Stinger

by Nancy Kress

  She turned back. “Look, gentlemen, this is a scientific task, not medical theater. The CDC has a vital job to do here. If you could just contact the CDC Press Office for the information you need.”

  The reporter didn’t even deign to answer that. The cameraman kept shooting. The reporter looked around hopefully for mosquitoes. Back at the roadside, a second sound truck screeched to a halt beside the first one. It said UPI.

  “Oh, my God. Look, guys, if you go stomping through the environment you’re just going to—”

  Three people jumped out of the second truck and waded into the field.

  Melanie hurried toward them, her boots sticking in mud at every step then pulling out with a little sucking noise. “You! Don’t come in here. Do you even know if you’re positive for sickle-cell trait?”

  The black man stared at her. Instantly she disliked him. One of the brothers who thought black women existed to serve their needs. She knew the type. “Look, unless you know for sure that you’re negative for sickle-cell trait, this isn’t a safe place for you.”

  “I’ve got a story to file,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Dr. Melanie Anderson, CDC!”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, stand over there and give us about sixty seconds. Not too technical.”

  She said coldly, “Forget you.”

  Before he could answer, two white kids appeared from a copse of trees on the far edge of the swamp. They sloshed toward her. “This the epidemic center? We’re graduate students from the university on a collecting expedition. Who’s in charge here, please?”

  “How did you—”

  “Come one, come all,” said the UPI man sourly. Mud caked his pants legs. “They followed us, obviously.”

  One of the grad students said, “There’re some other researchers down the road, but they didn’t speak English. I think they’re from the Institute of Tropical Medicine at Antwerp. My French isn’t so good.”

  “It wasn’t French, you dork,” his companion said. “It was Dutch. Hey, look—CNN!”

  Another car approached from Route 301, slowed, and stopped. Then another truck.

  Melanie took a long deep breath and put her face in her hands.

  Six

  Americans have every reason to expect a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack before the decade is over.

  —Senator Richard Lugar, 1995

  * * *

  The fax in Judy’s office beeped and began to whir. She swiveled her chair away from her computer and stared at it. Let it be a cartoon from Robert.

  He had courted her—if you could call it “courtship” when it didn’t lead to actual marriage—by sending her his whimsical drawings. By fax, by letter, by e-mail. Judy loved them. She loved the side of Robert that the cartoons revealed: not the dogged, persistent FBI agent, but the skewed humor, the zany tenderness. Her favorites were pinned to the corkboard above her desk, which at the moment she could barely see because the only light in the room came from the computer screen. She didn’t want to let the reporters camped outside even know which room she was in. That was irrational, yes, but there it was.

  The curtains, tightly drawn across the window, blocked out the trucks rutting the lawn; the discarded Styrofoam coffee cups blew down the slope into the river. When Judy went outside to get the mail, they shouted questions at her. Yesterday night there had been a lot of them; today there were fewer, since presumably they had found other connections to what the press was now calling “malaria reading.” Apparently “Plasmodium reading” didn’t sound scary enough.

  The worst of it was, Judy couldn’t blame Libby Turner. Turner was a journalist, doing just what Judy herself did when she was researching a science story. In fact, it was what Robert did in tracking down his cases. But that didn’t make him any happier with her.

  “I told you to keep this all confidential!” he’d said last night on the phone. “‘Confidential’ does not include letting in the six million people on the Internet!”

  “I’m sorry, Robert, I didn’t think—”

  “That’s evident,” he’d said, and hung up. That wasn’t like him, but, on reflection, Judy was glad he had. It put him in the wrong. That shifted the balance of power to her. Now he would have to apologize, or at least make it up to her, and that would probably have to include forgiving her for the Internet gaffe. Being Robert, he would most likely apologize through a cartoon.

  So she waited for a cartoon.

  The fax stopped whirring. Judy crossed her study, tore off the transmission, and took it back to read by the glowing terminal. It was printed in his small block letters:

  JUDY—I WON’T BE HOME FOR A WHILE BECAUSE I NEED TO STAY UNBROADCAST. YOU CAN REACH ME AT 301-5555. DON’T TALK TO THE PRESS.—ROBERT

  No apology. And how long was “a while”? And what did he mean “need to stay unbroadcast”? He wasn’t an undercover agent for God’s sake! The undercovers were an entirely different breed—edgy, thrill-seeking loners, who were all a little nuts. Judy had heard Robert say so dozens of times, with the mix of admiration and disconnection all agents seem to have for the undercovers. So what was going on here?

  Judy chewed on her thumb, staring at the number on the fax. Not his cell phone. Well, that wasn’t surprising; the cell phone belonged to the Bureau and was supposed to be reserved for official business. And “301-5555” was a suburban number, not D.C. She pressed it.

  A woman’s voice on the answering machine: “You have reached 301-5555. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Who was she?

  Judy punched in another number. Science writers met a diverse lot of people. A year ago, she’d interviewed a female state trooper who had located what she thought was the skeleton of a murder victim under her rented vacation house. The skeleton had turned out to belong to a five-hundred-year-old Cherokee. This had made the skeleton an embarrassment to the law, which had already opened a murder-case file, but a boon to science. The trooper was rueful and funny about her mistake, and she and Judy had become close friends.

  “Maryland State Police.”

  “Officer Tess Muratore, please,” Judy said.

  “Just a moment.”

  No cartoon. Not even a ‘Love, Robert.’ Why not?

  “Muratore.”

  “Tess, this is Judy Kozinski. Listen, I have to ask an enormous favor.”

  Tess’s voice lost its wary cop formality. “Hi, Jude. As long as the favor’s not illegal.”

  “Only a little illegal.”

  Tess said nothing.

  “I just need a name and address to go with a phone number.”

  “You know I can’t—”

  “It’s personal, Tess. About Robert. Who’s still being a dum-dum about marrying me. And I give you my word your name will never come up.”

  Tess had her own man troubles, as Judy well knew. Tess’s husband, another cop, was a skirt chaser, like Judy’s late husband, Ben. Judy and Tess commiserated with each other, listened to each other, supported each other in that highly verbal sisterhood of emotional anxiety that no man really understood.

  Tess said, “All right. Give me the number. I’ll call you back.” Fifteen minutes later, she did. “The phone is listed to an M. Gordon in Hyattsville. The address is:—Judy? You there?”

  “Yes,” Judy said numbly.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “Well, write down the address and phone because I have to go now. But if you want to talk, I’ll be home tonight.”

  “Thanks,” Judy said. It was hard to get the word past the constriction in her throat.

  Marcy Gordon. Robert’s ex-wife. And he was staying there for an indefinite “while.”

  Judy sat down carefully and stared at this week’s screen saver, maniacally leaping dinosaurs. It was important not to jump to conclusions. Robert might have a perfectly good reason for staying with Marcy.

  Oh, yeah? Like what?

  Trust was important. She had to
at least give Robert a chance to explain.

  And how was she going to do that if she didn’t see him? Over the phone? And how was she going to explain to him how she knew whose apartment he was inhabiting? She’d overstepped the information limits once already with the Internet leak.

  No, she had to trust him. She did trust him. Robert wasn’t like Ben. Robert was a fundamentally decent, honest man. And faithful.

  So why hadn’t he told her outright he was with his ex-wife?

  Judy put her hands over her face. All those nights Ben hadn’t come home, all the other women, the scientific colleagues and star-struck lab techs and academic-conference hotel clerks. Perfume on the lapels of his suits. Hang-up calls when the caller heard a woman answer. MasterCard bills for flowers she never got, jewelry she never saw … She couldn’t go through it again with Robert. She just couldn’t.

  And she wasn’t going to.

  She peered through the curtains. The last of the reporters had left for more promising prey.

  “Here it is,” Agent Chuck Romano said when the secure phone from Headquarters rang. “I’m offering bets of three whole dollars.”

  “No takers,” said an agent by the coffee machine.

  Since the initial meeting of the malaria reading FBI team, things had changed. The media had changed them. Malaria reading was now firmly established in the public mind as a terrorist disease, and so it had become a terrorist case. Too many citizens were dead, too instantly, too dramatically. Therefore, someone must be to blame. Therefore, the FBI must locate that someone. So far, the FBI had failed to do this. Therefore, the press was entitled to headlines like “OVER 100 DEAD—BUT FBI HAS ZERO” and “IS FBI CHIEF BROYLIN A RACIST?”

  Therefore, Dunbar had set up a “secret” command center in a South Maryland motel, away from the Leonardtown resident agency. The room’s twin beds had been pushed against the wall. Phones, fax, computer, and coffee machine—the four indispensable mechanical devices of law enforcement—covered desk and dresser and table. Extra chairs had materialized. The blinds were drawn, and empty Coke cans from the machine outside already grew in a precarious pyramid on the windowsill.

  Romano held the phone to his ear, saying little until the call was over. The agents waited.

  “Okay, here’s what we’ve got. Credit is being claimed by a group called Caucasian Caucus. Robert?”

  “Yeah. There’s a chapter in Saint Mary’s County. White supremacists. But it’s got about fifteen members, and we have them tagged as dummkopfs.” This, in the classification system Cavanaugh had borrowed from Felders, meant the Caucasian Caucus talked and published white supremacy but had never committed any actions in support of it, not even legal ones like marches. “They’re empty windbags.”

  “Well, we expected false claims,” another agent said. His mouth twisted. “Getting in on the glory.”

  Romano said, “The claimant sent a manifesto, mailed it U.S. post to the Bureau and the White House and the Washington Post. At least it’s short—five paragraphs. Headquarters is e-mailing us a text.”

  “Coming through now,” said Agent Walter West at the computer. He printed multiple copies. Cavanaugh studied his and found, to his surprise, this group was actually literate:

  GIVEN THAT THE CAUCASIAN CAUCUS EXISTS FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECOGNIZING THAT THE CAUCASIAN RACE HAS BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MAJOR ADVANCES IN SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND THE ARTS, AS WELL AS FOR THE FOUNDING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE GLORIOUS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; AND

  GIVEN THAT THE NEGROID RACES HAVE DAMAGED AND ATTEMPTED TO DESTROY THESE GLORIOUS ACHIEVEMENTS THROUGH THEIR GHETTO VIOLENCE, WELFARE DEMANDS, DRUG USE, AND GENERAL SOCIAL UGLINESS IN RAISING THEIR OWN KIDS; AND

  GIVEN THAT MISGUIDED CAUCASIAN LEADERS HAVE ACTUALLY FAVORED THE DESTRUCTIVE NEGROID RACES OVER CAUCASIANS THROUGH SUCH UNJUST PROGRAMS AS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND ELECTING NEGROIDS TO INFLUENTIAL OFFICE;

  THEN ANY TRULY PATRIOTIC GROUP IS LEFT WITH NO CHOICE BUT TO FIGHT FOR ITS COUNTRY’S INTEGRITY WITH EVERY WEAPON AT ITS DISPOSAL. ANYTHING LESS WOULD BE TO BETRAY THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND TO UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE ENEMY AT WAR WITH THE WHITE RACE; AND

  THUS THE CAUCASIAN CAUCUS IS PROUD TO CLAIM CREDIT FOR THE RELEASE OF A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON DESIGNED TO RIGHT THE PROPER BALANCE OF POWER, IN THE FORM OF THE ALTERED ANOPHELES MOSQUITO TO DEMONSTRATE WHO OWNS THIS GREAT COUNTRY AND ITS SCIENCE. HEED THE DEMONSTRATION.

  “Charming,” West said. “How seriously do we have to take it?”

  “Not very,” Cavanaugh said, “unless Headquarters knows something about other chapters of these guys that isn’t true in Saint Mary’s. They’re hollow megaphones. All right—I’ll take this group. Walt, you and Danny—” The phone rang again. Another transmission from Headquarters flashed on the computer screen.

  Cavanaugh made sure he had his copy of the notes from the CDC team on the particulars of the epidemic transmission. The Bureau was going to have to separate a lot of chaff from the rotten wheat. Assuming the wheat was actually there at all.

  Willis Hartman, information minister of the Saint Mary’s chapter of the Caucasian Caucus, both was and was not typical of the hate-group members Cavanaugh had found in southern Maryland.

  Hartman’s home was typical. He lived in a small, isolated house on a narrow spit of rocky land—“upground,” the locals called it—at the edge of a salt marsh. Here the Potomac River had almost, but not quite, become Chesapeake Bay. On the front of the house, a roofed porch furnished with chairs faced the water. A quarter mile farther inland the coast lifted into thick woods turned gold by the setting sun. Somewhere in the woods, Cavanaugh knew, the Caucasians would have hidden caches of weapons, radios, and paramilitary gear. With any luck, they would only use it for the internal “readiness drills” that made them feel heroic.

  Hartman’s education, however, was not typical. FBI files showed he had a B.S. in engineering from Georgia Tech. He had worked for Florida Power and Light until dismissed for “failure to carry out duties as specified,” and then had worked at successively more unskilled jobs until he’d landed in Maryland, working at a crab-canning factory. A misfit. His file said he was forty-one, never married, no police record. He was licensed to own a nine millimeter.

  Hartman’s house had no sidewalk from the road, just a semisoggy path among the marsh plants. Cavanaugh picked his way. A fresh breeze blew from the Potomac, cooling his face. To his right a heron took sudden flight, graceful against the darkening sky. Not for the first time, Cavanaugh wondered why some of the least worthwhile people on the planet should live in some of its most beautiful locations.

  Hartman met him on the porch. He was tall, thin, balding, dressed in jeans and a gray cotton work shirt. “Who are you?”

  “Mr. Hartman? FBI, Special Agent Robert Cavanaugh. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Of course you would,” Hartman said. He smiled slightly. “Sit down.”

  Cavanaugh sat. A cat, striped gray and white, regarded him impassively from the porch railing.

  “I’m here to check some facts,” Cavanaugh said. “Are you a member of Caucasian Caucus?”

  “I’m the information minister for southern Maryland,” Hartman said. He seemed amused.

  “The FBI, the White House, and the Washington Post all received the following communication.” Cavanaugh handed him a copy. “Have you seen this before?”

  Hartman didn’t glance at the paper. “No.”

  “How do you know you haven’t seen it if you don’t look at what it is?”

  “I saw it this morning in the Post. I can read, Agent Cavanaugh.” Hartman’s smile broadened slightly, a fraction of an inch. Cavanaugh saw that he was doling out the smile, making it last, using it to comment on this pointless exchange.

  “Did this communication originate from you?”

  “Obviously not, if I never saw it before.”

  “What are your duties as ‘information minister,’ Mr. Hartman? I’d like to remind you that it�
��s a federal offense to lie to an FBI agent.”

  “I issue all communications originating in the southern Maryland chapter of Caucasian Caucus. Also, I act as liaison to pass on, as appropriate, all communications coming from National.”

  “Yet you never saw this particular communication.”

  “No.” Another fractional inch of smile.

  “Isn’t that a contradiction?”

  “It would seem to be.”

  Cavanaugh leaned forward. “All right, Hartman. Let’s not waste both our time. This thing is signed ‘Caucasian Caucus,’ and in southern Maryland that’s you. Are you claiming credit for the outbreak of stroke-inducing malaria among sickle-cell carriers?”

  “I thought only God could take credit for malaria.”

  Cavanaugh stood and looked down at the man: intelligent, well-groomed, smiling faintly; a piece of slime. He said, knowing what the answer would be, “May I look around inside?”

  “Not without a warrant.”

  “Then one more question. Is there anything you’d like to tell the Bureau?”

  “Yes,” Hartman said, surprising Cavanaugh. The question was pro forma. Tell Director Broylin to fire all the nigger agents before they subvert the entire government.”

  Hartman wanted him to react. With an effort of will, Cavanaugh didn’t. He turned and walked calmly down the steps.

  “Mind the mosquitoes,” Hartman called after him. “In today’s corrupt world, you never know who’s got some nigger blood.”

  Cavanaugh continued along the path through the salt marsh. Greenflies buzzed in a cloud around his head, and a bird lifted off from the reeds, calling raucously in a language he could not understand.