“Certainly.” She turned aside and began typing into her computer. “Here,” she said, “we devise special enrichment programs to address the needs and strengths of each child.”
“Could I see such a program, something you’ve developed for a two-hundred-plus student?”
“We don’t actually do IQ tests, but there is a student who we’ve identified as hyperintelligent, and we’ve devised a special program for him.”
“Could I see that, please?”
“Well, I can show you the program itself, I think—just a minute, let’s see if I can print out his curriculum without his identity. Yeah—no, it’s not gonna let me do that. Here, I’ll read it.”
As she read off a list of the special tutoring, the accelerated reading program, the various high school and college language, physics, and math classes the child was attending, and his grade-point levels, Mike knew that he had almost certainly identified his kid. If he was also among the Oak Road families, then it was final.
“That’s certainly very impressive.”
“It’s an advantage that we’ve got the college right here, of course. His college-level courses are just a short walk away.”
That little slip told him that it wasn’t a girl. Mary Childs was easy to handle. “That’s a very impressive program. I don’t think my son’s in as good a situation now.”
“Where are you, if I may ask?”
Here was a chance to work his list a little more. He chose the professor with the most candidate children. His response rolled out smoothly. “I’m at Mabry in California. I’m in history.”
“Then you know John Kelton, our department head.”
“I certainly do. He sent me over here, in fact. But he didn’t say anything about his boys being like my son.”
“No. But we do have one actively matriculated. That program is in current use, I can assure you.”
Another two off the list. Nice. That left Paul and Amy Warner and Conner Callaghan among the Oak Road possibilities. But the information had come at a cost: at any time, this woman might mention “Dr. Wenders” to John Kelton. Probably, it would amount to nothing more than a moment of confusion between them, but if it went further, it could be dangerous. “I haven’t actually resigned Mabry yet, so if you don’t mind…”
“Of course, I understand perfectly. Not a word.”
“May I take a tour? Just look in on a few classes? We’ll be in middle school.”
She conducted him through their science lab first. Among the things it contained was a truly elaborate tangle of lab glass, with three retorts bubbling happily away. “Oh, boy,” she said, striding over to the rig. “This should not be left on unattended.” She looked quickly around the lab. “Conner?”
Silence.
“That boy, he’s always doing this sort of thing. This is supposed to measure the body burden for some-odd- thousand pollutants found in common foodstuffs. But he can’t just leave Bunsen burners on like this.”
“This is your super-gifted one?”
She laughed. “Please keep
“Of course.”
“The Callaghans have their hands full with this one. He’s absolutely awesome. But this experiment’s going to have to be moved to Science Hall, we can’t have this in our lab anymore. Look at some of that glass!”
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“Oh, I’m sure it separates each molecule into a different container or something. Probably has five original inventions floating around in there.
“He must annoy the other students.”
“Let’s put it this way. If yours comes in, he will be eternally grateful to you for a companion who runs at the same speed.”
“My son isn’t in this kind of overdrive, but he’s close enough to where I can guess that it’ll be a relief for both of them.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m off to see the libraries,” he said. “I want to thank you for your help. You’ve moved Bell to the top of my list.”
“Which is where it darned well should be. We’re the best little overlooked and ignored college in the United States.”
In other words, a perfect backwater for the grays to hide their bright little baby, Conner Callaghan. On the way back to her office, he said, “I’m seeing a rather high class density.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That class back there—I saw about thirty kids.”
“Where?”
“Back opposite the lab.”
She shook her head. “Let’s check that out.” She went into her office and did just what he needed: called up a class list. “Nope. Twenty-two in sixth-grade English B. And that’s high for us. We try to stay around eighteen.”
Back in his car, he opened the Palm and tapped the screen a few times. He was out of Wi-Fi range, so he attached the antenna to the Palm and was soon looking at her computer’s desktop. The class list was still there. He downloaded it to his Palm’s memory.
He had his weapon, now, as well, in the form of that list. Armed with it, he would not need to go near Oak Road to carry out his plan, nor would he need to be anywhere near Conner Callaghan when he died, nor would it appear to be an assassination.
But he would go to Oak Road. Two could play the gray’s lying game, and he planned to trick them into believing that he had bought into their deception. He knew that Conner Callaghan and Paul Warner were in middle school, and that the description given to Lauren was of a high school student. That meant that it was one of the Kelton boys. So Mike would enter the Kelton house and only the Kelton house. The grays would think that he had swallowed their bait.
What he was going to do there and elsewhere in the community did not involve directly killing anybody. Nor was the process in any way extracted from the grays. It had been invented during World War II, in fact, by a Dr. Antonio Krause, who had brought it from Auschwitz to Dr. Hubertus Strughold’s operation in Texas as part of Operation Paperclip in 1947.
By now, it was part of CIA routine. Field-tested, reliable as rain. The only difference between what he had to do and how a field agent might function was that he didn’t have a neat little surgical kit and would have to devise his own.
He drove down to the county seat. He needed a good map of the community, as well as the large property that surrounded the Oak Road development, in addition to a look at the plans of the houses.
By the time he reached Somersburg, the thin light had gone. The sky was dull now, the sun pallid. The air had that empty coldness that portends a blizzard. He was glad of the car he’d chosen. A lot of this work had to be done tonight, and he absolutely could not get stuck, not at any point.
He went into the small county records office, and up to a clerk who sat behind a counter playing Texas Hold ’Em on a computer. He froze his screen and looked up.
“Any luck?” Mike asked with a smile.
The clerk raised his eyebrows as if to say that yes, he was having some luck, which meant only one thing: he was having no luck. “What can I do you for?”
“I’ve seen a large farm out Oak Road east of the town, and—”
“One, that’s the Niederdorfer farm. Two, they aren’t sellers.”
“I’d still like to take a look at the plat, if I may.”
The clerk got up and came back with a large black record book. Mike took it to one of the three tables in the room and opened it. He familiarized himself with the layout of the farm, and noted down the longitude and latitude. In the car, he would use his Palm Pilot to go online and get a topo map. Unlike a cell phone, a Palm Pilot could not be specifically identified just by using it in a wireless context, as long as it was effectively firewall protected, which his was.
He then went to the pages that contained the little Oak Road development. He copied the plat numbers of each property, then went back to the clerk and asked for the blueprints of the houses.
“You looking to buy?”
