while I run a quick errand?” Li asked them.
“Certainly.” The young woman smiled. “We’ll be right here.”
Li kissed Pan, who gave her a wide grin because he knew that whenever his mother left, she returned with sweets. She moved through the market crowds to the vendor with the tiger and was disappointed. The artist who’d promised her a special price on the tiger was not there. A grumpy old man who wanted triple the cost was tending to the stall. Li bartered with him before the old crook relented.
Happy, she started back, stopping to get sweets for Pan.
As she neared her stall, alarm pinged in her stomach.
It was empty.
She went inside and looked around, puzzled and afraid.
What was going on?
She asked her neighboring vendors, who shrugged.
“It’s been so busy, Li. We’ve seen nothing.”
No sign of her son. No sign of the researchers.
“Pan!”
Her mouth went dry, fear slid down her throat and devoured her hope that he would appear.
“Pan Qin!”
Li left her stall, scanning the area, searching the faces of small children, running through the crowds screaming for her son. Her mind swirled. She didn’t even have the names of the researchers, no cards, no documentation.
Nothing.
“Pan!”
The minutes bled into a half hour, which became an hour. Time swept by without a trace of her boy. The other vendors passed on the word, some sent people to Li’s stall to help search the market.
The whole time Li accused herself.
Why weren’t you watching your child?
Why did you trust him to strangers?
How could you be so stupid?
Two police officers came by and Li pleaded to them, told them about the medical researchers, the government’s hygiene study.
“We know nothing of any study,” one officer said, while his partner relayed details on the radio.
“There is no such study in the market,” he said.
Li screamed.
This was a nightmare. She had to wake up. Yes. Sha would be waking her any moment now and she would tell him of her bad dream and she would go to Pan’s cot and hold him so tight and cry tears of joy.
As the sun sank and the market crowds thinned, Li remained in her stall praying for Pan’s return. Word got back to the village and Sha was alerted. He raced to the stall, his face a mask of disbelief.
Li collapsed in his arms.
“Kill me! Kill me for what I’ve done. I’ve lost our son!”
Sha only held her and stared at the empty market as a misting rain descended on them.
All night long, Li and Sha walked the abandoned streets, their voices echoing as they called out Pan’s name. They never stopped because they could not bear to go home, could not bear to face his empty cot and the devastating truth.
Their little boy had been stolen.
25
Chicago, Illinois
Robert Lancer’s hotel was near the Chicago River.
As he waited alone in a quiet corner of the hotel’s restaurant, staring through the window at the buildings soaring skyward, he questioned if pursuing the old CIA file as a potential threat was the way to go right now.
He didn’t have a lot of time.
He considered the upcoming Human World Conference. Maybe I should be concentrating on Said Salelee’s claim of an imminent attack? Lancer was grappling with his circumstances when two older men, both in their seventies, approached his table.
“Bob?” the one with the close-trimmed beard asked.
“Yes.”
“Phil Kenyon.”
Kenyon set a laptop on the table and Lancer shook his hand, and then shook hands with the second man, who was wearing gold-framed glasses.
“Les Weeks.”
Through Foster Winfield’s arrangement, Lancer had expected to meet only Kenyon, who was in town attending an international science trade fair. But when Kenyon informed him on the phone that Lester Weeks was attending the same event, he agreed to meet both retired CIA scientists at the same time. The men kept their voices low.
“Foster talked to us about his concerns a few weeks ago,” Weeks said. “But not all of us share his interpretation of the online chatter on some of the subject matter.”
“Is that what you told the agency when it followed up?” Lancer asked.
“Pretty much,” Weeks said. “Our work was advanced at the time but there’ve been breakthroughs since. I understand how Foster would be concerned about the appearance of someone using our work as the basis for engineering some sort of genetic attack.”
“But is it possible that someone from the original team could be using that work to be plotting something? Chemical, biological or genetic attacks are rare, but this stuff from Project Crucible—and I admit I don’t understand