Biowar

wasn’t followed.

Lia rode the Circle line to the Embankment stop a short distance away. Aboveground, Rockman directed her over to the Charing Cross bookstore Dean was heading for. Rather small, it specialized in mystery and crime books; the shelves were fairly disorganized by English standards, with books pushed in every which way and stacked so tightly that it was hard to take them out.

“When’s this meeting taking place?” Lia asked.

“Supposed to be in a half hour,” said Telach.

“Plenty of time.”

A video camera sat at the rear. Lia asked the more sympathetic-looking of the two clerks if there might be a rest room she could use; in a minute she was being led past haphazardly arranged piles of books to a small, rather fetid room about the size of a closet. Lia went inside, waiting a respectful moment before taking out her small computer and using it to find the shielded video cable running along the edge of the floor at the near wall. From her purse she took out what looked like a button with a metal clip; she attached it to the cable, then left. By the time she thanked the clerk, the Art Room was viewing the video feed from the store system. Lia walked down the street in search of a tea shop, waiting for Dean to arrive.

* * *

The sun glinted off Dean’s sunglasses as he turned left out of the hotel, walking down High Holburn toward Shaftesbury. Besides blocking the sun, the mirrored finish of the glasses provided a good backdrop for the viewer portion of the lens at the bottom, which made them much more practical to use than the clear set, at least outdoors. Dean was able to project a GPS map and locator system on the left screen; he found the map a good deal less annoying than Rockman’s directions, which made him feel like little more than a robot.

Rockman barked at him when he came to Cambridge Circus, telling him he should turn left; Dean ignored the runner, waiting against the rail for the light and then crossing, walking around near the Palace Theatre before going back toward the river. That meant he had to cross the street again, but the zigging course made it easier for him to check if he was being followed. He found the small store and went in, wandering for a while as if truly looking for something to read. He found the recent Ian Rankin and picked it up. He moved farther back, then paused over the true crime section, which turned out to be dominated by American authors. He pulled a book at random— Lobster Boy by Fred Rosen — and cracked it open.

“So?”

“Browse for a few minutes more,” advised Rockman.

Dean wandered back and forth for about ten minutes before finally going to the register with the two books. As the clerk put Dean’s credit card through the machine, a short Asian man came in, glancing in his direction before heading toward the back. Dean signed for his books, then left the store, walking down the street slowly. Sure enough, the man came out of the store — but went immediately in the other direction.

“Not following you?” asked Rockman.

“No.”

“All right. Go on back to the hotel and let’s see what happens.”

“Maybe I can take a nap,” muttered Dean.

As he reached the end of the block, he decided not to go back the way he had come. He took a right and nearly knocked over a man about his size who’d been studying a newspaper.

“Sorry,” said Dean, moving around him.

The man pulled the newspaper away, revealing a gun. “Onto the Tube,” he said, pointing with the barrel.

10

Rubens had placed his best analysis team on the virus project, but he had not made the decision lightly. The team was headed by Johnny Bib, a genius mathematician and a remarkably brilliant leader, at least in the eccentric world of the Deep Black analytic section. But Johnny brought a certain annoyance factor to any enterprise he was involved in. He was eccentric even by the outsize ruler the NSA used to measure eccentricity.

At the moment, for example, he sat in Rubens’ office holding a red apple in his hand, glancing at it and shaking it, without explaining either the apple’s significance or, more important, what he had wanted to talk about.

“Johnny, what did you want to tell me?” Rubens asked.

“Fauna.”

“I assume that means something.”

“Fauna,” repeated Johnny Bib.

“Why, Johnny? Why?”

“Yes. I haven’t decrypted it yet. Yes. Yes. Pictures, though. JPG format; any PC could view them.”

Frustrated and confused, Rubens just barely controlled his anger, stifling the urge to yell. He made his voice very quiet instead. “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

“Does he have a garden?”

“Who?”

“Dr. Kegan.”

“Why is that important?”

Johnny Bib took a bite of the apple and then began talking. According to the material they had recovered from the computer linked to the Internet, Kegan had downloaded considerable information about plants in the past few days.

“Why?” asked Rubens.

“Yes,” said Johnny triumphantly.

“What about the reformatted hard drive?”

“Very good work. We haven’t gotten anything from it yet. Very, very good work. The plants, though. Why?”

“Okay. Why? Does it have to do with plant bacteria or viruses?”

“Yes,” said Johnny Bib, who had an annoying habit — a mathematical habit, it must be admitted — of acknowledging the validity of the question before actually answering it. “No. Not apparently. Funguses in a few cases, but mostly plants. So: Does he have a garden?”

“I don’t know,” said Rubens. “We can find out. Have you checked the images for code?”

“Yes. No.”

Rubens really wondered if perhaps the best approach might be simply to throttle him. “Talk English, Johnny.”

“There are no fractals, none of that sort of thing,” said Bib, referring to a type of encryption that used complicated formulas as keys, inserting the information in what looked like data for something else. “And we looked at the originals. But maybe they are code for something: apple for anthrax, that sort of thing.”

“A substitution code?”

“Primitive, but effective if you can’t sample a large message. And we can’t.” Johnny Bib handed over a page of names that the team had pulled off the computer. “Some of these are exotic.”

“Are they real?”

“Oh yes.”

Rubens looked at the list. The names were all in Latin, with explanations about the species next to them.

“There is one point of intersection,” said Johnny Bib.

Rubens realized that the analyst was testing him, trying to see if he caught on. He glanced through the list; he didn’t recognize any of the words.

But he would sooner go home than lose a game like this to the likes of Johnny Bib.

Come to think of it, he really ought to go home. What was it, two o’clock in the morning?