Biowar

“Maybe he backed up onto a CD or something.”

“Not in the inventory that I saw,” said Karr.

“Look at the music collection. Maybe he stuck it in there, you know, hiding it kinda.”

“You see that on NYPD Blue?”

“Murder She Wrote,” said Rockman. “We’ll crack this case.” His tone changed, becoming more serious. “We should have data from his work computers soon. We’ll buzz you if it’s important.”

Karr sat down in one of the leather club chairs at the side of the room. He settled his hiking boots on the floor. The carpet was thick and, though Tommy wasn’t an expert, looked handwoven and very expensive. It was the sort of thing that would go for thousands, probably.

He looked at the furniture and furnishings a little more carefully. There were a lot of antiques in solid, showroom shape.

“So you think this murder is related to his work?” Karr asked Gorman when the investigator returned.

The BCI man gave him a blank stare.

“Angry student or something?”

Another blank stare.

“Robbery? Guy comes here; he turns the tables, kills him, then panics and runs off?”

Gorman finally blinked. “I doubt that. There’s no sign of panic. Everything except the body is perfectly in place. There was even food for the cat.”

“What about the guy who found him?”

“Not a suspect,” said Gorman.

“No?” asked Karr.

“FBI ruled him out. Just some friend who came up on a lark. Works for the government. They didn’t say who, but I thought CDC for some reason.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think CDC,” said Karr, realizing that Gorman was talking about Dean. Karr had been instructed not to lie — but also to avoid stating Dean’s affiliation, if at all possible. It was the sort of bureaucratic reflex, bordering on paranoia, that made little sense to the op — they’d told the state police that Karr was from the NSA, after all, even if they clouded the affiliation by claiming he was working for the CDC — but obviously the people who were paid to worry about the agency’s public image had thrashed it all out. Karr was just here to follow orders.

Gorman gave him a funny look.

“They don’t tell me much,” claimed Karr. “Except where to go.” He laughed and propped his elbow against the arm of the chair and leaned his head on his hand. The BCI investigator was easy to read — he didn’t like Tommy and probably resented the fact that he was parachuting in to work on his case.

“The FBI working hard on this?” Karr asked.

“Hard as they usually do.”

Gorman apparently didn’t mean it as a joke. Before Karr could ask anything else, his phone buzzed.

“Hey,” said Karr, pulling up the antenna.

“Mr. Rubens wants you to go to Bangkok,” said Telach. “You found that Web page with Bangkok’s time equivalents.”

“And?”

“There were two E-mails from the missing lab assistant on the lab system Lia compromised that we traced to Thailand,” said Telach. “One of them has a date in it. Five days ago.”

“Okay.”

“D. T. Pound. He’s twenty-two years old,” said Telach. “Text of the E-mails is minimal. Just describes the weather. We’re getting pictures, tracing his credit cards — but we’re working on the theory that he’s over there in Thailand and Kegan went to see him. That jibes with your Internet pages.”

“This sounds suspiciously like a wild-goose chase, Marie.” Karr looked up at Gorman, who was pretending not to eavesdrop.

“Maybe. Go to Albany Airport. There’ll be a ticket waiting”

“Aw, come on.”

“Tommy—”

“Can I get some lunch first?”

“No. We may be under a time constraint here. We just don’t know what’s going on.”

“You’re out of your mind, Marie.”

“Not my mind. Mr. Rubens’.”

“You’re out of his mind, too.”

9

By the time Charles Dean got off the 767 at Heathrow Airport, he had received the equivalent of an upper- level biology survey course on microbes and related phenomena. Armed with a mini-DVD player, he had worked his way through a collection of lectures that began by explaining the difference between viruses and bacteria. Viruses consisted of RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein shell and required a host cell to replicate; bacteria (the plural of bacterium) were single-cell microorganisms, much larger than viruses but in general able to replicate on their own. From there the lectures had proceeded to explain some of the various subtypes and how they caused disease; the final series demonstrated the rudiments of their replication and manipulation in the laboratory.

In sum, Dean learned enough to know that he would never in a million years fool anyone in the field.

But if they wanted an expert, they would have sent a scientist. Rubens wanted someone who could handle a difficult situation if things got complicated. And he wanted someone who knew Keys.

Did he know him, though?

He knew a lot of facts — Kegan was a great pool player, loved old houses, and at a shade past fifty could still play a hard game of hoops. He’d beaten back cancer and jogged about three miles a day. He could make women fall in love with him very easily, but inevitably they fell out of love just as fast.

He’d been a decent basketball player, a better outfielder, and a halfback so quick he might have tried for a sports scholarship if he hadn’t broken his ankle in his senior year.

But what did he really know about Kegan?

Kegan’s mother and father had died when he was in college. They were poor people, even poorer than Dean’s family. Kegan had had to work his way through school, even though he’d gotten a scholarship that covered his tuition.

What did he really know?

Kegan had been altruistic enough as a young man to volunteer to work for the World Health Organization. He’d been sent to Southeast Asia — Myanmar, then known as Burma. He’d returned older and wiser, but no less altruistic.

What did he really know?

That James Kegan wasn’t a murderer.

What did he really know?

That once his good friend had had a hell of a jump shot.

The long flight had left Dean’s knees stiff and he had a kink in his back. He felt creaky all of a sudden, making his way into the terminal like an old man.

Dean adjusted his glasses — he had not yet been implanted with the Desk Three com system and wasn’t sure he wanted to be. The glasses contained a tiny speaker that focused sound waves so that only he could hear them. There was a microphone near the nose bridge. The glasses connected to a transmission and antenna system in his belt, which was studded with metal.

“So I’m here,” he told the Art Room.

“Go through Customs like everyone else,” said Rockman. “Take a taxi to the Renaissance Hotel near Covent Garden. Lia will trail you there.”

Dean followed a pair of college girls through the terminal building to the long hall in the basement where his