CHAPTER 41

           To remove responsibility from the individual is no different than to laden them in shackles.

        —LANCASTER R. HILL, LECTURE AT MARIETTA COLLEGE, OHIO, MAY 1, 1938

Lou leaned up against Vaill’s sedan and gazed skyward, stealing a moment’s rest along with the chance to contemplate the gut-wrenching new developments. The man lying in the isolation suite was hardly the warrior who could once go fifteen rounds opposing ranked professionals. The visit with Cap had lasted fifteen minutes before he started to fade. Lou left with a promise to return soon, but kept the timetable vague. They had returned the FBI-issued Windbreakers to the trunk and Vaill had his suit jacket back on.

“Tim, this changes everything,” Lou said. “I can’t be locked up anywhere, my hotel room included—not if they could operate on Cap at any time. More important, I’ve got to keep looking for Humphrey or someone like the people at the CDC who can put his theories into practice.”

Vaill looked at him disapprovingly.

“You can’t do that, Lou. Anything you do right now risks compromising my work. I’ve got to manage this investigation, and unfortunately, because I can’t trust anyone connected with the agency, I have to do the important parts alone.”

“Look, I know how—”

Lou stopped speaking. Tim Vaill wasn’t listening. Instead, he was staring up at the glass and steel façade of the main building, his eyes squinting rhythmically. It was the same distant look Lou had seen in the interview room.

“Oh, God,” Vaill murmured.

Hyperventilating, he dropped to one knee, pressing his hands across his eyes.

Lou dropped down beside him.

“Another headache?”

Vaill managed a nod.

“I’m going to get you into the ER.”

“No!”

Lou checked his pulses, paying closest attention to his carotids.

“Is this the same as you’ve been having—the same as the one last night in the interview room?

Another nod.

Lou opened the passenger’s-side door, and helped him in. The hyperventilating was becoming even more marked.

“Jesus,” Vaill muttered, now holding his head on both sides as if to squeeze the pain into submission.

Standing outside the open door, Lou gently lifted his lids apart and checked his pupils. Abnormally dilated, but equal in size, and symmetrically constricting a bit to the light.

Almost certainly not a stroke, hemorrhage, or clot.

“If you need to get sick, just do it out here, Tim. You sure you don’t want me to get some help and get you into the ER?”

“I’ll … be … fine.”

In his years as an ER doc, Lou had seen every kind and degree of pain. Kidney stones and acute gout were high on his list of those he did not ever want to have, along with aortic artery leaks and of course, from all he could ever tell, childbirth. But also on the list were big-league headaches—migraines or even worse, cerebral aneurysms. Vaill’s pain seemed right up there with any of those, although, as the previous night, it seemed to have come on faster than a typical migraine. Had he not had that prior experience, Lou would have called for help. Instead, he kept his fingers alternating from Vaill’s carotid to radial pulse, and waited.

There was a large manila envelope on the driver’s-side floor. Lou emptied its contents on the floor and fitted it as best he could over Vaill’s mouth and nose to allow him to rebreathe some of the carbon dioxide he was blowing off.

“Easy, pal. Easy.”

Gradually, the rapid breathing began to slow. Lou checked the time. Twenty minutes.

An elderly couple, who had apparently been watching from nearby, came over to ask if they could help. Vaill, his eyes now open, waved them off.

“Let me stand up,” he said.

Lou helped him to his feet and for another few minutes, Vaill braced himself against the car roof.

“I’m not certain what is causing those headaches,” Lou said, “but I don’t think I want one.”

“Believe me, you don’t. I’m okay now. Thanks.”

“Tim, listen, you are really in no condition to be going after Humphrey or Burke on your own—especially if you’re getting an attack every day. You need a partner, and since you can’t trust anyone you work with, I want to come with you. I have as much at stake here as you do.”

“No. Absolutely—”

“Dammit, Tim, you’ve got to trust me and let me help.”

“Exactly what do you think you could do?”

Time was becoming as big an enemy as One Hundred Neighbors and the Doomsday Germ. It no longer seemed important to keep Humphrey’s research notebook a big secret, and Lou told him about it.

“There’s a lot of Humphrey’s work that isn’t over my head,” Lou said. “I can help in that regard. Is there any way you could share with me what you’ve found so far?”

“Everything? We have reams and reams of reports and interviews.”

“Where is all that?”

“I can’t believe I’m caving in on this,” Vaill said. “Okay, listen, we’ve got a new system, the I.D.W., for Information Data Warehouse, where we log in all the evidence and leads we collect on a case. It’s supposed to help improve efficiency with our taskforces. Physical evidence stored in evidence rooms gets logged in so we know where it is. We even take pictures of it, so we can look at it remotely. Any electronic evidence—photographs, videos, that sort of thing, is uploaded to the I.D.W. as well.”

“And you have the codes and passwords to access that warehouse?”

“Of course, doc. That’s the idea.”

“Sorry. Between Cap and you, I’m a little rattled.”

“Okay, I’ll check what McCall and I have entered into the warehouse.”

“Burn as much as you can onto a CD and we can go over it together.”

“What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I’ll take your advice and go back to my hotel room and reread Humphrey’s notes. Then I can start making calls to my ID contacts in Washington. If we can’t find Humphrey, maybe I can locate another microbiologist who could help put his theories into action.”

“We need to just stay away from any government scientists for a couple of days until I figure out where the leak could be coming from. If I don’t find it in two days, you’re the boss. This is all on us, doc.”

“And you’re feeling all right?”

“A few patches of fog still hanging around, but I’m okay. You just protect that book.”

“Check.”

“We’re going to bust this thing, Lou.”

Where there had been confusion and pain in Vaill’s eyes, now there was only fury—a hunger for vengeance.

“You got it,” Lou said. “I’ll stay in the hotel long enough to change out of these clothes, shower, call Emily, pack, and try to understand as much of Humphrey’s research as possible. You go check out that warehouse, make a CD, and maybe find us a place that’s safe away from McCall and anyone like my former clients and family who might know where I’m staying.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Vaill said. “Two hours?”

“Make it three and be extra careful picking a place for us.”

The new allies shook hands, climbed into the sedan, and drove off.

If, when they first arrived at the parking lot, they had glanced toward the hillside three hundred yards behind them, one of them well might have seen sunlight glinting off the lenses of a powerful pair of 30-160x70 Sunagor mega-zoom field glasses.

Now, had they looked, they would find the hillside empty.