don't like being checked up on, Mr. Grayson. The mere fact of your doing so could already have jeopardized my work.'
'I assure you, my people excel at keeping their inquiries discreet. They've had a good deal of practice.'
'I'm sure they have. Well, if they are that good, you must understand me well enough to know that there is no point in pursuing this discussion.'
'What I know is that your department chief would be upset to learn you had recovered from your ruptured disk so miraculously but had neglected to inform him.'
Rosa glared at him, her cheeks burning.
'Mr. Grayson,' she said, 'I can see that your reputation has been earned. Well, sir, if you want to bring the force of your massive corporate empire crashing down on the head of a sixty-year-old lady, go right ahead. I assure you, there is precious little trouble you could cause me that others have not already. But just remember, there are some problems I can cause you as well.'
Willis Grayson studied her for a time. Then suddenly he laughed roundly, reached across, and patted her on the arm.
'Perhaps, Mrs. Suarez,' he said, 'after you complete this investigation and retire from government service, you'll consider coming to work for me.'
CHAPTER 31
October 25
It was eight-fifteen in the morning when Sarah maneuvered the borrowed maroon Accord into one of the outbound lanes and inched down into the William Callahan Tunnel.
'Ovejas,' Rosa said, gesturing at the grim-faced drivers jockeying for their spots in the procession. 'Sheep.'
'It's especially impressive considering the rush-hour traffic is coming the other way,' Sarah said.
She and Rosa were heading to Logan Airport to pick up Ken Mulholland. The CDC virologist, who had been working on Lisa Grayson's serum, had come up with something. But the pressure had intensified on him to turn over any information on the Boston cases to Rosa Suarez's department head and not to assist her in any further way.
'There are just too many egos involved,' Rosa had explained. 'My chief will go to his grave believing that I ruined his career. I honestly feel he would rather see this mystery go unsolved than to have me come up with the answer. Ken is pretty immune to being squeezed by his superiors, but I really don't want him to get in any trouble. He has a wife and two little ones depending on him. That's why I begged him to let us do as much of the work as possible up here. He was involved in a portion of the BART investigation with me. Some of the culture reports that were altered came from his department. Since then he's had as little trust for the politics of the place as I do. So he's taking a personal day off to fly up to Boston. He's arranged things with a friend at a terminal someplace in Atlanta. They'll plug in by modem to the data banks and electronics in his lab. Ken will be working on his department's computers, but he'll be doing it in absentia twice removed.'
'And all he wants from us is an empty room with an IBM compatible terminal?'
'And a modem.'
'In that case, we're all set,' Sarah said. 'Glenn Paris has provided us an office in the data processing unit.'
'No questions asked?'
'No questions asked. Rosa, do you think this is something significant?'
'I have believed all along that infection of some sort was the most likely-though certainly not the only- explanation for the DIC cases. So yes, I believe this day could prove most interesting and eventful.'
The week just past had been most eventful as well. It began with the surprise decision by claims adjuster Roger Phelps of the Mutual Medical Protective Organization to settle Sarah's case. Then there was Rosa's flight to Long Island to draw Lisa Grayson's blood. And finally, just a day ago, there was the letter from Sarah to Phelps- formal notification that she had opted to reject the MMPO's no-guilt-admitted, $200,000 settlement. She would either have the case against her dropped entirely, or go to trial at her own expense.
There would be no settlement.
Sarah swung onto the exit ramp leading out to the airport. The early-morning overcast was beginning to burn off. The day, with temperatures predicted in the sixties, promised to be near perfect. Sarah had some clinic responsibilities and some library work she needed to do. But she had no surgery scheduled, and planned to spend as much time as possible with Rosa and her virologist.
'Five whole minutes to spare,' Sarah said, pulling up in front of the Delta terminal departure level. 'I'll wait here. I don't imagine he'll have to go through baggage claim.'
'I should think not. He's booked on the three-fifty flight back to Atlanta.'
Rosa hurried into the terminal. She emerged a short time later, arm in arm with a cheery, ruddy-cheeked fellow who was taller than average by any measure, but positively gargantuan next to her. He had a curved meerschaum pipe bobbing from the corner of his mouth and looked more like the Burgermeister of some Bavarian village than a scientist. By the time they had passed through the Sumner Tunnel and back into the city, though, Sarah knew why Rosa spoke of Ken Mulholland's dedication with admiration that bordered on awe.
'There ain't much of our little viral friend in your lady's blood,' Mulholland said with something of a midwestern twang. 'But he's there, alive and kicking. For now, until we've got something a bit more scientific, we're calling him George. Although we could just as easily have made him a Georgia. The first evidence we got was indirect-an antiviral antibody that didn't match any of the ones we know about. Now we have some actual electron microscope pictures of the little guy. Handsome. A veritable matinee idol. Might be in the adenovirus class. We're going to be working today on completing the chemical dissection of his DNA. But as far as we've gone, he's a perfect match with the DNA sequence from the previous sample you sent us from Lisa Grayson. How much time before we get to your hospital, Dr. Baldwin?'
'Ten minutes. Less actually. Listen, though. I'm afraid that when I'm being addressed by someone to whom I already owe a great deal of gratitude, I'll have to insist on 'Sarah.' '
'Well, then, Sarah-and you, too, Rosa-supposing I use the drive time we have left to give you both a little background of what we're up against, and what we're going to try to do today. I'm glad I decided to conduct this business up here. It'll be much easier for me to operate without looking over my shoulder every other minute. I've disconnected the screen on the terminal in our lab. The modem's hidden beneath a pile of papers. My department head-or yours, Rosa-could be standing three feet away, and he'd have no idea that data's pouring out of the place.'
'Thank you for going to all this trouble,' Sarah said.
'Just being cautious. This woman here's a star. It's time some people down there besides me know it. Now, then. There's no question your Miss Grayson has a low-grade viral infection of some sort.'
'And not a commonly known virus?' Rosa asked.
Mulholland shook his head. 'Hardly. We're going to finish mapping out George's DNA as soon as we get your computer booted up. But even at this point, I can say that whatever George is, he ain't in the books I've checked. He could still be something natural that we just don't know about yet. But I doubt that. A much better bet is something man-made. With luck, we'll know for certain by lunchtime.'
'Then what?' Sarah asked.
'Well, assuming we finish our DNA sequencing and still suspect George is a product of man rather than a production of God, I think it will be time for a crash legal course on Diamond versus Chakrabarty.'
'What's that all about?'
The virologist nodded respectfully toward Rosa Suarez.
'Well,' he said, 'it's about these hungry little bacterial beasties that eat oil slicks. I suspect that when we get to that point, Dr. Rosa, here, will tell you all about it, since she's the one responsible for introducing it to our unit.
