Shawbeck released a quiet snort of dubiety.

“Go on,” Kirby encouraged.

“It’s an old part of human biology. It’s been in our DNA since long before humans existed. Maybe it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.”

“Kill babies?” Shawbeck suggested tartly.

“Regulate some larger, species-level function.”

“Let’s go with what’s solid,” Augustine suggested quickly. “SHEVA is Herod’s. It causes gross birth defects and miscarriages.”

“The connection is strong enough for me,” Kirby said. “I think I can sell the president and Congress.”

“I agree,” Shawbeck said. “With some deep concerns, however. I wonder if all this mystery could catch up to us down the road a ways and bite us in the butt.”

Dicken felt some relief. He had almost blown the game but had managed to hold back an ace to play later; traces of SHEVA from the corpses in Georgia. The results had just come back from Maria Konig at the University of Washington.

“I’m seeing the president tomorrow,” the surgeon general said. “I have ten minutes with him. Get me the domestic stats on paper, ten copies, full color.”

SHEVA would soon become an official crisis. In the politics of health, a crisis tended to be resolved using familiar science and bureaucratically tried and true routines. Until the situation showed its true strangeness, Dicken did not think anybody would believe his conclusions. He could hardly believe them himself.

Outside, under felt-colored skies, a dull November afternoon, Augustine opened the door to the government Lincoln and said, over the roof, “Whenever anyone asks you what you really think, what do you do?”

“Go with the flow,” Dicken said.

“You got it, boy genius.”

Augustine drove. Despite Dicken’s near fumble, Augustine seemed happy enough with the meeting. “She’s only got six weeks left before she retires. She’s taking my name in to the White House chief of staff as a suggested replacement.”

“Congratulations,” Dicken said.

“With Shawbeck as a very close backup,” Augustine added. “But this could do it, Christopher. This could be the ticket.”

22

New York City

Kaye sat in a dark brown leather chair in the richly paneled office and wondered why highly paid East Coast lawyers chose such elegantly somber trappings. Her fingers pressed the brass heads of the upholstery nails on the arm.

The lawyer for AKS Industries, Daniel Munsey, stood beside the desk of J. Robert Orbison, her family’s lawyer for thirty years.

Her father and mother had died five years before, and Kaye had not paid Orbison’s retainer. With Saul’s disappearance and the all-too-stunning news from AKS and the corporate attorney for EcoBacter, now sucking up to AKS, she had gone to Orbison in a state of shock. She had found him to be a decent and caring fellow, who said he would charge no more than he had ever charged Mr. and Mrs. Lang in their thirty years of business.

Orbison was thin as a rail, hook-nosed, bald, with age spots all over his head and down his cheeks, whiskers on his moles, loose wet lips, bleary blue eyes, but he dressed in a beautiful custom-fitted pinstripe suit with wide lapels and a tie that almost filled the V of his vest.

Munsey was in his early thirties, darkly handsome, soft-spoken. He wore a smooth tobacco-colored wool suit and knew biotech almost as well as she did; in some ways, better.

“AKS may not be responsible for the failures of Mr. Mad-sen,” Orbison said in a strong, gentle voice, “but under the circumstances, we believe your company owes Ms. Lang due consideration.”

“Monetary consideration?” Munsey lifted his hands in puzzlement. “Saul Madsen could not convince his investors to keep funding him. Apparently, he had focused on a deal with a research group in the Republic of Georgia.” Munsey shook his head sadly. “My clients bought out the investors. Then- price was more than fair, considering what’s happened since.”

“Kaye put a lot of work into the company. Compensation for intellectual property—”

“She has contributed greatly to science, not to any product a potential purchaser could possibly market.”

“Then surely, fair compensation for contributing to the value of EcoBacter as a name.”

“Ms. Lang was not a legal co-owner. Saul Madsen apparently never regarded his wife as more than a managerial employee.”

“It is a regrettable lapse that Ms. Lang did not inquire,” Orbison admitted. “She trusted her husband.”

“We believe she’s entitled to whatever assets remain in the estate. EcoBacter is simply no longer one of those assets.”

Kaye looked away.

Orbison looked down at the glass-covered desktop. “Ms. Lang is a famous biological scientist, Mr. Munsey.”

“Mr. Orbison, Ms. Lang, AKS Industries buys and sells going concerns. With Saul Madsen’s death, EcoBacter is no longer a going concern. There are no valuable patents in its name, no relationships with other companies or institutions that can’t be renegotiated outside our control. The one product that could be marketable, a treatment for cholera, is actually owned by a so-called employee. Mr. Madsen was remarkably generous with his contracts. We’ll be lucky if the physical assets recoup ten percent of our costs. Ms. Lang, we can’t even make payroll for this month. Nobody’s buying.”

“We believe that given five months, using her reputation, Ms. Lang could assemble a team of solid financial backers and restart EcoBacter. Employee loyalty is very high. Many have signed letters of intent to stay with Kaye and help rebuild.”

Munsey raised his hands again: no go. “My clients follow their instincts. Perhaps Mr. Madsen should have chosen another kind of firm to sell his company to. With all respect to Ms. Lang, and nobody holds her in higher esteem than I do, she has performed no work of immediate commercial interest. Biotech is a highly competitive business, Ms. Lang, as you know.”

“The future lies in what we can create, Mr. Munsey,” Kaye said.

Munsey shook his head sadly. “You’d have my own investment in a flash, Ms. Lang. But I’m a softy. The rest of the companies…” He let his words trail off.

“Thank you, Mr. Munsey,” Orbison said, and made a tent with his hands, on which he rested his long nose.

Munsey seemed nonplussed by this dismissal. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Lang. We’re still having difficulty with our completion bond and insurance negotiations because of the way Mr. Madsen vanished.”

“He’s not coming back, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kaye said, her voice breaking. “They found him, Mr. Munsey. He’s not going to come back and have a good laugh with us and tell me how to get on with my life.”

Munsey stared at her.

She could not stop. The words poured out. “They found him on the rocks in Long Island Sound. He was in terrible shape. I had to identify him from our wedding ring.”

“I’m deeply sorry. I hadn’t heard,” Munsey said.

“The final identification was made this morning,” Orbison told him quietly.

“I’m so very sorry, Ms. Lang.”

Munsey backed out and closed the door behind him.

Orbison watched her silently.

Kaye wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I had no idea how much he meant to me, how much we had become one brain, working together. I thought I had my own mind and my own life…and now, I find out different. I feel less than half a human being. He’s dead.”

Orbison nodded.

“This afternoon I’m going back to EcoBacter and I’m going to hold a little wake with all the people there. I’m going to tell them it’s time to find work, and that I’ll be there right alongside them.”

“You’re smart and young. You’ll make it, Kaye.”

“I know I’ll make it!” she said fiercely. She hit her knee with her fist. “Goddamn him. The…bastard. The creep. He had no goddamn right!”