'Doctor B-B-Baldwin. I've been f-following you f-for days. I must s-speak with-'
'Sarah, is that you?'
Sarah whirled. Rosa Suarez was standing not ten feet away, angled so that she could see Sarah but not the man. At the sound of the intruder's voice, he bolted. Head down, he charged past Rosa, shoving her off balance and very nearly to the ground.
'Stop, please!' Sarah cried.
But the man was already crossing the lawn of the campus, heading full bore toward the front gate. Her pulse jackhammering, Sarah rushed to Rosa's side.
'Are you all right?'
'I'm fine, I think.' Rosa was breathing heavily as she stared across the deserted campus in the direction the man had run. She patted her chest. 'Who was he?'
'I don't know. He called me by name and said he had to speak with me. Then when you called out, he ran.'
'How strange.'
'He stuttered terribly-worse than almost anyone I can remember. And he said that he had been following me. You know, now that I think about it, I believe I've noticed him, too. He drives a blue foreign car-maybe a Honda. God, was that weird just now. I can't believe I just stood there and didn't run. Now I can't stop shaking.'
Rosa took Sarah's hands in hers. Almost instantly the shaking began to lessen. Sarah unlocked her bike. Slowly, the two women walked together toward the main gate, Sarah wheeling her bike along.
'I'm sorry I couldn't support you at that meeting tonight,' Rosa said. 'How did it go?'
'Pretty well, I think. Lisa's lawyer has a court order to inspect my herbalist's shop tomorrow morning and take samples.'
'Are you worried about that?'
'Actually, I'm relieved it's happening. The sooner they check the samples, the sooner this lawyer will see I couldn't have been responsible.'
Rosa stopped and looked at her. It was quite apparent to Sarah there was something on her mind-something she wanted to talk about.
'Sarah, I–I'd like it very much if you could walk me home,' she said finally. 'My bed and breakfast is just a few blocks from here. I'd like to explain why I chose not to discuss my findings and opinions at your meeting.'
'There's no need to.'
'The fact that you're being followed bothers me. I think that what I've discovered may be very important- especially if what just happened to you has something to do with this case.'
'Go on.'
'To begin with, in my native country, Cuba, I was a physician…'
Sarah listened, rapt, to Rosa Suarez's concise, eloquent sketch of her life. A political exile from Cuba, she found herself in a series of refugee camps with only minimal English, and the painful realization that there was no way she would ever be able to document her education or medical degree. Following a series of rather menial jobs, she managed to gain an entry-level, clerical position at the CDC. Her husband, a poet and educator in his homeland, worked in a book bindery, where he remained until his retirement a few years before.
Within a few years, Rosa's quick mind and medical expertise had landed her a place as a field epidemiologist. Some of her successes-a major role tracking down the source of the Legionnaire's disease outbreak in Philadelphia and tying a regional increase in leukemia deaths in one Texas county to a nuclear-contaminated stream-Sarah had actually heard of. Then, at the peak of what had been a valuable career, Rosa was sent to investigate reports of an unusual bacterial infection that had begun cropping up in geographic pockets throughout San Francisco. Already the uncommon germ had killed a number of immune-compromised and otherwise medically debilitated patients.
Her data, amassed over nearly a year, and involving thousands of interviews and cultures, pointed the finger of responsibility directly at the U.S. military. The army, she maintained, was using what they thought was a biologically inactive bacterial marker to test germ warfare/air current theories in the tunnels of the BART-the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Because of the sensitive nature of her accusation, Rosa did not reveal her findings until her case was, to all intents, airtight. But somewhere along the line, she had spoken of them to the wrong person.
A blue-ribbon commission of the country's foremost epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists was appointed by Congress to validate her conclusions. What they found, instead, were critical pieces of data missing all along the line. Computer programs that Rosa herself had designed functioned poorly or not at all. Probability calculations failed to support hypotheses. Laboratory technicians denied ever having received specimens that she swore to having sent. Finally, and most ignominiously, one expert on the commission quite easily traced the source of the bacteria to a dump site on the edge of the city. The directors of the private laboratory responsible for the disposal error readily admitted it. They were fined but soon after, Rosa learned, were the beneficiaries of a hefty military contract.
'So,' she said, 'the dumping site was cleaned up, and of course, the rate of infection began to drop. I was put into mothballs, so to speak, and was brought out for this investigation only when no one else was available to do it.'
'They sabotaged your work. I don't believe it,' Sarah said. 'Correction. Actually, I do believe it.'
'Well, at least now you may understand why I have maintained some distance from everyone involved in this case-including you.'
'Please, Rosa, don't worry about it. Just do your work.'
'Tomorrow morning I am returning to Atlanta for a while. My investigation is still in a most preliminary phase. But I have come across some things that disturb me, and I wanted to warn you.'
'Warn me?'
'It's not what you think,' Rosa said, patting her reassuringly on the arm. 'In fact, I've wanted for several days to tell you that my initial studies are pointing toward some sort of infection, not a toxin or poison. But I–I've just been reluctant to speak of my work with anybody.'
They had reached the doorway of the old stucco Victorian where Rosa was staying.
'Then what is there to warn me about?'
'Sarah, you are a kind and caring person-a credit to your profession. I can see the pain the charges against you have caused. I don't want to go into details just yet, but I have reason to believe someone may be trying to keep me from getting at the truth in these cases. Assuming that person is not you-and that is an assumption I have chosen to make-you must be careful whom you talk to and whom you trust.'
'But-'
'Please, Sarah. Sharing this much has been difficult for me. I'll tell you more when it seems right to do so. Meanwhile, I have a great deal of work yet to do, and you have a defense to put together.'
Sarah sighed. 'Your assumption is right, you know. I'm not that person.'
Again, Rosa patted her arm. 'I do know, dear. Just be patient with me, and be very, very careful.'
Sarah waited until the epidemiologist was inside. Then she pedaled slowly toward the inner city. For a time, she worked at clearing her mind entirely. Failing that, she tried to focus on her new lawyer and the strange, stuttering little man. But always, her thoughts drifted back to Rosa Suarez's cryptic warning.
Just be patient with me, and be very, very careful.
If the woman's intention was to frighten her, Sarah acknowledged finally, she had done a pretty damn good job.
CHAPTER 19
July 21
The shop of the herbalist Kwong Tian-wen occupied the ground floor and basement of a dilapidated, four- story brick tenement. Sarah paid more than customary attention to her appearance and to selecting an outfit, then
