42

Atlanta

Christopher Dicken had returned to his small house on the outskirts of Atlanta at three in the morning. He had worked at his CDC office until two, preparing papers for Augustine on the spread of SHEVA in Africa. He had lain awake for an hour, wondering what the world was going to be like in the next six months. When he finally drifted off into sleep, he was awakened it seemed moments later by the buzzing of his cell phone. He sat up in the queen-size bed that had once belonged to his parents, wondered for a moment where he was, decided quickly he was not in the Cape Town Hilton, and switched on the light. Morning was already glowing through the window shutters. He managed to pull the phone out of his coat pocket in the closet by the fourth ring and answered it.

“Is this Dr. Chris Dicken?”

“Christopher. Yeah.” He looked at his watch. It was eight fifteen. He had managed to sleep a mere two hours, and he was sure he felt worse than if he had had no sleep at all.

“My name is Mitch Rafelson.”

This time, Dicken remembered the name and its association. “Really?” he said. “Where are you, Mr. Rafelson?”

“Seattle.”

“Then it’s even earlier where you are. I need to get back to sleep.”

“Wait, please,” Mitch said. “I’m sorry if I woke you up. Did you get my message?”

“I got a message,” Dicken said.

“We need to talk.”

“Listen, if you are Mitch Rafelson, the Mitch Rafelson, I need to talk to you...about as much as...” He tried to come up with a witty comparison, but his mind wouldn’t work. “I don’t need to talk with you.”

“Point made...but please listen anyway. You’ve been tracking SHEVA all over the world, right?”

“Yeah,” Dicken said. He yawned. “I get very little sleep thinking about it.”

“Me, too,” Mitch said. “Your bodies in the Caucasus tested positive for SHEVA. My mummies...in the Alps...the mummies at Innsbruck test positive for SHEVA.”

Dicken pressed the phone closer to his ear. “How do you know that?”

“I have the lab reports from the University of Washington. I need to show what I know to you and to whoever else is open-minded about this.”

“Nobody is open-minded about this,” Dicken said. “Who gave you my number?”

“Dr. Wendell Packer.”

“Do I know Packer?”

“You work with a friend of his. Renee Sondak.”

Dicken scratched at a front tooth with a fingernail. Thought very seriously about hanging up. His cell phone was digitally scrambled, but somebody could decode the conversation if they had a mind to. This made him flash hot with anger. Things were out of control. Everyone had lost perspective and it was not going to get better if he just played along.

“I’m pretty lonely,” Mitch said into the silence. “I need someone to tell me I’m not completely nuts.”

“Yeah,” Dicken said. “I know what that’s like.” Then, screwing up his face and stamping his foot on the floor, knowing this was going to give him far more trouble than any windmill he had ever tilted at before, he said, “Tell me more, Mitch.”