THE DIVE: On June 18, I go down in DSV. Sea Messenger food dosed. Dave Press tries to kill us both. Three die on Sea Messenger.
June 19: Sea Messenger pulls into port in Seattle.
June 20: Breakfast with Bloom and Shun, 9–10:30 a.m. Investigate specimens 11:30 a.m.–8 p.m. Dinner at Canlis 10–11:30 p.m.
June 20:
Noon, EST. Rob calls my cell phone from public phone in New Jersey. (Guessing at place and time.)
2 p.m. EST. Ben and Rob meet Stuart Garvey outside Penn Station. Have lunch. Garvey takes them to Anthrax Central in downtown Manhattan 4:00 p.m. Irina tries to turn Rob. Recruit him? Ben shoots Rob in New York alley (2–3:00 a.m.?).
June 21: 12:30 a.m. PST Lissa calls on cell phone to leave message about Rob’s death.
June 21: 1 a.m. PST Last meeting with Montoya. I walk around Lake Union to Genetron lab, discover trashed specimens 2:30 a.m. PST.
June 21: 3:20 a.m. PST I turn on my cell phones, take message from Rob, Lissa. Learn Rob is dead.
June 27: Funeral in Coral Gables, Florida.
June 29–August 8: I am in Berkeley.
August 8: Promethean Conference. I meet Banning. Apartment fire and dog attack, hospital visit. Banning pays.
August 8–9: Haight hotel room.
August 9: I buy clothes, Banning and I meet with Callas, Lissa returns. I read several of Rob’s papers; City of Dog Mothers. Tagging attempt (can opener) partially successful that evening, late.
Never got to test can opener.
August 10: Second meeting with Callas, who turns us down. Smart lady.
August 10: Thuringia—crazy old fake cop with signs of Golokhov’s immortality treatments—and trip to San Jose with Lissa to open Rob’s office/lab. It’s a trap. Lissa shoots car salesman.
August 10–13: Lissa gives me supreme tagging and drives me out to desert hotel. Tells me to kill myself. Sounds like a good idea at the time.
August 13: Ben Bridger and Rudy Banning rescue me, give me gallon of elixir, then haul me shitting and puking to airport in Arizona.
August 13–14: Back to Anthrax Central. (My first time.)
August 17: Assault on Lemuria.
August 18: Meeting with Golokhov/Goncourt. Bad news about the Little Mothers.
August 20: Return to Miami from Bahamas. Not much news about Lemuria. Go into hiding.
I’ve worked out some of the history. Here it is, as far as I’ve gone. Open up the sealed brown paper envelope (hairs taped over the flap for security) and read. Wear gloves, though, ha-ha. Feel free to add your own details or correct me. It’s all up in the air, little or no documentation.
I can’t trace all the threads and who is pulling them and when. It still doesn’t add up. Something’s missing, something itches at the back of my head.
Why did Lissa shoot the skinny man in the herringbone suit?
Why didn’t they change the combinations in Goncourt’s hospital aboard the Lemuria after Tammy went missing? I’m thinking maybe they didn’t know she was betraying them. Tammy was there to foil Banning and Rob.
Why didn’t she? Who turned her? Rob?
Was he working for Mrs. Golokhova and the government?
Who ordered the gunship attack in LA? Probably Golokhov—but why? Why provoke his former allies? Was he that worried about Rob and Banning?
Weird election this November, wasn’t it?
Maxim Golokhov cooperated with the United States after the war. Everything else about him is murky until 1954, when he shows up in New York, but he must have been there to set up Thuringia and the other towns. Shipping tagged fruitcake all over the world.
Irina Golokhova was cooperating with some branches of the federal government, and had been since at least the 1960s, after Maxim left her in Manhattan. To keep things secret, Stuart Garvey and his cohorts at the CIA destroyed Rudy’s reputation in 1992. Supposedly that’s when Rudy’s career falls apart.
But Rudy is clearly not who he says he is.
The picture that fell out of Rob’s envelope, me and Rob somewhere in Europe, maybe, I don’t remember the occasion. Just a simple memory lapse?
Why would Golokhov distract himself from studying the Little Mothers? Did Golokhov think we would upset the balance of nature so badly? He already believed the bacteria had passed judgment and had it in for us.
Do I believe that?
Do you?
