To his last breath Lindell would continue to deny any responsibility for what had happened. It wasn't his fault. He couldn't have changed a single goddamned thing. Still, it was a fact that whoever had introduced the virus had done so only a few months after he and the PR department had initiated their white powder campaign, and the possibility that the whole chain of events was somehow inspired by the campaign – or even in answer to it – had definitely crossed his mind. The consumer affairs division had received any number of complaints during the high days of the congressional hearings and the media fuss, including at least one handwritten letter promising total world annihilation, but Lindell had learned from experience that there were cranks and failures beyond number in the world who blamed their lousy jobs and poor posture and the general lovelessness of their lives on some multinational corporation or another and who had nothing better to do than place angry phone calls and write menacing letters. Such people rarely if ever had the balls to act on their threats, for the simple reason that they were already defeated.

Yet somebody had decided to use Coca-Cola as the distribution nexus for the virus. That much was beyond doubt. The only questions to ask were who and why?

There were people in the PR division who were convinced that Islamic fundamentalists were to blame, or some group of anarcho-environmental zealots, or even, though it had been suggested mainly as a grim little joke, the Pepsi Corporation.

It seemed likely to Lindell, though, that whoever had devised the virus had no real grievance against Coca-Cola at all. They were simply looking for the product with the widest possible reach in the global marketplace, the one that would disseminate the virus with the most efficiency, and Coke was it.

Some ten years before, in response to falling transportation costs on one side of the equation and rising rates of water contamination on the other, the corporation had decided to centralize its processing operations in a single plant on the upper coast of Venezuela. It was cheaper to purify the entire soft drink supply in one location and then ship it the length of the world than it was to manufacture it in some fifty different noncontiguous locations and attempt to purify it on-site. Lindell had never been to the Venezuela plant, so he didn't know much about its layout, but his best guess was that someone had broken into whichever building held the processing equipment and introduced the virus directly into the syrup tanks. From there it had been mixed and bottled and carbonated, and then packaged and shipped around the world. And from there, undoubtedly, it had been consumed.

Of course, a lot of this was just guesswork on his part. He had sat in on the initial meeting between the CEO and the Infectious Agents Squad as the only delegate from the PR department. The one thing the IAS officers had been able to say for certain was that the contamination patterns suggested the virus was closely linked with Coca-Cola and that they intended to continue monitoring the situation.

The rest of the conversation had been very short. Lindell remembered it in its entirety.

"How many people are we talking about here?" the CEO had asked. "A few thousand? A few hundred thousand?"

One of the IAS officers had caught the other's eye, and they had both frowned.

"What? A few million?" the CEO said. "We wouldn't want to guess, sir." "More than that?" "As I say, sir…"

"So what are we supposed to do? Are you asking the company to issue a recall order? I presume you people are working on a cure – an antidote or something."

"The virus is lethal. That's all we've been authorized to tell you." His voice shifted to a lower tone. "I can add that it appears to be spreading rapidly, and not only within the Coke-drinking population."

It was a moment before the CEO realized what the officer was implying – that it was too late to do anything at all. That the situation was out of their control. That they would just have to watch from the sidelines and hope for the best.

The CEO let out a sigh. "I'll be motherfucked," he said.

"That may be, sir."

And then the IAS officers had left, and the rest of them had sat around the conference table staring blankly out of their faces until someone broke the silence with a "Jesus H. Christ" and the CEO had pledged them all to secrecy.

Just a few days later, Lindell was working on a contingency press release disavowing any rumors of Coke's connection to the virus when the weblines began reporting that the thing had gone airborne and waterborne. And a day or two after that, he was preparing a crisis statement for the CEO to read to the board of directors when he heard that the epidemic had reached the shores of the United States.

He could hardly see as he drove home that night.

He had died early the next morning.

The document he was looking for now was exactly where he had left it, behind the files in the top drawer of his desk. It was a list of ten names, the ten people who had been present at the meeting with the IAS officers and thus knew about Coca-Cola's liability with regard to the virus, followed by a statement promising that those people would not reveal this knowledge to anyone else, including the many other Coca-Cola employees who were present in the monument district. Six of the ten had signed the document, the six who had so far completed the crossing – which was to say the six who presumably knew this Laura Byrd woman, though for the life of him Lindell couldn't remember her. The other four had yet to appear in the city, and enough time had passed for the six of them who had appeared to conclude that they probably wouldn't be coming.

It was the CEO's opinion, and Lindell agreed, that since the document was the only hard evidence of the whole situation, it would be wise to destroy it.

And though no one had plainly directed him to do so, he was fairly certain – more certain than not – that none of the others would mind if he went ahead and took the initiative.

So it was that in the darkness of his office, lit only by the desk lamp, he ran the little fucker through the shredder and watched as the strips of paper fell as a single loose curtain onto the plastic lining of the trash can. There was so much air trapped beneath the lining that the opening had tightened into a sort of sphincter, and the pieces rested on the surface like cheap flakes of goldfish food floating in the water of an aquarium. He had to swat at the bag, pressing the air out, to make them drop to the bottom. A few stray threads of shredded paper drifted onto the floor during all the commotion. He could make out a Lind and a soev and an ola. He was picking them up when he heard a shuffling noise behind him.

"Unusual to see anybody here on a Saturday."

A current ran through Lindell’s back, and he straightened up. It was the building's custodian.

"Yeah, sometimes the work just follows you home," Lindell extemporized. He was holding the trash can in the crook of his arm, pressing it close to his body like a large bird whose wings he was trying to keep from beating. "You know how it is," he added.

"I can't say as I do," the custodian said.

"Well, no." Shut up and go away. "I guess you wouldn't, would you?"

The custodian gestured at the trash can. "So do you want me to empty that for you?"

"Oh, no, no. No, I'll do it," Lindell said. "I can do it. But thank you. Thank you very much," and without thinking he brushed past the custodian's cleaning-supply carriage and went down the hall, where he waited for the elevator to carry him to the lobby.

So it was that two minutes later he found himself standing outside with a small metal trash can in his hands. What the hell was he supposed to do with it? He couldn't just leave it sitting on the street, where anybody with the curiosity, the patience, and a good bottle of adhesive could scoop it up and paste the document back together. And he was afraid to toss it into one of the city's hundred-some-odd Dumpsters for the same reason: who knew what kind of person might find it? If he brought it home with him, he would have to carry it past the doorman who wore the silver cross around his neck and always asked a thousand questions – How's life treating you today? Can you believe all this snow we got last night? What's that you're holding there, Mr. Trimble? That trash can with the shredded paper? What's the writing on it say? Something about Coca-Cola? And if he went back to the office, there was the custodian to deal with.