BZRK

Doll Ship’s location up to an intelligence agent. She failed, and then she ran, so, no more Heidi Zulle.”
    “The Twins took her out?”
    “They had Carla do the job. But they didn’t tell her what she was doing, what she was delivering. And I was there, too, and I didn’t know. Flesh-eating bacteria, a sac of it. And, well, that was too much for Carla.”
    “Christ.”
    “You think you’ve seen some shit down in the meat, Bug Man? You’ve never seen that, or anything close.” Burnofsky shuddered. “Carla was a twitcher. Like you. But see, Anthony, she was still a human being. Unlike you. You? You don’t even know how many died in the stadium, do you? Doesn’t matter to you, because you’re a bloodless, amoral little piece of shit. All that matters to you is that you got spanked.”
    The truth dawned on Bug Man. The truth of what Burnofsky was telling them. And the why of it.
    “They want you to tell me this,” Bug Man said, and his voice cracked. “You’re threatening me.”
    Burnofsky laughed delightedly. “Like I said: you’re a smart kid.”
    “They killed your daughter. And you’re still their bitch?”
    “Everyone dies,” Burnofsky said. “Some die clawing at their eyes in agony as the bacteria eat their brains and eyes from the inside out. Others . . . others die happy, floating on waves of soft, warm pleasure. That second death? That’s what Carla had. That was my price. That’s what her loving father got for her.”
    “And you lecturing me about the dead. You should kill yourself, old man. You should kill
yourself
.”
    “What makes you think I’m not?” Burnofsky asked dully.
    They stared at each other until Bug Man could not look into those eyes any longer.
    “Now. I believe we have a meeting to attend, Anthony.”

NINETEEN
    On the screen was a diagram.
    Across the top of the diagram were five boxes containing the names MORALES, TS’AI, HAYASHI, BOWEN, and CHAUKSEY.
    Bug Man knew these were respectively the leaders of the United States, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and India.
    His first thought was that the Twins had pulled back a little. No Germany, France, or South Korea. It bothered him just a bit, because the plan had been to take down every head of state whose country had serious nanotech. This was a pullback. A pullback meant nervousness, and nervousness in others had a way of making Bug Man nervous.
    Helen Falkenhym Morales. President of the United States.
    Beneath the box with her name was a line of attack. A pathway. The trick as always was to get from point A to point Z. Fortunately there weren’t that many letters. “A” was the deputy director of the FBI, who was already an asset. “B” was a Secret Service agent who was not on the presidential protection detail but was a friend of the FBI guy. They played a weekly game of squash.
    Easy transfer, there.
    “B” led in turn to his Secret Service mentor, “C,” who was definitely on the presidential detail and would be in New York with the president.
    “C” might be enough. He might make physical contact with POTUS at some point. But the more reliable path was from “C” to “D.”
    “D” was the president’s “body man,” although in this case it was a “body woman.” Her name was Liz Law, a name that should have made her some kind of superhero. She was the first person to see Morales in the morning and the last to see her at night.
    To reach Liz Law was to reach the president, period.
    A,B,C,D.
    E.
    Four jumps.
    Some of the others had it tougher. The path to the Chinese president was seven steps. Some had it easier. The path to the British PM was three steps. Someone had quickly replaced the dead Liselotte Osborne in that pathway.
    Bug Man blinked, defocused the chart, and looked around at the room. Jindal was the briefer. He was standing at the ready, twirling a laser pointer nervously in his hand.
    The various lead twitchers were around the table.
    Kim. An Asperger’s case if ever there was one. Skinny Korean kid, looked about twelve, although he was probably seventeen. He tended to avoid eye contact. And any physical contact. And would occasionally interrupt the conversation with some totally off-topic remark. A good twitcher, methodical, careful.
    Dietrich. He was maybe twenty-five, a German with hair so thin and light it seemed to float on a breeze of its own, a sort of thinning blond halo. Behind his back people called him Riff-Raff, after the butler from
The Rocky Horror