I looked at Dr. Zollner awhile, and he looked back at me. His glasses were thick, but you could see the blue twinkling eyes. Maybe not Burl Ives. Maybe Colonel Sanders. That was it. How appropriate. The head of the world's largest animal disease research lab looks like Colonel Sanders.

He said to me, "Detective Corey? You have a contrary thought, perhaps?"

"Oh, no. I'm with the majority on this one. I knew the Gordons, and apparently you did too, Doctor. You're right on the mark." I looked at my colleagues and said, "I can't believe we never thought of that. Not death. Life. Not disease, but a cure."

"Vaccine," said Dr. Zollner. "A preventive. Not a cure. There's better money in vaccines. If it's a flu vaccine, for instance, then a hundred million doses are dispensed each year in America alone. The Gordons were doing brilliant work with viral vaccines."

"Right. Vaccine." I asked Dr. Zollner, "And you say they'd have had to plan this for some time?"

"Oh, yes. As soon as they realized they were on to something, they'd begin making false notes, false test results, and at the same time, keeping legitimate notes and so forth. It's the scientific equivalent of double bookkeeping."

"And no one would realize what was going on? There are no checks or controls?"

"Well, there are, of course. But the Gordons were each other's research partner, and they were very senior. Also, their area of expertise-viral genetic engineering-is somewhat exotic and not easily checked by others. And finally, if there's a will, and there's a genius IQ at work, then there's a way."

I nodded. "Incredible. And how did they smuggle this stuff out? I mean, how big is a Jell-O plate?"

"Gel plate."

"Right. How big?"

"Oh… perhaps a foot and a half wide, and two and a half feet long."

"How do you get that out of biocontamment?"

"I'm not sure."

"And their notes?"

"Fax. I'll show you later."

"And the actual vaccine?"

"That would be easier. Anal and vaginal."

"I don't want to sound crude, Doc, but I don't think they could get a thirty-inch gel plate up their ass without attracting a little attention."

Dr. Zollner cleared his throat and replied, "You don't actually need the gel plates if you could photocopy them or take a photo with one of those little spy cameras."

"Incredible." I thought of the fax machine in the Gordons' office.

"Yes. Well, let's go see if we can figure out what happened and how it happened." He stood. "If anyone does not want to go into biocontainment, you may sit in the lobby or in the cafeteria." He looked around, but no one said anything. He smiled, more Burl Ives than Colonel Sanders, I think. He said, "Well, everyone is brave then. Please, follow me."

We all stood and I said, "Stay together."

Dr. Zollner smiled at me and said, "When you are in biocontainment, my friend, you will naturally want to stay as close to me as possible."

It struck me that I should have gone to the Caribbean to convalesce.

CHAPTER 12

We returned to the lobby and stood before the two yellow doors. Dr. Zollner said to Beth, "Donna awaits you in the locker room. Please follow her instructions, and we will meet you at the rear door of the ladies' locker room." Zollner watched her go through the yellow door, then said to us, "Gentlemen, please follow me."

We followed the good doctor into the men's locker room, which turned out to be a hideous orange place, but otherwise typical of any locker room. An attendant handed us open locks without keys and freshly laundered lab whites. In a plastic bag were paper underwear, socks, and cotton slippers.

Zollner showed us to a row of empty lockers and said, "Please remove everything, including underwear and jewelry."

So, we all stripped down to our birthday suits, and I couldn't wait to tell Beth that Ted Nash carried a.38 with a three-inch barrel and that the barrel was longer than his dick.

George Foster said, apropos of my chest wound, "Close to the heart."

"I have no heart."

Zollner pulled on his oversized whites and now he looked more like Colonel Sanders.

I snapped my padlock on the locker hasp and adjusted my paper underwear.

Dr. Zollner looked us over and said, "So-we are all ready? Then please follow me."

"Hold on," Max said. "Don't we get face masks or respirators or something?"

"Not for Zone Two, Mr. Maxwell. Maybe for Zone Four, if you want to go that far. Come. Follow me."

We went to the rear of the locker room, and Zollner opened a red door marked with the weird-looking biohazard symbol and beneath the symbol the words "Zone Two." I could hear rushing air and Dr. Zollner explaining, "That's the negative air pressure you hear. It's up to a pound per square inch less in here than outside, so no pathogens can escape accidentally."

"I hate when that happens."

"Also, the particulate air niters on the roof clean all exhaust air from in here."

Max looked stubbornly skeptical, like a man who doesn't want any good news to interfere with his long-held belief that Plum Island was the biohazard equivalent of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl combined.

We went into a cement block corridor, and Zollner looked around and asked, "Where is Ms. Penrose?"

I replied, "Doc, are you married?"

"Yes. Oh… of course, she may take longer to get changed."

"No 'mays' about it, feller."

Finally, from the door marked "Women," Lady Penrose appeared, dressed in loose-fitting whites and cotton slippers. She still looked sexy, more cupid-like in white, I thought.

She heard the rushing air sound, and Zollner explained the negative air pressure, gave us some instructions about being careful not to bump into carts or racks of vials, or bottles filled with lethal bugs or chemicals, and so forth.

Zollner said, "All right, please follow me, and I will show you what goes on here so you can tell your friends and colleagues that we are not making anthrax bombs." He laughed, then said in a serious tone, "Zone Five is off-limits because you need special vaccinations, and also training to put on the biohazard suits and respirators and all of that. Also, the basement is off-limits."

"Why," I asked, "is the basement off-limits?"

"Because that's where we hide the dead aliens and the Nazi scientists." He laughed again. I love being the straight man for a fat Ph.D. with a Dr. Strange-love accent. Really. More to the point, I knew that Stevens had indeed spoken to Zollner. I would have liked to have been a tsetse fly on that wall.

Mr. Foster attempted humor and said, "I thought the aliens and the Nazis were in the underground bunkers."

"No, the dead aliens are in the lighthouse," Zollner said. "We moved the Nazis out of the bunkers when they complained about the vampires."

Everyone laughed-ha, ha, ha. Humor in biocontainment. I should write to Reader's Digest.

As we walked, Dr. Zany said, "It's safe in this zone-mostly we have genetic engineering labs, some offices, electron microscopes-low-risk, low-contagion work here."

We walked through cement block corridors and every once in a while, Dr. Zollner would open a yellow steel door and say hello to someone inside an office or laboratory and inquire as to their work.

There were all sorts of weird windowless rooms, including a place that looked like a wine cellar except the bottles in the racks were filled with cultures of living cells, according to Zollner.

Zollner gave us a commentary as we walked through the battleship-gray corridors. "There are newly emerging viruses that affect animals or humans or both. We humans and the higher animal species have no immunological responses to many of these deadly diseases. Present antiviral drugs are not very effective, and so the key to avoiding a future worldwide catastrophe is antiviral vaccines, and the key to the new vaccines is genetic engineering."