Davila and Peter slept in the business-class cabin of a direct flight from Oslo, Norway to Seattle. Both had been treated by Commander Avram's medics. Peter's concussion was minor, they said, nothing a bit of weapons-grade ibuprofen could not fix. Davila's broken finger had been reset and splinted properly, the cuts to her lip and ear cleaned and bandaged. They had both been given showers, food, and fresh clothing. And in their pockets were forged passports, credits cards, and plenty of cash—all courtesy of the State of Israel.

Back on the Estonian fishing boat, Davila had struck a deal with the Mossad. Through its surveillance of her phone, they had learned most of what she and Peter discovered about the Mustard Seeds, but not all of it. Missing were the thirty minutes between the time Gryphus threw her phone in the fire and when they were rescued—a crucial period during which they had learned who Gryphus worked for, his motives, and his next target, Delbert Mackai, keeper of the Mustard Seeds.

In exchange for this information, Avram promised to get them back to the US by the fastest means available. On-the-ground operatives friendly to the State of Israel would stake out Steens Mountain and capture or kill Gryphus, if and when he arrived. Davila and Peter were free to pursue the Mustard Seeds, but their personal safety could not be guaranteed.

They landed in Seattle in the early morning hours and rented a compact SUV. Driving east through the pale dawn, they followed Interstate 90 over the Cascade Mountains, a reprise of Peter's fishing trip nearly two weeks earlier. They even stopped at the park along the Columbia River commemorating Celilo Falls, Wy-am, long ago dammed and buried—the same deserted park where Peter had received his father's final words, semina sinapis.

But it seemed a different place now. Cars and pickup trucks crammed the parking lot. Hundreds of people milled about. It was a festival of sorts. Tents and booths lined the parched field all the way down to the river's edge. A light breeze carried up the sound of voices and the cozy smells of wood smoke and frying food.

Low clouds were moving in from the east, dark and fraught, shadowing the tawny hills to the north. Out in the channel, gulls skimmed the choppy water. A tugboat pushed an empty barge against the languid current. Far beneath that ruffled surface, Peter knew, the mighty falls of Wy-am remained, churning the depths, roiling in the dark.

Peter quickly realized that many of the festival's attendees were Native American. Aunties and grandmas in flower-print dresses sat beneath the locust trees while little children buzzed about. Girls in brightly colored fancy dress gathered near a broad tent. And out in the center of the field, a group of men sat around a huge drum singing and beating a steady rhythm.

Davila nodded at something down by the water, her profile stern and intent. Near the interpretive display about the falls, a man with red hair lay on his back, flopping like a fish in the sand. It reminded Peter of that poor woman at the British Museum, seizing on the marble floor beneath the Rosetta Stone. Someone knelt to roll the stricken man on his side, but the rest stood there staring. And out in the field, the drummers drummed on, their voices rising with the smoke.

***

Coffee refilled, Brisling settled on the couch, close to the potbelly stove. "Now, did Jason Numec ever hint that the Old One might have been dangerous in any way? Did he ask you to take precautions when you handled the body?"

Mackai retreated to his chartreuse armchair. "He didn't say anything like that. But he did spend a little time alone with the body, for his own spiritual needs. Then we buried that body quick—me, him, and a couple strong fellows."

"I don't suppose you'll tell me where."

"No, I won't."

Brisling let it go. The Feds would force it out of him soon enough. "What about the research material, all the data you took custody of?"

"Jason Numec asked me to burn it."

"Shit."

"I said he asked me to burn it."

"You still have it?"

"Let me go out to the shed and see what I can find. In the meantime, you keep that stove nice and hot."

Ten minutes later, Mackai's boots stomped on the front porch, and with a gust of cold air, he stepped into the entryway, his cropped white hair glittering with melting snowflakes. Under his arm, he carried a battered cardboard file box, which he set on the coffee table in front of Brisling.

The box contained a stack of musty folders bound with rubber bands so brittle they snapped as soon as Brisling touched them. He set the folders on the coffee table, amazed by how well the dry mountain air had preserved them. Then he adjusted his glasses and began to read.

The first folder contained the Carbon-14 dating results. According to analysis of multiple tissues, the Ice Man was indeed ancient, somewhere between 9,700 and 10,500 years old. That settled that.

The next folder held shipping manifests and formal correspondence. Apparently, bits and pieces of the Ice Man had been shipped all over the country for analysis, a lock of hair to the University of Las Vegas, a skin biopsy to Yale. And yes, stomach contents had gone to a contract lab in Oregon, the lab where John Carl Lundquist, patient zero, had worked.

Brisling tossed the folder aside and picked up another. Nothing but receipts and administrative garbage. Then he found the pages he was after. They were folded in half and held together with a paper clip. It left a rusty stamp as he pulled it loose. There were three pages in all, each with its own carbon copy, each bearing the same date in 1992 and the same set of initials, J.C.L. These were the missing pages from John Carl Lundquist's lab notebook.

The first two pages offered nothing but evidence of routine lab work, the preparation of buffers and reagents. But on the third page, near the bottom, Lundquist had written the following:

Accession #: 09-3549

Sample description: stomach contents, OSP John Doe #21234

Gross Description: approximately 10 cc dark green, fibrous-gelatinous material encasing 4 spherules: hard, dark-brown, smooth surface, each approx. 1.5 mm in diameter. Appear to be seeds.

Brisling looked at Mackai over the rims of his glasses. "Did you read this?"

"It's been years since I looked at it."

He shook the pages in his hand. "What happened to these seeds?"

"Look in the box, Doctor."

It lay at the bottom, there in the corner with a few rubber band fragments and the desiccated remains of a doodlebug: a small glass vial with a black screw-top lid. Brisling held it up to a lamp on the side table. Inside, three tiny seeds huddled at the bottom. He tapped the vial gently to dislodge the fourth seed from inside the cap. But there were only three.

"Where's the fourth seed?" asked Brisling.

"Look behind you."

Brisling spun around and found himself face-to-face again with that weird plant on the windowsill. Its dark green leaves were rimmed with fiery blue. Tiny white flowers littered the sill.

"Pretty thing," said Mackai. "Hardly needs watering, neither. I don't know what it is. I asked a gardener friend of mine once, but she'd never seen anything like it."

"I have," said Brisling, shrinking away from the plant. Now he remembered. "Son of a bitch! That's how he got infected."

"Who got infected?"

Brisling held up the missing pages from Lundquist's lab book. "He found five seeds, not four like he wrote down. The little bastard must have stolen one. Once he heard the Feds were going to confiscate everything, he forged his lab book and stole a seed. Then he planted it, right there in his lab. Jesus. The thing's still growing there. I saw it."

"I'm not following you, Doctor."

He showed Mackai the vial. "These seeds from the Old One's stomach, they're the source." He turned around slowly to face the plant again. "And that thing's a goddamned JCAV factory, genetically engineered to shed virus, probably in its leaves or flowers maybe." Brisling whipped back around. "Why the hell did you plant one?"

Delbert's black eyebrows inched together. "Well, I don't know. I suppose I was just curious."

"Curious? What the hell do you think science is but institutionalized curiosity?"

"I'm not a hypocrite if that's what you think."

"I am thinking that, so tell me why I'm wrong."

Mackai shook his head. "Doctor, I'm not sure just who we buried. He might have been one of our ancestors, but then again, he might not have been."

"What are you talking about?"

He pointed to the last folder on the coffee table. "Keep reading, Doctor."

Brisling picked it up, his glance lingering on Mackai. Then he opened it. It was the autopsy report, the staccato phrases of a coroner's dictation. . . . body of an adult male . . . partially decomposed . . . shrouded in finely woven blue textile of unknown origin . . . approximately 2.0 meters tall . . . early twenties . . . long black hair . . .

"We buried him in the clothes he wore. I've never seen anything like it, so blue, like the summer sky," said Mackai.

A gust of wind rattled the windows, and the stove crackled hot.

Brisling read on, each phrase an electric shock. . . . Radiographs reveal a well-developed skeleton with evidence of multiple acute fractures to ribs, pelvis, and left femur . . . 32 teeth, all in expected positions . . . no cavities or enamel loss . . . this appears to be due to clear sealant applied to premolars and molars . . .

Attached with staples to the final page was a glossy black-and-white photograph. It showed what appeared to be an old rope against a black background. But it was no rope. The image had been obtained with a scanning electron microscope, and the rope was a fiber one thousand times finer than a human hair. The caption read

1. Light microscopy: extremely tight plain weave of unknown blue fiber; color appears to be intrinsic; no evidence of dying agent.

2. Electron microscopy: weave composed of threads of seven to ten bundles; bundles comprised of seven unbroken one-micron diameter monofilaments; pattern has no match in reference bank of over fifteen thousand modern and antique textiles; fiber size and structure most consistent with spider silk of genus Nephilia (orb weaver).

"Spider silk? What the hell is this?" said Brisling.

Another gust of wind buffeted the house. This time, the front door flew inward and slammed against the dividing wall, shaking the sheepherder's implements hanging behind the stove. Mackai got up to close it. He was just about there when he stopped cold, his head cocked to the side, face frozen with recognition.

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