Shadow of the giant

had to do to trigger it was ... be a captive with no access to
computers."
    "Was his research that complete? Could he have a
working virus?"
    "I don't know. All his records were changed when he
moved. When you sent him a message, you told me about that, yes? You sent him a
message and he moved to Rwanda. Before that maybe he had an earlier version of
the virus. Maybe not. Maybe this is the first time he put the changed human
genes into the virus. If that's the case, then no, it has not been released.
But it could be. It's ready. Ready enough. Maybe you caught him just in
time."
    "And if it is out there, what?"
    "Then I hope the baby my wife is pregnant with, I hope
it's one like you, and not one like me."
    "Why?"
    "Your tragedy, Bean, is that you are the only one. If
all the world will soon be like you, then you know what that makes you."
    "A damn fool."
    "It makes you Adam."
    Anton was unbearably complaisant about this. What Bean was,
what was happening to him, he wouldn't wish that on anyone. Not his child, and
not Anton's. But Anton could be forgiven for his idiotic wish. He had not been
so small; he had not been this large. He could not know how ... how larval the
early stage was.
    Like silkworms, the larva of my species does all the work of
its life while it's young. Then the big butterfly, that's what people see, but
all it has left to do in its life is get laid, then lay eggs, then die.
    Bean talked it through with Petra, and then they went to
Ferreira and Peter. Now the computer search was geared—with some urgency—
toward detecting any kind of dead-man switch that Volescu was signing on to
every day or every week. No doubt the dead-man switch was set to destroy itself
as soon as its message was sent. Which meant that if it was already sent, it
wouldn't be there anymore. But somewhere there were tracks. Backups. Records of
one kind or another. Nobody traveled the networks clean.
    Not even Bean. He had made himself untraceable by constantly
changing everything. But Volescu had stayed rooted in a lab here or a lab
there, as long as he could. He might not have been as careful in his maneuvers
through the nets. After all, Volescu might think he was brilliant, but he was
no Bean.
     
     
     
     
     
    7
     
    AN OFFER
     
     
    From: PeterWiggin%[email protected]
    To: Vlad%[email protected]
    Re: my brother's friends
     
    I'd like to have a chance to talk with you. Face to face.
For my brother's sake. On neutral territory.
     
     
    Peter arrived in St. Petersburg ostensibly to be an observer
and consultant at the Warsaw Pact trade talks that were part of Russia's
ongoing effort to set up an economic union to rival the western European one.
And he did attend several meetings and kept his suite humming with
conversations. Of course, his agenda was quite different from the official one,
and he made good headway with—as expected— representatives from some of the
smaller or less prosperous countries. Latvia. Estonia. Slovakia. Bulgaria.
Bosnia. Albania. Croatia. Georgia. Every piece in the puzzle counted.
    Not every piece was a country. Sometimes it was an
individual.
    That's why Peter found himself walking in a park—not one of
the magnificent parks in the heart of St. Petersburg, but a smallish park in
Kohtla-Järve, a town in northeastern Estonia with delusions of city-hood. Peter
wasn't sure why Vlad had chosen a town that involved crossing borders—nothing
could have made their encounter more obvious. And being in Estonia meant
there'd be two intelligence services watching them, Estonia's and Russia's.
Russia hadn't forgotten history: They still watched over Estonia using their
domestic spy service rather than the foreign one.
    This park was, perhaps, the reason. There was a lake—no, a
pond, a skating pond in winter, Peter was sure, since it was almost perfectly
round and over-equipped with benches. Now, in the summer, it was undoubtedly
advertised with a "suck blood and lay eggs all in one place" campaign
among the mosquitos, which had shown up in profusion.
    "Close your eyes," said Vlad.
    Peter expected some kind of spy ritual and, sighing,
complied. His sigh left his mouth open, however, just enough to get a good
taste of the insect repellant that Vlad sprayed in his face.
    "Hands," said Vlad. "Tastes bad but doesn't
kill. Hands."
    Peter held out his hands. They were sprayed, too.
    "Don't want you to lose more than a pint during our
conversation. Horrible place. Nobody comes here in summer. So it