Spiral

Claviceps, aka ergot. If ingested, these mycotoxins caused symptoms ranging from mania and hallucinations to constricted blood flow in exterior appendages that led to gangrene. From what she read, all the local farmers had a mantra: stay away from the spiral.

It was a nasty fungus but no worse than dozens of other mycotoxin-producing species. What was special about this one? According to what Jake had told her a few hours before, Liam maintained that the Uzumaki was the most dangerous biological pathogen he’d ever seen. So how did it get that way? How had the Japanese changed it when they knew next to nothing about genetics at that time?

A few more clicks gave her the first clue. Fusarium spirale was an unusual bugger: it was dimorphic. Dimorphic fungi could exist in two completely different morphological states, with utterly different phenotypes-like a caterpillar and a butterfly. You’d never know by looking at them that they were the same species.

Depending on its environment, Fusarium spirale could be the spiral that attacked and devoured corn in the fields. This form produced toxins discouraging predators and reproduced sexually, sending billions of spores skyward to be spread by the wind and rain.

The second form was much simpler, a single-celled yeastlike organism. It grew in hot, moist conditions, such as inside the bodies of warm-blooded mammals. It would take up residence in the digestive tract of either humans or birds, reproducing asexually, by simple division. It would grow quickly but was relatively harmless, producing none of the poisonous toxins that were present in the spiral form. Its goal was simple-to ride along with the mammal, not causing it too much discomfort, until it dropped out in the fecal matter of the host and would begin life again in its spiral form.

Maggie struggled to piece it all together. She stared down at the pictures of the little spiral growths. So how had the Japanese turned fungus into a weapon?

Dimorph. Two forms. One kills you, the other doesn’t. She was beginning to get an inkling about how it would go. How you could turn this fungus into a killing machine.

Maggie decided to take a risk and call Sadie Toloff. She looked up the number in the old, beaten address book she still kept. She hadn’t talked to Sadie in a couple of years, since a conference in Toronto. But she thought she could trust her.

Maggie opened her cellphone and dialed the number. It rang once, then went dead.

She hung up, tried again. The result was the same. What was wrong with the damn lines? Maybe the circuits were overloaded because of the events at Bellevue.

She decided to try the landline in the reception area. She dialed Toloff’s cell. This time it rang four times, then clicked to voice mail.

Maggie kept it short. “It’s Maggie Connor. I’m okay. In shock about Liam. I need to talk to you about Fusarium spirale. Give a call and I’ll explain everything.”

She hung up the phone.

The heater chugged, turned itself off. The room was deathly quiet.

All of a sudden, she felt very alone. She wished to hell Jake would get back.

24

HARPO’S NEAT AND ORDERLY LAB WAS A WRECK. USED PIPETTE tips littered the countertops, and gels were everywhere. Vlad and Harpo had finished the PCR, and now they were running a Sanger gel, counting off bands. They were doing it retro, using two-decade-old technology. Jake knew the basics of what they were doing, but it was another thing to watch them going at it. Like sitting in the corner of an old-time editing room in Hollywood, bits of film taped to the walls, the director and his assistant trying to piece together the story hidden in the images.

Vlad dropped a cuvette, cursed in Russian.

Jake watched them, outwardly calm but inside twisted up with worry. “What’s the problem?”

“Something went wrong,” Harpo said. “All we got was a fragment. But I think I know what the problem is. We just have to lower the cycling temperature.”

“How long?”

“Another hour. At least.”

FRUSTRATED, JAKE PACED THE HOUSE. HE STOPPED AT THE back window, looking out at the forest that picked up right behind Harpo’s yard. A dog loitered, a handsome old hound with huge ears and black eyes. He stood in front of a fancy doghouse with the name DUKE over the door, his tail raised and watching Jake. He started barking, then thought better of it, sat down, and scratched his ear.

Jake wondered whether the NSA people were looking for him. They had made reservations for him on a flight out of Ithaca that had left hours ago. Jake guessed that if he called his voice mail at home, there would be messages asking what the hell had happened. He decided to leave those messages unchecked. At least a little while longer.

To his right, behind a glass case, was Harpo’s collection of guns. Mostly hunting rifles but with a few military pieces thrown in. Jake recognized the sleek lines of the M16 and, below it, an M9 pistol in a black holster. It was the civilian version of the sidearm Jake had carried when he was in the service. He still had it, tucked away on a high shelf in the closet of his apartment. He took it down, cleaned and oiled it, every few months, not because he thought he’d ever use it but out of a sense of respect. The special burdens of soldiers.

Three days.

Three days ago, life had been normal. Three days ago, he would’ve been grading papers, looking for an hour to sneak away to the gym. He might’ve gone over to Liam’s lab. Maybe Dylan would have been there, and Jake and the boy would have tried to teach the Crawlers some new trick. Now Liam was dead, tortured by those very same Crawlers. Jake was in a backyard bio lab, waiting for a guy named Harpo with fright-wig hair to decipher Liam’s final message. A message Liam had left hidden inside the genome of a fungus under a pile of rocks in a forest.

He pulled out his phone and called Maggie. Six rings, then voicemail. He left a message and tried again. Same result. What the hell? He’d talked to her a half-hour before-she said she was making progress, had found an entry in Liam’s field notebooks that was almost certainly about the Uzumaki. So where was she now?

He called information, got the number for her work. It rang four times, then clicked to voice mail: a woman’s voice, not Maggie’s, saying he’d reached the Cornell University herbarium, offering a phone tree of options. Jake chose “0” and left another message, telling Maggie to call him right away.

Damn it. Where was she? And if she had left the herbarium, why didn’t she call? The only thing he could think of was that something had happened, maybe something back at home.

He called Rivendell.

The phone rang and rang and rang. No answering machine. No voice mail.

What the hell was going on? Maggie’s roommate Cindy was supposed to be there, watching Dylan.

He thought about calling the police, then glanced again at Harpo’s gun collection, to the Beretta M9. Jake could be at the herbarium in fifteen minutes. He took down the M9 and unholstered it. Range of maybe fifty meters. History of slide problems but a good weapon. Checked the magazine. Full. Fifteen rounds.

He sought out Vlad and Harpo, the M9 in hand. “Harpo, I need to borrow this.”

“You plan on committing a felony?”

“No jokes. I can’t get Maggie on the phone.”

“Did something happen?” Vlad asked.

“I don’t know. Call my cell the minute you have the rest of the sequence. And if you don’t hear from me in the next half-hour, call the cops.”

ONCE OUTSIDE, JAKE CALLED LIEUTENANT BECRAFT AT THE Cornell police department. Becraft sounded surprised to hear from him. “Professor Sterling? Where are you? The Detrick people-”

“Can you do something for me? Can you send someone out to Maggie Connor’s place? No one’s answering the phone. A woman named Cindy Sharp is supposed to be there. Watching over Dylan. Maggie’s son.”

“Jake. Where are you? Is there some kind of problem?”