Biowar (7 page)

“Of me?”

“Hell no—you’d break the lens.”

“Go ahead then.”

Gorman scooped up the cat and brought him into the kitchen, looking for food. Karr took out a small digital camera, sliding it into the base of his satellite phone. He walked to the next room, which was a library, and began scanning the shelves with the camera. The books were mostly related to science and medicine, though several shelves were devoted to period homes and furniture. When he was done he unhooked the camera and spoke to Rockman over the phone.

“You got it all?” Karr asked.

“Lot of books,” said Rockman.

“I’m just doing what I’m told. Gonna have to ship you the lone computer. Disk was scrubbed pretty well.”

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he backed up onto a CD or something.”

“Not in the inventory that I saw,” said Karr.

“Look at the music collection. Maybe he stuck it in there, you know, hiding it kinda.”

“You see that on
NYPD Blue?”

“Murder She Wrote,”
said Rockman. “We’ll crack this case.” His tone changed, becoming more serious. “We should have data from his work computers soon. We’ll buzz you if it’s important.”

Karr sat down in one of the leather club chairs at the side of the room. He settled his hiking boots on the floor. The carpet was thick and, though Tommy wasn’t an expert, looked handwoven and very expensive. It was the sort of thing that would go for thousands, probably.

He looked at the furniture and furnishings a little more carefully. There were a lot of antiques in solid, showroom shape.

“So you think this murder is related to his work?” Karr asked Gorman when the investigator returned.

The BCI man gave him a blank stare.

“Angry student or something?”

Another blank stare.

“Robbery? Guy comes here; he turns the tables, kills him, then panics and runs off?”

Gorman finally blinked. “I doubt that. There’s no sign of panic. Everything except the body is perfectly in place. There was even food for the cat.”

“What about the guy who found him?”

“Not a suspect,” said Gorman.

“No?” asked Karr.

“FBI ruled him out. Just some friend who came up on a lark. Works for the government. They didn’t say who, but I thought CDC for some reason.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think CDC,” said Karr, realizing that Gorman was talking about Dean. Karr had been instructed not to lie—but also to avoid stating Dean’s affiliation, if at all possible. It was the sort of bureaucratic reflex, bordering on paranoia, that made little sense to the op—they’d told the state police that Karr was from the NSA, after all, even if they clouded the affiliation by claiming he was working for the CDC—but obviously the people who were paid to worry about the agency’s public image had thrashed it all out. Karr was just here to follow orders.

Gorman gave him a funny look.

“They don’t tell me much,” claimed Karr. “Except where to go.” He laughed and propped his elbow against the arm of the chair and leaned his head on his hand. The BCI investigator was easy to read—he didn’t like Tommy and probably resented the fact that he was parachuting in to work on his case.

“The FBI working hard on this?” Karr asked.

“Hard as they usually do.”

Gorman apparently didn’t mean it as a joke. Before Karr could ask anything else, his phone buzzed.

“Hey,” said Karr, pulling up the antenna.

“Mr. Rubens wants you to go to Bangkok,” said Telach. “You found that Web page with Bangkok’s time equivalents.”

“And?”

“There were two E-mails from the missing lab assistant on the lab system Lia compromised that we traced to Thailand,” said Telach. “One of them has a date in it. Five days ago.”

“Okay.”

“D. T. Pound. He’s twenty-two years old,” said Telach. “Text of the E-mails is minimal. Just describes the weather. We’re getting pictures, tracing his credit cards—but we’re working on the theory that he’s over there in Thailand and Kegan went to see him. That jibes with your Internet pages.”

“This sounds suspiciously like a wild-goose chase, Marie.” Karr looked up at Gorman, who was pretending not to eavesdrop.

“Maybe. Go to Albany Airport. There’ll be a ticket waiting”

“Aw, come on.”

“Tommy—”

“Can I get some lunch first?”

“No. We may be under a time constraint here. We just don’t know what’s going on.”

“You’re out of your mind, Marie.”

“Not my mind. Mr. Rubens’.”

“You’re out of his mind, too.”

9

By the time Charles Dean got off the 767 at Heathrow Airport, he had received the equivalent of an upper-level biology survey course on microbes and related phenomena. Armed with a mini-DVD player, he had worked his way through a collection of lectures that began by explaining the difference between viruses and bacteria. Viruses consisted of RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein shell and required a host cell to replicate; bacteria (the plural of bacterium) were single-cell microorganisms, much larger than viruses but in general able to replicate on their own. From there the lectures had proceeded to explain some of the various subtypes and how they caused disease; the final series demonstrated the rudiments of their replication and manipulation in the laboratory.

In sum, Dean learned enough to know that he would never in a million years fool anyone in the field.

But if they wanted an expert, they would have sent a scientist. Rubens wanted someone who could handle a difficult situation if things got complicated. And he wanted someone who knew Keys.

Did he know him, though?

He knew a lot of facts—Kegan was a great pool player, loved old houses, and at a shade past fifty could still play a hard game of hoops. He’d beaten back cancer and jogged about three miles a day. He could make women fall in love with him very easily, but inevitably they fell out of love just as fast.

He’d been a decent basketball player, a better outfielder, and a halfback so quick he might have tried for a sports scholarship if he hadn’t broken his ankle in his senior year.

But what did he really know about Kegan?

Kegan’s mother and father had died when he was in college. They were poor people, even poorer than Dean’s family. Kegan had had to work his way through school, even though he’d gotten a scholarship that covered his tuition.

What did he
really
know?

Kegan had been altruistic enough as a young man to volunteer to work for the World Health Organization. He’d been sent to Southeast Asia—Myanmar, then known as Burma. He’d returned older and wiser, but no less altruistic.

What did he really know?

That James Kegan wasn’t a murderer.

What did he really know?

That once his good friend had had a hell of a jump shot.

The long flight had left Dean’s knees stiff and he had a kink in his back. He felt creaky all of a sudden, making his way into the terminal like an old man.

Dean adjusted his glasses—he had not yet been implanted with the Desk Three com system and wasn’t sure he wanted to be. The glasses contained a tiny speaker that focused sound waves so that only he could hear them. There was a microphone near the nose bridge. The glasses connected to a transmission and antenna system in his belt, which was studded with metal.

“So I’m here,” he told the Art Room.

“Go through Customs like everyone else,” said Rockman. “Take a taxi to the Renaissance Hotel near Covent Garden. Lia will trail you there.”

Dean followed a pair of college girls through the terminal building to the long hall in the basement where his luggage waited. He picked up the big brown bag and snapped out the handle to wheel it along. The suitcase beeped at him, telling him that while it had been prodded and dropped and kicked—a large black smudge on the side near the base attested to this rough handling—it had not been opened or tampered with.

Dean pulled it along through the hall to the customs area, where he took a spot at the end of the snaking line. Dean surveyed the crowd, casing it to see if he had been followed. In his brief stint with the NSA he’d learned that paranoia could be extremely healthy, but he’d also learned that picking a really good trail team out in a crowded place could be next to impossible.

If he was being followed, it was at least being done by pros.

“Let’s move along now,” said a female customs agent at the front, opening a new station. Dean pulled his luggage up and took out his passport, which was in his name. He handed it and the questionnaire to the clerk.

“Business or pleasure?”

“I’m here for a scientific conference,” said Dean. “But I do hope to get a little pleasure in.”

“Science, really?” said the woman. “What of?”

“Biology,” said Dean. “Bacteria and viruses.”

“I see.” The woman looked as if she might start quizzing him, and Dean wondered about the timing of her arrival—she’d opened up a station just as he got to the head of the line. Had she been sent by Desk Three to test him?

Or was something else going on?

“Yeah,” said Dean, noncommittally.

“Thick glasses,” said the clerk.

“Trifocals,” said Dean. He smiled apologetically and held them as if adjusting his vision. “Getting old.”

She took his passport and looked at it under a special lamp to make sure it was authentic—or in this case, an authentic forgery. The two college girls he’d followed earlier were now at the station on his left. One made a joke when the customs agent asked why they had come, and they were given a lecture about the employment situation in Great Britain. (Not pretty, according to the agent, who noted that Her Majesty’s government could not have illegal workers “mucking about” and taking jobs from legitimate citizens.)

“That way,” said Dean’s customs agent, clearing him through.

Lia stood next to the line for the ATM, watching the escalator up from the lower level. British intelligence had an operation going to track the arriving scientists—she’d seen them pick up on a pair of Russians earlier, tagging their luggage with a small locator bug and then following them onto the airport shuttle into the city. For some reason they hadn’t tagged Dean—whether because he was American or hadn’t been listed on the original list of conference attendees wasn’t clear.

Lia had one of the ops in sight. They were easy to spot, lacking luggage and knowing far too much about where they were. The man made no move as Dean walked past, nor did he touch his ear to use his radio.

“You’re going to lose Dean,” warned Rockman in her ear.

“That’ll be the day,” she said, circling around the escalator. She paused to adjust her shoulder bag, moving the strap button so it focused on a brunette near the coffee seller.

“What’s Sylvia doing here?” said Rockman.

“My point exactly,” said Lia.

Sylvia Reynolds was a former CIA officer who did contract work for the FBI and occasionally British MI-6 and MI-5, respectively the external and internal intelligence organizations of the United Kingdom. Lia watched as Sylvia paid for her coffee, then began walking toward the terminal entrance. It wasn’t obvious that she was following Dean, which of course made Lia suspect immediately that she was. Dean had found his way to the taxi queue and was standing about twelve fares back.

“Tell him to go downstairs and take the express,” said Lia. “Let’s make sure she’s on him.”

“Good idea,” said Rockman.

Lia went back inside, spotting a pair of Russian SVR officers coming through the door lugging their bags. There were going to be more spies in London than scientists.

The Russian foreign service agents were veteran holdovers from the days their spy agency was known as the KGB. Lia put her hand to her face as she went through the door, nearly bowling over a bleary-eyed American tourist who was carrying a baby in a backpack. Dean, meanwhile, had given up on the taxi line and was waiting for an elevator to the basement level, where he could take the shuttle to London.

Lia circled through the large shop area, trying to avoid giving the airport security cameras a good shot at her face. Sylvia Reynolds had followed Dean to the elevator; Lia saw her get in the car with him.

“He know she’s following him?” Lia asked.

“We didn’t tell him.”

“Why the hell not?”

“He’ll be more natural if he doesn’t have to act natural.”

Typical Art Room logic, thought Lia.

She went down the stairway, coming out as Dean walked through the hallway into the shuttle tunnel. Tickets were sold at a machine on the wall, but as she approached it, Rockman warned her that the train was arriving. Lia veered toward the tunnel, deciding she’d have to buy it on board.

The train came in just as she reached the platform. She slipped into the last car, holding her carry-on luggage and watching through the glass as Reynolds found a seat in the next car up. She couldn’t see Dean, but Rockman told her he was in the next car as well. The com system blanked as the train started; it was supposed to provide complete coverage to a depth equal to two basement levels, but there was a gap between supposed-to and reality.

Lia took out her handheld and clicked on the transmission detector mode; there were no signals being sent in her car. She had started to get up to check the next car when Rockman came back on the line.

“I’m going up to the next car,” she told him.

“Sylvia may recognize you,” he said. “Hang back.”

“She’ll see me sooner or later. Did you figure out who she’s working for?”

“It’s not really a big deal at this point.”

“You don’t think she’s his contact?”

Obviously the idea hadn’t occurred to them, because there was a long pause. Telach came back on the line.

“We may be able to psych it out on this end without announcing that you’re there,” she said. “There’s no reason to think she’s involved. The contact will come at the conference.”

“Why?”

“Because we haven’t answered the E-mails; we just registered him as Kegan’s last-minute replacement.”

“Like she wouldn’t have accessed the information already?”