours. Taking a chance on Austria seemed to be a better idea than getting detained in London. So she went to the counter and bought a ticket, handing over a credit card. She was relieved to get it back — she had half-expected Rockman to kill the account on her so she couldn’t take off.