Germ

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