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“Put the dog in first,” says Grace.
“You think I’m going to trick you and send you down without the dog?”
“Yes.”
Patrick chuckles once, briefly, then cuts himself off. He crouches down to Jasper. Once Jasper is standing cheerfully in the dumbwaiter carriage, looking like some sort of strange wall ornament, Grace climbs in around him. She grabs on to him and shoots Patrick one last expression of loathing.
“Good luck, Grace,” Patrick says, then shuts the dumbwaiter door. He hauls at the cables in the narrow side cabinet for some time, then slows his pulling and stops. Leaning back against the dumbwaiter door, he closes his eyes and releases an enormous sigh.
“I love that kid,” he says.
“Do you?” says Kiran, not looking at him. “That explains why you’re so awful to her.”
An amused bitterness twists Patrick’s mouth. “And you’ve always been so wonderful to me,” he says. “How’s your fancy boyfriend?”
“Don’t you even pretend that this conversation is that conversation,” Kiran says. “At least you know all my secrets.”
“Kiran,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Patrick has wanted to tell you his secrets for some time. Mr. Vanders and I absolutely forbade it, because they aren’t just his secrets, they’re ours, and many other people’s too.”
“My mother forbade me to tell anyone her secrets too,” Kiran says hotly. “Guess who I told anyway? Patrick.”
“We’re not going to discuss your mother’s secrets,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“You know why?” says Kiran. “Because I trusted him. Because I wanted him to know me and all the places I’ve been!”
Mrs. Vanders stands so quickly that her chair shudders back across the floor. “I forbid any talk of your mother and her magic in this room,” she says in a voice that reaches into the roots of Jane’s teeth. “We’re trying to do good, simple, natural work here!”
“Oh my god,” says Kiran, suddenly sounding exhausted. Pulling out a chair, she slumps into it, rubbing her face. “Listen to yourself, Vanny. My mother isn’t a witch, she’s a scientist.”
Jane doesn’t understand this turn in the conversation, but she finds she doesn’t much care. She’s watching Ivy lower the Brancusi, then the Rembrandt, into crates.
Mrs. Vanders sits down again, clasps her hands together, and directs her steely expression at Kiran. “I’ll explain everything, as long as you swear there’ll be no more talk of your mother.”
“All right!” says Kiran, flapping an impatient hand. “I swear! Jeez!”
“Very well,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Victoria and Giuseppe Panzavecchia are microbiologists.”
“I know that,” says Kiran. “Apparently they’re also secret agents.”
“The Panzavecchias are not agents,” Mrs. Vanders says. “They’re contractors. They’ve been working under the auspices of a special CIA research and development grant for the purposes of discovering whether it’s possible to develop an immediately contagious strain of smallpox, the indicative symptoms of which manifest late in the course of infection.”
Kiran freezes, then speaks in a tone of pure disgust. “You mean a smallpox that wouldn’t be recognized as smallpox until it had already spread far and wide.”
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders, “precisely. They’ve been contracted to experiment with forms of smallpox that could serve as effective biological weapons.”
“This is your good, simple, natural work? Genetically modified smallpox?”
“In case you’re wondering why I want out,” Ivy mutters from her end of the table, where she’s now pouring an avalanche of packing peanuts into the crate containing the Brancusi. They make a tinkling sound, like ice. Patrick walks over to her and gathers up the ones that hit the floor, plowing them with his boots.
“We don’t work with biological weapons ourselves,” says Mrs. Vanders. “And our understanding is that the CIA runs these experiments not with the intention of using the weapons themselves, but rather to be better prepared should an enemy to the United States develop the same strain and attack with it.”
“Oh, right, I’ve never heard that one before!” Kiran practically yells.
“Think what you will. Their intentions don’t matter to Espions Sans Frontières. We’re nonpartisan.”
“Another word for complicit.”
“A couple of weeks back,” Mrs. Vanders continues, ignoring this, “Giuseppe and Victoria had a breakthrough. They discovered something unexpected, I’ve no idea how. But the fruit of their discovery was pretty much what they’d been directed to develop, a strain of smallpox that’s highly contagious long before the carrier can begin to suspect it’s smallpox. And then one odd thing and one terrible thing happened. The odd thing is that when they informed their research director at the CIA of their success, that man became afflicted suddenly with a different experimental strain of smallpox, an opposite sort of strain in which the indicative symptoms manifest very quickly. A week or so later, he died, and ‘A Smallpox Case in New York’ became headline news.”
“That’s the odd thing?” Jane says numbly. “That’s the odd thing? What’s the terrible thing?”
“No, wait,” says Kiran. “I heard about the smallpox guy, of course, but not that it was some sort of experimental strain of smallpox. They said he was a suicidal guy who used to work for the World Health Organization and had broken into the laboratories of the CDC in Atlanta. Which we’ve all been assured,” Kiran says, her voice growing harder, “is one of only two places in the world where the smallpox virus is kept, the other being a closely monitored lab in Russia. Smallpox,” she says in a voice now verging on shrill, “is no longer supposed to be a danger anywhere in the world.”
“Have your little hissy fit, Kiran,” says Mrs. Vanders, “then return yourself to reason. Your brother wears rose-colored glasses, but you’ve never been naïve.”
“How did that guy get smallpox?” Kiran demands.
“We don’t know,” says Mrs. Vanders. “He certainly never broke into any lab in Atlanta. The Panzavecchias believe he was infected with a strain they kept in their lab in New York, which means that someone got access to a part of that lab no one but they and a few particular people with CIA connections should have had access to. Which suggests a traitor.”
“Okay,” says Kiran. “Why did the guy get smallpox?”
“We don’t know that either,” says Mrs. Vanders. “But we think it’s likely he was infected as a message to the United States from some other state.”
“What’s the message?” Kiran asks.
“‘We know what you’re doing,’” says Mrs. Vanders. “‘We can get in anywhere. We’re one step ahead of you, you can’t protect yourself, and by the way, thanks for inventing all this nifty smallpox.’”
“Okay, that’s terrifying,” says Kiran. “But why infect the guy with some random strain? Why not the new, successful strain?”
“Two reasons,” says Mrs. Vanders. “One, the strain they chose was one unlikely to create an epidemic. It’s a message, not an act of war, you understand? The man suspected almost immediately what disease he had. He was able to quarantine himself. He called the hospital, sent them p
ictures of his mouth and skin, and told them his made-up CDC story, so that only vaccinated health workers would be sent to care for him. Two, the Panzavecchias’ new strain wasn’t available, because once they realized what they had, they got scared. They brought it, and all their notes about it, home, where they could control who had access to it. Which leads us to the terrible thing.”
“Home!” cries Kiran. “Oh god. Oh god! Please tell me Baby Leo doesn’t have smallpox!”
“Of course he doesn’t have smallpox,” says Mrs. Vanders. “What do you think they did, left vials of it in his crib? Baby Leo has chicken pox.”
“How do you know?”
“Because one of the cousins who attended Grace’s eighth birthday party two weeks ago had chicken pox. Don’t worry about Baby Leo. Espions Sans Frontières has engaged a doctor to care for him personally.”
“Philip Okada,” Jane says flatly.
“Philip Okada?” Kiran says. “Philip Okada is a spy?”
“He’s a doctor,” says Mrs. Vanders, “and a British asset who’s helping us out. Not a spy. You need to stop throwing these words around. In our circles, spy is a rather derogatory term.”
“Well, forgive me for the gap in my education. You’re the one who could’ve taught me the vocabulary. What’s the terrible thing that happened?”
“It relates to Grace,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“Grace?” says Kiran. “Obviously she doesn’t have smallpox or she wouldn’t be in this house.”
“Will you get it out of your head that someone has smallpox?” says Mrs. Vanders.
“You’ve made it clear that anyone could!” Kiran fires back. “We all could tomorrow!”
“Oh, everything could happen tomorrow!” says Mrs. Vanders. “If you can’t cope with all the awful things that are always on the verge of happening, then this isn’t the work for you!”
“Whoever said it was?” says Kiran. “Fucking hell, Vanny!”
Mrs. Vanders glares at Kiran with her hallmark enigmatic aggression. Kiran glares back. Jane has no idea where everyone’s getting all this energy.
“Grace doesn’t have smallpox,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Her problem is that she’s a natural-born snoop with an extraordinary affinity for mnemonic devices.”
