On Friday, Spector stuck his head in her office door—she hadn’t seen him in a month—gave her a wink and a thumbs-up, and disappeared. Toward the end of the day a courier arrived with an “Eyes Only” envelope from headquarters. One of these “burn before reading” jobs, Betsy thought. She opened it—it was a handwritten note from the DCI. Stamped above the message was the warning, SHRED AFTER READING. NOT FOR CIRCULATION. NOT FOR DUPLICATION.
This is a heads up. Lie low. Somebody has been monitoring your activities and knows every request you’ve made. Break contact with your project for at least a month.
Very interesting, she thought, as she headed to Thelma the secretary’s desk to make use of the shredder. “Love letters?” Thelma teased.
“Kind of. I’m outta here. Have a good weekend.”
She walked out of the Castleman Building. It was the first hot day of the season, and the sky had that yellowish haze it had when the ozone soup cooked up. She took the long way home, detouring past the Iwo Jima memorial, putting things together in her head.
The White House still wasn’t acting on her findings. Anything she had put through the system had been beaten back. She had to figure out some way to go outside the system, because if she did not, a lot of people might die.
At one meeting she had been talking with a branch chief from Science and Technology who had been paying her more attention than was strictly professional. The conversation had got around to bacteriological warfare. She played dumb and talked about how one of their cows had been killed by anthrax back on the ranch. The S-and-T guy had snorted. Anthrax was not what they were worrying about; it was genetic markers—germs or toxins that could kill members of one ethnic group, but not another. “That’s what Saddam’s after.”
“Then why is the Army developing all of that anthrax vaccine?”
“Those people, they’re still fighting the last war. The future is genetics. Why don’t we go out to dinner tonight and talk some more about this?”
“Sorry, I’ve got Bible study tonight. Want to come?”
She had looked into the genetic-markers thing and found that it was a real threat, but at least ten years in the future even for the Americans. The S-and-T guy was just trying to impress her. But one of his comments stuck with her: “They’re still fighting the last war.” The Soviets had done a lot of anthrax work, NATO had stockpiled a lot of vaccine—were Saddam’s people smart enough and good enough to see that some alternative bug might be more effective? Saddam’s nuclear people had been remarkably creative in coming up with unexpected ways of enriching uranium.
She was close. But there were just no connects.
Cassie was definitely in a party mood when Betsy got home, dancing around the room to a Janet Jackson CD turned up loud. When Betsy came in, she turned the volume down a couple of notches and set them up with a couple of Stoli straight shots. “We’re gettin’ outta this bureaucratic ghetto! We’re gonna see salt water.”
Betsy turned on the Weather Channel, changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and sipped her vodka.
The phone rang. Cassie hit the mute button on the stereo and picked it up. She listened for a moment, then covered the mouthpiece and looked quizzically at Betsy. “Did you call Acme Wildlife Management?”
“Wildlife Management?”
“Yeah. It’s a pest-control company.”
“No. Are they here?”
“Yeah. Downstairs. I didn’t call them.” Into the phone Cassie said, “There’s gotta be a mistake.” Cassie paused, then turned to Betsy and said, “He wants to talk to you.”
“Ms. Vandeventer? Jack Jenkins of Acme Wildlife Management Services, Inc. Your parents read in the paper about the forecasted infestation of roaches this year in the District and they gave you a free treatment.”
Betsy blushed. Mom’s ability to embarrass her was undiminished by time and distance. “Okay, come on up.”
“What’s that all about?” Cassie asked.
The vodka and the long week and the fatigue all came on Betsy at once, and she broke out in giggles. She couldn’t stop once she got started. She blurted out, “My folks read that there’s an infestation of bugs in—”
Then it hit her, and she wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Come on, love, what’s this all about?”
“It’s very simple, they’re coming up to remove bugs. But I don’t think my parents called them.”
Jack Jenkins the Acme man showed up, complete with two assistants, all of them dressed in Acme Wildlife Management coveralls and caps. But they didn’t bring the usual array of chemicals and sprayers. All of their equipment was electronic.
“Nasty spring for roaches, Ms. Vandeventer. Your parents were right to be concerned about you. You know, if you find one, there are fifty thousand of them behind it. Would you mind if we close the shades?” He went ahead and closed them without waiting for an answer, and closed the balcony doors and windows, too. “Some of our sprayers will interfere with your television set,” he said, scooping the remote control off the coffee table and terminating the Weather Channel. In the meantime his assistants were moving furniture away from the walls.