White Plague

by James Abel

  During prior administrations, lesser White House officials had occupied this building, Council for the Environment, Council on Safety in the Workplace.

  But the current National Security Advisor, Dr. A. R. Klinghoff of Michigan State University, the “Kissinger of the twenty-first century,” as pundits called him, preferred the weathered but homey building to the more impersonal gray, massive, Eisenhower-era, ornate, too-hot-in-winter, too-air-conditioned-in-summer Executive Office Building across Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Klinghoff was the youngest son of World War Two–era Viennese refugees, a professor and a civil lawyer, who fled the Nazis when Germany took over that country in 1938. He had grown up hearing dinner table stories of the bad things that happen when overt threats are ignored, and had made a career of predicting how to cope with them.

  All five people present—they’d been at this discussion for more than eight hours—were old enough to remember a time when the view outside included cars moving on Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House, along an area now turned into a pedestrian mall shielded from truck bombers by concrete barriers. All here were acutely aware of the way the lockdown of official Washington had grown over the last two decades. Each person present had a responsibility relating to national security. Each had, in their own way, inherited the nation’s nightmares.

  Admiral Bud “Red” Burgoyne was chief of Naval Operations of the United States Navy. At fifty-six, he was florid-faced, bowlegged, with a pugilist’s nose on an oddly thin, fluid body. He had, at age seventeen, considered a career in dance. Instead, he’d enlisted, become a champion Navy middleweight boxer, used the footwork to dodge punches, and never looked back.

  Judge Eileen Marcus—Homeland Security Secretary—had risen to national prominence after presiding over two New York–based terrorist trials. She was a widely respected jurist whose purview included the operation of the nation’s lone icebreaker. She was, at sixty-one, a grandmother of four, a painter of vintage rural railroad stations in her spare time, and a lover of saxophone jazz and crossword puzzles.

  Also present was Nate Grady, who had served under two presidents of opposite parties as a media advisor. Grady, thirty-nine, had no use for extremists on the left or the right. Time magazine had called him “one of the last professional Washingtonians who speak from the center.” Having no social life, he lived in a two-room apartment on Connecticut Avenue, went home each night and ate takeout soup or Mexican food, and drove a fourteen-year-old Honda. Physically, he resembled consumer advocate Ralph Nader, tall, ascetic, boxy brown suits, rubber-soled shoes. He slept well each night, when sometimes, smiling, he dreamed of playing left field for the Boston Red Sox.

  Klinghoff’s assistant National Security head, Dr. Joe Rush’s fifty-one-year-old boss, sat in a corner. Elias Pelfrey wore a box-cut pinstriped suit in dark blue, a white shirt, and a maroon tie. His brown curly hair was mat thick, cut short to control the wild part, and his quiet demeanor was enhanced by the limp from an old college football injury. He’d come close twice to being named National Security Advisor. He could hold his own with everyone in the group.

  “The President wants a recommendation on protocol five,” said Klinghoff. “Hopefully unanimous, that we’ll stand behind if things go public.”

  “Which they usually do,” said Grady.

  The windows were quadruple strength, bullet- and soundproof. Adobe-colored coffee mugs cooled on tables. The art was Ansel Adams photos: Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons. Klinghoff and his wife were avid hikers during his rare vacations.

  Protocol five, drawn up in 2007, was a top secret plan to be put into effect if ever a limited area inside the United States—an office building, a small town, a prison—any place smaller than two square miles—had been infected with deadly, contagious microorganisms.

  “Only fast, surgical action may prevent global catastrophe,” the protocol read.

  Activated by a button beneath Klinghoff’s desk was a voice-recording system. This is what it picked up.

  BURGOYNE: I advised you to order the film destroyed on the sub. But you preferred to save it.

  KLINGHOFF: We’ll continue our talk under the premise that Dr. Rush has seen it.

  BURGOYNE: Which is unfortunately more than I can say for us. Still, the idea of destroying our own people . . . There must be another way.

  GRADY: Would you rather they reach land? That the disease gets out? You saw the spread projections.

  PELFREY: How can it reach land if we stop the ship? You keep her offshore, see if the disease burns itself out, or we figure a way to kill it.

  KLINGHOFF: You know that’s misleading, Elias. You heard the CDC. They can probably decontaminate, but no one hundred percent certainty. They say if we put medical personnel aboard, they’d be at risk. They’re unsure whether healthy crew members—even months later—might be carriers. We all heard Dr. Graves say that noroviruses—that knocked out half of Washington last December—can live on surfaces; books, toilets. And you’ll recall the lab in Virginia where monkey Ebola broke out in 1990. A year later—after release from quarantine—two lab workers tested positive. Sheer luck made that strain harmless to humans. The entire building was destroyed.

  PELFREY: Oh, scientists never have one hundred percent certainty.

  KLINGHOFF: Because they know they can be surprised.

  MARCUS: If you would have listened to me two years ago, we could have avoided this. One icebreaker! I asked for more! Destroy that ship and it will end our ability to move around up there. The damn Russians have twenty icebreakers! If I had more icebreakers, one would have been close, would have reached the Montana early on.

  BURGOYNE: If the Navy had icebreakers, they’d be armed.

  KLINGHOFF: We’ll talk about that later. For now, I already explained, we can opt to try to decontaminate. Hydrogen chlorine gas in the vents. Foot-by-foot cleansing. Then testing. Lots of it, before sending her out again.

  GRADY: And what happens if the thing breaks out anyway? Listen to yourself. “Try” to decontaminate.

  MARCUS: Save the ship. Kill the crew.

  GRADY: Save millions of Americans onshore. That thing gets out, even a one percent lethality rate would kill four million people. We’ve got a twenty-five percent rate right now and it could go up.

  MARCUS: Disgusting!

  GRADY: Maybe you have a better idea. There’s simply no safe way to move so many infected and potentially sick to quarantine. Look, our group has commissioned two studies, two over the last six years, on decontaminating populated areas if worst comes to worst. All acknowledge the possibility of having to put the sick to sleep. And all recommend getting triaged people to isolation wards! But in this case that means transporting them hundreds of miles in planes or trucks that would have to be decontaminated or destroyed, putting new crews at risk, sending carriers into populated areas, to hospitals unequipped to handle so many isolation cases at the same time, so we’re talking multiple destinations. One sick person gets out, one truck breaks down, one fuckup, one fucking germ out, in a whole chain of events and it’s loose and we did it.

  PELFREY: I’d like to point out that—

  GRADY: I’m not finished. What is your suggestion, sir? Put the sick on a barge? In four weeks that ocean will freeze over. The locals can walk out to it. Or ice crushes the barge. You can’t guard it, we’ve got no ships that withstand ice. So what to do? Tow the barge off? Where? No deepwater harbors! Tow it six hundred miles to Nome? You still get ice, in a bigger city. And let’s not forget the fall storms. A barge might not even make it. And the whole thing on TV! Look, when it comes to the Arctic, you knew there would be an emergency one day. You’re unprepared.

  MARCUS: Then bring them into Barrow. There’s an old Air Force base there, an Arctic research center.

  GRADY: Ha! Barrow’s got a population of five thousand Eskimos, voters and veterans, and I’ll remind you that ind
igenous people were the most susceptible to flu in 1918. Whole villages perished. The base is not equipped for quarantine. Crews moving the sick would be at risk. The Quonset huts are eighty years old and would need to be fixed up. Costs in the Arctic are quadruple, so you’re saying we do a rush job and then cross our fingers that precautions are adequate? That the most deadly disease ever to hit mankind—stewing only one mile from a populated area—doesn’t get out? You think those people in town are going to stay quiet? You think Alaska’s senators are going to shut up?

  [The tape records Grady making a sound of disgust.]

  KLINGHOFF: Eileen, we’d have a disaster on our hands.

  MARCUS: And murdering two hundred American sailors and Marines, you don’t call that a disaster?

  PELFREY: You don’t have the corner on compassion, Eileen. Those are my guys up there, too.

  GRADY: A calamity, awful, terrible, but let’s discuss how to limit damage. Scenario A: The White House learned there was a fatal, highly contagious disease on board. After quarantining the ship, the President decided—in consultation with the nation’s foremost infectious disease experts—that in the interest of American families, the valiant crew—on death’s door—was put to sleep. We bring her into U.S. waters. We transfer the crew to a barge, tell ’em they’re going ashore. We put ’em to sleep peacefully, spray them. Figure out about the ship after.

  MARCUS: Gas ’em like Auschwitz.

  GRADY: I resent that. Every person in this room has known for years that we might one day face an outbreak. Now it’s real. You didn’t have a problem endorsing conclusions when they were theoretical, Eileen. Auschwitz? Those people suffered. I’m saying we put our people to sleep. We might even consider announcing that the disease may have been introduced by an enemy. We’ll hunt down the people who did this. We will not rest until our dead are avenged. The President takes control, out of the gate. And we triple decontaminate the icebreaker. Of course, once there’s a potential enemy out there, terrorists, Congress goes nuts. Every governor. Every mayor. Every senator. Every damn candidate for any office in fifty states. What do you mean, terrorists have a disease weapon? How did they get it?

  KLINGHOFF: I don’t think I like that can of worms.

  BURGOYNE: Well, this scenario of yours assumes the crew will just go along. You tell them to hand over weapons. May I remind you there are twenty-five Marines aboard, who can easily blow a copter out of the sky. If they have any idea what you’re up to, you’ll have one hell of a fight.

  GRADY: Okay, then, scenario B: We send her to the bottom. An accident. Like the submarine Thresher. One spread of torpedoes or missiles could do it. No one aboard would know what hit them. They’re cut off. A tragedy. But if we’re going to do it, we do it now!

  PELFREY: Why can’t we just leave the ship alone, see if Dr. Rush makes progress? The Montana is quarantined at the moment so the illness can’t spread, for God’s sake.

  MARCUS: I agree. Drop supplies. Or ask for medical volunteers, I’m sure many doctors would help, even knowing the risk. We show compassion. We save as many as we can. After the disease burns through, we keep the survivors in isolation, make sure they’re clean. That’s America! That’s the difference between us and . . . those other people.

  KLINGHOFF: That doesn’t sound so bad to me.

  GRADY: Sure, it sounds fine at first, benevolent, except . . . first, we just said the survivors may not be clean, and second, let’s put it in perspective. Remember President Jimmy Carter and Iran? You’ve got fifty-two American hostages taken. Instead of going in, attacking, endangering lives, Carter holds off, he’s the humanitarian President. He wants to avoid needless death. But what happens? The second the press knows, it becomes the lead story every night. You think this won’t be the same? DEATH SHIP, DAY ONE! DEATH SHIP, DAY EIGHTY! Roll call of the dead, on every screen in the world. Photos. Interviews with families. Congress demands an investigation, and someone digs up the other part. Washington at a standstill. The Russia treaty? The health initiative? Good luck! And when you finally decide to take action, we’re in court, blocked. Too late.

  KLINGHOFF: Hmmmmm.

  MARCUS: May I remind you that all the Iranian hostages got out without a single death in the end?

  GRADY: There was one death, and it was that Presidency. Tell me, what happens if Colonel Rush, who already disobeyed orders if he watched the film, has the Marines fight back? Or maybe someone on board gets on the Internet, blogs, or the film gets out. Oh, that would be us taking control, all right. The whole thing on YouTube.

  BURGOYNE: We’re fucked.

  GRADY: What we need now is a kind of triage.

  BURGOYNE: I’m afraid he’s right.

  GRADY: I say either try to decontaminate the ship after putting to sleep—humanely—people who are frankly getting sick anyway. Or blow the ship straight out.

  PELFREY: They’re not all sick. Some got over it! Some of them won’t even get sick at all!

  GRADY: You don’t know that for sure. The death rate could go up. And anyway, the bigger problem isn’t even the ship. It’s the other thing.

  MARCUS: Sounds like you’re talking about dogs. Put to sleep! Say what you mean. Murder!

  PELFREY: Joe Rush and Edward Nakamura, I’ve worked with those two for years . . . I’ve been to their homes.

  [The tape records silence at this point.]

  KLINGHOFF: Eileen, you’re certainly making it hard.

  MARCUS: Ha! I’m making it hard, he says.

  KLINGHOFF: Remember when the President interviewed you for your job? When you said you could make the tough choices? When you said you wanted to be the one to make them? That if he picked you, you’d never shirk.

  MARCUS: That’s not fair. I’m not shirking. I’m wondering which choice here is the best.

  [The tape records everyone talking at the same time. Snippets of voices . . . “Yes, but . . .” “I wish he’d destroyed the tape . . .” “How did the Chinese get that news . . .”]

  KLINGHOFF: It’s time for a vote. I’d rather have this unanimous, if possible. All in favor? Scenario A: Try to move the living onto barges, if we can disarm the Marines, let the thing burn through, try to move the barges south. All for it? Only one? Okay, then! Scenario B: Give it thirty-six hours, maybe Dr. Rush pulls off a miracle, and then destroy the ship and announce the real reason. Nobody for honesty, eh? C: Missiles or torpedoes. An accident. Hmmm, three out of five. Eileen? Vote!

  MARCUS: There has to be another way.

  KLINGHOFF: The President expects me in twelve minutes across the street, with a recommendation.

  MARCUS: I vote to quarantine.

  PELFREY: Sir, it’s the thirty-six hours that bothers me. It doesn’t seem like enough time. Colonel Rush will be giving medicines. He’ll need time to see if they work. To see if it spreads, or just dies off. Can’t we go longer?

  KLINGHOFF: Mr. Grady?

  GRADY: The longer you give them, the more chance the story will get out. Once it does, it’s out of control.

  KLINGHOFF: Oh, a few more hours won’t make such a big difference. Shall we say, forty-eight hours, Director Pelfrey?

  PELFREY: Can we say more?

  KLINGHOFF (irritated): How much more?

  PELFREY: Five days. We’re not even sure what the latency period is for this thing. For God’s sake, give my guys time!

  GRADY: That’s pushing it.

  KLINGHOFF: Fifty hours then! Okay! Hands, please. Eileen, still no? Elias? Okay, to sum up, I will tell the President that after being responsible for the destruction of a U.S. submarine, the outbreak is spreading on a second vessel. We recommend a fifty-hour window to see if Colonel Rush can show progress. After that, the National Emergency Powers Act enables him to use protocol five. The President might ignore us anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  PELFREY: Two days. My God!

 
KLINGHOFF: It’s a bit more than two. Certainly enough time to see if any treatments are working. Dr. Graves said that antivirals kick in fast. We’re compassionate people. We’ll give them a chance. We’re all here because we can make tough choices, and this one might be the toughest we will ever make. I thank you. Now, all, perhaps a brief moment of prayer is in order, for the sick, and for Colonel Rush’s efforts, before I cross the street.

  At the White House, the President thanked Klinghoff, and sat alone for a long time in the dark of the Oval Office. He was a midsized, plain-looking, tough-minded man, a former governor, and he’d come a long way from his boyhood as a lower-middle-class son of a Montana cattle rancher. He remembered his boyhood on that beautiful ranch, and the worst day of it, when he was eight. He recalled his father taking him out to the east range, where they looked over a herd of eight thousand prime beef cows. He remembered sobbing when his father told him that all those animals would have to be shot, burned, and buried, because one had been found to be infected with something called “mad cow disease,” which ate away brains.

  In order to protect people in the nearby town, and those who would one day eat Montana beef across America, the entire herd would be put down, even though this would cause his father to lose the ranch.

  “That’s not fair,” the boy had blurted out.

  “It is the right thing to do,” his father had said.

  “You said we’ll lose everything.”

  “When you have a tough decision to make, the longer you wait, the harder it gets.”

  At 3 A.M., the President picked up the phone and called his old college roommate, now an Air Force general in Seattle. He told the general what he needed, but asked the general to do it as a personal favor. He said he’d understand if the general refused.

  The Air Force general said, “Christ, Mike,” but then he said he would do it. He added, “We’ve got thick cloud cover moving in up there again, so the satellites will be blind.”