Biowar by Stephen Coonts Page A

connect to Desk Three, which would siphon the contents for examination. Gorman watched him for a while, scowling but saying nothing.
    “Mind if I take some pictures?” Karr asked after the modems connected.
    “Of me?”
    “Hell no—you’d break the lens.”
    “Go ahead then.”
    Gorman scooped up the cat and brought him into the kitchen, looking for food. Karr took out a small digital camera, sliding it into the base of his satellite phone. He walked to the next room, which was a library, and began scanning the shelves with the camera. The books were mostly related to science and medicine, though several shelves were devoted to period homes and furniture. When he was done he unhooked the camera and spoke to Rockman over the phone.
    “You got it all?” Karr asked.
    “Lot of books,” said Rockman.
    “I’m just doing what I’m told. Gonna have to ship you the lone computer. Disk was scrubbed pretty well.”
    “Well, that’s interesting.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe he backed up onto a CD or something.”
    “Not in the inventory that I saw,” said Karr.
    “Look at the music collection. Maybe he stuck it in there, you know, hiding it kinda.”
    “You see that on NYPD Blue?”
    “Murder She Wrote,” said Rockman. “We’ll crack this case.” His tone changed, becoming more serious. “We should have data from his work computers soon. We’ll buzz you if it’s important.”
    Karr sat down in one of the leather club chairs at the side of the room. He settled his hiking boots on the floor. The carpet was thick and, though Tommy wasn’t an expert, looked handwoven and very expensive. It was the sort of thing that would go for thousands, probably.
    He looked at the furniture and furnishings a little more carefully. There were a lot of antiques in solid, showroom shape.
    “So you think this murder is related to his work?” Karr asked Gorman when the investigator returned.
    The BCI man gave him a blank stare.
    “Angry student or something?”
    Another blank stare.
    “Robbery? Guy comes here; he turns the tables, kills him, then panics and runs off?”
    Gorman finally blinked. “I doubt that. There’s no sign of panic. Everything except the body is perfectly in place. There was even food for the cat.”
    “What about the guy who found him?”
    “Not a suspect,” said Gorman.
    “No?” asked Karr.
    “FBI ruled him out. Just some friend who came up on a lark. Works for the government. They didn’t say who, but I thought CDC for some reason.”
    “I don’t know. I don’t think CDC,” said Karr, realizing that Gorman was talking about Dean. Karr had been instructed not to lie—but also to avoid stating Dean’s affiliation, if at all possible. It was the sort of bureaucratic reflex, bordering on paranoia, that made little sense to the op—they’d told the state police that Karr was from the NSA, after all, even if they clouded the affiliation by claiming he was working for the CDC—but obviously the people who were paid to worry about the agency’s public image had thrashed it all out. Karr was just here to follow orders.
    Gorman gave him a funny look.
    “They don’t tell me much,” claimed Karr. “Except where to go.” He laughed and propped his elbow against the arm of the chair and leaned his head on his hand. The BCI investigator was easy to read—he didn’t like Tommy and probably resented the fact that he was parachuting in to work on his case.
    “The FBI working hard on this?” Karr asked.
    “Hard as they usually do.”
    Gorman apparently didn’t mean it as a joke. Before Karr could ask anything else, his phone buzzed.
    “Hey,” said Karr, pulling up the antenna.
    “Mr. Rubens wants you to go to Bangkok,” said Telach. “You found that Web page with Bangkok’s time equivalents.”
    “And?”
    “There were two E-mails from the missing lab assistant on the lab system Lia compromised that we traced to Thailand,” said Telach. “One of them has a date in it. Five days