'Sit and be still,' Fouad suggested, patting the ground beside him. 'They could have infrared.'

'I don't want to take a pain pill,' Harris said. 'I want to be clear-headed when they kill us.'

'Shh,' Fouad said.

'f.u.c.k, it hurts.' Harris squatted beside him and they watched the skies over the plain. Soon, Harris was on his back again, asleep but restless. The last of the dust devils had cleared. The sun was within minutes of setting. Soon it would be dusk, then night.

Fouad used his compa.s.s and quickly oriented himself, then laid down the flap edge of the sack and knelt on it to pray. He had to begin before sunset. Eventually he would have to catch up on the missed prayers. To pray was more than relief, far more than duty; it was a marvel of renewed strength.

He performed four raka'at. raka'at.

A few minutes later, Fouad heard Harris cursing softly in his sleep. This was a profanation, but what could be done? His companion was in pain. He finished his prayers, then added a Ya Latif. Ya Latif. As the evening deepened and the plain was covered in a veil of gray, Fouad spoke in a soft voice, As the evening deepened and the plain was covered in a veil of gray, Fouad spoke in a soft voice, 'You who is gentle with children still in the wombs of their mothers, exhibit thy gentleness and grace towards us, a grace that befits Your Generosity and Your Mercy, O You who is the Most Merciful...'

He did not often pray for relief from his distress. It was his thought that G.o.d, even in his deep and abiding love, had many concerns and should not be bothered for petty ills and sorrows. This his father had taught him, though his mother had also said that G.o.d never tired of listening. But now was definitely the time for extraordinary help and guidance.

When night fell, they could not risk using any light, and so they would not see the scorpions.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE.

Seattle.

'I am no longer your boss,' Rebecca said. 'You're buying the first round.'

'You're still senior,' William said. This brought a look from her that seemed at once angry and vulnerable. She turned back to the bar menu.

'For someone of my age and seniority, I am am hungry,' she said with forced cheer. hungry,' she said with forced cheer.

'Not what I meant, of course,' William said. He smiled at their figures in the mirror behind the ranked collection of bottles filled with amber, green, blue, and pale fluids. 'We could buy all of those and forget for an entire evening. That's what blue people often do.'

'Tell me more about people who are blue.'

'All right,' William said. 'We are few. We are blue. We protect him and her and you. you. I had a partner when I was working OCID-' I had a partner when I was working OCID-'

'Organized Crime Investigations Division,' Rebecca said. 'Right after getting kicked out of vice. That's how you got into FBI. The joint taskforce.'

'That's part of it. My father's reputation preceded me like Cyrano's nose.'

'Cyrano? Was he a goombah?'

'Cyrano de Bergerac. He had a huge nose and flew to the moon. You know Cyrano. He wrote letters for a guy who was in love with Roxanne. But he was in love with Roxanne, too, so it was tragic.'

Rebecca gave him a you-are-s.h.i.tting-me stare.

'Steve Martin, Darryl Hannah,' he said.

'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 n.o.body else. "Cop" is mostly okay, but "Copper" or "Flatfoot" or "Screw" or anything a d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.s."'

'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 s.p.a.ce 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 you wouldn't.' 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 gla.s.s 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 d.a.m.n 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 carca.s.ses-if any of them 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.' 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.'

'c.r.a.p,' 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 gla.s.ses-the first time William had seen her do this-and examined the small screen at arm's length. 'My G.o.d,' she said.

'What?'

'Hiram Newsome has been dismissed. The director's purging the Ay-d.i.c.ks.' 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 resume.'

'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.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.

Silesia, Ohio.

Sam walked around the park at dawn, making one last check of the wind. Clear skies, a gra.s.sy 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.

Meat makes more meat. Meat learns its cruelty from bad meat. In the end, they were all made meat.

By comparison, this is a kindness.

He arrived back at the truck in a foul, uncertain mood, his head zinging with sharp spasms of doubt. From the truck's glove box he took a foil pack of gingko biloba and swallowed three of the supplements, washing them down with bottled water. Pure superst.i.tion, he suspected-he could not even be sure he was affected-but what if he was? Then motivation, conviction, even a psychological edge could push him over the finish line, and all he needed was a few more weeks to spare before the blessed curtain fell and he could surrender to the fate he would be wishing on-inflicting upon-so many others.

He rechecked his plane tickets and the plastic packet of pa.s.sports. From Cleveland to New York, from New York to Jordan, and from Jordan by way of chartered flight to Jeddah. RFIDs-Radio Frequency Ident.i.ty tags-with medical and personal info and even DNA markers had been reprogrammed in all the pa.s.sports. To Homeland Security, and to any foreign government keeping track, he would be a different man, on n.o.body's list.

For most of his adult life, he had kept in reserve his most personal and hidden trait, his mother's most wonderful genetic accident, as a kind of contingency, a backup plan for a difficult world in which most people had few secrets from the grimly curious authorities.

There was still a risk, of course-but much reduced.

One blue eye, one green. Who would know?

He rolled back and tied the tarp on the trailer, then climbed up and inspected the hedgehog through the wide opening in the roof. Each of the launching tubes had been capped with a plastic cup secured by tape. Opening the rear door, he sidled in beside the launcher and removed each cap, careful not to b.u.mp the tubes. The late summer air was dry but not too dry. Static was not likely to be a problem, but one never knew.

Then he removed the firing board from its box and hooked it up to the base of the hedgehog. On the board he flipped a toggle and ran the wand over the twenty live contact points. At the base of each tube, red diodes lit up, flickered, then faded.

All it would take was a quick swipe down the contacts, with the toggle reversed.

Sam unhooked the patch cord, coiled it, strapped it to the bottom of the firing board with Velcro, then placed it in the seat of the truck. Legs stiff, hands shaking, he unhitched the trailer and placed the calibrated brace under the tongue, angling the trailer back a few centimeters to the proper angle. At the last minute, he could rotate the trailer, angle it up or down a few degrees, based on wind direction and speed, within parameters he had calculated months before.

The park was almost deserted. On the far side he spotted an elderly man out for a stroll with his white Scotty. There would be a few shrieks and loud bangs. Then a pattern of simultaneous starbursts. Gla.s.s beads and chunks of clay and talc.u.m would fall rather more quickly than the payload, rattling lightly on some rooftops, rolling down the rain gutters.

He was in the truck when he noticed the branches of the trees swaying along this side of the street, whipping around far more energetically than he liked. He frowned through the windshield, opened the door, and lifted his finger to the freshened breeze. The wind had shifted. It was blowing from the south at about ten or fifteen knots. If he fired now, even with the trailer properly angled, and if the wind reversed again, the plume would go out over the cornfields and empty lots north of town.

He returned to the truck and waited for an hour. At the end of that hour the wind was still back and forth, all wrong. He switched on the radio. The local weather station was forecasting turbulence for the next day or so-possibly signaling a front moving through and showers late in the evening.

Sam closed his eyes. He lowered the antenna on the firing box. Then he got out and hitched the trailer back onto the truck, stowing the calibrated brace.

G.o.d did not want it. Not now, not this morning.

After all this time, I have to listen. I have to be patient.