Spiral

“Right. Carried by seven Japanese soldiers. In little brass cylinders. A fungus that could end the world.”

“You got it.”

“Then Dunne calls you personally-about the Uzumaki, you are certain. But you didn’t mention to him about other fungus, the glowing fungus. The one you found under a pile of rocks.”

“That’s right.”

“That fungus that might have a secret message in its genome.” Vlad licked the last of the jelly off his fingers. “This is crazy. Like the clocks with little birds.”

“Vlad, come on. This woman tortured Liam to find out what he knew-”

“I know, I know. But he jumped first.” Vlad rubbed his temples with his palms. “You believe this?” Vlad asked. “Really believe it?”

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath, nodded slowly. “Then I suppose I believe it, too.”

DECIDING TO PULL VLAD INTO THIS MESS WAS NO EASY choice, but Jake and Maggie needed someone with access to a genetics lab. With the campus closed, they couldn’t get to the Cornell BioResource Center, the genetic sequencing facility that Maggie normally used. But Jake remembered that Vlad had a friend that ran a backyard genetics lab.

From the backseat, Vlad said, “My friend at DTRA-who said Dunne and Connor fought? He heard rumors about secret bioweapons project run out of USAMRIID and the USDA. Very tightly held. Now it makes sense. Maybe this is what Connor was so angry about. Must be some sort of countermeasures program.”

“Why would Liam be so upset about that?” Maggie asked.

“That is obvious,” Vlad said. “The principle of defensive asymmetry. Connor’s law, as invented by your grandfather in the fifties: you create a cure, you create a weapon.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“During the Vietnam War, we-meaning, the U.S. military-considered the covert use of smallpox on the North Vietnamese in Laos. Why? The Americans were vaccinated, the North Vietnamese were not. Smallpox was a viable weapon because we had the cure and the Vietnamese did not.”

Jake said, “Same with the Uzumaki. When the Japanese had it, before there was penicillin in Japan, they were safe. The Americans were not. But later, when the entire world used penicillin, everyone was vulnerable and the Uzumaki was no longer a weapon.”

“Correct,” Vlad said. “But if our scientists come up with a cure at Detrick-”

“Connor’s law,” Jake said. “It’s a weapon again. But this time a weapon controlled by us. As long as we are the only country with the cure.”

“Correct. Locked and loaded.”

Maggie shook her head. “This is insane. You really think Liam was worried about the U.S. using a biological weapon?”

“Absolutely,” Vlad said. “Connor saw it all, from the fifties to now. Not just Vietnam. One of plans for the invasion of Cuba called for a botulinum biological attack. At the time, chairman of the Joint Chiefs-Lyman Lemnitzer-argued like a madman for it. There were plans to get Castro with toxic fungus in his wet suit. We had a hundred operational scenarios.”

“But that was decades ago,” Maggie said.

“The world repeats. Strong becomes weak. Weak becomes strong. When scared, you do what you have to.”

“But who is strong enough to scare us?”

“If you are Lawrence Dunne?” Jake said. “China. Dunne is a right-wing nut. His entire reputation is based on the Chinese threat. He’s convinced half the current administration that the Chinese will surpass us militarily by 2015.”

Maggie sat back, frowning. “But even if Liam knew all about the Uzumaki, he was opposed to Dunne’s scheme. It doesn’t tell us why that woman tortured him. What good would that knowledge do her?”

“Maybe she works for the Guoanbu-Chinese security,” Vlad said. “They’d have no trouble believing the U.S. is developing a biological first-strike capability.”

“But we’re the good guys,” Maggie said, “aren’t we?”

Vlad grimly smiled. “We are supposed to be. Not everyone is.”

Maggie took a right turn and pulled into the parking lot of the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium.

“My home away from home,” Maggie said. “We used to be on the main campus, in the Plant Science Building, but we got pushed out. Hardly anybody cares about physical specimens anymore. It’s all about genomics.”

Jake got out and scanned the area as Maggie unlocked the front door. The building was set along a gravel road, surrounded by fields on three sides and woods behind. The isolation made him nervous. The soldier in him said that this would be a hell of a place to launch an ambush.

Vlad rolled out of the backseat. He lifted the cuff of his left pants leg and pulled out a snub-nosed pistol. “I’ll wait out here,” he said. “Put an eye out.”

THE RECEPTION AREA WAS BRIGHT AND FRIENDLY, WITH chairs and couches for visitors.

“Through here,” Maggie said, leading Jake to a door at the back. It opened into a large space, maybe forty feet wide and a hundred deep, filled with rows of dull brown metal cabinets. The place had a cold, industrial feel, with concrete floors and an odd smell.

“Homey,” Jake said.