of Ebola.'
'And that someone's intentionally infecting people,' Stephen said.
'There were two video clips,' Julia said, thinking. 'One appeared to be of a man in Africa being infected with Ebola. I'm making lots of assumptions, I know. The second was not action-oriented and was in a different setting. There's nothing that obviously connects the two, but they must be related somehow.'
'Somehow,' Allen repeated. He leaned back in the passenger's seat, fishing a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket. He examined the package, saw it was empty, and tossed it over his shoulder onto the dash.
Julia's eyebrows furled together. If Vero had intended to expose the true, malicious origin of Ebola, why wasn't the evidence on the memory chip? What had he set out to prove?
She had been staring at the computer, without really seeing it, when two white-lettered words appeared on the dark screen:
ERSTE ANGRIFF
'Who's that?' Stephen asked.
Allen said, 'I don't think it's a who.
'First battle,' Stephen whispered.
They waited for more . . .
Then it dawned on her. The self-starting video sequences had fooled her into regarding Vero's memory chip as a DVD, which would naturally unravel linearly to the end. But it wasn't. It was a computer data chip with files that had to be opened. The video clips were nothing more than digital multimedia files, like word processing documents and spreadsheets. Whatever this was, it wasn't self-opening.
Julia moved the cursor over the words, and the little arrow turned into a pointing hand. 'It's hypertext,' she said. 'It's linked to some other file.'
She clicked on the words. Instantly a list of names began scrolling past, lightning fast. She tapped a key, and the list froze.
'Anthony Petucci,' she said, pointing. 'The actor?'
Stephen bent near to read aloud. 'Howard Melton. Isn't he a senator? Janet Plenum, governor of Oregon.'
'Lew Darabont,' Allen said. 'I love his movies.'
Julia said, 'Hasn't he directed something like four or five of the top ten films of all time?'
She moved the cursor over one of the names. Again it turned into a pointing hand. 'They're linked too.' She tapped the cursor button.
New words filled the screen:
Richard Kennedy
SSN: 987-65-4320 b. 04/21/55
Occupation: CEO, Nanotech Software, Inc.
Home Address:
1910 Whitehorn Drive
San Francisco, CA 94120
<HIDDEN FIELDS FOLLOW—DO NOT MERGE>
Appendectomy, 11/02/92
Mount Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles
Control Code: 469878884-L
'He's one of the richest men in America,' Allen said.
'Appendectomy?' Stephen said. 'What kind of database is this?'
'A big one,' Julia said, bringing the screen back to the list of names. She scrolled down a few screens. Tapped on a name, closed it . . . then another . . . and another . . .
'There's an odd assortment of the famous and the average,' she said after a while. 'Politicians, celebrities, business leaders, an auto mechanic, housewives—look at this . . .'
Hunter, Baby Boy
SSN: N/A B. 09/15/06
Occupation: N/A
Home Address:
4250 Michigan Avenue, Apt. 312
Chicago, IL 60611
<HIDDEN FIELDS FOLLOW—DO NOT MERGE>
PKU, 09/17/06
Memorial Hospital, Chicago
Control Code: 842074654-M
Stephen shook his head. 'A baby. Didn't even have a name when this information was collected.'
'PKU,' Allen said. 'That's a blood test all newborns get.'
'Why is he here,' Julia whispered, 'on a list with the rich and famous, on a chip people are dying over?'
She went back to the names, let it scroll to the end. It took several minutes. She wasn't sure why, but watching those names zip past, knowing they were somehow linked to Donnelley's death, Vero's death, the gruesome murder of that man on the video, made her feel sick.
Stephen must have been uneasy too. He shifted nervously. 'How many?' he asked.
'I don't know. Five thousand? Ten?'
'What's it matter?' Allen said, patting his breast pocket, finding nothing. 'We don't know the significance of these names. Could be a Christmas card list, for all we know.' He opened the glove box and began rooting around. 'What are we going to do, phone up Richard Kennedy and everyone else who's on it? 'Excuse me, sir, do you happen to know the guy who's planning to invade the U.S. with the Ebola virus?''
Julia suspected that apprehension was a strange guest in Allen Parker's psyche; showing anger was easier than facing a new emotion. She waited for something else to materialize on the screen. When it didn't, she leaned over the laptop and started typing. She was digging for more information the way Allen was hunting for a cigarette. Both came up cold.
She slid back into her chair, seeming to be swallowed by it.
'What now?' Stephen asked.
She took a minute to answer. The chip wasn't what she had hoped it would be. It contained no quick solution, no proof of who was doing what to whom and why; it didn't even contain evidence they could use—not without knowing what it was evidence of. Like most evidentiary material, it was maddeningly ambiguous, needing to
