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  "I don't have it," she put out her arms in supplication. "Do you understand?"

  "Then we must assume he has it, since Hogarth's testimony is that the notes were in the lab when she went out to Swisher."

  The mention of Joe's name used like a pawn in her game, coming from her cold lips, made Robyn walk away from her and get into the waiting, unmarked police car behind Walter.

  "You don't get it, do you, Muro?" Thorpe said when she got into the automobile. "We are all of us expendable in this, all of us."

  Robyn said nothing, feeling the scratchy papers against her breast. She realized that all that stood between her and Thorpe, with her goonish Walter, all that kept them from strapping her to a chair and ripping her clothing away, was her gun and something she hadn't expected from Thorpe, forbearance.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Hogarths were being held at a heavily guarded, fortified location, a building which was a failed winery, largely empty, with a connecting house, all in Spanish architecture surrounded by gently sloping hills, overlooking a lake which could be viewed from the elaborate, wraparound veranda. Windows studded this veranda on two levels, and it gave some cover from the sun and the rain which was plentiful here in Washington. It had rained now, off and on, since Robyn's arrival. But for now the sun was out, covering the dry December lawn with a glistening sheen.

  There was a long approach to the "safe" house where the Hogarths were virtual prisoners to the situation. Robyn imagined it was most difficult on the child, but then, having the child in such danger must be equally difficult on the parents.

  Robyn was escorted into a very beautiful, spacious house, whose rear windows overlooked the lake. She was introduced to Mr. Hogarth, who apparently had had enough introductions to officers to last him a lifetime. He went back to his book and his martini without a word.

  "He's a college professor," said Thorpe, as if this explained his rudeness. "Philosophy."

  "Where's Mrs. Hogarth?" Thorpe asked an armed man at the window.

  He pointed, "At the lake."

  "What the hell're they doing down there?"

  "Easy, Malloy's with them."

  "They shouldn't be outside! Those were my orders."

  "The place is guarded on all sides, including the lake."

  "Come on, Muro," said Thorpe, rushing out the back.

  Robyn caught up to her and they made their way down stone steps for the water, where the child was puttering about the chilly shallows, playing chase with minnows below the surface, while her mother watched, doing some upright sunbathing in a low-cut print dress, her bare arms goose bumped with the cool air. From her stance and the nervous activity of her hands, it looked as if she'd just come away from a fight with her husband.

  From across the lake a small boat was chugging closer, the sound of the motor meshing with the sound of birds in the trees. The sun-dappled water made the boat and the man a black silhouette against the water, but Robyn saw the man at the tiller raise something—an object like a gun —and point it toward them. Was it one of Thorpe's people? Just then there rose an explosion from the house that rocked the ground, sending Robyn and Donna Thorpe toppling. Thorpe came up firing at the man in the boat as other agents rushed in toward the flaming house and winery. The boat swung around. Robyn aimed for the motor and put a slug into it before it was out of range.

  Mrs. Hogarth and the child were screaming in one another's arms in the shallows where Elena Hogarth had grabbed up her baby. Thorpe rushed into the water, continuing a fire which was useless since Dr. Ovierto was out of range.

  Using a hand-held radio she snatched from her pocket, Thorpe called for her men to circle the lake. She shouted for men on boats about the large, winding lake to pursue Ovierto. She pleaded for one of these boats to pick her up. All this time the child was screaming and Elena Hogarth tried to get her up, falling again into the water with her. Robyn rushed in to help with the child, throwing a coat she wore over the girl, who was screaming, "My daddy! My daddy! My daddy!"

  Elena Hogarth hugged the child and the coat into her. Thorpe suddenly pushed them to the ground, a ping like a bee sting passing Robyn's ear. "He's got a scope on that thing! Get to cover, now!"

  But Ovierto was toying with them all, sending bullets just close enough to frighten them before he suddenly stopped, seeing another boat racing toward him with agents firing at him.

  "Get him! Get him!" Thorpe shouted into her radio when the silhouette in the distance lifted a piece of heavy artillery and Robyn saw that it was a bazooka.

  "Thorpe! He's got a bazooka! Call your men back!"

  But it was too late. Ovierto fired and the boat carrying the agents exploded, the pieces raining down over the water.

  "Christ, he turns that thing on us and—" Robyn tugged at Hogarth and the child to run for the other side of the burning house, beyond the smoke, for protection. Thorpe stood her ground, calling up a second boat of agents, who picked her up. They barreled toward Ovierto, who readied to fire, but something was wrong with his artillery piece; he turned, revved the motor to full speed, and raced off.

  Robyn got Mrs. Hogarth and the child into the car which had brought her and Thorpe to the winery. Walter was nowhere in sight, most likely inside the house when it had blown with such an impact she guessed plastique explosives had been used. But how had the demon gotten in to place the charge, and when?"

  "Get us out of here!" Hogarth pleaded with her.

  Robyn hesitated. Thorpe and the others would continue their pursuit of the madman for as long as they could. She had a distraught child and a frightened woman on her hands and must act now to get them to safety.

  "We're getting the hell out of here!" Robyn declared.

  Robyn wheeled the car around and tore from the grounds, leaving rising flames and a black cloud of smoke behind them.

  "Where to? Where can we go?" asked Robyn.

  "Anywhere! South... South here on 192. That will take you to the Interstate."

  It sounded as good as any other direction to her at the moment, so Robyn punched the big sedan and rocketed south on 192, finding the Interstate and merging with the traffic there.

  The girl continued to cry. Her mother damned Robyn and all her kind with a few cutting words. "You people can't protect us... no one can."

  Robyn's nerves were frayed and she wanted to tell Hogarth to silence the kid, but she said nothing, her knuckles white against the steering wheel. They drove for an hour before the radio came to life and amid the static they heard a chilling voice say, "Daddy's dead, and mommy's .next ... daddy's dead and mommy's next."

  Robyn shut it off, saying, "Christ!"

  "He's a devil... he's everywhere," Elena Hogarth said, shaken. "How does he know we can hear him? How did he come on the radio?"

  "Anyone with a police band can play electronic detective, Dr. Hogarth, and he doesn't know that we got his message. He's just firing in the dark."

  "Like he destroyed the house? In the dark? Killed my husband in front of you people."

  "I'm not FBI, and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't lump me in with Thorpe's kind."

  "You're all the same... Seattle police, FBI... what's the difference?"

  "I'm a Chicago cop, that's the difference."

  "The Chicago cops couldn't stop this fiend either."

  "Joe Swisher was my partner."

  This silenced her a moment. "I'm... I'm so sorry. He was a very nice man."

  "We... we planned to marry some day."

  "Now we have both lost our men to this madness... and poor Oliguerri..."

  Robyn looked in her rearview and saw the anguish in the face of the woman, whose skin was slick with tears and an absence of makeup. Dr. Hogarth gasped several times, trying to regain her composure and strength for the child.

  Robyn had switched off the radio to shut Ovierto up, but now she wondered if it had been wise. Good police work meant listening to the killer when he gave you the opportunity, but with the child in the car, she hadn't a
choice. She wondered if such a consideration would have occurred to Thorpe. She wondered if Thorpe were not trying now to get through to them, worried silly about the whereabouts of her protected lady of science.

  Quietly, she reached for the radio to switch it back on when she thought better of it. If Ovierto heard what was said between her and Thorpe, he'd find them. She thought better of making any attempt to contact Thorpe. Thorpe had become a kind of magnet for Ovierto wherever Thorpe was, Ovierto was sure to go.

  She realized that Thorpe had found Hogarth in Seatte first, but now it dawned on her that Thorpe had made no effort to relocate the Hogarths from here before now; she had baited Ovierto, using these people. It was Inspector Thorpe's style, all right.

  Robyn drove on to the border, crossing into Oregon in the pitch dark, finding a small, unremarkable motel where they would stay the night. The neon-lit sign read North Star.

  "Well get a room here, move on when its light," she told Hogarth.

  Elena Hogarth, tending to the child asleep in her lap, said nothing. Robyn saw to the details, taking one room for the three of them and obtaining a folding bed for the girl. Once inside, Robyn claimed the bed nearest the door, not at all sure that Hogarth wouldn't run if she had the chance, as she had in Chicago. Robyn had ordered a pizza be delivered to them, and they ate enough to fill their stomachs.

  The little girl could hardly eat, however, and she re-turned to the safety of sleep. Robyn observed the tenderness between the mother and child. When she was sure the girl was asleep, Hogarth came back to where Robyn sat watching the news. "She's devastated," she told Robyn. "She'll never recover from seeing her father die like that."

  "If she's anything like you, she'll fight back."

  "How do we fight a maniac like this man?"

  "Any way you can."

  They sat in a deep, blue-lit shadow, staring at one another. Elena's eyes misted over. "She's my baby."

  "I know you're scared. So am I."

  "That doesn't quite reassure me, knowing that."

  "But I'm good at my job. You're safe."

  "For the time being... but for how long?"

  "Dr. Hogarth, tell me about Pythagoras."

  She looked stricken. "What?"

  "The project you and Oliguerri and the others were working on, the thing that's making this crazy man chase you across the country to destroy you and your family."

  "It's got nothing to do with the project. I've been as-sure of that by—"

  "By Thorpe?"

  "Yes."

  "Thorpe is almost as warped as this creep, Ovierto. Now tell me about Pythagoras. Tell me. You've got to trust someone."

  "I never even told Randall."

  "Dr. Hogarth, please."

  "No, I...1 couldn't."

  "Not even if it helps save you and your child?"

  She looked from Robyn to the child and back again. "How can it help?"

  "Anything that helps me understand this creep better will only help our chances."

  "Pythagoras..." she said it as if it were a curse. "Wish I'd never heard of it."

  Robyn gently nudged her on. "You've got to trust someone."

  Her sniffles subsided as she began to talk. "It's a major undertaking for space, astrophysics and medicine... that is it began that way, as a benevolent proposal for a humane program that would rid the world of any number of diseases—"

  "From space?"

  "Without space it would be impossible."

  "Is it possible?"

  "We were close... very close. Dr. Oliguerri held the key."

  Robyn thought of the papers Oliguerri had left behind, the ones she carried now, the ones Thorpe wanted. "How close?"

  "Everyone else had perfected their part. Oliguerri's was the most difficult, and I was assisting him the night... when he was killed. This monster, this Ovierto, he does want the research, doesn't he? Doesn't he?"

  "It certainly appears so. He wants to make some sort of a trade, the lives of future victims—scientists—for the information."

  "I suspected as much, but Thorpe—"

  "Thorpe has her own view of matters."

  "And you?"

  "My concern is with protecting you, and, to be honest, getting Joe Swisher's killer."

  "At least you seem... honest."

  "I’ll show you just how honest."

  "What?"

  Robyn reached into her bra and brought out the folded pages of Oliguerri's work. "I don't know if this means anything, but you're the first one I've shown it to."

  Elena Hogarth gasped. "It's Oliguerri's work... his final conclusion on the project."

  "Can you read it?"

  "Somewhat. He enjoyed the secrecy of his unusual language. It was as good as a computer code, but he taught me some. The figures of course... yes... yes..." She went into the reverie of those engulfed in the fascination of their work.

  After giving her ample time to look over the paperwork, Robyn asked, "What does this all... mean? That your Pythagoras project is workable?"

  "Possibly... possibly..."

  "And what would this be worth to a foreign government?"

  "Hmmmmmph, billions."

  "A cure for diseases of—"

  "It is a double-edged sword."

  Robyn stared into the dark eyes of the scientist. "There is a potential then for destruction?"

  "Yes."

  "So, Thorpe wasn't bullshitting about that much. Just how destructive could this thing be?"

  "It could wipe out whole populations. What's worse it could turn whole populations into mutants."

  "If that's true, why did you continue to work on it?"

  "Why did men build the first cannon, the atom bomb? To see if it could be done. Not that Oliguerri and I didn't have our reservations. We spent many restless nights with ourselves. It all started out harmlessly enough...the application of concentrated sun rays to destroy toxins and waste sites, in fact. Benevolent enough for you?"

  "But it got twisted?"

  "It was taken a step further, to help in diseases, to actually pinpoint and alter genetically impaired T cells—"

  "T-cells?"

  "—in the human immunological system."

  "A concentrated laser from outer space sifts the sunlight into a beam that can destroy cancer cells in a man on Earth?"

  "Yes... our beneficent repast from space exploration and laser technology with the help of Fermilab. Don't you see what it could mean? The long-term results, possibly wiping from the planet all genetically impaired cells of any kind. Oliguerri imagined an Africa free of disease."

  "Pretty heavy stuff," Robyn said.

  "But we both immediately recognized the dangers, as did others. The first fear was that some one person gaining control of this would, well, control all medicine, since medical practice as we know it would be... well—"

  "A thing of the past. No more surgery, for instance."

  "Yes.”

  “

  "Ovierto was a surgeon, you know."

  "There are more lethal problems with the technology," she replied.

  She stood and paced before Robyn, gathering her words. "It took Ibi and me months to determine just how lethal after our initial discovery. You see, what one can do in solar laser technology, one can undo just as quickly."

  "Depends on whose wielding the laser scalpel, you mean?"

  "Precisely. Whoever controls this thing has the power to nuke whole populations, and there'd be no place to hide. It would make what we're doing now, hiding from this maniac, playpen time by comparison."

  It was like letting the genie out of the bottle and taking your three nasty wishes only to lose your soul to the genie.

  "Genetic altering from space?"

  "Or genetic dismantling... one step beyond gene splicing, call it gene dicing," she said. "God, why didn't we shut down like Cartier wanted."

  "Cartier, the English scientist killed by Ovierto?"

  "Yes. She called it the power of Hider to the tenth power
. Imagine, Sergeant Muro, implanting a genetic malady or an immune deficiency in an entire race, and you have the dark side of Pythagoras."

  Robyn considered what she was hearing carefully, trying desperately to place Ovierto in, but he seemed a square peg here. "Space," she muttered, "final frontier of what, man's ignorance, fears, hatred. Why Pythagoras?"

  "Greek philosopher... took it from one of my husband's books. He was first to suggest that the Earth revolved around the sun, and that was in 500 bc. He also believed that the sun revolved around a fire at the center of the universe, a kind of cauldron of the universe..." She stopped to gather her strength and her thoughts. "He was quite ahead of his time, spoke of the harmony of the spheres, and proposed the theory that all phenomena may be reduced to numerical relations—"

  "So, you named it for a dead man."

  Dr. Hogarth frowned at this. "Most things are... named for the dead. Pythagoras also believed in the concept of the soul, and I liked that. He believed in a life of moderation, and he took a keen interest in medicine"

  Now Robyn stood to stretch, shaking her head. "To your knowledge, Ovierto knew nothing of this technology?"

  "Nothing, but information in the scientific community of this size... well, it's like any other community... news travels. We'd tested the laser with several dump sites before I ever heard of Ovierto. Mirrors were already in place at the orbiting stations before all this... this madness coming at us. The physicists worked out the necessary concentrations of sunlight required, along with the engineers who'd actually designed the laser itself. Hundreds of people worked on some portion of the whole."

  "But few people knew of the whole, right?"

  "Yes, correct."