She put a tuna sandwich, a granola bar, a container of yogurt, and a bag of potato chips on a tray and filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee.
As she was carrying the tray toward a window table a familiar voice sounded in her ear.
‘Miss Embry. You get around, I see.’ It was Joseph Kraig, the Secret Service agent she had talked to last night. He was sitting alone at a table for four. He looked unhappy and somewhat more tired than the first time she saw him.
‘So do you,’ Karen said. ‘May I join you?’
‘Why not?’ He pushed back a chair for her. She threw her coat over one of the unoccupied chairs and sat down.
‘That doesn’t look warm enough for you,’ Kraig said.
‘I haven’t been outside much,’ she said. ‘Have you?’
‘Now that you mention it, no.’
He watched her peel the top off her yogurt.
‘You don’t look as though you eat enough,’ he said.
She shrugged off the comment, sipping at her coffee with a look of distaste. ‘I hate hospitals,’ she said. ‘My grandmother was in a succession of them when she was dying. If I never see one of these cafeterias again, it will be too soon.’
Kraig nodded. He had his own hospital memories. He did not care to revisit them.
Karen ate a few spoonfuls of yogurt, then sat back to study Kraig’s face.
‘What I really need is a cigarette,’ she said. ‘These hospitals are too strict about smoking.’
Kraig nodded. ‘The world is tough on smokers nowadays.’
‘Did you ever smoke?’ she asked him.
‘In high school,’ he said. ‘I quit when I got to college.’
Karen nodded, glancing at the thick wrists emerging from his suit jacket. His fingers were square, almost stubby. The backs of his hands were broad. She guessed he worked out, perhaps too much.
‘How did you get into the federal agent business?’ she asked.
He smiled, reflecting that it was indeed a business, like any other.
‘I was young, I had just gotten married. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, and we needed money,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine was an FBI agent, and he told me about the salary and the benefits. From there, things just evolved.’
‘Are you still married?’ she asked.
He shook his head. She recognized the slight curl of his lip as the outward disguise of a pain he didn’t like to talk about. It was a look she had seen on her own face in the mirror.
He struck her as a straight arrow, but not as shallow. He looked like he had been around, made his share of mistakes. She liked that in him.
‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘How did you get into the reporting business?’
‘I always wanted to be a reporter,’ she said. ‘Even in high school. It keeps you busy. You meet a lot of people.’
‘People who aren’t necessarily glad to see you,’ Kraig added.
‘That’s right,’ she said, nodding. ‘But at least it gets you out of the house. I’m not that fond of my own company.’
She took a bite of her tuna sandwich, grimaced, and drank a swallow of coffee. ‘Jesus,’ she said. It had been years since she tasted food this bad, even on an airplane.
Kraig smiled understandingly.
She switched to the granola bar and ate half of it before saying what was on her mind.
‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘The same disease,’ she said. ‘The same as Everhardt.’
Kraig gave her a steady look.
‘You don’t listen, do you?’ he said. ‘No comment.’
‘On background?’ She smiled. ‘Off the record?’
He shook his head.
She was watching Kraig closely.
‘All vital functions normal,’ she said. ‘But the patient can’t act. Can’t obey simple commands, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t feed himself. A paralysis of the function of action or decision.’
Kraig said nothing.
‘They’re looking for a vector,’ Karen said. ‘But they don’t really have a disease, so the vector may not help. There is no known disease that produces these symptoms.’
Kraig asked, ‘How do you know?’
‘I never reveal my sources.’ She shrugged.
‘Anyway, as it happens, I know a little something about this sort of thing. I did a double major in biochemistry and journalism in college. I’ve done a lot of reporting on diseases. This is definitely something new.’
Kraig shrugged. ‘If you say so. I’m not a doctor.’
She leaned forward, a hint of her clean-smelling cologne reaching Kraig, who smiled slightly.
‘Out here there are hundreds of victims,’ she said. ‘Each area is covered completely. But in Washington there is only one victim. The vice president of the United States.’
Kraig kept his poker face. But he knew she was right. If Everhardt had the same disease, dozens of others in Washington should have it by now. Something here didn’t add up.
‘Everhardt is a key to the president’s popularity. He’s big, he’s down to earth, he’s popular among men as well as women. It took the party a long time to come up with him as a running mate. Take him away, and the administration is a lot weaker with the voters. He won’t be easy to replace.’
Kraig was silent.
‘And what about the president’s political enemies?’ she asked. ‘What about Colin Goss? How does he feel about this turn of events?’
Kraig shrugged. ‘Am I supposed to have a reaction to that?’ he asked.
She crumpled the wrapper of the granola bar and threw it on the tray.
‘Something isn’t right,’ she said. ‘About Everhardt. And about this.’ She glanced around her at the deserted cafeteria.
Kraig said nothing.
‘I’m going to find out,’ she said. ‘With you or without you. When the time comes, it may be you asking the questions.’
‘Maybe.’ Kraig nodded.
‘I’m betting twelve years of journalism that you won’t like the answers,’ she said.
Picking up her coat, she left the cafeteria. Her shoulders looked very small under her sweater. A tired young woman, no doubt an incurable workaholic, who did not bother to hide her unhappiness.
Kraig liked her. There was a tranquil hopelessness about her that struck a chord in him. She had given up on something a long time ago – love? belonging? – and the emptiness it left behind gave her sharp definition as a person. The reporters he had known were shallow people, slaves to their own ambition. Karen Embry was a human being, albeit a scarred one.
Kraig wondered what she looked like without those clothes on. What her cologne smelled like closer up, when one’s lips were against her skin.
He hoped he would never see her again.