HE’S STILL sleeping?” Phil Grant asked.
The frumpy doctor pushed the door to his lab open. “Like a baby. I insist that you let me study him further. This is highly unusual, you understand? I’ve never seen it.”
“Can you unlock his dreams with more work?”
“I don’t know what I can unlock, but I’m happy to try. Whatever’s happening in that mind of his must be scrutinized. Must.”
“I’m not sure how much time we have for your musts,” Grant said. “We’ll see.”
Kara walked in ahead of the two men. It struck her as odd that only two weeks ago she’d lived a quiet life as a nurse in Denver. Yet here she was, being traipsed about by the director of the CIA and a world-renowned cognitive psychologist, who were both looking to her brother for answers to perhaps the single greatest crisis that the United States had ever faced. That the world had ever faced.
Thomas lay in a maroon recliner, lights low, while an orchestral version of “Killing Me Softly” whispered through ceiling speakers. She’d spent the afternoon putting their affairs in order: rent on their Denver apartment, insurance bills, a long call to Mother, who’d been climbing the walls with all the news about Thomas’s kidnapping of Monique. Depending on what happened in the next day or so, Kara thought she might fly to New York for a visit. The prospect of never seeing her mother again wasn’t sitting well. The scientists were all talking as though the virus wouldn’t wreak havoc for another eighteen days, but really it could be less. Seventeen. Sixteen. The models were only so accurate. There was every possibility that they all had less than three weeks to live.
“So he’s been sleeping for three hours without dreaming?”
Dr. Myles Bancroft walked to the monitor and tapped it lightly. “Let me put it this way. If he is dreaming, it’s not like any dream I’ve ever seen. No rapid eye movement. No perceptual brain activity, no fluctuation in facial temperature. He’s in deep sleep, but his dreams are quiet.”
“So the whole notion of recording his dream patterns and feeding them back . . .”
“Is a nonstarter,” the psychologist finished.
Grant shook his head. “He looks so . . . ordinary.”
“He’s far from ordinary,” Kara said.
“Evidently. It’s just hard to imagine that the fate of the world is hung up somewhere in this mind. We know that he discovered the Raison Strain—the idea that he has the antivirus hidden in that mind somewhere is a bit unnerving, considering that he’s never had a day of medical training in his life.”
“Which is why you must let me spend more time with him,” Bancroft repeated.
They stared at him in silence.
“Wake him,” Kara said.
Bancroft shook Thomas gently. “Wake up, lad.”
Thomas’s eyes blinked open. Funny how she rarely thought of him as Tom anymore. He was Thomas now. It suited him better.
“Welcome to the land of the living,” the doctor said. “How do you feel?”
He sat up. Wiped at his eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Three hours.”
Thomas looked around the lab. Three hours. It felt like more.
“What happened?” Kara asked.
They were staring at him expectantly. “Did it work?” he asked.
“That’s what we were wondering,” Bancroft said.
“I don’t know. Did you record my dreams?”
“Did you dream?”
“I don’t know, did I? Or am I dreaming now?”
Kara sighed. “Please, Thomas.”
“Okay, then yes, of course I dreamed. I returned to the forest with my army after destroying the Horde—the black powder worked wonders— met with the Council, then fell asleep after joining the celebration with Rachelle.”
He slid his feet to the floor and stood. “And I’m dreaming now, which means I didn’t eat the fruit. She’ll have my hide.”
“Who’ll have your hide?” Grant asked.
“His wife. Rachelle,” Kara said.
The director looked at her with a raised brow.
“And I asked about the Books of Histories,” Thomas said. “I know the man who may be able to tell me where to find them.”
“But you don’t remember anything more about the antivirus,” Grant pressed.
“No. Your little experiment failed, remember? You can’t stimulate my memory banks because you can’t record the brain signatures associated with my dreams because I’m not dreaming. That pretty much summarizes it, doesn’t it, Doctor?”
“Perhaps, yes. Fascinating. We could be on the verge of a whole new world of understanding here.”
Phil Grant shook his head. “Okay, Gains is right. From this point forward we’ve got to keep this dream-talk to a minimum. We keep the story straight and simple. You have a gift. You’re seeing things that haven’t happened yet. That’s hard enough to buy, but at least there’s precedent for it. In the light of our situation, enough people will at least give a prophet a chance. But the rest of this—your wife, Rochel or whatever her name is, your war council, the Horde, the fruit you didn’t eat—all of it, strictly off-limits to anyone except me and Gains.”
“You want to pitch me as some kind of mystical prophet?” Thomas said. “I’m not as optimistic as you. It’ll do nothing for my leverage in the international community. Outside of this room I’m simply a person who may know more about the situation at hand than anyone else in this government because of my association with Monique. I was the last one to speak to her before she was taken. I’m the only one who has engaged the terrorists, and I’m the only one who has accurately anticipated their next move. Considering all of that, I am a man who should be taken very seriously. Judging the rather . . . lukewarm reception I got from the others in the meeting today, I think that might make more sense.”
“I won’t disagree,” Grant said. “Are you anticipating the need for leverage in the international community?”
Thomas walked past him, his sense of urgency swelling. “Who knows? One way or another we’ve got to beat this thing. I can’t believe the Books of Histories still exist! If I can get to them . . .”
He stopped. “I have to know something.” Thomas faced them, eyes wide. “I have to know if this cut on my shoulder came from Carlos or from the Horde. In my dreams, that is.”
They stared at him without offering any bold statements of support.
“From Carlos,” Kara finally said.
“But you didn’t see him cut me, right? I was already bleeding when you came into the room. No, I really need to know. They’re insisting that the Horde cut me.”
“How . . . can you prove it either way?”
“Yes. Cut me.” He stuck out his arm. “Make a small incision and I’ll see if I have it when I wake up.”
All three blinked.
“Just give me the knife then.”
Bancroft stepped to a drawer, opened it, and withdrew scissors. “Well, I have these—”
“You’re not serious, are you?” Grant demanded.
Thomas took the scissors and drew their sharp tip along his forearm. He had to understand the rules of engagement. “Just a small scratch. For me. I have to know.” He winced and handed the scissors back.
“You’re suggesting that more than what’s in your mind is transferred between realities?” the doctor asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m there and I’m here. Physically. That’s more than knowledge or skills. My wounds show up in both realities. My blood. Life. Nothing else. My mind and my life. On the other hand, my aging doesn’t show here. I’m younger here.”
“This . . . this is absolutely incredible,” the doctor said.
Thomas faced Grant. “So what’s our status?”
The director took awhile to answer. “Well . . . the president’s directed FEMA to direct all of its resources to work with the Centers for Disease Control, and he’s brought in the World Health Organization. They’ve now confirmed the virus in thirty-two airports.”
“What about the search for Monique? The rest may be pointless unless we find her.”
“We’re working on it. The governments of Britain, Germany, France, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil . . . a dozen others are pulling out the stops.”
“Switzerland?”
“Naturally. I may not be able to predict a virus, or battle the Horde, but I do know how to look for fugitives in the real world.”
“Svensson’s gone deep, into a hole somewhere that he prepared a long time ago. One that no one will think to look in. Like the one outside of Bangkok.”
“Which you found how?”
Thomas glanced at Kara.
“Could you do that again?” she asked. “The world’s changed, but that doesn’t mean Rachelle isn’t somehow connected to Monique, right?”
Thomas didn’t respond. What if he was wrong? He was still Thomas Hunter, the failed writer from Denver. What right did he have advising the CIA? The stakes were astronomical.
On the other hand, he had been right more than once. And he had battled the Horde successfully for fifteen years. That earned him something, as the president had said.
“Will someone please explain?” Grant asked.
Kara faced him. “Rachelle, Thomas’s dream-wife, inadvertently led him to Monique the first time. She seemed to know where Monique was being kept. But she became jealous of Monique, because she realized that Thomas was falling in love with her here. So she refused to help him again. It’s why he agreed not to dream for fifteen years.”
“I must be given more time,” Bancroft murmured. “You’re in love with two different women, one from each reality?”
“That’s a stretch,” Thomas said.
It was a thing that Thomas had been trying to squash ever since he’d awakened from the fifteen-year dream, but it lingered there in the back of his mind. It seemed absurd that he would have any feelings for Monique at all. Yes, they’d faced death together, and she’d kissed him as a matter of her own survival. He did find her fiery spirit attractive, and her face refused to budge from his mind’s eye. But maybe Rachelle’s jealousy was what triggered his romantic feelings for Monique in the first place. Maybe he wouldn’t have started to fall for her if Rachelle hadn’t suggested that he was falling for her.
Now, after fifteen years with Rachelle, any romantic notions he might once have felt for Monique had vanished.
“The whole thing is more than a stretch,” Grant said, “starting with your prediction of the Raison Strain. But these are now facts, aren’t they? So you get to your Books of Histories and you get to Rachelle and you convince her to help us here. Meaning you sleep and you dream.”
He shook his head and started for the door. “With any luck you’ll have something more sensible to tell the president when you meet with him tomorrow.”
They’d moved her again. Where, she had no clue.
Monique de Raison stared at the monitor, mind taxed, eyes burning.
It had been less than twenty-four hours since they’d put a sack over her head for the second time in as many days and led her into a car, then onto an airplane. The flight had lasted several hours—she could be anywhere. Hawaii, China, Argentina, Germany. She might have been able to figure out the region by any stray conversation she overheard, but they’d stuffed wax in her ears and taped them. She couldn’t even determine the temperature or humidity, because they’d landed during a rainstorm that had wet her hood before she’d been shoved into another car and brought here.
A man of German or Swiss descent whom she’d never met before had pulled the bag off her head and unplugged her ears. He’d left her in this room without speaking.
Another laboratory. Blinding white. A small lab, maybe twenty by twenty, but crammed with the latest equipment. A Field Emission Electron Microscope, a Siemens, stood along one wall. The microscope could effectively examine wet samples as well as specimens treated with liquid nitrogen. State of the art. Next to it, a long table arrayed with test tubes and a Beckman Coulter Counter.
In the corner, a mattress, and in an adjoining room without a door, a toilet and a sink.
The room was constructed of cinder blocks, like the others. On second look, she was sure that whoever had built the other two labs she’d been in had also built this one. How many did they have? And each had been carefully supplied with everything a geneticist or a virologist would need.
She’d curled up on the mattress, dressed in the pale blue slacks and matching blouse they’d given her before the trip, and cried. She knew that she should be strong. That Svensson surely wouldn’t actually release the virus as he’d threatened to. That if he did, she might be the only one who could stop it. But the chance of the back door she’d engineered surviving the mutation was terribly small. They had to be bluffing.
Still, she’d cried.
A man in a white smock with red hair and bifocals had entered the room twenty minutes later carrying a brown snakeskin briefcase. “Are you okay?” He actually looked surprised at her condition. “Goodness, what have they done to you? You’re Monique de Raison, right? TheMonique de Raison.”
She stood and pushed her bangs from her eyes. A scientist. Her hope surged. Was he a friend?
“Yes,” she said.
Only a few days earlier she might have slapped this man for his gawking. Now she felt small. Too small.
A glint sparkled in the man’s eyes. “We have a wager. We have a wager.” He motioned to the door. “Who will find it first, you or us.” He leaned forward as if what he was about to say was to be kept secret. “I am the only one betting on you.”
He was slightly mad, she thought.
“None of us will find it,” she said. “Do you realize what’s happening?”
“Of course I do. The first to isolate the antivirus will be paid fifty million dollars, and the whole team will be paid ten million each. But there are eleven teams, so Petrov—”
She slapped him then. His glasses spun across the room. “He’s going to release the virus, you idiot!”
He stared at her. “He already has.”
Then he set the case on the floor, walked to his glasses, returned them to his face. “Everything you need is in the case,” he said. “You will see all of our work in real-time calculations, and we will see yours.”
He headed for the door.
“Please, I’m sorry!” She hurried after him. “You have to help me!”
But he closed the door and was gone.
That was over an hour ago. Now Monique stared at a dizzying string of numbers and tried desperately to focus.
He hasn’t released the virus, Monique. The chances of finding an antivirus in time are too low. It would be suicide!
But he’d kidnapped her, hadn’t he? He knew he would eventually be caught and would spend the balance of his life in prison. What did he have to lose?
And Thomas . . .
Her mind was swallowed by her two encounters with the American. His harebrained kidnapping of her. He had tied her to the air conditioner in the Paradise Hotel while he slept, while he took his dream-trip to retrieve information that he could not possibly know. The attack by Carlos. She’d seen Thomas shot, and yet he’d survived and come for her again. She’d kissed him. She’d done it to distract whoever was watching, but she’d also done it because he had risked his life for her, and she felt desperate for him to save her. He was her savior.
She didn’t know if her irresponsible feelings for him were motivated by his character or by her own despair. Her emotions were hardly trustworthy in a time like this.
Was he still alive?
You have to focus, Monique. They will come for you again. Father will have the whole world looking for you.
She took a deep breath and reapplied her concentration. A model of her own Raison Vaccine filled one corner of the screen. Below it, a model of the Raison Strain, a mutation that had survived after the vaccine had been subjected to intense heat for two hours, exactly as Thomas had predicted. She’d analyzed a simulation of the actual mutation a hundred times over the past hour and saw how it had worked. This was a freak of nature far more complex than anything a geneticist could have come up with on his own.
Ironically, her own genetic engineering, designed to keep the vaccine viable for long periods without contacting any host or moisture, had allowed the inert vaccine to mutate in such adverse conditions.
As far as she could see, there were only two ways in which an antivirus could be developed with any kind of speed—meaning weeks instead of months or years.
The first would be for her to identify the signature she had engineered into her vaccine to turn it off, as it were. She’d developed a simple way to introduce an airborne agent into the vicinity of the vaccine—a virus that would essentially neutralize the vaccine by inserting its own DNA into the mix and rendering the vaccine impotent. It was her personal signature as much as a deterrent to foul play or theft.
If she could find the specific gene she’d engineered, and if it had survived the mutation, then introducing the virus she’d already developed to neutralize the vaccine might also render the Raison Strain impotent. If, if, and might being the key words.
She knew the signature like she knew her best friend. The problem now was how to find it in this mangled mess called the Raison Strain.
The only other way to unravel an antivirus in such short order was to chance upon the right gene manipulations. But ten thousand lab technicians could coordinate their efforts for sixty days and not strike the right combination.
Svensson knew something, or he wouldn’t risk so much on a long shot. Surely he understood that her signature might not have survived, or that it might not work on the mutated vaccine.
Monique moved the cursor over the key below the diagram of the Strain and brought up a window of its DNA. She would search for her key first.
She slammed her fist on the black Formica desktop. Glass tubes rattled in a tray. She swore through gritted teeth. “This can’t be happening!”
“I’m afraid it is.”
Svensson! She spun in her chair. The old goat stood in the doorway, smiling patiently, leaning on a white cane.
He moved into the room, dragging his leg, eyes glimmering with self-satisfaction.
“Sorry to leave you alone so long, but I’ve been a bit preoccupied. The last couple days have been quite eventful.”
Monique stood and held the desk to hide a tremble in her hand. The man wore a black jacket, white shirt, no tie. His dark hair was parted in the middle and slicked back with cream. Blue veins stood out on his knuckles.
“What’s going on?” she asked, as evenly as possible.
“What isn’t?” He closed the door. “But that’s unfair. You have no idea how exciting the world has become in the last forty-eight hours, because you’ve been hard at work trying to save it.”
“How can I work if you move me every twelve hours?”
“We’re on an Indonesian island, in a mountain called Cyclops. Quite safe here. Don’t worry, it will be home for at least three days. Have you made any progress?”
“With what? You’ve given us an impossible task.”
The old man’s smile didn’t soften, but his eyes glazed. He studied her for an inordinate amount of time.
“You’re not as motivated as I’d hoped.” He walked toward her. “Please insert this disk,” he said, withdrawing a CD-ROM from his breast pocket. “And please don’t think of assaulting me. If you think I can’t slit your belly open with the flip of my wrist, you’re a fool.”
She took the disk and slid it into the computer’s DVD tray. It retracted.
“The rest of the world has had the benefit of what you’re going to see for three days now. I want to make sure you understand everything.”
A single virus shell popped onto the screen and she recognized it immediately. The Raison Strain. A clock showed real time at the bottom of the picture.
“Yes, a most efficient mercenary. But you haven’t seen what it can actually do.”
“This is a simulation,” she said. “Anyone can create a cartoon.”
“I assure you, not a single piece of hypothetical data has been used for this ‘cartoon,’ as you call it. I’ll leave it for you to analyze later.”
She watched as the virus entered a human lung and immediately went to work on the cells of the alveoli. She knew how it would work, penetrating the cells with its own DNA and ultimately rupturing the cells. Soon thousands of virus-infected cells were streaming through the body’s network of veins and arteries, searching out new organs. Even so, with this microscopic damage, no symptoms would be evident.
The clock at the bottom sped up and began ticking off hours, then days. It slowed at sixteen. The infected cells had reached a critical mass and were producing symptoms. Their assault on the body’s organs resulted in massive internal hemorrhaging and quick failure within two more days.
Like an acid, the virus had eaten the host from the inside out.
“Nasty little beast,” Svensson said. “There’s more.”
Monique had seen a thousand superbug simulations. She’d participated in autopsies of Ebola victims. She had seen and studied as many viruses as any other living person. But she’d never seen such a ravaging animal, not one that was so contagious, so systemic, and so innocuous before reaching maturity and consuming its host like so many piranha.
Monique cleared her throat.
The next frame showed a map of the world. Twelve red dots lit up. New York, Washington, Bangkok, and on, tiny fires popping to life.
“Forgive the melodrama, but there really is no other way to show what the naked eye cannot see.”
By the end of day one, the number of cities had reached twenty-four.
“Our initial deposit. Everything else is the virus’s own doing.”
Lines spread over the map, showing air-traffic routes. The lights spread. By the beginning of day three, half the map was solid red.
Now the simulation changed to show the spread of the virus from one host to another. Monique knew the facts well enough: One sneeze contained as many as ten million germs traveling at up to one hundred miles per hour. With this virus, the time between a person acquiring the germ and becoming contagious was a mere four hours. Even assuming each contagious agent infected only a hundred per day, the numbers grew exponentially. By day nine the number had reached six billion.
Svensson reached forward and pressed the space bar. The simulation froze.
“That brings us up to date.”
At first she didn’t understand. Up to date, meaning what?
“Give or take a few hours,” he said.
“You’re saying you’ve actually done it?”
“As promised. And I will admit that not all of the infected cities represent saturation. The red light means the virus is currently airborne, sweeping through that city. We calculate that it will take two weeks for global saturation.”
He pulled out a small vial of amber liquid. Uncorked the lid. Sniffed the opening. “Odorless.”
She knew the whole truth then. It was hard to grasp, even with his simulations. Computer models and theories and pictures were one thing, but to imagine that what she was seeing had actually happened . . .
He could be lying about all of it, forcing her to slave on an antivirus so that with it he could blackmail the world.
“You need more convincing, I can see.” He pressed the intercom button on the phone. “Bring him down.” He picked up a clean slide.
Maybe he really had done it.
“This is crazy. The United States would come unglued if—”
“The United States is coming unglued!” he shouted. “Every nation with anything resembling a military is coming unglued. The people don’t know yet, but the governments have been scrambling for two days already. The CDC has already verified the virus in over fifty of its cities.”
The door opened, and a bound man wearing a green shirt and a black bag over his head stumbled in. Carlos entered and shut the door.
Svensson withdrew a scalpel from his pocket and walked to the man. “We picked him up in a Paris nightclub. We have no idea who he is, although he looks like he might be a visitor from the Mediterranean. Perhaps Greek. His mouth is taped, so don’t bother asking him any questions. The chances of him being infected are pretty good, considering where he was spending his time, wouldn’t you agree?”
Without waiting for an answer, Svensson slashed the man across his chest. The man jerked back and moaned behind his gag. Svensson whipped the slide along the seeping line of blood that darkened the green shirt.
He walked toward the electron microscope, snapped it on, and slipped the slide into place.
“Look for yourself,” he said, stepping back.
The man had fallen to his knees, shirt now soaked red.
Monique’s head swam.
Svensson walked to the man, pulled out a pistol, and shot him in the head. His victim dropped to the floor.
The Swiss shoved the gun at the microscope. “Look!”
Ears ringing, pulse pounding, Monique walked to the monitor. She worked the familiar instrument without thinking what she was doing. It took too long to focus because she couldn’t control her hands. They were shaking and seemed to have forgotten just what to do.
But when she finally found a patch on the slide that cooperated with the intense magnification, she could hardly miss the foreign bodies swimming through the man’s blood.
She blinked and increased the magnification. Behind her the room was silent. Just her, breathing through her nostrils. This was it. This was the Raison Strain.
She straightened.
“No more games, Monique. There’s no way to stop the spread of the virus. Without an antivirus we will all die. It really is that simple. We know that you engineer a back door into your vaccines. We need you to identify this back door, verify that it hasn’t mutated with the vaccine, and then create the virus that will turn the Raison Strain off. I won’t lie to you; I’m not telling you everything—you’re clever enough to figure that out. But I am telling you what you need to know to play your part in helping humanity survive.”
She faced him, suddenly cold. “I don’t think you know what you’ve done.”
“Oh, we do. And I, like you, am only playing my part. Everyone must play his part or the game will indeed end badly. But don’t think any of this has escaped our calculation. We’ve anticipated everything.”
He glanced at Carlos. “There is the matter of the pesky American, of course. But we’re dealing with him. He may not die so easily, but we have other means. I doubt a soul alive understands the breadth of our power.”
Thomas was still alive.
She glanced at the crumpled body on the floor. He was dead, but Thomas was alive. A sliver of hope.
“We need the key,” Svensson said.
“I’ll do my best.”
“How long?”
“If it survived the mutation, three days. Maybe two.”
Svensson smiled. “Perfect. Now I have a plane to catch. They will take good care of you. You are very important to us, Monique. We’ll need brilliant minds when this is over. Please try to think positively.”
“This is an outrage!”
Three of the four men in the room looked at Armand Fortier with shock in their eyes.
“Is it, Jean?” Fortier stood and faced France’s leading men: the premier, Boisverte, who had just objected; President Gaetan, who was a weasel and would ultimately capitulate; Du Braeck, the minister of defense, who was the most valuable to Fortier; and the head of the secret police, the Sûreté, Chombarde, who was the only one without round eyes at the moment. Each had been intentionally selected; each was now faced with the decision to live for tomorrow or die tonight, though they didn’t understand it in those terms. Not yet.
“Be careful what you say,” Fortier said.
“You can’t do this!”
“I already have.”
As minister of foreign affairs, Fortier had convinced Henri Gaetan to call this emergency session to address Valborg Svensson’s recent ultimatum. Fortier had critical information relevant to the virus, he told Gaetan, and suggested that the leaders meet at the Château Triomphe in the Right Bank.
The private conference room beneath the ancient two-story retreat was the perfect setting for new beginnings. Lamps mounted on the stone walls cast an amber light across the plush furnishings. It was more like a private living room than a conference room: tall leather wing chairs budding with brass buttons, a large fireplace licked by greedy flames, a crystal chandelier over the brass coffee table, a fully stocked bar.
And most importantly, heavy walls. Very heavy walls.
Armand Fortier was a thick man. Thick eyebrows, thick wrists, thick lips. His mind, he would say, was sharp enough to cut any woman down to size in a matter of seconds. They never knew what to do with such an assertive statement, but it generally put them in a defensive mind-set so that when he did dominate them, they were not quite so submissive.
It was his only vice.
That and power.
He knew that he could have muscled his way into the presidency long ago, but he wasn’t interested in France—the scrutiny leveled at such an office would have worked against him. His appointment as the minister of foreign affairs, however, put him in the perfect position to achieve his true aspirations.
Henri Gaetan was a tall, thin man with deep-set eyes and a jaw line as sharp as Fortier’s mind. “What are you saying, Armand? That you work for Valborg Svensson?”
“No.”
Fortier had first recruited Svensson fifteen years ago to conduct a much simpler operation: untraceable arms deals with several interested nations, which involved biological weapons research in exchange for lucrative contracts. The deals had earned him billions. The money had fueled Svensson’s pharmaceutical empire, with strings attached, naturally.
Fortier hadn’t grasped the true potential of the right biological weapon until he watched one of those nations discreetly use an agent of Svensson’s against the Americans. The incident had forever altered the course of Fortier’s life.
“Then how is this possible?” the president demanded. “You’re suggesting that we give in to his demands—”
“No. I’m suggesting that you give in to my demands.”
“So he works for you,” said Chombarde.
“Gentlemen, perhaps you don’t truly understand what has happened. Let me clarify. Half of our citizens are going to work and feeding their children and attending school and doing whatever else they do in this wonderful republic of ours today without the slightest notion that they have been infected with a virus that will overtake every last soul on this planet within two weeks. It is called the Raison Strain, and it will sit quietly for the next eighteen days before it begins its killing. Then it will kill very quickly. There is no cure. There is no way to find a cure. There is no way to stop the virus. There is only one antivirus, and I control it. Is there any part of this explanation that escapes any of you?”
“But what you’re suggesting is morally reprehensible!” the premier said.
Only the minister of defense, Georges Du Braeck, hadn’t spoken. He seemed ambivalent. This was good. Fortier would need Du Braeck’s cooperation more than any of the others.
“No sir. Embracing death is morally reprehensible. I’m offering your only escape from that most certain death. Very few men in this world will be given the kind of opportunity I’m giving you tonight.”
For a few moments no one spoke.
The president pushed himself to standing and faced Fortier at ten feet. “You’re underestimating the world’s nuclear powers. You expect them to just load up their aircraft carriers and their merchant fleets and float their entire nuclear arsenals to France because we demand it? They will launch them first!”
It was the same objection other heads of much smaller states had voiced when he’d first suggested the plan a decade ago. Fortier smiled at the pompous pole of a man.
“Do you take me for a fool, Henri? You think I have spent less time making calculations in the last ten years than you have after only a few minutes? Please sit down.”
There was a tremble in Henri Gaetan’s hands. He reached back for a grip on the chair and sat slowly.
“Good. They will object, naturally, but you underestimate the human drive for self-preservation. In the end, when faced with a choice between the bloody death of twenty million innocent children and their military, they will choose their children. We will make sure that the choice is understood in those terms. The British, the Russians, the Germans . . . All will choose to live and fight another day. As I hope you will.”
The nature of his threat against each of them personally was starting to sink in, he thought.
“Let me phrase it this way: In fewer than eighteen days, the balance of power on this planet will have shifted dramatically. The course is set; the outcome is inevitable. We have chosen France to host the world’s new superpower. As the leaders of France, you have two choices. You can facilitate this shift in global power and live as a part of the leadership you’ve all secretly wanted for so many years, or you can deny me and die with the rest.”
Now they surely understood.
The minister of defense sat with legs crossed, glowing like any good Stalinist faced with such an ultimatum. He finally spoke. “May I ask a few questions?”
“Please.”
“There is no physical way for the United States, let alone the rest of the world, to ship all of its nuclear weapons in fourteen days. They have to be evacuated from launching points and armament caches, shipped to the East Coast, loaded on ships, and sailed across the Atlantic.”
“Naturally. The list we have given them includes all of their ICBMs, all long-range missiles, most of their navy, including their submarines, and most of their air force, much of which can be flown. The United States will have to take extraordinary measures, but we’re demanding nothing of them or anyone else that can’t be done. As for the British, India, Pakistan, and Israel, we are demanding their entire nuclear arsenals.”
“China and Russia?”
“China. Let’s just say that China will not be a problem. They have no love for the United States. China has agreed already and will begin shipments tomorrow in exchange for certain favors. They will be an example for others to follow. Russia is a different story, but we have several critical elements in alignment. Although they will sound off their objections, they will comply.”
“Then we have allies.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The revelation delivered a long moment of silence. “The Americans are still the greatest threat,” said Gaetan. “Assuming the Americans do agree, how can France accommodate all of this”—the president drew his hand through the air—“this massive amount of hardware? We don’t have the people or the space.”
“Destroy it,” the defense minister said.
“Very good, Du Braeck. Superiority is measured in ratios, not sums, yes? Ten to one is better than a thousand to five hundred. We will sink more than half of the military hardware we receive. Think of this as forced disarmament. History may even smile on us.”
“Which is why you’ve chosen the deep water near the Brest naval base.”
“Among other reasons.”
“And how can we protect ourselves against an assault during this transition of power?” the defense minister asked.
Fortier had expected these questions and possessed answers so detailed that he could never begin to explain everything at this meeting. Inventories of hardware, possible troop movement, preemptive strikes, political will— every possibility had been considered at great length. Tonight his only task was to win the trust of these four men.
“Fourteen days is enough time to ship arms, not deploy troops. Any immediate long-range attack would come by air. Thanks to the Russians, we will have the threat of retaliation to deter any such attack. The only other immediate threat would come from our neighbors, primarily England. We will be at our weakest for the next three days, until we can reposition our forces to repel a ground attack and take on reinforcements from the Chinese. But the world will be in a political tailspin—confusion will buy us the time we need.”
“Unless they learn who is responsible now.”
“They will have to assume that the French government is being forced. Besides that, they have no guarantee that an attack would secure the antivirus. The antivirus won’t be held up in a vial in our parliament for all the world to see. Only I will know where it is.”
“Why France?”
“Please, Georges. Wasn’t it Hitler who said that he who controls France controls Europe, and he who controls Europe controls the world? He was right. If there were a more strategic country, I would take my leave and go now. France is and always will be the center of the world.”
The president had crossed his legs; the head of the Sûreté had stopped blinking; the minister of defense was virtually glowing. They were softening.
Only Prime Minister Boisverte still glared.
“Let me give you an example of how this is going to play out, gentlemen. Jean, would you come here?”
The defiant prime minister just stared at him.
He motioned him. “Please. Stand over here. I insist.”
The man still hesitated. He was hard to the bones.
“Then where you are will do.” Fortier reached into his jacket and pulled out a silenced 9 mm pistol. He pointed the gun at the prime minister and pulled the trigger. The slug punched through the chair just above his shoulder.
The prime minister’s eyes bulged.
“You see, this is what we have done. We’ve fired a warning shot across their bow. Right now they aren’t certain of our will to carry through. But soon enough”—he shifted the pistol and shot the man through his fore-head—“ they will be.”
The prime minister slumped in his chair.
“Don’t think of this as a threat, Henri. Jean would have died in eighteen days anyway. We all will unless we do exactly what I have said. Does anyone doubt that?”
The remaining three men looked at him with a calm that pleasantly surprised Fortier.
Fortier slipped the gun back into his pocket and straightened his jacket. “If I die, the antivirus would be lost. The world would die. But I have no intention of dying. I invite you to join me with similar intentions.”
“Naturally,” Georges said.
Fortier glanced at the president. “Henri?”
“Yes.”
“Chombarde?”
The head of the Sûreté dipped his head. “Of course.”
“And how do we proceed?” the president asked.
Fortier walked around his chair and sat.
“As for the members of the military, the National Assembly, and the Senate, who must know, our explanation is simple: A new demand has come from Svensson. He has chosen our naval base in Brest to accommodate his demands. France will agree with the understanding that we are luring Svensson into our own web. A bluff. Voices of opposition will begin to disappear within the week. I anticipate we will have to call for martial law to protect against any insurgence or riots at week’s end. By then we will have most of the world in a vise, and the French people will know that their only hope for survival lies in our hands.”
“My dear, my dear,” the president muttered. “We are really doing this.”
“Yes. We are.”
Fortier reached for a stack of folders on the table at his elbow. “We don’t have the time to work through all of our individual challenges, so I’ve taken the liberty of doing it for you. We will need to adjust as we go, of course.” He handed each a folder. “Think of this as a game of high-stakes poker. I expect you will each hold your cards close to the chest.”
They took the folders and flipped them open. A sense of purpose had settled on the room. Henri Gaetan glanced at the slumped body of the prime minister.
“He’s taken an emergency trip to the south, Henri.”
The president nodded.
“Thomas Hunter,” Chombarde said, lifting the top page from his folder. “The man who kidnapped Monique de Raison.”
“Yes. He is . . . a unique man who’s stumbled into our way. He may know more than we need him to know. Use whatever force is necessary to bring him, alive if possible. You will coordinate your efforts with Carlos Missirian. Consider Hunter your highest priority.”
“Securing a man in the United States could be a challenge at a time like this.”
“You won’t have to. I am certain that he will come to us, if not to France, then to where we have the woman.”
A beat.
“There are 577 members in the Assembly,” the president said. “You have listed 97 who could be a problem. I think there may be more.”
They reviewed and on occasion adjusted the plans deep into the night. Objections were overcome, new arguments cast and dismissed, strategies fortified. A sense of purpose and perhaps a little destiny slowly overtook all of them with growing certainty.
After all, they had little choice.
The die had been cast.
France had always been destined to save the world, and in the end that’s exactly what they were doing. They were saving the world from its own demise.
They left the room six hours later.
Prime Minister Jean Boisverte left in a body bag.