Threat Level Black

Something bumped his elbow. Fisher looked down into the gnomelike face of a forty-year-old woman. The face was attached to a body that barely cleared his belt. Fisher was tall-a bit over six feet-but not that tall. This woman defined vertically challenged.

“I’m Fisher.”

“Special Agent Katherine Mathers,” said the woman, jabbing her hand toward his. “And you can’t smoke in here.”

“That’s good to know,” said Fisher. He took another drag. “Are we walking to where we’re going, or is there a car?”

“I’ve heard about you,” said Mathers. She frowned and headed across the reception area, all eight feet of it, toward the exit. Fisher caught up outside at the curb, where Mathers was waiting behind the wheel of a 1967 puke-green Ford Torino.

“Nice car,” he said, getting in.

“Oldest Bu-car in existence,” she said, using the accepted slang for a Bureau-issued vehicle. If she hadn’t, he might have thought of asking to see her ID.

“No smoking,” she told him.

“No?”

“No.”

He was almost at the butt anyway, so Fisher rolled down his window and tossed it.

“You do that again and I’ll have to bust you for littering,” said Mathers. “We’re very ecology-conscious here.”

“I could tell from the car you were driving.”

Mathers stomped on the gas pedal-or, rather, the three wooden blocks taped one atop another on the gas pedal. The Torino lurched away from the curb, smoke and grit flying.

“Can you see where you’re going?” Fisher asked the other agent.

“I heard you were a wiseass.”

“That’s me.”

“I can see fine,” said Mathers, whose head would not have been visible from outside the car. “They brief you or what?”

“You got some guy who met some other guy who knows someone who built an E-bomb for North Korea and wants asylum,” said Fisher.

Mathers shook her head. “First of all, the guy’s a gal.”

“Okay.”

“Second of all, the gal met the scientist himself, not someone else. There’s only two players.”

“That’s a relief. I was afraid we’d have to use zone coverage. Now we can just go man-to-man.”

“What are you going to do?” Mathers asked.

“After we stop for some coffee, I’m going to talk to the guy who’s a gal,” said Fisher. “And we’ll take it from there.”

“We don’t have no fancy bullshit coffee here,” said Mathers, in a tone that made Fisher forgive not only her driving but the business about smoking in the car. “Just stuff that’ll burn a hole in your crankcase.”

“The only kind I drink,” said Fisher.

The e-mail that had brought Fisher to Applegate consisted of exactly two words:

OUT, PLEASE.

Attached was a technical diagram of an E-bomb-or, as the technical people preferred to call it, “an explosive device intended to render a disruptive magnetic pulse.”

The e-mail had been sent to Amanda Kung. While Kung worked at a defense-related company, neither she nor the company had anything directly to do with E-bombs-or any weapons, for that matter. The company built UHF radios that could fit on pinheads, undoubtedly seeking to exploit the burgeoning market of seamstresses who needed walkie-talkies.

According to Mathers, the connection between Amanda and the Korean who had sent the e-mail was personal: They had met in China during a conference two years before and occasionally corresponded electronically.

“Love thing?” Fisher asked as they drove toward the complex on a road that might be charitably described as a succession of bumps interrupted by gullies. Fortunately, Fisher had equipped his coffee cup with a safety shield; when you found java this bad, you didn’t want to spill a drop.

“Could be love. Probably just curiosity: how the other half lives, that kind of thing,” said Mathers. “Typical flighty-scientist kind of thing. Women. You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“So, did you really commandeer a C-17 over the Pacific to make a bust?”

“Gross exaggeration,” said Fisher. “I won the C- 17 in a game of darts.”

Mathers smiled. “You’re an inspiration.”

“Don’t get giggly on me, Mathers.”

She veered from the pothole-strewn highway onto what looked like a dust-swept field. The Torino growled as they took another turn, the engine chuttering while the air filter chewed on some pebbles.

And then, like a scene from a Charlton Heston movie, the dust cleared and a four-lane concrete road appeared. The Bu-car settled down as they approached the building where Amanda Kung worked, K-4 Electronics. A quartet of khaki-clad guards with German shepherds met their car. The two FBI agents were instructed to get out of the vehicle and the car was searched before being allowed to proceed. Inside the gate, they were met by a six-foot-five protosimian who pointed to a parking space and gave them coded tags to wear.

“Computer system figures out if you’re inside and don’t have a tag on,” warned Mathers.

“What’s it do, vaporize you?”

“Very possibly.”

Inside the building, the agents were met by a personal minder, another large athletic type Fisher thought he might recognize from WFW reruns. He led them to a private room where Amanda Kung was waiting.