Germ

unusually high concentration of glycoprotein that shields it from the immune system. That means there are no vaccines and no cures.'

'If you get it, you die?'

'Not necessarily. Some victims survive. No one knows why.'

'But that's changing,' said Stephen. 'Allen looked into it last night. Ebola is getting worse, more virulent, as if someone is improving its effectiveness.'

Julia stared at Stephen, then turned to Allen for confirmation.

'It's true,' he said. 'The first Marburg outbreak had a 28 percent mortality rate. Ten years later, the Ebola- Zaire's mortality was up to 75 percent. In 2001, it hit 90 percent. It's now one of the most lethal viruses ever known.'

'As if that weren't enough,' added Stephen, 'transmission of the disease is getting more volatile. Earlier strains showed no signs of spreading through the air. Direct transmission was by contact with blood and other secretions containing high titers of virus. Then, about ten years ago, the Army reported that healthy monkeys caged across the room from monkeys with Ebola got infected. The Ebola had become airborne. Was this a natural evolution of the virus?' His bushy eyebrows shot up. 'Or the fruition of someone's efforts to make the disease more deadly?'

Julia shook her head. 'But why? I mean, it doesn't make sense.'

'It makes perfect sense,' said Allen. 'Think about it. A disease with no known cure. No way to vaccinate against it. The person who controls such a thing could hold the world hostage. Symptoms of Ebola exhibit quickly, often just a few hours after infection. And it kills quickly, usually within a couple weeks. The short incubation means a tight quarantine can keep it from spreading out of control. But if someone were to systematically infect pockets of the population, he could wipe out whole societies without losing much control over its spread.'

The table fell silent for a full minute. Julia stared down at her half-eaten sandwich, watching the tuna salad ooze from the croissant. She couldn't grasp the full implications of Allen's words; her mind would not project itself past the popular horror stories of Ebola's effects on the human body. But she did know that if people had created this disease, they would kill to keep it secret.

In fact, she thought, such people would be highly proficient at killing.

thirty-seven

He was almost there. Ten minutes, according to the rental car's GPS. Seven minutes, the way he was driving. He anticipated finding three targets. He'd try to take one alive, use him or her to retrieve his employer's property. He had never failed an assignment, and he didn't want to start now. Truth was, however, he didn't care too much about the property . . . or his employer. He did care about the targets.

He cared a lot about them.

Tension in his face. In the muscles of his forearms and hands. Bad for battle.

He focused on the sound of the radio coming through the car's cheap speakers: a country melody . . . heavy metal . . . some loudmouth ranting about a local politician's drive to . . . classical music—Vivaldi, the driver decided. The Red Priest. And what had that politician been up to? He wanted to raise the cost of parking meters—yeah, that was it. The radio jumped to the next station on the dial. A commercial for 'champagne homes on a beer budget . . .'

He felt calmer.

Champagne homes on a beer budget. Who thought up these things? His foot edged down on the accelerator, and he shot through a light just as it turned red.

GPS said eight minutes. He said five.

thirty-eight

'There's one more thing that lends credibility to what

your partner told me,' Allen said, poking at the fries on his plate. 'No one has been able to find where Ebola resides when it is not in monkeys or humans. It disappears for years at a time, but no reservoir has been found, despite testing thousands of animals and insects.' He gave her a sideways glance, as if to say,

Are you following?

'You're suggesting it can't be found in nature because it's not there.'

'Pretty and smart,' he said with a wink at Stephen. 'The reservoir is actually a test tube in some mad scientist's lab. He keeps it there until it's time for another field test. Then back into nature it goes so he can watch what happens.'

'Wait a minute,' Julia said. 'Isn't it possible that a virus can mutate itself in the ways you've described, for no other reason than its own survival?'

'Certainly.'

'And scientists still might find a nonhuman reservoir in nature and figure out natural reasons for those other odd things about Ebola, right?'

'It's possible.'

'I mean, you are viewing the evidence through the lens of suspicion.'

'And in the context of a murderous cover-up,' he agreed.

'Why wouldn't somebody have blown the top off this years ago?'

'Julia, I can only guess.' Allen snatched a fry off her plate, bit it in two, and flicked the remainder at Stephen. 'Maybe these guys are good at hiding. If they have been introducing Ebola into the population every time they needed to test it, they've been smart about it; probably giving it to monkeys first, or even infecting humans through monkeys, to throw investigators off the trail. In Africa they found the perfect red herring: poor countries where shoddy communication, transportation, and medical expertise combine with rough terrain and a staggering number of possible insect and animal vectors to hinder ecological investigations and throw a cloud of mystique over the whole puzzle. It is the Dark Continent.'

'You're forgetting the more probable reason,' said Stephen. 'Look at the situation we're in. We may or may not know something, yet somebody is going all out to silence us. How do we know that other people, people before us, haven't tried to blow the top off, only to be stopped? By all indications, we're messing with powerful people.'

They sat quietly for a while, looking at their partially eaten lunches, at each other, but not really at anything. The shadow under their umbrella seemed to have darkened.

'Okay,' Julia said, pushing away her plate. 'Let's say someone is making Ebola. Unless they're doing something more, I can't see—'

'They are,' Allen said. 'I think they are. The way your partner put it was—and I'm not trying to embellish or interpret—'bio . . . attack . . . filovirus . . .' I asked when. He said, 'Already happening.''

Julia said, ''Under way'? That's what he said.'

'We've got to do something,' Stephen said, leaning in.

'I agree,' she said. 'But what?'

Allen said, 'The sooner this breaks open, the sooner the heat's off us.'

'Any ideas?'

'The media. Newspapers, television. It'll make headlines for a year.'

'Allen, it's not going to happen,' Stephen said with a dismissive wave of his hand. His frustrated tone told Julia the two had already covered this ground. 'There's not a news organization in the country that'll touch this story without proof.'

'Look!' Allen leaned on his elbows over the table, bringing his face to within a foot of Stephen's.

The wooden pole of the umbrella perfectly separated their firm profiles. The image reminded Julia of a billboard she'd seen outside Atlantic City for what promoters billed 'the fight of the century.' The Parkers made credible stand-ins for the boxers: handsome Allen would be the media darling—witty, enchanting, nimble of tongue and foot. But hulking Stephen would be the hands-down favorite, a monolith of unyielding muscle. She suspected that their discord ran deeper than the disagreement at hand.

'I know people, media heavyweights, who could help,' Allen continued.

'You could be joined at the hip to Katie Couric—it's not gonna matter.'