"'At least one corpse was smoking and 'making a strange crackling noise,' while others were fully deteriorated, an officer said. It is not known why the Vincentes killed the animals or what method was used. Due to the mysterious disintegration factor, the corpses are being examined by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.'"
We exhaled in frustration. Hamdani stated the obvious: "If the CDC has been contacted, USIC knows."
Our game is to find what they don't know.
"But you think these might be tied to the dog corpse found in the road, which 'authorities say' was infected with some new strain of tularemia," I laid out.
He shrugged. "That was near Mexico City, and these dog corpses are across the country, near Cancún..."
I pulled up a chair behind him and stuck my pillow under my butt. I had grabbed it off my bed without even thinking. I figured the hard chair would keep me awake while he opened his favorite new search engine. He had designed it, and it searched only chat rooms and chatter in twenty-some languages. I saw him plug in "Vincente," "dogs," "Mexico," "Tulum," a/o "Mexico City." But I had seen him do stuff like this many times in the last five weeks. I needed to get to sleep. I put my chin on his shoulder, thinking this might annoy him enough to hurry it along and give me my measly five minutes.
However, many minutes later, he was shaking me awake. "Will you please get your scabs off my scabs and look at this?"
I blinked.
ALERT: OmarLoggi is Online: www.tijuanaprime.com/chat/hodgpoq-hall/%853.18.05%/ Enter9:59 pm
I raised my head slowly. "My god..."
Hamdani hacked into the chat room as an invisible guest. The chatter was just disappearing, but he hit CTRL-C and managed to capture it into Notepad and translate. It was only a few lines.
OmarLoggi: I had a runner go to pay the Vincentes' bail. I thought it would be a thousand pesos, but the Tulum judge wanted upwards of nine thousand. We smelled the CDC immediately and left them to rot in the can. He knows nothing, and his wife knows less. They cannot hurt us.
We went off like an explosion, flying out of the chairs, whooping ... I landed standing in the middle of the bed.
"Your face is bleeding," Hamdani noted, sitting down quickly again. "Go! Script it!"
I flew across the hall to my own room, to my four terminals that I never shut down, in case of something like this. I ripped the towel off my favorite monitor—the towel kept the light down—and plopped my sorry butt into the chair too fast. I hardly felt it.
"Boys! What are you doing? The neighbors will hear!" Miss Alexa, our USIC live-in nurse, shouted up the stairs. That would be a bad thing. We kept the curtains drawn. I was supposed to be living somewhere else, and the house was supposed to be rented to an elderly couple while my mom sat in federal prison.
I didn't bother answering Miss Alexa. OmarLoggi is online. Ho ho. Omar is a former professor of marine biology in Hamburg who designed the germ that infected Trinity Falls. VaporStrike is not a scientist but an officer of some sort. He's a trained assassin.
There wasn't a lot more chatter to catch. Omar was talking to a log-in named Pasco, not familiar to me, so I dog-leashed him to track later. Hamdani got the IP address of where Omar was chattering from. He came in my room to do the translation of their last two exchanges before they exited. He whipped the towel off the terminal next to me.
"Sit on that towel!" I warned him. I don't like the possibility of sitting my butt pustules where his butt pustules have been, if you'll pardon me. He calls me on my obsessive-compulsive behavior daily, but now he looked peaceful and gratified.
"You need me to translate?" he asked.
"Yes, but don't toy with me," I said. "What's going on?"
Hamdani's smile is forever with his eyes and not his mouth. It keeps his face from breaking open like mine just had.
He said, "Omar is in Cancún."
Well, well. We'd been placing bets for weeks. Sydney, Australia. Beijing, China. The Polynesian Islands. Pakistan. Omar's whereabouts was huge. Cancún boiled my blood, because it is a beautiful Mexican place where people slurp margaritas on the beach and get twenty-buck massages and snorkel.
I moved my chair down so he could move his toweled ass into place. He can identify the language pretty quickly if I can't, and then we have translation programs to do most of the work. After that we have to fill in with whatever English words are missing so USIC can understand it. The initial translation is usually clunky, but I let him fill in:
Pasco: What were their last calculations before the arrest?
OmarLoggi: The dog died in two minutes and twenty-nine seconds and deteriorated in three hours and fifty minutes. This is a vast improvement over our trials in Mexico City.
Pasco: May I share this with our friends in Colony Two?
"Whoa ... whoa..." I think I said it first. Trinity Falls had been known as Colony One. This was the first mention of any new colonies.
Miss Alexa was now behind us. Because USIC employs her, we didn't bother sending her away from our soon-to-be-classified secrets. "Boys. You know what Hodji has told you over and over again."
"We're not boys," I snapped. Or if we are, maybe USIC ought to consider hiring boys. "In the world of computers, boys are the men and men are—"
"Yadda yadda, young men. You're supposed to be using your computers to play chess and download e-books. To fully recover, you need sleep." She marched her girth out while Hamdani translated the last line.
OmarLoggi: Tell no one in Colony Two yet. I want to kill my monkeys first. Their circulatory components mirror humans more closely than dogs.
Exits followed. The top of my head broke into a sweat, and Hamdani said nothing. As happy as we used to get in March, back when we were capturing chatter like crazy, I had forgotten there were moments like this. When you get excited over some ShadowStrike chatter, there's obviously some puke factor attached. There's a Colony Two. Omar's got some disgusting new mutation of what had gotten us that is powerful enough to take apart a dog in four hours.
I tried to focus on the good: Omar had just used an Internet café server in Cancún. Hamdani put it all in an e-mail to Hodji and simply wrote, This is an anonymous tip from a friend. He attached the script and hit SEND.
Because of our ages, we're not allowed to work for any American Intelligence agencies. We got a nurse because it was the least American Intelligence could do after we kicked butt capturing chatter and helped save more people from dying in Trinity Falls. The New York squad had scoured its policy manuals to figure out some way to help the two of us, whom they owed, without creating a paper trail that spoke of "encouraging minors to v-spy on American soil." Their pages on "hired nurses" lacked a demand for reasons on the receipts. It was a glitch in the red tape that worked in our favor, and they went with it, though we would have done better with a secretary.
Still, we send USIC articles and our versions of alerts all the time, and with such thin covers that only an asshole would not know it was us. We don't get paid. That's the bite-me part.
Miss Alexa returned and began wiping the bleeding pustule on my face with a hot washcloth. Nurses are very motherly. I kind of like it, since my mother had never been the motherly type. Miss Alexa wiped the back of my neck, clucking about our ages. It was weird, finding out shit that USIC would probably only figure out weeks later if it weren't for us, and having some kindly nurse wiping my face down and telling me to go to bed.
I didn't question my life. I have to admit, pustules and all, it was better than it had been, back when I was staring at blackboards and having my hundred-and-two-pound body pummeled in gym class.
SIX
CORA HOLMAN
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002
7:30 A.M.
KELLERTON HOUSE
THE MORNING SUN poured in through the endlessly tall windows, and I was sucked from bed like a dreamer. I stared out the window facing east. Glimpses of sea blue shone through the pine trees. A barrier island lay on the other side of Great Bay, but I coul
dn't think of which one, and the mist hid the horizon. The north window revealed more lawn and forest, both very still.
Before I realized what I was doing, I had scanned the woods, the bramble between trees, looking for the forms or even shadows of strangers. I forced myself to stop the paranoia and to simply bask a moment in the silence, something I hadn't heard in a couple of months. I reached for the sweater I had hung on the bedpost last night.
Descending the sweeping staircase, I studied the faces in the Civil War portraits. The bearded officers were dressed with lots of officer brocade on their shoulders, and I went through a mental exercise that I find myself doing every time I look at a picture of a man. I imagine the face on a real-live body, and the mouth is uttering, "Cora, I'm your father."
I'm a slightly diluted image of my mother. I have no idea what my father looks like. As I've gazed at myself lately, I've felt like I'm teetering on a genetic fence. My father's invisible contributions to me could be anything from Swiss to South American.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. Mrs. Starn, head of the historical society, stood beside me. We'd met her last night.
"You're up early," I said.
She was already dressed. "At my age, you don't sleep more than five hours on any given night." She had mentioned last night being in her late eighties, and her white bun and frail frame attested to it, though she still had a lot of bounce in her step. She had also mentioned staying here last night, though she didn't live here. She'd said something about furniture men coming early today to bring a new couch for the TV room.
I followed her through the double doors of the parlor, taking in again the huge fireplace, the massive drapes over tall windows, and the face of a stern woman in the portrait above the couch. She had dark hair like mine and ramrod-straight posture, the kind I'd been accused once in a while of having. I remembered from last night her having the type of gaze that follows you around the room.
This woman's eyes in the portrait didn't twinkle like the men's had. We watched each other. I had some idea of the discomforts that had cost her the light in her eyes.
"That's Patience Kellerton," Mrs. Starn said. "The matriarch. Mother of thirteen children, though she'd lost several at the time this portrait was painted."
I stared at the picture, memories stirring.
"When I was in fifth grade, my class took a field trip here for the house and grounds history tour," I said. I remembered that portrait. "Mrs. Kellerton's eyes follow you all around the room. That got a lot of kids asking questions about the Kellerton children, the ghost stories."
Mrs. Starn smiled and cleared her throat. "I wondered how much time would pass before one of you four asked about those morbid tales."
I pooh-poohed the subject. "I didn't even remember them until this morning. We've got too much reality haunting us. If any of us saw a ghost, we would laugh ... tell it to go find someone who scared easily."
"I'm a historian, and hence, I like accuracy. So many students asked about the six dead Kellerton children on field trips here that the tour guides were equipped with answers. The first is, 'To lose that many offspring in the eighteen hundreds, when you'd given birth to thirteen, was unfortunate but not highly unusual.'"
"All six had epilepsy?" I asked. Details like this were just out of reach lately, but I remembered something about seizures.
"Diabetes, we now think. Obviously it was something genetic, something that struck around puberty, as all six children passed away between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, having enjoyed perfect health as children."
"Poor Mrs. Kellerton," I said, staring at the portrait. I could understand why she didn't have any sparkle in those trailing eyes. "It is kind of coincidental that we would end up here ... Perfect health as children, then something threatening strikes in our teenage years..."
Mrs. Starn laughed uneasily. "That has been duly noted lately at board meetings. It is a coincidence, something no one thought of until after the grant came through—and after we realized we'd only be getting the four of you and not the Level Threes as well. But I made sure to keep any talk of strange spiritual influences as a sidebar. Mrs. Kellerton ran the glass foundry after Captain Kellerton was killed in the Civil War, then the sawmill. My comment to my board was well taken: 'Let's not get carried away.'"
I liked her levelheadedness; I'd always had an easier time talking to adults than to people my own age. I hunted around for my feelings on the subject of a spiritual realm, which were confused.
"Sometimes lately I sense my mother around me, which is not a good feeling. We didn't have a great relationship. She was..." I put my hand to my throat, my compulsive gesture when talking about Aleese in our therapy sessions. "...she died a drug addict. But sensing my mother—that's different from walking around in a place like this and expecting to see one of the dead Kellerton children. Perhaps it's that my mother is personal to me. Spooky stories are impersonal. Something like that..."
"I definitely believe in contact with the dead, though not in the silly way that locals love to ramble about," Mrs. Starn said, which made my head turn. "Parents and loved ones go off to higher places and see things from a higher perspective. They can definitely help us out."
"Mm ... yes," I stumbled, not wanting to announce that most often, I felt my mother was laughing at me. Our therapist, Dr. Hollis, believed it was our drug protocol. I'd been the only one to hallucinate on one of our early painkillers toward the end of March, and it had been of Aleese standing beside my bed, laughing at me in a taunting way. It turned out to be a nurse who had awakened me from a dream of Aleese. Our drug had been changed immediately, however, and I hadn't seen Aleese since. I simply sensed her.
Mrs. Starn put a reassuring hand on my arm, gazing into my eyes. I suppose the wisdom of her years took over. "Maybe your mother has something wonderful to share, if you just relax and give her a chance."
I highly doubted that.
"As for Mrs. Kellerton, perhaps she wants to be part of the restoration of your health, as she could not do as much for her own children."
I smiled. I liked that idea. It was hard to talk about my mother—or to look into the dark, wandering eyes of Mrs. Kellerton, which resembled my mother's in their sharpness. But it wasn't hard to look into Mrs. Starn's eyes and take in almost ninety years of wisdom.
Mrs. Starn went back to putting fresh flowers in a vase on top of the piano, and I walked aimlessly through the antique-filled rooms downstairs. Drifting back up the stairs, I found myself standing at Scott's closed door. I didn't hear him moving, and I forced myself to go and get dressed. I felt off center, pulled in many directions, and like I might find peace in this house by walking into it, like you'd walk into a hot spot in the road on a summer's night.
SEVEN
TYLER PING
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002
8:30 A.M.
DINING ROOM
HODJI MONTU dropped in on Shahzad and me in the morning. In Pakistan, the two of them had been really tight. V-spy and bodyguard.
Since Shahzad came to live on American soil, his relationship with Hodji is tricky. Hodji can't acknowledge what we do, or he could lose his job.
I've noted to Hamdani many times how funny it is that he got both a bodyguard and money while living in Pakistan, but here in America, he's unprotected and working for free. But I don't think there's a line of reasoning in the Pakistani culture to capture the essence of "what the fuck." He refuses to complain.
Hodji clomped his cowboy boots on my mom's hardwood floors and came into the dining room, where we were eating this concoction Nurse Alexa makes for us, which is scrambled eggs with blotches of spinach in it. Our tongues are healing. We try not to discuss the sorry state of our food choices.
"I got word last night from an anonymous source that Omar is alive and well and hanging out in Mexico," he said innocently.
"Anonymous sources are quite wonderful, yes," Shahzad noted.
Hodji sat down at the head of the table and forced
himself to look at each of us. He is as good a liar as Intelligence could create for working undercover, but we know him very well, so it's obvious that he forces himself to look at us. Nobody would want to look at us. He craned his neck back to see into the kitchen and listen for Nurse Alexa pattering about. The kitchen was silent. She retreats to her room behind the pantry sometimes and closes the door to read a novel.
He watched Shahzad pick at his eggs.
His face brightened. "You guys want to live somewhere else for a while? Are you up for a little change of scene?"
I raised my hand as an enthusiastic yes. "I keep waiting for this place to get spray-painted, despite the rumor of some elderly couple living here. The news stations had to report our address when my mom was arrested for spying. They just had to come out here and shoot footage of our house. I'm surprised we haven't found a few crosses burning on the lawn already."
"What means this burning of crosses?" Hamdani asked.
Pakistanis. I ignored him. "I don't expect the graciousness of our neighbors to last much longer. Where to?"
Not that you could call any element of being poisoned fun, but I had thought it might come close to fun to live with the victims of the Trinity Falls water poisoning instead of in my Long Island house. In fact, Hodji had gotten us kind of excited early in March to go to this place on Great Bay near New Gretna to live with the Trinity Four.
But a week later, Hodji got nervous. The only people outside of USIC who knew our status as v-spies were in jail. They were either ShadowStrike members or recruits who had been arrested at the same raid where Hamdani and I got discovered and scratched in the face. But despite high security, there were ways to get word out of prison, and Hodji was growing more and more concerned about ShadowStrike members who were not in jail discovering us. And he was also concerned that our presence at the Kellerton House might jeopardize the safety of the Trinity Four.