by Nancy Kress
“The individual we’re looking for belongs to the category ‘organized killer.’ He—and it is a male—is intelligent, plans very carefully, and understands exactly what he’s doing. He’s a Caucasian in his mid-to-late forties. He’s trained in microbiology, obviously. He—”
“Excuse me,” Cavanaugh said, “but are we assuming here that we’ve got a lone perp and not an organization? Why?”
“We covered that before you arrived, Robert,” Dunbar said, pointedly. Cavanaugh nodded. He’d have to get the scoop on that afterward … but it sounded nuts to him. A lone perp? For genetic-engineering terrorism? That didn’t make sense. Maybe there was some explanation in the papers stacked at his place on the conference table. Maybe the sheets would also explain the massive increase in manpower since yesterday. Nothing on the radio had.
As unobtrusively as possible, he started to shuffle paper while everybody else concentrated on the profile report.
“He did well in college,” Dr. Gissing continued, “possibly even brilliantly, but did not complete his Ph.D. Since then, his career has not lived up to everyone’s early expectations, including his own. This is most likely due to conflicts with superiors, or to a certain rigidity in procedures that he will not adapt to accommodate team projects. He may or may not still be working in a scientific field.”
There was nothing among the papers that explained why the Bureau had decided to focus on an individual perp. But there was an airtel—an urgent internal memo—from Director Broylin himself. Routing info showed that it had been sent to all 25,000 FBI employees. It announced that this case was now the Bureau’s number-one priority.
Since two days ago? Why?
Cavanaugh found the answer by peering at a note the agent on his left had scribbled at the top of his pile of papers. The note said, “Lena Penniston 12 12 12 years old!!!!” Leonard Penniston headed the Criminal Investigative Division; he was the highest-ranking black in the FBI.
Any war only hit home when it came home.
Gissing was still talking. “… heterosexual and has a stable home life. He lives with or is married to a woman his pronounced intellectual inferior. No children. Probably estranged from his birth family, or at least not close to them.”
All 25,000 Bureau employees. That meant secretaries, lab technicians, janitors, analysts, and the clerical staff that handled expense vouchers. That sort of mobilization was more than a reaction to young Lena Penniston’s death. It was also a press maneuver. Look how much we’re horrified at the mounting deaths of our black citizens. All 25,000 of us will throw ourselves at this, even people who can’t possibly influence the outcome at all.
“… not openly affiliated with any hate group, although he may follow their activities with paternalistic approval from a distance …”
Another sheet of paper announced that the FBI was offering a $500,000 reward for information leading directly to the apprehension of the terrorist.
“… is following events of the case closely in the media, although too smart to collect clippings or—”
“Excuse me,” Cavanaugh interrupted again. Dunbar looked at him wearily.
“Have we discussed the fact that a reward offer like this is going to produce even more leads about alleged individual terrorists? A huge amount of manpower is going to be diverted from looking at groups, both domestic groups and international.”
Now the two agents from Division Five, Maloney and Meath, were scrutinizing him as carefully as Dunbar was, although more quietly. Dunbar said, “We’re not neglecting possible group involvement, Robert. Domestic hate groups will continue to be checked out whenever they meet the three guideline criteria—you do remember what they are, don’t you?”
Cavanaugh nodded. Of course he knew: “A threat or advocacy of force; apparent ability to carry out the claimed act; potential violation of federal law.” Dunbar wasn’t happy with him.
“And Agents Graham and DiPreta”—Dunbar nodded his head to the two people on his right, one of them a woman—“are legats. As we discussed before you arrived.”
“Legats” were legal attachés, agents posted to foreign offices to coordinate work with local law-enforcement officials in those countries. They worked openly, unlike the CIA, who were probably also at work on the foreign terrorist angle. Of course they were, Cavanaugh realized, but one wasn’t supposed to mention it. The two legats studied him expressionlessly.
“If I may finish,” Dr. Gissing said coldly.
“Please,” Dunbar said. His neck was flushed, just above the collar.
“Thank you. The key to this individual’s character is his sense of superiority. He imagines himself a powerful behind-the-scenes figure; manipulating entire bureaucracies—such as the FBI—into doing his bidding. Because of this, he has told no one what he’s doing, not even his wife or live-in woman. The lab where he has created the malaria parasite and infected mosquitoes is thus not in his home. No one but him knows about it. No one else is worthy to appreciate his achievement.
“And to him it is an achievement. His delusions of grandeur are so deeply rooted that he may be one of those rare individuals who can beat a polygraph test. He sees himself as cleansing society for its own good, which few people beside himself are perceptive enough to comprehend. His belief in this is total.”
Dr. Gissing paused and consulted his notes. Cavanaugh had been too busy rifling papers to count how many of the agents in the room were black. He counted now. About 6 percent, the same proportion as the FBI as a whole. Somebody was being very careful.
He thought of Melanie Anderson, and hoped all these black agents were negative for sickle-cell trait.
“Finally,” Dr. Gissing said, “because this individual considers himself a natural aristocrat he will pride himself on his superior taste in at least one consumer area. It might be his car, or his clothing, or his choice of wines. We can’t predict which, and he does not have the income to do all of them. Most likely he earns between forty and sixty thousand, which he manages very shrewdly. But in some area of aristocratic taste he will buy the best and will be supercilious about anything less.
“Do we have any questions?”
Everyone glanced at Cavanaugh, Dunbar very steadily. Cavanaugh spoke anyway.
“Yes, Doctor. I know that behavioral profiles—”
“‘Criminal investigative analyses,’” Dr. Gissing corrected.
“Yes. Right. I know that they’re compiled from profiles of other perps who have committed the same kind of crime in the same way. But nobody has ever committed this crime before in any way. So how did your unit put the analysis together?”
Gissing smiled. Clearly he relished setting Cavanaugh straight. “You are wrong, I’m afraid. Terrorists may differ by individual act, and killers may differ by behavior pattern. But by putting them together, we obtain a profile of great probable accuracy. And we have considerable information about individual killers. In seventy-seven percent of cases later solved, the investigators say the profile was of great use in focusing the investigation.”
“Yes,” Cavanaugh said, obscurely pleased that Gissing himself had called it a “profile,” “I know. But that means your entire analysis is based on the idea that it is an individual acting alone. I mean, profiles can only reflect the initial assumptions about the crime. If this is a group—”
“I think we covered that already,” Dunbar said stiffly. “Any other questions?”
The meeting moved on. Cavanaugh sat deep in thought. After a while he noted that the two Division Five agents, Maloney and Meath, were both studying him. When he caught their eyes, neither smiled. Stick to looking for individuals, the looks said. We’re now covering the possibility of terrorist groups.
Turf wars. Felders never permitted his agents to conduct them. Cavanaugh missed Felders. He missed their fierce, unstifled arguments about how to proceed on everything. He missed being key to a case, rather than just another legman. He reached for his notepad.
As he listened to the peo
ple who would get to be key, Cavanaugh sketched the Division Five agents. He gave Maloney, who had a long, thin face, a head that was a sausage. He gave Meath, in his fifties, a head like an ancient goblet, spilling out drops of wisdom. He labeled the drawing “LAW FOOD: BOLONEY AND MEAD.” He didn’t ask any more questions.
He called Judy at noon, while caterers from a local deli distributed the sandwiches and other goodies apparently ordered before Cavanaugh’s belated appearance. Dunbar had ordered him something; he didn’t know what. There wasn’t enough room for everyone to eat in the conference room; and since it was raining outside, agents spilled into nearby offices and lobbies, munching ham-on-rye, dropping crumbs. Cavanaugh found a public phone on another floor.
She answered on the first ring.
“Robert?”
“Yes, it’s me.” She’d been sitting by the phone. He was in deep shit.
“Look, Judy, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you before now. I was in Atlanta yesterday and didn’t get back until—”
“Don’t lie to me, Robert. Please.”
Anger flared in him. “I am not lying. I was in Atlanta until very late.”
“Oh, I believe that,” Judy said. “That isn’t the lie. The lie is that being in Atlanta is the reason you didn’t call me. Are you telling me there are no phones in Atlanta?”
He visualized the banks of phones in the airport. Phones at Ticketing, phones at gates, phones by newsstands, phones along corridors. Defensiveness sprouted on top of the anger. “Yes, there are phones in Atlanta. I could have called, I suppose. But I really had a lot on my mind—”
“Not me, obviously.”
“Damn it, Judy, why do you always have to run everything to earth like some sort of bloodhound?”
“Oh, don’t say that to me!” she cried, and he realized that it must have been something her rotten dead husband had said, something that he had used to counterattack for his infidelities. Well, Cavanaugh wasn’t Ben! Why the hell couldn’t she realize that? To anger and defensiveness were now added a feeling of injustice. She was unfair. She was impossible.
He said evenly, “Maybe I say it because it’s true. Can’t you just ever let me be? You insist on running me to earth over every little thing—”
“Moving in with your ex-wife without even telling me is not a little thing.”
It knocked the breath out of him. After a moment he said quietly, “How do you know that?”
“The point is not how I—”
“You checked up on the phone number. Through that cop friend of yours. Tess what’s-her-name.”
“Don’t try to—”
“You put me under surveillance.”
“No, I—”
“I don’t like this, Judy. We’ve talked about how important it is to trust each other. I’m staying at Marcy’s to avoid the press so I can work on this case with some minor anonymity”—not that that would matter anymore, now he was only a bit player in a cast of thousands—“and Marcy, for your information, isn’t in her apartment. She’s in Dallas. I’m dog-sitting. And I don’t like being checked up on.”
“But you didn’t tell me, so I—”
“I don’t have to tell you everything! Stop hounding me!”
His voice had risen, a good measure of his anger. But was the anger at her or at himself? He knew he was being unfair. But, perversely, that only made him angrier. She had forced him into this position. She was always at him!
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and now he heard that she was scared: scared she’d driven him away from her, scared he’d leave her, scared he’d romance sleek, glamorous Marcy, just as Ben had always romanced sleek, glamorous women. But he wasn’t Ben! His anger grew, in exact proportion to his remorse over awakening all her old fears. He’d sworn to himself he’d never do that, that she’d be able to rely on him as she never had been able to on Ben.
Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Robert,” she whispered, “when do you think you’ll be coming back home?”
And if he just said, “Tonight, sweetheart,” it would have been all right. The fighting over. But he couldn’t say it. She would just be controlling him again, this time through her weakness. She was always trying to control him, to become surer of him, safer, until he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t fair.
He said coldly, “I’ll be home when I come home. Not before.”
“I see,” she said, not whispering anymore, and the phone clicked in his ear.
A disaster. A complete disaster. It would be better if he’d never called. He hung up the receiver, turned, and saw one of the secretaries standing there. Her young face said that she’d been listening, and that he was a shit.
“Mr. Dunbar sent me to tell you the meeting is about to resume,” she said, very clearly. Without waiting for an answer, she turned her back and walked away.
“Thank you for rejoining us,” Dunbar said coldly. Once again everyone at the table looked at Cavanaugh. He reached for his notepad.
Apparently Maloney had been talking. He resumed. “As I was just saying, Agent Cavanaugh, Washington has decided to issue a Terrorist Warning Advisory to the public. The director has called a press conference for three o’clock.”
Cavanaugh nodded and kept his eyes on his “notes.” What could he say? He was minor, he was late, and he didn’t believe in the entire idea of a lone terrorist. It was wishful thinking, to avoid the racial and political implications of an organized antiblack group, possibly based in another country. Oh, the Bureau would investigate that possibility thoroughly, Cavanaugh knew, behind the scenes. So would the CIA. But for public consumption, they’d downplay it. Too panic-inducing. Too riot-inducing, like the riot in front of the White House. Nobody liked riots.
Better to let the public believe there might be a single nut out there, a nut the Bureau would catch just as they’d caught the Unabomber. Better to issue bullshit all-bureau memos and Terrorist Advisory Warnings, which made it look like the FBI knew more than it actually did. There was no need for a Terrorist Warning Advisory; there was nobody left in America who didn’t know what was happening with malaria reading. Not unless they didn’t have a TV, a radio, a newspaper, or any neighbors for five miles around. And if they lived in Maryland and Virginia, even that wouldn’t help, because the CDC, USPHS, or army would show up on their isolated doorstep to ask questions, tell them to empty their birdbath, or urge them to have their blood tested.
The meeting proceeded. Teams were organized for scientific-equipment tracing, suspect identification, surveillance, background checks, CDC liaison, international investigation. Cavanaugh doodled on his notepad.
He drew a huge Venus flytrap, swallowing an FBI agent. All that was left were the agent’s gun and badge. The Venus flytrap keeled over woozily. A neighboring daisy said disapprovingly, “I TOLD HER NOT TO EAT THAT THING!”
He drew a stone. Eight panels, and in every one of them the stone looked exactly the same. He labeled it “ADVENTURES OF ROCKY.”
He drew a man and a woman talking on a sofa. “NEAR HUMAN DIALOGUE,” he called this one. The man was saying, “What’s for dinner?” The woman answered, “Yes, but should I wear a penguin?”
Cavanaugh realized the couple looked like him and Judy.
He turned the notepad facedown and paid attention to the meeting. It was no surprise that the Southern Maryland Resident Agency, which was him and Seton, was assigned to continue investigation of the local hate groups. Nobody believed the local hate groups had the capacity to create a genetically engineered strain of malaria. “We need to make sure we cover all possible bases,” Dunbar said. We need to keep you sidelined and unvocal, he didn’t say. Cavanaugh heard it anyway.
Only midafternoon, and he’d managed to piss off his girlfriend, his boss, and, apparently, the gods of law enforcement. Probably a personal record.
There was just no end to his talents.
Interim
The truck pulled up to the shacks just before dawn. Inside, the workers were alrea
dy up, eating fried bacon, nursing babies, trudging to the privies and the rough, wooden shower house. The shacks had no indoor plumbing.
The truck beeped its horn twice. Men and women, shadowy in the gray dawn, walked toward it and climbed into the back.
“I count sixteen,” the driver said. “Christ, that ain’t enough.”
The man beside him said nothing.
“Well, it ain’t. Berenger’ll have my balls I bring him just sixteen. We’re weeding today, for Chrissake.” He rolled down the window and waved his arm outside. “Hey! Time to go! Hey!”
The arm waving outside the truck window looked ghostly gray in the predawn. But the migrant workers didn’t have to see its color. They knew from the voice.
“They’re scared,” the second man in the truck cab said abruptly. He was black. “Can’t blame ’em. Mosquitoes all over this year.”
“I don’t blame ’em. But I still gotta make my crew.” He waved his arm again. “Hey! Hey!”
“Can’t yell ’em into goin’.”
The driver pulled in his arm and snapped on the radio. “Rioting again today in Washington, where protestors and looters alike—”
“Turn it off,” the black man said.
The driver did. In the east, the very beginnings of sunrise stained the sky. Bugs swarmed in the truck’s headlights.
“And close the window,” the black man said.
“Sorry,” the driver said. He rolled up the window. Neither man looked at each other. One more figure emerged from the closest shack, a woman, making her reluctant way to the open back of the truck through the wing-buzzing darkness.
Eight
The value of biological warfare will be a debatable question until it has been clearly proven or disproven by experience. … There is but one logical course to pursue, namely, to study the possibilities of such warfare from every angle, to make every preparation for reducing its effectiveness, and thereby reduce the likelihood of its use.
