Page 34 of Slow Burn

She continued the autopsy.

“It really wasn’t your fault, you know. Could have happened to anybody. I’m sure you didn’t intentionally turn your back on her. It was hot, you were tired …”

She let it trail off, without even the courtesy to give him the fatal stab. He sat dumb and hurting while she turned away from the picture and settled herself in the guest chair across from him. Legs crossed with a whisper of nylon, and he stared at the shadowed revelation of her thigh.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. She raised an eyebrow.

“To show you I can,” she answered, as if it were obvious. “By the way, I had your office swept for bugs today. There were six.”

It took a second or two to sink in, and then he sat up so suddenly that his chair squeaked in alarm. She held up a hand to stop him.

“Now there’s only one. Mine. I’m being straight with you, Marty.”

“Whose were they?”

“Well, they don’t usually label them, so I have to guess. Other U.S. intelligence organs, the Israelis—they do it for fun, I think. The fifth, of course, was mine. It’s the sixth one that worries me. I don’t know whose it is.” She pulled off her brown leather gloves and rubbed her hands. She didn’t bother with manicures; her nails were blunt-cut, clean but unpolished. “Why are you here, Marty?”

It sounded like a trick question. He said cautiously, “To present the—”

“No,you, Marty,you.Why you? Why not, say, Dr. Harrison, Dr. Scheider? Why a bureaucrat, when obviously one of the scientific experts would have been so much more convincing?” She watched his face for awareness of the answer. “Because you’re expendable, Marty. Because, frankly, if you get lost in big bad Washington, nobody cares. Nobody except Sally, provided she even knows you’re alive.”

Another surgical strike, one he suffered in silence because he had no defense to offer. It was all so easy for her.

“You’re down here in the engine room,” she continued more softly. “Marty, you’re going down with theTitanic, understand? This isn’t a game for amateurs. Pack your bags and go home.”

“No.”

“That’s not a suggestion.” She sat back, folded her hands neatly together. “It’s a threat.”

He met her gaze, and it told him nothing at all; she was as smooth as plastic, as cold as nitrogen. He couldn’t imagine her warm.

“I’m right,” he said. It sounded feeble and stupid, and he thought he saw a flash of impatience in her eyes. “We’reright, Agent Carling. We could save lives! Doesn’t that mean anything at all?”

“Sure. It means you don’t understand the game.” She studied him for a few more seconds and said, “Got a cigarette?”

He sat back, staring, and finally pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapped one out, passed the pack to her. They lit up together in silence. Martin studied the sole government-provided decoration in the room, an unevenly lettered red NO SMOKING sign behind Carling’s head.

The heat of the smoke he sucked in was the only warmth in the room.

“Dichlorhyradine,” he said. The word came out wreathed in white. “Processed chemical byproduct, but we don’t know who’s producing it. It’s hydrophilic and inserts itself in cellular membranes. It’s in the water, Agent Carling. Ordinary tap water.”

She stared over his shoulder. Over the sharp tinny smell of burning tobacco, he caught a hint of flowers. Perfume?

“Damn it, are you listening to me?” he demanded. She focused on his face.

“What does it do?”

He watched Carling smoke; to her it was a neat efficient process, no sensuality to it at all. He imagined she ate the same way, mechanically, fueling up.

“Under certain circumstances, dichlorhyradine destabilizes. It has a low ignition threshold and causes an enzymatic reaction, highly exothermic.” He thought he caught a flash of interest in her eyes. Could he convince her? Hell, he’d better. If he couldn’t convince Carling, what chance would he have on the Hill? “Uh, just a sec.”

He flicked the latches on his briefcase and sorted through papers, found a folder and laid out a chart, traced a jagged red line with his thumb.

“See? Oxidization. Self-fueling. From the moment of ignition to irreparable damage is a matter of minutes, maybe less.” He fumbled through his papers and pulled out another chart, this one in green and blue. “We think it’s facilitated by high mineral concentrations. Some water samples are dense with it, some are clean. Anyway, once it ignites, the victim is certainly dead from shock and release of toxins. I don’t know how you’d save one, provided you caught him in time to try.”

She leaned forward to study the chart, but suddenly it looked to him like a parent dutifully examining a third-grader’s drawing.Oh, honey, it’s lovely. Let’s put it on the refrigerator.

“I understand you found traces in liver samples,” she said. Did she mean it? Was it just a soft-soap? God, how could he tell anything at all about her?

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