“Once upon a time,” he agreed. “Magda Spirova came to Kansas from the Soviet bioweapons lab in Těchonin, Czechoslovakia. Was she a defector, as she claimed? A spy, as the U.S. feared? Or a woman who’d fallen in love with an American scientist? I doubt we’ll ever know the answers definitively, but after a year or two in Kansas she felt like a woman scorned: Nathan Kiel had slept with her during a big conference in Bratislava. When she got here, the affair continued in a desultory, hole-in-the-corner kind of way, but the harder she pushed on Kiel, the clearer it became he was never going to leave his wife.

“There were three people in Kiel’s lab who had an idea of the affair—his technician, Lucinda Ferring; his most despised graduate student, Matt Chastain; and his devoted secretary, Gertrude Perec.

“Kiel was doing research on bioweapons for the army. Of course, by the 1980s, we—the U.S.—had signed on to protocols repudiating all bioweapons. But—and there’s always a big ‘but’ with weapons—we were still doing research into cures or vaccines against other countries’ bioweapons. That meant we had to grow our own organisms, because how can you test an anthrax or plague or whatever vaccine if you don’t have any anthrax?” He gave a sour smile. “Kiel was doing some low-grade weapons work for the DoD on a Y. pestis relative.”

“Yes, I know, Y. enterocolitica.”

“How did you learn that?” Baggetto was instantly suspicious.

“I can read the professor’s publication list, Colonel, even if I don’t understand the big words. The air force asked Kiel to try out an aerosol version of his pet bug—it would make anyone who didn’t vacate the camp sick to their stomachs, clear any remaining protesters out of the camp, and show the Defense Department how wide a radius the aerosol would reach. Someone switched Y. pestis for Y. enterocolitica. My money’s on Spirova.”

I could now say “enterocolitica” three times in a row without stumbling. I guess I’d brought something away from this wretched case.

“At the time Kiel blamed his graduate student,” Baggetto said, “but you’re probably right. No, I’m trying to be honest: you are right. I’ve read the classified reports.”

“How lucky you are to have access to work done at taxpayer expense. The rest of us aren’t so fortunate.”