He leaned against a pipe for support.

Sal looked down at his pants, which were soaked with poisoned beer, and he became pale. "I have to change my clothes."

"Good idea," Ethel said. "Now move! We have a lot to do."

Smythe woke up abruptly.

"Protein folding!" he yelled.

Then he opened his eyes and realized he was alone in his room.

He fumbled in the dark for the light switch and turned it on. He was lying on his bed in one of the guest rooms in headquarters. He had been dreaming but couldn't recall many details. He vaguely remembered sheets of sticky black cloth, which had spread across the sky until they turned day into night.

He remembered something else extremely important.

He got out of bed, pulled on a bathrobe, and ran directly to the laboratory. Ramirez was already there. He was looking through a high-power microscope at a slide.

"I'm glad I caught you," Smythe said. "You can help me. Do we still have some of those food samples from the carnival?"

"Slow down, sir," Ramirez said. "You look like you're about to have a heart attack."

"I'm just very excited." Smythe opened the refrigerator. As he had hoped, there was still a hot dog and a slice of pizza left. They were sealed in air-tight, plastic bags, just as he had left them. "Good! I want to perform protein separation using two-dimensional gel electroph.o.r.esis. Do we have all the chemicals for that?"

"I think so. Why?"

"The poison is a protein."

"How do you know that, sir?"

"It came to me in a dream, or maybe my subconscious was a.n.a.lyzing the formula while I was asleep." Smythe shrugged. "Have you ever heard of a prion?"

"Like CreutzfeldtaJakob disease?" Ramirez said.

"Exactly! A mutant protein that replicates itself almost like a virus. The human body has no defense. It's extremely hard to detect and almost always fatal. But I believe we can isolate the protein in this case."

"We don't have to." Grinning, Ramirez picked up a beaker full of black liquid. "I already have a pure sample."

Smythe approached with wide open eyes. "How?"

"The team went up to the Mooseland brewery early this morning, and they sent back a dispenser full of this stuff."

Smythe took the beaker and swirled it around. The liquid was as gooey as hot tar.

"This is wonderful!" He grinned wide enough to make his cheeks hurt.

"And your dream was right," Ramirez said. "I performed ma.s.s spectrometry, and the sample is ninety-five percent protein. I was just starting to measure its physical properties."

"I'll help you."

"Maybe you should get some breakfast first, sir. You still look anemic."

"Breakfast?" Smythe raised his eyebrows. "What time is it?"

"9:30. You slept for a long time. How are you feeling?"

"Good. I'm ready to work."

"You seem very happy," Ramirez said.

"I feel... at peace."

"Let me guess. For the first time ever, you're exactly where you want to be, with people you want to be with."

"Yes. That's it."

Ramirez nodded. "We all have the same experience when we join. Welcome to the Society."

"Thank you." Smythe smiled. "I think I will eat after all. It's hard to think when you're hungry. I'll be back in twenty minutes. Then I'm going to work my a.s.s off until we find a cure. It's time I started pulling my weight around here."

Aaron rubbed his eyes. He, along with Sal and Marina, had been studying security camera videos for hours. It seemed every frame was poorly lit and out of focus. Distinguishing the faces of the many factory workers was difficult or impossible.

Aaron sighed. "What's the point of having cameras when they never take a decent picture?"

"Not my department," Sal said. "Are we done, yet?"

"No."

They were sitting in the small, windowless security office of the Mooseland brewery. Gitelman had ordered the security guards to leave the room, so Sal was operating the video equipment, while Aaron and Marina looked over his shoulder.

Sal pushed in a fresh tape and pressed "play." Aaron forced himself to focus on the indistinct image on the monitor.

After a few minutes he said. "There! Stop!"

Sal stopped the playback.

"Those are the guys." Aaron used his finger to draw a circle around two men.

"How do you know?" Sal asked.

"They walk like soldiers. They're almost marching in formation. Do you know them?"

"No, but I don't work that shift."

Aaron leaned in for a closer look. The two men were young and lacked beer bellies, distinguishing them from the regular workers. They had very short hair. One man carried a large, black satchel. The other carried a tool box.

"But we don't know who they are or how to find them," Marina said.

"It's a start," Aaron said. "I'll ask... Sarah to come in here."

He had almost slipped and used Ethel's real name. "Sarah" was Ethel's cover for today.

He used his phone to call Ethel. A few minutes later she and Gitelman walked into the security office.

"There." Aaron pointed at the video image.

Ethel narrowed her eyes. "Hmm." She frowned. "Not much to work with."

"How is your part going?"

"We tracked down most of the contaminated beer," Gitelman said, "and it's being destroyed. There is only one truckload left that we can't locate. A hundred and fifty kegs. We tried to contact the driver but he isn't answering. He isn't following his delivery schedule, either. The entire truck has gone missing."

"Not good."

"It left from dock 51 at 5:45 AM. As long as we're here, we might as well look at the security video."

Sal sorted through tapes until he found the right one. He skipped forward until they saw a truck being loaded at the right time and place. Two men were stacking kegs in the trailer.

"The same guys," Aaron observed.

After the men finished loading the truck, both climbed into the cab and drove off.

"We have to find that truck," Ethel said, "quickly."

Gitelman nodded. "We have the license plate number. We could call the police."

"I don't want the local police involved. This is a federal operation. Besides, I'm sure the terrorists changed the license plate by now."

"Sir," Sal said, "we could use the anti-theft locator system. All our trucks have it."

"We already talked to dispatch," Gitelman said, "and that truck isn't sending any tracking data. The terrorists must've turned it off."

"It can't be turned off without disabling the vehicle."

Gitelman shrugged. "They did it, somehow."

"Maybe they just cut off the GPS antenna. That would make the system blind."

"But it would still send out a radio signal?" Aaron said. "Right?"

"I suppose so." Sal nodded. "It works like a cell phone. Each unit even has a phone number."

"Give me the number," Ethel demanded.

"You can find a cell phone?"

"If it's turned on, yes, absolutely. We use the towers for triangulation. I just need the number."

"Hang on," Gitelman said.

He called another office in the factory and wrote down a number for Ethel. Then, she made a call. Aaron a.s.sumed she was talking to Edward back at headquarters.

"We have a location," Ethel said. "Thank you, gentlemen. The Office of Domestic Counterterrorism will take over from here. The people of the United States appreciate your cooperation and a.s.sistance."

"You're leaving?" Gitelman said.

"Yes, and we won't be back. As far as you're concerned, this matter is closed. Let's go!"

Ethel walked out, followed closely by Aaron and Marina.

Chapter Twenty-six.

"This poison is unbelievable," Smythe said. "It's impervious to acid and the standard enzymes. I don't know how we're supposed to a.n.a.lyze it."

Ramirez shrugged. "We could try burning it."

They were standing in the laboratory in headquarters. The debris from a dozen failed experiments covered the countertops. The sharp odors of solvents lingered despite a good ventilation system running at full blast.

"All we would accomplish is making another mess. It would be useful to see how this stuff behaves in living tissue."

"What did you have in mind, sir?" Ramirez said.

"We could feed a large quant.i.ty to a test subject, and then dissect the subject to see where the poison went. That should be straightforward now that we know what to look for."

"Interesting idea, but I think it might be hard to get volunteers for that experiment. What about an animal?

"I suppose we could try a monkey." Smythe furrowed his brow. "It wouldn't tell us as much. Animal physiology is always a little different."

"Or we could examine tissue samples from dead human victims," Ramirez said.

"That might work just as well. The morgue in Saint Athanasius Hospital is well stocked with victims. Overstocked, actually. I could drive down there and get one."

Ramirez raised his eyebrows. "I don't think they'll just give you a body."

"I've been in that morgue at least twenty times. I practically lived in that hospital for weeks. I know the security very well. I'll work something out."

"You're going by yourself?"