Biowar

“Who are you?” asked a voice that sounded as if it were generated by a machine.

“My name is Dean. I work for Dr. Kegan as an assistant. He asked me to come to the conference for him.”

“Why are you here?”

“I was brought here.”

“Tell me about Baltic flu,” said the voice.

“A bluff,” said a voice in his head. “Kegan has never worked on flu viruses.”

The Art Room—finally.

Dean shrugged. “Flu viruses aren’t my thing.”

“What variety of smallpox did Dr. Kegan work with?”

“Aralsk,” said the voice. “It’s named after a city in the old Soviet Union where there was an outbreak.”

Dean sensed that there was more to the question than that. Someone who was trying to bluff his way in — as he was — would be expected to have detailed knowledge; he’d just memorize everything he could. An intelligent interviewer — and someone with a setup like this had to be intelligent — would be looking more at his behavior than his answers.

“Dr. Kegan doesn’t work outside the law, if that’s what you’re getting at,” said Dean.

The voice laughed. “Smallpox,” it repeated.

“Unpublished paper. Two of them,” the expert in the Art Room told him. “Nineteen-ninety-one and nineteen- ninety-three.”

“I haven’t been with Dr. Kegan that long,” said Dean. He took a step forward. “Truth is, he kind of adopted me as a project. He’s helping supervise my dissertation. It’s written.”

“You’re rather old to be working on your Ph.D.”

“I’m not that smart,” said Dean.

The lights shut off abruptly. Dean wanted to keep the glasses on, sensing that the interview was far from over, but he knew that would give him away. He folded them up slowly; his eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness. The room was filled with shadows.

“What’s your dissertation on?”

Dean had memorized the dissertation topic, but he decided again that his behavior was what was in question. He was supposed to be a technical person — more drudge than scientist. He’d gotten to work with Kegan because he was useful, not a genius.

“It demonstrates the propagation of bacteria in mouse tissue,” said Dean. “It’s not particularly advanced.”

“No?”

“Frankly, Dr. Kegan is interested in the techniques I used to culture the cells. They’re not in the paper because he said we should keep that proprietary.”

“We^?”

“I owe him a great deal.”

“And how did you culture them?”

“Well, it wasn’t really that tricky.” Dean smiled. “But if it’s something that’s worth money…”

“Do you like money, Dr. Dean?”

“I don’t refuse it. By the way, I’m not a doctor.” He smiled. “Though everybody I meet seems to think I am.”

A man in a red ghoul’s mask stepped from the shadows at the left. He was dressed in black, and for a moment he looked as if he were a real ghoul, emerging from the depths of hell. Dean gathered that was the idea.

“Where is Kegan?” asked the man.

“He sent me to the conference in his place. He said something had come up. I assume he’s back in the States working.”

“Where’s the antidote?”

“First of all, I want to know exactly where I am,” said Dean.

“You have the mistaken impression that you have some influence on what happens next.”

“I’ll gladly admit I’m confused.”

“Your employer owes us the antidote. He has twenty-four hours. You have twenty- four hours. Tell him that.”

“Then what happens?”

The lights flooded on again. Before Dean could repeat his question, a dart shot into his back. His neck felt paralyzed for a second; his mind seemed to leave his body, and he saw himself falling to the floor. Then the lights slammed off and he lost consciousness completely.

18

Fortified by a serious lunch — and still lacking any real information about Kegan’s or Pounds’ whereabouts — Karr decided the next order of business was to find out about the men who’d trailed him in the car earlier. He circled back to the spot where he’d told the driver to meet him, discovering that the goons had split up, with one now on a motorbike. Obviously they were quick learners.

“Hey,” said Karr, jumping into the car’s front seat.

“You’re back,” said Luc Dai.

“Told you. Drive ahead.”

“Then?”

“Find a tourist trap where I’m likely to be ripped off,” Karr said.

The driver twisted his head. Karr smiled at him, then reached down and pulled up his pants leg. He loosened the strap that held the gun there, sliding in the handheld behind it. Modesty prevented slipping the computer down his pants to his thigh, where the second of the three guns he carried was secreted.

“You want to be robbed?” asked the driver.

“Just mugged. Doesn’t everyone?”

They’d gone about a half-mile when Karr spotted a broad avenue that would do perfectly. He told the driver to let him out, then meet him on the other side of the block. Luc Dai shook his head but pulled over nonetheless.

“Get ready,” said Chafetz as Karr closed the car door and turned toward the street vendor selling trinkets.

“Born ready.” Karr could hear the high-pitched whine of the motorbike in the distance. He stepped over to the stall and pointed at a trinket, taking his wallet from his pocket just in time to have it snatched from his hand by the thief.

Karr shouted and grabbed for his assailant, making sure to just miss. When both the bike and the car were gone, Karr made a show of gathering himself, then walked down the block toward the spot where Luc Dai was to meet him. He had the driver take him to a spot where he could rent a motorbike, then dismissed him for the day. With the Art Room tracking the thieves, Karr took the time to haggle over the rental fee for the largest bike in the inventory, which he still dwarfed. By the time the deal was completed, the goons had stopped at a building several blocks from the hotel.

“We think it’s a warehouse,” said Chafetz, giving him directions. “Did the CIA draw these maps or what?”

“Taking the name of the competition in vain?” Karr asked.

Chafetz guided him through a maze of tiny alleys in the capital city, tracking the thugs into a district thick with sweatshops, some ultramodern, some that would have seemed out-of-date in 1700. Finally he got to within a few buildings of the factory. If you ignored the vegetation peeking out from the torn macadam and the relative lack of graffiti, the area could have been the backside of any American city, with dilapidated buildings and rusting wrecks of trucks.