“Don’t worry, Daniels,” Sam said. “I think Fletcher’s level of aggravation will be in direct proportion to what, exactly, Mouse has found. Let’s go see, shall we?”

The girl sitting at Fletcher’s table was the furthest thing from a Mouse as Sam had ever seen, but she supposed that was the whole point of having an alias—you chose something to disguise yourself. Mouse’s right arm was a sleeve of colorful tattoos that ended sharply at her wrist. Though she was clearly young, her dark honey-blond hair was streaked with silver. Whether it was natural or purposeful, its effect was stunning. She had a pierced septum, and she wasn’t wearing a bra; her nipples were pierced, as well. Sam could see the outline of small barbells through the girl’s thin shirt.

Mouse saw Fletcher, smiled widely and put up two fingers in a peace sign. “I come bearing good news.”

“You better,” Fletcher growled at her, but Sam could tell he was too interested to see what she’d found to be truly angry at Daniels’s slipup.

“Good to see you, too, Lieutenant.” She glanced at Sam, one eyebrow hiked.

Sam nodded in greeting. “Dr. Samantha Owens. FBI.”

“Fletcher told me you were a professor at Georgetown.”

“Normally I am. I’m an FBI consultant, too.”

“Do you know anything about my world, Doc? What it is that I do?”

“A bit. Not enough to follow if you’re going to talk hacker, though.”

She smiled. The top teeth were perfect, gleaming white, but the bottom were crowded, the canines at an odd angle. More imperfections that looked utterly right on this mercurial girl.

“All right, then. When Marcos decoded the SD card, he only skimmed the top layer. There’s a second level of encryption inside the card. Really advanced stuff, theoretical, even, if you want me to be honest. This card can take down the entire network of a company with a clean keystroke. It’s a weapon, plain and simple. And if the wrong person gets their hands on it, someone’s going to end up having a very bad day.”

“In English, Mouse, for the old folks. Please,” Fletcher said.

She nodded patiently. Genius she might be, but she was used to having to make herself clear. “You’ve heard of server proxies? It’s what keeps a website secure, allows them to move and store people’s private information. Some hackers sell proxies to the highest bidder. I’m talking millions of dollars changing hands. There’s code on this card that will take down a website’s secure proxy, and allow the hacker access to all the financial data stored in the servers.”

“What would Amanda Souleyret be doing with this? Or what did she want it for? Is there any indication?” Fletcher asked.

Mouse took a gulp of her soda, her eyes never leaving Fletcher’s. “To be honest, I’d assume she needed to get into a really secure database and steal something.”

Sam nodded. “That makes sense. That’s what her job was. Getting secrets out of databases. And the program worked, right? She was able to get the vaccination schedules, and the proof of the superbug...” She stopped. Mouse wasn’t at all cleared to know anything more.

But the girl rolled her eyes. “I saw it all. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. I assume your people will know what to do with this information more than me. It’s wild, though, to think that they’ve managed to come up with a medication that might work. That’s some cool shit, dude.”

“What do you mean, work?” Sam asked. “The parts I read showed a ninety percent mortality rate.”

“Au contraire, mon frère. Inside the second layer of information, there’s a list of survivors, actual names and such. The data on the first layer was a year old—this is current, real time, like last week. There are a bunch more people who did survive. But here’s the kicker. The ones who survived are being killed by the soldiers and families. They think they’re zombies. There are a lot of superstitions in that part of the world. They know no one gets better once they contract the blood diseases. There’s a patient in here who was in isolation for over a month, but got better, and when they released her and sent her home to her family, they stoned her to death, thinking she was a monster.”

“Zombies?” Fletcher said. Skeptical had nothing on him.

Mouse shrugged. “That’s what the files say.”

“How many patients are we talking about who survived?” Sam asked.

“Of the people who were given the fake vaccine with the superbug in it, at least a hundred. The mortality rate is still tremendous, but some people are surviving. They’re all identified by code letters. That’s the important part of this, what was deeply encrypted. They are using antibodies in the blood of the ones who survived to create a real vaccine that will help fight the spread of the superbug. Which means there are samples somewhere—blood, tissue, all that icky stuff. I can’t find where, but they exist. There’s a log of them in the files.”

Sam felt a spark of hope. “Who is they?”

“Some virologist here in D.C.”

Bromley. It had to be. She exchanged a look with Fletcher. “So you’re saying that they’re using the samples from the survivors to work on a new vaccine that protects against the superbug?”

Mouse nodded. “They just have no idea how or why it works. And it still only works on about seventy percent. So the numbers are moving in the right direction, but it’s still fatal for a lot of people.”

“Tell me more,” Sam said. “The physical samples taken from the survivors...what are they doing with them?”

“I’m not sure. The labeling system is a bit wonky, but it’s consistent from area to area. That’s the trick with codes—you find the similarities, and everything falls into place.” She pointed to a line of code on the computer. “See, this one is from ground zero. It’s a small village in Sierra Leone—Anchurra. AN. So all the samples from this area are labeled with a GR—for ground zero—and AN for Anchurra. The next letters are which strain they’ve been given, and lastly the patient number or letter. But I can’t find where the samples got off to. Who knows where they are.”

Sam felt a zing of recognition, looked at Fletcher. “I think I know where at least one is. God, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before. I’m slipping.”

“Where?”

“Remember the vials we pulled out of Cattafi’s refrigerator? The one no one could identify? Gransef. GR—ground zero. AN—Anchurra province. SE—the strain. F—the patient. We have one of the samples in evidence right now. It was rather elegantly hidden, wasn’t it?”

Fletcher’s smile grew wide, and he bumped Mouse on the shoulder. “Damn good work, kiddo.” He nodded at Daniels. “You’re forgiven.”

“Wait. It’s not all good news.”

“What is it, Mouse?” Sam asked.

“It’s the ultimate biological weapon, right? Even at its best, it still has a seventy to ninety percent mortality rate. You manage to slip this superbug into a shipment of flu vaccines heading to your local doctor’s office or drugstore, and you can infect the populace. And even with our great sanitation and medical care, there would be a massive mortality rate, because the vaccine against the superbug still kills so many of the people who get it.”

“What are you saying? That it’s possible a terrorist organization might have their hands on some of this and is planning to put it into our vaccines?”

“Ma’am, I may be paranoid, but I think we can’t rule it out. That would explain why the SD chip has the software proxies. So someone can load them into the firm’s servers and download all their financial data. To condemn, or to prosecute or to cover all this up. If they’re being funded by a terror group, or selling this superbug to them? We could have a much bigger problem on our hands.”

The kitchen went silent. This was what Girabaldi had been worried about. Now they had proof, in one way.

Sam took a deep breath. “We need to get our hands on those vials from Cattafi’s right now.”