Thibodeau nodded yes.

“The spectrometry units I’ve seen look like U-Haul trailers,” Ricci said. “They’re too big to cart around offices—the military tows them around with Humvees.”

Thibodeau shrugged.

“Be true for most of them,” he said. “Think it’s because of all the air they got to suck in for accurate samples. There’s hoses, plus a vacuum collector and a separate laser chromatography unit in the housing. Adds up to a lot of space. The laser machine shoots beams of light through the air sample, and that light bends off whatever particles get caught with it. Then a computer tell us what those particles are, depending on the angle it bends at, sort of how our eyes see color.” He paused, pulling at his beard some more. “Far’s the system goes, you’d have to ask our R and D noggins for every detail of how it works. The handle I got is that it’s like an invisible electronic nose, sniffs for germs and chemicals just the way our noses . . . or to put it better, the nose of a trained bloodhound . . . can pick up the smell of things in the air. Special cells in the nose, what the noggins call receptors, they be connected to nerves that can tell the brain what those things are. Then the brain translates the info as smells. Our invisible nose, now, it uses them sensors I told you about—microsensors, they called, made of different polymers—exactly like the receptors. But instead of having nerve connections, they attach to optical fibers. Coat ’em, actually. One coated fiber maybe pick up anthrax or smallpox. Another can recognize the sleeper bug that almost killed the boss. A third can catch a whiff of cyanide, sarin gas, or some other nerve agent that been released—”

Ricci made a slicing gesture to check him.

“Let’s skip ahead,” he said. “Say we’re attacked. The invisible nose twitches, we evacuate, get emergency medical treatment for people we know were exposed, make sure everybody else that might’ve been affected is examined. That’s our immediate response. Now how do we conduct decontamination and site inspection? Who takes charge of the investigation? The feebs and CDC? FEMA? Or homeland security people? We supposed to let them walk right on in, go clomping all over each other’s tracks like they did at Gordian and his daughter’s homes a couple years ago? Or when they mucked up that anthrax mail probe in ’01?”

Thibodeau blew a breath out his pursed lips. “Be quite a bunch of questions,” he said. “I guess what happens far as outside agencies depends on the particulars. If there’s a threat of public infection, we need to let them know . . . and where chembio’s the problem, you have to expect that’s going to be the case. But ain’t nobody can beat us comes to dealing with problems of multiple jurisdiction. So we try to coordinate, hope they have the sense to work with us and not around us. That way we don’t have hassle figuring out how to work around them.”