But first he had to stick out his neck and send them his report and a coverage memo, and make sure it was on everybody’s desk before the shit was airborne.
Not that he would be sticking his neck out very far. Before some White House lackey — maybe Kennealy, greasing for a promotion — whispered in the president’s ear that Augustine was not a team player, he strongly suspected there would be another incident.
A very bad incident.
48
The National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
Burying herself in work was the only thing Kaye could think of to do right now. Confusion blocked any other option. As she left the clinic, walking briskly past the outdoor tables full of Vietnamese and Korean vendors selling toiletries and knickknacks, she looked at the task list in her daybook and ticked off the meetings and calls — Augustine first, then ten minutes in Building 15 with Robert Jackson to ask about the ribozyme binding sites, a cross-check with two NIH researchers in Buildings 5 and 6 helping her in her search for additional SHEVA-like HERV; then to half a dozen other researchers in her backup list to solicit their opinions -
She was halfway between the clinic and the Taskforce center when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse.
“Kaye, this is Christopher.”
“I don’t have any time and I feel like shit, Christopher,” she snapped. “Tell me something that will make me feel good.”
“If it’s any consolation, I feel like shit, too. I got drunk last night and there are demonstrators out front.”
“They’re here, too.”
“But listen to this, Kaye. We have Infant C in pathology now. It was born at least a month premature.”
“It? Ithad a sex, didn’t it?”
“He. He’s riddled inside and out with herpes lesions. He had no protection against herpes in the womb — SHEVA induces some sort of opportunistic opening through the pla-cental barrier for herpes virus.”
“So they’re in league — all out to cause death and destruction. That’s cheerful.”
“No,” Dicken said. “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. I’m coming up to NIH tomorrow.”
“Give me something to go on, Christopher. I don’t want another night like the last two.”
“Infant C might not have died if his mother hadn’t contracted herpes. They may be separate issues, Kaye.”
Kaye closed her eyes, stood still on the sidewalk. She looked around for Farrah Tighe; in her distraction, she had apparently walked out without her, against instructions. No doubt Tighe was frantically searching for her right now. “Even if they are, who will listen to us now?”
“None of the eight women at the clinic have any herpes or HIV I called Lipton and checked. They’re excellent test cases.”
“They aren’t due for ten months,” Kaye said. “If they follow the one-month rule.”
“I know. But I’m sure we’ll find others. We need to talk again — seriously.”
“I’ll be in meetings all day, then at the Americol labs in Baltimore tomorrow.”
“This evening, then. Or doesn’t the truth mean much now?”
“Don’t lecture me about truth, damn it,” Kaye said. She could see National Guard trucks moving in along Center Drive. So far, the protesters had kept to the northern end; she could see their signs and banners from where she stood beside a low grassy hill. She missed Dicken’s next few words. She was fascinated by the distant crowds on the move.
“ — I want to give your idea a fair chance,” Dicken said. “The LPC carries no possible benefit for a simple virus — why use it?”
“Because SHEVA’s a messenger,” Kaye said, her voice soft, between dreamy and distracted. “It’s Darwin’s radio.”
“What?”
“You’ve seen the afterbirth from the Herod’s first-stage fetuses, Christopher. Specialized amniotic sacs…Very sophisticated. Not diseased.”
“Like I said, I want to work on this more. Convince me, Kaye. God, if this Infant C is just a fluke!”
Three blunt little popping sounds came from the north end of the campus, small, toylike. She heard the crowd let out a startled moan, then a distant, high scream.
“I can’t talk, Christopher.” She shut the phone with a plastic clack and ran. The crowd was about a quarter of a mile away, breaking up, people pushing back and scattering along the roads, the parking lots, the brick buildings. No more pops. She slowed to a walk for several steps, considering the danger, then ran again. She had to know. Too much uncertainty in her life. Too much hanging back and inaction, with Saul, with everything and everybody.
Fifty feet from her she saw a stocky man in a brown suit dash out of a building’s rear service door, arms and legs going like windmills. His coat flapped up over a bulging white shirt and he looked ridiculous, but he was quick as a bat out of hell and heading right for her.
For a moment she was alarmed and veered to avoid him.
“Damn it, Dr. Lang,” he shouted. “Hold on there! Stop!”
She slowed to a grudging walk, out of breath. The man in the brown suit caught up with her and flashed a badge. He was from the Secret Service and his name was Benson and that was all she managed to catch before he closed the case and pocketed it again. “What in hell are you doing? Where’s Tighe?” he asked her, his face beefy red, sweat pouring down his pockmarked cheeks.
“They need help,” she said. “She’s back at the—”
“That’s gunfire. You will stay right here if I have to hold you down personally. Goddamn it, Tighe was not supposed to let you out alone!”
At that moment, Tighe came running to catch up with them. She was red-faced with anger. She and Benson exchanged quick, harsh whispers, then Tighe positioned herself beside Kaye. Benson broke into a speedy trot toward the broken clumps of protesters. Kaye continued walking, but slower.
“Stop right here, Ms. Lang,” Tighe said.
“Somebody’s been shot!”
“Benson will take care of it!” Tighe insisted, standing between her and the crowd.
Kaye peered over Tighe’s shoulders. Men and women clutched their hands to their faces, crying. She saw dropped banners, drooping signs. The crowd swirled in complete confusion.
National Guard soldiers in camouflage, automatic rifles held at ready, took positions between brick buildings along the closest road.
A campus police car drove over the lawn and between two tall oak trees. She saw other men in suits, some talking on cell phones, walkie-talkies.
Then she noticed the lone man in the middle, arms held straight out as if he wanted to fly. Beside him, a motionless woman sprawled on the grass. Benson and a campus security officer reached them simultaneously. Benson kicked a dark object across the grass: a pistol. The security officer pulled out his own pistol and aggressively pushed back the flying man.
Benson knelt beside the woman, checked the pulse at her neck, looked up, around, his face saying it all. Then he glared at Kaye, mouthed emphatically, Get back .
“It wasn’t my baby,” the flying man shouted. Skinny, white, short fuzzy blond hair, in his late twenties, he wore a black T-shirt and black jeans slung low on his hips. He tossed his head back and forth as if surrounded by flies. “She made me come here. She goddamn made me. It wasn’t my baby!”
The flying man danced back from the guard, jerking like a marionette. “I can’t take this shit anymore. NO MORE SHIT!”
Kaye stared at the injured woman. Even from twenty yards she could see the blood staining her blouse around her stomach, sightless eyes staring up with a blank kind of hope at the sky.
Kaye ignored Tighe, Benson, the flying man, the troops, the security guards, the crowd.