“Not for a day, at least,” Browning said. “Everyone’s taking care of their own, and the governor of Ohio hasn’t asked yet. And, frankly, why should I trust you? You’ll help me best where you are—screwing everything up royally. But I don’t hold grudges. I’m here to offer some charity. I know where Kaye Lang will be hiding in a couple of hours. Do you?”
“No. I’ve been busy, Rachel.”
“I think you’re telling the truth.”
Augustine worked quickly through the possible ways Rachel Browning could have discovered such a thing as Kaye’s whereabouts. “You squeezed someone?”
“A GPS NuTest report out of Pittsburgh and neighbor complaints led us to a particular house. I got needed medical attention to a particular virus child at a school in Indiana. His parents are very happy. The doctors say he’s going to live, Mark.” Browning sounded ebullient, relating this tale of detection and shakedown.
“With so much power, I know you could help us here,” Augustine said.
“Honestly. I can’t. Did you hear that France offered to send in wide-spectrum antivirals, and President Ellington refused?”
“I did not.”
“All the precious beltway schools are well-supplied. Nobody raided their medical stores. And remember, Ohio did not go for Ellington, last election.”
Augustine pinched the bridge of his nose. He had had a headache for the last two hours, and it showed no signs of going away. “I hear no charity, Rachel. Why the call?”
“Because the shit that passes for opinion around here is starting to scare even me. I can’t get through to the NRO or NSA bosses. Secretary of Health and Human Services is unavailable. I think they’re all in conference in their secure little rabbit holes in Annapolis and Arlington. Mark, you know as well as I do that everyone in the House and Senate had their kids well before SHEVA. Only two senators and four representatives have SHEVA grandkids. Tough luck. Statistically it should be more. Sixty-four percent of our aging electorate favored shoot-on-sight policies against fugitive virus kids in a CNN-Gallup Poll yesterday evening. Two out of three, Mark.”
“How secure is this line, Rachel?” Augustine asked.
Browning made a sharp raspberry between her teeth. “Can you guess what’s coming down from the beltway?”
The headache pounded. He leaned over the desk. “All too easily.”
“Queen’s X, Mark?”
“Who’s Queen today?”
“That would be me. I’ll authorize a special pickup for Kaye Lang and her daughter. People I know and trust.”
Augustine thought this over for a few seconds. He had never been angrier in his life, or weaker. “I’m obliged, Rachel.”
He could hear the triumph in her voice. “I’m not as stupid as you think I am, Mark. Alive, she’s a pain in the ass. Dead, she’s a martyr.”
“Do what you can, Rachel.”
“I always do. No timetables, though. I’ll do this on my own schedule and tell you as little as possible.”
“All right.”
“If this works, you owe me, Mark. Now, here’s what—”
Abruptly, the phone died. He shook it and punched the on button several times. The phone flashed to life, but, receiving no signal, turned off again to conserve power.
Very likely, SRO had taken over the wireless networks and shut down cell towers around all the schools. First stage of PDD 298.
Augustine put the phone down just as DeWitt returned to the room.
“Dr. Dicken wants to see you,” she said. “They’ve found something.”
“Supplies?” Augustine asked hopefully.
DeWitt shook her head.
42
PENNSYLVANIA
On the state route, the traffic was light, three or four cars in the last fifteen minutes. Nobody wanted to be caught driving. Simply being out on the road would be suspicious. George had said the turnoff to the cabin was tricky, hard to see. He had nailed a red plastic strip to a large pine tree to mark the spot.
Mitch drove more slowly, looking for the red plastic strip and a wooden plaque that joy-riding vandals tended to splinter with ball bats.
Suddenly, the interior of the Jeep filled with shadow. He felt immersed in inky night. The sensation passed, but it scared him; he could almost smell the darkness, like crankcase oil.
“Too damned tired,” he told himself, and wondered whether they had heard him in the backseat. He could feel both of them back there, both alive, both quiet. Stella’s breathing had lost some of its harshness, but Mitch knew her fever was high.
Maybe he was coming down with it, too. That would be more than Kaye could stand, he suspected. So, I will not become sick.
Whistling in the dark. In the oily dark.
43
OHIO
“Jurie left the number codes in a desk drawer,” Middleton said as Augustine and DeWitt followed her into the concrete cube of the research building. “Dr. Dicken told me to bring you all here.”
Dicken came through the opposite door, carrying a thick folder of papers. He glared at Augustine. “You rotten son of a bitch,” he said.
Augustine took this without blinking. “You’ve found something,” he said.
“You’re goddamned right I’ve found something. How much did Americol pump into the schools? The camps?”
“To my knowledge, nothing.”
“You’re going to blame it all on Trask, right?”
Augustine shook his head cautiously. He looked around the big room and focused on the wall of steel refrigerators. “I don’t even know what it is.”
“What would Marge Cross want with all these children?” Dicken held out the folder. Augustine reached forward, leaning on his cane, and Dicken pulled it back, then dropped it on a desk next to the stainless steel cold storage units. Photographs spilled out: color photographs of autopsy proceedings. Even from a distance, it was obvious the subjects were children, some of them infants.
Dicken took a step away, as if too disgusted to let Augustine come near him.
Augustine shifted his eyes from face to face, facial lines deepening. He pushed aside the photos, then lifted the cover page on the folder and leafed through it.
“I know you too well,” Dicken said. “You wouldn’t be stupid enough to just let this happen.”
“Show me the rest,” Augustine said.
Middleton punched in the code numbers that unlocked the first stainless steel refrigerator door. Fog fell, revealing ranks of jars. Augustine immediately recognized the contents for what they were. The jars on top were small and contained anonymous meaty lumps in colorless fluid.
The jars below, on taller shelves, contained whole internal organs.
Middleton’s skin had faded to a sickly shade of olive, and her eyes were almost closed.
“How many?” Augustine asked.
“There’re the remains of maybe sixty or seventy children here, and more scattered throughout the building,” Dicken said.
“What do you think… what purpose?”
“I won’t even hazard a guess,” Dicken said.
“We never lost this many children,” Middleton said, “and Dr. Jurie… Dr. Pickman… left before…” She did not finish. She closed the first door and opened the second. Trays of thousands of frozen tissue samples, mounted on slides or stored in solution in smaller bottles, had been stacked to the top of the compartment.
Augustine surveyed the trays, then stepped forward and motioned for Middleton to open the third door, and the fourth. His cane made rubbery squeaks on the linoleum floor. “You’re positive none of these were from the last two days,” he said, grasping at some reasonable explanation for all the jars and tubes and dishes sealed, neatly numbered, and marked with yellow-and-red biohazard labels.