Hu laughed despite himself. “If the Upierczi have a congenital allergy, that could be in our favor. It’d be better if you could get some dust or oil directly into their lungs or bloodstream. That’s probably why the Sabbatarians threw garlic in your face. If you breathed it and you were a Upier, then you might go into anaphylaxis. Then they’d go all Buffy the Vampire Slayer on you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Hu said. “The kicker is that we don’t know if garlic is a genuine allergen to them or if that’s more disinformation. You’re going to have to figure that out on the fly.”

“Swell. Anything else you can tell me?”

“Nothing that isn’t blind speculation. We don’t have the data to do more than speculate.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Church, and he dropped Hu out of the conversation. “Any other thoughts, Captain?”

“Just one. What are the chances that the Iranian government is behind this whole thing? I know Rasouli gave me the flash drive, but I can see how he could be pulling a fast one: planting nukes in Iran and in the States and tipping us off so that we find them.”

“To what end?”

“To whitewash their reputation. They discover a global threat and reach across political and religious differences to join with us in a joint operation that proves to the world that they’re part of the solution and not the core of the problem.”

“Why do so covertly?”

“Because if it goes wrong they can plausibly deny any involvement and probably dump it all on us. After all—we have the original flash drive now, and we have people operating inside their borders without permission. We flub it, they have proof; we don’t flub it and we can both retroactively spin the story that this was all a hush-hush joint operation from the jump.”

“Chasing Hugo Vox is turning you into a cynic, Captain.”

“Hard to stay optimistic with a bunch of nukes ready to pop,” I pointed out.

“I could accept that Rasouli is behind it, but not as an official representative of the Iranian government,” mused Church. “They couldn’t afford to come within a million miles of such a plan. It would do irreparable political harm to the sitting party.”

“What about a move by an opposition party or a dissident group?”

He considered. “It would take enormous resources and would be ultimately self-defeating.”

“Only if they pulled the trigger.”

Church paused a little before he said, “Yes.”

“Do we have an overall game plan yet?”

“If we can we locate the last two devices, then we go for a quarterback blitz.”

“That’ll be interesting.”

“Won’t it, though?”