by Tom Clancy
"Morning, Janet," he said, walking into the hot lab.
"Alex," replied Janet Clemenger, a Ph.D. molecular biologist. He took the plastic box from his pocket.
"I need this done in a hurry. Like, immediately."
"What is it?" She wasn't often told to stop everything she was doing, especially at the start of a working day.
"Looks like hemorrhagic fever. Treat it as level… four." Her eyes went a little wide.
"Here?" People were asking the same question all over America, but none of them knew it yet.
"They should be bringing the patient up now. I have to talk to his wife."
She took the container and set it gently on the work-table. "The usual antibody tests?"
"Yes, and please be careful with it, Janet."
"Always," she assured him. Like Alexandre, she worked a lot of AIDS experiments.
Alexandre next went to his office to call Dave James.
"How certain are you?" the dean asked two minutes later.
"Dave, it's just a heads-up for now, but—I've seen it before. Just like it was with George Westphal. I have Jan Clemenger working on it right now. Until further notice, I think we have to take this one seriously. If the lab results are what I expect, I get on the phone to Gus and we declare a for-real alert."
"Well, Ralph gets back from London day after tomorrow. It's your department for the moment, Alex. Keep me posted."
"Roger," the former soldier said. Then it was time to speak to the patient's wife.
In the emergency room, orderlies were scrubbing the floor where the bed had been, overseen by the ER charge nurse. Overhead they could hear the distinctively powerful sound of a Sikorsky helicopter. The First Lady was coming to work.
THE COURIER ARRIVED at CDC, carrying his "hatbox," and handed it over to one of Lorenz's lab technicians. From there everything was fast-tracked. The antibody tests were already set up on the lab benches, and under exquisitely precise handling precautions, a drop of blood was dipped into a small glass tube. The liquid in the tube changed color almost instantly.
"It's Ebola, Doctor," the technician reported. In another room a sample was being set up for the scanning electron microscope. Lorenz walked there, his legs feeling tired for so early in the morning. The instrument was already switched on. It was just a matter of getting things aimed properly before the images appeared on the TV display.
"Take your pick, Gus." This was a senior physician, not a lab tech. As the magnification was adjusted, the picture was instantly clear. This blood sample was alive with the tiny strands. And soon it would be alive with nothing else. "Where's this one from?"
"Chicago," Lorenz answered.
"Welcome to the New World," he told the screen as he worked the fine control to isolate one particular strand for full magnification. "You little son of a bitch."
Next came a closer examination to see if they could subtype it. That would take a while.
"AND SO HE has not traveled out of the country?" Alex was running down his list of stock questions.
"No, no he hasn't," she assured him. "Just to the big RV show. He goes to that every year."
"Ma'am, I have to ask a number of questions, and some of them may seem offensive. Please understand that I have to do this in order to help your husband." She nodded. Alexandre had a quiet way of getting past that problem. "Do you have any reason to suspect that your husband has been seeing other women?"
"No."
"Sorry, I had to ask that. Do you have any exotic pets?"
"Just two Chesapeake Bay retrievers," she replied, surprised at the question.
"Monkeys? Anything from out of the country?"
"No, nothing like that." This isn't going anywhere. Alex couldn't think of another relevant question. They were supposed to say yes to the travel one.
"Do you know anybody, family member, friend, whatever, who does a lot of traveling?"
"No—can I see him?"
"Yes, you can, but first we have to get him settled into his room and get some treatment going."
"Is he going to—I mean, he's never been sick at all, he runs and doesn't smoke and doesn't drink much and we've always been careful." And then she started losing control.
"I won't lie to you. Your husband appears to be a very sick man, but your family doctor sent you to the best hospital in the world. I just started here. I spent more than twenty years in the Army, all of that in the area of infectious diseases. So you are in the right place, and I am the right doc." You had to say things like that, empty words though they might be. The one thing you could never, ever, do was take hope away. The phone rang.
"Dr. Alexandre."
"Alex, it's Janet. Antibody test is positive for Ebola. I ran it twice," she told him. "I have the spare tube packaged to go to CDC, and the microscopy will be ready to go in about fifteen minutes."
"Very well. I'll be over for that." He hung up. "Here," he told the patient's wife. "Let me get you out to the waiting room and introduce you to the nurses. We have some very good ones on my unit." This was not the fun part, even though infectious diseases was not a particularly fun field. In trying to give her hope, he'd probably given her too much. Now she'd listen to him, thinking that he spoke with God's voice, but right now God didn't have any answers, and next he had to explain to her that the nurses would be taking some of her blood for examination, too.
"WHAT GIVES, SCOTT?" Ryan asked across thirteen time zones.
"Well, they sure as hell tossed a wrench into it. Jack?"
"Yes?"
"This guy Zhang, I've met him twice now. He doesn't talk a hell of a lot, but he's a bigger fish than we thought. I think he's the one keeping an eye on the Foreign Minister. He's a player, Mr. President. Tell the Foleys to open a file on the guy and put a big flag on it."
"Will Taipei spring for compensation?" SWORDSMAN asked.
"Would you?"
"My instinct would be to tell them where they could shove it, but I'm not supposed to lose my temper, remember?"
"They will listen to the demand, and then they will ask me where the United States of America stands. What do I tell them?"
"For the moment, we stand for renewed peace and stability."
"I can make that last an hour, maybe two hours. Then what?" SecState persisted.
"You know that area better than I do. What's the game, Scott?"
"I don't know. I thought I did, but I don't. First, I kinda hoped it was an accident. Then I thought they might be rattling their cage—Taiwan's, I mean. No, it's not that. They're pushing too hard and in the wrong way for that. Third option, they're doing all this to test you. If so, they're playing very rough—too rough. They don't know you well enough yet, Jack. It's too big a pot for the first hand of the night. Bottom line, I do not know what they're thinking. Without that, I can't tell you how to play it out."
"We know they were behind Japan—Zhang personally was behind that Yamata bastard and—"
"Yes, I know. And they must know that we know, and
that's one more reason not to piss us off. There are a lot of chips on the table, Jack," Adler emphasized again. "And I do not see a reason for this."
"Tell Taiwan we're behind them?"
"Okay, if you do that, and it gets out, and the PRC ups the ante, we have thousands—hell, close to a hundred thousand citizens over here, and they're hostages. I won't go into the trade considerations, but that's a big chip in political-economic terms."
"But if we don't back Taiwan up, then they'll think they're on their own and cornered—"
"Yes, sir, and the same thing happens from the other direction. My best suggestion is to ride with it. I deliver the demand, Taipei says no, then I suggest that they suggest the issue is held in abeyance until the issue of the airliner is determined. For that, we call in the U.N. We, that is, the United States, call the question before the Security Council. That strings it out. Sooner or later, their friggin' navy's gotta run out of fuel. We have a carrier group in the neighborhood, a
nd so nothing can happen, really."
Ryan frowned. "I won't say I like it, but run with it. It'll last a day or two anyway. My instinct is to back up Taiwan and tell the PRC to suck wind."
"The world isn't that simple, and you know it," Adler's voice told him.
"Ain't it the truth. Run with what you said, Scott, and keep me posted."
"Yes, sir."
ALEX CHECKED HIS watch. Next to the electron microscope was Dr. Clemenger's notebook. At 10:16, she lifted it, made a time notation, and described how both she and her fellow associate professor confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus. On the other side of the lab, a technician was running a test on blood drawn from the wife of Patient Zero. It was positive for Ebola antibodies. She had it, too, though she didn't know it yet.
"They have any children?" Janet asked, when the news arrived.
"Two, both away in school."
"Alex, unless you know something I don't… I hope their insurance is paid up." Clemenger didn't quite have the status of an M.D. here, but at moments like this she didn't mind. Physicians got to know the patients a lot better than the pure scientists did.
"What else can you tell me?"
"I need to map the genes out a little, but look here." She tapped the screen. "See the way the protein loops are grouped, and this structure down here?" Janet was the lab's top expert on how viruses were formed.
"Mayinga?" Christ, that's what got George.. And nobody knew how George had gotten it, and he didn't know now how this patient…
"Too early to be sure. You know what I have to do to run that down, but…"
"It fits. No known risk factors for him, maybe not for her, either. Jesus, Janet, if this is airborne."
"I know, Alex. You call Atlanta or me?"
"I'll do it."
"I'll start picking the little bastard apart," she promised. It seemed a long walk from the lab back to his office. His secretary was in now, and noticed his mood.
"DR. LORENZ IS in a meeting now," another secretary said. That usually put people off. Not this time: "Break in, if you would, please. Tell him it's Pierre Alexandre at Johns Hopkins, and it's important."
"Yes, Doctor. Please hold." She pressed one button and then another, ringing the line in the conference room down the hall. "Dr. Lorenz, please, it's urgent."
"Yes, Marjorie?"
"I have Dr. Alexandre holding on three. He says it's important, sir."
"Thank you." Gus switched lines. "Talk fast, Alex, we have a developing situation here," he said in an unusually businesslike voice.
"I know. Ebola's made it to this side of the world," Alexandre announced. "Have you been talking to Mark, too?"
"Mark? Mark who?" the professor asked. "Wait, wait, back up, Alex. Why did you call here?"
"We have two patients on my unit, and they've both got it, Gus."
"In Baltimore?"
"Yes, now what—where else, Gus?"
"Mark Klein in Chicago has one, female, forty-one. I've already micrographed the blood sample."
In two widely separated cities, two world-class experts did exactly the same thing. One pair of eyes looked at a wall in a small office. The other pair looked down a conference table at ten other physicians and scientists. The expressions were exactly the same. "Has either one been to Chicago or Kansas City?"
"Negative," the former colonel said. "When did Klein's case show up?"
"Last night, ten or so. Yours?"
"Just before eight. Husband has all the symptoms. Wife doesn't, but her blood's positive… oh, shit, Gus…"
"I have to call Detrick next."
"You do that. Keep an eye on the fax machine, Gus," Professor Alexandre advised. "And hope it's all a fucking mistake." But it wasn't, and both knew it now. "Stay close to the phone. I may want your input."
"You bet." Alex thought about that as he hung up. He had a call to make, too. "Dave, Alex."
"Well?" the dean asked.
"Husband and wife both positive. Wife is not yet symptomatic. Husband is showing all the classic signs."
"So what's the story, Alex?" the dean asked guardedly.
"Dave, the story is I caught Gus at a staff meeting. They were discussing an Ebola case in Chicago. Mark Klein called it in around midnight, I gather. No commonalties between that one and our Index Case here. I, uh, think we have a potential epidemic on our hands. We need to alert our emergency people. There might be some very dangerous stuff coming in."
"Epidemic? But—"
"That's my call to make, Dave. CDC is talking to the Army. I know exactly what they're going to say up at Detrick. Six months ago it would have been me making that call, too." Alexandre's other line started ringing. His secretary got it in the outer office. A moment later, her head appeared in the doorway.
"Doctor, that's ER, they say they need you stat." Alex relayed that message to the dean.
"I'll meet you there, Alex," Dave James told him.
"AT THE NEXT call on your machine, you will be free to complete your mission," Mr. Alahad said. "The timing is yours to decide." He didn't have to add that it would be better for him if Raman erased all his messages. To do so would have appeared venal to one who was willing to sacrifice himself. "We will not meet again in this lifetime."
"I must go to my workplace." Raman hesitated. So the order had really come, after a fashion. The two men embraced, and the younger one took his leave.
"CATHY?" SHE LOOKED up to see Bernie Katz's head sticking in her office door.
"Yeah, Bernie?"
"Dave has called a department head meeting in his office at two. I'm leaving for New York to do that conference at Columbia, and Hal's operating this afternoon. Sit in for me?"
"Sure, I'm clear."
"Thanks, Cath." His head vanished again. SURGEON went back to her patient records.
ACTUALLY THE DEAN had told his secretary to call the meeting on his way out the door. David James was in the emergency room. Behind the mask he looked like any other physician. This patient had nothing at all to do with the other two. Watching from ten feet away in a corner of the ER already set aside for the situation, they watched him vomit into a plastic container. There was ample evidence of blood. It was the same young resident working this one, too.
"No traveling to speak of. Says he was in New York for some stuff. Theater, auto show, regular tourist stuff. What about the first one?"
"Positive for Ebola virus," Alex told her. That snapped her head around like an owl's.
"Here?"
"Here. Don't be too surprised, Doctor. You called me, remember?" He turned to Dean James and raised an eyebrow.
"All department heads in my office at two. I can't go any faster, Alex. A third of them are operating or seeing patients right now."
"Ross for this one?" the resident asked. She had a patient to deal with.
"Quick as you can." Alexandre took the dean by the arm and walked him outside. There, dressed in greens, he lit a cigar, to the surprise of the security guards, who enforced a smoking ban out there.
"What the hell's going on?"
"You know, there is something to be said for these things." Alex took a few puffs. "I can tell you what they're going to say up at Detrick, sure as hell."
"Go on."
"Two separate index cases, Dave, a thousand miles apart in distance, and eight hours apart in time. No connection of any kind. No commonalties at all. Think it through," Pierre Alexandre said, taking another worried puff.
"Not enough data to support it," James objected.
"I hope I'm wrong. They're going to be scrambling down in Atlanta. Good people down there. The best. But they don't look at this sort of the thing the way I do. I wore that green suit a long time. Well" — another puff—"we're going to see what the best possible supportive care can do. We're better than anyplace in Africa. So's Chicago. So are all the other places that are going to phone in, I suppose."
"Others?" As fine a physician as he was, James still wasn't getting it.
; "The first attempt at biological warfare was undertaken by Alexander the Great. He launched bodies of plague victims into a besieged city with catapults. I don't know if it worked or not. He took the city anyway, slaughtered all the citizens, and moved on."
He got it now, Alex could see. The dean was as pale as the new patient inside.
"JEFF?" RAMAN WAS in the local command post going over the coming schedule for POTUS. He had a mission to complete now, and it was time to start doing some planning. Andrea walked over to him. "We have a trip to Pittsburgh on Friday. You want to hop up there with the advance team? There are a couple local problems that have cropped up at the hotel."
"Okay. When do I leave?" Agent Raman asked.
"Flight leaves in ninety minutes." She handed him a ticket. "You get back tomorrow night."
How much the better, Raman thought, if he might even survive. Were he to structure all the security at one of these events, that might actually be possible. The idea of martyrdom didn't turn his head all that much, but if survival were possible, then he would opt for that.
"Fair enough," the assassin replied. He didn't have to worry about packing. The agents on the Detail always had a bag in the car.
IT TOOK THREE satellite passes before NRO was willing to make its estimate of the situation. All six of the UIR heavy divisions which had participated in the war game were now in a full-maintenance stand-down. Some might say that such a thing was normal. A unit went into a heavy-maintenance cycle after a major training exercise, but six divisions—three heavy corps—at once was a bit much. The data was immediately forwarded to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments. In the meantime, the Pentagon called the White House.
"Yes, Mr. Secretary," Ryan said.
"The SNIE isn't ready yet for the UIR, but we have received… well, some disturbing information. I'll let Admiral Jackson present it."
The President listened, and didn't need much in the way of analysis, though he wished the Special National Intelligence Estimates were on his desk to give him a better feel for the UIR's political intentions. "Recommendations?" he asked, when Robby was done.