The Virus

by Janelle Diller

  In between pulling the coffeecake out of the oven and sliding a couple of giant omelets onto a serving platter, Kai looked over Michael’s shoulder and did her own studying. “So what are you going to do with it?”

  “I know someone in Zaan Development. I’m hoping she can take this information and find that chink in the armor.”

  Neither Michael nor Kai said anything while we took a moment to serve ourselves and another minute to savor what Kai had accomplished. Without question, waiting tables was a waste of her talents.

  “Have you shown her this yet?” Michael asked. “Can she make sense of it?”

  I shook my head. “I tried calling her this morning, but she didn’t answer the phone.”

  Kai must have read my face. “Maybe she stayed with a friend last night.” She glanced at Michael and kind of giggled. “It happens.”

  He blushed. “Or maybe she turned the ringer off on her phone.” He glanced at Kai. “Like I should on a weekend.”

  “Maybe.” I still had to live with the electronic breadcrumb trail I’d left.

  “Here’s an idea,” Kai said. “This dishwasher at the restaurant who’s working his way through Stanford? He’s some kind of programming whiz, always coming in and bragging about hacking into this company or that system. Claims he never does anything, just goes in and looks around.”

  “Why would he do this? What’s in it for him?” Michael asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Why does anyone hack into a system? For the fun of it. For the challenge.”

  Kai tilted her head slightly. “For him, maybe it’s more. He’s Russian.” As if that said it all.

  I twitched at the coincidence. “Russian?” I hadn’t thought through how I was going to get Daniel’s first page translated. This seemed peculiarly convenient. I tried to shake it off.

  Kai nodded, missing my uneasiness. “He’s older, somewhere in his late thirties. He lived under communism long enough that it shaped his view of the world. At heart, he’s an anarchist.”

  A geeky anarchist. The world really needed one more of them.

  “So you really think he’d do this, even with the risk?” Michael asked. “This isn’t your ordinary jail time if he gets caught.”

  “For him? The risk would be the carrot. He’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  This conversation had leaped too far too fast. As thrilled as I was that Michael and now Kai, too, were willing to help me, I just wasn’t ready to hand this over to a total stranger.

  But Kai didn’t notice. She swept the papers together in a stack and left the room. A minute later, she came back with the originals and copies. “The restaurant’s closed tonight, so I know he’s not working. I’ll invite him over for a beer, and we’ll see what he can do with this.”

  She finally must have realized how on edge I was because she patted my hand and smiled. “Relax, Maggie. We’re going to make this work.” Then she leaned over to Michael and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so excited. I’ve always wanted to save the world.”

  They both laughed, but I didn’t.

  CHAPTER

  44

  WHAT I REALLY NEEDED WAS A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP. But since it was closing in on noon, I settled for a fifteen-minute nap on the couch followed by a little Gmail time on Kai’s computer. I shouldn’t have wasted the nap time. There, in heartwarming black and white, was a short, sweet message from Easy. Easy Rider, my dad’s nickname for the only one of my boyfriends he ever liked.

  Mz M, Heard you were in town. How about dinner at your favorite SF restaurant ... date 1 time ... rez under my favorite movie star.

  He was here, in California. Finally, all the worry that had sapped my energy and clarity came to a sharp end. I was weak. My childhood—or at least life from the last eighteen years—flooded through me, filling me with intense nostalgia. My skin had returned.

  His code was simple enough: we would meet at Sam’s Chowder Bowl, a hole in the wall seafood place down by the Embarcadero that had the best fish and chips on the planet. He wanted to meet at four o’clock, the hour of our first date ever. Back then, he’d been too broke to take me to dinner and a movie, so I gladly settled for a matinee and an Eddy-built picnic. The reservation name was a decoy. The takeout place only had six tables and took as many dinner reservations as your average Burger King. But the decoy told me he didn’t trust email even with the new addresses we each had.

  Now I faced a dilemma: should I tell Michael and Kai I was going to meet Eddy? Or should I keep those cards close to my chest? They’d been generous and quick-thinking; Michael had been my friend for ages—at least in Zaan years. Somehow, though, the morning had left me uneasy, like figuring out a puzzle too quickly. Sometimes, the solution is for real. Sometimes, there has to be a hitch.

  I went with my instincts and told them I was going to Jola’s house to see if she could figure out anything with the JavaScript. Kai said to get her to come and meet Stepan the Dishwasher.

  We should all have such a moniker.

  Kai called a cab for me, which I took to the closest BART station. From there, I took BART for several stops, jumped out at the last possible moment, and waited for another train. I rode that to the end of the line, walked a few blocks, and hopped on a streetcar. I backtracked with a cab to within walking distance of Jola’s. I hadn’t seen a single person follow me yet. In fact, for all I knew no humans had to be on the ground because they could track me from the sky by way of some unfound RFID on me. Still, there was a whisper of something, an uneasiness that shadowed me. People looked vaguely familiar on streetcars and sidewalks. When they looked at me, I felt disquieted. When they quickly glanced away, I became anxious. The only thing I could be sure about was that the effort distracted me from thinking nonstop about Eddy and counting down the minutes till I saw him again.

  A block from Jola’s, I stopped at a corner coffee shop, not quite ready to knock on her door and know for sure she wasn’t home. I could see her house from the coffee shop window, the lavender siding and pink flowers a lovely bookmark on the extravagantly painted row. I might not have even noticed the dark sedan parked a couple of houses up the hill except that two people sat in the car, not talking, not sightseeing, not even reading a map as far as I could tell. It wasn’t a Sunday thing to do, and it made me nervous.

  I watched them as I sipped my coffee. For five minutes, then ten minutes, they just sat. They were waiting for someone. Maybe Jola.

  Maybe me.

  I dialed Jola’s number. The phone rang over and over. I hung up and told myself that the only thing that told me was that Jola wasn’t home. Probably. I would have felt much better if I’d talked to her in person and she could have confirmed that there’d been no knock on the door in the middle of the night. I tried calling Anya’s Place, Anna’s restaurant in Palo Alto. After the first ring, a recording said that the restaurant was closed due to a death and that it would reopen on Tuesday as usual. A small worry poked at me. Why was the restaurant open on Saturday night but not Sunday? Why wasn’t it just closed until after the funeral?

  I was surprised at how easily I could suspect even the smallest event. I was beginning to think I had an unexpected gift for paranoia.

  I returned to my table by the window and watched the two people in the dark car up the street. Something had woken them up. The passenger talked on a phone and the headlights came on. The car was running and they were ready to move.

  The two of them suddenly looked animated, and the driver actually pointed down the street. Suddenly, the headlights flicked off and both people—one of them Mario Seneca, the other a black guy with a shaved head—stepped out of the car and started giant striding in the direction of the coffee shop.

  In the direction of me.

  “You have a back door?” I frantically asked the only woman behind the counter. “I need a back door, fast.” She looked young and slightly worn already; she was my best chance. “My boyfriend’s been beating on me, so I split. Now he sent some of his goon frie
nds after me.”

  She shifted her eyes back and forth a moment. My ring finger suddenly weighed a thousand pounds.

  I didn’t have time for her to narrow her eyes and think about what might be true. “Please,” I urged as softly as I could. “You can see them headed this way. The one guy is a government creep. He’ll flash a badge at you. Just ignore him.”

  Maybe she’d had a brush with the law—after all, it was San Francisco—but that triggered something. She flipped open the half door next to her and waved me back toward a small hallway beyond. I took three steps and shoved open a metal door, finding myself in a dingy interior hall with a half-dozen doors opening into it. At the end of the hall, an exit sign pointed the way out to the left. I hoped and ran, bursting into the cool afternoon air a moment later.

  The door emptied out onto the opposite street of the coffee shop. It gave me a half-block head start, as long as they didn’t figure out what had happened and leap the counter after me. I sprinted across the street, wishing for more trees or cars to provide a tiny bit of cover. An alley miraculously opened up on my left, and I ducked in, praying that it didn’t dead end in a heap of trashcans. In my last fleeting glance up the street, I saw Mario Seneca round the corner. He shouted something angry and dashed across the street. A car screeched to a halt just behind him. His weight was in my favor, but for all I knew, his partner could have been a marathon runner.

  The worst happened: the alley dead-ended a hundred feet in front of me. A hammer pounded in my chest. I couldn’t think fast enough. A fraction away from crazy, I scanned the sheer walls for something, a dangling fire escape, a dumpster, an open doorway. Anything to disappear into. But the place was clean of even a rain gutter. Then, at the last moment, the alley broke open to my right; daylight spilled in from the street ahead. I tried to listen for footsteps beating on the street ahead or the alley behind, but nothing was louder than my own adrenaline rushing through my head. Mario had to be closing in behind me, but I didn’t dare look.

  Ahead, the alley dumped out onto a quiet street lined with clean, colorful row houses.

  Retail. That’s what I needed. Where was a mall when I desperately needed one?

  I glanced to the right, the direction someone would be running from. The street was empty. I headed left, then left again at the first corner. It was the least logical direction since it took me uphill and closer to, rather than further from, the corner coffee shop. The street, still residential, at least had cars crammed bumper to bumper against the curb. I squeezed between two and dropped on fours to see if I could see running feet. Thirty seconds later black pants raced into the street, did a small dance of uncertainty, and then took off downhill. Slower khaki pants followed twenty paces behind. Khaki pants did the same confused downhill-then-straight-ahead-then-downhill shuffle and disappeared in the same direction as black pants.

  I was momentarily lost to them.

  I stayed crouched between the cars for at least ten minutes that might have been ten days. I didn’t see black or khaki pants return, so I peeked out between the cars on the sidewalk side. Again, nothing. I took a deep breath, stood, and scanned the empty street downhill from me, which was filled with a dozen shops and restaurants. Then as casually as I could, I did a Sunday stroll back towards and through the alley, back up the street, and flagged the first cab I saw. From a third floor window, someone could have seen the sweat on my forehead.

  The cab took me to Sausalito on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Mario and his friend would never think to look for me there, but just to be safe, I asked the cab driver for a bag and emptied my sunglasses, cash, credit cards, and some loose junk out of my purse, creating new nuances in the meaning of “bag lady.” I made a lousy trade—my six-month old Coach bag for the cab fare—but I was thankful that I’d at least snagged one of the more sophisticated cabbies in San Francisco.

  I was now stripped of nearly everything external that defined me.

  Logic told me that the DHS had been staking out Jola’s place because I’d led them there the day before. I was sick—really sick—about that, but I couldn’t change it. On a gut level, though, I couldn’t shake my fear that I still carried some RFID on me. Maybe I’d swallowed one at lunch. Maybe they had sprinkled RFID dust on me while I slept.

  Maybe they’d finally gotten so clever that they simply knew.

  I sat on the wharf, shaking and waiting for the ferry that would take me back across the Bay to Pier 39 in time to meet Eddy at four. For a chilly January Sunday, a surprising number of tourists strolled the walk by the sea. If they were looking for me, they didn’t seem to spot me. Just before the ferry shoved off the pier, I hopped on.

  I was the last passenger on. Even though the line between sea and sky was thick and wet, I rode on the deck and wished for a clearer head. Big-as-turkey seagulls floated beside the boat, but I didn’t have any bread to throw them.

  Four o’clock crept closer. My anxiety inched higher.

  Once we docked, I headed toward the seafood dive, all the while glancing behind, ahead, and behind me again. Even though I was sure I’d given them the slip, I was so terrible at this game they might have been waiting for me at the next bench.

  Tucked inside a small warren of tourist shops, Sam’s Chowder Bowl was the perfect place to meet. The bell on the door jingled a welcome as I entered the warm, slightly steamy café. The tiny space was empty except for a powerfully attractive dark-haired man at a corner table. I didn’t let myself make eye contact with Eddy until I’d finished ordering and paying. If the clerk thought I was weird for getting a little weepy over a mid-afternoon lunch, he kept from rolling his eyes. I took my Coke and headed for Eddy’s table. He stood up and casually kissed me, as though we were a comfortable couple separated for a few hours and not the nightmare week we’d just endured. My heart pounded. He squeezed my hand tight and pulled me into the seat next to him facing the door and counter.

  “You’re safe.”

  “Thank God you’re here.”

  “I love you.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  Our words softly tumbled over each other. He rubbed my neck and held my hand. I intertwined the fingers of the hand that was on top of mine. The details of the last couple of hours poured out in a nearly incoherent stream.

  “But you don’t think you were followed here?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

  His fingers squeezed mine tighter.

  “I was so worried about you.”

  “I knew you would be, and I felt terrible about it, but after I found your health card on my computer, I knew I had to get out of there. I didn’t trust your cell phone, and I was afraid your hotel or work phone might have been tapped. I didn’t dare email you, either. I just threw some things in a suitcase, cleaned off everything I could from my desktop computer, and took my laptop. I split town before they could miss me for not showing up at the Fox interview.”

  “But they hacked into your computer on Friday and gtalked me.”

  “The idiots. Like they could pass for someone on gtalk. They weren’t even smart enough to be suspicious about how easy it was to get into my computer.”

  “So you changed your passwords?”

  “Removed them. I wanted to see if they’d come back, and what they’d do. The extra five minutes it took might give me some good fingerprints.”

  I knew he meant the computer tracking kind of fingerprints, not the FBI kind.

  “If we ever go home again,” he said softly.

  “If we go home again.” I knew he was right, but I hadn’t put it into words until this moment.

  He sighed. “I know. But there are a lot worse things to give up than our leather couch and loveseat.” He lightly kissed my cheek. “I brought our photo albums and videos and the jewelry your mother left you. If I missed anything we can’t live without, we can have Pete retrieve it and send it if he ever gets his head back on straight.”

  “Send it? To w
here?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll figure it out later.”

  “So how did you get to California?”

  “I drove. Here’s the deal. On the way out of town, I sold Pete the Porsche for cash. He gave me some old Audi that he’d fixed up and the owners could never pay him for it. I got as far as Denver before I had second thoughts about racing across the country in an Audi, so I made some used-car lot guy a great trade for an old blue Taurus.”

  I laughed out loud. “A Taurus? The most generic car in the universe?”

  “You want to disappear? How can you do it better than in a car that looks like every other car on the road?”

  I picked up our orders at the counter and grabbed a handful of napkins. Eddy had been surprisingly brilliant about this whole escaping thing, but maybe that’s what you get for always assuming the worst is going to happen. When it does, who could be better prepared?

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. The fish was even better than I remembered—a crisp golden light batter on the outside, melt-in-your-mouth flaky on the inside. For that matter, I could have eaten just the tarter sauce with a spoon.

  I reached for my second piece. “They’re desperate to find you—to find both of us because they want me to lead them to you.”

  “I know. I know. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “I have so much to tell you.” I pulled the pages out of the manila envelope. “Maybe I’ve stumbled across some starting points.” I leafed through it till I got to the page with Tina’s information. “Take a look at this. There really are smallpox victims. But they’re victims DHS has intentionally infected to punish or coerce or use as bait.” I pointed to Tina’s line. “Has Pete heard anything?”

  Eddy shook his head and studied the page. “He’s gone crazy. He keeps sending me emails that hardly make sense. If he saw this, he’d assault the penitentiary single-handedly.”

  “It’s what I’d do.”

  “I know. I can’t blame him.” He sighed. “Where did you get this?”

  “From the father of this woman.” I gave him the obituary for Phil Generett’s daughter. “They exposed her because he threatened to go to the media with what he knew.”