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someone who wants to win as badly as I do . ” Just remembering the intensity vibrating in his voice made her heart race a little faster.
    “He’s testing a new serum that might stop a lung disease from spreading to other organs in the body. If it works, it will prolong the patient’s life.”
    “What kind of disease?” Mr. Zomohkov asked.
    “Tuberculosis. He only takes the very worst cases.”
    The diplomat reared back. Turning to his wife, he unleashed a spiel in Russian. Mrs. Zomohkov gasped and shot to her feet, tipping over her teacup. Kate tossed a napkin over the spreading stain, but Mrs. Zomohkov was shrieking in Russian and gesturing like a madwoman.
    The diplomat finally persuaded his wife to stop yelling, but not before she grabbed her pastries and fled upstairs.
    “What do you know of tuberculosis?” Mr. Zomohkov demanded.
    Kate looked around the room and all the faces staring at her, awaiting an answer. “Trevor explained the disease to me. It sounds horrible, but he is determined to find a cure.”
    “There is no cure for tuberculosis,” Mr. Zomohkov pronounced. “Only misery and death. It spreads from person to person and leaves people twisted and crippled and dead. It is a dangerous disease, Mrs. Livingston. You will be playing with fire if you tamper with it.”
    He stormed off to follow his wife, and Kate was left to wonder if he was right to be so afraid of the disease.
    * * * *
    It was the first question she asked Trevor on Monday morning. She arrived at the conference room promptly at nine o’clock to find the large table covered with stacks of paper. Once again, Trevor was wearing a black suit with a vest and tie beneath his white lab coat, a stethoscope clamped around his neck.
    “Of course it is dangerous,” Trevor said. “I told you that.”
    “Is it frightening enough to send a woman shrieking from the room at the very mention of it?”
    The clock on the conference room wall ticked out a steady beat as Trevor contemplated her with that expressionless stare of his. “She is a wise woman. Tuberculosis ought to strike fear in the heart of anyone who works with it. All my employees are tested each month to ensure they have not contracted the bacillus. I’ll need you to provide me with a sputum sample as soon as we go upstairs.”
    Heat stained her cheeks. She’d happily go through the rest of her life without mentioning the word sputum in polite company. “Isn’t that overreacting?” Kate asked.
    “If we catch the disease early, there is a chance at recovery.”
    “How good of a chance?”
    “Almost none, so try not to get it.” He continued to sort his papers as though she were going to be satisfied with that horrific assessment.
    “Is that your best scientific opinion? You want me to risk my life over a flippant response like that?”
    His face softened just a trace. “Only around ten percent of people who get tuberculosis will survive. We are beginning to believe that moving to climates with high, dry air is the best chance for a cure. People who go to such settings can double their odds of survival, but tuberculosis is still usually a death sentence. You will need to be scrupulous about following the safety rules while you are here.”
    He went on to describe how the disease was contracted by inhaling the bacillus. Victims of tuberculosis were often seized with uncontrollable fits of coughing, during which moisture from their lungs sprayed into the air. The most common way for the disease to spread was to inhale air near an infected person who had been coughing.
    “I insist you wear a mask whenever you are near the patients. If you follow the rules, you will be fine. Come on, let me show you the ward.”
    Kate followed him up the narrow staircase to the top floor. She’d never been in a hospital clinic and didn’t know what to expect, but it seemed remarkably homey. The entrance had a sitting area tucked into the semicircle of a turret. An assortment of comfortable