The man, who had been in the other pilot’s chair, killed the engine, plunging the small stretch of coast into silence except for the fading footfalls of the two restaurant employees. Their continual yelps, prayers, and curses lingered long after they vanished down a side street. Then the man clambered out of the boat and onto the rocks. His clothes were dark, and the angle of approach had hidden him behind the dog. He clicked his tongue for the dog, who leaped from the bow to the rocks and then followed the man up to the street.

They lingered for only a moment as the man oriented himself.

Then they faded into darkness and were gone long before anyone came to investigate. The night birds watched them go and then one by one lifted off the sea-soaked rocks and followed.

CHAPTER 17

INTEGRATED SCIENCES DIVISION

PHOENIX HOUSE

OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

Dr. Jane Holliday sat perched on a stool sipping tea from a delicate china cup, the saucer held between thumb and index finger of her other hand. She was the calm center of a storm of activity as handlers brought in dozens of boxes of paper printouts, crates of laptops, cell phones, and hard drives. Another team, dressed in lemon-yellow biohazard suits, carried special metal boxes boldly stenciled with the distinctive symbol, the four stylized circles of which representing the infection chain of agent, host, source, and transmission. These boxes went into a cold room guarded by two stone-faced guards with automatic rifles at port arms.

“Wow,” said Isaac Breslau, Doc Holliday’s senior research assistant, “that’s a lot of stuff.”

“Yeppers,” said Doc happily. “They got it all, soup to nuts. No one at that site had the presence of mind to delete the data or toss a lit cigarette butt into the file cabinets. Might as well be Christmas morning.”