“I didn’t know the youth of Iran even had internet,” I said warily.
Maitland smiled bleakly. “They do,” he said. “In fact the leadership of Iran itself is not immune to the power of Facebook and other social media sites. Some of them have used those sites to post messages and information.”
“But the country had internet filtering, surely.”
“Yes,” Maitland said. “They had draconian measures in place because they feared online social networking’s potential to challenge the narrative the regime was articulating. The ‘Twitter Revolution’ that threatened Moldova a few years ago and that swept the Egyptian government from power would have given the Iranian’s plenty to worry about. So they had draconian internet filtering. That wasn’t enough to stop the Iranian youth. One third of the nation’s youth were interconnected and politicized by virtual social networks.”
“So you are saying that the Iranian youth were actively disobeying or circumventing the social media bans imposed by the government?”
“Of course they were,” Maitland said bluntly. “In fact, according to Iran’s Ministry of Sciences, almost sixty percent of Iranian university students use Viber and WeChat, and almost the same amount admit to using Facebook. Iranian university students are just like students all around the world, Mr. Culver. They’re social – it’s just harder for them, so much of the social media activity was underground.”
“And your staff at the Open Source Center tapped into the social media network of information?”
“Yes.”
“What did you discover?”
“Nothing – directly,” Maitland admitted. “But in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of the zombie infection in Florida, there were photos and commentaries coming out of Iran’s social media about long lines of people around Tehran. Now normally that’s nothing too extraordinary. But the lines of people being photographed were all young men. Normally if the government was vaccinating the population for a strain of desert flu, then the lines would be mixed groups of men and women, and mixed ages in different parts of the city. But these groups were all young men, and the lines were not out front of hospitals or medical facilities – they were outside military barracks.”
I nodded my head in slow understanding. “And that was your first clue?”
“It was, but we didn’t realize it at the time,” Maitland confessed. “It was just something interesting that made it into a report and was then forgotten. The speculation in Iran from the people we were connected to through social media was vague, and certainly not alarmed. They didn’t know what the government was doing, and neither did the men in the lines. They received an injection – that was all they knew. They weren’t told what it was for.”
“And the human intelligence?”
The CIA Director didn’t flinch – didn’t resist. He adjusted the knot of his tie and fell back into the soft padding of his chair.
“Not ours,” he admitted. “The fact is that we have never been able to place a source high enough into the Iranian regime to be of any use.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “So where did the information come from?”
“The Mossad and the British.”
“Mossad – the Israeli secret intelligence?”
Maitland nodded. “They had a source in the Iranian government – a contact they only referred to as ‘Pegasus’.”
“A politician?”
Maitland made a face like he had bitten into something sour. “Most probably,” he agreed. “All we know is they had been running him since 2010. Apparently they caught him in a honey-pot operation during some European delegation visit. Quite frankly, that’s all we know about the guy.”
“Honey-pot? What is that?”
“It’s a standard method of trapping a source and blackmailing them,” Maitland said frankly. “This guy got caught with his dick inside the wrong under-aged girl. The Israelis set him up and he rolled over.”
I nodded. “And he told the Israelis about the zombie virus?”
Maitland shook his head. “If he did, Mossad didn’t tell us,” Maitland said softly. “They told us that the Iranian government was immunizing its Army – injecting them with some kind of antidote.”
“The antidote to the zombie virus, right.”
“That’s the conclusion we made – eventually. Once it was too late. At the time, it dovetailed in with what we were hearing on social media, but the reports were separate. No one put the two pieces of information together until later.”
“And the British? You mentioned their involvement somehow.”
Maitland nodded. “They intercepted two phone calls, one from France and one from Tehran, both made by a Russian scientist to a former comrade and fellow scientist. Apparently the two men had worked together in Russia. The man who received the call had defected to Britain.”
“And the caller? Who was that?”
“A scientist by the name of Glavinoski.”
I sat back in my chair again, and recalled my conversation with Professor Igor Vavilov. “So then you went to Boston and spoke to one of the other men this Glavinoski worked with – a man the CIA had brought into America after the end of the Cold War.”
“Vavilov,” Maitland confirmed.
It was all making sense. I could see the trail: the Russian scientist who had been employed by the Iranians to develop the zombie virus, telephoning an old associate who he had worked with at the Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations in Leningrad. “Were those phone calls you intercepted between the two Russian scientists specifically about the development of the zombie plague?”
“Yes,” Maitland said, “although when we played through the tapes the British sent us, everything was naturally abstract. Again, on its own, the information was interesting, but not specific. We only put everything together when our blue-skyers started asking questions.”
I leaned forward in the chair again. I was perspiring. The heating in the room was turned up high, and the air was stuffy. Maitland seemed strangely unaffected. I felt a trickle of sweat run down my back.
“Tell me more about these blue-skyers you keep referring to. I don’t understand their role, or how they operate.”
Finally Calvin Maitland seemed to relax. A trace of a smile touched his lips, and it was an expression of grim satisfaction. I sensed that here, at last, was something he was willing and eager to share.
“Generally intelligence gathering is a join-the-dots kind of process,” he explained. “Sometimes you can come across a piece of information and use it to take preventative counter-measures. At other times, the intelligence gathered simply confirms a current belief. Occasionally… too rarely… you can use that intelligence you have to create a case. That’s what we did. We created a case against Iran by assembling all the fragments of information.”
I was disappointed. The whole explanation was too abstract for me to grasp, let alone for me to describe to readers. I set down my pen and notepad.
“Can you explain that in a way I can understand?” I asked. “Can you put it into a relevant context that relates to the zombie infection?”
Maitland was still smiling smugly. He sat forward and the springs of his expensive executive chair creaked.
“Back when Ronald Reagan was President, America and Russia were locked in the grips of the cold war. It was the 1980’s and all the data coming across the CIA’s desk suggested that Russia’s economy was growing – almost booming. But one or two of our guys didn’t believe it, so they sat down and asked themselves ‘what if’. What if Russia was actually on the brink of economic collapse – despite everything we were being told. What sort of conditions would we expect to see? What indicators would there be to support the idea? Then they went looking. That was the key. They asked a question and then went looking for evidence. They didn’t wait for the evidence to come to them and they didn’t accept anything at face value. They went looking for truth.”
“And found?”
“And they
found that Russia was teetering on the brink of imploding,” the CIA Director explained. “They drew up a list of the economic and social indicators they expected to see and then put the word out to agencies around the world. Within weeks the data started coming back, all of it supporting their speculation. Reagan used that information to end the Cold War. He essentially dared the Russians to compete in an arms race they couldn’t afford. Ultimately, they had to concede. The Cold War ended.”
“And your guys did the same thing?”
“Essentially, they did,” Maitland confirmed. He got out of his chair suddenly, leaped to his feet and paced across the room. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and when he reached the door, he stood perfectly still with his head bowed, like he was concentrating all of his will on a problem. I swiveled in my chair to follow the man. He looked up at me at last.
“For months after the initial outbreak of the zombie infection we all assumed it was some terrible disaster, but a natural disaster. Something that just happened,” he shrugged his shoulders. “But one of the guys here at Langley wasn’t so sure. He started to ask questions, and one of the questions was ‘what if’. What if this was some kind of monumental monstrous terrorist attack, the likes of which mankind had never known? What would we see if that was the case?”
“And he started digging, right?”
Maitland nodded. “He started assembling those fragments of information I mentioned earlier. We started looking in the Middle East, and when we put the fragments of information together it became clear that Iran might have been involved. Then we went to the satellite data, and other social data that suddenly became relevant.
“Social data?”
Maitland nodded. “The Iranian government – the key members of the regime – had not been seen in public for months. No national broadcasts. No sightings at all. No military exercises. The entire Army had been basically confined to barracks. Their defense systems had been on alert, but there was no imminent threat.”
“And the satellites?”
Maitland peered hard at me. “In 2014 the US government launched a satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base named NROL-25,” he said quietly. “It’s operated by the National Reconnaissance Office, and it is fitted with technology known as ‘synthetic aperture radar’… which means it can see through cloud, it can see in daylight and dark… and it can identify underground structures, such as military bunkers.”
I raised both eyebrows in stunned surprise. “Really? We have satellites that can do that?”
Maitland nodded and then went on. “The NROL-25 was tasked to fly over Iran. We found the secret bunkers beneath Tehran. Then we went back through the records of previous satellite images and saw the sudden flurries of activity around the diplomatic quarter of Tehran where the bunker is concealed. They were stocking up.”
“Stocking up with supplies?”
“And people. Key people. They were all underground. That’s why we hadn’t seen or heard anything from their government. Every crucial person in the regime was underground – hiding… or waiting.”
“You took your findings to the President?”
“Of course,” Maitland came back to his desk. “When we were sure of the facts, I took everything to the President and laid it out for him. The two intercepted phone conversations between the Russian scientists were the smoking gun. Now that we looked at them and were able to give them context, everything fell into place. I assure you, there was no doubt.” The CIA Director paused for a moment. “Mr. Culver, even though I haven’t told you everything about our investigation, I’ve told you more than enough for your interview. Safe to say that when I detailed our conclusions to the President directly, he too was convinced. It was no coincidence that seven days after we pushed the zombie hordes back into Florida and cordoned off the state, we declared war on Iran and bombed them back into the sands of history.”
I sat back in my chair, frowning. For long moments the room was silent. I was groping for something buried deep within my subconscious – some critical question that remained just out of reach. I furrowed my brow. I could see the CIA Director watching me like I was a fascinating science experiment. Finally, I had it. My eyes went wide.
“Sir, when all this information was assembled, and you were sure the Iranians were behind the plot, why didn’t we just fly into Iran one night and snatch a dozen soldiers? Couldn’t we have manufactured our own antidote? Couldn’t thousands – perhaps millions of lives – have been saved if we had been able to lay our hands on the formula?”
Maitland grunted. He folded his arms across his chest. “We did,” he said.
“Did what?”
“We did exactly what you suggested, Mr. Culver. The SEALs flew into Iran and we captured eight Iranian soldiers. Three of them were Revolutionary Guard.”
“What happened to them?”
Maitland shrugged his shoulders in a gesture to suggest that he knew damned well, but he wasn’t about to tell me. “Officially those men disappeared.”
I took a deep breath and jerked my head in understanding. I wasn’t about to detour down the perilous path of discussing detainees and the ethics of the government’s actions. “Well before they disappeared, did you manage to discover anything about the antidote? Are we making this stuff in a lab or something?”
“There is no antidote,” Maitland said flatly.
“What? But the Iranian soldiers… the long lines outside the barracks. Your intelligence information…”
“There is no antidote,” the Director said again. His tone was bleak and unwavering. “Whatever those soldiers were injected with, it was either a temporary preventative to the infection that wore off and left the bloodstream within just a few days, or it was a placebo. We found nothing – no cure, and no traces of anything in their systems that might offer protection against the infection. There is no cure, Mr. Culver. None.”
AIR FORCE ONE:
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, MARYLAND
I watched the President give his speech down on the concrete tarmac from a swing-up TV screen that was mounted to my seat at the rear of the iconic VC-25B.
In the years before the apocalypse, the televised Presidential departure address was rarely broadcast by news media. But now – when the nation’s fate hung precariously in the balance – the people needed to see their leader as often as possible.
The President stood before the microphone with Air Force One looming in the background. He smiled. He spoke about a future where America would rise from the ashes of the zombie horror into a new era of prosperity and strength. Then he took his wife by the elbow and guided her to the stairs because Air Force One had never had a jetway. A sergeant saluted. At the door of the aircraft the President and the First Lady turned and waved.
I felt a sudden jangle of nerves.
I got up from my seat and walked towards the front of the aircraft. The President’s Director of Communications was waiting for me. She flicked me a harried, anxious smile.
Her name was Connie Collins. She had worked in the media before joining the President’s team. She had a clipboard clasped tightly to her chest. She ran her eyes down a page of names and details, then glanced sideways at me.
“The President’s accommodations are in the nose of the plane,” Connie said. “He wants you to meet him there for the interview. I’ll lead you through to his office.”
I followed the woman forward through the lower deck of the modified Boeing 747 airliner. The upper deck was cordoned off. It was packed full of military-style electronics gear and a team of communications specialists. Connie led me to a wooden door near the front of the plane and knocked.
“Come in,” the man’s voice was a boom of bass even through the wall. Connie smiled at me and arched an eyebrow. “I’ll be back to collect you in exactly twenty minutes. Be ready. We depart in half an hour. If you’re not finished by then, you will be flying all the way to Europe with us.” She gave me a pout of pink lipstick and then silently mouthed the
words, “Good luck.”
I took a nerve-settling breath and pushed open the door to meet the President of the United States of America.
Joseph Mace was sixty-three years old; a hulking solid framed man with intelligent, searching eyes set in a web of fine wrinkles. His hair was grey and wavy, tidy without being styled, and his smile seemed genuine. As I entered the office he rose from behind his desk and shook my hand. He was wearing a shirt and tie. His coat was draped over the backrest of the chair and he had the sleeves of his shirt rolled up.
“John, nice to meet you.”
The President just called me ‘John’.
“Mr. President,” I smiled nervously. My palms were sweaty. “Sir, thank you for granting this interview.”
The office was functional – nothing elaborate, nor extravagant. It seemed a reflection of the way this man ran the country, and perhaps of the man himself. We sat down. I slid the strap of my bag off my shoulder and set it down on the carpeted floor. The President sat back, relaxed. He crossed his legs, propped his elbow on the armrest of his chair, and then rested his chin in the cup of his hand like he was giving me his full attention. “Welcome to Air Force One,” Joseph Mace said. “Do you want anything to drink before we start? Coffee perhaps?”
I shook my head. “No thank you sir. I’ve been told I’m on the clock and I don’t want to take up any more of your time than I need to.”
The President started to smile. “Did Connie read you the riot act?”
I nodded. “She’s efficient,” I conceded, “and a little bit scary.”
Mace chuckled. It was an unaffected, genuine sound. “She needs to be, I’m afraid, otherwise I wouldn’t get any work done.”
I sat back. I felt a little of the anxiety seep away from my body. President Joseph Mace was going out of his way to make me feel comfortable. He struck me then as the kind of man who could easily be your next-door neighbor – the kind of guy who might drink a beer on Sunday afternoons while watching a ball game. For all his stature and power, somehow he had retained his humility and humanity… and his willingness to connect with the people who had elected him to represent them.
Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America Page 28