Biowar

the small hamlet seemed to know a few English words, including Red Cross. Between that and their gestures, they made it clear that Foster’s wounds had to be cleaned. Karr brought them with him to the field, where he waved his arms and made sure the Puff/1 got a good visual on him and the group so the Art Room knew these were friends. Then, drained and tired and sick, he let the others help him to the village.

With one exception, the huts were made of some sort of straw or vegetation. The lone exception was a metal shack with a Buddhist statue at the front; it served as a temple and a common building, and it was there that the Americans were brought. The old woman pulled a small piece of shrapnel from Foster’s leg, then prepared to pour liquid on it. Gidrey stopped her, taking a whiff from the bottle to see what it was.

“Smells wicked,” he told Karr. “What do you think?”

“I think if they were going to kill us they would have been a hell of a lot more direct about it,” said Karr. He shrugged. “She seems to know what she’s doing.”

Gidrey nodded. The woman poured the liquid, which had an immediate effect — the Marine practically jumped from the bed where he’d been laid.

“Nothing like ol’-fashion’ medicine,” said Karr.

A bedroll was laid out for him on the floor. He lay down, gazing at the odd mix of items near the wall — carved drinking gourds and an empty television set, its picture tube gone.

The woman bent over him and started talking in rapid-fire Burmese. Karr shook his head. She repeated what she had said, a little slower and louder. He smiled, then held up his hands. She put her hand on his forehead.

Karr put his hand over hers, gently removing it.

“Thanks. I’ll be okay,” he told her.

She pointed at his stomach.

He looked down. “You telling me to lay off the nachos?” He glanced up at Gidrey. “Man, these doctors are all alike.”

The woman disappeared for a few minutes; when she came back she had a small bottle, which she obviously wanted him to drink. When Karr didn’t take it, the woman began talking very quickly again, no doubt urging him to be a big boy and swallow it down. She reminded him of his Scandinavian grandmother, whose words were similarly indecipherable yet just as obvious.

“How much?” he asked, taking the bottle.

She put her finger on the bottle. Karr took a slug. The taste of the medicine — if that’s what it was — nearly killed him.

“Whoa,” he said. His throat constricted and his eyes watered.

There was gunfire in the distance.

“What the hell?” said Gidrey.

“Wait,” said Tommy. “That’s just the Puff, taking out the guerrillas.”

“I’d better go check.”

“Not unless I go with you. They may not know it’s you.”

“I think you ought to rest.”

Karr tried to push up from the seat, but there was no way he was moving.

“All right, listen — take my handheld computer,” Karr told Gidrey. “Keep it out where they can see it.”

“Where who can see it?”

“The Puff — the UAV gunship. Or the Kite they took over or there’s a satellite overhead or something. They’re watching us, believe me.”

“All right,” said Gidrey reluctantly.

“Make sure they can see the computer clearly. And don’t try turning it on,” added Karr. “If you do, it’ll check your thumbprint and it’ll blow itself up.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

67

Sandra Marshall lived in what passed for a modest condominium development in suburban Virginia — though anywhere else it would have seemed opulent indeed. Green marble slabs, walnut-stained wainscoting, embossed wallpaper, and two-tone paint on the walls; chandeliers and recessed lighting; cool Italian marble and elaborate oak inlays on the floor — the materials alone would have paid several government workers’ pensions for a lifetime. Rubens, who had grown up with wealth, wasn’t impressed by the setting, but he was somewhat surprised when Marshall greeted him in an apron. It wasn’t for show, either — there were some light stains, and her face was flushed from working over the stove.

“I’m glad you could come,” said Marshall, taking his arm. Her perfume wafted through the air as they walked through the corridor past the library and parlor, down toward the kitchen.

“My pleasure.”

“I thought we’d eat in the kitchen,” she said. “If that’s okay? The dining room is too formal, and it’s just the two of us. All right?”

“Of course,” said Rubens.

So she really was in love with him, he realized. He’d been trying to fight off the idea — banish the possibility — the whole way over. Perhaps he’d been trying to fight it off from the moment they first met.

Rubens ordinarily did not trust love. It made one vulnerable. Oh, far worse than that. Far, far worse.

“Cocktails first, or should we start with wine?”

“I don’t like to drink too much,” he said.

“I agree.” She went to the island in the kitchen, which stood under a collection of enough copper pots that the Treasury could tap her supply for a year if the Mint ran short of pennies. She produced a bottle of cabernet. It was Chester Valley — an inexpensive and not very well-known label that Rubens himself had come across only recently.

He dismissed this as a coincidence, though a very promising one. He sipped the wine as Marshall presented an amusegueule, a mini-appetizer in this case made of foie gras and caviar served with poached pheasant eggs.

From there, dinner got involved; Marshall even flamed the beef medallions with a touch of port. Rubens ate well when he ate, but rarely had he tasted a dinner like this — and surely no one had cooked one for him under such circumstances.

She was in love.

And he?

“What a dinner,” he said as he finished.

“I thought the meat slightly overdone,” she fretted.

That was obviously a put-on, but Rubens couldn’t ignore his cue.

“Nonsense. Perfect,” he said.

“Really?”

Her voice was sincere. The poor creature was actually insecure.

“You could open up a restaurant, I assure you,” said Rubens.

She got up, pulling the plates away.

She was in love, but he wasn’t, he decided. And his duty was to reject the Internet biometric DNA proposal.

“So. You wanted to discuss business?” he asked.

“Oh, we can put that off.”

“I really have to get back to my office,” Rubens told her.

Marshall reached behind her back for her apron. For a second Rubens thought she was going to pull off her skirt as well.

“Let’s have a little cognac in the library, shall we? It’s so much more comfortable.”

“I can’t really drink much.”