Greg Bear - Quantico

The President shook hands around the room, then paused before Hiram Newsome and pressed his hand between both of hers. ‘We need to find time for a heart-to-heart,’ she said, sharp gray eyes burrowing into his.

‘I look forward to that, Madam President,’ Hiram said.

The President turned to Rebecca. ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘I hear the FBI has caught the bastard who mailed anthrax back in 2001. Your case, I understand.’

‘I wasn’t there, but my fellow agents are generously sharing credit,’ Rebecca said. ‘And it was Director Newsome’s initiative that kept us going.’

‘That’s part of our presentation today, Madam President,’ Hiram added. ‘We believe his activities continued until just recently.’

Larsen took the large leather seat Schein had vacated. The rest of them sat in a circle around the President.

‘They’ve booted me out of my house. Isn’t that a bitch?’ the President said. ‘Let’s get started with Who . Then we’ll go to What, When, and Where. Special Agent Rose, you seem to be at the center. I’d like you to direct this show. Begin.’

‘Thank you, Madam President,’ Rebecca said. ‘Here’s the best information we have about our suspect. Agent Frank Chao is a chief analyst at the FBI Academy Crime Lab.’

Chao bowed his head briefly. Larsen sized him up, then returned her gaze to Rebecca, unimpressed. Rebecca had testified before female prosecutors many times and recognized The Look.

Chao began, ‘Madam President, blood evidence and saliva left behind in Arizona at the scene of a patrol officer’s murder-’

‘Hundreds of inkjet printers spilled all over the highway, right?’ the President asked.

Chao nodded and folded his hands in his lap. ‘DNA taken from saliva on a glove, and additional DNA from a speck of blood, seemed to point to two male individuals, half-brothers with the same mother. I found no matches in CODIS-compliant files in any national criminal database, including NDIS-3-and so I searched DNA records obtained from truck drivers seeking permits to haul hazardous materials, as well as international customs records-and still, nothing. National insurance and medical databases provided to the agency after 10-4 also produced no matches.’

Rebecca watched the President closely. Her face had taken on a stony look and she was drumming the fingers of one hand on the arm of the leather chair. Such violations of personal privacy had been a strong part of her campaign.

‘I had reached the end of my familiar resources,’ Chao said, ‘so I took a stab in the dark and scored an unusual hit-a marker profile in a statistical database used to speed matches for victims of mass terror. That database, of course, would not be usable in obtaining warrants or subpoenas, so we requested access to the actual 9-11 Memorial Park DNA records…’

‘Goddamn it,’ the President said. ‘Did they give them to you without a subpoena?’

Chao looked thunderstruck. ‘Sorry?’

‘Go on,’ the President said, leaning back in the leather chair.

‘We were refused, perhaps rightly,’ Chao said. ‘However, I found duplicates of the Memorial Park records retained by a company that had once analyzed DNA for the New York medical examiner. That company had since gone bankrupt. All of its assets, including these records, were in the process of being acquired-in a secret deal-by the Church of Latter Day Saints, and as it happened, were kept on a server that was less than secure. We gained access on a federal warrant and found the actual DNA analysis of the relative’s donated sample. This record was still not quite a match-but it was obvious we had a blood relation of someone who had died in that tragedy. Following one of Agent Rose’s excellent hunches, we then compared the crime scene DNA and the 9-11 donated record with DNA already on file with the FBI-from police departments, military service medical histories, and so on.’

The President had stopped drumming her fingers.

Chao put on a stubborn look. ‘It is our job to find dangerous criminals. Would you have it any other way?’

‘Move on, Frank,’ Hiram said.

‘Law enforcement officers donate tissue samples that we use to rule out contamination of crime scenes-typically, buccal cells-cheek cells. Through patient search of FBI internal records, we found a match-logically, to the halfbrother of an FBI agent named Lawrence Winter.’

‘So you questioned Winter,’ Schein said.

‘Special Agent Winter has been missing for almost five years,’ Chao said. ‘He vanished while working undercover in the Pacific northwest. Telomere, viral RT, and epigenetic analysis told us that Winter’s half-brother would have to be the same age as he is-a difficulty, since there are no records of his having had a brother and since, in theory, half-brothers cannot be twins. They cannot be born to the same mother at the same time.’

The President and Schein looked lost, trying to work through the implications.

‘Tragically, Special Agent Winter had suffered a loss in the September 11 attacks. His wife and his daughter had apparently been killed by falling debris outside the World Trade Center. Their remains were never found. Winter did have a sister. Her name was Connie Winter Richards and she was an employee of the state of Washington. She and her father-Winter’s father-were murdered on 10-4, along with twenty-two hundred others, as they were riding a ferry in Puget Sound. Their bodies were identified by the mother, who died the next year from an overdose of sleeping pills.’

‘My God,’ the President said.

‘Lawrence Winter stopped reporting to his chief and his SAC-Special Agent in Charge-shortly after the 10-4 attack.’

‘Why can’t you find him?’ Schein asked.

‘Some speculate he got lost in his undercover work and was either killed or took his own life,’ Rebecca said. ‘He was dealing with domestic and ecological terrorists-Animal Rescue, Earth Liberation Front, Gaia Brigade. Dangerous people. But we should let Frank finish.’

‘Agent Winter’s official FBI photo shows that he has one green eye and one blue. It took creative thinking and extensive research to realize that Winter might be a chimera, of a sort we have not often heard of. Only in the last few years have such individuals been considered possible: an offspring who combines the chromosomes of two half-sibling embryos, fertilized by two separate fathers.’

The President looked to her Chief of Staff. Schein shook her head in bafflement.

Before anyone could stop him, Chao enthusiastically added details. ‘His mother had sex with two men within hours of each other. Two of her egg cells were fertilized by these different fathers, and the early stage blastulas fused perfectly before implanting. Somehow, the resulting single embryo did not miscarry. The genetically disparate tissues worked out an accord-and the embryo’s nascent immune system learned to recognize both as self. But this means that DNA from one set of this man’s tissues will not necessarily match DNA from his other tissue types. Some of the tissues will have a Y-chromosome from one father, and some from another. His inheritance from each father and from his mother-and remember, we have no samples from any of these individuals-will be statistically muddled. That prevents finding a match in any CODIS or NDIS-3 record search. A very special case of fraternal twins. Therefore, without expert and painstaking analysis, Special Agent Lawrence Winter’s DNA, if found at a crime scene, could not be directly matched to any data base-a convenient way of eluding authorities for decades, or even forever. Such fraternal chimeras may suffer from personality imbalances in later life, including schizophrenia. Had we known of this potential, very likely we would never have accepted Lawrence Winter into our agency.’