“Leave her alone,” Dr. Kiel said. “Abigail, take your violin down and play for the mice. We have a lab full of fascists today who could infect you with something worse than Q Fever, namely innuendo and smear tactics.”
“You signed a loyalty oath, Dr. Kiel,” Agent Burroughs said. “Calling me names makes me wonder whether you really are a loyal American.”
Dr. Kiel looked so murderous that Abigail fled down to the animal room with her violin and her bookbag. She felt guilty about taking Miss Bianca, she felt guilty about not rescuing the other mice, she was worried about Miss Bianca alone at home not getting all the pills she needed. She was so miserable that she sat on the floor of the animal room and cried.
Crying wore her out. Her head was aching and she didn’t think she had the energy to get to her feet. The floor was cool against her hot head and the smells of the animals and the disinfectants were so familiar that they calmed her down.
A noise at the contamination room door woke her. A strange man, wearing a brown suit that didn’t fit him very well, was trying to undo the lock. He must be a reporter trying to sneak into the lab. Abigail sat up. Her head was still aching, but she needed to find Bob.
The man heard her when she got to her feet. He spun around, looking scared, then, when he saw that it was a child, he smiled in a way that frightened Abigail.
“So, Dr. Kiel has little girls working with his animals. Does he give you a key to this room?”
Abigail edged toward the door. “I only feed the healthy mice. You have to see Bob Pharris for the sick mice.”
As soon as she’d spoken, Abigail wished she hadn’t; what if this man wrote it up in his newspaper and Bob got in trouble?
“There aren’t any foreigners working with the animals? Foreign women?”
Even though Abigail was scared that Elena was a spy, she didn’t feel right about saying so, especially after hearing Dr. Kiel talking about witch hunts.
“We only have foreign witches in the lab,” she said. “They concoct magic potions to make Dr. Kiel fall in love with them.”
The man frowned in an angry way, but he decided to laugh instead, showing a gold tooth in the front of his mouth. “You’re a little girl with a big imagination, aren’t you? Who is this foreign witch?”
Abigail hated being called a little girl. “I don’t know. She flew in on her broomstick and didn’t tell us her name.”
“You’re too old for such childish games,” the man said, bending over her. “What is her name, and what does she do with the animals?”
“Mamelouk. Her name is Mamelouk.”
The man grabbed her arm. “You know that isn’t her name.”
Bob came into the animal room just then. “Abby—Dr. Kiel said he’d sent you—what the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you this morning that you can’t come into the lab without Dr. Kiel’s say-so and I know damned well he didn’t say so. Get out before I call the cops.”
Bob looked almost as fierce as Dr. Kiel. The man in the brown suit let go of Abigail’s arm.
He stopped in the doorway and said, “I’m only looking for the foreign woman who’s been working here. Magdalena, isn’t it?”
Abigail started to say, “No, it’s—” but Bob frowned at her and she was quiet.
“I thought you knew, little girl. What is it?”
“Mamelouk,” Abigail said. “I told you that before.”
“So now you know, Buster. Off you go.”
Bob walked to the elevator with Abigail and called the car. He stood with a foot in the door until the man got on the elevator. They watched the numbers go down to “1” to make sure he’d ridden all the way to the ground.
“Maybe I should go down and throw him out of the building,” Bob said. “He was here when I opened for the day. Elena took one look at him and disappeared, so I don’t know if he’s someone who’s been harassing her at home, or if she’s allergic to reporters.”
He looked down at Abigail. “You feeling okay, short stuff? You’re looking kind of white—all the drama getting to you, huh? Maybe Dr. Kiel will let your mom take you home. She didn’t even break for lunch today.”
When they got to the office, Bob went in to tell Dr. Kiel about the man in the animal room, but Rhonda took one look at Abigail and hung up the phone mid-sentence.
“Darling, you’re burning up,” she announced, feeling Abigail’s forehead. “I hope you haven’t caught Q Fever.”
She went into Dr. Kiel’s office. He came out to look at Abigail, felt her forehead as Rhonda had, and agreed. “You need her doctor to see her, but I can give you some tetracycline to take home with you.”
Rhonda shook her head. “Thank you, Dr. Kiel, but I’d better let the pediatrician prescribe for her.”
Mother collected the bookbag and violin where Abigail had dropped them on the floor of the animal room. “I never should have let you work with the animals. I worried all along that it wasn’t safe.”
In the night, Abigail’s fever rose. She was shivering, her joints ached. She knew she had Q Fever, but if she told Mother, Mother wouldn’t let her stay with Miss Bianca.
Mother put cold washcloths on her head. While she was out of the room, Abigail crawled under bed and got the mouse. Miss Bianca needed more of her pills, but Abigail was too sick to feed her. She put Miss Bianca in her pajama pocket and hoped she wouldn’t make the mouse sick again.
Mother came and went, Abigail’s fever rose, the doorbell rang.
Abigail heard her mother’s voice, faintly, as if her mother were at the end of the street, not the end of the hall. “What are you doing here? I thought it would be the doctor! Abigail is very sick.”
An even fainter voice answered. “I sorry, Rhonda. Men is watching flat, I not know how I do.”
She was a terrible spy; she couldn’t speak English well enough to fool anyone. Abigail lay still, although her head ached so badly she wanted to cry. She couldn’t sleep or weep; Mother might need her to call the cops.
“You can’t stay here!” Mother was saying. “Dr. Kiel—the FBI—”
“Also KGB,” Elena said. “They wanting me. They find me now with news story.”
“The KGB?”
“Russian secret police. I see man in morning, know he is KGB, wanting me, finding me from news.”
“But why do the KGB want you?”
Elena smiled sadly. “I am—oh, what is word? Person against own country.”
“Traitor,” Rhonda said. “You are a traitor? But—Dr. Kiel said you had to hide from the communists.”
“Yes, is true, I hiding. They take my husband, they put him in prison, they torture, but for what? For what he write in books. He write for freedom, for liberty, for those words he is enemy of state. Me, I am scientist, name Magdalena Spirova. I make same disease that Dr. Kiel make. Almost same, small ways different. Russians want my Rickettsia prowazekii for germ wars, I make, no problem. Until they put husband in prison.”
Rhonda took Elena out of the doorway into the front room. Abigail couldn’t hear them. She was freezing now, her teeth chattering, but she slid out of bed and went into the hall, where she could hear Elena.
Elena was saying that when she learned the authorities were torturing her husband, she pretended not to care. She waited until she could take a trip to Yugoslavia. She injected herself with the Rickettsia she was working on right before she left Bratislava to go to Sarajevo. In Sarajevo, Elena ran away from the secret police who were watching her and hitchhiked to Vienna. From Vienna, she flew to Canada. In Toronto, she called Dr. Kiel, whom she had met when he came to Bratislava in 1966. He drove up to Toronto and hid her in the backseat of his car to smuggle her to Kansas. He gave her tetracycline tablets, but she didn’t take them until she had extracted her infected blood to give to Dr. Kiel. That was the magic potion Abigail had seen in the animal room; that was why her arm was all bruised—it’s not easy to take a blood sample from your own veins.