“Here!” he says, pulling a crumpled, multiply folded printout from the pile. He passes it over to them.
The first slide is simple, big red text on a white background.
Safe Havens Protocol (SHP) - Development
Working with our partner firms to construct a protocol for threats of biological terrorism. Segment II focuses on potential pandemic influenza strains, wild-type and laboratory-developed.
The next slide shows the names of several flu strains, alongside notations that indicate the status of vaccine development. Then comes a map of the continental US with lines drawn between major city centers, unlabeled, probably from further along in the presentation.
The final leaked slide seems to come from near the end. Beneath the headline Partner Firms are about fifteen different corporate logos, presumably the subcontractors affiliated with the project.
“Look, there’s Lukas Group,” Marella says. “We were right.”
But Bird’s gaze has fixed upon a different image. The wings circling a beaker have the wrong name underneath them, and she’s only seen the logo once in her life, but she recognizes it immediately.
“Synergy Labs,” she whispers. Where her parents worked many years ago. Her reckless shot in the dark that made Roosevelt start shooting back.
Coffee scans the paper. “I didn’t see that.”
“This logo.” She points with a shaky hand. “It’s got a new name now, see, TriState Research? But I recognize the logo. It’s the same one that was on that letter I found in the trash five years ago. It’s Synergy Labs.”
Coffee whistles. “Well, we knew he used to work with your parents. I guess he still does.”
Bird looks down, dizzy. “But this is all about developing vaccines. And my mom … she seemed to know something about Mrs. Early and Devonshire. She told me to make sure that I was here and I followed all the rules. Do you think … did she know because they helped develop it?”
“If she did,” Marella says, “then she was only trying to protect you. It’s not your mother’s decision who gets the vaccine and who doesn’t.”
But Bird can’t imagine her mother objecting in principle either. Not like Sasha Granger did.
“That night,” Bird says quietly, “you said that you knew Synergy Labs was bad news. What kind of bad news, Coffee?”
She can’t look at his face, but she hears the pained reluctance in his voice. “They’re just rumors on a message board. Tinfoil hatters, like you said. There’s no reason to believe it.”
“You did then.”
He sighs and for some reason that makes her look at him, at the lines and shadows on his face, at his long fingers buried in thick curls. He laughs, that old Coffee laugh, riddled with bullets. “I wanted to get a rise out of you. I wanted to see what you would say if your perfect boyfriend were involved in something even you couldn’t defend.”
“What the hell?”
“Well, wanting to work with a bunch of torturers and assassins didn’t seem to tip the scale.”
“It’s more complicated, and you know it. The way you talk, everyone who works with the government is some kind of depraved monster.”
He arches his eyebrows, but his eyes seem as hurt as her own. “Not a monster. Just morally compromised.”
“What about your mother?”
“She works for the Brazilian government.”
“And they’re saints, huh? I don’t pretend to know as much as you, Comrade Alonso, but I seem to remember some stories about indigenous groups in the Amazon getting kicked off their land because of an earth-destroying dam your government wants to build? Didn’t an international court call it human rights abuse?”
Coffee flinches and Marella clears her throat. “You guys, could we get back to the topic?”
“Right. Sorry.” Coffee looks away from Bird with palpable effort. “Synergy Labs did research on bioterrorism delivery mechanisms. Like, warheads for diseases. And —”
“Only according to the Internet,” Bird interrupts.
“And what?” Marella says.
Coffee hesitates. “And there’s reports … Have you heard of this? The terrorist effect? If you look at maps of who is dying of the v-flu, there’s a statistical blip in unrelated rural communities in countries all over the world: Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, possibly China, though that’s hard to tell —”
Bird shakes her head. “You’re saying that people in countries with terrorists are more likely to die of the v-flu?”
“I’m saying certain people in countries with recent so-called US counterterrorism operations are significantly less likely to die of it.”
“This is a real thing?” Marella asks.
“Some Canadian scientists noticed it a few months ago, and the effect has only gotten stronger.”
“That is really weird.”
“Weird, yes,” Bird says, “but related to Synergy how, exactly? Terrorists released that flu. Did Synergy test the vaccine alongside some drones?”
“The rumors were they had tested something. And yes, at the same time as the drone attacks. But who knows what it was.” Coffee shrugs. “I said you couldn’t use it.”
It’s clear enough what he believes, but Coffee’s message board conspiracies won’t make any difference with Roosevelt.
“I guess the stuff Dr. Granger left us has to be enough.”
“You’re going to confront him,” Coffee says without inflection.
“Am I supposed to let him keep stalking me? And now he’s even threatening Aaron. We are getting home for Thanksgiving, I don’t care what I have to do.”
“Home?” Coffee asks softly.
Bird feels the air in her face, the lurch and exhilaration of that subconscious slip. “Nicky’s,” she mumbles. “Do you guys want to come? If you don’t have anything else …”
Marella turns to her. “Really? I’d … kind of love to, honestly. Mom is terrified of leaving the house, she told me to stay here. And my dad’s place is too far out for the buses.”
Coffee frowns. “What if Roosevelt doesn’t agree?”
“He will.”
“And your uncle?”
“Do you want to come or not? Invitation expiring in three, two —”
“Yes,” he says.
Bird smiles.
“And Bird?”
She’s already imagining the food she’ll make — her grandmother’s collard greens, her father’s rolls, the best goddamn mac and cheese this side of the Potomac — “Yes?”
“You’re sure? He might escalate, after this.”
Bird reaches up and feels her nappy roots like a talisman. She will be dangerous to Roosevelt. She will be true to that girl who sent the email; he will regret what he did to her. “I’m sure.”
Coffee blinks. “You should do it now.”
There are words behind those words, thoughts trapped behind his lips, truths he has never quite said, and she has never quite heard. She wants to hear them. She wants to crack his mind and steal the treasure. But she wants a lot of things she can’t have.
She fishes her phone from her pocket and dials.
Paul picks up immediately. “Emily?” he says.
“I need to speak with Roosevelt,” she says. “He can meet me in the rose garden in a half hour.”
“Emily, I don’t think you can just demand —”
“Let him know,” Bird says. “I’m pretty sure he’ll want to speak with me.”
She hangs up before he can answer.
* * *
She shivers on the bench, watching the brightest stars share the sky with the faint afterglow of the setting sun. The cold, dry air carries a musk of dead leaves and cracked mud. The silence of the quarantined streets makes her jump at every natural sound: The squirrels chasing one another in the oak above her head might as well be the rattle of a machine gun. Within eyesight but not earshot, Coffee and Marella wait on the steps of the upper school. She doubts they could really do anythin
g if Roosevelt loses it, but she feels safer with witnesses. They debated giving her Marella’s recording stick, but eventually decided that it would be too dangerous if Roosevelt found it. So she waits, ten minutes past the thirty she gave Paul, before her very own nemesis crunches his boots on the mulched path.
He’s wearing a long black pea coat and a black knit ski cap that makes him even more anonymous than usual. His smile, however, is unmistakable.
“Hello again, Emily,” he says. “I was just thinking I should give you the good news.”
He has her off-balance already. “Good news?”
“Your parents came back with Senator Grossman’s entourage, and they’ll be out of quarantine in time for Thanksgiving. Aren’t you happy?”
She grips her thighs and swallows sour acid. She doesn’t look at him. She didn’t know how much she had relaxed in her mother’s absence, but Roosevelt clearly did; he said happy because he knows how miserably she feels the foreshadow of Carol Bird’s eyes.
“They didn’t tell me,” she says.
“It would have been a security breach if they had, and we both know your parents are too careful for that.” The sarcastic edge of his voice startles her into looking up, but his eyes are as bland as ever, two shoe-polish puddles waiting to consume whatever might fall inside.
“You think my parents told me something I shouldn’t know,” she says. He’s led the conversation exactly where she wanted it to go, which makes her wary.
He smiles and shakes his head. “I’m keeping an eye on the daughter of a friend. As a favor, Bird.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He leans forward. “Because he’s watching?”
Coffee stands beneath the pale neo-Gothic arches by the upper school entrance, his hands deep in his pockets and his gaze fixed unerringly on Bird and Roosevelt. Bird’s thoughts stutter when she looks at him, her ears fill with crashing waves. But she can breathe, and that’s enough.
“I want you to leave me alone,” she says.
“You were the one who asked to see me. Poor Paul. He asked me not to hurt you, but he still passed on your message.” Roosevelt shakes his head. “But he’s a bright kid, pleasantly ambitious. I’m sure he’ll learn.”
Bird’s hand tingles where she brushed against Paul in the hallway, a physical memory that has nothing to do with her rational mind. She hates what Paul has become. She hates what he’s done to her. And it makes it worse, somehow, that he’s retained enough of his conscience to regret it, and not enough to stop.
“No more spying,” she says, forcing the words out. “No more threats. I want my life back.”
He frowns. “So would about two million other people.”
It’s a long way down if she jumps, and her mother is coming home tomorrow. Roosevelt meant that news to intimidate her, and even two weeks ago it would have worked — Bird would have retreated to her cave and Emily would have glued on her molted feathers. But with Coffee and Marella watching, reckless bravery bubbles up her throat.
“Then it would have helped,” she says, “if you had given them the vaccine.”
For a second, Roosevelt doesn’t so much as twitch a finger. Then he takes a gentle step closer to her bench, so she is forced to look up to see his face, now a mask of dark hollows and white planes. When she breathes all she can smell is him: menthol cigarettes and sandalwood cologne, Coffee’s ripe aroma of sociopathy.
“That’s what this is? I wondered. The vaccine.” A faint laugh.
From this angle, she can see a dust of white powder in his nostrils. Coke is her immediate thought, though it seems fantastic that a CIA contractor could get away with it. But then again, who better?
Bird clears her throat. “We have proof that’s what the school has been giving us. A secret vaccine that could have saved millions of lives.” Her heart races, her mouth is dry, but she only has eyes for Roosevelt.
“Proof!” Roosevelt rolls his shoulders and fixes her with a glare of sudden impatience. “What, did you write it down in invisible ink?”
“It’s not true?”
He looks at her for several long seconds, then shrugs. “It is a vaccine. And so I’m sure you’ll be excited to hear that the president himself will give the nation the good news Thanksgiving morning.”
And there’s the ground, rushing close. “Tomorrow?”
“It’ll be a good turkey day,” he says. “I hear the Redskins are going to play Dallas in a demonstration game. The good American spirit, cowboys versus Indians. The Indians will lose, of course. Everything is going back to normal.”
If Roosevelt isn’t lying — and why would he be? — the president’s announcement undermines any leverage she might have had. Should she tell him she has Dr. Granger’s emails, her formal letter of complaint? They might make a good news story, but they might not protect her. She fumbles at the few remaining questions. “Why did we get it so early, then? How did you test it? — you gave it to the vice president’s daughter, you must have known it was safe. Criminals? Why keep it secret —”
Roosevelt raises his hand. Just that, but it stops her short. “To keep you safe.” His voice is strangled, as if he has barely stopped himself from saying something very different. “That’s why we’re doing all of this. To protect America from ungrateful national security risks like you. You think you know a secret, Bird?”
He puts a hand on her shoulder, a violation she doesn’t dare remove. In the corner of her eye, she sees Coffee pull away from the wall and cross the bridge. Part of her longs for him to intervene, but she knows that he would only make this worse. Roosevelt doesn’t see her as a threat. He thinks she is stupid and harmless, and only that might provoke him into carelessness. She shakes her head firmly. Coffee stops like he’s hit a wall.
“The vaccine is a big deal,” she makes herself say, so he won’t notice.
“The vaccine program was very important to our national security. Feel free to tell the papers you got it early — but the kids of the big editors also got the vaccine early, so something tells me you won’t get much traction with them. And the Internet? Well, who can believe the conspiracy theories you read online?”
“But the rest of the world —”
“Can buy it from us at a fair price. It’s not simple to manufacture after all. It took weeks just to give it to Congress.”
Bird closes her eyes. “You can’t do this forever. You have to leave me alone sometime.”
“I’ll leave you alone now. Your parents are back, you don’t know anything you shouldn’t.”
She opens her eyes and stands, unbalancing him so he staggers backward. “What happened to Sasha Granger?”
“Sasha? Of course you would ask about her. She didn’t like the vaccine program any more than you do.”
“So you killed her,” she says.
“Massive aortic aneurysm. Her heart was a time bomb.” Roosevelt shrugs. “We just got lucky.”
She wishes she could be sure he’s lying. He’s a cokehead hypocrite serial harasser, but he might not have done anything to hurt Dr. Granger. And if he didn’t, then there is nothing else she can do. She has played her ace and lost.
“Oh, you and your cousin are free to go home any time you want. Happy Thanksgiving, Bird. If you need to get in touch again, just leave a message.”
He nods at her and ambles away, hands in pockets. He chuckles to himself and says, “The vaccine!” low and disbelieving. He nods at Coffee when they pass each other. Coffee doesn’t bother to acknowledge him. He meets Bird at the rose garden entrance and cups her elbows in his large, restless hands. Marella hangs back.
“Are you okay?”
“You can come for Thanksgiving.”
He frowns, reads the whole story on her face. “But it didn’t work.” It has scared her how well Coffee knows her, but now that knowledge feels like a salve on angry burns.
“The president will announce the vaccine tomorrow morning. We were too late. But Roosevelt said he would leave me alone,
anyway. My parents are coming back, and really he was only using me as some sort of hostage in case they said something….”
Coffee frowns. “But Bird,” he whispers, “the party.”
Roosevelt’s low chuckle as he left. The vaccine, he said, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. Because she couldn’t touch him, or because she had made the wrong threat? His story fit together with everything except the party. Why interrogate her if he was only interested in ensuring her parents stayed quiet? What had happened in those hours after Coffee chased Paul’s car down the driveway? If Roosevelt came here thinking there was a chance she knew something, then maybe she does.
“When you come tomorrow,” she says carefully, “bring that dessert you promised me. The mind-blowing one you had after your father died.”
Coffee flinches. She keeps her gaze steady on his. “Bird —”
“It’s time,” she says.
His Adam’s apple bobs and he blinks twice. She catches a tear with her thumb and rests her cold hand on his cheek. When he unlocks her memories, what Trojan secrets will follow them?
He leans into her palm. His evening stubble pricks a constellation in her skin. Her breath is lazy and thick, full of him and striated with longing. What will he hear tomorrow, if this works? She asks, “What do you feel for me?”
He goes rigid; lifts his head and steps back in a jerky, panicked motion. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because if we do this tomorrow …”
“You’ve never wanted to know before.” His voice is rough with anger.
“I was afraid before.”
Two more tears leak from his eyes and he wipes them away angrily. “Christ. Oh, goddamn it, Bird, you don’t — I can’t even — I just —” He shakes his head.
Bird can only stare.
“I’ll come to your uncle’s tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll bring what you want. Good night.”
Considerate as always, Marella walks up to her after Coffee stalks away. “We should get back inside. It’s nearly curfew.”
“I screwed everything up, Mar.” Bird hugs herself and shivers.
Love is the Drug Page 22
