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clues. For the umpteenth time, she checked the thick paper file she had brought from Yeltsengrad. Born
October 2, 1972
in Manchester , New Hampshire . DeVere had grown up in Bedford , New Hampshire , on one of that town’s last dairy farms. Educated in public schools, then at Cal-Poly, a Master’s Degree from the University of Michigan , a PhD from Cornell, a teaching fellowship at MIT followed by the quick achievement of professorial status. A career straight and uneventful. No evidence of radicalism.
Natasha tossed the folder aside on her bed and reached for the nail polish. She had done her left toes first-she always did-and as she waited for the IM3 to hack into another folder she began applying the mauve to her right ones.
DeVere’s computer files were of little help. His career was uneventful until two years earlier when he had participated in the discovery of a subatomic particle now known as SU44, for sub-uranium 44. The discovery had made a mild splash in geek circles. A particle of SU44 could be accelerated to speeds faster than light without converting to pure energy so that it would momentarily appear in two physical locations simultaneously. This was a slight anomaly to Einstein physics, but its existence had been theorized for years. Not exactly Nobel Prize winning quality but interesting to physicists and warranting an inside story in the Boston Globe. Shortly thereafter deVere’s personal files included references to Stephen Hawking, Kip Sone and that Bennett David crackpot. Then eight months ago deVere had stopped making references about his research or his interests.
There was nothing further in his files. And this troubled Natasha the most: the sanitization of all his folders. No trace to sexually explicit websites, no chatting with unhappy marrieds, no anti-Soviet jokes clandestinely Gorenected between fellow closet Soviet-phobes, no gambling pools on college football bowl games, not even the storage of the television schedule for his beloved Red Sox baseball team. If deVere were up to something, he wasn’t storing the information in any of his computer files, and he wasn’t hiding it in written form at his office. It had to be recorded somewhere. What was he up to?
Natasha finished the toes on her right foot, studied them for a moment as she wiggled them around, and then impulsively slammed her laptop shut. She threw herself back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
Maybe tonight she’d catch a break. Nigel was picking her up for a Sunday evening department barbecue at deVere’s home in Concord . She didn’t especially like Nigel-he wasn’t her type-but feigning reciprocal interest allowed her to get invitations. Without Nigel, there was no way a lab intern could have wrangled an invite to the department chairman’s home, especially since anyone with half a brain suspected she was Agency.
As an added benefit, Nigel was the old fashioned type who still paid the tab on his dates. On a lab intern’s salary-agents still had to live on their cover’s salary-that kicker was appreciated.
She wiggled her toes again. Satisfied they were dry, she removed the cotton balls and pondered what to wear. She smiled mischievously as she considered ignoring the heat and going with the short black leather shirt with open toed stilettos. THAT would cause a reaction, especially in a wolf like Ginter. Ultimately, she settled on perpetuating the struggling lab intern motif: flat Birkenstocks, bell-bottom jeans and a loose fitting white pullover top. With bra. And long hair put up, of course.
She got up and walked to the bedroom’s only window. The heat continued pouring in. Along the street windows were thrown open but she doubted that the other residents were experiencing any more relief than she was. Maybe, she mused, she should have given in to Igor’s clumsy advances and gotten the air conditioned Charles River digs. The night before leaving she had stood in her Yeltsengrad apartment looking out at a half