Well, he told himself, I’ll either get away with it or I won’t.

He walked to her car and glanced in the windows casually. Her briefcase wasn’t in the front or backseats, though it wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d forgotten it there, as sick as she’d been lately. He knew it wouldn’t be in the trunk; he’d never even seen her open the trunk. Hands in his pockets, he headed for the house. The front door was locked, but he had a key Jill had given him months ago. He let himself in.

He shut the front door slowly, trying not to make a sound. His ears strained for any noise. He heard nothing.

He sighed with relief. Still being quiet, but pretty confident now that he was alone, he surveyed the living room for Jill’s briefcase. He didn’t see it. He went into the small kitchen—nada. He rummaged around and found a large plastic garbage bag. He’d laid this all out in his head on the way over here like a criminal planning a heist—in and out in five minutes. He would collect the control specimens as well as any papers or records in the house and put them in the bag.

He went down the hall to the guest room where the control subjects were kept and opened the door. The room was empty. He gaped, then blinked hard, several times, as if to change the message being transmitted to his brain. Every piece of fruit, every virus dish, every mouse was gone. Only the barren card tables remained. It reminded him of the time he’d pulled the wool over Chalmers’s eyes, hiding all their stuff in the next room. Now someone had pulled that switcharoo on him.

He went and checked the next room—Jill’s bedroom. Her closet and bedside table had been rifled through, but they hadn’t taken her clothes or even, he noticed, the passport or small collection of family photographs in the open drawer of her bedside table. He paused, unable to resist looking at these pictures. Jill never mentioned family, ever. They looked poor, her mother washed out and old. Jill was younger but just as feisty-looking. She took after her dad.

Nate put the pictures back and checked the bath and hall closet. There was nothing in them but a few towels, shampoo, toothbrush—the basics. Everything related to the experiment had been taken from the house. The briefcase, if it had been here, was now in the custody of the FBI. He was too late.

Nate slumped to the floor in the hallway, garbage bag useless at his side. So his intuition hadn’t been wrong. This wasn’t just about the explosion; they wanted information. And what were the two most important sources of information? He and Jill. They’d already be grilling her, and it was just a matter of time before they caught up with him.

He had a bad feeling about this. He had a very bad feeling.

He heard the front door creaking open, slowly, as though moved by the wind. He’d left it unlocked. Damn! Cautious footsteps. It was no wind.

Nate panicked. The thought of him and Rambo alone was enough to make him gag in terror. But before he could do more than push himself to his feet, a figure stepped into the hallway. Nate screamed. He looked at the man; the man looked at him.

My god, Nate thought, with a hysterical giggle, I’m hallucinating. Maybe he’d wake up to find this whole thing was some bizarre lucid dream caused by the negative one pulse. Because the funny thing was, the intruder looked exactly like an Orthodox Jew. There was the long beard, the black fedora and long black coat, black pants, black shoes. He could have walked out of Mr. Broadway’s deli in New York. The man was studying him suspiciously.

“Who are you?” the man asked, as if this were his house and Nate had broken in.

“Who am I? Who are you?”

“I’m looking for Dr. Talcott.”

“She’s at the hospital.”

“I know that.” The man put a finger to his lips, thinking. “So who are you?”

“Who are you?” Nate asked again, frowning.

The man rolled his eyes. “This could go on all day. I’m tired, so I give up first. My name is Rabbi Aharon Handalman. I need to know what Dr. Talcott was experimenting with.”

Nate slumped against the wall. He’d accepted the idea that the government might be interested. That the Orthodox Jewish community might be interested—that was too bizarre. “How do you know about Dr. Talcott?”

“I have information. She’ll want to talk; trust me. And who are you?”

“I’m…” Nate hesitated but figured what the hell. It was all over anyway. “Her graduate student, Nate Andros.”

Rabbi Handalman sighed and closed his eyes. “Thank the Lord for that.”

11.3. Shimon Norowitz

Aharon Handalman had flown to Seattle.

Shimon Norowitz had not been having the rabbi followed, hadn’t given him that much credit. But he had put Handalman’s name into the database of “people of interest,” a list that would raise flags when processed by airlines, railways, and police departments or if they cropped up in the media.

Norowitz had his secretary call and inquire at the yeshiva. They told her Rabbi Handalman had a family emergency in America—a sick relative. Norowitz called Aharon’s wife himself. She wanted to know who he was and sounded nervous. She told him the same thing—a sick relative. She was lying.

The Mossad subscribed to a service that gave them a daily summary of news throughout the world. He brought up the summary for the day Handalman left. There were more than fifty items. He saved it to a text file and brought it up in another window, did a search on “Seattle.” He found an article about an explosion on campus at the University of Washington.

He clicked on a hyperlink under the heading. It took him on-line to the Seattle Times site. It was suspected that the lab of a physicist named Dr. Jill Talcott was the cause of the explosion, and the FBI was trying to rule out any possible terrorist connection.

Norowitz sucked on his mustache, considering it. He reread all the coverage carefully. There wasn’t much there, really. He sucked on his mustache some more.

He picked up the phone and called one of his analysts. Assaf was a gifted mathematician and one of Norowitz’s best cryptologists.

“Assaf, listen; bring up your search routine for the Kobinski codes. I want to try some keywords.”

Norowitz heard typing in the background.

“Go ahead.”

“ ‘Seattle.’ ”

Typing. “Nothing.”

“ ‘University of Washington’ and ‘Washington.’ ”

“No.”

“ ‘Explosion’?”

“Emm… no.”

“ ‘Smith Hall.’ ”

“No.”

Norowitz could still taste hummus on his mustache from lunch. “ ‘Jill Talcott’ or just ‘Talcott.’ ”

“Umm…” More typing. “Hit.”

“Yes?”

“Hit.” Assaf’s voice was perking up. “I’m trying the… hit. Hit, hit, hit!”

Norowitz hung up the phone. He sat there for a moment, staring at the CNN article. Then he picked up the phone and called the chief of the Mossad.