Germ

fifty

Atropos considered the possibility that his prey had changed hotels, but dismissed it. They probably thought the Oak Ridge ruse was evasive enough. If they had gone somewhere else, the chances of finding them without his employer's help was slim. This place was the best lead he had.

He turned right onto Houston Street, which intersected Broadway Avenue at the Motel 6 where the cabbie said he'd dropped them off. His eyes darted over the L-shaped structure, taking in the ground-level breezeway and housekeeping cart parked in front of an open door on the second-floor walkway. Continuing past, he noted the alley that separated the motel from residential backyards. The small, opaque windows of bathrooms dotted this side of the building: each a point of egress. He'd watch for one of them to come out for ice or snacks or to use a pay phone. But if he had to hit the room, he'd have to move hard and fast: no return fire, no retreat.

He made a U-turn at the next intersection, pulling to the curb when he came abreast of the motel. The office was visible through the glass of a station wagon parked in front of the room closest to him. He could barely make out what appeared to be vending machines in the shadowy breezeway. A bright square of sunlight glowed like a movie screen where the breezeway opened up on the other side of the motel. He stared for a long time, looking for the silhouette of a head to break out from the sharp lines of the machines. Satisfied that the three had not posted a sentry there, he shifted his gaze to the cars in the parking lot. One of his prey could have broken into a car to keep watch. That it appeared they had not taken such precautions confirmed his suspicion that he was dealing with amateurs, despite the woman's position as a federal agent. She was accustomed to hunting, not hiding.

Approaching the office from the front seemed safe, but first he would inspect the surrounding area: Where were the nearest police cruisers? The likely avenues of escape? Places where his quarry could hide should they evade his attack, and where he could hole up if something went wrong?

He reached for the gearshift lever on the steering column, and a glimmer against the matte of his gauntlet caught his eye. Instantly he knew the cause and reached for a handkerchief in the leather pouch around his waist. In his anxiousness to get to Maryville after interrogating the cabbie, he'd neglected routine maintenance. He wiped at the glimmer first, then rubbed vigorously over and between each spike and each finger. He tossed the cloth into the passenger seat, where it landed soiled-side up: thick red smears against the sun-brightened white.

He rolled away from the curb with one last look at the motel. As he turned onto Broadway, he began scrutinizing every person, vehicle, building, and passageway he saw.

Bonsai came online as soon as Julia selected the click me

button.

"So, anything for me?" she asked.

"Do hackers like computers?" He explained the information he'd found in the Knox County Sheriff's Department database.

She wrote two names and a phone number on a notepad. "You're brilliant. I'll get back to you when I'm ready to receive the data from the memory chip." She shifted on the bed and tucked a bare foot under her bottom. She caught a whiff of something unpleasant in her dirty clothes and ignored it. It would have to be good enough to have clean hair, dry now and brushed loosely back from her face. She pulled the room's phone off the nightstand and dialed the number Bonsai had supplied.

"Sky Signs," a male voice announced.

"I need some phones."

"We do skywriting, lady. Weddings, birthdays, something to cheer—let Sky Signs write it in the stratosphere."

"Cute."

"Thanks for calling."

"Whoa, I still need some phones."

"I told you, we don't do phones."

She glanced at the notepad. "That's not what Aaron Horvitz told me."

A pause.

Bingo.

"Who?" the man asked flatly.

"Thought Aaron mentioned he was a good customer of yours . . . Colin, right? Maybe I heard wrong."

"Gimme your name and number."

She did, and the line went dead. She shot out the door and across the parking lot to the pay phone she'd visited before checking in with Bonsai. It was one of those boothless phones, encased in a blue egg-shaped shell. She tucked her head close to the phone, hiding from passersby on the street behind her. Mr. Colin Dorsett was undoubtedly trying to reach Aaron Horvitz to vouch for her. Sad thing, though: according to Bonsai, police had taken Horvitz into custody two nights ago for discharging a firearm into the foot of a rival drug dealer during a bar fight. She was betting that Horvitz had more pressing concerns than apprising his supplier of stolen and reprogrammed cellular phones of his new residence in the county clink. The pay phone began ringing.

"Yeah?" she answered.

"Aaron ain't answering."

"So?"

"So I don't do business with strangers."

"Look," she said, sharp. "Aaron said his name was good as gold with you. He's not going to be too happy to find out it ain't."

Dead air, then: "Whaddya want?"

"Four flip phones with fully juiced batteries, a car power cord, a USB adapter."

He spit out a colorful word. "You starting a telethon?"

"Something like that. While you're at it, I need a few others things. I'll make it worth your while." She told him what she wanted.

The man reluctantly agreed and quoted an extravagant price. He was trying to allay his concern with cash.

"Fine," Julia said. "Bring them to the Hungry Farmer on Henley Street at five." Their taxi had passed the restaurant on their way out of Knoxville. She knew through Bonsai that the cops were onto Dorsett's clone-phone business. She couldn't risk their seeing her at his counterfeit storefront.

"Hey, I don't make house calls, lady. I don't care who you know."

"Tell me business is booming after 60 Minutes ran that piece on clone-phone crackdowns. No way, buddy. Make a swing by the Farmer for me, or I'll spend my money somewhere else."

It's what eventually got them all: greed.

"All right, five o'clock, but I ain't coming in. I'll be driving a red convertible Camaro. Come out when you see me, cash in hand."

"See you then," she said, sweet as candy.

fifty-one

Allen just didn't get it, and Stephen shouldn't have been surprised. He shook his big head and steered the van onto Broadway Avenue. After the Vega, it was a pleasure to drive such a smooth-running machine; that he actually fit in it was icing on the cake.

"It's not like I assaulted the guy," Allen said, continuing their argument.

"You said his van was a piece of—"

"That's called negotiation."

"You were antagonizing the man!" A light turned red, allowing him to turn the full force of his gaze on his brother.

"Oh, bull," Allen countered snidely, which was really no counter at all. "He didn't take offense."

"He almost decked you."

"I would have let him if it lowered the price."

"How can you spend so much money and be so cheap at the same time?"

"How green do you want it?"

Stephen glared at him a moment, then realized he was talking about the traffic light and accelerated through the intersection.

"Besides, he could have told us to take a hike if he didn't like my attitude," Allen said.

"Some people don't have the luxury you do to turn their backs on cash. Not that you ever have." It was a wonder they had come from the same family. The next light turned yellow, and he slowed for it. He seemed to have caught the red side of Broadway's traffic-light cycle. Fortunately, they were only a few blocks from the motel.

Abruptly, Allen fell to the floor between the two front captain's chairs. "Turn your head to the left!" he yelled, motioning wildly in that direction. His terrified expression compelled Stephen to obey.

"What?" he asked.

"Don't look, but the motel . . ."

He flicked his vision at the Motel 6, catty-corner on the right. The massive figure of the Warrior filled the open office doorway. He had his head cranked around, looking into the parking lot, toward where Stephen waited for the light to turn green. Stephen turned his head away. He felt the skin on his arms rise rapidly into goose bumps. There were maybe fifty yards between them. The Warrior could look right at him if the thought crossed his mind.

A horn behind him blared.

"Oh—" Green light. He glanced over. The Warrior was talking to someone in the office. Stephen made a panicked decision to turn away from the motel, instead of driving past it. He checked for cars in the left-turn lane, signaled, and edged into the intersection. A pickup was approaching from the other direction, and he braked for it, realizing too late that he could have darted across ahead of it. If a siren erupted from the van and flashing lights sprang up on its roof, he would not have felt more exposed. Another car pulled out from a liquor store, filling the gap between the truck and a knot of cars racing forward from the intersection a block away.

"Come on, come on," he said under his breath.

"Just go!" From his position on the floor, Allen was blind to the traffic.

Stephen hunkered low in the seat and looked over. The Warrior

had come out of the office. He was standing in the sunlight, squinting at the cars in the parking lot.

The car behind him honked again. Stephen jumped. The Warrior turned to look. He put his hand against his brow to block the sun. The horn blared again, longer. Now the Warrior was striding forward, across the motel parking lot, directly toward Stephen.

Why is this guy honking? Can't he see the traffic?

He realized the rear of the long van was blocking the lane that went straight through the intersection. Deciding to turn had been a mistake.

He calculated he could cut through the traffic behind a car and pray the oncoming drivers were attentive enough to slam on their brakes hard enough and fast enough to avoid colliding with him. He saw an opening and knew there wasn't room. He was going for it anyway.

Dear Lord, don't let anyone be hurt.

He moved his foot off the brake and glanced quickly at the Warrior, thinking he may have to duck away from a gunshot. He was gone. Stephen jammed the brake pedal. Then he spotted him: staring into a parked Toyota. The Warrior moved around it to examine the interior of the next parked car. He seemed to have discounted the commotion in the street as being none of his concern.

Stephen closed his eyes, let out a long breath.

"What? What's happening?"

"Nothing. We're outta here." The light had turned yellow, stopping the surge of oncoming cars. Stephen roared across and into a residential neighborhood.

Allen grunted as he began pulling himself up.

"Stay down, Allen!" Stephen said, urgent, wide-eyed. There was something about his brother sprawled on the floor of the van that lifted his spirits. He turned his head to hide his smile.

The roar of a big engine and the squeal of tires beckoned

her to the window. Pistol in hand, she pressed against the wall, flicked her head around the sill, and pulled it back again. A dark blue conversion van, idling directly in front of the room, not parked. Had to be the guys. But why the Jeff Gordon theatrics? A car door slammed. Allen ran around the front of the van. She holstered her weapon and swung the door open.

"Let's go!" he said, still outside. "The Warrior! He's at the Motel 6."

"That was fast. He'll know we didn't check in."

"Then he'll start checking around." He was grabbing the few items he and Stephen owned, tossing them into the drugstore bag.

"He may not be alone," she said, disconnecting computer cables with one hand, pushing components into the gym bag with the other. Allen stepped into the bathroom, used his forearm to sweep whatever was on the counter into the bag, and followed Julia out of the room.

Stephen pulled away before she had the side door shut, and that was fine by her. He bounded over a curb onto Broadway, jostling her headfirst into one of the plush rear seats. For a while she watched out the tinted rear windows for a vehicle pulling up fast or following at a consistent distance. Nothing.

"You saw only the Warrior?" she asked.

"Isn't he enough?" Allen had a smudge on his cheek, but his hair was perfect. It came to her that she'd never seen it any other way, even after crawling out from under the car.

"I need some navigation," Stephen said.

"Knoxville."

"You gotta be kidding. The airport?"

"Hungry Farmer Restaurant. I've arranged to pick up some new phones, ones that can't be traced back to us."

"And then?"

"And then we find out who wants us dead so badly."

Neither man had seen her withdraw her pistol, and both jumped when she jerked the slide back and let it return with a resounding ka-chink!

fifty-two

The van was perfect. Besides tinting its windows, someone had put curtains over the side and back windows. Curtains also separated the front seats from the rear of the van, but were now pushed to the sides. A foot-wide board could be placed on supports so that it spanned the width of the van directly in front of the rear captain's chairs, or stowed under the seats. A mattress on a plywood board took up the last four feet of the interior. Julia could have done without the stench of cigar smoke, but by the time they reached the parking lot of the Hungry Farmer, she had the table cluttered with computer gear and had forgotten all about the repugnant odor.

"Drop me off and park across the street," she told Stephen. She took a table by a window looking out on the parking lot and ordered coffee.

Halfway through her second cup, a red Camaro pulled in, its beige canvas top up. She was out of the restaurant before the car came to a complete stop. An obese man behind the wheel eyed her suspiciously. She squatted by the window and tossed a wad of cash onto his bulbous stomach. He counted it and handed her a plastic grocery bag. She looked inside and nodded, and the car pulled out faster than it had pulled in. Thirty seconds later, Stephen picked her up in the van.

"I wish everything went that smoothly," she said, slamming the van's sliding door. She moved into the captain's chair behind the driver's seat and laid a phone down on the table beside the computer. She dumped the rest of the bag's contents into the chair next to her: three more cell phones and another bag of items from Radio Shack.

"Where to?" Stephen asked.

"Take us to an east-west interstate."

"Which direction?"

"Doesn't matter. Find a rest area or truck stop."

He thought about it. "We're not too far from I-40."

"What's east?"

"Next big city, Charlotte."

"What's west?"

"Nashville."

"I-40, James."

Stephen got the van moving.

Allen turned around in his seat. "What's with the phones?"

"Each one has been reprogrammed with a cell phone number that someone retrieved by monitoring the calls in a congested area, like rush-hour traffic."

Allen nodded. "The people looking for us don't know to monitor the airwaves for these particular numbers. We can use them without the bad guys tracing the signals back to us."

"Except that I want them to find these two." She held up a phone in each hand.

"I don't get it."

"You will. But first, here . . ." She handed him a minicassette recorder still in a Radio Shack box, two AA batteries, and a cassette tape. She began pulling a second recorder out of its box. When both recorders were ready, she said, "Pretend it's a phone. Hit the record button when I hit mine and chat with me."

"What do I say?"

"Follow my lead."

fifty-three

"Play it again."

Kendrick Reynolds sat in his wheelchair next to a computer workstation, a pair of noise-eliminating headphones clamped over his ears.

The technician used a trackball to manipulate controls on the monitor. Voices came over the headphones.

". . . killed Goody." A female voice.

"Who?" Male.

"My partner, Goodwin Donnelley. The guy who died on your operating table yesterday."

"Right. Who killed him?"

"I don't know, but Despesorio Vero died too." She sounded exasperated. "He was the guy who was trying to get into the Center for Disease Control. They were in some bar in Chattanooga. Goody went to your ER. Vero's body disappeared."

Behind Kendrick, Captain Landon held a single headphone cup to his right ear. He said, "The key-phrase trigger was Karl Litt. When the monitors recognized the phrase, the recorder kicked in."

Kendrick moved a cup off one ear. "But we can't hear it in context?"

"Key-phrasing entire geographical areas means monitoring every conversation, millions of them. It's not like monitoring a handful of lines or even every line in an office building. We can't use record-and-erase technology on geo-keys. Our systems are already taxed—"

"Just say no, Mike." Kendrick looked up at him. He was sure what the captain saw when he looked back was a tired old man. He hated that.

"No, sir. No context on the key phrase Karl Litt."

He hated that too: not knowing how much these people knew, how much Vero had told them. He had to find them, interrogate them, and confiscate whatever evidence Vero had passed on to them. There were two issues now: finding Karl and keeping a lid on projects that were never meant for public scrutiny. He hoped catching up with these three would solve both problems.

The technician at the controls spoke up. "They're still talking."

"What? How long have they kept this connection open?"

"Twenty-three minutes. I'm streaming it live now. Should I bring the audio current?"

"Go ahead."

". . . but that's impossible. If Despesorio Vero did have information, he would have told Goody."

"Donnelley?"

"Yes."

"What about this Karl Litt guy?"

"I don't know . . ."

Kendrick closed his eyes slowly. He pulled the headphones off and laid them on the workstation. "They're moving?" he asked with a quiet sigh.

"Yes," said the technician. "They're both on I-40. The woman's heading west out of Knoxville, toward Nashville. The man's heading east, between Thorngrove and Danridge."

Kendrick shook his head. It wasn't them. As a federal agent, Matheson would know about key-phrasing. But she wouldn't know how much more advanced military technology was over what the Justice Department had access to. She would be accustomed to systems that missed more key phrases than they caught. That's why she repeated the names—Karl Litt, Despesorio Vero, Goodwin Donnelley. Decoys only worked if people went after them.

"Send one team each to intercept them," he ordered. He could not risk being wrong. "Tell them to tread lightly; I don't think it's them. And, ruling out anything along I-40, try to get a handle on where they're really heading."

"That was fun," Allen said flatly.

They had recorded their conversation, duct-taped the recorders to the phones, had one phone call the other, and sent them in different directions—one under the tarp of a ski boat attached to a Suburban and one in the open bed of a pickup truck. Julia had no doubt their pursuers would key in on the signal. Their ability to intercept the SATD and find them in Knoxville told her they had the technology and were actively seeking them. She only hoped it would take them a long time to track down the cell phones. On the recordings, she hadn't mentioned any possible key phrases for fifteen minutes. That would give them time to distance themselves from the phones. The mini-cassette tapes were thirty minutes long. After that, the dead air would cause the phones to disconnect. If their pursuers had yet to find the phones, they would not be able to pinpoint the signals—because there would be no signals—and would have to search everywhere along I-40.

Except, she thought with dismay, if they used an infinity transmitter to call the cell phones and force the lines to stay open until they found them.

She'd forgotten about that. If it wasn't one thing, it was twenty.

"So you think they're off our tail now?" Allen wanted to know.

"For a while . . . I hope."

"Now what?"

"We find out what Vero gave his life to bring to us."

She told them about the memory chip, where she'd found it, and how she had to contact a friend to help her access the data.

"You have this chip, but you can't read it, and you don't have the data your friend converted? So what's your plan?" Allen looked as though he'd been hit with a bat.

"I'm going to get the data, Allen, all right?" She wanted to smack him. In his smug expression she saw someone used to predictability, someone who didn't just prefer order over chaos but required it. She saw . . . She saw someone who was frightened and wanted everything to go back to normal. She realized they were all on edge. His frustration came from the same well as hers.

"Look, I don't have all the answers. I don't have any answers, really. All I know is we have to keep moving, keep looking for reasons why this is happening and how we can put an end to it. We just don't know enough at this point."

She plugged her laptop into a cigarette lighter receptacle, then connected the other cell phone she'd purchased to the laptop. Allen watched her.

"While we're moving," she explained, "I can't use the device that connects me to Wi-Fi, and I don't want to stay in one place long enough to get the file transfer. So I got a third clone-phone. Bonsai gave me a direct number to his server. It'll be slow, but it's secure and we can do it while we're heading back to Atlanta."

"That's what I don't understand," Stephen said from the driver's seat. They were traveling south on I-75, which would take them through Chattanooga and on to Atlanta. "Why there?"

"Atlanta? It's where all this started, for Goody and me anyway. And it's my home turf; I may be able to tap some resources I couldn't somewhere else."

"Like what?" Allen asked.

"I don't know, Allen. Maybe it's just a comfort factor."

Consulting a notepad, she punched a number into the cell phone. A moment later, the laptop indicated that it was connected to a server. She called up Bonsai's web site and started the transfer of Vero's data.

"This is going to take awhile."

"What's awhile?" Allen asked.

Julia shrugged. "I'll know in a minute." She waited for the program to receive enough data to extrapolate an estimated completion time. "I'm hoping we can view it before reaching Atlanta."

"That's about three, three and a half hours," Stephen informed her.

Three digits appeared on the screen. She stared at them numbly, then reported, "Six hours and twenty-three minutes."

When you start marking time by the number of attempts on your life you've survived, six hours seems an eternity.

She cleared her throat.

On the way to meet the clone-phoner, they'd stopped by a grocery store for a supply of food and drinks. Now Allen reached into a small Styrofoam ice bucket in the foot well and pulled out a Pepsi. He handed it to Julia.

She nodded her thanks and took a swig.

They rode in silence. Stephen clutched the wheel in both hands and checked the side mirrors with obsessive frequency. Allen rolled an unopened Dr Pepper between his palms and stared out the windshield. Julia leaned back, hiked a shoeless foot up onto the chair, and thought about the events since Goody's phone call yesterday morning. She carefully considered every word she could remember, every move she'd made or seen, searching for a question that needed answering, a clue that needed exploring. They were there, waiting for discovery. They always were.

fifty-four

Jorge Prieto watched his blood drop a dozen feet and disappear into the rich, dark soil below. He had long stopped trying to snort back the constant flow that poured from his nostrils, or blot it with the thin cotton sleeves of his khaki coveralls. Cradled in the fork of two limbs in a thirty-meter copaiba tree, he painfully sucked in air through clenched teeth, trying to relieve his burning lungs without making a sound. It had taken all his energy to break away from his captors and make it this far.

Not far enough! Gotta move! Move . . .

But his aching body urged him to wait, just a few more minutes of rest.

Brought in blindfolded five weeks ago, he had no idea how much farther to the compound's perimeter. A kilometer? Twenty? No matter, he had to make it, had to.

Before he could suppress the urge, he coughed, hawking up something from deep inside. Stifling a groan, he listened for pursuers. He heard nothing but the ghostly howl of wind flitting through the tree-tops. He planted his sweaty face on a forearm and waited for the feeling that his organs were shifting freely within his body to pass.

What had they done to him? What?

When the pain had come, cramping his stomach, raising the temperature of his skin, he'd cursed Karai-pyhare, the evil troll whose invisible caress left victims shaken and sick. A silly superstition, he knew, but childhood beliefs die hard. His adult mind recognized the symptoms of influenza. Then the headaches, dizziness, nausea, and perspiration spiraled higher like a brewing storm, and he realized something far more serious had hold of him. Dysentery, he thought when blood showed up in the toilet, maybe jungle fever—malaria.

He thought of how his captors had seemed obsessively concerned over his condition, attaching a million confusing machines to him and running all sorts of tests. He'd asked about chloramphenicol for dysentery or chloroquine for jungle fever—medicines you learned about growing up poor on the Tropic of Capricorn. They had shook their heads dismissively.

That's when I knew you'd done something to me, you devils, you monstruos! I saw it in your faces, and knew I had to get away . . . had to warn others . . .

Most everyone, it seemed—his fellow "prisoners," the guards, himself—had cold symptoms to greater or lesser degrees. The ones who had complained of cramps or bloody noses disappeared within a few days. If he was going to make a move, it had to be quick.

The crack of a twig startled him. His face made a sticky suction sound when he raised it to glare into the dense subtropical forest. Pitch-black shadows made darker by irregular spots of bright sunlight—nothing more. Even the contraptions hidden in the trees—the tiny cameras and monstrous machines that defied imagination—were invisible to him now. He turned to face the ground, and a ribbon of blood spiraled down like an eel escaping into the deep.

In his mind's eye, he saw Juanita floating up to him as if through water: her cashew-colored skin, mahogany eyes, soft lips . . .

No! He must not let his thoughts scurry away; but they were becoming so slippery, so rebellious.

Concentrate! Escape! You don't belong here. You are not a prisoner.

And that was true. He had done nothing wrong, nothing to deserve imprisonment. Jorge Prieto had always accepted personal responsibility, had always tried to do the right thing. When he slipped, he worked hard to make amends. Had he fled when Juanita said she was with child? No. Casper Merez had even pushed a half million guaranis into his hand—a month's wages!—and told him, "Go, Jorge. Such a burden is not for a seventeen-year-old boy. Go find the man inside first." But the man was already there, and he had married the girl instead. Now, twelve years later, he and Juanita had not just one but four ninos, three girls darkly pretty like their mother, and a boy strong and forthright like his father.

And did his family starve when their mouths became too many for their backwater town of Piribebuy to feed? No, he had moved them to Itaipu, where construction on the world's largest hydroelectric plant paid him for as many hours as his back could bear.

Always food on the table, shelter from the elements. The minimum a man provides his family.

Maybe he should have worried more about the many people who vanished from Itaipu. Some said it was the demon Kurupi, who came in the night to feast on human flesh. Others thought those gone had tired of the bone-breaking work and fled back to their poorer but happier villages. He had not known what to think, had not really thought about it at all. Feed his family, be a man—only these things mattered.

Now Jorge Prieto knew better. The truth had come to him instantly in the form of two men leaping from a slow-moving van, clubbing him, shackling him, dragging him into their metal lair.

Kurupi, yes—but with the faces of men.

He pushed into a sitting position, his legs dangling through the fork, his back hard against the massive tree trunk.

As much as he wanted to provide again for his family, he wanted more to tell them that he had not simply left them. What had his disappearance done to their hearts? It was a twisting knife in his own chest to ponder the question.

So he had watched for a chance to escape. This morning, it had come.

Movement in his peripheral vision.

A guard emerged from the darkness, stepping silently over the muscular roots of a mahogany tree. The man, clad in shades of green, carried an assault rifle, panning its barrel as his eyes scanned the forest before him. He did not look up. When he was directly underneath, Jorge Prieto leaped through the fork, aiming his legs on each side of the soldier's head. They crashed down together, the other man cushioning Prieto's fall. Still, Prieto rolled away in agony, every organ blazing with its own unique pain. He vomited, crimson streaked with oily black swirls. Dark mist moved through his brain, stripping away rational thought. But he knew he had to get away, as an animal knows when to hide, when to run, when to strike.

He pulled the weapon out from under the collapsed soldier, staggered away. Unsure of what made him look back, he did—in time to see the soldier on his knees, pulling a pistol from a holster at his hip. Prieto swung the automatic rifle around and squeezed the trigger.

The sound shattered the calm jungle. Birds of all sizes and colors burst through the leafy canopy, adding their own panicked squawking to the rustling of the countless plants they disturbed. Soldiers instantly hunched lower, pivoting in the direction of the machine-gun fire. Gregor von Papen, nearly invisible among the mottled greens and tans of the forest in his camo, considered drawing his sidearm, decided not to, and marched into the barrage's dying echo.

Gregor thought of this as his descabellar, the final kill offered a retiring matador. He wasn't retiring, of course; he would die commanding security forces. But Litt had proclaimed an end to his need for test subjects.

"We've arrived," he'd said. "Target practice is over. Let's get on with the war." He wanted all the prisoners gone immediately. "Managing them will put a strain on our resources during this critical time," he'd said.

So this morning, while loading the prisoners into a truck for

transportation into the jungle, where the others were buried, Gregor had arranged an opportunity for one of them to "escape."

Humid air carried an almost inhuman scream to him, wavering insanely until it formed into words: "Morir, Huicho! Bajar infierno! Bajar infierno!" Back to hell! Back to hell!

Near. More important, the reproach came after the gunfire, meaning their prey had armed himself. The few guards left in the compound started to converge on the sound. Gregor whispered quickly into his headset and they backed off. He didn't want to lose any more men.

Besides, these men respected a leader who exhibited the kind of bravery he demanded. Respect bred loyalty, so he always watched for ways to improve it.

Walking forward alone, he pulled his BlackBerry out of its holster and examined it. It monitored and controlled all of the compound's outside security systems. At the touch of an icon on the screen, he could turn electric fences on and off, lock and unlock gates, arm and disarm surface weapons, and access the lighting system. Gregor had read in a security publication that small transmitters could be added to cameras to relay their images to handheld devices like his. He hoped to convince Litt of his need for the upgrade.

He cut through the forest's shadows like a cat on the prowl. The BlackBerry confirmed that the compound's Deadeye system was inactive. Only recently developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the device monitored an area for gunfire. When its infrared sensors detected a gunshot, its computer would calculate the projectile's point of origin and instruct its own weaponry to return fire. Regardless of how well the assailant hidden himself, two seconds after pulling the trigger, he'd be dead.

Designed to protect high-ranking officials in motorcades and at public appearances, and to combat sniper activity, the Deadeye was a perfect addition to the compound's perimeter security. Suspicious of the compound's guards, covert activities, and the steady disappearance of people from surrounding towns, some local rebels had taken to ambushing vehicles coming into the compound and shooting at guards from the cover of the jungle. Such assaults had stopped after the Deadeye system mowed down three of the guerrillas.

Private organizations were not supposed to possess military-grade weapons. However, Gregor had discovered long ago that nothing was out of his reach as long as Litt's band of merry scientists kept producing the germs dictators and terrorists desired. With its constant exchange of illegal merchandise, barter was the currency of choice on the black market. The Deadeyes had been a gift from the U.S. government to Israel to combat sniper activity on Route 1, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Several wound up in the possession of Hamas sympathizers, who preferred biological agents over anti-sniper weapons.

Gregor used his thumb to punch the button that activated the Deadeyes. The icon changed from "safe" green to "unsafe" red. Up ahead, he heard labored breathing and the crashing of a body breaking through heavy foliage.

He stepped behind a tree and yelled, "Jorge Prieto!"

The crashing sounds stopped.

"Jorge! There is no need for this! We want only to help you!" He spoke in the man's native tongue.

"Go away! Huicho!"

He nodded to himself. To the Guarani Indians, Huicbo was an ugly little demon, a chummy companion of Death. He had long, dirty hair, skin the pallor of a corpse, and a fetid odor. The creature caused repugnance and terror. Gregor wondered if Prieto had ever laid eyes on Litt. He bent around the tree and caught a flash of khaki.

Prieto was staggering at the edge of a pillar of sunlight at the far side of a small clearing, looking for his pursuers. He was hugging himself with one arm; the hand of the other arm gripped a Beretta AR-70 assault rifle. Blood covered his face from the nose down, giving him the appearance of wearing a harlequin's half mask. His eyes were wide and blinking continuously, whether from the sun or perspiration or troubled vision Gregor didn't know.

He felt a pang of pity for the man. What must it be like to feel your insides turning to jelly? To have no clue why? He doubted Prieto would appreciate his own sacrifice. Could such a simple man grasp the grandeur of being the last experimental host of a virus that billions would come to fear? Or of being one of the first to experience a new generation of manipulable "designer" viruses? Ignorance is not always bliss, for here was a man who knew nothing but pain and fear, and none of the reasons that would make him proud to endure them.

Better to end it quickly.

Gregor stepped out from behind the tree and into the clearing.

Prieto jumped at the movement. He squinted at Gregor, obviously unsure if he had spotted a man or a bush. Then he focused on Gregor's face, which Gregor had not bothered to cover with camo. The Indian hunched lower and leveled the machine gun. Its barrel wavered wildly.

Gregor waited. When Prieto started backing slowly into the shadows, Gregor made a show of reaching for his holstered pistol. Startled by this, Prieto bared his teeth and fired. Dirt exploded fifteen feet in front of Gregor, who didn't so much as flinch. The high-pitched whine of an electric motor sounded to Gregor's right as the Deadeye rotated its weaponry. Prieto heard it, too, and shifted his gaze just as the Deadeye let loose with a five-second burst from its Ml34 minigun— five hundred rounds of 7.62mm ammunition spread over a six-foot radius. The effect was similar to an explosive charge: Jorge Prieto ceased to be.

The Deadeye's Gatling-style barrels continued to whirl, filling the comparative silence with a metallic death rattle.

Gregor could make out the circular pattern cut through the jungle as if a rocket had passed, taking Prieto with it. Small trees fell to the ground, severed in two. Leaves floated down, having been torn from their branches and hurled skyward. The air was hazy as the slate-colored smoke of gunpowder drifted up from the Deadeye's hiding place in the trees, and the green-hued mist of vaporized foliage floated down.

Booted feet stomped behind him. He punched the BlackBerry's Deadeye icon again and watched it turn green. The last thing he needed was for some excited guard to shoot off a round and awaken the hideous Deadeye to their presence. He strode forward, searching the ground. He stopped when he spotted a pair of legs . . . just legs. The rest of Jorge Prieto fanned out from the knees in a glistening, lumpy mass. A guard entered the clearing, then stopped, wide eyes taking it all in. Two medical technicians arrived. They, too, stopped short, eyeing Gregor as if he'd perpetrated the destruction with his bare hands. He bent down to scoop up the dented and perforated AR-70. A piece of its polyurethane stock fell away. He saw that a fist still clenched the grip, and remembered that Guarani meant "warrior." The man had died as his ancestors had lived—fighting. He tossed the rifle to the guard, who shied back before catching it with fumbling hands.

"Clean this up," Gregor ordered and marched away.

fifty-five

Allen bolted up, a nightmare clinging to him like a bedsheet. He gulped for air even as the fear faded into his subconscious. For an instant he thought the warm moisture drenching his hair, streaking his chest, was blood, then he realized it was perspiration, lots of it.

The sound of another breath caused him to freeze.

He jerked around and recognized the van's interior. Stephen was reposed in the driver's chair, which was collapsed into a sort of narrow bed. Faint light coming in through the windshield caught the tips of his whiskers and hair, giving his head a fuzzy, surreal quality. But his soft, bass snore was real enough, and Allen found some comfort in that. He became aware of a rhythmic patter echoing through the van. It took him a moment to identify it as light rain falling on the roof. He shifted his gaze and made out Julia's head between the passenger door and seat. He thought he could hear her shallow breathing. In all, he found the sounds soothing.

The army blanket that had covered the mattress when he crawled back to it was now bunched up in a corner. He shifted to slide the makeshift curtain away from one of the square back windows and smelled the stale odor of uric ammonia. The former owner had mentioned having small children, and Allen envisioned stains the ragged shape of countries on the bare, pinstriped mattress beneath him. It gave him a token appreciation for the dark.

Stephen had parked at the far end of a shopping center's parking lot. A twenty-four-hour grocery store in the middle of the strip dwarfed the peddlers of videos, liquor, stationery, coffee, electronic components, and other assorted luxuries of modern life. Allen spied a pickup truck and a dilapidated VW bug a few slots and one row over. Because the cars were too far from the grocery to belong to shoppers, he assumed their owners were store employees. A regular pattern of lampposts poured pools of rain-hazed light onto the vast asphalt. One such lamppost rose out of sight just to the right of the van's rear window but returned no light. He scanned the pavement below for broken glass, saw none. He doubted Stephen would have thought to shatter the bulb, but Julia would not have hesitated.

He eased down on the mattress and gazed through the window at the clouds. Beyond, stars twinkled as raindrops passed over them. He wondered how long until the sun came up and the others woke. Then he drifted off again. When his eyes fluttered open, it was daylight and the van was moving. Stephen and Julia talked quietly in the front seats. To orient himself, he turned back to the rear window. The sun stung his eyes.

"Good morning." It was Julia, looking much more refreshed than he felt. She had spun her chair around and was ducking under the table that held her computer equipment. She positioned herself in the bucket behind Stephen.

"Is it?"

"We're alive," Stephen called back. "I'd say that makes it a good morning."

"I suppose." Allen groaned and swung his legs off the mattress. He tugged at his shirt to align the buttons with the center of his chest and asked, "Where we going?"

"McDonald's," Stephen chimed. "Hungry?"

"I don't know yet, but I sure could use a mug of Java." His mouth tasted like something had died in it; probably smelled like it too. Julia was massaging her neck, and he remembered the awkward position she had slept in. He felt a little guilty that he'd hogged the only bed, but only a little. He lined up the toe seam of a sock and pulled it up. He looked up to find her smiling at him.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head slightly.

That smile. She really could break hearts without any trouble.

"It's just that I've never seen your hair mussed up before."

His hands flew to his head as if she'd said his hair was on fire, and he began combing it with his fingers. Her smile broadened, and as much as he could have bathed in her charms all day, he was irked to realize that he was the cause of her amusement. He noticed the laptop lid was closed. When he'd decided to check out the mattress, it had been open and still receiving the decrypted data from Julia's friend.

"Did you get the data?"

She grinned and nodded. "It took even longer than the program had calculated. It was still downloading when we parked and fell asleep. When I checked this morning, it said file transfer complete. I almost opened the directory, but I figured you two would want to be part of it." She was almost giddy.

"Doesn't matter to me who checks it out." Allen shrugged. "As long as it's something we can turn over to someone else and get back to our lives."

The van stopped, and Stephen killed the engine. Through the windshield, a pair of men in paint-stained coveralls pushed through a glass door marked with golden arches.

Stephen turned to face them. "So what's say we stoke up on some greasy fast food and do some good today?"

The three collected their toiletries, invaded the restaurant's washrooms, ordered breakfasts, and met back at the van, bags of food in hand. The men climbed into the front seats while Julia took her position facing the laptop. Immediately she began clicking away, taking bites out of a biscuit whenever the computer paused to perform a command. The aroma of Egg McMuffins, hash browns, and coffee quickly usurped the odor of old cigars as the van's dominant smell.

"Okay," she said after a few minutes.

Allen tossed her a quick glance, then turned his full attention to her when he noticed that she was sawing her top incisors over her bottom lip. He wondered if she'd have much of a lip left when this thing was over.

"Ready to see what's on that memory chip Vero left?"

Allen thought she was trying to sound optimistic. Truth was, they were all hoping for something that probably didn't exist: an easy answer to their dilemma—any answer to their dilemma.

Stephen choked on his coffee. It spewed from his mouth and into the forest of his beard as he snatched at a pile of napkins and slammed them over his mouth. He turned his watery eyes toward her.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said, popping the cables from the back of the laptop and positioning it on the chair behind Allen so all of them could see. She collapsed the van's pseudo-table as though she'd been doing it a long time, put it on the floor at her feet, then turned back to the laptop. The fifteen-inch screen was black except for a palette of five colorful buttons hovering in the lower right corner.

Allen recognized the symbols on the buttons from audio-cassette players: a triangle with the acute angle facing right for PLAY; a triangle pointing left for rewind; two vertical lines for PAUSE; and a square for STOP. The fifth symbol he didn't recognize; it looked like the circle and crosshairs of a rifle scope.

Julia moved a cursor over the palette of buttons.

Something struck the van.

Thunk!

Her pistol appeared in her hand so quickly, Allen wondered if it had always been there. As for himself, he might not have even noticed the sound, had Julia not moved so urgently. Before he realized it, his head was between his knees. He steeled himself for the windshield's inevitable shattering under the impact of the next round. His mind filled with things he wanted to yell out: Start the van! Step on it! Let's go!

But he heard Stephen's words first: "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" He was leaning almost out of the chair to stop Julia's movement toward the sliding door. "The door lock, Julia!" he said. "I just locked the doors." He reached his hand back and toggled the switch twice: Thunk! Thunk!

She stared at him in disbelief, whether at Stephen's actions or her own, Allen couldn't tell.

"It is loud," Stephen said apologetically, with a sideways tilt of his head.

She settled back in her chair, calmly slipping the weapon under her blazer. "It's okay," she said, closing her eyes. "Bit jumpy."

I'm just glad she's on our side, Allen thought.

Her lips stretched into a fat grin; then her eyes snapped open. "Told you I was raring to go." She reached out to the computer and clicked play.

fifty-six

The black man emerged from a doorway set in a whitewashed wall. With a perfectly round head and pencil-thin body, he resembled an upside-down exclamation point. He wore blue jeans, which were mostly white and hung loosely on his narrow hips, and a threadbare flannel shirt, buttoned tight at the neck. Dangling from the tips of three fingers was a beat-up metal lunch box, the kind kids toted to school in the sixties. Whatever had decorated it—images of the Brady Bunch, Speed Racer, or King Kong—had long since faded and chipped away. After appraising the sky, he started up the unpaved street, his heavy boots kicking up little plumes of dust. He glanced over his shoulder and stopped. A big smile broke like a crescent moon on a starless night. He raised his unencumbered hand and yelled, "Moyo Wanji!"

"What's that? What'd he say?" Allen didn't take his eyes off the screen.

Julia shook her head. Stephen said, "Shhh." All three had rotated their captain's chairs to face the laptop. By now, each was leaning forward—even Allen, whose nonchalant posture had succumbed to intense curiosity around the time the man on the screen had assessed the sky for rain. If the McDonald's restaurant suddenly exploded, it was doubtful the three people in the blue conversion van would have noticed—except maybe to turn up the volume on the computer they encircled.

From the left side of the monitor, another man came into view, dressed in equally depreciated clothes, carrying a stained paper sack. He said something unintelligible and clapped the first man on his back. As the two continued on, the camera jerked and followed, wobbling with the camera operator's hurried gait.

A column of numbers lay to the right of the video image. The first appeared to be a date, European style with the day first— 5 April of last year. Below that, presumably, the time the video was shot—06:08:21 when the action started and now just changing to 06:11:00.

Julia thought the next number, 00:01:49:15, was a tape counter in National Television System Commission protocol: hours, minutes, seconds, then frames, which were ticking off at a pace of thirty per second. This was no amateur shoot; whoever had filmed, edited, and compiled this demonstration was professional.

As the camera followed the two men through the grungy streets of a small village, Stephen stretched across to tap at the number below the counter.

"See that?" he asked.

"Some kind of countdown," Julia observed. "Seven hours and four minutes—to something." She suppressed the urge to look at her watch, almost forgetting that the events playing out on her computer screen were now thirteen months old. Still, that backward-moving timer gave her the chills.

The men on the screen walked into a square where an old military-type truck idled loudly, belching clouds of oily exhaust from a rattling tailpipe. The truck was a sick shade of greenish-yellow, except for spots of pea green on the cab doors where insignias had been stripped away. Other men, all black, converged on the truck from different directions. In turn, each man climbed aboard, disappearing within the

truck's canvas-covered bed. When the "star" of the video—that's the way Julia had come to think of the round-headed man—disappeared into the shadows, the image flickered once and went black.

Julia realized she'd been holding her breath. She let it out and pulled in another.

A new scene appeared with a jolt of the camera—a close-up of a pudgy man with an enormous gut and a yellow hard hat. He was barking out orders in a tongue so foreign it made Julia's head hurt. From behind came the sound of motors, raised voices, and the staccato rhythm of construction. After a moment, the camera swung to an area where a small group of men were slamming axes into trees. The camera zoomed in on the one in the center—Julia's star.

"The countdown," Stephen whispered.

It read -00:13:58. Julia's stomach tightened. A car horn from the laptop's tiny speakers drew her back to the video. The horn blasted for about five seconds. In that time, the star looked up, dropped his ax, and started meandering toward the camera, head hung as his left hand massaged his right bicep. The camera pulled back and hobbled away, taking a position some forty feet from the army-style truck. Again men converged on it, each with the day's physical agony showing on their bodies: filthy clothes, hair hued tan with sawdust and forested with spiky wood chips, grimacing faces, joints so stiff Julia could almost hear them creak. Shadows pooled at their feet, betraying a midday sun.

Each leaned into the back of the truck and emerged with a sack or box. They moved to the shade at the edge of a dense forest and sat. They pulled unwrapped clumps of a doughy substance from their containers, then worked vigorously to transfer it to their stomachs. The star ate quietly, perfectly centered in the camera's eye. The camera jiggled occasionally but otherwise remained stationary.

"Anyone got a fix on the location?" Julia asked without turning away from the screen.

"Haven't seen enough of the landscape," answered Allen. "I'd guess the language is an African dialect—a form of Swahili, maybe."

"So, Africa?"

"Just a guess. The town was pretty impoverished, and that foliage appears equatorial. Africa, South America, Southeast Asia. Our best clue—"

Julia stopped him with a raised hand, palm out.

The countdown had reached -00:00:55, and heads began turning skyward, apparently hearing something not yet detectable to the camera's microphone. Their eyes scanned aimlessly, then focused on something up and to the left of the screen. Over their apparent words of curiosity came the escalating drone of an airplane motor, like the hum of an approaching giant. Someone pointed, and one by one the men stood.

At this point the camera swung away from them, catching a white flash of sunlight before finding blue skies over the leafy tips of trees. A black dot grew quickly into a single-engine plane, coming in low over the forest. In an instant it swooped down, blurring hugely in the monitor. As the camera followed, it spewed a fine mist from its undercarriage.

"Crop duster," Allen remarked, stating the obvious out of sheer befuddlement.

The plane banked right, leaped over the trees, and disappeared.

Angry words poured from the speakers as the camera panned to the men speaking them: "Wadika!" "Unakwenda wapi!" "Salop!"

"That was French!" Stephen said. "I heard salop. That's French for . . . Well, it's not a nice word."

"Nimekasirika!" "Espece de pauvre con!"

"French again. Con means idiot."

As the mist blanketed them, the workers closed their eyes to it, coughed, and shook their fists at the spot where the plane had disappeared. Brushing off a flourlike dust, they spoke in sharp tones to one another and spat at the ground.

"Wait a sec," Julia said, moving a finger to the keyboard and causing the image to freeze. "The countdown's at plus twenty-two seconds now." She moved the cursor on the screen to the rewind button and tapped her finger. In reverse, the workers appeared to powder themselves with dust that magically floated off their bodies and sailed into

the air. Julia froze the image again. "Negative five seconds." She started clicking a button. "Four . . . three . . . two . . ."

"The mist from the plane is just coming into view at the top of the screen," Allen pointed out. Despite Bonsai's predictions about the converted file's poor quality, the resolution was perfect.

"One."

The mist was just hitting the tops of their heads.

"Zero."

The star's head was only a vague shadow behind the layer of dropping mist.

"That's it," Julia said. "The countdown was to this point."

"When whatever was in that mist hit their lungs," Allen said.

Dead silence filled the van like smoke as the three gazed at the image on the screen. After a few moments, Julia clicked a button to reactivate the video in real time. They had already seen this part: the men hurling insults at the sky, dusting themselves off, checking their food for residue . . .

"So what African countries speak French?" Julia asked, turning to Stephen and shifting in the big chair to tuck a leg under herself. She kept flicking her eyes toward the screen, waiting for something new. Despite being with two civilians, mentally she had donned her investigator's hat and was getting into the rhythm of corporate deductive reasoning.

"Zaire," Allen said. He whipped a crumpled pack of Camels out of his breast pocket and shook one out. After tossing it into his lips, he said, "It's obvious, isn't it? Ebola? Zaire?" He replaced the pack and removed a bright red Bic lighter from the same pocket; instead of lighting up, he rolled it between his fingers and raised his eyebrows at her. "The two are practically synonymous."

"It adds up," Stephen agreed.

Julia nodded and turned back to the screen. She wasn't really sure why it mattered at this point, but Donnelley had taught her that every fact, no matter how seemingly insignificant, played a part—sometimes a crucial part—in unraveling the mystery at hand.

"Okay, Zaire," she said quietly and watched as the camera

panned slowly over the faces of the complaining men, lingering a moment on each one as if to record their identities.

"I don't like where this is heading," Allen said.

She brushed her bangs away from her forehead. Without turning away from the screen, she said, "If we really are dealing with Ebola, I think we just witnessed the intentional infection of these people."

"What bothers me more is that Ebola spreads through body fluids, blood usually." Allen shifted, agitated.

Julia paused the display as the camera was pulling back to frame the entire group again.

Allen's unlit cigarette wagged like an accusatory finger when he spoke. "As far as we know, no one has ever been infected by an airborne strain. Monkeys, yes; never a human. Big difference. If the vector to transmit the disease was in that dust, it's a strain more dangerous than any we've ever seen. And it's gone unreported."

"Maybe nobody knows," Stephen whispered.

"Look at the date," Allen said, indicating the screen. "Whoever's controlling it has had over a year to perfect the delivery system. A crop duster when this video was made—what now, a breeze?"

Julia stared at him a long time, lost in thought. At last she punched the button that continued the video.

fifty-seven

The video flicked to a new scene.

The doorway set in a whitewashed wall again—the skinny black man's home. The date and time set the moment at the fifth morning after the crop duster's visit to the man's work site. The man's friend approached the door, knocked. A woman answered, worry as plain on her face as the bright red housedress on her body. She shook her head and closed the door.

Blackness.

The scream pierced through the speaker even before the shadows swam into recognizable objects on the screen. The man—Julia's star—bellowed in agony from a battered cot in a small, dark room. Naked to the waist, he was curled in a fetal position, clutching at his stomach, rubbing his chest. Perspiration sluiced in thick streams from every inch of exposed flesh. With savage effort, the man hooked his head over the cot's edge and vomited into the black hole of a rusty pail.

"Lord, have mercy," Stephen whispered.

Positioned somewhere above the cot, the camera perfectly framed the convulsing figure. The woman who had answered the door glided into view and began wiping the man's head and neck with a drenched cloth, comforting him with soft cooing.

With a bolt of quick static, the day passed. The man still lay in a knot, wet, miserable, accepting water from a rag pressed to his fever-blistered lips; only the time on the display had changed. Another flash of static and the man was blistered and bleeding, flailing on the bed, splashing ribbons of blood across the walls and curtains. His mouth stretched in a silent scream. His eyes, solid red, searched blindly for help.

Julia's palm covered her mouth.

A man in a blood-drenched smock, a stethoscope slung around his neck, tried to hold down the dying man. A woman in a white-and-blue dress—a nurse, Julia thought—covered her mouth much the way Julia did and backed away from the bed and out of frame. A geyser of blackish blood erupted. The doctor staggered back, arms raised against the horror before him.

The body convulsed, then was still.

Soft chanting now; the mournful throb of a single drum. A corpse, wrapped from head to toe in white linen, lay like a ghost on a chest-high bier. Weeping softly, the woman who'd comforted Julia's star, his wife perhaps, dipped a flambeau into the kindling under the body. Within seconds, flames had completely engulfed the corpse.

"The medical staff didn't report the cause of death," Allen said, shaking his head. "Health officials never would have released the body."

The camera panned over the faces of the mourners, many of them recognizable from the work site scene when the crop duster had vomited its obscene cargo over them. As smoke darkened the sky, the scene faded to black.

The next act opened at the work site, familiar men laboring under a scorching sun.

"Not again," Julia lamented. The date display had jumped ahead two months.

But the crop duster did not return. In fact, nothing dramatic occurred in the two minutes the camera lingered there, zooming in on individual faces in calm order. Each went about his duties, seeming to have forgotten the death of his friend. The scene played out like an epilogue, as if to say, Life goes on. If Kafka or Tolstoy had directed the video, this was the way he would have ended it.

Another slow fade. All that was missing, Julia thought, was the word Fini in scripted letters.

After several flashes of static, another video sequence started— this one far different in quality. The image, grainy from low light levels, filled the monitor. Gone was the column of numbers that had recorded the time, date, and other bits of cryptic information. Where the first video had all the markings of a professional recording, made for evidence or analysis, this one more closely resembled a home movie. As covert as the preceding footage obviously was, this current stock seemed more so: most of the time something like a flap of cloth blocked a portion of the lens; the angle was from about knee-high, as if the operator had held the camera like a briefcase—or in a briefcase, thought Julia—and nothing was framed quite right. Most disturbing, visually and viscerally, was the image's constant vibration.

"Why is it doing that, that shaking?" Stephen asked.

"Bad tape in the camera, maybe?" offered Allen.

"Fear," Julia said. "Over the past decade, the Bureau has taken to wiring informants and undercover agents not only for sound but also for visuals with miniature cameras. We see that shaking a lot. The guy's scared stiff."

Under a slate sky, the camera panned over a collection of rusty Quonset huts. They rose like the humps of a sea monster from a field cleared of all foliage except for wisps of dry prairie grass. Here and there, the camera caught men with guns standing or strolling, paying no particular attention to the camera operator. In the distance was a tall chain-link fence, double coils of gleaming concertina wire balancing on top. Beyond that a dense jungle grew. Directly in front of the hangars was a long patch of ground, level and clear of foliage.

"That's a landing strip," Allen said.

"So it's an air base?" Julia asked.

"Except for the armed men, it looks abandoned."

Stephen stroked his beard in thought. "Don't drug cartels operate out of abandoned airstrips?"

"Yeah, and look how green and lush that jungle looks," Allen said. "More Amazonian or Asian than African."

Julia said, "I don't think this is about drugs."

The scene changed, and the camera was moving through a dim corridor. It approached a door, then went through it into a brightly lit, refurbished corridor. Windows were set in the walls on each side, lighted from within. The camera approached a window. Reflected in it was a ghostly image that quickly sharpened.

Julia froze the frame. Caught in the glass, a man held a briefcase under his arm.

"Look," Julia said, pointing to a black circle in the side of the briefcase, facing the glass. "Wanna bet that's an opening for the camera lens?"

The man recording his own reflection appeared Hispanic, with tight curly hair and heavy features.

"He matches the description of Vero from the bartender at the place where he and Goody were killed," she said. She studied the face a moment, then restarted the playback.

The reflection faded off the glass as the camera focused on what lay beyond—a room lined with beds. On every one lay a man or woman, some tossing in anguish, others still. Machines monitored their vital signs. IVs snaked into most of the arms.

"Some sort of sick ward," Stephen said.

Turning from the window, the image blurred. When it refocused, a man was walking toward it. At first Julia thought he wore a mask of a skull. His eyes were big black holes, his skin bone-white and gaunt. As he approached, she saw it was no mask. Sunglasses covered his eyes, but the rest of the visible head was disturbing: wispy white hair clung in patches to the scalp, and the face was more than gaunt; it was as though someone had stretched cheesecloth over a skull. A lipless mouth stretched into a wide grin, showing canted and missing teeth.

Julia's heart leaped, and the camera flicked off.

fifty-eight

When the screen had been black for a good fifteen seconds, Allen exhaled loudly and said, "I didn't see anything that proves Ebola is man-made, or that these guys did it. At best, it showed that there's an airborne strain of Ebola."

"And that someone's intentionally infecting people," Stephen said.

"There were two video clips," Julia said, thinking. "One appeared to be of a man in Africa being infected with Ebola. I'm making lots of assumptions, I know. The second was not action-oriented and was in a different setting. There's nothing that obviously connects the two, but they must be related somehow."

"Somehow," Allen repeated. He leaned back in the passenger's seat, fishing a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket. He examined the package, saw it was empty, and tossed it over his shoulder onto the dash.

Julia's eyebrows furled together. If Vero had intended to expose the true, malicious origin of Ebola, why wasn't the evidence on the memory chip? What had he set out to prove?

She had been staring at the computer, without really seeing it, when two white-lettered words appeared on the dark screen:

ERSTE ANGRIFF

"Who's that?" Stephen asked.

Allen said, "I don't think it's a who. Erste is German for 'first.'" He scrunched up his face. "I'm not sure about angriff. Something like 'battle' or 'fight.'"

"First battle," Stephen whispered.

They waited for more . . .

Then it dawned on her. The self-starting video sequences had fooled her into regarding Vero's memory chip as a DVD, which would naturally unravel linearly to the end. But it wasn't. It was a computer data chip with files that had to be opened. The video clips were nothing more than digital multimedia files, like word processing documents and spreadsheets. Whatever this was, it wasn't self-opening.

Julia moved the cursor over the words, and the little arrow turned into a pointing hand. "It's hypertext," she said. "It's linked to some other file."

She clicked on the words. Instantly a list of names began scrolling past, lightning fast. She tapped a key, and the list froze.

"Anthony Petucci," she said, pointing. "The actor?"

Stephen bent near to read aloud. "Howard Melton. Isn't he a senator? Janet Plenum, governor of Oregon."

"Lew Darabont," Allen said. "I love his movies."

Julia said, "Hasn't he directed something like four or five of the top ten films of all time?"

She moved the cursor over one of the names. Again it turned into a pointing hand. "They're linked too." She tapped the cursor button.

New words filled the screen:

Richard Kennedy

SSN: 987-65-4320 b. 04/21/55

Occupation: CEO, Nanotech Software, Inc.

Home Address:

1910 Whitehorn Drive

San Francisco, CA 94120

Appendectomy, 11/02/92

Mount Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles

Control Code: 469878884-L

"He's one of the richest men in America," Allen said.

"Appendectomy?" Stephen said. "What kind of database is this?"

"A big one," Julia said, bringing the screen back to the list of names. She scrolled down a few screens. Tapped on a name, closed it . . . then another . . . and another . . .

"There's an odd assortment of the famous and the average," she said after a while. "Politicians, celebrities, business leaders, an auto mechanic, housewives—look at this . . ."

Hunter, Baby Boy

SSN: N/A B. 09/15/06

Occupation: N/A

Home Address:

4250 Michigan Avenue, Apt. 312

Chicago, IL 60611

PKU, 09/17/06

Memorial Hospital, Chicago

Control Code: 842074654-M

Stephen shook his head. "A baby. Didn't even have a name when this information was collected."

"PKU," Allen said. "That's a blood test all newborns get."

"Why is he here," Julia whispered, "on a list with the rich and famous, on a chip people are dying over?"

She went back to the names, let it scroll to the end. It took several minutes. She wasn't sure why, but watching those names zip past, knowing they were somehow linked to Donnelley's death, Vero's death, the gruesome murder of that man on the video, made her feel sick.

Stephen must have been uneasy too. He shifted nervously. "How many?" he asked.

"I don't know. Five thousand? Ten?"

"What's it matter?" Allen said, patting his breast pocket, finding nothing. "We don't know the significance of these names. Could be a Christmas card list, for all we know." He opened the glove box and began rooting around. "What are we going to do, phone up Richard Kennedy and everyone else who's on it? 'Excuse me, sir, do you happen to know the guy who's planning to invade the U.S. with the Ebola virus?'"

Julia suspected that apprehension was a strange guest in Allen Parker's psyche; showing anger was easier than facing a new emotion. She waited for something else to materialize on the screen. When it didn't, she leaned over the laptop and started typing. She was digging for more information the way Allen was hunting for a cigarette. Both came up cold.

She slid back into her chair, seeming to be swallowed by it.

"What now?" Stephen asked.

She took a minute to answer. The chip wasn't what she had hoped it would be. It contained no quick solution, no proof of who was doing what to whom and why; it didn't even contain evidence they could use—not without knowing what it was evidence of. Like most evidentiary material, it was maddeningly ambiguous, needing to be united with other puzzle pieces before its value became clear. She wanted to kick the computer right off the chair but didn't have the energy. Finally she took a deep breath and raised her eyebrows to him. "We've been here too long. Let's get moving."

"Anywhere in particular?"

She skewed her mouth, considering. "No," she said and laughed a little. "Nowhere at all."

fifty-nine

About ten minutes into their journey to nowhere in particular, Allen said, "The planes."

"What planes?" Stephen asked. "You mean the crop duster?" "That's what got me thinking, that and the airstrip on that base." He had been riding with his feet up on the dash like a teenager. He brought them down and turned to Julia. "Would you agree the people trying to kill us are professionals?"

"Professional hit men? Yeah, seems that way to me."

"Then they're probably not from Atlanta. Certainly not Chattanooga. Not enough work for them."

She saw where he was heading. "They flew in for the job."

He nodded. "And I'll bet they didn't take commercial flights. They've got special weapons. Need to move quickly, on their own schedule. They don't want too much scrutiny."

"So a chartered or private plane?" Julia said. "That's what I'm thinking."

"And landing at the airport leaves a record, a lead." "Not necessarily. Airports aren't required to log every landing.

Most do since 9/11. Sometimes there's a record only if the plane paid for fuel or overnight parking."

"There'll be records," she said. "Goody's killers didn't make their return flight, and the Warrior stayed awhile. Parking fees are a gimme."

"Can you access airport records?"

"Hey, I'm a federal agent—I can do anything." She smiled and reached down to maneuver the makeshift table off the floor. Allen moved to help, but she had it in place between the front and rear chairs before he could decide which part of the board to grab. She transferred the laptop to it.

"Seriously, this thing is loaded with programs that can worm their way into most computer systems. They're designed for on-site searches of computers used for criminal activities. You wouldn't believe the gimmicks perps use to prevent their data from making it to a tech lab. Magnetized doorways that wipe out hard drives as police carry them through; reserve batteries that blitz the data with a power surge, triggered by mercury switches to detect movement or zero-current switches that detect when the computer is unplugged. One child pornographer booby-trapped his computer with homemade C-4. It was rigged to detonate if the computer was lifted off of a pressure-sensitive pad. We spotted it before it hurt anyone, but it would have vaporized the evidence, along with the house and a half dozen cops. Anyway, it's best to seize the data right at the scene. I have programs that slice through the toughest computer security systems like they weren't even there. Where do I start?" Her fingers were poised over the keyboard.

"Try General Aviation, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport."

She scooted closer to the computer, eyes flicking from keyboard to screen and back.

"See what they show for landings, parking, fuel sales, maintenance."

A few minutes passed. Then she swiveled the monitor around for Allen to see.

He leaned in. "Those are the flight progress strips."

"Going back two weeks," Julia said, smug. "But this is where I hit a brick wall. I have no idea what to look for."

"Let me see." He pulled it closer, squinting at the entries.

"How do you know all this?" she asked.

"I've always loved private aviation. I took some private pilot lessons but never finished. Got too busy. Sometimes I still park by the airport to eat my lunch, watch the planes come and go. Here, look at this." He read it aloud: "Fourteen-eighteen. Cessna Citation CJ2. N471B."

"Yeah?"

"How many four-million-dollar private jets fly into Chattanooga?"

"The timing's right. Just before the killings at the bar."

"You think that's the plane that brought in the two-man hit team?"

"It's the Warrior's. The first two assailants pursued Goody and Vero from Atlanta. The second set of assailants, the ones who came for you at your house, you said one of them had a cop's badge. A local cop. Maybe by then they were getting desperate, hiring whoever was available."

Allen said, "The FAA maintains a plane registry right on the Internet. We can find out who owns that Citation without jumping through techno-hoops." Something on the screen caught his eye. "Hold on. Oh-five-fifty-one, Cessna Citation . . ."

"This morning? He left?"

"Yesterday morning. Another landed. N-number: N476B."

"Two Citations? Sixteen hours apart." Julia was thinking out loud. "Could the same people own both?"

"Same type of plane with almost sequential tail numbers? Very likely." Allen read again from the screen: "Oh-eight-twenty, Cessna Citation."

"Another one?"

"The first one, N471B, took off yesterday morning, two and a half hours after the second arrived."

"What are we supposed to do now?" Stephen asked from behind the wheel.

She gave herself a moment to think. "I suppose we find out who registered the Cessnas. Probably a dummy corporation, owned by another dummy corporation. But if we burrow deep enough, maybe cross-reference the names we dig up with other clues we find along the way, we'll uncover something solid."

Allen didn't look happy.

"Welcome to detective work," she said. "Ninety percent of criminal investigations is following paper trails, digging through computer files, reading receipts and depositions and ledgers until your eyes are ready to fall out. Forget CSI, it's more like—wait a minute." She spun the laptop around, away from Allen.

"Hey."

She began typing, staring at the screen.

"What?"

"The hard drive. Can't you hear it? It's working too hard. Someone's hacked into my computer."

sixty

"You're in the airport's computer," Allen said.

"Maybe they're trying to hack you back."

"That's not they way it works. If they detect the breech, they just cut you off. Someone's going through my files."

"So cut them off."

"I'm trying. They've got some kind of protection against that. I've never seen anything like it."

An observer catching her flexing bands of jaw muscles, the determined flash of gritted teeth, would have guessed that she was battling for her life. And they'd have been right: Survival on the run was like a knife fight. The outcome was rarely determined by the planting of one deadly blow, but by the number and depth of slash after slash after slash—until the one most slashed bled to death. She could not afford the injury of giving away access to her computer, whether the intruder's motive was to find out its contents or destroy its data.

"Disconnect the phone," Allen said.

"If I can stop him, maybe I can find out who it is." She keyed in more commands. "It's not working." She reached for the phone line. The screen went black, and a line of white text appeared at the top:

> Ms. Matheson?

Allen, unable to see the monitor from the front seat, asked, "What is it?"

She told him, then typed:

> Who is this? The answer:

> A friend.

"What's going on?" Allen stood to lean over the top, bumping the table and nearly dumping everything to the floor.

Julia caught the computer and phone, stabilizing them on the table once more. "Allen! Sit. I'll tell you. He says he's a friend."

"A friend? Your friend? What's his name, Bonsai?"

"Shhhhh! This isn't Bonsai. Just be quiet and listen."

Speaking the words, she typed:

> I don't need any more friends.

> That's not what I've heard.

She read the response aloud, already typing her reply:

> How do you know me?

> I've been waiting for you. I knew you would eventually think to check the airport records. I'm surprised it took you so long.

Allen whispered, "Is he still going through your hard drive?" "No, he's just talking." She wrote:

> Why did you hack me?

> Just trying to make a connection.

"That's not true," she said. "He was digging. I think he realized I was onto him and decided to take another approach, instead of just getting cut off."

> Ms. Matheson. Your enemy is my enemy. Does that not make us friends?

> No. Who is my enemy?

> Atropos.

"I've heard that name," she said, but she typed:

> I don't know who that is.

> The man who tried to kill you, Dr. Parker, and Mr. Parker.

"The Warrior," Allen said. The words continued:

> Of all the people who kill for a living, he is the worst.

Julia closed her eyes. It was coming back, who Atropos was. She typed:

> Atropos is a myth.

> A myth that almost killed you.

> Whoever he is, he's only a hired gun. Are you his employer?

> Atropos is purely freelance.

> Did you hire him?

> No. You know who did.

"What's he mean, we know?" Allen said after she read the line.

"I don't know."

The answer came over the screen:

> Litt.

"Karl Litt," she said, her mind racing. "Goody said his name. We used it in our fake conversation, the one we recorded. They were listening. That may have been the one key phrase they caught. He must think we know more about him than we do." She typed:

> Are you Karl Litt?

> Litt hires killers. He does not engage in conversation. He does not have the resources to find you the way I did.

"I don't know," she said. "He seemed to find us in Knoxville without any problem. Either this guy doesn't know Litt's capabilities, or he just wants us to think he's more powerful than Litt."

> How do I know you don't want us dead as well?

> Ms. Matheson, I've traced you to your computer, which means I know the cell phone number you're using. I could have simply remained silent and sent people to your location.

"Except that I realized he had hacked me. I wouldn't have continued using this phone."

"But what if he hadn't rooted through your hard drive?" Stephen said. "Couldn't he have found the number you were calling from without your ever knowing?"

She nodded. "He might have thought he could get away with both—getting a traceable number for us and finding out what's on my hard drive. But we caught him, so now he's trying to say what a stand-up guy he is."

> So, friend, what is your name?

> It doesn't matter, just that we can help each other.

"I don't trust people who won't say who they are," she said. "All right, then . . ." She moved her fingers over the keyboard and punched in a series of commands. She stopped and leaned back. "Let's see how you like that."

"What did you do?" Allen asked hesitantly.

"I sent a worm back to him," she answered with a smile. "Right now it's rooting its way into the other computer. And it's sending data back to us."

"Like what?"

She shrugged. "Letters, address book data, financial information— the kinds of things people keep in their computers. The first thing it looks for are program registration records. They usually contain the name and address of the computer owner."

A box floated on the screen, showing the quantity of data her worm had pulled in from the other computer. The number grew larger as she watched. She typed:

> How can we help each other?

Nothing. Ten seconds. Twenty. Then the number in the floating box stopped changing.

"He cut me off." Her fingers moved over the keyboard.

> You there? Nothing. "He's gone."

"You shouldn't have hacked him," Stephen said.

"Why not?"

"He said he could help us."

"And what makes you believe him?"

"What he said, that he could have just sent people after us."

"We don't know he didn't."

She rebooted the laptop with plans to run a spyware-detection program when it was up again. She didn't want something lurking in her computer she didn't know about.

"Who's Atropos?" Allen asked.

She shook her head. "A fantasy. Supposedly he's the world's best assassin. He can hit anyone, anywhere. Never fails. Always gets away."

"He didn't get us," Stephen said, defiant.

"Yet," she said. "Most assassinations don't happen the way they do in the movies. They're rarely clean, quiet kills. Sometimes it takes four or five attempts to hit the target, over days or weeks. Of course, getting them on the first attempt is best; later they're on guard, probably got some beefed-up security. It gets tougher. Then again, the assassin learns more about his target with each attempt. Patterns and weaknesses. So as long as he doesn't give up until the job is done, he's considered successful."

"Why did you say he's a myth?"

"Maybe legend is a better word. The stories about him get wilder every time you hear them. He's killed dictators protected by armies. He's been credited with killing someone in Asia and then, within an hour, killing someone else in America. The story goes, he comes from a long line of assassins. In the eleventh century, an 'Atropos' helped Frederick Barbarossa seize control of the Holy Roman Empire. Six hundred years later, Elizabeth Petrovna of Russia was found dead in her bedchamber; despite the official explanation of a sudden illness, some historians claim she was assassinated by a man named Atropos. During World War II, Atropos claimed Allied spies, politicos, and important industrialists as his victims. Just some spot examples I remember. Besides the name, each succeeding assassin shared one trait: he killed with a spiked gauntlet."

"Oh, man," Stephen said. "You're creeping me out."

"I think that's the idea. He's the boogeyman for historians and CIA types."

She disconnected the phone from the laptop and turned it around in her hand while she talked.

"I guess he's kind of a cult celebrity," she continued. "Look on the Internet. There are fan clubs dedicated to this guy. Some say he was reared from infancy on the skills of his family's tradecraft. At six years old he learned how to pick locks. At eight he learned that severing the spinal cord at the base of the neck prevents targets from getting off one last shot after you've killed them. It's this lifelong training that makes him so good. And some people think his very lineage adds to his prowess, that each generation yields a better assassin than the generation before him—not because of the training, but because it's in his blood."

"Knock it off," Allen said, flashing an unsure smile.

"You asked," she said.

"Maybe there's something to it," Stephen said. "After all, Julia, you saw him come back from the dead."

Her mouth went dry. She had see him slaughtered, only to appear the next day ready for a fight. That was creepy enough, but did it lend credibility to stories about him? To her, it did.

The tinted window next to her hinged at the top. She levered open the bottom to its maximum opening of about four inches. She was about to drop the phone through when it rang.

She looked at Allen, who scowled.

"Private number," she said and answered.

"Touche, Ms. Matheson."

The voice made her think of her great-aunt's letters. The writing was thin and shaky, as though written on a paint mixer.

"I thought you'd like that," she said.

"You're a very capable woman. As I said, I believe we can help each other."

"Without knowing who you are, I don't want your help, and you certainly won't get mine."

Silence.

"At this point," he said, "I must tell you that we are dealing in matters of national security. I must be assured that anything I tell you will be kept in the strictest confidence. This goes for you and Allen and Stephen Parker. I am recording this conversation."

"You're kidding, right?"

"I've very serious. Divulging what we say to anyone—the media, your mother—will result in your arrest and imprisonment. Is that clear?"

Her stomach tightened. Did he say mother simply to stress the comprehensiveness of the prohibition, or was he saying something? Did he know about her mother, her being alone, her illness? Was he threatening her?

"We've got killers after us, and you're telling me you'll throw me in jail for talking?"

"I can't say more without your indicating that you understand the confidential nature of our conversation and the consequences for violating this confidence."

She suspected he was more interested in establishing his credibility with her than binding her to a gag order.

"I understand and agree."

"And what is your whole name?"

She told him.

"Now, please, let me speak to Dr. Parker and his brother."

She hesitated. Was he trying to establish that they were together? Was there any reason to keep it secret? She couldn't think of any. She handed the phone to Allen.

He listened, then said, "Allen Douglas Parker." Listened. "I agree." He handed the phone to Stephen, who went through the process, then held the phone over his shoulder for Julia to take.

"Okay, now—"

"My name is Kendrick Reynolds."

"Kendrick Reynolds?"

Allen's eyes got big. He mouthed the name.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Of course. Former secretary of state. Former director of the CIA. Advisor to, what, eight presidents?"

"Ten," he corrected.

"Billionaire," Allen added.

"I assume," the man claiming to be Kendrick Reynolds said, "you can confirm my identity through the computer files you stole."

"You said you can help us."

"I can protect you."

"The way you protected Goodwin Donnelley and Despesorio Vero?"

"My point exactly. They were on their own, away from my protection. Their fate does not have to be yours."

"And how do we help you?"

"I believe you have something Despesorio Vero was bringing me."

"To you? He showed up at the CDC. I heard tapes of his calls. He never mentioned you."

"I am the only person who can stop Karl Litt."

"From doing what?"

"Honestly, I do not know." He sounded even more tired than previously. "But considering Karl's . . . expertise, I have some ideas."

"Such as?"

"A biological attack on the United States."

"And who is Karl Litt to you?"

"A bad investment."

"You're in business with him?"

"He worked for the government at one time. Now he doesn't."

Allen touched her shoulder. He whispered, "Could they be tracing the call?"

She nodded. "Give me a number where I can reach you."

"Ms. Matheson, you can end this now. Thousands of lives—"

"A number or we never speak again."

She waited. After a long moment, he recited a number and a security code. She closed the flip phone and dropped it out the window.

sixty-one

Kendrick Reynolds cradled the handset and looked at his assistant. Captain Landon watched him carefully, unsure of Kendrick's mood.

"Interesting," was all Kendrick would say. He pulled a breath through the mouthpiece of his God-head pipe, found it had gone out, and plucked it from his mouth.

Maybe it was for the best that Julia and the Parkers knew precisely who they were dealing with. He didn't know about Stephen Parker, but reports on Allen Parker pegged him as some sort of medical Einstein, and just now Julia had made her intelligence abundantly clear. These were the kind of people who didn't believe in "the man behind the curtain"; they wanted names and faces and resumes.

Now they have mine, he thought.

That both frightened and exhilarated him. If laying himself bare before people who had the evidence not only to destroy his future but to dismantle his past resulted in finding Litt and burying that very evidence against himself—well, this could turn out to be his most brilliant play yet. What a way to end his career. Absently, he ran a finger over the face of God.

Of course, Matheson and the Parkers themselves were loose ends that would need tying up. But for now, he needed only to get his hands on whatever it was Vero had left and Litt was trying to get back. Something, definitely. The woman had all but admitted to having it.

His eyes refocused on the captain. "Anything?" he asked.

Captain Landon checked his monitor. He pushed a button and spoke into a mouthpiece clamped to his head.

Kendrick wheeled himself back, spun his chair, and positioned it near a recliner. He reached out and got hold of a wooden cane. He rocked his body out of the chair, leaning heavily on the cane. Aiming for the room's exit, he took two halting steps. His third was more sure.

"Sir?" the captain called behind him.

Kendrick didn't look back or stop his gait; he was shuffling but moving along at a good clip.

"The cell phone has stopped moving. Our team will intercept it in twenty minutes."

Kendrick waved his free hand. "Ah! She got rid of it. We can only hope she calls."

Seventy seconds later, he made it to the door and stepped through.

"Do you trust him?" Stephen asked. He was still steering the van through the streets of Atlanta. Being a moving target gave them a small measure of comfort.

"Not as far as I can throw this van," Allen said.

"I don't know," Julia said.

"Look," Allen snapped, "he wants the evidence kept secret and claims Vero was bringing it to him. That means he's involved."

"He's offering to help," Stephen reminded him.

"What else would he say? 'I want to kill you for the evidence and because you know too much. Let's meet'?"

"He may be our best chance of getting out of this mess intact."

Stephen wasn't completely convinced of his own words, Julia could tell, but he wanted to examine all the possibilities.

"Our best chance of getting killed, more likely," Allen said. "For all we know, Kendrick Reynolds is behind this whole thing. It makes sense: He's got the money and the power to do everything we've witnessed. Finding us. Sending cops to kill us—Julia, you said it had the government's fingerprints all over it; this guy's as government as they get. Hiring 'the world's best assassin.' Come on!"

She let Allen's voice fade into the throaty drone of the engine. Deep in concentration, she stared out at the city, at its eclectic people and architecture, at its silent clash of old and new, beautiful and ugly. She was vaguely aware of sunlight slicing through the van at a different angle each time Stephen rounded a corner; of the rising temperature, turning the air muggy and soporific; of an increasing sense of being nothing more than a bit player in a tragedy already written and rolling along toward an unknown climax. All of it could have too easily congealed into an atmosphere of hopelessness.

For that reason, Julia accepted this new wrinkle, this stranger bearing gifts or traps, as a challenge. If Kendrick Reynolds turned out to be what he claimed, a friend, then she'd lose nothing by waiting a little longer, learning a little more. If he was another face of the monster that pursued them, she was hell-bent on knowing that before their next encounter. His offer of assistance could be an oasis or a mirage. She wasn't going to stop looking for water until she knew for sure.

At last she said, "He may be able to help us, but he wants us to help him too. He's asked us to turn over the data from the memory chip. He's in a much better position to know what any of it means. Maybe sharing it with him will give him the ammunition to fight our foes for us. Then again, what if his seeing the evidence means he no longer needs us or wants to help us? We'll have lost a bargaining chip. I think we need to know more before we make that decision."

"So, what?" Stephen asked. "Investigate more?"

"That's my two cents," she said. She picked up another cell phone and began readying it for use.

Allen tapped the top end of a pack of Camels against the dash. He glanced back at her. "Now what?"

She powered up the laptop. "Atropos is still looking for us. The airport records show his plane is still in Chattanooga, right?" He nodded. "Then let's go to Chattanooga."

sixty-two

Silently, Allen slipped out the door between two hang

ars and began making his way toward the tarmac. Thick shadows had already filled the man-made canyon he traversed, but the orange glow of dusk still blazed at its far end like fading embers. The fingers of his left hand skipped lightly along the corrugated metal side of the hangar he had exited; his left arm cradled a package hidden beneath his beige Windbreaker.

He crossed the narrow alley and stopped with his back pressed against the other building, two feet from the corner. He scratched savagely at his beard, flipped his salt-and-pepper ponytail off his shoulder. Three quick breaths, then he edged to the corner and peered around.

Beyond the hangars stretched three rows of parked airplanes. Most were compact, two- and four-man rides, tied down to keep them from flipping in a stiff wind. Here and there private jets gleamed above their propellered brethren. And past them all, well away from the rest, sat the one he had come for—a white Cessna Citation CJ2, tail number N476B.

He was about to swing out into the open when he glanced in the other direction—toward the majority of buildings, the terminal, and the control tower—and saw a white pickup truck speeding along the taxiway toward him, amber strobes flashing atop its cab. He stepped back into the shadows.

This is not a good idea, Allen thought as the truck flashed past the alley.

Trouble was, it was their only idea that didn't involve putting their tails between their legs and scampering away like scared dogs. He scratched at the fake beard again; the spirit gum Julia had used to affix it was drying, and it itched.

He poked his head around the corner again and caught the truck hooking a U-turn in front of the parked planes. Within seconds it swept past him again, heading toward the terminal and busier parts of the airfield.

It had been Julia's excitement that had hooked him. As little as he thought of her plan, he wanted to disappoint her even less. She was just so . . . darn cute. He smiled wryly. How many times had his libido led him blissfully over the cliff of bad ideas? Too many to count. And now this doozy.

In his mind's eye, he saw Julia's smile—faltering when she caught his looks of concern—as she laid it all out, grabbing things from her gym bag to show them, drawing invisible diagrams in the air with her finger.

"If I'm reading the guys who're after us right, they're

control freaks," she had explained as the van moved toward their first destination, S & L Law Enforcement Provisions, Inc. "Allen, they knew everything about you before Vero's body had even cooled. Your address, Stephen's. They found out who transported Goody from the bar to the hospital, who assisted you in the ER—and had them killed."

For a moment, her lips had pressed together bitterly. Not in anger, Allen thought. Not entirely. He suspected a heavy dose of sorrow motivated the gesture. She didn't even know the EMTs or the nurses, but their senseless deaths grieved her.

"The point is," she continued, "I don't think they'll be able to stand a new, unknown player in the game."

"Player? What new player?"

She cocked her head innocently. "You."

"Me?"

"You're taller than the average male Caucasian, but not remarkably so. If we disguise your features enough, they'll think you're someone who knows them, but they won't know you."

"And how will they learn about this 'new player'?" he asked, condescending.

"He's going to try to break into their jet."

"Atropos's jet?"

She nodded.

Allen crossed his legs, then his arms. "Why break in?"

"Two objectives. If no one's there, see if there's anything that'll identify who hired him."

"What do you mean, if no one's there? If I do this, there'd better not be anyone there."

"If Atropos or whoever he has working for him—a pilot maybe— does see you, then you want to leave this . . ."

She leaned over, rooted in her gym bag, and held up the gauntlet.

"But you can't just leave it," she continued. "You have to pretend to lose it accidentally, drop it while running away or something."

Allen shook his head. "Why give it to them at all? You really are an exasperating woman."

She set the gauntlet on her lap, and again she fumbled around in the gym bag. When she straightened, empty-handed, Allen presumed she'd misplaced something. Then he noticed the item resting in her upturned palm. It was about the size of a dime, but several times thicker, black. He leaned closer.

"A satellite-assisted tracking device," she announced. "Goody was going to place it on Vero so we wouldn't lose him. I have the equipment to track this puppy to hell and back. It's a beacon of the gods—as close to omniscience as we'll ever get."

She examined the device, used her fingernail to rotate an almost invisible switch set into its case. Then, picking up the gauntlet, black and muscular and hideous, she carefully slipped in her hand, the tracking device on a fingertip.

"I'm going to put the SATD into one of the fingers. If I've guessed right, Atropos will want to find out who was walking around with one of his own special weapons and who made an attempt to breach his plane." She withdrew her arm, then shook the gauntlet a few times to make sure the device wouldn't fall out. "The only clue he'll have is the gauntlet."

Allen nodded. "He'll have it examined it for fingerprints."

"I'm counting on that to keep him from finding the SATD too soon. He'll want to preserve any fingerprints that may be inside. Kendrick said Atropos is freelance; he goes where the jobs and the money are. I think he'll turn to his current employer for help in finding out who this new guy is. And I bet Litt has the means to lift and analyze a fingerprint. By the time they discover the tracking device, I'm praying that it's smack in the middle of their home base."

"So he takes it to them, and we find out where they are," Stephen said from the driver's seat. His deep voice was frigid, all business.

"Wait a sec," Allen said. "Why can't we simply attach it to their plane? Wouldn't that be safer?"

"We can't be sure the Citation will go all the way to their base. What if they land at a major airport and take another form of transportation to their final destination?"

"And even if they don't use the plane," Stephen said, "if they send it by courier or something, we'll still find out where they are."

Despite himself, Allen felt excitement lift his mood. "Want to bet it ends up at whatever swank address Kendrick Reynolds calls home?" he asked. "Or at one of the agencies he controls?"

Stephen cranked the wheel, jostling the van over what felt like a canyon wall. Allen turned to see the cop supply store's front window looming large in the windshield.

"First, Allen, we make sure you're well protected," Julia said behind him. "Then we make you look like someone Atropos doesn't know."