by Earl Merkel
“Pretty handy, I bet.” Beck nodded at the card. He pulled the seat belt around himself and locked it with a click, just as his driver cut hard into a faster lane. He heard the sound of brakes squealing and involuntarily braced for an impact that did not materialize.
“Are we in a hurry?”
“Actually, Dr. Casey,” she began, “I just assumed—”
“Please, let’s drop the ‘doctor,’ ” Beck interrupted. “Why don’t you call me Beck? Then I can call you Andrea.”
“Andi, if you please. Only my mother uses the other name. Pardon me, but you’renot a doctor?” She pulled from the airport ramp onto the expressway and accelerated in a manner that pressed Beck into the seat back.
“My doctorate is in history. And sociology.”
“Ah, a professor.”
“Yes and no. Having dual specialties seems to annoy both the sociology department and the history department at most universities—at least, it sure pisses off their tenure committees.”
“Really. I had no idea.”
“I’m glad you saw that truck,” Beck said, trying to sound unconcerned. “So I’ve become a professional visiting academic. I’ve worked on four campuses in three years. Right now I’m a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago—or will be when the term starts next month.” He glanced pointedly at the speedometer. “If I live that long.”
“Dr. Krewell seems to know you well. Have you worked together?”
“I met Larry years ago, when I was living in D.C.”
He noticed her eyes flicker toward him momentarily, and he was careful to sound casual. “Georgetown, on a nice little government grant. I was working on my master’s then, and was still afflicted with literary ambitions. So I was trying to research a book.”
“Really? What was the subject?”
Beck flinched as a minivan changed lanes in front of them; Andi’s Mustang swerved around it tightly and expertly.
“Looking back, it was a little pretentious. A history of the impact of pandemic diseases on world history. You know—the Black Death. Cholera. Smallpox. Plague books were considered sexy for a while back then. I thought I’d cash in on the trend and maybe start building a reputation at the same time. I interviewed a lot of people. Larry was sort of the Army’s up-and-coming resident expert.”
“He would have been at USAMRIID—or was it still called Fort Detrick, back then?”
Beck smiled, but said nothing. In the circles he had once traveled, it was considered bad form to mention that someone had been posted to Detrick, despite the new reputation the military installation had spared no effort to build for itself. At least USAMRIID—the acronym for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where today the work focused on vaccines and treatments—carried fewer connotations of the biological weapons that was once Detrick’s sole reason for existence.
“So, was your book a success?”
Beck made a show of scowling darkly, then grinned in unison with his driver.
“Took too long to write it,” he said. “By the time I finished, public tastes had moved on. But at least I didn’t have to give the grant money back.”
And that’s not exactly a lie,Beck thought.
In fact, ultimately the book had been published, though distribution had been limited to a small, select audience—all of whom received salaries from the United States government. It had also led to a job offer, then a career, in a profession he had once thought existed only in fiction. But he could think of no reason to proffer this information to Andi Wheelwright, or to anyone else who did not carry the requisite clearance.
After all, he thought with a flash of bitter regret, he had not offered it to Deborah—at least, not during the years when it might have made the difference to both of them. And by the time he might have been ready to do so, the information had already been devaluated, torn from him by violent strangers whose calculated interrogations had been more intimate than anything he had shared with his wife. In the aftermath, Deborah had no longer seemed inclined to know.
He shook off the dark thoughts and turned to his driver.
“So, Andi—is it Dr. Wheelwright, or Ms. Wheelwright?”
She looked at Beck briefly, and—he thought—speculatively.
“I’m not a doctor,” she said, easily, her eyes back on the traffic. “Most of my work involves public information.”
“Aha—we’re both in the same business,” Beck said, and was puzzled at the look she shot him. “Writing and teaching, I mean. Do you always drive this fast?”
“Uh-huh.” Another lane change snapped Beck’s head sideways. “Beck, could we talk when we get to CDC? I’m sorry, but I kind of need to keep my mind on the road right now.”
“No problem,” Beck assured her, the cars outside a solid blur in his peripheral vision. Unconsciously, he drew his knees closer to his chest. “Absolutely. You go ahead and concentrate. Please.”
The Centers for Disease Control are just what they sound like, a collection of six red-brick structures in Chamblee, just north of downtown Atlanta. Viewed from Clifton Road, which it faces, the complex is deceptive; built into one of the rolling Georgian hills, the bulk of the complex is actually underground. The overall appearance is not unlike the headquarters of a medium-sized corporation, though not a particularly prosperous one. This similarity continues into the various lobbies and reception areas, each comfortably appointed with an intentionally understated restraint. The effect is one of both scientific efficiency and a casual, almost folksy sense of welcome to the public.
The latter ends abruptly immediately inside the doors on the north side, where a lobby branches into an atrium. Those doors mark the outer boundary of Building Fifteen, officially designated the Viral and Rickettsial Diseases Lab. This is home for the CDC’s Special Pathogens Branch, and the sunny visages with which staff greets most visitors elsewhere are conspicuous in their absence. Here, the uniformed guards take their jobs seriously indeed; the sidearms are clearly not for show. Here, a special system of fans maintains an air pressure that is slightly lower than the world outside; the negative air pressure ensures any exchange of microscopic life-forms will be in only one direction. It also causes a slight hiss that soon becomes unnoticed white noise.
Andi Wheelwright handed her laminated identification card to one of the guards, who passed it through what looked like an electronic credit card validator. He carefully studied the image that popped up on his computer monitor before returning the card.
“This is Dr. Beck Casey,” Andi said, a hint of emphasis on the honorific. “He’s on Dr. Krewell’s access authorization. This morning’s list.”
The guard punched in a series of keystrokes.
“I’ll need to see a photo ID, Dr. Beck.”
“Sure,” Beck said, and reached for his hip pocket and stiffened.
The wallet he always carried there was gone.
“Looks like we have a slight problem,” Beck said.
“One of us does,” said the guard. He glanced at Andi Wheelwright, who answered with a slight nod. Before Beck could speak, she was already heading down the hall.
“Can’t admit you without an ID,” the guard said. “But Ms. Wheelwright might be able to do something. It’ll probably be a few minutes, though.”
“I’ll bet you have a little room where I can wait,” he told the guard. “While all this gets straightened out.”
“Uh-huh,” the guard said, trying to keep a straight face. “I’ll even keep you company.”
Less than twenty minutes later, the guard escorted Beck past the lobby checkpoint. There was no ID check this time, and no sign of Andi Wheelwright. Instead, Beck walked in lock-step with the guard through a labyrinth of corridors. Occasionally, people passed them, traveling in the opposite direction. No one spoke.
Finally, they stopped outside one anonymous set of closed doors. The guard knocked once. He winked at Beck and gestured, palm up, at the door.
Inside, seated at a hardwood desk that
butted against tall filing cabinets, was Larry Krewell. Spread out on the desk in front of Krewell was Beck’s wallet and the contents thereof.
A man’s history, or at least a significant part of it, is contained in the things he carries. Old business cards, receipts, the type and number of credit cards, a phone number scribbled on a napkin: each item adds another handful of pixels to the overall picture. Krewell had made an untidy pile: a commuter ticket, a prepaid phone card, an American Express and a MasterCard, five twenty-dollar bills and a similar number of singles. Apparently, Krewell had already read whatever stories they told and dismissed them as irrelevant.
All save the driver’s license, which he was examining with a skeptical expression.
“Damn it, Beck—you trying to tell me you still weigh one-ninety?” Krewell raised his eyes, tracked up and down on his visitor. “Okay,” he said grudgingly. “Maybe. You must have alot of free time to spend in the gym, though.” He tossed the license onto the pile of other official detritus. “By the way, my paranoid ol’ buddy—whoever did up the other two licenses for you does good work. But where did he come up with the names? You just don’tlook like a Wayne or a Buford.”
“Hello to you too, Larry,” Beck said. “Don’t lose the Metra ticket. It’s a monthly pass, and I’ll need it when I go back to Chicago.” He pulled up the visitor’s chair and crossed his legs. “Which will be on the next flight, unless you can explain why you had that pair of boosters lift my wallet.”
Krewell grinned. “Bullshit. No way you made ’em.” He thrust an impressive jaw at the monitor that occupied a corner of the desk. “I saw your face when you reached for your wallet, ol’ buddy. About fell out of my chair laughing.”
The door opened and Andi Wheelwright entered. In her hand was a sheaf of what looked like photos, which she laid in front of Krewell.
“You know, you should consider a cleaning service,” she said to Beck, her impassive expression leavened by the hint of humor in her tone. “Your apartment is rather a mess, even for a bachelor.”
Krewell glanced at the top photo—actually, a fine-detailed laser printout, a vast improvement over the fax images it had replaced. It showed a small kitchen table that evidently doubled as a desk; paper Starbucks cups and opened take-out containers with Chinese characters badly printed in red shared the tabletop with textbooks butterflied open. Krewell flipped through the printouts rapidly, pausing only at a picture of a bedside table in the middle of the stack.
A head shot of a smiling girl in her early teens filled the right side of a hinged photo frame; the left side was conspicuously empty.
“How is Katie, by the way?” Krewell asked, still looking at the photo. “She’s what now—fifteen?”
“Fifteen, going on thirty,” Beck said. “She spent two weeks in Chicago with me last month—most of it, I think, on the phone talking to her girlfriends back in Virginia. Mainly aboutboys, from what I could overhear.”
Krewell grinned. “Daughters are God’s way of punishing fathers for the sins of their youth. At least she’s not driving yet.”
“Driver’s ed starts in September,” Beck replied. “Katie already has her learner’s permit, courtesy of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
“Wait till she asks for a car.”
“Already asked and answered.” Beck shook his head. “No way, even if Ihad the money. So we compromised—I taught her how to drive a stick shift. By the time she went back home, my Beetle needed a new clutch.”
“Back home.” Krewell nodded, making it sound casual. “How’s everybody adjusting? To the divorce, I mean.”
“Katie’s fine.”
“Good to hear. And Deborah? Is she fine, too?”
There was no answer. When Krewell looked up to repeat, he saw Beck staring at him, unblinking. Krewell held Beck’s eye for a moment, then tossed the photos on the desk as if they had no significance.
“Well, I hope you’re getting a break on the rent,” he told Beck. “Looks like a bomb went off in your bedroom—and this was takenbefore our people searched the place.”
Andi chuckled.
“You work in public information, you say?” Beck said to her, eyebrows raised in polite inquiry.
“Yes,” Andi said. “Except my job is usually toprevent information from becoming public.”
“Find anything interesting?” Beck asked. “In my wallet or my place?”
“Well, I for one find it interesting that your bank balance can be so low without knocking your credit rating all to hell,” Krewell volunteered.
He smiled at the expression on Beck’s face and shrugged in a way meant to convey good humor. “Oh, grow up. You know how the game is played. Ofcourse we looked at your finances. Heck, ol’ buddy, we turned your life inside out—did a pretty good job, given the time limitations.”
“Behave, gentlemen,” Andi said. “We didn’t find anything incriminating or even mildly suspicious.” She tried to look apologetic, and failed utterly. “Sorry. You never know until you check, and there wasn’t time to go by the rule book.”
“Andi is our security director here, Beck,” said a grinning Krewell. “And since yesterday afternoon, it has been her people that youdidn’t see following you around. C’mon. Admit it, ol’ buddy. It’ll only hurt for a minute.”
“I may be out of practice,” Beck conceded. “A little.” He twisted to address Andi. “Congratulations. Your guys are pretty good at the bump and lift. Dog and cat team at the airport gate. Right?”
Andi nodded. To Beck, she looked more than a little smug.
“Mario Andretti couldn’t have beat your time getting out here, so I assume the dip handed off my wallet to you right there. What, ten feet from where I was standing? Nice touch.”
“I like to get in a little fieldwork every now and then,” Andi said. “Keepsmy tradecraft from getting too rusty.”
“Touché,” Beck said. “Okay. What’s this about, Larry? I gather all that sugar on the phone this morning was just bullshit to get me down here. All you had to do was ask me.”
“You’re wrong, my friend. I am indeed about to offer you a consulting contract. But not to research the history of the CDC, or whatever the hell I told you.”
Beck frowned. “Why the cover story?”
“We have a for-real, double-barreled public health emergency,” Krewell said, “and you’ve been drafted.” He made a gesture with his thumb. “I have a roomful of silverbacks down the hall. Right now, they don’t know how to do anything but bare their fangs and growl at one another. And throw dung, when they get the chance. They are one scared pack of old gorillas, I kid you not. But they’re the ones who will have to go back to the President, damn soon, and give him our official recommendation.”
“The President? Larry, what the hell is going on?”
“All that stuff you wrote for the Company on epidemics, pandemics, bioplagues, remember? The disruptions, the riots—hell, the whole ball of social breakdown they could create? I’ll tell you—you painted one hell of a picture. Scared me, when the CIA sent over a copy.”
Beck looked at his friend blankly. He realized that his heart had begun to beat faster, and that his face suddenly felt numb.
Krewell looked at his wristwatch.
“As of seventeen hours ago, ol’ buddy, you officially became a prophet.”
More than a dozen people were seated around the polished mahogany of the circular conference table, and as almost as many were in the theater-style chairs behind them. Each principal had been allowed only one aide; some, recognizing the sensitivity of the subject matter, had elected to come alone.
It was nearing lunchtime, and the meeting evidently had been going on for some hours. Plates and saucers, some bearing scraps of long-cold scrambled eggs and crusts of toasted muffins, still littered the table. The breakfast crockery had been pushed to the side to clear a space for legal pads or laptop computers, depending on each participant’s note-taking preference. Only two or three people were squinting down, Beck
noticed, trying to decipher the undersized screen of a Palm Pilot. Audio recorders might have been useful to these unfortunates; given the nature of the subject matter and its potential political sensitivity, these were strictly prohibited.
Despite an efficient air-conditioning system, the tang of burned coffee lingered in the air.
It mingled with a tantalizingly familiar odor that at first Beck could not place. Then it hit him: it was the smell of tobacco, and that fact alone confirmed to Beck that this was no ordinary meeting. Whoever was smoking had reached a stress level high enough to need a cigarette; needed one badly enough to ignore this most sacred of federal regulations.
And,Beck thought,has the clout to get away with it.
“Mr. Secretary, I would suggest that our most urgent need is to determine if we are indeed facing a threat. We should not forget the swine flu debacle that Jerry Ford initiated under much the same circumstances. More people died from the vaccine than evencaught that flu.”
The voice came from the far edge of the table, from the only person in the room who was still wearing a suit jacket. He was clearly not the smoker. Unlike the others, he appeared sleek and composed, and his eyes were bright as a ferret’s. From television, Beck recognized him as the junior senator from Pennsylvania.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Fred. That was 1976,” another voice objected. “Mr. Secretary, rehashing what happened more than two decades ago is not a valid comparison. At least the Ford administration wasn’t afraid toact when action was called for. I’d remind the gentleman that our science has come a long way since then—as has our ability to identify, and respond to, a critical danger to public health.”
“Fine,” the senator fired back. “Youtell that to the President. Better still, tell the people of the United States they have to line up and get injected with some goddamn witches’ brew—one that doesn’t even exist yet.”
Next to him, a woman in a tailored suit nodded in grim agreement; Beck recognized her as the surgeon general and assumed that a similarly serious-looking woman seated alongside was her aide.