Zoo(25)

We banked hard and thundered due north for twenty minutes or so and then began descending again. An office park of stark glass buildings emerged from the forest. From the vantage point of a few thousand feet above, they looked like blocks of ice melting on the grass. We dove toward the central building. I thought we were going to land on the red H of the helipad on the ground next to it, but instead the pilot guided us onto the flat roof of the building.

"Thanks, Colonel," yelled a silver-haired man in a navy Windbreaker who was waiting for us on the roof as we disembarked. "I'll take it from here."

The colonel flicked a salute at him, and the chopper picked up behind us and rose skyward.

I noticed the letters NSA on the electronic badge clipped to the pocket of his crisp white dress shirt as he led me, Chloe, Eli, and Nimo across the sun-baked asphalt of the roof toward a door.

The National Security Agency: the department that does worldwide electronic surveillance for all the intelligence services-so cloak-and-dagger that some people call it No Such Agency.

"Section Chief Mike Leahy," the man said, shaking my hand as we entered the building. "Thanks for agreeing to come."

He led us out of a stairwell into a long, blinding-white corridor.

"Sorry for all the drama, but when"-he glanced at Eli-"the you-know-what hits the fan, things tend to work pretty fast around here."

We turned a corner and entered a semicircular room that had rows of seats and a podium in front. It reminded me of a college lecture hall. Behind the podium was a shiny, sleek television screen the size of a billboard.

A side door opened and a middle-aged black man entered the room. Leahy was in business attire, but this guy wore a black polo shirt with black jeans and Chuck Taylors that squeaked like balloon animals on the shiny white floor. The gold Rolex at his wrist added a splash of bling to the ensemble.

"Are you the president?" Eli said, gazing up at him.

"No, I'm not," the man said.

"Actually," Leahy said, smiling stiffly, "the president has been detained. This is Conrad Marlowe from the Defense Department."

"Don't jerk their chains, Mike," Marlowe said. His teeth could have been mah-jongg tiles, and his voice was like a velvet cello. "Mr. Oz here is smarter than that. He saw this coming back in 2012. Hell, back in 2011, 2010. The president's not coming. They say that to get you on the bird. And technically, I'm not from the Defense Department. I work for a think tank. War games. That kind of happy crap. They think I can solve this Rubik's Cube, but I'm having my doubts."

"But we really do need your help, Mr. Oz," said Leahy.

Now standing in the doorway was a severe-looking sparrow of a woman with threaded brows and hair yanked back as tight as a figure skater's. She clicked her knuckles twice on the open door. Leahy cleared his throat.</ol>
 
 

 

"This is Jen, my assistant," he said. "Would it be all right if she brought Eli across the hall to have some ice cream and play computer games while we talk shop?"

"Heck, if he doesn't want to go, I'm down," Marlowe said, glancing at Jen, a speck of fire in his eye.

"Can I go, Mommy?"

"No ice cream without the magic word, okay?"

"Pleeease!" Eli beamed bright as a headlight as Jen herded him out the door.

"Hard to find a sitter on short notice," I told Leahy.

"Okay," Chloe said after they were gone. "Let's cut to the chase, yes? What is this? Why are we here? What's happened?"

"It's here, Mrs. Oz," Leahy said.

"What's here?" I said.

"HAC has arrived in the United States like gangbusters," said Marlowe. "The animals are on the warpath. It's spreading. A pandemic."

"We're calling the unfortunate new environment Z-O-O," Leahy said, spelling out the word. "Those letters stand for something, but fuck if I can remember what."

Marlowe snickered. "And we're just one of the animals."





Chapter 54




ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

DR. CHARLES GROH lets the hiss and crackle rise to a frenzy, and then, sensing their undersides beginning to burn, reaches a fork into the cast-iron pan and turns over the slices of bacon one by one. The bacon strips tremble and buckle, spitting a mist of fat flecks and smoke above the pan.

Behind him, sprawled on the patterned floor of Mexican Talavera tiles, his chocolate Lab, Charlie II, whines pitifully and drums his tail against the side of the kitchen island. His whining erupts into a yelp.

"Patience, Charlie. Patience," Groh says, waving his fork in the air like a maestro. "With the important things in life, it's all about the timing. And bacon is a very important thing."

After draping the bacon on a paper towel, Groh hobbles to the sink with his cane and washes his hand. The male gorilla who had attacked him in his primatology lab at Johns Hopkins three years ago took his left hand as well as his nose, his lips, his right eye, left ear, and his right leg from the knee down. Groh uses a prosthetic hand and leg.

The incident had actually been a perverse godsend, in a cosmic sense. Back then, everything had been put on the back burner but his career. He was tenured, secure in his career, with a CV thick as a phone book. He had written academic books and several popular books on gorillas, and had been awarded a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He was the toast of intellectual circles-but as his career floated higher and higher into the ether he had been spending less and less time with his wife, Adrianna, and his son, Christopher Robin. He was growing distant from his family, and Christopher was growing up without him. He was even neglecting his teaching, sloughing off most of his classes on TAs.

For all its pain and horror, the mauling and his grueling recovery had saved him, in a way-it brought him back down to earth. Yes, he now wears sunglasses in public, and his potential career as a foot model is shot. But he can still teach. Although certain positions are off the table, he can still make love to his wife. He can still fry bacon.

All things considered, Groh thinks, lifting a steaming mug of coffee to his surgically reconstructed lips, he is a relatively lucky man.

Groh folds a strip of bacon into his mouth and switches on the radio beside the sink. The needle's zeroed in on some nattering morning talk show, and he paws around the dial until he lands on some classical music. Verdi. That's better. He hears the clink of crockery against the marble counter of the kitchen island and turns. His twelve-year-old son mumbles a good morning as he tilts a box of Lucky Charms into a cereal bowl. He's a handsome kid, currently brown as a nut from hours of outdoor play at his summer day camp.

"Hey, kiddo," Groh says. "Cease and desist with the Charms. I made us bacon."

"Bacon and what?" says Chris, turning on the MLB Network on the kitchen TV. He mutes it, letting his dad's Verdi score the recap of the Braves losing to the Orioles the night before.

"Bacon and bacon so far," Groh says, opening the fridge. "How about an egg?"

"Can I have bacon with Lucky Charms?" says his son, staring at the screen.

"I don't know. Would your mother let you do that?"

Adrianna is in Baltimore for a few days with her elderly mother, who just had her gallbladder removed.

"Are you nuts? Hell no," Chris says.

Groh smiles as he brings over the steaming pieces of swine.

"Then have at it, boy," he says. "She'll be home soon."</ol>
 
 

 

Groh makes his way across the floor between the kitchen and the front door when he hears a truck pull up outside. He glances out the window and sees that it's a Lawn Doctor truck in front of the neighbors' place across the street. A couple of childless yuppie lobbyists who pull down some long green, apparently, judging from their matching Beemers. They certainly aren't landscapers. Crabgrass and brown spots mottle their sickly lawn like mange. Hence the Lawn Doctor truck.

When he turns from the window, Charlie II is looking out the open front door, panting as he spies with him on the neighbors through the glass of the storm door. Groh galumphs back toward the kitchen on his cane, patting the dog on top of his sleek, brown, dopey head. A flurry of shiny red cartoon hearts is floating out of Charlie II's expression.

"Okay," Groh says, scooping up his keys with a jingle from the kitchen counter. "I'm off to work. You're on your own for another hour, Chris. Mom left Nana's already and will be here to take you to camp. Love you."

"Dad, wait. I almost forgot," Chris says.

Groh watches his son ransack the backpack dangling from a hook on the wall by the front door. He fishes something from the bag and hands it to him-what looks like a red-and-white plastic necklace.

"It's a lanyard. I made it at camp yesterday," says Chris. "I thought it could hold your sunglasses, you know, like, around your neck, when you're working or something. I made it red and white for the Nats."

Groh looks at it, then at his son, his one eye threatening to fog up.

"Hey, thanks, kiddo," Groh says. "It's awesome. Are the Nats playing tonight?"

"At home. Versus the Diamondbacks. Seven tonight. Strasburg's starting."

"You want to go?" Groh says.

"What? To the stadium? Heck, yeah!" says Chris, slapping him a high five.

Lucky man, Groh thinks again as he pats his son on the shoulder and then steps into the garage.