The Cure

by Glenn Cooper

  Deakins hustled off and Walker jumped off his stool.

  “Sorry, Doctor. You heard the man.”

  “We’re going with you,” Jamie said. “I need to speak with the president about getting into Fort Detrick.”

  “I don’t have the authority to transport civilians,” Walker said, “and I certainly don’t have clearance to bring civilians into the White House bubble.”

  “Then you’d better get the authority, or just stick your neck out and do it on your own. You’ve got to ask yourself if you really want to go down in history as the man who prevented the world from getting a cure?”

  Walker seemed like he was about to blow a fuse, but then his shoulders sagged a bit. “Fine. Just you and your daughters. No one else. Outside my office. One hour.”

  Jamie made sure the girls had some lunch, then went to give the news to Bigelow. He wasn’t sure what he would do if the man begged to leave with them, but he supposed he’d try to argue the case to Walker.

  He knocked gently on Bigelow’s door, then harder.

  It was unlocked, so he pushed in.

  The note on his chest was partly unreadable as it had been splashed by blood. A Swiss Army knife was on the floor.

  The note read in part:

  Cannot bear to lose my faculties. My brain has always been my finest organ. My vaccine is a failure. Hopefully yours will succeed.

  47

  The convoy of army vehicles bisected the crowds and entered the White House grounds at the Northwest gate behind the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The commanding officer of what was left of the 3rd US Infantry Regiment at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, met Lieutenant Walker as he exited his Humvee on the tire-rutted south lawn.

  Colonel Amelia Willey’s salute turned to a finger point when she saw Jamie and the girls climbing out. At Walker’s prior orders, the three of them were masked as were all the troops on the lawn.

  “What the hell are you doing bringing civilians into a secure facility, Lieutenant?” she said.

  “This man says he’s got a cure. These are his daughters.”

  “You from the NIH?” Willey asked Jamie.

  “No, Boston,” Jamie said. “I was at NIH looking for critical biological materials. Turns out what I need is at Fort Detrick. Can I get an escort?”

  The colonel waved her hand toward the baying crowds at the fence line. “My mission is to keep the wolves away from the chickens. You’re going to have to talk to someone inside.”

  It turned out that the colonel’s idea of talking to someone inside was taking Jamie straight into the West Wing where she briefed the two Secret Service agents standing guard at the Oval Office.

  One of the agents glared over his mask and disappeared inside. Not a minute later, he returned and instructed the other agent to frisk them, and the girls giggled at what they interpreted as a tickling session.

  “The president will see you now,” the senior agent grumbled.

  Circumstances had robbed Jamie from any of the sense of pomp that might otherwise be associated with a visit to the Oval Office.

  Oliver Perkins, President of the United States for all of a month, wasn’t behind the massive Resolute desk. The slight, narrow-shouldered man had been sitting in an armchair shoeless, and in an act of lassitude, hadn’t bothered to put them on for this occasion. He also hadn’t bothered to put on a mask. He had spent all his political life as a congressman from rural Illinois and having wheedled his way to become Speaker of the House, he had never expected nor wanted to be in the position he now found himself.

  Aside from voting and reading the papers, Jamie was not a political animal. Single-parenthood and work had been all-consuming. He knew who Perkins was, of course, but he had no idea who the woman was seated across from him. He wondered if she was the First Lady. She was in her sixties, well-put-together and age-appropriate as Perkins’s wife. She too, was maskless. She had a novel on her lap that she marked with a piece of paper and slapped closed.

  “Dr. Abbott, welcome to Washington,” Perkins said. “I haven’t been told much but I gather you’re on a mission of sorts.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. It’s an honor.”

  “And who are these young ladies?”

  “My daughters, Emma and Kyra. So, you know, they both have the infection.”

  “Pleased to meet you—all of you,” Perkins said. “Why don’t all of you remove your masks so I can see what you look like. The precautions seem silly at this point. The vice president and I have been in contact with so many who’ve fallen ill and yet, we have not succumbed. I imagine we are not going to get the sickness.”

  “I’m also immune,” Jamie said, peeling his mask off, “as is about a fifth of the population.”

  Perkins introduced the woman as Gloria Morningside, previously, the Secretary of Agriculture. With the girls’ faces revealed, she remarked how beautiful they were and that she could see the resemblance to their father. He chose not to disabuse her of her notion, although he was sure Kyra looked nothing like him.

  “May I ask about their mother?” she said.

  “My wife passed away years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you hungry, darlings?” she asked. “Can they understand me?”

  “Cookies?” Emma said.

  Laughing, Morningside said, “I guess they can. It just so happens, we do have cookies.” There was a box of Oreos on a sideboard, and soon, the girls were happily tucking in.

  Perkins poured Jamie a coffee from a carafe and had him join them on the facing sofas at the center of the august room.

  “Where are you from, Dr. Abbott?” the president asked.

  “Boston. I’m at—or I was at—the Mass General Hospital.”

  “Are you a medical doctor?”

  “Yes, sir. A neurologist.”

  “My father was a general practitioner from a small town in Illinois you’ve never heard of.”

  “My uncle delivered babies,” Morningside said a little dreamily.

  “I understand you believe you’ve got a shot at a cure,” Perkins said. “Fill us in.”

  Jamie spoke for a good half an hour. The only interruption was when the older of the two Secret Service men came in, made a scolding remark at the lack of masks among the visitors, and handed Perkins a note.

  “Keep going, Dr. Abbott,” Perkins said when he had left. “If Agent Mitchell ever had a sense of humor, it has well and truly disappeared.”

  When Jamie was done, the president asked, “Do you really think your approach is workable?”

  “I think it’s got a shot. The way I look at it, it would be criminal not to try.”

  Perkins nodded gravely. “Here’s what I think. You and your daughters have been through an ordeal in service to humanity. There’s no other way to characterize your quest. It exemplifies noble service. That also goes for your colleague in Indianapolis, Dr. Alexander, may she rest in peace. Wouldn’t you agree, Gloria?”

  “Absolutely,” Morningside said.

  Perkins pushed himself off the sofa. “We’ll help you, of course. You’ll get a military escort to Detrick and a letter from me to the base commander. You’ll leave first thing in the morning. Until then, you’ll be my guests for dinner. This is a big house. You and your charming daughters will have your choice of accommodations for the night.”

  “I don’t suppose I could stay in the Lincoln Bedroom?” Jamie said, half in jest.

  Perkins clapped his hands sharply and grinned. “The Lincoln Bedroom it is.”

  Miraculously, the White House seemed to have an abundance of hot water. Jamie soaked in the Lincoln Bedroom bathtub until his fingertips were puckered. Then he checked on the girls who were across the hall on the second floor of the residence, in the Queen’s Bedroom. They had enjoyed their own hot tubs and were happily lounging in a pink confection of a room under the canopy of a four-poster. Returning to his room, he studied the copy of the Gettysburg Address on the desk before plunking himsel
f down onto the massive rosewood bed. Under the stern gaze of Abe Lincoln in oil paint, he fell asleep until he was awakened for dinner by the only housekeeper remaining on the premises.

  Dinner was on the ground floor of the residence, in the Blue Room. A table at the center of the oval was set for five and lit by the dimmed bulbs of the massive crystal chandelier. Perkins praised the cook, a heavyset woman, who was doing double-duty as the server.

  “Amy whipped this meal up without any help,” he said. “She’s the only one in the kitchen, isn’t that right, Amy?”

  “Yes, sir, it’s a fact.”

  “Tell Dr. Abbott how many presidents you’ve served?”

  “Five—well six, counting you.”

  “I’m the one with an asterisk after his name,” Perkins chuckled.

  “If you’ve got an asterisk, what do I have?” Morningside said, drinking her wine in gulps.

  Perkins ignored her and said, “Amy inspires us through her service.”

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t have anywhere else to go, and no people to go to. Now who wants more chicken?”

  “The White House is down to a skeleton staff,” Perkins said after a while. “We’re down to a few loyal aides and a couple of Secret Service guys. To be honest, there isn’t all that much to do. We’ve got plenty of power from our backup generators, but other than the military folk on site, and some units in the Pentagon who are reachable by radio, there’s no one to communicate with and precious little information coming to us from outside Washington. That’s why your account of your cross-country journey was so enlightening. Truthfully, President Lincoln had vastly more information on the state of the country during the Civil War than I do.

  “This is a federal government in name only. A diminished Congress is out of session indefinitely, there’s no functional judiciary, and you’re looking at the executive branch. In the early days of the epidemic, when the president and vice president were incapacitated, and I was sworn in pursuant to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, I thought the job was going to be supremely difficult, but I had no idea it would be essentially meaningless.”

  “It’s not meaningless, Oliver,” Morningside said.

  Perkins smiled and pointed across the table. “This woman is my strength. My wife was in Illinois with our children and grandchildren when the lines of communication went down and I lost touch. Gloria’s husband—well—”

  “He’s gone,” was all she added.

  “Gloria’s the only cabinet member accounted for who wasn’t infected. I made her vice president and now we have a succession plan if I go down. In the absence of Congressional ratification, it’s not technically valid, but hell, sue me. There’s no one I’d rather be in the trenches with. We came up together as freshmen in Congress, you know.”

  Morningside got up to get another bottle of wine from the sideboard. She stood and wobbled a little. The cook sprang into action and told her that she’d get it.

  “We were both from farming districts,” Morningside said, “both young lawyers, both deer in headlights when we came to Washington. I think he fancied me.”

  “Well maybe a little,” Perkins said.

  “Maybe a lot,” she replied.

  Jamie smiled and listened to their banter. He was the audience for this odd bit of domesticity playing out in an ornate blue theater in the most storied house in America. He wondered whom he would ever have to tell about it.

  They heard a single gunshot, muffled by the thick glass and drawn curtains.

  “Oh my,” Morningside said. “That sounded close.”

  “The sound of gunfire has become commonplace,” Perkins said.

  Morningside reached over, found Jamie’s wrist and said, out of the blue, “Tell me your vaccine will work.”

  He told her what she wanted to hear. “I think it will.”

  She started to say something but was interrupted by a nearby burst of automatic rifle fire.

  The two Secret Service agents that Jamie had seen at the Oval Office entered and checked that the curtains weren’t letting any light escape.

  “Ours or theirs?” Perkins asked.

  The older man said, “Theirs,” and replied to a transmission into his earpiece. “Roger, understood.”

  “Sentries on the North Lawn think that someone plinked some windows on the third floor. The commanding officer wants permission to fire back some warning rounds.”

  “Over their heads!” Perkins exclaimed. “I don’t want any bloodshed.”

  A volley let loose from a light machine gun on the White House roof and quiet returned.

  “Poor bastards,” Perkins said. “They’re drawn here from far and wide because this house is a beacon of hope. They have no electricity; they see lights inside. They have little food; they imagine there’s food aplenty in here.”

  “We should feed them as best we can,” Morningside said.

  “We’ve discussed this ad nauseam, Gloria,” Perkins said. He seemed to be trying to control his temper. “We’ve got to use our stores to provide for our troops. We’ve got even more mouths to feed now that additional men from Bethesda have arrived. We have a duty to preserve the executive branch.” His anger broke through and he banged the table with his hand. “I’m not going to let an armed mob take this house!”

  The girls put down the chicken bones they’d been gnawing, and at the jolt, looked to Jamie for guidance.

  “Look, you’ve scared them,” Morningside said.

  Perkins dismissed her with a wave and said, “Do you girls want something more to eat?”

  “I want cookies,” Kyra said.

  Emma said, “Me too!”

  “Amy,” Perkins said, “go ahead and dip into my private stash for these two young constituents.”

  *

  In Jamie’s dream, Mandy was sitting in a meadow full of flowers, looking exactly as she did in Rosenberg’s painting. She turned toward him and he anticipated that she was about to say something of profound importance, maybe something about their cure. But all that came out of her mouth was a pounding noise.

  The light came on and the younger of the two Secret Service agents was in the bedroom. As Jamie woke, he heard sustained gunfire from the grounds.

  “Get moving,” the agent said with a calm sort of urgency. “We’re evacuating. There’s been a coordinated attack from all sides. Gangs of civilians are pouring through the gates. They’re heavily armed. The army’s not going to be able to hold the line.”

  Jamie threw his clothes on, grabbed the one bag he’d been using for the three of them, plus the backpack with Mandy’s notebooks, and ran to the girls’ room. As they got dressed, he stuffed their night clothes onto the rolled-up portrait of Mandy he had been dreaming about.

  The president and vice president were waiting near the Blue Room by the doors to the South Portico.

  Jamie herded the girls down the hallway and called out to Perkins, asking him where they were going.

  Perkins looked scared. “The five of us and our Secret Service detail are getting onto Marine One,” he said. “The rest of the staff are going to evacuate by road with the army who say they can punch through. I do not want to leave but I’m told we don’t have a choice. It looks like the people’s house is about to be overrun by the goddamn people. We’ll all meet up at Fort Detrick. I guess we’re going to have to hold your hand while you try to cure this thing.”

  As the big green helicopter lifted off and sped into the night, Jamie held Emma’s and Kyra’s hands and strained at his seat belt to catch a fleeting moonlit glimpse of a river of people streaming toward the magnificent white building.

  48

  Marine One, a Sikorsky Sea King, was large as helicopters went, but the passenger cabin was still claustrophobic. The president and vice president faced each other in large captain’s chairs, while Jamie and the girls, and the two Secret Service agents took the bench seats across the narrow aisle. The two military pilots kept the cockpit door open. The glow from the instrument pane
ls provided the only illumination since a brightly lit cabin could be a target for someone taking potshots from the ground.

  Perkins called to the front, “What’s our flight-time?”

  The copilot shouted back, “Fifteen minutes to Detrick, sir.”

  Jamie sat between the girls, keeping up the hand-holding. Emma had been in a helicopter before as a young girl when she accompanied him to a medical congress in Las Vegas. They had taken an aerial tour of the Grand Canyon and she had loved every second of it. But those memories were hidden behind blocked memory gates and flying scared her now. She squeezed his hand until it was bloodless.

  “It’s okay, baby. We’ll be there soon.”

  Morningside smiled at Jamie. “They’re such sweet girls,” she said. “You’re lucky to have them. I have two daughters of my own. They’re grown, of course—” Her voice became too small to hear the rest.

  The helicopter was rocked by a pocket of turbulence and Emma began to whimper, and Kyra joined in. As Jamie catered to their needs, he missed the beginnings of the aerial drama.

  He looked up when he heard one of the Secret Service men, the younger one, say, “What are you doing, Grant?”

  The older one, Mitchell, said, “Give me your gun.”

  Jamie looked over to see Mitchell pointing his weapon at his partner.

  The president said, “Put that gun down! What are you doing?”

  “I’m not going to say it again, Bobby.”

  “I’m not giving you my weapon. Stand down,” the younger man said.

  The older agent changed his aim toward Perkins. “The gun, or I will kill him.”

  Morningside called to the pilots, “Help! Help!”

  When the pilots turned toward the cabin, Mitchell warned them not to get out of their chairs. “I know you guys aren’t armed. Don’t be assholes.”

  Jamie pulled his hands free of the girls. He told them that everything was going to be okay. He studied the face of the younger agent and tried to read his next move. It came fast. He pulled out his holstered pistol with two fingers and handed it over.

  “That was the right decision,” Mitchell said. “Now stay put. Don’t unbuckle your belt or I’ll have to put you down.”