Crime Zero (32 page)

She pointed at the center of the underground lab complex on the napkin. "I'll go down to the Womb here. Assuming Joey can tell me how to get into the safe and I find something, then I'll be able to scan it." She pointed to the ground-floor level of the dome. "But, Luke, I'll need you to wait up in the anteroom above the complex. There's a terminal and a printer here. The terminal can be used to transfer data onto a hi-data digital disc and the printer to generate hard copy. You turn on the printer and insert a blank disc into the terminal. I then send topline data from the Womb terminal to the printer and copy the detailed stuff to the blank disc. It's standard practice to get info out of the Womb, avoiding contamination."

Decker nodded. "OK, but how do we get in and out without being spotted or challenged?"

"Well, with Silver clearance I can sign one other person in as long as he submits to a DNA scan. But we've still got to--"

"Hey, hey, hey. That's enough for tonight," said Barzini, standing up and raising his two huge hands. "You know what you're after and where you think it is. That's great. Now it's time for you both to get some sleep. Let me make a few calls, and by tomorrow morning I should have some people to help you with surveillance, transport, and equipment. They'll know the best way to get in and out of the campus, and they'll supply a pulse box and safe for you to practice on." Barzini smiled. "These people are very good at what they do, but I must stress they have nothing to do with me." His smile broadened. "Sadly not all of my family is as law-abiding as I am."

Chapter 29.

The Oval Office, Washington, D.C. Friday, November 7, 9:30 A.M.

First came relief and euphoria, then concern and finally fear. The administration ran through the extremes of emotions on the morning after the dramatic Iraqi retreat. The concern and fear came later, though, when Pamela Weiss received more information.

The secretary of defense and the secretary of state were tired but smiling when they accompanied the uniformed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff into the Oval Office at nine-thirty that morning. The usually sober trio had an almost discernible spring in their gaits; they were men who had received a stay of execution.

At first the Iraqi volte-face seemed inexplicable. The first reports of a mystery epidemic ravaging the Iraqi Army arrived via the CIA and Britain's MI5 at eleven that morning. Again the initial reaction was positive. The nation was a known belligerent, and therefore anything that affected its military capabilities was regarded as beneficial. Such infections were common on military bases where troops lived in close proximity to one another.

At one-forty in the afternoon sketchy intelligence reported that the mystery illness was more serious than the usual epidemics, that it led to either suicide or brain hemorrhage and appeared to be already spreading to the civilian population. Another report claimed that all sufferers had been men.

The fact that the epidemic, if that's what it was, wasn't understood and that it was spreading caused the President and her advisers grave concern for the wider implications. It was immediately agreed by the UN and the World Health Organization that all of Iraq's borders, which were already strictly patrolled, should be sealed, allowing no one in or out. The country was effectively to be put into quarantine.

But it was the symptoms the more detailed reports were outlining that gave cause for greater worry. Reaching into a drawer in the impressive desk that dominated the Oval Office, President Weiss pulled out two sheets of typed paper. She frowned when she read the second page. After asking her advisers to leave the office for a moment, she reached for the secure phone and began dialing a number she knew by heart. Then she paused for a second before deciding against it.

It was a minute past 2:00 P.M. in Washington, therefore just 11:00 A.M. in San Francisco. She dialed one of the two numbers at the bottom of the sheet of paper. When she received no reply, she tried the second number, hoping it might be his office. A woman answered.

"I'm sorry," the woman said, not even asking who was calling. "I'm Mr. Butcher's personal assistant, and I was expecting him to return from Washington last night, but for some reason he missed his flight. I'm expecting him to turn up or call in at any moment. I apologize, but it's very unusual for him not to tell me of his whereabouts. Can I take a message? I'm sure he'll get back to you as soon as he can."

"No, that's fine," said the President, her face pale. "I'll call later." She took a deep breath and asked the White House operator to put her through to Fort Detrick in Maryland. "This is the President. I need to speak to the commander immediately."

Within seconds Major General Thomas Allardyce, M.D., of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, was on the line. "Hello, Madam President, I assume you're calling about the computer disc Agent Toshack brought me."

"Yes, I hope you've still told no one else about it, not even within USAMRIID." She drawled the abbreviation phoneti

cally, "you sam rid."

"Of course not."

"What can you tell me?"

"Well, it contains two copies of an individual's genome. Except they're not exact copies. The second contains subtle changes in seventeen of the genes."

"What would those subtle changes do?"

"Well, quite a lot."

"Such as?"

Listening to his answer, Weiss stared down at her desk, comparing his report with the two sheets of typed paper that Hank Butcher had given her with the disc. When the doctor finished, she asked him one more question and then thanked him and hung up.

For a long while she sat in silence, trying to marshal both her thoughts and feelings. Finally she came to a decision and pressed a button on the desk summoning the head of her security detail.

Special Agent Mark Toshack entered the room. He held a file in his hand. Without saying anything, he passed it to her. Opening it, she scanned the photograph and notes. It only confirmed her thoughts. "Thank you, Mark," she said. "Now I would like you to do something else for me. Again I want you to use only Secret Service personnel, and I need you to do it fast."

Overlooking the ViroVector Campus, Palo Alto. Noon.

"Well, if you want my advice, I wouldn't do it. The first rule of this business is you don't go into a rathole. You always make sure you've got a way out. And this Womb sounds like the mother of all ratholes."

Decker groaned and took the binoculars from Barzini's cousin Frankie Danza and trained them on the main dome of ViroVector. "Thanks, but that's not really the kind of advice we're after."

Luke Decker and Kathy Kerr sat inside Frankie's Mer-cedes van on a raised part of the main road overlooking the ViroVector campus. The other two men with Frankie hadn't volunteered their names, and their faces didn't invite further questions.

The irony of Decker's current situation didn't really register. It was probably one of the less weird things that had occurred to him over the last few days. Working with the opposition was only part of it. Earlier this morning, after Joey Barzini had made a few vague introductions, Frankie and his men had taken him and Kathy to a warehouse near Fisher-man's Wharf. There the two nameless men had given Kathy a pulse box and taught her how to use it on a safe similar to the one in the Womb. Throughout the three-hour session their conversation never once strayed outside the narrow confines of the task in hand.

And now Frankie Danza, a whip-thin guy with nervous hands, no hair, and a Camel cigarette surgically attached to his lower lip, was trying to explain the problems involved getting into and out of smart buildings.

Frankie's van was parked next to an imposing blue sign with "White Heat Science Park" written in letters three feet high. The park of the same name, a cluster of small high-tech start-up companies, comprised the only buildings adjoining the relatively isolated ViroVector site. A large man-made lake and the eleventh hole of the Bellevue Golf and Country Club bordered its other perimeters.

The campus itself was an emerald blanket of manicured lawns and perfectly proportioned trees, interrupted only by a few tennis courts, a helicopter site, parking lots, and large production warehouses. The most striking feature was the crystal dome sitting like a vast alien moon in the center of the site.

A lightweight steel fence encircled the campus, and on the road there was a gateway. All around the perimeter and at key locations on the campus, high up on twenty-foot steep poles, Decker could see what looked like sensors and closed-circuit TV cameras.

"Getting in ain't the problem," said Frankie, "especially if Kathy's got the clearance. The guardian computer don't question you or give you no trouble if your clearance is OK. But it'll watch you, and sometimes it'll splash your face up on the monitors inside the dome. And if this Dr. Prince is inside and sees you, then you're in deep shit. But you can wear headgear to disguise yourself. The other risk is being eyeballed in the flesh. But again, if you go late in the day, you can minimize that.

"Your big problem is that there's only one way out. And if you don't leave in time, that computer mother's gonna close you down. And if Dr. Prince catches you on one of the monitors while you're in the Womb and sets off the alarms, kaboom, you're history.

"A guy I knew did a bank job in Hong Kong. A brand-new grade A smart building overlooking Kowloon Harbor. He got in easy, outsmarted the computer, fooled all the sensors. Got right into the vault. Even tripped the time lock codes with a quantum code breaker. Then, when the team was in the heart of the vault, the computer closed 'em down. Two-foot-thick steel doors shut 'em in, then sucked all the air out. Game over. They were found the next day: a pile of stiffs. That's what smart buildings do. They let you check in, but they don't never let you check out."

"Thanks for the encouragement," said Kathy. "Any ideas?"

"Well, if you gotta go in, the only real advice is timing. From what you've told me, the whole place closes down to all personnel except Gold clearance at ten. That means you must be out by ten. If you're inside the dome, the computer will seal you in. Even if you're outside, it'll get you. Those flimsy fences around the campus are like the computer's skin. If you try to break through it, it'll feel you and send a few thousand volts your way. So, rule number one: You gotta be off campus by ten.

"Rule number two: Go in as late as you can to avoid most of the working suits. When do most people leave the site?"

Kathy shrugged. "Most are out by seven. Few, if any, people work after that. It's virtually unheard of to go into the Womb after six. It's not the place to be when you're tired and prone to making mistakes."

Frankie nodded. "Rule number three: Give yourself enough time. This is the hardest rule to stick to because no one knows what enough means. How long you need to get your stuff? Give yourself at least a half hour to get into the safe."

Kathy thought for a moment. "I've got to get into the space suits beforehand and then go through the decon showers when I come out. Assuming we find a sample of something, it shouldn't take more than ten minutes to scan the file and for Luke to copy it to disc in the anteroom above. I'd say we need an hour, tops."

Frankie nodded. "Give yourself two. That means we drop you off outside the main gates at eight. And we pick you up before ten. In the meantime you better get some more practice with the pulse box. And then you better start praying no one catches you in the Womb. It sounds like an awful easy place to die."

ViroVector Solutions. 7:59 P.M.

By eight most of the ViroVector offices were empty, but the tireless TITANIA was still at work. The biocomputer's electronic receptors scoured the World Wide Web, monitoring any data even remotely related to Crime Zero, continually informing its neural net of any relevant information. Its air ducts breathed with precise regularity as it absorbed much of the same information President Weiss had received from her intelligence sources.

TITANIA had no moral compass against which to evaluate the escalating deaths it was recording. It could only objectively compare the deaths and their causes with its predictions. The death of Bob Burbank and the swearing in of President Weiss were logged, as were the Iraqi retreat and the spreading epidemic. TITANIA calculated that more than nine thousand humans had died as a consequence of Crime Zero within Iraq and that the rate was increasing, all in the expected demographic groups.

These figures elicited no concern from TITANIA, unlike from the President of the United States.

Similarly TITANIA felt or raised no alarm when at a more basic level of artificial cognition it registered the activation of one of the DNA scanners allowing entrance onto the campus. Like a human's subconscious, TITANIA's base operating system controlling ViroVector's security noted that the genome taken from the palm of the human hand pressed against the sensor matched one on file. Since that genome possessed Silver clearance and the second unauthorized person acceded to a DNA scan, TITANIA simply allowed the two entrants access without troubling its higher-level consciousness, in the same way that a human's subconscious automatically regulates breathing, only alerting the conscious mind when it perceives a problem.