Homegrown: The Terror Within

What others are saying about HOMEGROWN: THE TERROR WITHIN—

HOMEGROWN: THE TERROR WITHIN is terrific--fascinating, fast-paced, and frighteningly plausible. CIALAN HAASNIC has written a thriller so compelling, it kept me up nights--after I'd finished it.

--Harley Jane Kozak Macavity, Agatha & Anthony-award winning author of

DATING DEAD MEN and A DATE YOU CAN'T REFUSE

A perfect choice to read on a long flight . . .The general public has no idea of the artistic side of mathematics . . . this book might spark some interest . . .

--Nathanial Grossman Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at UCLA

Homegrown: The Terror Within

By

Cialan Haasnic

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2009 by Cialan Haasnic

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this eBook, which is licensed for your personal use only. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of authors' rights is appreciated.

Audio clips of HOMEGROWN: THE TERROR WITHIN may be obtained through the book's official website: http://theterrorwithin.com More about this author can be obtained through the publisher's website: http://bournos.com Hard copies of this book may be obtained through select, online book retailers. Connect on twitter: http://twitter.com/HomegrownTTW

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

First Edition July 2009

Smashwords Edition July 2011

ISBN 978-1-4661-4672-3

* * *

-Prologue-

There are few places where mosquitoes do not exist. Some three thousand species inhabit every country on every continent, and they are among Earth’s most adaptable creatures. Like cockroaches and rats, these insects will survive final days, whenever final days finally come.

Mosquitoes fall into the Class Insecta, within the Phylum Arthropoda and as disease carriers, they are the most deadly of all with whom we share the planet. Dengue hemorrhagic, Rift Valley and yellow fevers; malaria, encephalomyelitis, encephalitis, West Nile virus, and filariasis are but a few of the ills these flying pests with the long proboscises give to another member of the Kingdom Animalia—human beings. And though mosquitoes will bite birds, rodents and other mammals, their favorite blood meal is human.

About five hundred species of mosquitoes exist in the United States with fifty-two in the state of California alone. The genus Culex has proven the most effective vector, or carrier, of the West Nile virus due to its hearty adaptability. Within the Culex genus, the most common species is quinquefasciatus, the Southern House Mosquito.

Though quinquefasciatus may be the most common, almost any mosquito could be turned into a bio-weapon with a little retooling. Which is just what was happening thirty miles from Santa Barbara, California, down Highway 101, in the mostly agricultural area west of the town of Camarillo. Once known for its State-run mental hospital and giant sod farms, Camarillo has become a fast-growing exurbia with miles of paved-over farmland, outlet centers and the now ubiquitous housing developments originally made popular after World War II. There is so much bustling activity that those still in the farming business are all but ignored by those who’ve discovered the business of consumption, still a favorite American pastime regardless of the global recession.

The man tending the mosquitoes, underneath his white jumpsuit and bee keeper’s hat, is the kind of guy one might see on the links of a suburban golf course on a sunny Saturday in summer, or perhaps cruising the aisles at Lowe’s or Home Depot. That is to say, he would blend in anywhere he went.

The man had considered Culex tarsalis briefly, but returned to quinquefasciatus as the most ideal species. It breeds in any type of water including backyard birdbaths, streetside ditches, wetlands, and slow moving creeks, and it doesn’t particularly care if the water is dirty. Quinquefasciatus also enjoy the neoregalias that grow in so many of the lush gardens in the state. These bromelieads and tillandsias provide shade and rest during the part of the day mosquitoes lie low, and the rotting flowers provide a meal for the male of the species, while the females go in search of blood.

Opening the outer door of the greenhouse, which he’d modified himself, the man in white slips through, out of the wintry, overcast southern California day and into moist artificial warmth. In his arms he carries a thirty-five pound dog, a mangy golden mutt with round chestnut eyes, trusting of this stranger who had rescued him and fed him for a week, giving him things he’d never before tasted—Gooey, fatty, sugary cakes that made his teeth tingle with joy while causing his subcutaneous tissue to emit insect attractors.

The man puts the dog down on the plastic covered floor where it wags its tail and runs in circles around the man as he changes his bee keeper’s hood for a sophisticated helmet, certified to Bio-Safety Level Three and seals the seams. It’s only smart. Accidents happen and it takes so little effort to keep from being bitten.

Reaching down he once again picks up the dog. His growing insect air squadron needs blood, and finding a human volunteer will only draw attention. That’s why he’s taken to saving dogs and cats from the streets and almost certain euthanasia at animal shelters far from Camarillo, rescuing them from one type of death by lethal injection, into another. But he holds one last small spot of softness for the animals. He doesn’t want them to suffer any more than they have to, so after the quinquefasciati have their meal but before the animals develop symptoms of his experimental viruses, he puts the creatures out of their misery. He has to protect the project after all. His old friend is counting on him. If one of the dogs were kept alive, and subsequently became the blood meal for a mosquito with unfettered access to the general population, the virus might show up on vector control watch lists before he wants it to.

The mosquito man seals up the first door then goes through a second panel, a zippered flap of thick, clear plastic, re-sealing it behind him. When he opens the third panel, the dog shifts uncomfortably in his arms. The whining whrrr of mosquitoes sounds like a hundred distant tiny smoke alarms going off at once, all tuned to slightly different frequencies and wavelengths.

The dog hunkers down in the man’s arms, trying to bury his head, unaware that this man who’s cared for him better than any person in his life is about to release him into the most hostile environment he’s ever experienced.

When the man puts the dog down onto the plastic covered earth, he squelches the small pain he feels inside and turns away. All the small pains the man has felt over time have brought him to this point. He will come back in an hour and save the dog from further torment. It’s the least he can do, he thinks, after the dog has given its life to help his cause. Man’s best friend to the last.

-1-

What’s wrong with talking about sex? Do you think they’re not having it? Meredith Satter, single mom, knew something about sex. Dr. Meredith Satter, theoretical mathematician knew even more—at least in theory. She also knew there had to be more to her suspension as Professor of Mathematics than using it in a lecture to the University of California/Santa Barbara's School of Engineering. But then, Meredith had a theory for just about everything, including the Theory of Everything—a mathematical expression unifying the minute world of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s relativity. Now, however, in order to make her case for reinstatement, she needed more information. But Professor Albert Raynham, the person responsible for her unspecified leave, wasn’t giving her any.

"What is it, then? Because they’re having sex, Albert. By seventeen, more than half of these kids has had it several times. And those in college or grad school—like the group we’re talking about—they’ve all had sex, of one kind or another."

Raynham cringed, his comb-over lifting almost imperceptibly from his scalp. It was inappropriate, he mumbled.

Inappropriate. I was explaining the Theory using a subject that might actually keep them awake.

I finally get network theory, Sharon Fortus, a gossip columnist for the struggling Santa Barbara News-Press had told Meredith in her characteristic coo after the lecture. It’s just fascinating! Then she'd leaned in and whispered, I never considered before how we’re all so sexually connected.

That hadn’t been her point of course but Meredith was bolstered by the fact that even Sharon had grasped the concept of networks—the theory, derived from math and practical reality, that proves how seemingly disparate populations, events and actions are linked together to form the whole—that all we are really is a sticky web of relationships connected by numbers.

* * *

Meredith pressed her thumb and forefinger against the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath and turned on the windshield wipers. It was mid-morning on a traffic-free Santa Barbara surface street and it had started to drizzle, the drops large enough to require more frequent swipes at the windshield than the intermittent setting on her new but disappointingly practical KIA Savant allowed.

Approaching a bend in the road, she took her foot off the gas. Ahead, something was in the road. What was it? She couldn’t see. Condensation had formed on the windshield, fogging her view. It was the first time driving the Savant in the rain, its lipstick red color the only thing about it that might suggest a risk taker. She glanced down, searching for the defroster. Grasping the knob, she turned it, air whooshing up toward the fogged glass. Through the tiny clearing patch, she searched the road again. There it was - something in the trees on the left. She put her foot on the brakes.

Then she was skidding. The combined forces of a March rain on oil-slicked macadam played upon rubber tires rotating on steel and aluminum creating a projectile on a path. Like a subatomic particle spinning off into a new atom, Meredith and the car in which she traveled spun sideways. Without warning, she was yanked from her thoughts and the weekday morning routine of high school teen drop-off, into a visceral, life-changing event, an uncontrolled trajectory alterable only by another moving body. Because nothing is ever truly fixed—all bodies are moving as they hold fast to their place on the earth.

The Savant maintained degree arc, careening several yards without obstruction toward the side of the road and what lay beyond. The car’s front end pivoted out, then in, as Meredith cranked the steering wheel in one direction, then back the other in an effort to point the car straight, not that it changed anything. She and the mass of metal, plastic and rubber were on a linear track leading toward a small stand of trees. The computer-assisted ABS brakes would be of no help. Time wasn’t behaving properly either. Not time—but her perception of it. This was one of those situations when a person’s altered state gave seconds the appearance of stretching to minutes, though time did not actually stretch. There was a theory for that too.

The left rear fender was the first part of the car to glance off one of the trees which then sent it spinning off into a different arc at about 30°, resulting in a slam to the front passenger side from a second tree before another bounce off a third, as the car made it’s way into a culvert where it came to rest, slightly askew, with the driver’s side pitched up at a 45° angle, and the front end pointed away from traffic on the opposite side of the road. Somewhere in there all five airbags deployed in a succession of pops and poofs that Meredith thought must be sounding off somewhere else, except for the claustrophobia she felt in the midst of all the motion, as if she were trapped in a novelty store filled with balloon bouquets on Valentine's Day.

Then everything stopped. There was only engine whine and rain. One wheel spun uselessly, as it tried to gain traction in the gathering mud. Meredith let her foot slip off the gas pedal.

It had been her expression for the Theory of Everything that had gotten her into this mess—the sex lecture, the lost career, now this—a chain of events linking action and reaction. Just like science.

Meredith slapped at the air bags, pushing them out of the way—a task that took a few passes while the balloon-y blobs began to deflate. She wanted to be mad at Raynham and at herself for not paying attention; mad at the rain, mad at everyone—even her ex. But she couldn’t find the anger. She was fine—there was no pain, nor any blood that she could see. Instead she felt relief. She’d escaped what would have been her own scientific prediction of injury, and she liked defying odds.

The rain continued as she forced the door open and made her way to the street next to the upended Savant, ready to flag down the first driver who passed. She felt her brown, shoulder length hair, which usually sprang from her head in a mane of individual waves, hanging in a wet collective mass, the ends dripping onto her equally wet MIT sweatshirt—a cherished relic from her years as a grad student, a time of imaginings and creation, before life had become so complicated.

She saw a car clear the bend, heading toward her—a white Mercedes Meredith pegged as a 190. A small engine job that hadn’t lasted, the 190 was gutless—a crime for a Mercedes, and another example of a practical car failing to meet expectations. Cars were extensions of their drivers, after all, and if the car couldn’t say anything more than I’m practical, it wouldn’t last. That had been Meredith’s theory on cars, anyway, but she thought now, with the global downturn, people might have to get practical about a lot of things, like it or not.

This particular white Mercedes she knew. She also knew its driver who had more than enough going on, almost making up for what his car lacked. She turned back to the Savant and took hold of the door handle. From this position, it was even harder to open because she had to pull up, and physics—more specifically lack of leverage and the effects of gravity—were working against her. Once it was open, she leaned over the side and fished her purse from the jumble, then jumped clear as the door crashed closed. She was still poking though her purse, looking for her cell phone when she heard the 190 idling over her shoulder. Shit—why doesn't some other car drive by?

Meredith—came the accented male voice behind her. She could just make out a slight note of concern over her car engine’s whine and the 190’s ratatat.

Hi, she said, a note of surprise in her voice as she faced him. She glanced up and down the street, hoping for refuge in another passerby.

Mo was rolling his window down—to see her better? She hoped her excitement at seeing him was hidden from view. She squinted, peering at him through the falling raindrops. From what she could tell, he still looked dangerously great.

Are you all right? You are bleeding, he said, pointing to her shirt.

It’s nothing. She gestured toward the Savant. Could have been worse.

It's a drastic way to get rid of your new car, is what it is. He gave her that smile. Physics grad students shouldn’t be this handsome.

She couldn’t help smiling back, though she shouldn't be encouraging him.

He had that air of concern again. Are you sure you’re not hurt? Let me help you. He pushed his door open. I’ll take you to the hospital.

I’m fine. She spread her arms out, purse in one hand, and revolved 360° for him to examine, as if the act of doing this would keep him seated. I was happy to learn airbags actually work. I may be a little bruised tomorrow, but I’m not hurt. Really.

He eyed her skeptically but remained in the car. At least she had that much power over him. She’d had none in bed. Mo had the olive skin and thick, dark locks of someone from the Mediterranean, along with chocolate-colored eyes flecked with gold that made her melt. He’s cut his hair, she noticed. He seems different.

I heard about what happened, he said. Something's not right with that. You got screwed. Using sex to explain networks and cellular autómata was brilliant.

What you and I think doesn’t matter apparently.

A van approached heading the opposite direction and slowed, the driver staring at them both before taking off again.

She remembered that she was drenched and brought her hand up to her brow in an attempt to arrange her hair.

He pushed the car door open again and this time got out, striding toward her.

You look quite beautiful standing in the rain but if you stay out here, you will get ill. He was almost to her, his arms outstretched.

I’m fine—just wet is all, she said, backing up a few steps.

She was struck by his will. Though she’d felt it before, it was far more noticeable now. One wouldn’t want to cross him.

You’re in shock, he continued innocently. Let me give you a ride at least. Just a ride, I promise. I’m on my way to the University.

He was only twenty-six—she'd checked, stupidly hoping he was older then told him they couldn’t be together again. Not like that afternoon in his house. Whatever there was between them, at forty-two, Meredith couldn’t see it as anything but a dead end. Plus Mo was about to leave, go home to Florida and begin his life. And there was Jordan to consider, her hormonally charged fifteen-year-old. He needed her. Still, she ached for what she knew Mo could give her.

Come. He held out his hand. Please.

The rain was beginning to let up, the sun starting to peak through the departing clouds. She became aware of a sound, this one not coming from the Savant—a high-pitched buzzing more insect than machine. Then she spotted it—a mosquito; what Tom Robbins calls the bantam spawn of Beelzebub—tiny whiners that seem to appear spontaneously whenever sun and moisture mix.

A Nissan pickup went by, again slowing only long enough to assess the scene before driving on. Perhaps she didn't appear as if she needed help. But time was playing tricks again. She’d been thrust into another time zone where Mo had been making love to her and she’d wanted him to.

Okay, she said returning to the present. If we take Patterson Avenue, you can drop me on your way.

* * *

What did you mean before, when you said I got screwed? What made you say that? Meredith asked once they were moving.

You scare them. This is the reason you are gone.

I scare them?

This is what I think, yes. When your article comes out they won’t look good because if you are right, it will mean their great scientific minds are wrong, he scoffed. Think how much they have invested in String Theory. You have called all that into question. And Raynham is jealous as well. Trust me on that.

He’s not jealous. He says my theory doesn’t work, not that he’d know. He’s never tested the proof. The thing that bothers me is they all knew about my thesis for cellular autómata when they hired me—Raynham more than anybody.

His gaze was forward as they drove along, steam rising from the macadam. But the article getting published is evidence your autómata has merit. Before your ideas about the Theory were just concepts, and concepts are not so scary by themselves. Now that you have a real expression for it and have gained recognition, you maybe have upset things. The emotion and conviction in his voice made his accent more pronounced. It was a combination of what he’d told her was Greek by way of Cuban south Florida.

So they want to discredit me?

Yes, that’s the word. Discredit. Not your ideas—you.

Wouldn’t they, and I mean the University, have more to gain by my being successful?

If that is how things worked, yes. He took his eyes off the road for a second and glanced at her. I don’t want to upset you too much, but if what you say is verified in the international field of mathematics, maybe someone else could gain if you are gone.

Meredith was stunned. She’d never considered her little math idea as a steal-able invention. What about camaraderie in research, shared Nobel Prizes and that sort of thing? Could she really be so unlucky as to be surrounded by thieves?

I don’t know, she said. It seems so. . . somebody else’s life.

Why not your life?

My life isn’t that dramatic.

Your life is what you want it to be, yes? In America people make their own lives. He spoke with the authority of a child of immigrants, but Meredith thought she also detected a note of cynicism. She looked away to see a rainbow arching over the San Marcos foothills, an untouched, environmentally sensitive area slated for twenty 10,000 square foot homes, despite the protests of everyone but the developers.

It’s difficult, even in America, to make your life everything you want it to be, she said. You must know that.

We cannot be greedy. Not even here. But things can always get better.

She wasn’t sure what he meant, but she turned back to face him. Did you happen to mention to anyone—you know, about you and me?

No one, he said, with a note of hurt, drawing up to a traffic light. Just as you asked.

She was glad he was driving and that she could avoid his eyes. But she was drawn to his mouth—soft, full lips she had loved kissing that afternoon in his funny little house with almost nothing in it. He was so neat, she recalled, a very ordered kind of physicist. But then perhaps he had already packed, the bags elsewhere, the semester almost over.

The stoplight changed and the car began to move again.

That’s it, she said spotting the dealership. Up there next to Hollister Farms.

He pulled the Mercedes over onto the shoulder; she wanted to get out of the car before she lost her resolve.

I just don’t believe they are telling you the truth, he said as he let the Mercedes roll to a stop.

Well, it could be worse, she said, changing the subject. At least I found another job. And I'm still teaching math and science. This time to the Little Einsteins.

What are Little Einsteins?

Third and fourth graders mostly. I’m teaching them what they no longer get in school because of budget cuts. But I could be in for a tough time. The previous teacher quit. She knew she shouldn’t be flirting but she couldn't help herself.

He reached for the key and the 190's engine chugged down to nothing, then he turned his entire body to face her. An invitation? She looked away.

Thanks, she said opening the door. When do you leave?

A couple of days, he said. But I could stay awhile longer. My new position doesn’t start for two more weeks. He held up a few papers that had been on the seat between them, the name of a lab in Florida featured prominently.

Good luck, Mo. I wish you well, she said, then leaned over and brushed his cheek. If only I weren’t so damned practical and responsible. . .

As she got out of the car and closed the door behind her, he said something else, which she pretended not to hear. She’d made the right decision but that didn’t make it any easier. She watched as he drove off, her thoughts interrupted by another mosquito whining nearby. Spotting the creature as it landed on her ankle, her hand came down hard, squashing it. This one had drawn blood.

-2-

Agent Paul Hopkins and nine other agents from a Department of Homeland Security task force were gathered around a conference table in a sparsely furnished maple paneled room at NSA Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. There was nothing on the paneled walls but the government seal and a painting of the President, just like most of the other conference rooms in and around the Capitol. Paul and the others were getting briefed by Gordon Exley, the lean and imposing chief of the task force made up of agents from several different agencies, all of which had been tasked with some aspect of intelligence gathering and law enforcement. They all knew they were supposed to be holding the meeting at NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center in Maclean, Virginia, but nobody liked the place, so, in their ongoing effort to keep terror at bay, this interagency force, as well as most of the others, conducted business in the same old corridors and conference rooms they always had.

There was a world-weary quality to Paul, a weltschmerz absent in the younger agents seated around the table who more closely resembled eager recruits than seasoned members of the intelligence community. But Paul, a career NSA man, had retained his boyish quality. He had a full head of reddish hair now flecked with gray, and an Ivy League aura, though of late his clothes had veered away from Brooks Brothers and had settled decidedly in the European camp, thanks to the influence of his twenty-year-old daughter, Katy, who thought he needed a new look.

Paul unwrapped a stick of sugar free gum and deposited it in his mouth. Since losing weight, his gum chewing had become almost constant, particularly at times when he tormented himself over whether he should retire. At fifty-three, he was older than everyone in the room except for Exley. Though he still cared about serving his country, he wanted to enjoy life more. To that end, he was thinking ahead to the weekend in New York where he’d take Katy to a Broadway show, and where he planned to take her shopping for her first official, overpriced, European suit for her new job, one of the few investment banking positions still being offered to recent college grads. He might even buy himself a present. After all, he had to keep rewarding himself for all this weight he was losing—another of Katy’s suggestions. He was contemplating whether he even liked himself in Italian suits when Exley dropped a weighty, four-inch file on the table in front of him.

That’s the thickest one yet, said Nina Solomon, a chic thirty-five year-old ex-undercover operative whose previous assignment had been tracking environmental terrorists in the Northwest. Nina had dark hair, green eyes, and an air of confidence unshaken by Paul’s gentle rebuff of her amorous advances a couple of years earlier. Paul had lost his wife, whom he’d worshipped, three years before that, when she was only forty. And Nina, beautiful as she was, never had a chance against his memory of Sally. Very few women did.

Ms. Solomon, if I were you, I’d concentrate on my own files before I decide to give you more. Exley, a severe man, was almost gentle with Nina, which only underscored the crush he had on her. He glanced up and saw Paul smiling at him. What are you looking at?

Something you care to tell me about this? Paul asked, his hands on the file.

Exley sighed and it appeared to Paul that his boss lacked enthusiasm for what he was about to say. We need to consider everything now, not just the ideas coming out of these think tanks. There’s been a spike in chatter and we still can’t sift through it all in a timely manner. We’ve got to mine our scientific assets for all they’re worth, even if we’ve lost most o’ the good ones to the Chinese. Exley gestured to the file in front of Paul. CGEAUP’s turned up some new, albeit lesser, players in physics and math. And you know what they say, everything in life comes down to the math.

That’s what they say. Paul left out how he thought CGEAUP was the most ridiculous agency that this, or any administration, had ever come up with—developed with the assistance of physicists, mathematicians, chemists, even musicians, all of whom were on the cutting edge of their respective fields. They were hard at work, supposedly, on using science to come up with useful tools for combating terrorism, but the reality was, CGEAUP was known as the agency trying to talk to aliens. Despite the heightened political instability all over the globe, and the resultant violence occurring in more countries than ever before in history, the current President seemed preternaturally focused on colonizing space.

As far as Paul knew, no one had communicated with a single alien, but the buzz in the Universe, along with the fear the U.S. was losing the space race, had led the President to task Ivan Kolchak, the newly anointed head of Homeland Security, with appointing representatives from several existing Federal agencies—NSA, FCC, FBI, EPA, CIA—to the Communication and Geographic Enhancement Agency for Universal Peace, better known by its acronym, CGEAUP. Most pronounced it C-jup, but Paul preferred to call it, see Paul jump, because the damned thing had kept him busy since its creation. Not only was the agency a waste of his time in his opinion, he was the NSA go-to guy for the group and it was his job to talk to anybody Kolchak, and by extension, Exley, wanted him to.

Lately, monitoring devices have been picking up even more noise than usual from a lot of different sectors and we need to develop the tools to interpret it, Exley said.

It was Paul’s turn to sigh.

Indulge us, Exley went on. Go through the file. We might have missed something. Contact whoever you need to and get back to me in a couple of days. We can’t afford to miss the one math geek stuck in who-knows-where who might have some cockamamie idea that could actually work.

Indulging the politicos was something Paul was all too familiar with. Before the days of DHS, Paul had answered to the head of NSA, and before that CIA. Even though his immediate boss hadn’t changed, he and his boss now had to answer to Ivan Kolchak, instead of to the President. That had caused problems in all the agencies. CIA, FBI and NSA all had their reasons for wanting to get the President’s ear without having their intel filtered through Ivan Kolchak who, though quite a good golfer, wasn’t even a crime guy, but a career diplomat and businessman.

Perhaps there would be something in the file, some new theory, Paul thought as he pulled the stack of papers from the file. He didn’t look forward to being up all night scrutinizing things he didn’t fully understand—like Mandelbrot sets and stochastic systems. He looked down and spotted a particularly disturbing word—reparametrization. Geez, this was going to take awhile.

Unbuttoning his gray Armani jacket, Paul began to scan the pages. Well, he’d do what he could. He would have preferred talking to people and reading body language, but this is what he’d been promoted to—reading other agents accounts of talking to people and reading body language.

Exley handed off a file to a young female agent with closely cropped blonde hair at the far end of the table. Alright, we all know we’re living in disturbing times. Things keep ratcheting up and we’re almost overdue for some kind of incident. Our enemies are operating in every country. We need to find out what they're doing and shut them down. That means we need to become knowledgeable in everything from homemade bombs to dry cleaning to tending naked mole rats for Chrissake. In the meantime, the so-called experts in these fields who we're talking to have got to make themselves understood. We need all gathered information to be crystal clear so we can translate back up the chain so the intel can be acted on with confidence. Without that, it’s useless.

Nina winked at Paul, who then found Exley staring at him.

Take Agent Hopkins, for example, Exley said. He’s worked in just about every branch of Federal law enforcement over the course of his career and now he's mining science and math leads to see what we can get out of these people—‘String Theory,’ for example. Everybody’s heard of it, but what the hell is it? Nobody in higher government has a handle on what the damned thing is, or if it has any practical applications. Paul’s going to go out, talk to people, then come back and explain it to us.

Paul forced a smile, and the other agents nodded, at least pretending to follow.

So, that’s the job, Exley went on. Each of you—find out what people are doing in these different fields, then come back and tell us. We've got to find out if there’s a pony in there somewhere.

Paul unwrapped another piece of gum and thrust it into his mouth, chewing hard, enjoying the flavor rush of vanilla mint. So it all comes down to math. If it all came down to the math, he mused; he should have more money in the bank. He was a government agent of twenty-seven years standing, most of it good. There was no other job he’d rather have, but he was fed up with politics. They didn’t pay him enough. Sure, he’d had to slow down a little for his health—his heart had been working overtime and now his doctor wanted him to limit the excitement of fieldwork. But that alone didn’t explain the change that had come over him. His idealism was being tested. He’d lost his faith in the superior potential of human beings—particularly those at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation.

The potential for an event like 9/11 had been obvious in Paul's opinion, and using airplanes as weapons had even been a Hollywood plotline, or so he'd heard from a well-connected senator he knew. But somehow they’d all missed it, despite clear warnings. Written FBI reports weren’t taken seriously; worse—they’d been ignored, and the President claimed he hadn’t been told. Then, when the World Trade Center was struck, rather than mobilize, the President chose to keep reading the goat story to Florida school children. You can’t make this stuff up, he thought.

So now the country had the Department of Homeland Security, with Ivan Kolchak, an ex-captain of industry, at its helm. Beneath him, thousands of people, Paul among them, fed information up the chain. Kolchak would then take the collected intelligence, distilled down to its essence, and brief the President on a daily basis.

To Paul it was just another layer of government, fallible to the egos of men. It made no difference that high-level intelligence would now be spoon-fed to the President by one of his golf buddies. The only improvement Paul could see was that it might be harder to believe the President never received the intelligence. Still, even the best information, hand delivered, wouldn’t keep the Timothy MacVeighs and Ted Kuzcinskis and Mohammed Attas from acting badly and possibly getting through the net. There were crazies out there who didn’t care about things the way most people did and nothing was going to change that. But the idea of catching those guys was what kept Paul going.

He fingered the pages of his thick stack of documents along the top edges. There was research from all the usual places: Columbia, MIT, Oxford, Cal Poly, UCSB. . . He stopped. UCSB was that party school in Santa Barbara. Yeah. He knew some kids who’d gone out there and never returned, never graduated either. UCSB on the cutting edge of science?

Exley said the word terrorist, and Paul’s attention was back in the room. What are you going to say if something happens? Exley demanded of Josh Scagaletti, an FBI agent in his early thirties, recently transferred from the Midwest. Josh’s father had been an operative in the Democratic Party and Josh had grown up well-aware of civil rights. He was balking at having to scrutinize anti-war rallies for extremist elements.

It’s Cointelpro all over again, Josh said, referring to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI monitoring program of protesters in the 1960’s. They’re just exercising free speech.

So what will you say if one of these ‘peaceful protesters’ stages an attack? Exley pressed. We’ve got to find the activity before it happens. If a few rights are infringed, so be it.

Paul knew the thing that pissed Scagaletti off, as it did him, was that after 9/11, the administration saw just about everyone as a threat to national security and they were still milking it. As a result, the list of potentially dangerous persons was long indeed. In addition to people of vague Arab ancestry or those with un-American sounding names, the list included renegades of any ethnic background who’d gone to Cuba or failed to pay income taxes. There were also Mormons, overzealous Rabbis and medical marijuana growers. Some were on the list because they’d purchased hybrid or electric automobiles, perceived by the corporate-run government to be anti-American, or at least anti-Detroit and big oil, which meant the same thing. Highway patrol was even asked to note the license plate numbers of people whose cars sported bumper stickers reading: Support our troops—bring ’em home, or I Want My Country Back, and the like

Paul wanted to join Scagaletti in protesting the detail, to point out there weren’t enough agents to go after all the bad guys they knew about; that their energies would be better spent on real intelligence work, not attending peaceful anti-war rallies. But he said nothing and he felt like shit for it. The occupants of the White House had changed four times with three changes of party and through it all Paul had remained a loyal employee of whoever was in power. He was still fifteen years from retirement and didn’t think he could afford to fight Scagaletti’s battle for him.

That’s it, everyone, Exley said. I want each of you to narrow down your lists to three or four potential sites of inquiry/observation by Monday. And be prepared to leave town by end of next week to follow up.

Paul stood, buttoning his jacket, and then jammed the stack of papers back into the file. Now he and Katy wouldn’t have quite the weekend he’d hoped with all this homework. As he followed the other agents out, he thought how odd it was people thought life went by quickly. To him it had become just a long stretch of pavement.

-3-

Meredith opened the front door of her Goleta ranch-style house and dumped her purse and grocery bag—paper not plastic—on the hall table. She recognized the screeching, melodically challenged sounds of Napalm Death—or maybe it was Godsmack—coming from the direction of her son’s bedroom. She couldn’t really tell the difference between the two bands, but perhaps that was the point.

How could Jordan concentrate with such . . . exuberance? Bob-the-Ex, Jordan’s father, also had the ability to focus no matter what was going on around him. Meredith called it an ability and not a talent, despite wishing she had it, simply because her marriage hadn’t been over long enough to be that kind.

She knew she had not yet, and might in fact never, come to terms with her wounded inner-child, as the self-help books she tried reading called it, or with Bob-the-Ex’s fragile-self-in-search-of-approval-and-love or with anything else the books said would help her move on and repair her life—another inadequate self-help phrase that compared one’s life to a broken plate.

Gimme, gimme—the singer screamed. Gimme something, Meredith thought. Gimme the off switch. She tried to concentrate on her breath and letting go of the hostility inside her. She’d had a bad day and had every right to be hostile, but she knew that actually acting hostile wouldn’t help. And besides, she wasn’t mad at Jordan. She was still brooding about Mo, about losing her job; and her body ached, understandably, from the accident. She felt like she’d lost control of her little world, which had always been a balancing act between her work and emotional life. Give her a math problem to work out and she’d be happily lost in it for hours. Give her an uncomfortable feeling and she was in danger of being lost forever.

The decibel level was increasing as she walked down the hallway toward the bedrooms. She was nearing the source of the screeching, the lead singer, imploring in ever more urgent tones: I take, you break, you fake, I wake. You snake . . .

She convinced herself Jordan couldn’t be listening to the lyrics if he was accomplishing something in there. The truth was, the melody alone, what there was of one, would have been enough to destroy her concentration. These days, a drip from a storm drain could shatter her concentration. She needed a huge mind-consuming project to create critical focus—the kind of focus that had led to her Theory of Everything. And, being a mom, she couldn’t get into one of those projects unless she really wanted to fall down on the much harder job of raising a teenage boy. The reality was, there just hadn’t been a new project to force her to make that tough decision.

Meredith had proven herself an esteemed member of the higher echelons of theoretical mathematics, but she was prone to brain scatter much more than she’d been at twenty, or even thirty. She had to admit she’d demonstrated it that day on the dais when, instead of explaining what the Theory could tell us about networks and seemingly random events, she