Drake was too stunned to speak.
Chertok looked battered and gaunt, dried blood or oil splattered across his shirt, his jaw covered with dark stubble. He was wearing a black wristband and a spider shoulder-holster with an ID badge clipped to his belt. A Homeland Security badge. That didn't compute.
"Huh-uh." Gena shook her head. "No way."
Chertok met her shocked stare, smiling a little as he screwed a black silencer onto the barrel of his gun—a Heckler & Kotch USP Tactical Forty-Five. His bloodshot eyes flickered over Drake and Paxton, then settled on her again, taking in her bruised face, grimy clothes and ratty, tangled hair.
"Beautiful," he said. "Lovely as ever."
"What're you doing here?" she asked quietly.
"Building a new reality." Chertok smiled, glancing over at Paxton. "What's wrong with him?"
"You know what's wrong with him," Drake said.
Chertok waved the forty-five in his general direction.
"Move back a little. Keep your hands where I can see them."
Drake stepped back, looking over at Buzard.
"Mr. President—are you all right?"
Buzard wasn't paying any attention to them. Cigar clamped between his teeth, he was reading something on his laptop, blowing smoke at the screen.
"He's not a hostage, Drake." Chertok checked his watch. "We have a limited window and you're not cleared for explanations." He looked over at MacMillan. "Relax, doctor. We'll send you back to the lab in a few minutes."
MacMillan didn't answer.
"I don't have time for this," Buzard said.
Sitting down at the table, the President reached for the whiskey bottle, refilled his tumbler and took another drink, throwing his head back, then he set the glass down next to his gun, coughing and dragging a sleeve across his mouth.
"They're the ones?" he asked Chertok.
"They're the ones."
"The only contacts? Are you sure?"
Chertok nodded. "The only ones who matter."
"I don't like it," Buzard said. "Breaking quarantine to bring them down here was an unnecessary risk. They're nobodies. I don't see why you couldn't have left them in Walnut Creek or wherever the hell they came from."
"We have to contain this, Mr. President." Chertok was watching Drake now, studying his face like a doctor checking for symptoms. "Hahn was present at the hijacking, Drake was in charge of the Conwell surveillance, and Paxton was running the investigation at WESTCOM. Drake and Hahn talked to Bartholomew on the way to Roseville and they were alone with her for several hours on the train. And MacMillan was locked up with them at the camp—another mistake. They've been in contact with too many people outside our control. We have to know how far it's gone before we can plug the leaks." He shrugged, glancing at MacMillan. "The transport was too hot to divert to another airfield. Once they'd landed, we had to bring them down."
"More screw-ups." Buzard shook his head. "Add them to the list."
"Christine didn't say anything," MacMillan bleated.
"I hope not, doctor," Chertok said. "We restored her granddaughter, but we can always send her back to the city, let her loose on the streets. How long do you think a twelve-year-old girl could survive in downtown San Francisco?"
"You wouldn't do that."
Chertok cocked a scorched eyebrow. "That's an odd thing to say."
"Bartholomew." Buzard frowned at his cigar. "We never should have sent the old bat to Roseville in the first place. I knew it was a mistake."
"But you did it anyway," Chertok said.
"Where is she now?"
"Computer center. Still running her analysis."
"They sent her, Chertok. Not me." The President shifted uncomfortably. "They said she was the only one who could evaluate the situation."
"And the doctor here, of course." Chertok smiled at MacMillan. "You're a team, aren't you, doctor? In more ways than one." He flinched a little, touching the bandage wrapped around his head. "There should be a law against geriatric love affairs."
"She didn't tell them anything." MacMillan's voice trembled. He looked very frail, blinking at Chertok through his bifocals, wringing his hands. "She knows what's at stake. So do I."
"You were alone with them at the camp."
"Neither of us would talk to outsiders."
"Maybe not," Chertok said. "One way or another, your lab team will stay behind with a National Guard contingent after our departure. Do you understand? You'll never leave this place unless you discover what happened to the vaccine."
"That may not be...there's not enough time."
The President stood up again, working his cigar.
"Better make time, doctor. We need a solution."
*
Drake stared at Buzard, shivering.
The decay must have started years ago, creeping through the government like a fungus, rotting it out from the inside, agency by agency. The good people were marginalized or driven out, the scum rising to the top—the puppets and party hacks, the globalists and bloodthirsty technocrats, the psychopaths dreaming of world domination. The country was falling apart, the government at war with its own citizens, chaos spreading through the system—war and terrorism, institutional corruption, massive intelligence failures, economic collapse, and now this—a deliberate biological attack on the population by the Federal government.
EFFIGY had taken over, but not completely. Not yet. They still needed to consolidate their position, roll out the vaccine and save the day before they could declare their New World Order. Problem, reaction, solution. It was classic. They must be desperate now that the vaccine seemed to have gone wrong, unless they'd planned it that way from the start. Recent history only made sense as a coordinated effort to destroy the existing order—to sweep it out of existence. Buzard didn't fit, though. The President had been at the Waverly, the primary target.
Suddenly, Drake understood.
"It was you," he said, watching Buzard nurse his whiskey. "You knew about the attack on the hotel. You were vaccinated, so there wasn't any danger. Not to you. Not then. You knew no one would suspect your involvement if they thought you were the target. You walked into that conference knowing it would happen."
"No danger." Buzard snorted and took another drink, scowling at MacMillan. "There's always a danger when you're surrounded by incompetents."
The doctor flushed, staring at the floor.
"The President is a public figure," Chertok said.
"You mean a front man," Drake said. "An EFFIGY puppet."
"He has to maintain his credibility," Chertok went on, smiling at him. "His good will with the people. Public trust is essential if he's going to declare emergency powers and a mandatory vaccination program." He shook his head, looking over at Buzard. "Drake's a conservative. A patriot. He resigned from the Agency after Yugoslavia."
Buzard's eyes centered on Drake.
"A patriot," he said, checking his watch. "Thank you for your service, Mr. Drake, but things have changed since those idiots decided it would be a good idea to bomb the hell out of Belgrade in the name of human rights and multiculturalism." He sat down again, rapping on the table. "Your country doesn't exist any more. Can't you see that? It couldn't survive a half-century of corruption and mismanagement and our institutions are no longer capable of self-correction." Chewing on his cigar, he blew a cloud of smoke at the lights. "We landed a man on the moon fifty years ago. No further progress. We should be expanding into space by now, colonizing Mars, developing an interplanetary civilization—there's no telling how far we could go. Instead, we're bogged down with intractable problems we inherited from fifty years of incompetent leadership—over-leveraged, bankrupt, our credibility blown, trillion-dollar deficits, the dollar shot, wasting our wealth and blood in foreign quagmires that have nothing to do with our real national interests. It's unsustainable." He pointed his cigar at Drake. "Unsustainable. We're trying to fix problems that have no solutions, wasting trillions trying to maintain an obsolete political structure that should have collapsed decades ago. Sometimes things get so screwed-up there's nothing to do but start all over again. Wipe it all out. Reboot. It's the only way."
Drake stared at him in a daze. "BLOWTORCH?" he said. "That's your solution?"
"The future is one planet united by a common neurological imperative. Most people are already living in a media-induced hallucination. They'll hardly notice the difference."
"You're insane," Gena said. "Millions could die from this."
"Gena the bleeding heart." Chertok smiled at her.
Buzard raised his tumbler and took another drink.
"There are seven billion people in the world, Miss Hahn. Over 190 countries squabbling over living space and natural resources. That's a recipe for perpetual chaos. By the year 2040, the global population will exceed nine billion people, most of them useless eaters located in Third World pest holes that will never contribute one thing to the future of the planet. That's unsustainable. We have terminal systemic problems that have to be resolved if we're going to survive and we can't do that with another goddamn election." He drained his glass, banged it down on the table. "Get on with it, Chertok. The chopper's waiting."