Germ

'I guess we're quarantined, but it's more like they don't know what to do with us. They let me call my mom. She had a . . . an episode, but the home health nurse got there pretty quickly. She's in their facility now.'

She drew closer, and her voice grew soft. 'Do you remember anything? Tate meeting us in the jungle? The U.S. soldiers intercepting his truck outside Pedro Juan Caballero? Getting evacced here?'

He tried to remember. 'Vaguely . . . I guess.'

She bit her lip. 'Do you remember what happened to Stephen?'

He closed his eyes. He didn't move for a long time. Then a tear broke free and rolled down his cheek. Without looking at her, he said, 'He saved my life.'

'Both our lives. Many lives. I've had time here to imagine what would have happened if Litt escaped. He would have set up shop somewhere else and terrorized the world with his designer virus. That's what they're calling it, a designer virus, like it was something cool.'

'A lot of people died to stop him. Your partner too.'

'I wish I could see Goody's wife, the boys. They need to know he died heroically.'

'They haven't said when we can leave?'

The door pushed open, letting in a sigh of antisepticized air. With it came an old man, leaning heavily on a cane, with the lax shoulders of a weary traveler. He paused, holding the door, then let it close. Allen felt he'd seen the man before but could not place him.

Julia had one hand resting on Allen's head. He felt it stiffen.

'I should throw you out this window,' she said.

'I have no doubt you could, Ms. Matheson.' His smile faltered. 'I'm sorry for your losses. Both of you.'

Allen caught her eye. 'I don't understand.'

'This is Kendrick Reynolds,' she said, keeping a level gaze on the old man. 'He promised to help, then he tried to incinerate us with the rest of his problem.'

Reynolds shuffled to the end of the bed and rested his long, wrinkled hands over the tubular footboard. He said, 'I did what I had to do. There was no time to extricate you and Dr. Parker and his brother.'

'So he bombed the base,' she continued, talking to Allen, glaring at Reynolds. 'With us in it.'

'We prevented a holocaust, Ms. Matheson.'

'You didn't prevent anything. Without us, the antidote would have been destroyed too—the antidote that has saved, what, ten thousand people?'

'Most of them, yes. But if we hadn't eliminated Litt and his virus, we would be living in a very different world right now, one too terrible to think about.'

'It was your mess to start with, your Frankenstein monster that got out of hand.'

'I accept that indictment,' he said with a slight bow of his head. 'I can't begin to tell you the kind of second- guessing I've put myself through lately.'

'How terrible for you.'

Allen felt the coiled tension in Julia's hand. Afraid she might make good on her threat to toss the old guy through the window, he asked, 'Why are you here?'

'I stopped by earlier, Dr. Parker, but you were not up to receiving visitors, and Ms. Matheson was busy giving some army officials a hard time.'

Allen glanced at her.

'They've been trying to 'debrief me since we arrived,' she explained.

'And she's been trying to debrief them,'' Kendrick said.

'So now they send in the big guns, is that it?'

He sighed. 'I need to know only one thing,' he told her. 'Can you end it here?'

She thought for a moment. 'Did you wipe out the virus?'

'We believe so. The compound was completely incinerated—the underground base, the surface, the surrounding areas. We bombed well into the night. Our on-site teams have found no trace of virus or any other biochemical agents. Are you all right?'

Allen was squeezing his eyes shut again, this time tightly. Julia answered for him.

'We had to leave Stephen's body there.'

'I know. You told Commander Bransford in Paraguay. I am sorry.' He looked at his hands, then again at Julia and Allen. 'This country owes you its gratitude. Unfortunately, it cannot publicly recognize that debt. We are prepared, however, to pretend none of this ever happened.' His eyes locked on hers. 'You understand that you must never speak of Karl Litt or Ebola Kugel or the United States' alleged involvement in biological weapons? Where is your laptop, please?'

'It was destroyed on Litt's compound.'

Kendrick Reynolds simply stared.

Julia added, 'You understand that if anything happens to me or Allen, someone might find it?'

After a moment, Reynolds tilted his head, accepting the arrangement. 'When you are ready, you will be given a ticket to Atlanta on a commercial airline.'

'I'll wait for Dr. Parker.'

'As I said, when you are ready. Dr. Parker, I understand you may be here for another few weeks. We cannot have you treated in a private hospital.' He stepped away from the bed. At the door, he turned back. 'In my last conversation with him, Karl Litt said something that made me take a closer look at three records on his list of targets.'

Julia smiled. 'Everyone loves the First Family.'

He bowed his head to her. Then he slipped out.

Julia offered Allen a sideways smile. 'We're going home.'

Allen didn't answer. He was somewhere else.

'What is it?' she asked.

'I don't know. When Stephen gave up on medicine, my family didn't understand. I didn't understand. The way we were raised, there was nothing else. It felt like he was turning his back on his family, his destiny.' He shook his head. 'But I see now that he had found his destiny. He chose to look outside my parents' narrow vision for his life. He saw a world that was bigger than himself and our family. He saw something other than patients who could provide him with the wealth and prestige our family expected. He saw people.'

His voice broke on the last word. He turned his face away, covered it with one hand. He felt Julia's hand on his shoulder, rubbing, comforting.

After a long moment, he continued. 'When I was there, in that room in Litt's base . . . when I was . . . dying, I thought about the names we found on your computer, the data Vero had smuggled out. Ten thousand names. Ten thousand people. I thought about their lives and the people who loved them, who tucked them in at night or called them during the day just to hear their voices. I wondered if they were scared the way I was. If they were in pain. I felt for them—not for me, for them. For the first time, I understood what had gotten into Stephen. What he did for people—from that little cabin behind the church, with his crummy car—what he did was so much grander than what I did.'

'We need doctors, Allen. It's a noble profession.'

'Only when your heart's in the right place. Stephen understood that. He went off and did what he should have done for the right reason, not what he could have done for the wrong reason.'

He turned and found her eyes, relieved. She got it. He was making sense.

'Now he's gone,' he said. 'And I never got the chance to tell him.' He paused. 'I can't help but believe the wrong brother died.'

'That kind of thinking will drive you crazy.'

He nodded.

'I mean it. Stephen told me what happened, about killing that man in the bar. He said he felt the same way you do now, that the wrong man had died. Allen, that's not for us to decide. We can only do the best we can with the understanding we have.'

Allen smiled. 'Didn't I say you were pretty and smart?'

'Something like that.'