Page 42 of Mastermind

And nearly tore countries apart through riots and misinformation. “They’re supposed to be better now, and we have improved systems for controlling misinformation,” I reply.

“Do we? Or did we centralize everything and make it even easier to spread fear? Now all it takes is one extra vote in a contested district for a VP of software at a tech company to have the authority to tell people what’s true and not true. Is that a better system? Sometimes quick fixes are exactly what our enemy wants. Viruses learned to use our immune systems against us, and that’s worked extremely well.”

“We’re still here,” I reply.

“Cow pastures exist because we need meat, not because of any clever social thinking on the cow’s behalf.”

“Any other cheery thoughts?”

“No, just what I said. That if Heywood did want to use some kind of pathogen attack, then he’d do well to infect the people who are supposed to solve the problem. Taking them out of the equation like he tried with you and me.”

I make some notes. “So, we should be monitoring infectious-disease researchers for disease?”

“It’s probably worth the effort. Although I suspect that he’d use something rather mild in the beginning so as not to raise too many of their own alarm bells. He might even infect researchers with variants of their own research so they’d take longer to report symptoms.”

“Because they’d assume it was self-contamination?”

“Yes. The only thing intelligent people hate almost as much as making mistakes is being wrong. When I was teaching, sometimes I’d deliberately mess up my students’ experiments and see how many of them reported the errors in their results.”

“And?”

“I’d call out the name of a student and read their lab report in class and eviscerate them for concealing the faulty results, giving the others a chance to make amends.”

“That had to suck to be that student,” I reply.

Theo shakes his head. “I made the name up. The other students were too focused on their own mistakes to realize that I was tearing into someone who didn’t exist.”

“Did you like to teach?” I ask.

“I miss it more than anything else,” says Theo without hesitation. “I liked to teach and do original research. I didn’t appreciate what I had back then, though. I didn’t know what a gift it was to be around smart, young minds . . .” His voice trails off. “I should have paid more attention.”

There’s something profoundly sad about the way he just said that. I’d ask for more, but I might be probing too deep.

“You’ve circled the word biological,” says Theo, pointing at my notepad.

“Well, you make a strong case. The thing is, we haven’t had any reports of break-ins at labs . . .”

“First of all, you don’t need to physically steal the specimen. You can get the genetic sequence from an online database. Then it’s a matter of using a sequencer. If the strands are too short, you can use a growth medium like yeast to join them. After that, you take the DNA and convert it to RNA—if it’s an RNA virus—and then infect a cell with it. Same with bacteria, although you can skip a step. For fun, you could mix and match genes to see what you get.”

“It’s that easy?” I ask.

“It’s all relative. I’ve done it . . . unofficially. But some of my methods haven’t been published because I’m afraid they make the process a little too simple. Any medium-size university or biotech company could pull it off. It just takes one or two steady hands and money. Do you think Heywood has access to those kinds of resources?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past him. And I suspect he has access to a large source of funding, either his own or from a state sponsor. But I can’t prove it.”

Theo goes silent for a moment. “Hmm. I’ll have to think about that.”

“I hate to ask you this, but we need your help. Ongoing, I mean. This has already been helpful.”

“Hmm,” he says again. “Last I checked, the government was trying to put me into a cell.”

“Some people still want to see that happen. And if you stay on board, it’ll only create more suspicion for them about you.”

“That’s good. At least it shows they’re learning. After the Forrester incident, I pointed out that because he’d been considered a leading authority on the kind of vaccine tampering they were trying to prevent, they never considered him a suspect. And yet he should have been the first one we looked at.”

“So, you’ll help us?”

“No, Jessica. I’ll help you. The moment they take you off this or try to get me to talk to someone else, I’m done.”