Snakehead tct-4 Page 32

  ‘Mendez has a lab. Here at the ranch.’ Margaret fought to remember why it was important. She struggled to sit up, and the blanket fell away.

  Hrycyk blushed, embarrassed by her nakedness, and quickly pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. ‘For Christ’s sake, someone get her something to wear!’

  Elizabeth took over and wrapped the blanket around her until someone came with a towelling dressing gown and Margaret’s sneakers. Margaret slipped the soft towelling around her and tied it tightly at the waist. Then she slid into her sneakers, and with help got to her feet. She staggered a little as she felt the blood rushing from her head. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘I need a drink,’ Margaret said, and one of the deputies brought her a glass of water. She drained it in a single draught and stood gasping. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  ‘Where we going?’ Hrycyk asked.

  ‘Across the meadow. There’s an old barn…’ She grabbed Hrycyk’s arm. ‘Just stay with me.’

  He took her hand, and put a supporting arm around her waist. He appeared awkward, embarrassed by his own concern. It didn’t fit, somehow, with his image — or the one he liked to project. Out of all context, Margaret wondered suddenly if he was married and asked him.

  He looked at her in amazement. ‘Is that a proposal?’

  ‘You wish,’ she said.

  He grinned. ‘Silver wedding anniversary next year. Got two kids at college.’

  Margaret wondered why she was surprised.

  The chestnut mares were frolicking at the far end of the meadow. Sunlight slanted across the grass, steam rising as it burned off the dew. In the far distance, two long strands of mist hung above the lake. Mendez’s Bronco stood silent, its nose buried in the upright between the garage and the house, its windshield shattered. Margaret could see the blood inside. But the body had already been removed. Police vehicles, a forensics van, an ambulance, and several unmarked cars blocked the dirt track leading to the road. A couple of crows sat on the fence watching as Margaret led a small entourage of law enforcement people across the meadow, supported on the arm of Agent Hrycyk.

  The barn was shaded by trees and dark inside. Margaret remembered from last night the smell of cow dung in the treads of its huge tyres. They crossed the dusty floor and she pointed out the trap. A couple of the sheriff’s men moved forward to open it, and one went down the ladders to find the lights. When they came on, Margaret insisted on climbing down herself. They helped her from above and below, and she stood shakily in the pit where she had listened to Mascagni’s Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana only fourteen hours ago, when she still had a whole life ahead of her.

  Fluorescent lights flickered to life as they went into the lab. It was just as Margaret and Mendez had left it the previous night. Hrycyk whistled softly. ‘So this is where he did it, huh? Created a monster you can’t even see. Jees. It’s like Frankenstein’s surgery.’ He turned to Margaret. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

  She shook her head, eyes darting across every surface. ‘I don’t know.’ She frowned as if in pain. ‘I can’t remember.’ Whatever it was cast a huge shadow across her mind, but somehow she could neither see nor touch it.

  She scanned the wooden-topped bench in the centre of the room, the gel electrophoresis machines, the digital camera, the iMac and scanner, then jumped focus to the far worktop. Something, she knew, had lodged in her brain. Something she had seen here. Something significant that had not immediately occurred to her. There was the small electric oven for doing blots, the other iMacs, the electron microscope, and all the detritus of jars and bottles, papers and books, coffee-maker and ashtray. She ran her eyes past the incubators and freezer to the stereo and small centrifuge. And then suddenly she realised what it was. She swung her eyes back to the worktop. ‘The coffee-maker,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Hrycyk was nonplussed.

  She broke free from the bewildered INS agent and made her way across the lab. There were cupboards below the worktop. She eased herself down on to her haunches and opened the doors. The top shelf was crammed with vacuum-sealed packs of washed Arabica Colombian coffee. A couple of packs on the bottom shelf were open, and some beans had spilled across the melamine. There was an electronic coffee-grinder with some grounds still in it. But the coffee had long since lost its freshness.

  Hrycyk crouched beside her. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘So he liked coffee.’

  ‘That’s just the point,’ Margaret said. ‘He was allergic to it.’

  II

  Margaret and Hrycyk sat in silence in Mendez’s office at Baylor. They had been there two hours. A secretary had come in and offered them coffee. They both refused and accepted an offer of water instead. Margaret felt like death. She had refused medical treatment, and after making her official statement, Hrycyk had driven her straight here with samples of the coffee. He had disappeared on several occasions for five minutes at a time, and come back smelling of cigarette smoke.

  They both looked up as the door opened, and a young man in his thirties, dark hair flopping across a flushed face, came in. Unlike his former boss the young geneticist’s lab coat was crisp and clean and fully buttoned. He looked at them both and then sat down and held up a coffee bean between forefinger and thumb. He nodded. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘That’s what does it. Mendez spliced a promoter into his virus that is activated by a protein recognising the unique chemical flavour of Colombian washed Arabica coffee.’ He half-smiled, shaking his head in admiration. ‘Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The man was a genius.’

  ‘A dead fucking genius,’ Hrycyk growled, and the young man flinched as if he had been slapped.

  Margaret felt relief surge through her like a prescription relaxant. She could have wept. As long as she never drank coffee again both she and her child would be safe, even if she had to live with Mendez’s viral contaminant for the rest of her days. She said, ‘Colombian coffee. He had a finely honed sense of irony. He didn’t figure we were smart enough to understand it, or figure out what it was.’

  ‘Dead wrong, huh?’ Hrycyk chuckled, as if he thought he had made a joke.

  ‘The thing is,’ Margaret said, ‘maybe the Chinese don’t drink much coffee. But I’ll bet there’s Colombian in most blends in most coffee shops in America. It can only be a matter of time. Somehow we’ve got to get that message across. Fast. It could take just a single case to start the pandemic.’

  * * *

  She stood in the phone booth at the end of the hall fumbling in her purse for the FEMA list. She was certain it was there somewhere. She found various pieces of paper, folded and crumpled and smeared with eye make-up, near the bottom of the bag. But no FEMA list. She cursed and flipped with trembling fingers through her address book instead, and found Li’s home number in Georgetown where she had made the scribbled entry a couple of days before. She wanted to tell him that Xiao Ling was going to be okay. And somewhere, lurking at the back of her mind, was a hope she would not even dare to acknowledge, that somehow this might change things. She ran her credit card through the reader and tapped out the number. It rang in her ear. Long, single rings. Five of them. Six. Seven. After the tenth ring she reluctantly accepted that there was no one home and gave up. She had not made a note of his cellphone number. That was on the FEMA list which, in her mind’s eye, she saw now lying on her office desk. She hurried back along the corridor looking for Hrycyk.

  III

  They turned the corner at the intersection of Wisconsin and M, and passed beneath a golden dome supported on Greek pillars. From here they had a view down M Street toward the bridge over Rock Creek. Tall narrow shopfronts in red brick, trees newly planted along the sidewalk still in green leaf. Xinxin, happier than Li could remember, kept running ahead, only reining herself in when Xiao Ling or Meiping called on her not to go too far. They were an hour ahead of Houston time, and it was a beautiful morning, more like spring than fall. The sky was painfully clear, and the warmth of the sun on
their faces lifted their spirits. Their White House tour was in the afternoon, and they had the morning to kill.

  Xinxin knew where they were going. Li had taken her and Meiping on several occasions to the M Street Starbucks, and she was salivating already at the thought of the hot chocolate slathered in caramel that he would get for her. Outside Johnny Rockets, Li led them across the road through traffic that had ground to a halt. For a moment he considered taking them into Café Häagen-Dazs next door for an ice cream. But ice cream wasn’t on the list. They passed the Bistro Français and turned into the narrow rough brick doorway that opened into Starbucks Coffee Shop. A poster read: REMEMBER THE GOOEY, STICKY, BUTTERY-SWEET, LIP-LOCKING LOVE OF CARAMEL?

  It was busier than Li had expected. People sat reading newspapers or talking in animated groups at tables beneath pictures of steaming mugs of Caramel Apple Cider and Caramel Macchiato. Li sat the girls up at the bar that ran along the window, and left them looking out at Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Parlour across the street to go and fetch their order. He came back with tall cappuccinos for himself and Meiping, Xinxin’s favourite chocolate and caramel, and plain bottled water for Xiao Ling.

  They talked excitedly about their trip to the White House. Li had secured them a VIP tour, and Xinxin wanted to know if they would meet the President’s dog. Xiao Ling watched Li and Meiping drinking their coffee and wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,’ she said. ‘It smells horrible.’

  Li shrugged. ‘An acquired taste.’

  ‘Have you never tried it?’ Meiping asked.

  Xiao Ling shook her head.

  ‘Mine’s great!’ Xinxin said.

  Li laughed. ‘Yeah, but it’s not coffee, little one.’

  His cellphone rang in his pocket, and for a moment he hesitated to answer. Only a handful of people knew this number, so it could only be official business. But that official business might include confirmation of their flight tomorrow, so he fished it out of his pocket and flipped down the mouthpiece. ‘Wei,’ he said.

  ‘Li Yan?’ A group of people at the next table laughed loudly at some inane joke and he could barely hear her voice. But he knew it was Margaret and he was at once tense. He stood up and moved away toward the door, slipping behind the glass and pressing a finger to his other ear.

  ‘Margaret?’

  ‘Li Yan, it’s coffee.’ There was a strange urgency in her voice. ‘Don’t let her drink coffee.’ And he did not immediately understand. How could Margaret know they were in a Starbucks?

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The trigger. It’s in coffee.’

  And even as her words sank in and he made the connection, he saw, through the glass, Meiping offering her cappuccino to Xiao Ling to try. She was laughing. And he could see the words form in her mouth, almost hear them above the din. It’s only coffee. What harm can it do?

  Li’s yell cut across the hubbub in the coffee shop. He heard it distantly, as if it were someone else who had shouted. His legs felt leaden as they carried him in slow motion past the astonished faces of Starbucks customers. A table went spinning away to crash against the window, hot coffee streaking the glass, condensation forming instantly like frost. Someone’s angry voice burned his ear. A hand clutched at his arm. The cup was at Xiao Ling’s lips as he lunged at her, knocking it from her hand to clatter away across the floor. She was frozen in astonishment and fright, uncomprehending. Xinxin’s cries rose in her throat, giving vent to her fear. Why had Uncle Yan hit her mother? Li put his arms around his sister and drew her to him and immediately felt her sobs. He squeezed most of the breath from her and knew that death had been only a whisper away.

  A member of staff was at his elbow demanding to know what he thought he was doing. Who did he think was going to clear up the mess? Someone stooped to pick his cellphone from the floor where it had slithered beneath a chair. He could hear Margaret’s voice. Urgent and fearful. ‘Li? Li? For God’s sake, Li, are you still there? What’s happened?’

  He took the phone and put it to his ear, and with a voice that seemed so much calmer than he felt he said, ‘I’m here, Margaret.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  And for a moment neither of them knew what else to say, or how to end the conversation. Then Margaret said, ‘So…’ her voice trailing away, her sentence unfinished.

  Li said, ‘So…what?’

  ‘So, you’ll still be going back to China?’

  ‘I have no reason to stay, Margaret.’

  Another silence. Then, ‘What if I were to give you a reason?’

  He glanced at his sister. She and Meiping were staring back at him, fearful, curious. He was aware of Xinxin clutching her mother’s leg, still crying. A girl with a bucket and mop was splashing the floor around his feet. ‘What reason?’ he asked. What reason could she give him? That she loved him? Well, maybe she did. And maybe he loved her, too. But they had been down that road before and it had not led to fulfilment.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said simply. ‘I’m carrying your child, Li Yan.’

  And of all the reasons he might have imagined, that was not one of them. But he knew immediately that it was the only reason he would ever need.

  Note

  At the time of writing, the American federal government had not actually cleared the use of Fusarium oxysporum for spraying coca crops in Colombia. But it was under active consideration.

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