III
[ONE]
Laboratory Four
The AFC Corporation—McCarran Facility
Las Vegas, Nevada
0835 4 February 2007
Laboratory Four was not visible to anyone looking across McCarran International Airport toward what had become the center of AFC’s worldwide production and research-and-development activity.
This was because Laboratory Four was deep underground, beneath Hangar III, one of a row of enormous hangars each bearing the AFC logotype. It was also below Laboratories One, Two, and Three, which were closer to ground level as their numbers suggested, One being immediately beneath the hangar.
When Aloysius Francis Casey, AFC’s chairman, had been a student at MIT, he had become friendly with a Korean-American student of architecture, who was something of an outcast because of his odd notion that with some exceptions—aircraft hangars being one—all industrial buildings, which would include laboratories, should be underground.
This had gotten J. Charles Who in as much trouble with the architectural faculty as had Casey’s odd notions of data transmission and encryption had done the opposite of endearing him to the electrical engineering and mathematics faculties.
Years later, when Casey decided that he had had quite enough, thank you, of the politicians and weather of his native Massachusetts to last a lifetime, and wanted to move at least the laboratories and some of the manufacturing facilities elsewhere, he got in touch with his old school chum and sought his expertise.
Site selection was Problem One. Las Vegas had quickly risen to the head of the list of possibilities for a number of reasons including location, tax concessions to be granted by the state and local governments for bringing a laboratory/ production facility with several thousand extremely well-paid and well-educated workers to Sin City, and the attractions of Sin City itself.
At Who’s suggestion, just about everything would go to Vegas.
Charley Who, Ph.D. (MIT), AIA, had pointed out to Aloysius Casey, Ph.D. (MIT), that all work and no play would tend to make his extremely well-paid workers dull. It was hard to become bored in Las Vegas, whether one’s interests lay in the cultural or the carnal, or a combination of both.
Construction had begun immediately and in earnest, starting with the laboratories that would be under Hangar III. They were something like the BioLabs at Fort Detrick in that they were as “pure” as they could be made. The air and water was filtered as it entered and was discharged. The humidity and temperature in the labs was whatever the particular labs required, and being below ground cut the cost of doing this to a tiny fraction of what it would have cost in a surface building. They were essentially soundproof. And, finally, the deeper underground that they were, the less they were affected by vibration, say a heavy truck driving by or the landing of a heavy airplane. Almost all of Aloysius’s gadgets in development were very tiny and quite delicate. Much of the work on them was done using microscopes or their electronic equivalent. Vibration was the enemy.
What Casey was working on now in Laboratory Four, his personal lab—“My latest gadget,” as he put it—was yet another improvement on a system he had developed for the gambling cops, or as they liked to portray themselves, “The security element of the gaming industry.”
Many people try to cheat the casinos. Most are incredibly stupid. But a small number are the exact opposite: incredibly smart, imaginative, and resourceful. Both stupid and near-genius would-be thieves alike have to deal with the same problem: One has to be physically in a casino if one is to steal anything.
Surveillance cameras scan every inch of a casino floor, often from several angles, and the angles can be changed. The people watching these monitors know what to look for. If some dummy is seen stealing quarters from Grandma’s bucket on a slot machine row, or some near-genius is engaged with three or more equally intelligent co-conspirators in a complex scheme to cheat the casino at a twenty-one table, they are seen. Security officers are sent to the slot machine or the twenty-one table. The would-be thieves and cheats are taken to an area where they are photographed, fingerprinted, counseled regarding the punishments involved for cheating a casino, and then shown the door.
The problem then becomes that stupid and near-genius alike tend to believe that if at first you don’t succeed, one should try, try again. They come back, now disguised with a phony mustache or a wig and a change of clothing.
Specially trained security officers, who regularly review the photographs of caught crooks, stand at casino doors and roam the floors looking for familiar, if unwelcome, faces.
When Casey had first moved to Las Vegas, he had been very discreetly approached—the day he was welcomed into the Las Vegas Chamber of Gaming, Hospitality and Other Commerce—by a man who then owned three—and now owned five—of the more glitzy hotel/casinos in Sin City.
The man approached Casey at the urinal in the men’s room of the Via Veneto Restaurant in Caligula’s Palace Resort and Casino and said he wanted to thank him for what he was doing for the “boys in the stockade in Bragg.”
“I don’t know who or what the hell you’re talking about,” Casey had replied immediately.
But Casey of course knew full well who the boys in the stockade in Fort Bragg were—Delta Force; their base had once been the post stockade—and what he was doing for them—providing them with whatever they asked for, absolutely free of charge, or didn’t ask for but got anyway because Casey thought it might be useful.
“Sure you do,” the man had said. “The commo gear. It was very useful last week in Tunisia.”
“How the hell did you find out about that?” Casey had blurted.
“We have sources all over.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Like you, people who happen to be in positions where we can help the good guys, and try quietly—very quietly—to do so. I’d like to talk to you about our group some time.”
“These people have names?”
They were furnished.
“Give me a day or two to check these people out,” Casey said, “then come to see me.”
The first person Casey had tried to call was then-Major General Bruce J. McNab, who at the time commanded the Special Forces Center at Fort Bragg. He got instead then-Major Charley Castillo on the phone. Castillo did odd jobs for McNab—both had told Casey that—and he’d become one of Casey’s favorite people since they’d first met.
And when Casey had asked, Castillo had flatly—almost indignantly—denied telling anyone about the Tunisian radios mentioned in the casino pisser and of ever even hearing of the man who claimed to own the glitzy Las Vegas hotels.
General McNab, however, when he came on the line, was so obfuscatory about both questions—even aware that the line was encrypted—that Casey promptly decided (a) McNab knew the guy who owned the three glitzy casinos; (b) had told the guy where the radios used in Tunisia had come from; (c) had more than likely suggested he could probably wheedle some out of Casey, which meant he knew and approved of what the guy was up to; and, thus, (d) didn’t want Castillo to know about (a) through (c).
That had been surprising. For years, from the time during the First Desert War, when then-Second Lieutenant Castillo had gone to work for then-Colonel McNab, Casey had thought—In fact I was told—that Castillo was always privy to all of McNab’s secrets.
Casey prided himself on his few friends, and on having no secrets from them. He had quickly solved the problem here by concluding that having no secrets did not mean you had to tell your friends everything you knew, but rather, if asked, to be wholly forthcoming.
If Castillo asked about these people in Las Vegas, he would tell him. If he didn’t ask, he would not.
And, as quickly, he had decided if these people were okay in General McNab’s book, they were okay—period.
Unless of course something happened that changed that.
Casey had called the man who owned the three glitzy hotels—and was in business discussions leading to the construction of the largest hotel in the world (7,550 rooms)—and told him he was in.
“What do these people need?” Casey asked.
He was told: secure telephones to connect them all.
While AFC had such devices sitting in his warehouse, these were not what he delivered to the people in Las Vegas. The secure telephones they used thereafter had encryption circuitry that could not be decrypted by even the legendary National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. Casey knew this because the NSA’s equipment had come from AFC Corporation.
And after that, and after writing several very substantial checks to pay his share of what it had cost those people to do something that had to be done—but for one reason or another couldn’t be done by the various intelligence agencies—Casey realized that he had become one of the group.
No one said anything to him. He didn’t get a membership card.
He just knew.
He became friendly with the man who owned the glitzy hotels, and not only because one of his hotels had a restaurant to which lobsters and clams were flown in daily from Maine. The man who owned the hotels was from New Jersey. Politicians and high taxes, not the cuisine, had driven him from the Garden State. They took to taking together what they thought of as One of God’s Better Meals—a dozen steamed clams and a pair of three-pound lobsters washed down with a couple of pitchers of beer—once or twice a week.
One day, en route to the restaurant, Casey had witnessed one of the gambling cops intently studying the face of the man who happened to be walking ahead of Casey.
“What’s that all about?” Casey had asked his new friend the casino owner between their first pitcher of beer and the clams, and their lobsters and the second pitcher.
The problem of controlling undesirable incoming gamblers was explained.
“There has to be a better way to do that than having your gambling cops in everybody’s face,” Casey said. “Let me think about it.”
The AFC prototype was delivered in three weeks, and operational a week after that. All the photographs of miscreants in the files were digitalized. Additional digital cameras were discreetly installed at the entrances in such positions that the only way to avoid having one’s face captured by the system would be to arrive by parachute on the roof.
The computer software quickly and constantly attempted to cross-match images of casino patrons with the database of miscreants on the security servers. When a “hit” was made, the gambling cops could immediately take corrective action to protect the casino.
The owner was delighted, and ordered installation of the system in all his properties as quickly as this could be accomplished.
But Casey was just getting started. The first major improvement was to provide the gambling cops with a small communications device that looked like a telephone. When a “hit” was made, every security officer in the establishment was immediately furnished with both the digital image of Mr. Unwelcome—or Grandma Unwelcome; there were a surprising number of the latter—and the last known location of said miscreant.
It hadn’t been hard for Casey to improve on that. Soon the miscreant’s name, aliases, and other personal data, including why he or she was unwelcome, was flashed to the gambling cops as soon as there was a hit.
The next large—and expensive—step had required the replacement of the system computers with ones of much greater capacity and speed. The owner complained not a word when he got the bill. He thought of himself, after all, as a leader in the hospitality and gaming industry, and there was a price that had to be paid for that.
The system now made a hit when a good customer returned to the premises, presumably bringing more funds to pass into the casino’s coffers through the croupier’s slots. He was greeted as quickly and as warmly as possible, and depending on how bad his luck had been the last time, provided with complimentary accommodations, victuals, and spirits. Often, the gambling cops assigned to keep them happy were attractive members of the opposite gender.
Good Grandmother customers, interestingly enough, seemed to appreciate this courtesy more than most of the men.
The new system soon covered all of the hotels owned by the proprietor. And the database grew as guests’ pertinent details—bank balances, credit reports, domestic problems, known associates, carnal preferences, that sort of thing—were added.
For a while, as he had been working on the system, Casey had thought it would have a sure market in other areas where management wanted to keep a close eye on people within its walls. Prisons, for example.
AFC’s legal counsel had quickly disabused him of this pleasant notion. The ACLU would go ballistic, his lawyers warned, at what they would perceive as an outrageous violation of a felon’s right to privacy while incarcerated. He would be the accused in a class action lawsuit that would probably cost him millions.
What Casey was doing when his cellular buzzed in the lab deep beneath Hangar III was conducting a sort of graduation ceremony for a pair of students who had just completed How This Works 101. He had just presented the graduates with what looked like fairly ordinary BlackBerrys or similar so-called smart-phones.
Actually, by comparison, the capabilities of the CaseyBerry devices that Casey had given the two students made the BlackBerry look as state-of-the-art as the wood fire from which an Apache brave informs his squaw that he’ll be a little late for supper by allowing puffs of smoke to rise.
The students were First Lieutenant Edmund “Peg-Leg” Lorimer, MI, USA (Retired), and former Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley, USMC.
When the Office of Organizational Analysis had been disbanded and its men and women ordered to vanish from the face of the earth, Casey had had a private word with Castillo about them.
Neither Bradley nor Lorimer had a family—perhaps more accurately: a family into whose arms they would be welcomed with joy—and neither had skills readily convertible to earning a decent living as a civilian. There was not much of a market for a one-legged Spanish/English/Portuguese interpreter, or for a five-foot-two, hundred-thirty-pound twenty-year-old who could give marksmanship instruction to Annie Oakley. Further, there was the problem that they, too, were expected to fall off the face of the earth and never be seen again.
Both men, Casey had told Castillo, had become skilled in the use of the state-of-the-art communications equipment that OOA had been using. Casey intended to keep providing similar equipment to Delta Force, and with some additional training, Bradley and Lorimer could assume responsibility for training Delta troopers to operate and maintain it.
So far as their falling off the face of the earth, Casey said, they would be hard to find in Las Vegas and next to impossible to find if they moved in with him at the home Charley Who had built for the Caseys on a very expensive piece of mountainside real estate that overlooked Las Vegas. Now that Mrs. Casey had finally succumbed to an especially nasty and painful carcinoma, there was nobody in the place but the Mexican couple who took care of Casey.
And to keep them busy when they weren’t dealing with the equipment for Delta Force, or keeping an eye on the communications network used by those people, they would be welcomed—and well paid—by the gaming industry as experts in the digital photo recognition and data system.
Not thirty seconds after Casey had handed Lorimer and Bradley their new cell phones, vibration announced an incoming message on the peoples’ circuit, and Casey thought he had inadvertently pressed the CHECK FUNCTIONING key.
But he checked the screen and saw that there was indeed an incoming message.
It’s from Colonel Hamilton.
I wonder what the hell he wants.
When, inside his Level A hazmat gear, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton had pressed the TRANSMIT button for his cellular phone, and given his name, the following had happened:
An integral voice recognition circuit had determined that he was indeed Colonel J. Porter Hamilton and, at about the time a satellite link had been established between Hamilton and Las Vegas, had announced that Encryption Level One was now active.
By the time Hamilton spoke again to report the delivery of biohazardous material to his laboratory and what he planned to do about it, the cell phones in the hands of those people had vibrated to announce the arrival of an incoming call. Their cell phones automatically recorded the message, and then sent a message to Hamilton’s phone that the message had been received and recorded.
He had then broken the connection.
When those called “answered” their telephones, either when the call was first made, or whenever they got around to it, they would hear the recorded message. A small green LED on the telephone would indicate that the caller was at that moment on the line. A red LED would indicate the caller was not.
Casey saw that the red LED was illuminated.
Hamilton’s off-line.
I wonder what he wanted.
As he touched the ANSWER key, he saw that both Lester and Peg-Leg were doing the same thing.
Hamilton’s message was played to them all.
“I wonder what the hell that’s all about,” Casey wondered out loud.
“He said, ‘identical to what I brought out of the Congo,’” Peg-Leg said. “What did he bring out of the Congo?”
Both Peg-Leg and Aloysius looked at Lester, whose face was troubled.
“You know what Hamilton’s talking about, Lester?” Casey asked.
Bradley looked even more uncomfortable.
Casey waited patiently, and was rewarded for his patience.
“Colonel Torine would, sir,” Bradley said finally.
“How many times do I have to tell you to call me ‘Aloysius’?” Casey said.
He pushed a button on his CaseyBerry.
“Jake? Aloysius,” he said a moment later. “Got a minute? Can you come to my lab?”
“Captain Sparkman would know, too,” Bradley said.
“Sparkman with you?” Casey said to his telephone, and a moment later, “Bring him, too.”
Casey pushed another button and said, “Pass Torine and Sparkman,” and then looked at Peg-Leg and Lester. “They’re in the hangar.”
He pointed upward.
Colonel Jacob Torine, USAF (Retired), and Mr. Richard Sparkman (formerly Captain USAF) got off the elevator ninety seconds later.
They were dressed almost identically in khaki trousers, polo shirts, and zipper jackets, and had large multibutton watches on their wrists. Their belts held cases for Ray-Ban sunglasses. They both had clear blue eyes. No one would ever guess that they were pilots.
“What’s up?
“Listen to this,” Casey said, and handed him his Caseyberry, and motioned for Lester to hand his to Sparkman.
Both listened to Colonel J. Porter Hamilton’s message.
Sparkman’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
Torine said, “Oh, shit!” and then asked, “When did you get this?”
“Just now.”
“Not good news,” Torine said. “What is the exact opposite of ‘good news’?”
Casey said, “What’s he talking about? What did he bring out of the Congo?”
Torine exhaled.
He looked around the laboratory.
“I don’t suppose this place is bugged?”
Casey shook his head.
“We went over there in Delta’s 727,” Torine said. “It was painted in the color scheme of Sub-Saharan Airways—” He stopped. “Why am I telling you this? You know.”
“Go on, Jake,” Casey said.
“We landed at Kilimanjaro International in Tanzania. Uncle Remus and his crew went by truck to Bujumbura in Burundi. There’s an airport at Bujumbura but Castillo decided we’d attract too much attention if we used it, particularly if we sat on the runway for a couple of days, maybe longer.
“Uncle Remus infiltrated Hamilton back into the Congo from Bujumbura. And then when Hamilton found what he found, and the shit hit the fan, we got a message from Uncle Remus to move the airplane to Bujumbura, yesterday, and have it prepared for immediate takeoff.
“We were there about three hours when Uncle Remus, his crew, and Hamilton showed up. They had with them a half-dozen of what looked like rubber beer kegs. Blue.”
He demonstrated with his hands the size of the kegs.
“Uncle Remus asked me if we could fly to the States with the HALO compartment depressurized and open.”
“I don’t understand that,” Lester said. “‘HALO compartment’?”
“For ‘High Altitude, Low Opening’ parachute infiltration from up to forty thousand feet,” Peg-Leg explained. “The rear half—the HALO compartment—of the fuselage can be sealed off from the rest of the fuselage, and then, where that rear stairway was, opened to the atmosphere.”
“Got it,” Lester said.
“I told him yes,” Torine went on, “and Hamilton said, ‘Thank God,’ as if he meant it.
“I asked him what was going on, and he told me the beer barrels contained more dangerous material than I could imagine, and extraordinary precautions were in order; he would explain later. He asked me how cold the HALO compartment would get in flight, and I told him probably at least sixty degrees below zero, and he said, ‘Thank God,’ again and sounded like he meant it this time, too.
“Then he and Uncle Remus and his team loaded the barrels in the HALO compartment. When they came out, everybody stripped to the skin. They took a shower on the tarmac using the fire engine and some special soap and chemicals Hamilton had with him. Then they put on whatever clothing we had aboard, flight suits, some other clothing, and got in the front, and we took off.
“Before we had climbed out to cruising altitude, we got some company, a flight of F/A-18E Super Hornets from a carrier in the Indian Ocean. They stayed with us until we were over the Atlantic, where they handed us over to some Super Hornets flying off a carrier in the Atlantic.
“We headed for North Carolina—Pope Air Force at Fort Bragg. We were refueled in flight halfway across the Atlantic and when the refueling was over, we were handed over to a flight of Air Force F-16s who stayed with us until we got to Pope.
“When we got to Pope, we were directed to the Delta hangar, and immediately towed inside and the doors closed. Then maybe two dozen guys in science-fiction movie space suits swarmed all over the airplane. Some of them went into the HALO compartment and removed the barrels. I later learned they were sealed and then loaded aboard a Citation Three and flown to Washington.
“They took everybody off the airplane and gave us a bath. Unbelievable. Soap, chemicals, some kind of powder. It took half an hour. And then they held us—everybody but Hamilton and Uncle Remus; they went on the Citation with the barrels—for twenty-four hours for observation, gave us another bath, and finally let us go.
“General McNab was waiting for us—did I mention they held us in the hangar?—when they finally turned us loose. He gave us the standard speech about keeping this secret for the rest of our natural lives or suffer castration with a dull knife.”
“What was in the barrels, Jake?” Casey asked softly. “Did Hamilton tell you?”
Torine nodded.
“He said two of them contained ‘laboratory material’ and the other four had ‘tissue samples.’ When I pressed him on that, he said that two of the barrels contained body parts from bodies he and Uncle Remus dug up near this place, and the other two held the bodies of two people, one black and one white, that Uncle Remus took down when they had to get into the laboratory. He said he needed them for autopsies.”
“Jesus!” Casey said.
“And now we learn that not everything was destroyed,” Sparkman said. “The word I got was there was nothing left standing or unburned in a twenty-square-mile area. What the hell is this all about?”
“I don’t know,” Casey admitted. “But I just had this thought: It doesn’t matter to you guys. OOA is dead. You’ve fallen off the face of the earth. You’re out of the loop. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Why don’t I believe that, Aloysius?” Torine asked softly.
“Probably because you’re an old fart like me, and have learned that when things are as black as they can possibly get, they invariably get worse.”
[TWO]
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
Fort Detrick, Maryland
0905 4 February 2007
The declaration of a Potential Level Four Disaster at Fort Detrick by Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, MC, caused a series of standing operating procedures to kick in—something akin to a row of dominoes tumbling, one domino knocking over the one adjacent, but in this instance damned faster.
When Master Sergeant Dennis called the post duty officer, he actually called the garrison duty officer. On coming to work for Colonel Hamilton, Dennis had quickly learned that the colonel often had trouble with Army bureaucracy and that it was his job to provide the colonel with what he wanted, which often was not what he asked for.
The garrison duty officer immediately expressed doubt that Master Sergeant Dennis was actually asking for what he said he was.
“A Potential Level Four Disaster? You sure about that, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. Colonel Hamilton said he was declaring a Potential Level Four Disaster.”
The garrison duty officer consulted his SOP dealing with disasters, and checked who was authorized to declare one.
There were three people who could on their own authority declare a Potential Level Four Disaster: the garrison commander, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, and the garrison duty officer.
“Let me speak to Colonel Hamilton, Sergeant,” the garrison duty officer said.
“He’s on his phone, Major. Now, do you want to send a Level Four van over here, personnel in Level One hazmat suits, or should I call for it?”
“You have that authority?”
“Yes, sir. I do. And I have authority to have Level Four BioLab Two opened and on standby. You want me to do that, too, sir?”
“Why don’t you do that, Sergeant, while I bring the garrison commander up to speed on this. And, Sergeant, see if you can have Colonel Hamilton call her.”
“Yes, sir,” Master Sergeant Dennis said.
The duty officer called the garrison commander.
“Major Lott, ma’am. Ma’am, we seem to have a problem.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“Ma’am, Colonel Hamilton’s sergeant just called and said the colonel wanted to declare a Potential Level Four Disaster.”
There was a pause. Then the garrison commander said, “Let me make sure I understand the situation. You say Colonel Hamilton’s sergeant called and told you Colonel Hamilton wants to declare a Potential Level Four Disaster? Is that it?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s it. I thought I’d better bring you up to speed on this, ma’am.”
The garrison commander thought: What you were supposed to do, you stupid sonofabitch, was sound the goddamned alarm sirens, get a Level Four van over to Hamilton, get a Level Four BioLab on emergency standby and then—and only then—call me.
And you’re a goddamn major?
Jesus H. Christ.
She said calmly: “Listen carefully. What I want you to do, Major, is first sound the alarm sirens. Then send a Level Four van to Colonel Hamilton’s laboratory, and when you’ve done that, get a Level Four BioLab on emergency standby. Got all that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then do it,” the garrison commander said, and broke the connection.
Major Lott raised the cover of the alarm activation switch and then pressed on the switch. Sirens all over began to howl.
He then consulted the standing operating procedure to see what else was required of him to do—thus knocking over the first of the dominoes.
The provost marshal was notified. The first thing listed on his SOP was to lock down the fort. Nobody in. Nobody out. He did so. The second thing on his list was to notify the garrison medical facility to prepare for casualties. The third thing listed was to notify the Secret Service detachment on the base. He did so, and then continued to work down his list.
The first thing on the Secret Service Detachment SOP was to notify local law enforcement agencies. With Fort Detrick equidistant between Washington, D.C. (forty-five miles), and Baltimore, Maryland (forty-six miles), there was a large number of law enforcement agencies in that area, each of which was entitled to know of the problem at Fort Detrick.
The Secret Service agent instead first called his special agent in charge at the Department of Homeland Security at the Nebraska Avenue complex in the District of Columbia. He told him about the Potential Level Four Disaster, but had to confess that was all he knew.
“I’ll handle it,” the SAC said.
The Secret Service agent began calling the numbers on his list of law enforcement agencies to be notified.
The SAC at Homeland Security attempted to contact the secretary of Homeland Security but was told he was in Chicago with Mayor Daley. He then got the assistant secretary for enforcement on the telephone and told him about the Potential Level Four Disaster at Fort Detrick.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ll handle it.”
He contacted the garrison commander on a hotline.
“Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Andrews, Colonel,” he said. “I understand you’ve got a little problem over there.”
The garrison commander had by then spoken with Master Sergeant Dennis, who had told her about the container that had arrived with the morning FedEx shipment.
When she had told Andrews this, he said, “I’ll take immediate action.”
Andrews then called the SAC back, told him to get on the horn to his people at Detrick, and have them grab the container and not let anybody else near it.
“How’s the quickest way for me to get there?” the assistant secretary asked.
“It would probably be quicker in one of our Yukons than trying to get a chopper, Mr. Secretary. I can have one at your door in ninety seconds.”
“Do it.”
Five and a half minutes later, a black Secret Service Yukon—red and blue lights flashing from behind its grille and with another magnet-based blue light flashing on the roof—skidded to a stop in front of the main building and picked up Assistant Secretary Andrews. The SAC was in the front seat, where the assistant secretary preferred to ride.
Andrews thought: Ninety seconds, my ass.
That took five minutes plus, and we need to roll.
“Get in the back,” he said.
Only then did the assistant secretary remember he had had another option. He could have told the SAC to get out.
But it was too late. He took a seat in the second row and, siren screaming and lights flashing, they were on their way to the Potential Level Four Disaster at Fort Detrick.
[THREE]
Office of the Presidential Press Secretary
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1020 4 February 2007
There were a half-dozen television monitors mounted on the wall of John David “Porky” Parker’s office, one for each of the major television networks, and the other three for the “major” cable news programs.
The sound of only one was on, the volume low but on.
Porky Parker was more or less addicted to watching/listening to Wolf News. Not because he liked it, but the opposite. He hated it. Wolf News gave him the most trouble. It seemed to be dedicated to the proposition that all politicians, from POTUS down, were scoundrels, mountebanks, and fools, and that it was Wolf News’s noble duty to bring every proof—or suggestion—of this to the attention of the American people.
The problem was compounded for Porky by the fact that the people of Wolf News were very good at what they did, and with great skill went after the scoundrels, mountebanks, and fools regardless of political affiliation.
Wolf News used the fourth and final part of Gioacchino Antonio Rossini’s (1792-1868) “William Tell Overture” to catch people’s attention whenever there was “breaking news.” Most people recognized the music as the theme for the Lone Ranger motion picture and television series.
That was happening now, and when Porky faintly heard the stirring music, he reached for the remote control as a Pavlovian reaction and raised his eyes to the screen. He had the sound turned up in time to see and hear the Wolf News anchor-on-duty proclaim, “There is breaking news! Wolf News is on top of it! Back in sixty seconds ...”
There then followed a sixty-second commercial offering The Wall Street Journal delivered to one’s home for only pennies a day.
Then the screen showed what looked like the scene of a major traffic accident. There were at least thirty police cars, all with their red and blue lights flashing. It had been taken from a helicopter. At the upper right corner of the screen, a message unnecessarily flashed, LIVE! LIVE! FROM A WOLF NEWS CHOPPER!
Porky was a second from muting the sound when the voice of the on-duty Wolf News anchor announced, “What we’re looking at, from a Wolf News chopper, is the main gate of Fort Detrick, Maryland. We don’t know, yet, what exactly is going on here. But we do know that the post has been closed down, nobody gets in or out, and that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency just choppered in and a ‘senior official’ of the Department of Homeland Security not yet identified just arrived in a vehicle with a screaming siren ...”
In another Pavlovian reflex, Porky reached for his White House telephone and told the operator to get him the commanding general of Fort Detrick on a secure line.
“Colonel Russell.”
“This is the White House switchboard. This line is secure. Mr. Parker wishes to speak with the commanding general.”
“This is the garrison commander.”
“Mr. Parker wishes to speak with the commanding general.”
“We don’t have a commanding general. I’m the senior officer, the garrison commander.”
“One moment please.”
“Colonel, this is John Parker, the President’s press secretary.”
“This is Colonel Florence Russell. What can I do for you, Mr. Parker?”
“What’s going on down there?”
The garrison commander for a moment considered correcting the pompous political lackey with “What’s going on up here, Porky. Fort Detrick is damn near due north of D.C. ...” but instead said, “We have a Potential Level Four biological hazard disaster, Mr. Parker.”
“What does that mean, exactly?
“The operative word is ‘potential.’ We may have, repeat may have, a biological hazard disaster, Level Four. The most serious kind.”
“What happened?”
“All I can tell you, Mr. Parker, is that our chief scientific officer, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, has declared a Potential Level Four biological hazard disaster, and we have taken the necessary actions to deal with that.”
“Colonel Russell, I repeat: What does that mean?”
“Per SOP, we have shut down the post, alerted the hospital, and notified the proper authorities. Until we hear from Colonel Hamilton, that’s all we can do.”
“May I speak with Colonel Hamilton, please?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment, Mr. Parker.”
“Why not?”
“Colonel Hamilton is in Level Four BioLab Two.”
“And there’s no telephone in there?”
“There’s a telephone. He’s not answering it.”
“Perhaps if you told him the White House is calling, he might change his mind.”
“To do that, Mr. Parker, I would have to get him on the line. And he’s not picking up.”
“Can you tell me what he’s doing?”
“I can tell you what I think he’s doing. A package was delivered to him shortly before he declared the potential disaster. I think it’s reasonable to presume he’s examining the contents of that package.”
“To what end, Colonel?”
“To see if what it contains justifies changing the current status from ‘potential’ to ‘actual.’ Or from ‘Potential Level Four’ to a lesser threat designation. We won’t know until he tells us.”
“The President, Colonel, is going to want to know.”
“Colonel Hamilton is not answering the telephone in the laboratory, Mr. Parker.”
“I understand DCI Powell is there.”
“Yes, he is. Would you like to speak with him, Mr. Parker?”
“Not right now. Colonel, you understand that I’m going to have to tell the President that the only person who seems to know what’s going on won’t answer his telephone?”
“I suppose that’s true,” Colonel Russell said.
“I’ll get back to you, Colonel,” Parker said, and then feverishly tapped the switchhook in the telephone handset cradle to get the switchboard operator back on the line.
“Yes, Mr. Parker?”
“Get me DCI Powell.”
“Powell.”
“Mr. Parker is calling, Mr. Powell. The line is secure.”
“Mr. Powell, John Parker. What the hell is going on over there?”
“John ...” the director of Central Intelligence began, and then stopped. After a long moment, he resumed: “John, I was just about to call the President. I think it would be best if he decided what to tell you about this.”
Parker heard the click that told him Powell had just broken the connection.
Porky Parker normally had unquestioned access to the President, anywhere, at any time. But now when he approached the door to the Oval Office, one of the two Secret Service men on duty put on an insincere smile and held up his hand to bar him.
The second Secret Service agent then opened the door, and called in, “Mr. President, Mr. Parker?”
Parker heard President Clendennen’s impatient reply: “Not now.”
Then he heard another male voice: “Mr. President, may I respectfully suggest that we’re going to need Parker.”
After a moment, Parker recognized the voice as that of Ambassador Charles M. Montvale, the director of National Intelligence.
There was a brief pause, and then Clendennen, even more impatiently, drawled, “All right. Let him in.”
The Secret Service agent at the door waved Parker into the Oval Office.
The President was at his desk, slumped back in his high-backed blue leather-upholstered judge’s chair. Ambassador Montvale was sitting in an armchair looking up at the wall-mounted television monitor. Secretary of State Natalie Cohen was sitting sideward on the couch facing Montvale, also looking at the television.
The President looked at Parker and pointed to the television. Parker moved to the opposite wall, leaned on it, and looked up at the television.
Surprising Parker not at all, the President was watching Wolf News.
There was a flashing banner across the bottom on the screen: BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS!
The Wolf News anchor-on-duty was sitting at his desk, facing C. Harry Whelan, Jr. A banner read: C. HARRY WHELAN, JR., WOLF NEWS DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTOR.
Whelan was answering a question, and although he hadn’t heard it, Parker knew what the question was: “What’s going on at Fort Detrick?”
“Well, of course I don’t know, Steven,” C. Harry Whelan, Jr., said, somewhat pontifically, “but it seems to me, with the director of Central Intelligence there—plus that unnamed senior official from Homeland Security—that the situation there, whatever it is, is under control. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say we have a case of high-level arf-arf.”
“‘Arf-arf,’ Harry?”
“You don’t know the term?” Whelan asked, surprised.
The anchor-on-duty shook his head.
“Well, far be it from me to suggest anything at all that would cast any aspersion whatever on my good friend, Central Intelligence Agency Director Jack Powell—or for that matter on the unidentified senior Homeland Security official—but, hypothetically speaking, if President Clendennen had two dogs—say, a Labrador and a cocker spaniel—and they started chasing their tails, the sound they would be making would be arf-arf.”
The camera paused for a moment on Mr. Whelan’s face—he looked very pleased with himself—and then a picture of the front page of The Wall Street Journal replaced it and a voice-over deeply intoned, “For only pennies a day ...”
The screen went black.
“I hate that sonofabitch,” President Clendennen said.
A full thirty seconds later, Porky Parker broke the silence: “May I ask what’s going on at Fort Detrick?”
President Clendennen glared at him.
Secretary of State Natalie Cohen came to his rescue.
“Mr. President, you’re either going to have to make a statement, or have Jack make one in your name.”
“That might prove to be difficult, Madam Secretary,” President Clendennen said sarcastically, “as we don’t seem to have the first goddamn clue about what’s going on at Fort Detrick.”
He let that sink in, and then went on: “And if what the DCI has just told me is true, I don’t think we should broadcast that little gem from the White House.”
“Mr. President, what exactly did DCI Powell say?” Ambassador Montvale asked.
“He said this colonel had gotten word to him that he ‘strongly suspects’ that the attack we made on the quote unquote Fish Farm in the Congo—the attack that brought us this close”—he held his thumb and index fingers perhaps a quarter of an inch apart—“to a nuclear exchange—did not kill all the fishes.”
“You’re talking about Colonel Hamilton, Mr. President?” Montvale asked.
The President nodded.
“How could he know that?”
“That’s what Powell said; that he got a message to that effect from Hamilton.”
“What does Hamilton say?”
“He’s not answering his telephone,” the President said bitterly, then picked up his telephone.
“Get me Powell,” he ordered, and then, not twenty seconds later, said, “Is he still not answering his phone?”
There was a short reply.
“The minute he comes out of that laboratory, put him in your helicopter and bring him here.”
He put the telephone handset into its cradle.
“And now we wait,” Clendennen said. “The President of the United States, the secretary of State, and the director of National Intelligence wait for some lousy colonel to find time for us. ...”
[FOUR]
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
Fort Detrick, Maryland
1035 4 February 2007
Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, Medical Corps, U.S. Army, came through the outer portal of Level Four BioLab Two wearing only a bathrobe. The crest of the United States Military Academy was on the breast, and the legend WEST POINT was on the back.
He found in the room the garrison commander, the director of Central Intelligence, the assistant secretary of Homeland Security, the special agent in charge at the Department of Homeland Security, the Fort Detrick provost marshal, two Secret Service agents, and Master Sergeant Dennis.
“You’ll have to pardon my appearance, Colonel Russell,” Colonel Hamilton said.
“Not a problem, Colonel,” Colonel Florence Russell replied.
Hamilton turned to DCI Powell, and said, “I can only surmise that those people relayed my message to you.”
Powell nodded.
“Colonel, my name is Mason Andrews. I’m the assistant secretary of Homeland Security. I would be grateful—”
“First things first,” Hamilton interrupted. “Sergeant Dennis, could I impose upon you to take your car and get me a uniform from my quarters? I’m afraid the keys to my car are in there, in my uniform.”
“Way ahead of you, Colonel,” Dennis said. “Fresh uniform’s in the lobby. I’ll go get it.”
“Good man,” Hamilton said. “Mr. Powell and I will be in the locker room.”
He looked at Colonel Russell. “Colonel, would it offend you if I suggested that you come with us? You could turn your back while I dress.”
“Not at all,” she said.
“The President’s really curious about what’s going on here, Colonel,” DCI Powell said. “He wants to see you at the White House. There’s a helicopter—”
“Would you prefer to wait until we’re at the White House?” Hamilton said. “I have to bring Colonel Russell up to speed on this before I go anywhere.”
“I’ll go with you and Colonel Russell,” Powell said.
“So will I,” Assistant Secretary Andrews said.
“I think not,” Hamilton said.
“Excuse me?” Andrews bristled.
“I can tell you what you need to know right here: There is no immediate threat.” He turned to the provost marshal, and added, “As soon as you can, you’re to establish a guard around, one, where the package was originally examined; two, my office; and three, this building, to which no one is to enter without the specific approval of myself, Master Sergeant Dennis, or of course Colonel Russell. And you may lift the shut-down. Colonel Russell will have more details after we have spoken.”
“Yes, sir,” the provost marshal said.
“You had better impound the golf cart on which the package was moved—bring it and the two security people who drove it here. Dennis will see to their bath. Just a precaution. Better safe than sorry, I always say.”
Master Sergeant Dennis came back into the room carrying a plastic bag in his prosthetic hand. He handed it to Hamilton.
“Good man,” Hamilton said as he took it. Then he said, “Dennis, they are going to bring the golf cart and the security drivers here. See that they get a complete bath. Then do the same to the golf cart.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Colonel Russell, Mr. Powell, if you’ll be good enough to come with me?”
“Am I correctly inferring, Colonel, that I was not included in that invitation?” Mason Andrews asked icily. He didn’t wait for Hamilton to reply, and—obviously on the edge of losing his temper—went on: “Perhaps you didn’t hear me, Colonel, when I told you that I am the assistant secretary of Homeland Security.”
If he had intended to cow Hamilton, he failed.
“Mr. Secretary ... or is it Mr. Assistant Secretary?” Hamilton replied. “I know that Mr. Powell is cleared for this sort of information. I don’t know how much the President wants you to know. I am not about to risk the ire of the President by telling you any more than I already have.”
Andrews flared: “Now, goddamn it, you listen to me, Colonel—”
“Mr. Andrews,” DCI Powell interrupted, “why don’t you let the President settle this? You’re welcome to ride with us to the White House.”
The assistant secretary of Homeland Security took a moment to get his temper under control.
“Perhaps that would be best,” he said finally. “Thank you.”
[FIVE]
The Oval Office
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1205 4 February 2007
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Colonel,” President Clendennen said.
The sarcasm was lost on Hamilton.
“I came as quickly as I could, Mr. President,” Hamilton said.
“I know. You were on Wolf. We all saw you both taking off from Fort Detrick and landing here. And we all saw C. Harry Whelan, Jr., tell his several million viewers he believes you were coming here to deliver the bad news. Please tell me he’s wrong.”
“Actually, Mr. President, it’s a mixed bag. The news could be much, much worse.”
“Well,” Clendennen drawled, pronouncing the word whale, “tell me the good news.”
“There is no cause for immediate alarm. I told Colonel Russell what was necessary for her to do, and that once she had done that, she could lift the shut-down. I have changed the Potential Level Four Biological Hazard Disaster to Level Two Biological Hazard Incident.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“That, in my judgment, there is reason to believe that all Congo-X under my control is contained in a safe environment, and there is no immediate risk to the general public.”
“‘Congo-X’? What is that?”
“It is what I call this virus. Or organism. Or whatever it is. What I brought from the Congo just before the Fish Farm was attacked.”
“Which is it, an organism or a virus?”
“I’m afraid I don’t really know, sir. More than like a combination of both. An ‘organismus,’ perhaps. Or a ‘virusism.’ Those are terms I made up in the last week or ten days. There is no scientific terminology that I know of to describe Congo-X.”
“Colonel,” Press Secretary John D. Parker said, “did I understand you to say there is no immediate danger to the public?”
“I was speaking with the colonel, Parker,” the President said unpleasantly.
“Mr. President, if the colonel can assure us that there is no immediate danger to the public, I think—to counter that comment of C. Harry Whelan, Jr., on Wolf News—you should make a statement to that effect. And as soon as possible. Immediately. We really have to control this before it gets out of hand.”
The President glared at Parker.
“Mr. President,” Ambassador Montvale put in, “I think Porky’s right.”
Parker glared at Montvale, which wasn’t lost on the President.
“What do you think I should say, Porky?” Clendennen asked.
“Mr. President, if you make any statement, it carries great importance. I mean to suggest that it will give the impression that this situation is more serious than the colonel suggests it is.”
“In other words, you want to make the statement?”
“That would be my recommendation, Mr. President.”
“I agree with Porky,” Ambassador Montvale said.
“That makes it twice, doesn’t it?” the President asked, and then went on: “And what would you say, Parker?”
“Sir, something along the lines of this: ‘There was an incident early this morning at Fort Detrick that has attracted a good deal of media attention. The President has just spoken with the chief scientific officer at Fort Detrick, who has assured him there is no cause for concern. What it was was the routine triggering of a safety system, erring on the side of caution. To repeat, there is no cause for concern.’ Something like that, Mr. President.”
The President was thoughtful for a long moment. Then he asked, “Read that back, please.”
A female voice came over a loudspeaker and recited Parker’s suggested statement.
“At the end of the first sentence, where it says ‘has attracted a good deal of media attention,’ strike that and change it to ‘has apparently caused much of the media to start chasing its tail once again. Arf-arf.’ The rest of it is fine. Type that up for Mr. Parker.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Mr. President?” Secretary of State Natalie Cohen asked.
The President ignored her, and gestured for Parker to leave the office. Then he turned to Hamilton.
“Okay, Colonel. Now let’s have the bad news.”
Hamilton inhaled audibly before he began to speak.
“I think we have to presume, Mr. President, that the attack on the establishment—the laboratory-slash-manufacturing facility—in the Congo was not successful. There is a quantity—I have no idea how much—of Congo-X in unknown hands.”
“How do you know that?” the President asked, softly.
“Because a quantity of it—several kilograms, plus another several kilograms of infected tissue—was delivered to me at Fort Detrick this morning. It is identical to the Congo-X and the infected tissue I brought out of the Congo.”
“Where did it come from?” the President asked, then interrupted himself: “No. Tell me what this stuff—Congo-X—is and what it does.”
“I don’t know what it is. I’m working on that. As to what it does, it causes disseminated intravascular coagulation, acronym DIC.”
“And can you tell me what that means? In layman’s terms?”
“DIC is a thrombohemorrhagic disorder characterized by primary thrombotic and secondary hemorrhagic diathesis, usually fatal.”
“Try it again, Colonel,” the President ordered, not unpleasantly, “and this time in layman’s terms.”
“Yes, sir. DIC is sometimes called consumptive coagulopathy, since excessive intravascular coagulation leads to consumption of platelets and nonenzymatic coagulation factors—”
The President interrupted Hamilton by holding up his hand and shaking his head.
“You might as well be speaking Greek, Colonel. Try it again, please, keeping in mind that you’re dealing with a simple country boy from Alabama.”
“Yes, sir,” Hamilton said, paused in thought, and then announced, almost happily: “Sir, DIC causes coagulation to run amok.”
“Coagulation, as in blood?”
Hamilton nodded.
“Go down that road, Colonel, and see where it takes us,” the President said.
“Coagulation is the process, in this connection, which causes liquid human blood to turn into a soft, semisolid mass.”
He looked at the President to see if the President was still with him.
The President responded by smiling encouragingly, and making a gesture with both hands for him to continue.
“If you think of the vascular system of the body, Mr. President, as a series of interconnected garden hoses, and of the heart as a pump that pushes blood through that system.”
He paused to see if his student was still with him, and when the President nodded, went on: “Imagine, if you will, sir, that the blood is transformed into a very thick mud. The pump cannot push the mass through the vascular system. It is overwhelmed; it stops.”
“And death occurs? By what a layman might call a heart attack?”
“That, too, Mr. President,” Hamilton said.
“‘That, too’?” the President parroted.
“The mud, the now-coagulated blood, then begins to attack the garden hose. As sort of a parasite. It feeds on it, so to speak.”
“Eats it, you mean?”
Hamilton nodded. “And when it’s finished, so to speak, with the vascular system, it begins to feed on the other tissues of the body. In some sort of unusual enzymatic manner, which I have so far been unable to pin down.”
“You’d better run that past me again, Colonel,” the President said. “‘Enzymatic manner’?”
Hamilton considered for a moment the level of knowledge the President might have.
“Think of meat tenderizer, Mr. President. Do you know how that works?”
“I can’t say that I do,” Clendennen confessed.
“Meat—and that would of course include human flesh—is held together by a complex protein called collagen. This makes it quite tough to chew in the raw state.”
“I’ve noticed,” the President drawled dryly.
“Cooking destroys these proteins, making the meat chewable. But so does contact with certain enzymes, most commonly ones extracted from the papaya. These proteolytic enzymes break the peptide bonds between the amino acids found in complex proteins. Such as flesh.”
“What you’re saying is that Congo-X is some sort of meat tenderizer?” the President asked. “Why is that so dangerous?”
“Unlike the enzymatic tenderizers one finds in the supermarket, which lose their strength after attacking the peptide bonding between the amino acids of meat, the Congo-X enzymes—if they are indeed enzymes, and I am not yet prepared to make that call—seem to gather strength from the collagens they attack. In a manner of speaking, they are nurtured by it.”
“What happens when they run out of meat?” the President asked, and then corrected himself: “Out of something to eat?”
Hamilton didn’t answer directly.
“Grocery store tenderizer doesn’t work on bones,” he said. “Congo-X does. Whenever it finishes turning the meat into sort of a mush—perhaps strengthened by taking nutrition from that process—it attacks bones. They are turned into mush. When the entire process is completed, what is left is a semisolid residue, which then enters sort of a coma. Forgive the crudeness, Mr. President, but what remains bears a strong physical resemblance to what one might pass when suffering from diarrhea: a semisolid brown, or brownish black, mass.”
“And what happens to that?”
“It apparently receives enough nutrients from the atmosphere to maintain life—I hesitate to use that term but I cannot think of another—for an indefinite period. If it is touched by flesh, the process begins again.”
“The only way it is contagious, so to speak, is if there’s physical contact with it? Is that what you’re saying?”
“When it is in the dormant, coma stage, yes, sir. But when it is feeding, so to speak, on flesh, it gives off microscopic particles which, if inhaled, also start the degenerative process.”
“How can it be killed?”
“My initial tests suggest the only way it can be killed is by thorough incineration at temperatures over a thousand degrees Centigrade. The residue, I am coming to believe, may then be encased in a nonporous container. Glass or some type of ceramic would work, I think, but there one would have the risk of the glass or ceramic breaking. Aluminum seems to form a satisfactory barrier. As a matter of fact, I used simple aluminum foil to isolate the material I brought out of the Congo; I had nothing else. And the Congo-X material that was sent to my laboratory today was wrapped in aluminum foil.”
“Like a Christmas turkey?” President Clendennen asked.
“More like, I would say, Mr. President, cold cuts from a delicatessen. Very carefully, so there was little or no risk that the foil could be torn. The people who sent me the Congo-X obviously seem to know what they are doing.”
“And who, would you guess, Colonel, were the people who sent you the Congo-X? More importantly, why do you think they did?”
“I’ve given that some thought, Mr. President,” Hamilton said.
“And?”
The tone of impatience in the President’s voice was clearly evident.
“They wanted us to know that the attack on the Fish Farm was unsuccessful,” Hamilton said. “That they have Congo-X. We have to presume they know a great deal more about it than I have been able to learn in the few days I’ve had to work with it. They are making the point that the threat which existed before we learned of the Fish Farm and attempted to destroy it exists now.”
“Why wouldn’t they try to keep that secret, so they would have the element of surprise if they decide to use Congo-X on us?”
“That’s the question to which I have given the most thought,” Hamilton said. “It was self-evident that they wanted us to know we failed, and that they have Congo-X. The question is, why?”
“That’s the question I asked, Colonel,” the President said.
“I think they want something from us,” Hamilton said, very seriously.
“And what, Colonel, do you think that might be?”
“I have no idea,” Hamilton said. “Absolutely no idea.”
President Clendennen looked around the Oval Office.
The Honorable Natalie Cohen, secretary of State; Ambassador Charles M. Montvale, director of National Intelligence; the Honorable John J. Powell, director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and the Honorable Mason Andrews, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, were sitting on the chairs and couches around a glass-topped coffee table. Not one had said a word during the “bad news” exchange between the President and Colonel Hamilton.
“Odd,” Clendennen said to them. “I would have bet two bits to a doughnut that y’all would be falling all over yourselves to offer sage political advice and profound philosophical opinions concerning our little dilemma.”
No one responded.
The President grunted, then announced: “One, I believe everything Colonel Hamilton has told us about this terrible substance. Two, we are not about to react to this threat the way my predecessor did. We bombed everything in a twenty-square-mile area of the Congo into small pieces and then incinerated the pieces. Since somebody still has enough of a supply of this stuff to share it with us, I think we have to concede that the only thing that bombing did was bring us within a cat’s whisker of a nuclear exchange and give those people who don’t like us much anyway good reason to like us even less.
“So what we’re going to do now is proceed very carefully and only when we’re absolutely sure of what we’re doing. I will now entertain suggestions as to how we can do this.” He paused, and then went on: “You first, Andrews.”
There was no immediate reply.
“Well?” the President pursued, not very pleasantly.
“Mr. President,” Mason Andrews said. “In addition to the obvious, I think we have—”
“What’s the obvious?” the President interrupted.
“Well, we have to decide whether we are going to raise the threat level to orange, or perhaps red. I tend to think the latter.”
“Not ‘we have to decide,’” the President said. “I have to decide. Somebody tell me why raising the threat level from yellow wouldn’t cause more problems than it would solve.”
He looked around the Oval Office. “Comments? Anyone?”
There were none.
“What else is obvious?” the President demanded.
“Well, sir, we have to find out who sent this stuff to the colonel,” Andrews said.
“First of all, it wasn’t sent to Colonel Hamilton,” the President said. “It was sent to us. The government. Me, as President. Not to Colonel Hamilton. It was sent through him because these bastards somehow knew he was the only man around who would know what it was. And they knew he would tell me. Secondly, at this moment—and I realize this could change in the blink of an eye—there is no immediate threat. If these people wanted to start killing Americans, they would have already done so.”
“Mr. President,” Ambassador Montvale offered, “their intention might be to cause panic.”
Clendennen nodded.
“That’s what I’m thinking. And I’m not going to give them that. That’s why the threat level stays at yellow.”
The President was then silent, visibly in thought, for a long moment. Then he cocked his head to one side. A smile crossed his lips, as if to signify he was pleased with himself.
He said, “Fully aware that this is politically incorrect, I have just profiled the bastards who sent Colonel Hamilton the Congo-X. I have decided that the Congo-X was sent to the colonel by a foreign power, or at the direction of a foreign power or powers. And not, for example, by the Rotary Club of Enterprise, Alabama, or any sister or brother organization to which the Rotarians may be connected, however remotely.”
Ambassador Montvale’s eyes widened, and for a moment he seemed to be on the edge of saying something. In the end, he remained silent.
“The ramifications of this decision,” the President went on, “are that finding out who these bastards are—and, it is to be hoped, what the hell this is all about—falls into what I think of as the CIA’s area of responsibility, rather than that of the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security.”
He looked at DCI Powell.
“Those are your marching orders, Jack. Get onto it. I will have the attorney general direct the FBI to assist you in any area in which you need help.”
“Mr. President, with all respect,” Mason Andrews said, “this crime, this threat to American security, took place on American soil! This situation is clearly within the purview of Homeland Sec—”
“What situation, Andrews?” the President interrupted him. “What threat to American security? No one has been hurt. What’s happened is that a securely wrapped package of what the colonel has determined to be what he calls Congo-X was sent to Colonel Hamilton in a container clearly marked as a biological hazard.
“That’s all. There has been no damage to anyone. Not even a threat of causing damage. If we had these people in handcuffs, there’s nothing we could do to them because they haven’t broken any laws that I can think of.
“What we are not, repeat not, going to do is go off half-cocked. For example, we are not going to resurrect my predecessor’s private James Bond—what’s his name? Costello?—and his band of assassins and give them carte blanche to roam the world to kill people. Or anything like that.
“What we are going to do is have Montvale—he is the director of National Intelligence—very quietly try to find out who the hell these bastards are and what they want. I think Colonel Hamilton is right about that. They want something. That means they will probably—almost certainly—contact Colonel Hamilton again.
“What that means, since we can’t afford to have anything happen to him, is that Homeland Security is going to wrap the colonel in a Secret Service security blanket at least as thick as the one around me. That’s your role in this, Andrews. That’s your only role.
“And then we’re going to wait for their next move. No action of any kind will be taken without my express approval.”
The President met the eyes of everyone in the Oval Office, and then quietly asked, “Is there anyone who doesn’t understand what I have just said?”
There were no replies.
“That will be all, thank you,” the President said.