“On what grounds can you assure me of that, Sidney?”
“On the grounds of his accomplishments. He’s a humanitarian. There’s nothing nefarious about him. It’s laughable to think so.”
“You’re probably right. Thank you for your time, Sidney. I can’t imagine I’ll be bothering you again.”
“Oh, you’ve never been a bother. I understand your obsession, the grief that drives it. I hope you find acceptance and peace.”
“You’ve been kind,” she said. “And I’d enjoy talking with you again. But though it might be only my FBI way of thinking, I’d bet almost anything that there’s a third ear on this call, in addition to yours and mine. Just one thing. In the last year, did you ever go to a conference with your wife and stay overnight?”
“No. In our personal lives, Eileen and I were as tight as two people ever were, but our professional lives were worlds apart.”
“I’m relieved to know it. Relieved for you. Good-bye, Sidney.”
After switching off the phone, she cruised a nearby residential area until she found a house under construction, a Dumpster standing at the curb. Although she had burned through only a fraction of the minutes that came with the phone, she chose not to risk its further use. From her open window, she tossed it into the open Dumpster and drove away.
She headed for Pierce College, which was only a few miles away and no doubt boasted a good library with Internet access.
19
* * *
AT PIERCE COLLEGE, she bought a parking pass from a dispenser. Numerous trees—oaks, conifers, ficuses—graced the lovely campus.
No demonstrations were under way in support of one utopian vision or another. Good. College and university libraries were problematic if she might be delayed by angry placard-bearing crowds and in danger of being captured on camera by the media that raced to cover such events regardless of their frequency.
With its dramatic clock tower and massive cantilevered roof over the main-entrance stairs, the library was a bold and handsome structure. The computer lab lay in the northwest corner of the ground floor, at the moment deserted.
She sat in the back row of workstations, where no one could sit behind her.
Dr. Bertold Shenneck proved to be a big deal. His name came with so many links that she would need weeks to read everything that had been written about him.
She went to the Shenneck Technology website, a trove of data. There were numerous videos featuring Shenneck, crafted to explain aspects of his work and to elicit multimillion-dollar grants from government and industry.
In the most recent one, Shenneck was a youngish-looking fifty-year-old with a full head of dark hair, the face of a kindly uncle, and a smile as appealing as that of any of the more benign Muppets. If he was an intellectual giant, he was also a superb salesman whose enthusiasm for the potential of biotechnology would be contagious when he was pitching his plans to the captains of industry and to politicians who controlled the biggest purse strings.
The computer-lab door opened. A man entered. Early thirties. Clean but tousled hair, a carefully crafted disarrangement. Tall. A tan so even it had to have come from a machine. One of those laser-bleached smiles.
He wore an upscale blue sport coat with a somewhat loose cut, leaving room for a weapon if he was licensed to carry. A chambray shirt with the tail out. Pale-gray chinos. Rubber-sole Rockports instead of loafers or other leather-sole shoes. Rockports provided excellent traction if you had to move fast and chase someone down. Jane usually wore Rockports. This guy had the right look for a certain kind of undercover assignment.
She did not return his smile. She focused again on the computer screen, but she remained aware of him with her peripheral vision.
He went to the workstation at the farther end of the row that she had chosen.
Reading descriptions of the other Shenneck videos, Jane settled on one that mentioned light-sensitive proteins, reading-out brain implants, and thought-translation software. It covered the same ground as the TV story she’d seen while waiting in bed for Nick, six days before his death. In fact, she suspected Bertold Shenneck had been one of several researchers who appeared in that news piece, for his face had looked vaguely familiar to her in the previous video.
The hope-filled story of brain implants that would one day allow mute patients to think what they wanted to say and have their thoughts become speech through a computer had remained with her the past four months. She’d thought it stuck in her memory because it was the last thing she’d seen on TV that night before Nick had come to bed, raised her hand to his lips, and said, You rock me.
At the farther end of the row, the newcomer hadn’t yet powered up his computer.
He made a call on his smartphone. His voice was so low that Jane couldn’t make out a word. The call was at most a minute long.
She was acutely conscious of time passing, but she did not believe she could already be in danger. The conspirators who seemed to be able to identify her explorations of sensitive websites, who seemed to be able to track-to-source the computer she was using, might be on to her right now if Shenneck was somehow related to the increase in suicides. But they couldn’t possibly get here and take her down mere minutes after she logged on to Shenneck Technology.
Yesterday, she had told Gwyn Lambert that she was going to see someone in the San Diego area, so the hunters had been given a few hours to seed their people at key points in the metropolitan maze. She was not nearly as vulnerable today.
She quickly scanned the descriptions of Bertold Shenneck’s many videos. When she saw the words NANO-MACHINE BRAIN IMPLANTS AND THE POTENTIAL TO CONTROL LIVESTOCK FOR MORE EFFICIENT HUSBANDRY, her interest was piqued, and she clicked on that selection.
At the end of the row, Rockport Man made another phone call.
The video that Jane selected began. With his usual avuncular charm, compelling presentation, and authoritative voice, Bertold Shenneck pitched a futuristic—though soon achievable—system for livestock monitoring and control. Nano-machines were constructed of a minimal number of molecules, invisible to the human eye. Programmed like computers, they could be injected in tiny units that self-assembled into a network once inside the animal. If they weren’t self-replicating, only self-assembling, they wouldn’t endanger the body by consuming its carbon to make more of themselves. They would be perpetually powered by tapping a host animal’s own electrical activity. The nano-machines could monitor and transmit details of the animal’s health, could even identify a communicable disease when it was still limited to a few individuals in the population. Through such technology, poultry flocks and cattle herds and other animals could be controlled to eliminate fighting as well as stampedes and other panic responses that led to stock deaths and damage.
“Excuse me,” said the man at the other computer.
Jane turned her head, met his eyes.
“Are you a student here?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“What’s your major?”
“Child development. Excuse me, but I don’t want to miss anything in this video.” She returned her attention to the screen.
Assume a third ear had been listening to her and Sidney Root.
Assume they figured she was still somewhere in California.
Assume Bertold Shenneck was up to his neck in this.
Assume that just fifteen minutes after she terminated the call to Sidney, her enemy’s security software alerted them to a search of Shenneck Technology’s website from a Pierce College workstation.
If those assumptions were correct, depending on the extent of their resources, especially if they were able to call on a spectrum of government agencies for manpower, they might reach her sooner than she, even in the worst throes of paranoia, thought possible.