“She’s not going to keep quiet,” says Ivy. “Do you want a screaming dumbwaiter to slide past the gala guests who are looking at the second-story art?”
“No,” says Patrick, “which is why, unless you’re silent all the way down, Grace, Cook is going to put you to sleep the moment you reach the cellars, and then Christopher will see you that way.”
Grace has grown eerily calm. “Someday I’m going to kill you all,” she says, then adds, specially for Patrick, “And I’m going to kill you first.”
“Someday,” Patrick says with a suppressed sigh, “you’re going to look back on this experience and be amazed by how much latitude we allowed you, given the circumstances.”
Ivy makes a tiny snorting noise that brings Mrs. Vanders swinging sideways to direct at her the full force of an outraged expression.
“Ivy,” says Mrs. Vanders, “we’re aware of your dissatisfaction and we’re used to your childish tantrums. But HQ will not extend you the same latitude. If you expect fair treatment from them during your exit interview, you’re going to have to curb your self-righteousness and your sarcasm long before you get to Geneva.”
Ivy doesn’t respond to this, only looks down at the Rembrandt as if she’d like to pick it up and smash it on the floor. Instead, she sighs, runs one gentle finger along its top ridge, then eases a soft sack over its form. She follows this with the most enormous sealable plastic bag Jane has ever seen.
“I want my brother,” says Grace.
“Have you decided, then?” asks Patrick.
There’s a pause. “I’ll go if I can take the dog with me in the dumbwaiter,” says Grace.
“Quietly?” says Patrick.
“I’ll be quiet,” says Grace. “I can’t help it if the dog starts barking.”
“What are you going to do, pinch him?” says Patrick.
“You would think that,” says Grace, in a voice of the purest disgust. “You would think I’d pinch the dog, probably because you pinch dogs every day for fun.”
“All right,” says Patrick, with a touch of weariness, gesturing toward the dumbwaiter. “Get in.”
“Put the dog in first,” says Grace.
“You think I’m going to trick you and send you down without the dog?”
“Yes.”
Patrick chuckles once, briefly, then cuts himself off. He crouches down to Jasper. Once Jasper is standing cheerfully in the dumbwaiter carriage, looking like some sort of strange wall ornament, Grace climbs in around him. She grabs on to him and shoots Patrick one last expression of loathing.
“Good luck, Grace,” Patrick says, then shuts the dumbwaiter door. He hauls at the cables in the narrow side cabinet for some time, then slows his pulling and stops. Leaning back against the dumbwaiter door, he closes his eyes and releases an enormous sigh.
“I love that kid,” he says.
“Do you?” says Kiran, not looking at him. “That explains why you’re so awful to her.”
An amused bitterness twists Patrick’s mouth. “And you’ve always been so wonderful to me,” he says. “How’s your fancy boyfriend?”
“Don’t you even pretend that this conversation is that conversation,” Kiran says. “At least you know all my secrets.”
“Kiran,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Patrick has wanted to tell you his secrets for some time. Mr. Vanders and I absolutely forbade it, because they aren’t just his secrets, they’re ours, and many other people’s too.”
“My mother forbade me to tell anyone her secrets too,” Kiran says hotly. “Guess who I told anyway? Patrick.”
“We’re not going to discuss your mother’s secrets,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“You know why?” says Kiran. “Because I trusted him. Because I wanted him to know me and all the places I’ve been!”
Mrs. Vanders stands so quickly that her chair shudders back across the floor. “I forbid any talk of your mother and her magic in this room,” she says in a voice that reaches into the roots of Jane’s teeth. “We’re trying to do good, simple, natural work here!”
“Oh my god,” says Kiran, suddenly sounding exhausted. Pulling out a chair, she slumps into it, rubbing her face. “Listen to yourself, Vanny. My mother isn’t a witch, she’s a scientist.”
Jane doesn’t understand this turn in the conversation, but she finds she doesn’t much care. She’s watching Ivy lower the Brancusi, then the Rembrandt, into crates.
Mrs. Vanders sits down again, clasps her hands together, and directs her steely expression at Kiran. “I’ll explain everything, as long as you swear there’ll be no more talk of your mother.”
“All right!” says Kiran, flapping an impatient hand. “I swear! Jeez!”
“Very well,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Victoria and Giuseppe Panzavecchia are microbiologists.”
“I know that,” says Kiran. “Apparently they’re also secret agents.”
“The Panzavecchias are not agents,” Mrs. Vanders says. “They’re contractors. They’ve been working under the auspices of a special CIA research and development grant for the purposes of discovering whether it’s possible to develop an immediately contagious strain of smallpox, the indicative symptoms of which manifest late in the course of infection.”
Kiran freezes, then speaks in a tone of pure disgust. “You mean a smallpox that wouldn’t be recognized as smallpox until it had already spread far and wide.”
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders, “precisely. They’ve been contracted to experiment with forms of smallpox that could serve as effective biological weapons.”
“This is your good, simple, natural work? Genetically modified smallpox?”
“In case you’re wondering why I want out,” Ivy mutters from her end of the table, where she’s now pouring an avalanche of packing peanuts into the crate containing the Brancusi. They make a tinkling sound, like ice. Patrick walks over to her and gathers up the ones that hit the floor, plowing them with his boots.
“We don’t work with biological weapons ourselves,” says Mrs. Vanders. “And our understanding is that the CIA runs these experiments not with the intention of using the weapons themselves, but rather to be better prepared should an enemy to the United States develop the same strain and attack with it.”
“Oh, right, I’ve never heard that one before!” Kiran practically yells.
“Think what you will. Their intentions don’t matter to Espions Sans Frontières. We’re nonpartisan.”
“Another word for complicit.”
“A couple of weeks back,” Mrs. Vanders continues, ignoring this, “Giuseppe and Victoria had a breakthrough. They discovered something unexpected, I’ve no idea how. But the fruit of their discovery was pretty much what they’d been directed to develop, a strain of smallpox that’s highly contagious long before the carrier can begin to suspect it’s smallpox. And then one odd thing and one terrible thing happened. The odd thing is that when they informed their research director at the CIA of their success, that man became afflicted suddenly with a different experimental strain of smallpox, an opposite sort of strain in which the indicative symptoms manifest very quickly. A week or so later, he died, and ‘A Smallpox Case in New York’ became headline news.”
“That’s the odd thing?” Jane says numbly. “That’s the odd thing? What’s the terrible thing?”
“No, wait,” says Kiran. “I heard about the smallpox guy, of course, but not that it was some sort of experimental strain of smallpox. They said he was a suicidal guy who used to work for the World Health Organization and had broken into the laboratories of the CDC in Atlanta. Which we’ve all been assured,” Kiran says, her voice growing harder, “is one of only two places in the world where the smallpox virus is kept, the other being a closely monitored lab in Russia. Smallpox,” she says in a voice now verging on shrill, “is no longer supposed to be a danger anywhere in the world.”
“Have your little hissy fit, Kiran,” says Mrs. Vanders, “then return yourself to reason. Your brother wears rose-colored glasses, but you’ve never been na?ve.”