Snakehead

I

Giant windows threw long arches of light across the marble floor. White pillars rose high into a vaulted ceiling lined with guastavino tile. Where once the smoke and steam and shrill whistle of freight and passenger trains had filled its vastness, only three solitary sets of footsteps now echoed across the concourse of what had been the elegant Union Station. The tracks beyond the terminal were long gone, replaced by a diamond of grass, the rumble of wheel on rail supplanted by the thwack of leather on wood and the roar of forty thousand baseball fans. Designed by the firm that built the Grand Central Station in New York City, and with a one-time reputation as the finest station in the South, this monument to the heyday of the American railroad was now home to the Houston Astros. Minute Maid Park.

A uniformed security officer sat at a shiny mahogany desk right in the centre of the concourse. She turned a smile as bright as sunshine on Li, Fuller and Hrycyk. ‘Can I help y’all?’

Fuller said, ‘We have an appointment with Councilman Soong.’

Soong himself came down to take them up to his suite. He was a large man in every sense. He had an expansive personality and an expanded waistline, a very round, smooth face and a thick head of neatly trimmed wavy black hair shot through with streaks of silver. Incongruously, he was wearing sneakers, a pair of Wrangler jeans and a red leather Astros baseball jacket. Solemnly he shook everyone’s hands. ‘Welcome, gentlemen. I am very pleased you can make it.’ Then he grinned and waved his arm around the concourse. ‘Impressive, yes? Restored to all its former glory.’ He pushed open a tall glass door and took them into the stadium. To their left, a long corridor ran the length of the original terminal building, arches opening out on to the baseball field below. Before them, the field itself glistened in the rain beneath three tiers of seats rising into an angry-looking sky, puddles gathering in the red blaize that circled the mound. ‘They gonna close the roof, I think,’ Soong said. ‘Too much rain no good for grass.’

‘Jees,’ Hrycyk whispered in awe. ‘I’ve never seen them close the roof before.’

Soong beamed at him. ‘You are baseball fan, Mistah Hrycyk?’

Hrycyk shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. ‘Yeah, I go to the games sometimes. When I can.’

‘Then you must be my guest next season,’ Soong said. ‘I can arrange seat for you in enclosure.’ He pointed to a small enclosed area of seats immediately behind where the batsman faced the pitcher.

‘Wow,’ Hrycyk said, forgetting his reserve. He was like a kid with a candy bar. ‘That’s where all the celebs sit.’

Soong beamed. ‘It cost twenty thousand dollar to buy seat there. And two hundred dollar a game. Roughly seventeen thousand a year. In thirty years you pay more than half a million dollar for one seat.’ He paused for effect. ‘I got three.’

Li looked at Hrycyk. The INS agent might dislike the Chinese, but when it came to baseball he had no problem accepting Chinese hospitality.

They heard the whine and hum of a motor, and the smooth sound of gears engaging through syncromesh.

‘Yuh,’ Soong said. ‘They close the roof.’

They followed him out on to the near terracing, where they had a view across the field to the arched walkway they had just passed through. Above it, on eight hundred feet of track, stood a full-size replica vintage locomotive painted black and orange and red, the glass towers and skyscrapers of downtown Houston rising into the sky behind it, like the painted backdrop of a theatre set.

Soong laughed. ‘Owner of team pay one and a quarter million dollar out of own pocket to install train,’ he said. ‘It run along track, blowing whistle and letting off steam every time Astros score home run. It’s fun.’

Beyond it, set into the far side of the stadium, the roof was starting to close. It comprised two massive arced sections, one overlapping the other and supported along the open side on glass-panelled scaffolding more than two hundred feet high which ran on rails parallel to the train line. Through the windows of a small control cabin at the base of the scaffolding, they could see the engineer controlling the motors that closed the roof. The cabin moved along the rail with the scaffolding, overtaking the train as the first section stopped halfway and the overlap continued toward the near side of the stadium, above where they stood. Although the whole structure was designed with toughened glass panels to let in as much light as possible, the sky was almost black now, and the engineer switched on the floodlights from his little control room, washing the entire stadium with an unnaturally bright light.

Soong took great delight in displaying his knowledge of the facts and figures. He said, ‘The roof weigh nine thousand ton and cover six-and-a-half acre. It generate its own electricity and take just twelve minutes to close. Pretty impressive, huh?’ But he gave them no time to respond. ‘You come with me, now. We got important stuff to talk about.’

They followed him under a bewildering array of hanging signs arranged to guide fans to their seats, and into a stairwell that led them up from the main concourse through club level to suite level. Soong arrived panting at the top of the stairs. ‘I used to take lift,’ he said, ‘but now I take stair for health.’ He grinned again. ‘Only exercise I get, apart from sex.’

Fuller and Hrycyk gave small, dutiful laughs. Li did not. There was nothing amusing for him in the image of this fat man grunting and sweating over the delicate frame of some poor Chinese girl working to pay off her debt to a snakehead. Soong’s wealth and confidence, his eccentricity — the sneakers and the baseball jacket — reminded Li of those corrupt petty officials back in China who lined their pockets at the expense of the people. Overweight, overbearing, overconfident.

A door led them into a long, curved and carpeted concourse. Large windows gave on to stunning views of the illuminated field below. After a lengthy walk around the curve of the stadium, they arrived at the elaborate wood-panelled entries to the row of private suites. Opposite, a panorama of windows looked out on to the freeway, the lights of the afternoon traffic a dazzle of reflections in the wet. Li could see rain caught in the headlamps, spray rising like mist. Soong opened the door to his suite and they found themselves entering a large room with a conference table at its centre and a hot buffet counter along one side. Facing the entrance, sliding glass doors opened onto a single row of seats with a spectacular aerial view of the field. Overhead they heard a soft thunk that vibrated gently through the building. Soong looked at his watch. ‘We make good time,’ he said. ‘The roof just close.’

Eight sombre-looking middle-aged and elderly Chinese gentlemen in uniformly dark suits and dark hair, white shirts open at the neck, sat around the conference table, noisily slurping green tea from tall glasses. A fog of smoke filled the room from their cigarettes. Ashtrays were full. They had been here for some time. Wary, hooded eyes fixed on Li as Soong made the introductions. These were the leaders of the various business associations represented Chinese commercial interests in Houston. The tongs. And they were clearly ill at ease sitting down with agents of the INS and FBI and a police officer representing the country from which they had all, at one time or another, made illegal exits.

Soong, by contrast, had the appearance of a man supremely comfortable with his own status: as city councilman, director of the Houston-Hong Kong Bank, member of the Astros board. When Fuller, Hrycyk and Li were seated at the table, he offered them green tea from stainless steel flasks. Fuller and Hrycyk demurred. Li accepted. It was a long time since he had drunk green tea. There was a comfort in it. A taste of home. He lit a cigarette and, catching Hrycyk’s eye, reluctantly tossed him one. Fuller coughed ostentatiously into his hand.

‘Any chance we could open one of these windows?’ he said. ‘A guy could get lung cancer just breathing in this place.’

‘Sure,’ Soong said, nodding to one of the dark-suited gentlemen at the far end of the table who got up and slid open the door. As air rushed in, smoke got sucked out, drawn high up into the enclosed roof space of the stadium where it quickly dispersed.

Li said in Mandarin, ‘Whereabouts in Canton are you from, Mr. Soong?’

Soong scrutinised him quickly, searching for some ulterior motive in the question. ‘I’m afraid my putonghua is not very good, Mr. Li.’

‘Neither is my Cantonese.’

‘Then perhaps we should speak English,’ Soong said in English.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Hrycyk said. ‘Agent Fuller and myself can’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin.’

And Li glanced at the INS agent, momentarily discomposed. Hrycyk clearly knew more Chinese than he was prepared to admit.

Ostentatiously avoiding Li’s question, Soong folded his hands on the table in front of him and composed his brows into a frown of concern. ‘I have to tell you, gentlemen, that the people of Houston Chinatown are not happy today, after yesterday’s raids.’

‘We picked up more than sixty illegal immigrants, Councilman Soong,’ Fuller said evenly. ‘These people had no papers, no right to be here. They were breaking the law.’

‘Of course, Mistah Fullah,’ Soong said. ‘Chinese not above the law. We know this. But even illegal immigrants have rights in United States, yes?’

‘Citizens of the United States have rights,’ Fuller said. ‘Illegal immigrants do not.’

Soong said, ‘But many of these people escape from persecution in China. They have right to claim political asylum. They have right to bail, and legal representation.’

‘In my experience,’ Li said, fixing Soong with an unblinking gaze, ‘illegal emigrants from China come to America for economic, not political, reasons. Except, of course, for those who have broken the law and are escaping prosecution.’

Soong was unruffled. A slightly puzzled, almost amused, frown settled around his eyes. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, Mistah Li, but I understood that your own sister is seeking political asylum. From persecution under Chinese government’s one-child policy.’

Li felt a hot flush darken his cheeks and wondered how Soong knew about his sister and what had happened in court only a matter of hours before. But it made it almost impossible for him to argue his point. He caught Hrycyk smirking at him across the table.

Having dealt with Li, Soong turned his attentions back to Fuller. ‘It is important,’ he said, ‘that Chinese people have confidence in American system. There are many illegal immigrant in America, Mistah Fullah, but if Chinese people feel they are being…singled out…then this is ve-ery dangerous for good relations in community. ’

‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ Fuller asked sharply.

Soong was unruffled. ‘I mean, Mistah Fullah, that Chinese people want to be good American citizen. We want to make money, pursue American Dream. Not break the law. But, if always there is fear of raid on business and home, then bad Chinese element, they go underground. And that no good for you, or us.’ He paused to let his point sink in. ‘These people you arrest, you make gesture, you release them on bail, then people believe in American justice, people in community happy to help police again.’

Hrycyk blew a jet of smoke at the ceiling. ‘And I don’t suppose this anxiety to release all these illegals back on the street has anything to do with the money they owe their snakeheads? About three and a half million by my reckoning.’

‘We are anxious like you, Mistah Hrycyk, to put snakehead out of business,’ Soong said earnestly. ‘All gentlemen round this table have legitimate business. Banking, import-export, retail sale, restaurant, entertainment.’

Li scrutinised the faces of the commercial interests around the table. They were all deeply reserved, eyes dark and impenetrable. Whatever was going on behind them was well masked. And none of them looked as if they might be about to give voice to their anxiety. They seemed more than happy to let Soong do it for them.

Soong continued, ‘Illegal activity of snakehead bad for our business, scare people, depress economy. That why we wanna help. Stop street gangs, illegal gambling, protection racket. These things bad for everyone. But if people scared of police, then the gangs only have more power. You let people out on bail, like sister of Mistah Li, and people not so scared.’

‘I’m afraid we can’t do that, Mr. Soong,’ Fuller said. ‘We opposed the release of Li’s sister, but that was a court decision. We have no control over that.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The fact is, we’re holding all the illegal immigrants arrested yesterday in protective quarantine — for their safety, and ours.’

There was a long silence around the table. Soong leaned forward. ‘I do not understand, Mistah Fullah. Protective quarantine?’

Fuller said, ‘What I’m about to tell you, Councilman, must not leave this room. I know I’m taking a risk here, but you people need to know what’s happening. We’re going to need your full co-operation, not least because the Chinese community will be the first to suffer.’ The slurping of green tea had stopped. He had the full attention of everyone in the room. And he explained to them how for the last three months illegal Chinese immigrants crossing the border from Mexico had been injected with a flu virus which would be activated on consumption of a specific set of proteins, as yet unidentified. And that once activated, the virus was likely to spread like wildfire through the United States, leaving thousands of people dead in its wake. He said, ‘This thing gets out, and every Asian face in the United States is going to be a target for vigilante groups, whether they’re illegal immigrants or third-generation Vietnamese Americans.’

Outside, they heard the rain battering on the roof of the stadium. Sheet lightning flashed across the skyline of downtown Houston like bad stage lighting. The composure had left Soong’s face, along with all the colour.

The grey-painted stonework of the Catholic Annunciation Church on the corner of Texas and Crawford was stained dark by the rain. The intermittent rat-a-tat of a pneumatic drill echoed back at them off the walls of the buildings that crowded the intersection. Men in hard hats were digging up the road behind red and white striped drums, cutting through the remains of a railroad track that the city fathers had simply tarmacked over during a previous era of short-termism.

Fuller, Li and Hrycyk hurried through the downpour to the sprawling empty car park behind the stadium where Fuller had parked his Chrysler. Hrycyk pulled up the collar of his jacket and shouted above the noise of the drill, ‘American justice, my ass! Only two reasons those people in there want the immigrants back on the street. They want their pound of flesh.’

Li said, ‘You almost sound as if you cared.’

‘Sure I care,’ Hrycyk shouted. ‘I want to see the whole goddamned lot of them behind bars, or at the very least on a slow boat back to China. Community leaders! Those guys were all shuk foo, uncles in the tongs. You think they ain’t involved some way in bringing in the illegals?’ He snorted his derision. ‘If they ain’t, then you can bet your sweet life they’re exploiting the cheap labour these people represent. Lot of restaurants without waiters last night, shops without assistants today, sweatshops without machinists, whorehouses without whores.’ He gave Li a special leer.

Fuller said, ‘And what’s the other reason?’

Hrycyk said, ‘They don’t want us asking the immigrants a lot of questions. They might not know a lot, but I’m betting a good few of them have seen enough to incriminate more than one of the uncles in there in a whole range of illegal activities.’

‘What about Soong?’ Fuller asked.

‘He represents the Chinese community,’ Hrycyk said, no longer having to shout as the sound of the pneumatic drill receded. They splashed through the surface water gathered on the tarmac. ‘These people are the Chinese community — or, at least, the commercial face of it. He’s playing both sides, so that no matter what happens, he’s going to come out looking good. Typical goddamned politician!’

They jumped into Fuller’s car, shaking off the rain, and the windows quickly steamed up. Fuller turned to Li in the back seat. ‘What did you make of them, Li?’

Li thought for a moment. ‘I’ve seen them all before,’ he said, and in his mind’s eye he saw a parade of faces pass before him. Corrupt politicians and Party officials, businessmen on the take, civil servants with small salaries and big houses. ‘I’ve seen them on village councils and street committees, at Party gatherings and on public platforms. I’ve arrested more than a few of them in my time, and I’ve seen them in football stadiums with a gun pressed in the back of their head and the piss running down their legs.’ If not them, it was people just like them who had forced thousands of young men and women into prostitution and virtual slavery. The venom in his tone made Fuller and Hrycyk turn to look at him.

Hrycyk grinned. ‘I take it you weren’t impressed, then?’ Li didn’t think a response was required.

Fuller started up the engine of the Chrysler and said, ‘Washington’s diverting emergency funds to a massive operation along the Mexican border. They’re going to quadruple the number of Border Patrol guards and enlist the help of the local police departments. Every vehicle coming into the country’s going to be stopped, every truck searched with dogs and x-rays and carbon dioxide detectors.’ The windshield wipers scraped rhythmically back and forth, the vents blew out hot air to demist the car.

Hrycyk was unimpressed. ‘Now that’s what I’d call shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. We’ve been screaming for an increase in Border Patrol for years.’ He hissed his frustration. ‘Jesus, we been telling them long enough that people-smuggling was bigger than drugs. It’s the goddamn drug runners who’re bringing the people in, for Chrissake. They’re experts at moving stuff in and out of the country. They’ve been doing it for decades.’

‘Well, whoever’s bringing them in,’ Fuller said, ‘that’s who’s injecting them. And I don’t figure it’s any of the people we just sat around the table with. Whatever else they’re involved in, I don’t think it’s that. Did you see their faces when I told them what was going down?’

‘Sure didn’t look too happy,’ Hrycyk conceded.

Li stared through the rain running down his window and somehow couldn’t convince himself that the faces which had expressed such shock in Soong’s suite were anything more than masks, like those he had seen on trips to the Peking opera with his uncle.

II

From her window, Margaret could see the sky breaking up, shredded by light and patches of pale blue. Dark, tumescent clouds edged by fine patterns of gold, sunlight bursting through the gaps, delineated like rods of platinum striking toward the earth. Even in her anger, she could not help but admire its magnificence.

‘So I don’t have a leg to stand on?’ she barked into the phone. ‘He can just throw me out on the street because I changed the locks without his permission?’ She sucked in air through her teeth. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of charging me for that information.’ She gasped her disbelief at the response. ‘Well, thank you! Next time I need a lawyer, I’ll know who not to call.’ She slammed the receiver back in its cradle. ‘Damn you!’ she shouted at the ceiling, at the sunset, at the liquid gold reflections in every west-facing window in medicine city.

The phone rang and she snatched it back to her ear, surprised by the heat of her anger still retained in the plastic. It was Lucy. ‘I think you should know, Dr. Campbell, that they can hear you at the end of the corridor.’ And before Margaret had time to respond she added, ‘And you should also know that hell and damnation are very real to some of us.’

‘I know that, Lucy,’ Margaret said. ‘They’re very real to me, too. Was there any other reason you called?’

‘Mr. Li is here.’

Margaret was at the door even before Lucy had time to hang up. The afternoon had felt interminable. She had been unable to concentrate on the mountain of paperwork which had piled up in her in-tray during the last few days. There were two bodies in the morgue awaiting autopsy — a murder and a suspect road accident — and she had spent an hour phoning the hospitals trying to enlist pathologists to do post-mortems out of hours. She held the door open for Li and waited until he was in and she could close it behind her before she threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest. ‘My God, Li Yan, where have you been? Why are you never there when I need you?’

She felt his initial surprise, and then he held her at arm’s length, concerned. ‘Where’s Xiao Ling?’ he asked.

‘I had them set up a cot bed for her in an office downstairs. She’s sleeping.’

‘What’s wrong?’

And she felt her fear returning, and her hands started shaking as she took him step by step through the nightmare of their drive down from Huntsville. His face was carved from stone. Grim and thoughtful. ‘What did they want, Li Yan?’ she asked when she had finished. ‘One of them had a gun, I’m sure. Only, when I tried to confront them they just drove away. Xiao Ling looked liked she’d seen a ghost. Like she knew them. She called them something…’ She searched her memory for the words Xiao Ling had whispered. ‘Ma ja…something like that.’

‘Ma zhai?’ Li said.

‘That’s it. What does it mean?’

Li frowned. ‘It means “little horses”. It’s what they call members of the Chinese street gangs here. We picked up a couple when we raided that cellar in Chinatown. They’re the enforcers, the ones who beat and intimidate the illegal immigrants into coming up with the money for the snakeheads. And usually they are the ones sent to collect protection money from the shops and restaurants on the gang’s turf.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure Xiao Ling recognised them?’

‘She must have. How else would she have known what they were?’

He nodded.

‘So what did they want?’

Li said, ‘If they had wanted to hurt you, they would have.’ He took a moment or two to think about it. ‘So they must have wanted to scare you. Because that is what they did.’

‘Yeah, and they were pretty good at it, too.’ Her attempt at a smile fell short of its objective. Li drew her to him, brushing the hair from her face and softly kissing her forehead. She looked up into his face. ‘But why would they want to scare me?’

Li’s face coloured slightly. ‘Not you, Margaret,’ he said. ‘Xiao Ling.’ And he remembered Hrycyk’s words as they left Minute Maid Park just half an hour ago. I’m betting a good few of them have seen enough to incriminate more than one of the uncles in there in a whole range of illegal activities. She had worked in the Golden Mountain Club. She had been favoured by the bosses, she’d said. She must have seen things, heard things that someone was very anxious she did not convey to Li. ‘She must know something,’ he said, and he told Margaret about the club. ‘I’m going to take her to Washington tonight. She’s not safe here.’

Margaret felt a depression wash over her at the thought of Li going. Everything in her life seemed to be in a state of flux. And the residue of fear from the encounter with the ma zhai was still powerful enough to leave her feeling vulnerable, even raw.

‘When will you be back?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. My first responsibility is to Xiao Ling. Once she is safe in Georgetown with Meiping to look after her, then I will consider what my options are.’ But he knew they were limited. He could either throw himself on the mercy of his Embassy and ask to be allowed to take her back to China with him, or he could let her take her chances through the American court system while he continued to play an active part in the investigation. Neither option left much room for Margaret. He knew she was afraid. He looked at her. Fear made her seem smaller, more defenceless. It was only the power of her personality that ever made her seem bigger, stronger than she really was. But then he hardened his mind to her. It was only two nights ago that she had told him she thought they should keep things between them on a professional basis. ‘I must book a flight,’ he said. ‘Can I use your phone?’

She nodded, but before he could lift the receiver, it rang. Margaret answered it, and he saw immediately that something was wrong. The colour drained from her face leaving it chalk white, and her eyes were a pale, bloodless blue.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and hung up. He could see her hand trembling. She looked at him and he saw the cold, gold sunset reflected in her moist eyes. ‘Looks like I’ll be on that flight with you,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘That was a pathologist from AFIP. Steve’s virus has gone active.’

III

The Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner sat up off the freeway in a low, anonymous brick building opposite a Best Western Hotel. It was surrounded by neatly trimmed lawns, and clusters of shrubs and trees circled by carefully tended flower beds. The pathologists there still called it the Gillette building, even though it was some years since Gillette had been forced by animal rights protesters to abandon it. The laboratories where the company had tested its products had been perfect for the purposes of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, and the smoked, plexiglass windows and sophisticated electronic entry system had made it ideally secure.

It was dark when Margaret arrived. One of the pathologists from the team which had carried out the autopsies at Ellington Field led her up stairs to the second level and along anonymous hushed corridors to Steve’s office. Overhead fluorescents flickered on and threw a man’s life into sharp relief. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ the pathologist said. ‘Anything you need, holler. I’m just down the hall.’

Margaret stood blinking in the harsh light, depressed and alone. This was Steve’s space, where he spent so much of his life, and he was in every corner of it. But his physical absence was haunting.

Water sprinkled across a tiny arrangement of rocks on a desk pushed against the far wall, a soothing, peaceful sound in the stillness. Good feng shui, Margaret thought. Beside it, a favourite microscope, and a twelve-inch plastic model of the human body, torso and head, with removable internal organs brightly coloured. There were miniature cardboard drawers built one on the other, each carefully labelled. Tiny glass sample slides and piles of transparencies. On a shelf above, all his plaques and medals and framed certificates, a lemonade bottle with a DNA label on it. On the wall there was a painting of the astronauts who had achieved the first successful moon landing, smiling out stoically from their bulky NASA space suits. A bed pan in use as a flower pot made her smile. There were, she saw, a number of pot plants around the office, breathing fresh oxygen into the still air.

Above a cluttered bookshelf, a large sheet pinned to the wall was mounted with half a dozen photographs of Plasticine heads that Steve had moulded from the skulls of Jane and John Does in an attempt to identify them. A hobby, he had told her. Pinned to the drawer of a metal filing cabinet were photographs of his little girl, Danni, taken on a beach somewhere. Just three years old. Plump and smiling in her little red bathing costume, she was grinning at the camera and splashing the cold sea water. Margaret could almost hear her screams of delight. And then, in the corner, Steve’s computer, Danni’s smile saving his screen from burnout. Her soft, brown hair was tied up in a ribbon and her mouth half-open in a smile breaking into laughter. Margaret reached out and touched the face, but felt only the cold glass of the screen. Tears formed in her eyes and she blinked furiously to stop them. And through the blur, she hunted around in the drawers of his desk until she found his personal stereo and headset, and looked up to see the rows of audio tapes on the bookshelf above.

There were around two dozen of them, and she had no idea which ones to take. As she fumbled through them, reading the labels which he had so clearly marked in blue felt tip pen, she was almost overcome by a sense of desperation and failure. He should have had these two days ago, and now she wasn’t sure if he would ever hear them again. Although they were before his time, he appeared to have all The Beatles albums. There were tapes of opera arias, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Eric Clapton’s Pilgrim, The Eagles, Handel’s Water Music, Christina Aguilera. Like Steve himself, impossible to categorise. He was unique, and fleetingly she wondered if they might have had some kind of future together had they met some other time, some other place.

She decided to take all the tapes, and emptied a plastic carrier bag she found in one of the cupboards and swept the cassettes into it off the shelf.

She found the picture of Danni, in its little silver frame, tucked in beside the computer monitor where he could look at it any time he chose when he was working at the keyboard. It wasn’t really silver. It was soft, polished pewter, with art nouveau patterns worked into the border. Danni looked out from it with her trademark smile.

‘You’re a little late, aren’t you?’ Margaret swung around, startled, to find Dr. Ward standing in the doorway, his lips pinched and white, dark eyes filled with hostility. ‘I was expecting you two days ago.’

She shook her head and found it hard to defend herself. ‘I was called back to Houston.’

‘And did it not occur to you to make other arrangements?’

There hadn’t been time. She should have made time. She didn’t know what to say.

‘I’m going up there now.’

‘Don’t you want to know how he is?’

‘I’ll find out for myself.’ But her defiance wavered with uncertainly. It was more than three hours since she had received the phone call. She hesitated. ‘How is he?’

He said, ‘From the onset of first symptoms — sore throat, swollen glands, rising temperature — they’ve been pumping him full of antibiotics and rimantadine.’ Margaret had read about rimantadine, one of a new generation of antiviral drugs, reputed to be up to 70 percent effective in inhibiting secondary infection in cases of influenza A virus. ‘So far he seems to have responded well. But the prognosis is uncertain.’

Margaret lifted the bag of cassettes and slipped the pewter frame into her purse. ‘I’d better go, then.’

As she pushed past Ward in the doorway he said, ‘For the first twenty-four hours he was asking for you all the time. But he hasn’t mentioned you once today.’

Margaret stopped and looked into his face. Why did he want to hurt her? Because she knew about his human frailties, had touched his imperfection? Was it guilt, or anger, or just plain bigotry? ‘I guess he must have other things on his mind right now,’ she said, and hurried out.

Margaret pushed her rental car up to eighty on the freeway. It was a big car with soft suspension that rolled gently but too much on every bend in the road. She had passed Gaithersburg about twenty minutes earlier, and as she crested a rise, she could see the lights of Frederick spread out below her. Traffic was light, and another fifteen minutes took her onto the Seventh Street exit, to skirt the northwestern edge of the town to Fort Detrick.

During the forty minutes it had taken her to drive from the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner to her destination, she had made a conscious effort to blank out the reason for her trip. Her mind had wandered, and at one point she had figured that the original German settlers must have named the fort Dietrich as in Marlene, and that time had corrupted it to Detrick, the soft German ch that came from the back of the throat hardened to a ck from much further forward on the tongue. And she had almost laughed at herself for allowing such trivia to fill her thoughts. Except that laughter was impossible, and now that she saw the orange flashing lights at the gates of Fort Detrick on the road ahead of her, she felt a constriction in her chest and found it hard to breathe.

The duty doctor was a young woman, dark hair scraped back into a ponytail. She wore army fatigues and carried the rank of major. Her complexion was sallow, and she had large sad eyes that conveyed something of the apprehension she was doing her best to mask. She led Margaret briskly through the labyrinth of corridors to Ward 200. The air at the receiving desk was bristling with tension. Several medical staff looked at Margaret with a mix of curiosity and concern.

‘He’s not good,’ the doctor had said when she picked Margaret up at the front desk. ‘Temperature’s high, over a hundred and six, and there’s fluid in his lungs, intermittent vomiting. He swings between fever and lucidity without warning. His symptoms have developed incredibly fast.’

Margaret reached the door to the Slammer and peered through the window. There were two medical staff in Steve’s room, both wearing light blue protective suits, yellow cable corkscrewing behind them. She could barely see the figure lying on the bed. But she could see the IV feeding lactated Ringer’s solution into his arm to combat dehydration and a forest of wires leading off to the equipment monitoring his condition.

‘We’ve done everything we can to keep his temperature down, but it’s a losing battle,’ the doctor was saying. ‘And it’s impossible to tell at this stage if the rimantadine is having any effect. But he’s strong, you know; he could ride it out.’

Margaret wondered how much homework the doctor had done on the symptoms and progress of the Spanish flu. She remembered Markin’s words: It could reduce a strong, vigorous adult to a quivering wreck in a matter of hours. And then it occurred to her that when the prognosis is bleak and all hope gone, comfort is all that remains. It is the doctor’s final crutch with which to face the patient’s loved ones. Margaret searched the doctor’s face for some sign that she knew something she wasn’t telling. ‘What do you really think?’ she asked.

The doctor shrugged hopelessly. ‘I have no idea. The next few hours will be critical.’

Margaret said, ‘I have stuff for him. A picture of his little girl. Can I go in?’

The doctor closed the door behind her, and she found herself in a small changing room, shelves rising to the ceiling, cotton pants and shirts arranged in colours: white, khaki, blue, brown. Margaret laid her pale blue personal protective suit on the bench and undressed quickly. She slipped into a pair of white pants and shirt, fingers fumbling with the ties, before stepping into the protective suit and zipping herself in.

For a moment she was gripped by panic. Claustrophobia, fear. She turned and saw the plaque on the door, red lettering on white. EMERGENCY DOOR RELEASE. And almost gave in to an impulse to hit the release and get the hell out. She took a deep breath and heard it quivering in the sealed confines of her suit, and then saw her world turn opaque as it misted her visor. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself and then turned toward the outer shower. There was no need to decontaminate on the way in.

Clumsy in the suit, she stepped through a short, narrow corridor past the outer shower, closing the door behind her, and opened the heavy stainless steel door into the large chemical decontamination shower. On the inside of it, above a push-handle for opening, was a red warning sign: CLOSE OUTER SHOWER DOOR BEFORE OPENING INNER SHOWER DOOR. She pulled it closed behind her, and looked around the glistening walls of the stainless steel cubicle, pipes and shower heads, stop-cocks with knurled red turning handles. On the way out she would be bombarded in here by liquid chemicals designed to kill every living thing. Her breathing had become shallow and rapid, emphasised in her head by the loudness of it. She thumped the push-handle of the outer door with her open palms and it swung open into the anteroom with the white-painted brick walls that she had seen through the window from the outside. She swung the door shut again, and twisted awkwardly to find the nozzle at the back of her suit that fit the end of the yellow corkscrew cable that hung from the wall on her left, fumbling through her white latex gloves to make the connection. As it locked into place, the suit immediately began to fill with cool, filtered air, expanding around her, and she began to feel the panic diminishing. She could breathe again. The misting on her visor evaporated. She looked around and saw on the shelf behind her the rows of short green booties that the doctor had told her to put on. Moving with the awkward, slow-motion gait of a spaceman, she reached up and pulled down a pair of boots, checking them for size and then slipping her inflated feet inside.

She saw the doctor, through the glass, waving her to the door. She disconnected from the yellow cable and waddled over to where she could open the hatch of the ultraviolet chamber to retrieve the photograph, cassettes, and handful of books she had bought at the airport. Then she turned back toward Steve’s room. The nursing staff had spotted her by now, and one of them pointed to a yellow cable hanging free from the window wall on the far side of the bed. She hurried across the anteroom and into the special care room, rounding the bed and connecting to the cable before she turned to look at Steve where he lay in the bed. The air rushed back into her suit and blew down over her head.

Steve’s face was a strange putty colour, with incongruously red patches high on his cheeks and forehead. His mouth was open and his breathing shallow, eyes shut, sweat beading across his brow. One of the nurses laid a cool wet towel across his forehead, and his eyes flickered open. He inclined his head a little to his right and the dull glaze left his eyes, a lustre returning to them as he recognised Margaret behind the visor. He smiled, and reached out a hand to take hers, wires trailing in its wake.

‘Welcome back to Wally World,’ he said. ‘It’s a fun place to spend forty-eight hours.’ Phlegm caught in the back of his throat, throwing him into a convulsion of coughing that turned him scarlet and left him gasping for breath. When he had control again, he said, ‘I knew I should have paid those goddamned parking fines.’

Margaret squeezed his hand tightly. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it yesterday.’

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s twenty-four hours between friends? I knew if you couldn’t make it there’d be a good reason.’ He paused. ‘So what the hell was it?’ And then he broke into a grin. ‘Only kidding.’ He nodded toward the bag. ‘What have you got for me?’

She held it open for him to see. ‘Some books. Your personal stereo. And I didn’t know which tapes you’d want, so I just brought them all.’

He flicked his head toward a blue and silver portable stereo on a shelf on the opposite wall. ‘One of the nurses loaned me her ghetto-blaster. Jesus, she only had tapes of rap music. You know, that’s rap with a silent C. Go figure.’ He stopped to catch his breath. ‘Put Clapton on for me.’

Margaret glanced up at the nearest nurse who gave an imperceptible nod of her head. ‘Sure,’ she said, and rummaged through the cassettes until she found the Pilgrim tape. She crossed to the stereo, slipped in the tape and pushed the play button. The creamy sound of the Clapton guitar swooped and slid around the room, rising and falling in skin-tingling crescendos. And then his soft, tremulous voice praying for a healing rain to restore his soul again.

The tears ran hot and salty down Margaret’s cheeks as she turned to see that Steve had closed his eyes, dried lips moving, almost as if he were miming the words. She moved back to his bedside and took out the little pewter frame. ‘I brought Danni,’ she said.

His eyes opened again and she saw that they, too, were filled with tears. He looked at the photograph in her hand and reached out to take it from her. For a long time he looked at the little girl smiling at him. Then he looked at Margaret. ‘I wish I could have known her,’ he said.

‘You will,’ Margaret said softly, urgently, and with more conviction than she felt. ‘Be strong, Steve. You can make it through this.’

Steve clutched her hand again. ‘I want to see her,’ he said. ‘Even through the glass. They’ve got the address and phone number out there. Martha’s still down as my next of kin.’ And he was racked by another fit of coughing. And when he caught his breath again, he said, ‘Call her, Margaret. Please.’

IV

Li watched the traffic out on Connecticut Avenue drift past in the colourless sodium light and felt the deep rumble of the Washington metro through the floor of Charlie Chiang’s restaurant as a train pulled into the Van Ness metro station somewhere deep below them in the bowels of the city. His normal appetite for Charlie’s excellent cuisine was on hold, and he picked at the shredded beef and noodles in the rice bowl before him. Sitting opposite, in some deep, dark world of her own, Xiao Ling ate in small, almost frenetic, bursts. Plain boiled rice. She seemed to have only the most tenuous grasp of why her diet was being restricted, but did not seem to mind that she faced a lifetime of dull and simple food. It had never been a priority.

Li had asked her several times about the ma zhai, and in small, teasing fragments, she had confirmed what Margaret had told him. Yes, she thought she recognised them. No, she didn’t know their names. She was not sure if they worked at the Golden Mountain Club or not. Perhaps she had seen them at the massage parlour. She couldn’t remember. Li was certain that her memory lapses were selective and inspired by fear. Whatever else they had done, the ma zhai had been successful in scaring her into silence.

Finally, he reached across the table, removing her chopsticks from between her fingers and taking one of her hands in both of his. ‘Xiao Ling, we are in Washington now,’ he said with as much reassurance as he could muster. ‘You are safe here. Tell me about the Golden Mountain Club.’

She pulled her hand away and shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She took a long draught of Coke, one of a handful of soft drinks that had been identified as ‘safe’. She met his eye. ‘And if I told you, you wouldn’t want to hear it. Believe me.’

He knew that her recent past was like an open wound. It would take time to heal, time before he could touch her again and she could revisit that place without pain. He did not want to force the issue, particularly since she was going to have to face yet more trauma in the next hour. He had not yet had the courage to tell her. Some instinct told him that if she knew, nothing would persuade her to come home with him. To come face to face with the daughter she had abandoned.

He felt sick. It was not only Xiao Ling who faced the trauma of reunion. He had no idea how little Xinxin would react to seeing her mother again after two years. At first he had told her that her mother was ill. That she had been taken off to a hospital for treatment and then to a rest home in the country to recuperate. Initially, she had asked daily when her mother would be coming home. When would she be well again? Why couldn’t she go and see her? It had broken Li’s heart to lie to the child. It was such a breach of trust, and trust between child and adult was almost as important as love. Margaret’s presence had been an invaluable diversion, a substitute mother-figure, a loving presence to fill the black hole left by the disappearance of her real mother.

Gradually, Xinxin had asked after her less and less, and in time not at all. There was a knowingness about her whenever the subject came up, as if somehow she had guessed. And she had become adept at side-stepping the issue when she was asked by children at school or by their parents or her teachers. She had never once asked after her father, and Li had been taken aback once, when collecting her from kindergarten, to discover that she had told her teachers that she lived with her uncle and that both her parents were dead.

Li paid the check and told Xiao Ling it was time to go. He asked Charlie to call them a cab, and the driver took them south on Connecticut, crossing Rock Creek at the Taft Bridge, guarded on either side by impressive carved stone lions couchant, and then turning right past the seven-storey hotel that was now home to the Chinese Embassy. From their cab, the only identifiably Chinese feature was the red and gold emblem of the People’s Republic above blanked-out glass doors. Xiao Ling did not even notice it. Li craned to see if there was anyone he knew coming or going. But the tree-lined street was empty, dark and deserted in the quiet mid-evening of a Washington fall.

They crossed Rock Creek again, just past Sheridan Circle, and found themselves passing into the precincts of Georgetown. The driver made his way down through quiet shady streets onto O and turned west, passing a towering red-brick church that dominated the east end of the street. When Li had paid the driver and they were left standing on the sidewalk, Xiao Ling looked around her in amazement. Painted townhouses with lacquered doors and Georgian windows, fresh-painted wrought-iron gates and chintzy shutters, crooked stairways and narrow alleys overhung by red-leafed ivy. Alarm systems everywhere, prominent on walls and in gardens. Expensive cars lining both sides of the street. She turned to Li. ‘You live here?’ All she had seen of America were filthy cellars, overcrowded apartments, night clubs and massage parlours in Chinatown. ‘All on your own in a house this size?’

‘Not on my own,’ Li corrected her.

Xiao Ling frowned ‘What do you mean?’ Like Margaret before her, she was jumping to the wrong conclusion.

He took her by the arm and led her gently up the path to the front door. Through glass panels they could see that there was a light on in the downstairs hall. He unlocked the door, almost certain that she would be able to hear the banging of his heart against his ribs. ‘I have someone living in,’ he said. ‘A nanny.’ He closed the door behind them. ‘I needed someone to look after Xinxin.’

Almost before she could react, Xinxin appeared from the kitchen calling his name. She was barefoot in her nightie, dressed for bed. Her hair, released from its bunches, was hanging in untidy clumps. She stopped abruptly, the smile frozen on her face. Mother and daughter faced each other for the first time in nearly a third of her life.

Li tried to react normally. ‘Hi, little one,’ he said. ‘Guess who’s here to see you?’

Xinxin took a couple of hesitant steps toward them, the expression on her face unreadable. Then she burst into a run, past Li’s bike leaning against the bannister, and up the stairs stuffing her fist in her mouth to stop herself crying. They heard her footsteps on the polished floorboards, followed by the slamming of her bedroom door and a howl that was almost feral. Li felt as if someone had just driven six inches of cold steel into his chest. Then his face stung and burned white hot as Xiao Ling struck him with her open palm, a blow of such force that he stumbled and almost fell. Their eyes met for only a moment, and he felt their hatred sear his soul. A deep sob broke in her chest, and she ran down the hall, through the first door that she could find, passing a bewildered-looking Meiping. Meiping looked at Li, alarmed. ‘Is everything all right, Mr. Li?’

V

Margaret sat in someone’s office staring at the shadows on the walls. A lamp on the desk burned a pool of light into a white blotter. Beyond it, only the shapes and shadows of the monsters that stalked her imagination moved in the darkness. Her body felt as if someone had been pounding at it with clenched fists. Her head ached and her eyes stung.

Tracking down Steve’s ex-wife had not been as simple as she had expected. Martha and her new husband were out to dinner somewhere, leaving Danni in the care of a teenage babysitter who gave Margaret a cellphone number. But the cellphone was turned off, and Margaret had been forced to call the babysitter back for the name of the restaurant. The girl said she would have to call home and find out, and that she would call back. In spite of Margaret stressing the urgency of the situation, it was twenty minutes before the babysitter returned the call, saying that her home line had been engaged.

When, eventually, Margaret got through to the restaurant, it was the husband who came to the phone. The banker. He took some convincing that this was not one of Steve’s practical jokes. Apparently there had been several. Margaret inwardly cursed Steve and his juvenile sense of humour but still was unable to resist a tiny, sad smile. She assured the banker that this was no practical joke.

Then Martha had come to the phone, truculent and ready to be difficult. How serious could it be? Did Margaret know how long it would take her to get there from West Virginia? And it was far too late to be dragging a young child out of her bed.

Margaret, patience strained to the limit, had said simply, ‘Martha, it might be the last time Danni gets to see her father. There’s a very strong chance he could be dead by the time you get here.’

And the silence at the other end of the line had stretched out for an eternity. Finally, in a very small voice, Martha had said, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

There was a knock at the door and a wedge of yellow light fell in from the corridor as it opened. Margaret looked up expectantly and saw the silhouette of Felipe Mendez standing in the open doorway. He looked almost like a caricature of himself, tousled hair, creased and rumpled overcoat, a battered briefcase hanging from the end of his arm. She heard, rather than saw, his smile. ‘People who sit in the dark, my dear, are generally trying to hide from something,’ he said.

‘Life,’ Margaret said. ‘Or maybe it’s death.’

‘What’s the news?’

‘Temperature’s still creeping up. Lot of fluid in the lungs now. He’s very fevered. They’re pinning everything on this rimantadine.’

‘Ah, yes, the antiviral stuff. Unproven.’

Margaret nodded. He stepped in and closed the door behind him, placing his case on her desk and drawing up a chair. As he sat down, his face fell into the circle of reflected light from the desk and she saw him clearly for the first time. He looked tired, older somehow. She could smell the cigar smoke clinging to his clothes. He said, ‘I didn’t get word until I was back in Conroe. This is the earliest I could make it.’ He sighed. ‘At the very least, we might learn more about what it is that has triggered the virus.’

Margaret glanced at him. It was such a cold and unfeeling thing to say. And yet, what else did she expect? Steve meant nothing to Mendez. His concern was to try to find out what had made the virus active, in order that they could prevent it happening to thousands of others. Live or die, Steve gave him a case study.

‘The trouble is,’ Mendez said, ‘although we know exactly what he has eaten and drunk during his time in isolation, there were nearly forty-eight hours prior to that in which he could have consumed any number of things.’

‘Didn’t you ask him?’

‘Of course. The night he was admitted.’ He stroked his goatee thoughtfully. ‘He was very helpful. Went through everything he could remember.’ He exhaled deeply. ‘Unfortunately, the memory is a very unreliable thing. Often faulty. And as you know, my dear, science is only too exact. However, the more data we have to work with the more we can narrow our search.’ He laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘From a speck of dust in the Milky Way, perhaps to something the size of a pebble.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You look weary, my dear.’

‘I could sleep for a week — if my nightmares would only give me peace.’

‘Ah, yes, the waking kind. They’re the worst. You can’t just open your eyes and leave them behind.’

‘Can’t close your eyes and lose them either.’

A uniformed nurse knocked and opened the door. ‘That’s Major Cardiff’s wife and daughter at front reception,’ she said.

Margaret stood up immediately. ‘I’ll be right there.’ She looked sadly at Mendez. ‘He wanted to see his little girl, in case it would be for the last time.’

Margaret had been unaware of creating expectations in her mind, but Martha still took her by surprise. She was not what she had been expecting at all. A strikingly good-looking woman, tall and elegant, she had a thick mane of shiny, black hair. Her face was madeup for her night out, elaborate eye colour and a slash of red lipstick, although Margaret could see that she was pale now beneath the powder. She still wore her long red evening dress beneath a man’s overcoat that had been placed over her shoulders for warmth.

Danni, wrapped and swaddled in quilted anorak and scarf, stood clinging sleepily to her mother’s legs, tired and bewildered. The banker stood behind them, at a discreet distance, in dinner jacket and silk scarf. He was shorter than Steve, heavier, and losing his hair. And there was no magic in his eyes. Margaret fleetingly wondered what it was about him that had made Martha choose him over Steve. Could it really have been as simple and as mercenary as his bank balance? Perhaps it was the smell of money he brought home on his clothes, instead of the smell of death.

‘How is he?’ Martha asked.

‘Not good,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m not sure that you’ll be able to see him now, even through the glass.’

Martha frowned. ‘What do you mean, through the glass?’

‘He’s in isolation. Only properly protected medical staff are allowed any contact with him.’

Martha shook her head, as if this was something preposterous. ‘Well, what on earth’s wrong with him?’

‘He cut himself during autopsy and contracted a viral infection.’

Danni’s sleepy little voice interrupted the interrogation. ‘Mommy, where’s Daddy?’

‘In a minute, honey.’ There was irritation in Martha’s voice. She said to Margaret, ‘But you’re treating him, right? I mean, if it’s just a virus…’

‘AIDS is caused by a virus, Mrs. Muller.’

‘Yeah, and so’s the common cold. I’m not an idiot, Dr. Campbell. What kind of virus are we talking about here?’

An alarm sounded in the corridor, a repetitive monotone wail that sent shivers of chilling apprehension coursing through Margaret’s veins. She turned toward the uniformed nurse who had been standing by. ‘That’s the emergency alarm in two hundred,’ the nurse said in a hushed voice.

‘Oh, God,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Let us through. Fast.’

Martha snatched Danni into her arms. ‘I’ll wait here,’ the banker called after them, but no one was listening to him.

They followed the nurse through the maze of corridors, stopping only to let electronic doors swing open as the nurse waved her ID at the readers on the wall. The reception area was in a state of pandemonium. The alarm was louder here, almost deafening.

The doctor Margaret had spoken to earlier and another two nurses ran past them carrying blue suits into the changing room, making hurried preparations to enter the isolation ward.

Margaret ran to the window and peered through the glass. There were three space-suited nurses around Steve, who was thrashing around on the bed like a man possessed, crashing into the protective rails on either side, wires and drip-feed ripped free and trailing on the floor. His eyes seemed to have sunk into the back recesses of his head, his lips cracked and bleeding. Blood-filled vomit coursed from his mouth. And when it stopped he began screaming and yelling before yet more vomit choked off his screams. And all the time the siren bore into their brains like some maniac with a drill.

And then suddenly, and without warning, Steve stopped fighting it, falling back limp on the bed, three or four shuddering convulsions racking his body, before he lay quite still, head turned toward the door, eyes wide and staring. Margaret knew his heart had simply stopped. His lungs had filled with fluid and blood, starving his brain of oxygen. The billions of replicated viral particles in his blood had finally infested and destroyed his essential organs. His nightmare was over. Theirs had just begun.

A scream exploded in Margaret’s right ear, and she turned to see the terror on little Danni’s face. Hoisted in her mother’s arms she had seen it all through the glass. An unspeakable horror, and Margaret knew that it would live with her all her days. The tiny face which had smiled out from the pewter frame, from her father’s computer screen, from the snapshots pinned to his filing cabinet, was distorted out of all recognition as she drew another deep, quivering breath and screamed again for her lost daddy.

VI

The lights of the Capitol reflected deeply in the dark, silently shifting mass of the Tidal Basin. Margaret stood on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, beneath its towering marble, and looked directly north, beyond the Ellipse, and the South Lawn of the White House to the floodlit Truman Balcony with its distinctive arc of columns. She was not quite sure why she had come here. On a trip to Washington as a schoolgirl, she had been overawed by the scale and magnificence of the Jefferson Memorial. Even more than the commanding figure of Lincoln, gazing from his vast seat across the Reflecting Pool to the needle of the Washington Monument, Jefferson had seemed strong and eternal. Perhaps, she thought, she had returned all these years later in an attempt to rediscover her faith. Not in God, but in Man.

Officially, the memorial was closed. But she had simply abandoned her car in the park and walked across the lawns in the dark, climbing the fence and dropping into the well of the monument, circling it through the trees until she found herself standing on the front steps gazing across the water toward the home of the most powerful man on earth. Away to the right, light reflected off the white stone of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where they printed the paper money that made the world go round. And then there was the Agricultural Department on Fourteenth Street and other buildings that housed some of the primary Cabinet departments. Beyond them, although she could not see it from here, lay Capitol Hill. She was surrounded by all the great seats of government, of power and influence. All as defenceless as man himself against an organism so small it could not be seen with the naked eye. All their task forces and budgets and people, powerless to prevent a simple virus from destroying the life of one man and leaving a little girl fatherless. Bleakly, Margaret wondered how many more lives would be lost before this thing was over. How many more children would be left fatherless, motherless. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions. For the first time since the USAMRIID briefing she knew just what devastation they really faced. She had seen it first hand. And even greater than her grief was her fear.

She turned and walked slowly up the steps, through the pillars, into the vast circular hall at its heart. In the centre of it stood the massive bronze figure of Thomas Jefferson, a great shadow in the dark, reflected light from beyond casting his shadow in several directions at once across the polished marble floor. Pale light from streetlamps in the park slanted in between the pillars, lighting his words carved in the wall. We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Margaret could almost hear them spoken. She wondered what had happened to poor Steve’s inalienable rights. Life, liberty, happiness — all stolen away by a virus engineered by madmen. She took a deep breath, steeling herself for the fight against fear. Somehow these people had to be stopped.