“You know I can’t tell you that.” Miriam did her best to look irritated but patient. “It’s the Reproductive Assistance Foundation children, the W-star heterozygotes. I’ve been asked some inconvenient questions by our sister agency. What are your postnatal follow-up protocols? What process did you subject your study guidelines to for ethical clearance, and what facilities do you have in place to recall patients in the event that it turns out that there are complications—if, just for the sake of argument, the W-star trait is associated with inborn errors of metabolism such as a hyperlipidemia or phenylketonuria? I am—surprised—Dr. Darling, to put it mildly, that there doesn’t seem to be any mention of this trait in the approvals filing for your clinic. And I was hoping you could offer me an explanation that doesn’t necessitate further investigation.”
Darling blinked rapidly. “I—the W-star trait, where did you hear about that? Nobody’s supposed to—” He stood up hastily and walked over to the office door, pushed it shut.
“I can’t disclose my sources.” Miriam stared at him coolly.
“Was it Homeland Security?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
“Why are you here on your own?” There was a nasty edge to his voice.
Here comes the hard sell. “Because this is best dealt with quietly.” She concentrated on thinking herself into the skin of the person who was using Julie Anderson, compliance inspector, FDA, as a convenient cover identity. “I repeat, I can’t tell you who I am. I wasn’t here, I don’t exist. We know about your relationship with Applied Genomics. Mr. Angbard is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation. I’m here to follow up a loose end and make sure nothing unravels when I pull on it, if you follow me. This is all going to be swept under the rug so tightly that it didn’t happen, it never existed, nobody’s going to admit anything, and there won’t be any prosecutions—at least not in public. Are you with me so far? We do not need any scandals. But we need to know several things. We need to know how many, and when they were born, and where they live. And then we’re going to make sure that when Mr. Angbard and his interesting supply of money vanishes quietly—no, don’t ask—your problem goes away too. Did you ever see the Indiana Jones movies, Dr. Darling? If you like, I’m from the Federal Warehouse. I’m one of the curators. And I want your address list, in hard copy, before I walk out of this building. Do you understand me?”
Darling swallowed. “What you’re asking for is unethical as hell, not to mention illegal,” he said. “Doesn’t medical confidentiality mean anything to you people?”
Miriam smiled humorlessly. She was really getting into this, she decided: being a spook was fun. “I’m sure using substituted semen for in-vitro fertilization is also unethical and illegal. Now are we going to do this quietly, or am I going to have to go away and come back with a FEMA emergency court order and an arrest warrant?”
“Shit.” It was the sweet sound of surrender. “Are you going to indemnify me? Or entertain a plea bargain? If you get this stuff, I want immunity from prosecution arising from it.”
“You are not the target of this investigation,” Miriam stonewalled. If he expects paperwork . . . “And this isn’t prosecution territory in any event, as I believe I already said. I was never here, you didn’t give me any files, there’s not going to be any fallout or any collateral damage. We don’t want a paper trail. Do you follow?”
“I—oh hell.” Darling shuffled. “Okay, I’ll get you the files.” He glanced at the door. “Will hard copy do? We don’t keep this stuff on a networked server.”
“Paper will be fine,” Miriam nodded. “In the first instance, we’re just after a contact sheet for the W-star subjects. I can come back for their full medical records later.” Not that I’m going to, because they won’t be worth a three-dollar bill.
“Okay. Wait here.” Darling stood up and left the office, closing the door quietly.
Miriam shut her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, he’s doing it, she decided. He’s bought the story. Right? This was always the hardest part of an investigation, getting the target’s trust. But after about thirty seconds she opened her eyes again. Am I missing something? She rubbed her palms on her knees: they were damp. She hadn’t been on this end of an investigation for more than a year, and it made her as nervous as a cat passing the back fence of a boarding kennel. She thought she’d laid the groundwork adequately, but . . . Darling’s been falsifying IVF donor records for Angbard by way of this nonprofit trust. I’ve just dropped the hammer on him. What could go wrong at this stage?
Well, in the worst case scenario Darling could just pick up the phone and call Angbard, tell him someone from the FDA was sniffing around the operation. But that wasn’t very likely, and in any case it would take time for Angbard to send Clan security round to deal with her, time in which she could simply vanish from the scene. (She resisted the urge to push back her left sleeve and glance at the temporary tattoo: if she bugged out now she’d probably end up somewhere in the wild woods, over on the other side, with a splitting headache.) Next worst scenario: Darling was going to phone the FDA, and would discover pretty quickly that there was no field inspector called Anderson. At which point she could either run away or pull the full black-helicopters tinfoil-hat spook thing. This being a deeply paranoid decade, the odds were that he’d believe her—and if not, she could still bug out. But the third worst case—
Miriam stood up as the door opened. It was Darling, and there was a security guard with him. “That’s her,” he said. The guard took a step forward and Miriam flicked her sleeve back to stare at the knotwork design in brown henna that writhed on the back of her wrist like a snake endlessly swallowing its own tail, inducing feelings of nausea. “Arrest her.”
The guard reached out to grab Miriam as she brought the knot into focus, putting her mind into the state in which she could world-walk with the ease of long practice. Hands closed around her right arm as lightning stabbed at the base of her skull. “Ow!” She winced, vision flickering, and tried again. Nothing. Her stomach twisted and she began to double over, head a throbbing wall of pain. What the hell—
“On the ground!” said the guard. “Lie down!” Something hard shoved into the base of her skull. “Okay, I don’t think she’s armed, sir. If you can help me with these—”
Handcuffs. Miriam tried to move her wrists but they didn’t want to respond, flopping around behind her as the guard pinioned them. The building must be doppelgangered, she realized through the crippling headache. Which means the whole clinic is a Clan front—that’s impossible!
Her stomach flip-flopped. Hands were lifting her: something sharp pressed against the side of her neck. “Okay, that’s ten mills of valium. Wait two minutes, then get the cuffs off her and take her down to recovery ward B, there’s a spare room off the main bay. I’ll meet you down there.”
“Going . . . be sick . . .” She’d spoken aloud, she thought. But there was a great empty hollow space inside her, and everything felt warm and wet, as if she were dissolving in a vast salty ocean of comfort and sleep. Valium? she thought. What went wrong? It was the last thing she thought for a long time.
It was dark, and her head hurt. Miriam tried to stretch and found she couldn’t move. That’s odd, she thought fuzzily, I don’t remember going to bed. She tried to stretch again, but her head was spinning and her knees ached and she felt a sudden urge to urinate. She was lying on her back. Why am I on my back? The urge was irresistible and for some reason she couldn’t fight it. But that was okay. If it wasn’t for the headache and the knee thing she could fall asleep again; she felt warm and comfortable, as if a hot pillow was pressing down on her. Drugs, she thought vaguely, I’m sedated. It was so funny she felt like giggling, but laughter was too much like hard work.