“Video,” I prompted. “Do I ever get to see it?”

Instead of answering me, he cleared his throat and tried to look serious. “What do you know of cryptozoology?”

“Crypto-what?” I asked.

“Cryptozoology,” he repeated, saying it slower this time. “Depending on who you ask, it’s either a minor branch of biology or a pseudoscience. In either case, it’s concerned with the search for cryptids-animals that do not belong to any known biological or fossil record.”

“You lost me.”

Hu smiled thinly. “It’s simple. Cryptids are animals that are believed by some to exist… but which usually don’t.”

“What? Like the Loch Ness Monster?”

Hu gave me a “wow, the caveman had a real thought” sort of look but nodded. “And Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, El Chupacabra, and a bunch of others.”

“Please don’t tell me that I busted my ass to dodge the NSA just to go on a Bigfoot hunt. I’m just starting to not entirely dislike you, Doc; don’t make me have to kill you.”

His smile would have wrinkled a lemon.

“No,” he said with exaggerated patience, “we’re not searching for Bigfoot. However, there have been instances of presumed mythological creatures being found. Until a few years ago the giant squid was considered a myth. And two hundred years ago the first people to report an egg-laying mammal with webbed feet, a duck’s bill, and a poisonous sting were branded as liars, but we now know the platypus exists.”

“Platypuses are poisonous?” I asked.

“Male platypi are,” he said, correcting me with a sneer. “Some of these animals may be UMAs, or Unidentified Mysterious Animals, that, due to lack of physical evidence, spoor or DNA, resist scientific classification in the known biology. Others are relicts-that’s with a t-surviving examples of species believed to be extinct or so close to extinction that living examples are rarely found.”

“Wow, this is fascinating, Doc,” I said. “By the way, did anyone mention that the Vice President of the United frigging States of America wants us all arrested?”

Hu peered at me for a moment. “Exciting,” he said. “Another more exotic example is the coelacanth, a large fish believed to have become completely extinct over sixty million years ago, and yet one was netted in December of 1938 by the crew of a South African trawler. Since then living populations of them have been sighted and caught in the waters around Indonesia and South Africa.”

I grunted. “Sure, I’ve seen them in the Smithsonian.”

“Generally cryptozoologists search for the more sensational mega-fauna cases-like Bigfoot-rather than new species of beetles or flies. And before you ask, ‘megafauna’ means ‘large animals.’ In biology it’s used to describe any animal weighing more than forty kilograms. And we occasionally find relicts or UMAs that do exist.”

“Okay, I get that this is like porn for you science geeks, but if there’s some reason I have to sit through it then for Christ’s sake get to it.”

“I wanted you to have this in mind before I played the video.”

“Church said he wanted me to watch it without preconceptions so I could form my own opinions.”

From Hu’s look it was clear that he didn’t think me capable of anything as complex as an “opinion.” He tapped a few keys. “This video was blind e-mailed to us. Someone logged on from an Internet café in São Paolo, created a Yahoo account, sent this, and then abandoned the account. We hacked Yahoo, but all of the info used to create the account was phony. All we have is the file.”

“Sent to whom?”

“To an old e-mail account owned by Mr. Church. Don’t ask about the account, because he didn’t tell me. All he said is that it’s one he never uses anymore but which he occasionally checks as a matter of routine.” Hu rubbed his hands together in a way I’d only ever seen mad scientists do in bad movies. “Now… watch! I can guarantee you that this is going to blow you away.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia

Saturday, August 28, 10:48 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 97 hours, 12 minutes

“We have a virus,” said Judah Levin. He couldn’t help smiling.

It was an old joke in the CDC’s IT department, and it always got a laugh, or at least a groan.

His boss, Colleen McVie, looked up from the papers on her desk. She wore her glasses halfway down her nose and measured out half a smile.

“Unless it’s urgent,” she said, “go practice your standup on someone else. I’m ass deep with the payroll, or don’t you want to get paid?”

“Being paid is nice, but we actually do have a virus, Colleen. A couple of the secretaries have been complaining about it. It’s a bounce-back program that came at us through-”

“So… deal with it,” she interrupted. “We get fifty viruses a week.”

“Okay,” he said, and left her office.

He went back to the main office, where several secretaries were standing around the coffeemaker. Judah had told them to log off and they seemed to take that as a sign to do no work at all. He shrugged-it wasn’t his problem, and Colleen would be buried with her payroll for the rest of the day.

The virus hadn’t been overtly destructive, but it had been new and oddly configured enough to catch his attention, especially since it arrived as a bounce-back response to the CDC’s daily alert e-mail bulletin.

Judah sat at one of the workstations, opened his laptop on a wheeled side table, and logged onto both computers. Everything loaded normally all the way to the password screen. He used one of IT’s secure passwords that would open the system but reroute it to his laptop. Again the screens loaded normally. He ran several different spyware scans and came up with nothing.

He frowned. That was weird, because he had definitely seen the virus warning message pop-up. He tapped a few keys and did a different kind of search.

Nothing.

Very weird.

He logged into the office e-mail account and looked for the e-mail that had likely carried the virus. It was gone.

Without saying a word he got up and went to the adjoining desk and logged on. Same result-no trace of the e-mail, no trace of a virus. He repeated this four more times, but there was no trace of either the e-mail or the virus anywhere in the system.

Judah picked up the secretary’s phone and punched the number for Tom Ito, his assistant. When Ito answered, Judah said, “Did you do a system search on an e-mail virus this morning?”

“No, why-you need me to run one?”

Judah explained the situation.

“Got me, Jude. Do we have a problem?”

Judah thought about it. “Nah. Skip it. If it’s not there, then it’s not there. Nothing to worry about.”

He hung up and walked over to the secretaries. “Look, the system seems to be clear, but if you get anything else call me right away.”