Greg Bear - Quantico

‘Right.’ Rebecca lifted her martini. ‘Here’s to romantic poetry and big noses. Tell me more about your partner. What was he like?’

‘She, actually. We used hang out after work, plotting how to improve our record in the department. We were both pretty marginal.’

‘No hotshots?’

‘Our instincts were hinky,’ William said. ‘We just naturally liked people.’

‘Bad juju,’ Rebecca said. She tapped the bar and asked for another. ‘This one is on me.’

‘Thanks,’ William said. ‘Anyway, it was good, and it was bad. We were great at interrogations. Together, we could get under the skin of a perp so soft and easy he didn’t even know we were injecting verbal truth serum. My partner was great at psychology. Big brown eyes, plump, sort of a Mediterranean mama. The goombahs, as you say-and the Russians, but not so much the Cambodians or Vietnamese-just wanted to open up and spill their guts. There, there, she’d say, and pat their wrists as they signed off on their confessions. But we weren’t all that good at pegging them, not right away.’

‘Bad for a cop,’ Rebecca said. ‘But good for the soul.’

‘Her name was Karen Truslow. Upstate New York money, but to her folks’ dismay, she turned blue. We spent a lot of time in the backs of vans listening to taps, and when things were slow we made up a dictionary of slurs. We could use them, blue people, but nobody else. “Cop” is mostly okay, but “Copper” or “Flatfoot” or “Screw” or anything a Dick Tracy villain would say is a mortal insult.’

‘You liked her,’ Rebecca said. ‘But she died a tragic death and now you cherish her memory and feel guilty.’

‘No, she’s still in OCID. She recommended I go FBI. “They’re not so blue. They pass.”’

‘That’s a lie,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m deep midnight. But wait. I’m senior, so I’m wrinkled and faded, like old denim.’

‘You’re fishing,’ William said.

‘That means you think I’m hitting on you,’ Rebecca said, turning on her stool. ‘That I need to hook a compliment out of that manly, tall, broad chest…Whatever. Christ, I’m a cheap drunk. But tell me, young William Griffin. You saw me in my nightie. Is it all over for me?’

‘You’re tired.’

Her expression drooped. ‘I’m gone. I’m dead. I’ll crawl back to my desk and shuffle papers for the rest of my career. I’ll retire with blue hair, my stomach hanging below my knees, and dream of filing cabinets. I’ll be a faded blue bag hag.’

William shook his head. ‘Let’s pay.’

‘You don’t like my company.’

‘I don’t like my liquor talking with an anger chaser.’

‘What?’

William’s serious face broke. ‘I’m tired, too.’

‘You’re translucent. Milky blue. I can hardly see you.’ Rebecca waved her hand in front of his face. ‘Agent Griffin, is that you?’

‘Anything else?’ asked the bartender, a slender brunette with huge eyes.

‘Some food,’ Rebecca said. ‘We’ll take the buffalo wings.’

‘We call them angel wings,’ the bartender said. ‘Hot, mild, or boring?’

‘Hot,’ Rebecca said. ‘Olives in parmesan. Goat cheese plate. Anything that tastes good to hungry people who are blue.’

‘Blue cheese dip for the wings,’ the bartender suggested.

‘Right.’

The bartender asked if they wanted more drinks. Rebecca asked for club soda, William, tomato juice.

‘This will not be a problem, not for you,’ Rebecca told him. ‘This will be a void, a blank space in your record. You’ll go to New Jersey and act as if nothing happened.’

‘Flaming TP,’ William said.

‘No, seriously,’ Rebecca said. ‘Start over again.’

‘It’s real, though, isn’t it?’ William asked. ‘Something’s going on. Something bad.’

‘Of course it’s real. Would Hiram Newsome lead you astray?’

‘I know you wouldn’t.’

‘Ah, well. That’s a pity.’ She took the club soda and downed it. ‘I seldom drink this much,’ she said. ‘White wine with dinner. I have a delicate metabolism.’ She set down the glass with a thunk, blowing an ice cube onto the bar. ‘We’ve known about biohackers since at least 2000, but in the last ten years, they’ve grown unimaginably more common and powerful. They have journals, websites, they exchange little tricks of the trade. Right now, you can buy a gene sequencer on eBay for five grand. Using online recipes you can make your own RNA, your own DNA, which means you can make viruses-real ones, not computer viruses-including smallpox or Ebola. You can create plasmids that turn ordinary bacteria into killers. Amerithrax was probably one of the first killer hackers. We were too blind to see it. Now, it’s international. People will die, and there is nothing we can do. We’re focused on a single nuclear explosion-still chasing old nightmares. But some screwball S.O.B. who doesn’t give a damn about atom bombs is up to something that could kill hundreds of millions, and six months from now, a year from now, if any of us are still alive, OPR will have us on the carpet, testifying about how the FBI missed another sterling opportunity. Congress critters will dine off our carcasses-if any of them are still alive. Maybe by then I’ll have slipped into early retirement. I’ll drown while fishing in a lake in Minnesota. But that won’t help you, dear boy.’

‘Crap,’ William said.

‘You dare disagree with the drunken blue lady?’ Rebecca asked, eyes intense.

‘It’s not a tasty future. How do you hunt down a thousand killer nerds?’

‘All I want to do is find one-just one-and make an example out of him.’ Her slate chimed. She put on reading glasses-the first time William had seen her do this-and examined the small screen at arm’s length. ‘My God,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Hiram Newsome has been dismissed. The director’s purging the Ay-Dicks.’ She scrolled through the message and her face turned gray. ‘I need to go to the little girl’s room.’

Rebecca left him at the bar. The food arrived but William was no longer hungry. Still, he picked at a chicken wing and, despising blue cheese, dipped it in his tomato juice, hoping it would dilute the spiciness. It did not. But globs of chicken grease made the juice undrinkable.

Rebecca returned ten minutes later. ‘I made myself throw up,’ she informed him. ‘An old trick from my bingeing days in college. You should go do the same.’

William shook his head. He had never seen Rebecca Rose look so vulnerable, even when she had had her blouse ripped in half, soaked in sprinkler water and tussling with a man twenty-five years younger. It made him sick inside.

Rebecca called to the bartender. ‘Got a pot of coffee?’

‘Always,’ the bartender answered from the end of the bar.

‘We are going to make phone calls,’ Rebecca said to William. ‘You will talk to New Jersey and tell them you’re on your way. Don’t make waves. And don’t mention News or me in your résumé.’

‘Is it official?’

‘Reuters and AP. Keller must have seen this coming.’

The bartender brought two mugs and a stainless pot. ‘Anything for blue people,’ she said, and winked at William.

Silesia, Ohio

Sam walked around the park at dawn, making one last check of the wind. Clear skies, a grassy zephyr blowing from the northwest, three to five knots: gentle and perfect. The dispersion plume would be beautiful, a slow, graceful fan descending over at least five square miles of Silesia. Having the Town Talk bakery right in the center of the plume was a plus, he decided.

To send this kind of message-his kind of message-one had to alter large volumes of flesh. Rotten flesh, killing flesh.