Toys giggled. He loved to make Gault say it.
Gault finished his coffee and held his cup out for more. Toys refilled it and they sat down; Gault in the overstuffed chair by the French windows, Toys perched on the edge of the couch with his saucer on his knees. An iPod in a Bose speaker dock played Andy Williams singing Steve Allen, with Alvy West on alto sax. Meet Me Where They Play the Blues. Toys had been converting all of Gault’s vast collection of historic big-band music to the iPod. Gault wondered where he found the time.
When the song ended, Toys said, “This alteration in the timetable is that going to change things? With El Musclehead, I mean.”
“I’ve been working that through in my head. The timing is tricky. It really would have been better if they hit the crab plant first, and I can’t understand why they didn’t.”
“Could they have decrypted the files from the warehouse? You said it was only a matter of time.”
“A matter of very precise time. I paid good money to make sure that those files would not be cracked this quickly. The flashdrive was deliberately and very precisely damaged and the programs corrupted just enough to have given us at least forty hours more, even if they used the best equipment.” He shook his head in frustration. “Dr. Renson and that other computer geek assured me that no technology exists to do it faster.”
“What about MindReader?”
Gault waved that away. “MindReader’s a myth. It’s Internet folklore cooked up in some hacker’s fantasies. They’ve been mythologizing about it since the nineties.”
Toys was insistent. “What if it’s real?”
Gault shrugged. “If it’s real and the DMS has it, then, yes, they could scramble the timetable. But so what? At this point nothing they do can stop the program.”
“You’re the boss,” Toys said in a wounded tone of voice that he knew needled Gault. “But it doesn’t answer the question of what to do about the crab plant and whether this will spoil the whole operation.”
“No,” Gault said after some consideration, “no, it won’t spoil the plan. Too many things are in motion now. But as far as the plant goes, it won’t be a total disaster.”
Toys studied his face and began to grin. “You’re making that face. I know that face, What have you got cooking over there?”
Gault gave him an enigmatic smile. “Expect another call from the Yank sometime soon.”
“Hm,” purred Toys, “I’ll be waiting with bated breath.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Tuesday, June 30; 9:24 P.M.
THE INTERIOR OF the lab was somewhere between a scientist’s wet dream and a god-awful mess, with heaps of books and spilled stacks of computer printouts, coffee cups everywhere and tables laden with every manner of diagnostic and forensics equipment. Gas chromatographs, portable DNA sequencers, and a lot of stuff I’d never seen before even at the State Crime Lab. Sci-fi stuff. Machines pinged and beeped and blipped and a dozen technicians in white lab coats pushed buttons and made notes on clipboards and exchanged grim looks. In the middle of all of this was one desk, bigger than all the others, that was a shrine to pop culture geekiness, and though I pride myself on seldom showing surprise I went a little slack-jawed at what I saw. In an astonishing display of either the blackest humor on record or spectacular bad taste, there were horror magazines, bobble-heads of zombies from half a dozen movies, at least fifty zombie novels with dog-eared pages, and the entire collection of resin action figures of Marvel superheroes as decaying zombies. Seated like a happy school kid in the middle of this oasis of poor taste was a sloppy thirty-something Chinese guy with a bad haircut and a Hawaiian shirt under his lab coat. Church stood beside the desk-but not too close-and his immaculate suit and air of command seemed like a statement by comparison.
“Captain,” Church said, “let me introduce Doctor Hu.”
I stared. “Doctor Who? Are you shitting me? This some kind of goofy code name or something?”
“H-U,” Church said, spelling it.
“Oh.”
Without rising Hu offered his hand and I shook it. I expected something slack and moist but he broke the stereotype and gave me a hard, dry shake. What he said, though, was, “You’re the hotshot zombie killer. Man, I just saw the footage from Delaware. Wow! Freaking awesome! You can kick zombie ass”
He smelled like old baked bread, which is not as good as it sounds. “I thought you guys called them walkers.”
“Yeah, sometimes.” He shrugged. “It’s more PC, I guess. Doesn’t stress the troops.”
I gave his toys a significant nod. “And you wouldn’t want to appear insensitive.”
Hu grinned. “Denial is stupid. We’re fighting the living dead. Would you prefer we call them ‘undead citizens’? I mean, I originally wanted to call them ALFs.”
I looked from him to Church. “Alien lifeless forms,” Church said with a wooden face.
“Get it?” Hu said, “Because they’re illegal aliens.”
I said, “How do people not shoot you?”
He spread his hands. “I’m useful.”
And I swear to God I saw Church’s mouth silently form the words “Only just.” Aloud he said, “Dr. Hu enjoys his jokes more than does his audience.”
“You said as much about me the first time we met.”
“Mm.” Church turned to the scientist. “Please answer any questions Captain Ledger has.”
“What’s his clearance level?”
Church was looking at me as he said, “Open door. He’s in the family now.” With that he walked over to a nearby workstation, pulled out the chair, sat, crossed his legs, and appeared to totally tune us out.
Hu looked me up and down for a moment, nodding to himself, then he beamed a great smile. “You have any background in science?”
“Forensics on the job,” I said, “a few related night courses, and a subscription to Popular Science.”
“I’ll use smallish words,” he said, trying not to sound as condescending as he was. “We’re dealing with a weaponized disease of immense complexity. This didn’t evolve, this isn’t Mother Nature getting cranky and throwing out a mutation. This isn’t even a disease pathogen that could have evolved. We’re into the bizarro zone here. Somebody brewed this up in a lab, and whoever made this is smart.”
“Joe Obvious speaks,” I said.
“No,” he said, “I mean scary smart. Whoever did this should have a shelf full of Nobel Prizes and a whole alphabet soup behind his name. I don’t have the stuff to make this and Mr. Church buys me lots of nice toys. This would take a major research facility, electron mikes, clean rooms, and a lot of shit you never heard of maybe. Maybe stuff no one’s ever heard of. This is radical technology, Captain.”
“Call me Joe.”
“Joe?” He snapped his fingers. “Hey your name’s Joe Ledger.”
“Yeah, I thought we’d pretty well established that.”
“You into comic books. Y’know Dr. Spectrum?” He had an expectant look on his face. “Dr. Spectrum, the superhero from Marvel Comics? His secret identity is ‘Joe Ledger.’ That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?”
“All things considered,” I said, “no, not very much.”
“Doctor ” Church said with a note of soft warning in his voice.
“Okay, okay, whatever. We’re talking about the disease,” he said, and for a moment I saw the scientist behind the geek facade. “Look, science is only occasionally cool and a soul-crushing bore the other ninety-nine percent of the time. Aside from the fact that the empirical process requires endless repetition on each and every freaking step, there’s also the reality of state and federal regulations on what we can and cannot do. A lot of research opportunities are limited and some are blocked. Biological weapons, that sort of thing.”
“Even with the military?”
“Yes.”
“Even supersecret military?” I said, half smiling.
He hesitated. “Well, okay, that starts getting to be a bit more fun, but even then you can’t publish half the
