Plath did not ask Keats to join her this time. She would discuss the Tulip with Mr. Stern, but she would mostly be asking him what he had discovered about Lear.
Attempts to learn about Lear counted as treason within BZRK. Treason led to bad things, and she did not want to implicate Keats in that.
Of course, Keats had a biot in her brain. If he was very curious he could make the long trip out into an ear canal and listen in.
She didn’t think Keats did things like that. It would be out of character. But in this new world she had entered such things had to be considered. In this new world the human body was not a singular object—it was an ecosystem. It was a Brazilian rainforest full of flora and fauna, from creepy, crawly mites to big, fat balls of pollen to Dr. Seuss–like fungal trees, to a hundred different types of bacteria, all the way down to viruses. None of it strictly human. The average human body had far more nonhuman cells than human ones, though they comprised only a fraction of the weight—about five pounds in most people.
You moved differently through the world when you truly came to accept that fact. When you knew that you were crawling, covered, congested by nonhuman life-forms. Sometimes you couldn’t quite see the line between yourself and the world around you.
All about her on the sidewalk were other ecosystems, each body a similarly complex environment. Each body in turn a small part of a larger system. A system called New York. Or, more inclusively, the human race. Formerly meaningful divisions had lost some solidity. What seemed solid in the macro was so much less so down in the meat.
The meeting with Stern followed all the rules of spy craft. They set up the meeting using text messages. They both spent an hour throwing off any possible pursuers. Their phones were off and therefore impossible to track. If she were being followed, then it was very professionally done.
And yet when Plath arrived at the steps of the public library in Bryant Park, there was a man sitting across the street in the window of a hotel café, sipping a latte and making no effort to go unnoticed.
He was middle-aged, with long graying hair and a wry, observant expression. He was dressed like a dandy—a purple velvet blazer, a top hat that sat on the counter beside him.
If he had ever had a real name, Plath didn’t know it. His nom de guerre, his BZRK name, was Caligula.
Plath had seen him in action. He was a confident and extremely capable killer. He was the eighth person of whom Lear had spoken. But it was not possible for Plath to imagine giving him orders.
It was Caligula who had killed Ophelia after she was captured by the FBI. He had burned out her brain so as to leave no traces of nanotechnology behind. If Plath brought him into BZRK now—into her BZRK—Wilkes, who had been close to Ophelia, who had very nearly died beside her, might try to kill him. And that would be the end of Wilkes.
And yet, here was Plath meeting Mr. Stern to discover what he had learned in his efforts to track down the elusive personality behind BZRK. Was that why Caligula was here? Did he already know? Should she be expecting a bullet or a knife or the killer’s trademark hatchet?
Could Caligula guess what they were talking about? Surely not. But he had found a way to follow her, or perhaps to follow Mr. Stern. That knowledge made her feel faint. It weakened her knees.
God, it was true: there was no escaping the man in the velvet suit. The NKVD. Plath had Googled it. Anya had spoken the truth. And now here was her own personal NKVD sipping a coffee and watching to see what she would do.
Or fail to do.
As Nijinksy’s body was being cut loose by paramedics, Plath bought a street pretzel and a Nantucket Nectars cranberry. Stern had a coffee and an Italian sausage. They looked, perhaps, like a girl meeting her father. Or a student with her atypically tough-looking professor.
“Now that we’re alone, how have you been, Sadie?”
“Getting used to being back in the world,” she said, looking around at the other lunchtime diners, all somewhere between coats and sweaters on this gray day.
“It was good of you to pay the money to the boat crew who died. One of them had two young kids. Softens the blow.”
“What have you found?” she asked, too cold to want to chat, and too aware of Caligula’s cobra gaze.
“On the Armstrong Twins? I suspect they are in a place called Sarawak, which is in Malaysia. AFGC owns a facility in Malaysia, a rare earths mine. Rare earths are a class of rare minerals used in some sophisticated electronics components. It makes sense that AFGC would have a source.”
“How likely do you think it is that they’re there?”
Stern thought it over. “I’d say seventy percent. It seems consistent with what we’re seeing. But it’s possible they’re elsewhere. It’s even possible they are back in New York.”
“And the other person you’re looking for?”
Stern glanced at Caligula. “There sits the one man who might be able to take us to Lear.”
“Stay away from him,” Plath said too quickly.
“You’re that scared of him.”
“I’ve seen his work, Mr. Stern. The man who warned me about him doesn’t scare easily.” Vincent. Back when Vincent was Vincent. “But he was scared of Caligula.”
Stern raised his cup, sipped, and said, “I have leads, nothing solid. Lear’s cell number is obviously switched out daily. You gave me four such numbers. All the numbers are throwaways. Burner phones. But interestingly, two of them were purchased in odd locations.”
“Odd how?”