Sandford laid an encouraging hand on the other man’s arm.
“Aw, come on. Peabody’s an old hand. He doesn’t make mistakes. At least, not that kind of mistake.”
Mrs Irving Woodnutt, alias Gloria Nimmo, came to the airport to meet her husband at the end of his long but interesting day.
Normally, his driver would have picked him up to take him home. But, when he called from Washington, Gloria had insisted.
“No, darling. Let me do it. I haven’t seen enough of you lately. I’d like to meet you.”
He hadn’t said much on the way back from the airport. He needed to unwind. His arm rested lightly on the back of her seat as she drove skilfully in the evening traffic. Once he put up a finger and brushed her lightly on the cheek. She turned to him, for a moment taking her eyes off the road.
“You’ll tell me about it, won’t you? Your day in Washington seems to have done you good.”
She was pleased for him at that moment. She knew how desperately keen he was on politics and how frustrated he had been lately because that particular ball didn’t seem to start rolling. At last something had happened. Or so it appeared. And if she was pleased for him she was also pleased for herself. In the long run she was more interested in her role as Mrs Irving Woodnutt than she was in being Gloria Nimmo. The movie-going public was notoriously fickle. And her looks wouldn’t last for ever. She stole a glance at herself in the driving mirror.
He noticed. “You look pretty good yourself. We ought to get together some time, what do you say?”
She gave an imitation girlish squeal. “Darling, I can’t wait.”
Over dinner, he took her through the events of the day step by step.
When he had finished, she asked simply: “Are you going to do it?”
He pushed back his chair and stood up from the table.
“Let’s go outside.”
They went out onto the balcony. It was a warm balmy night. Woodnutt put his arm round his wife’s waist. He noticed, as he did so, the slight thickening that had occurred over the last two years. “Watch that, my girl!” he thought to himself. In the movie-business, an expanding waistline could spell the beginning of the end.
“Darling,” he pointed out across the lawn, “do you see those lights in the distance?”
She followed the direction of his gaze.
“I see them.”
“Do you know the house the lights come from?”
“Of course I do. It’s Fallingwater, isn’t it?”
He turned back to her. “Yes, that’s Fallingwater out there. Back in 1935 Frank Lloyd Wright built the house for Edgar J. Kaufmann right here in this Pittsburgh suburb. I was down at the Golf Club the other day and an old boy who remembered the house being built told me how it all began. Apparently, Lloyd Wright was a blustering cantankerous fellow. He used to give the shopgirls hell if they didn’t let him have a discount. But he knew his onions as far as architecture was concerned . . .”
He could see her eyes shining as he spoke.
“How marvellous! How thrilling!” She saw her own home with new eyes. “It makes this place seem very dull, doesn’t it, when you think of Fallingwater.”
He had made his point. He led her back inside.
“Gloria,” he said quietly, “you asked me what I was going to do. And I tell you: I’m still thinking.”
He looked at her handsome face across the room. “If we go ahead with this idea; if I and Pharmacorp play ball, this time next year you’ll be able to pick your own site anywhere in the United States. You’ll be able to choose the best architect and walk over the ground with him. Anything that Frank Lloyd Wright did with Fallingwater, you and your man will be able to do better.”
He walked over to her and took her hand. “Honey, this is the big time. A deal like this could put Pharmacorp at the top of the league. We’d be past Mercx and American Cynamid and the others so fast they wouldn’t even know it. In personal terms, given the stake I have — we both have — in the company, we’d be up in the multimillionaire class. And in political terms, you can be sure that George Peabody will be as good as his word. Anything that man can deliver, he will deliver. The rest is up to me.” He laughed. “After all, the candidate has to do some work too.”
She was proud of him. Immensely proud of him. He was going to make it. She was sure of that. He was tough enough to play with the big boys. She stood on tip-toe and kissed him full on the lips.
“What’s holding you up?”
He looked her in the eyes.
“You approve?”
“Of course, I approve.”
For a second he held her at arm’s length. Then he clasped her to him. Hungrily. His heavy florid face thrust into hers, searching greedily for her mouth. It was as though he had waited a long time for this moment.
13
The tall distinguished gentleman who was Chairman of the Senate SubCommittee on Health and Scientific Research rapped on his desk in Room 1202 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The gathering subsided into silence. Photographers who had been popping away with flashbulbs before the session withdrew. The witnesses who had come into Washington for the day shuffled their papers and prepared themselves for interrogation.
Senator Matthews availed himself of the customary privilege of an opening statement:
“Today,” he began, “the SubCommittee on Health and Scientific Research convenes to discuss the Administration’s proposed program for immunization against influenza. It is not sufficient to have a vaccine that will protect those who receive it from illness. We must be confident that we can get that vaccine to people in the right time and place, at an acceptable cost and without creating exorbitant and unpredictable legal difficulties.”
The Senator raised his head from his prepared text to look directly at the row of witnesses who sat across the room from him, each one marked by an appropriate name-card.
“We will want to know, therefore, from the witnesses here today exactly how this new program will work. We will want to know how much vaccine we can actually get to the American public. We will want to know how each of the necessary participants — the Federal Government, the state and local health agencies, the vaccine manufacturers, the public health professionals, the insurance companies — regard the program. Above all, we will want to look at the size of the program itself. The Administration proposes an immunization program that is focused on, indeed I might almost say limited to, critical groups such as the elderly, the chronically ill and children.”
Once more he looked up from his text, this time for effect.
“But is a program of this nature really an adequate response to the challenge of the day? We will hear evidence this morning of the progress which has been made in recent months and weeks by the new flu virus which first originated in Japan known” — he looked down at his notes to make sure he had the name right — “as A-Fukushima. We shall be told whether and to what extent this new virus threatens the health of the population of the United States. And we shall have the opportunity to discuss and to decide upon the necessary steps to be taken.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. The SubCommittee recognizes its first witness this morning, Dr Frank Kimble, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr Kimble, would you care to address the SubCommittee?”
Dr Kimble, a short wiry-looking man with close-cropped hair, was an impressive performer. Over the years he had had considerable experience with Congressional committees. He knew how to appeal to the vanity of the men and women before whom he was called to testify, to make them feel that it was their voice and their voice alone which counted in the counsels of state. At the same time, he knew how to cajole and to bully. In spite of the fact that the committees were on the whole well-served from the staff point of view, including the research side, Kimble knew that he disposed of immensely greater resources. He could call on facts and figures to support his case which the committee members barely knew existed. St
atistics could be dredged up in the depths of his Department which, as far as the committee was concerned, were irrefutable because they had no access to the raw material on which those statistics were based. Kimble was a master at playing the numbers game. He knew that a good number, like a good photograph, says more than a thousand words.
That was how he began his testimony that morning. With numbers.
“You’ve raised some questions, Mr Chairman, about the extent of the Administration’s flu immunization program for the upcoming flu season. Let me say straight away that it is a by no means negligible effort that we are proposing. Secretary Marshall’s Conference of January this year” — he was referring here to the Secretary of State for Health and Human Services — “recommended provision of Federal support for influenza immunizations for high-risk individuals. After extensive consultation with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers, a proposal was developed and announced on February 23 by Secretary Marshall. On March 23, the President submitted a supplemental budget request to Congress which included $15 million for this year, of which $10.9 million was to be used as project grant funds for state and local health departments. This level of funding would provide 8-9 million doses of influenza vaccine to high-risk individuals who would not otherwise have received it through private means. This level of activity was based on reports from states as to their expectations of ability to provide Federally supported vaccine . . .”
“With respect, Mr Kimble,” Senator Matthews interrupted his first witness with a somewhat acid comment, “surely the size of the program should not be determined by the ability of the states to use Federal money. If the states don’t believe they can get the vaccine to where it’s needed, surely they must improve their administrative performance? And in any case, you yourself have admitted that the Administration’s proposal was developed in February this year. But this was prior to the outbreak in Asia of A-Fukushima” — this time he had no trouble with the name. “Are you telling the Committee that the Administration’s thinking has not been modified by the appearance of this new flu virus in Asia and the prospect that A-Fukushima will reach the continental United States by the next flu season? Did the President’s supplemental budget request for this fiscal year reflect this fact?”
“No, sir, it did not. Our proposal was based on an evaluation of the states’ capacity to deliver.”
“Not on the medical requirement itself? Not on the need to protect human life and health in absolute terms?” The Senator was thrusting deeply now. The television lights had been turned on to register the brief moment of drama, and the cameras had begun to roll. Matthews was making the most of his opportunity.
Frank Kimble sighed. How he hated politicians! They were all as dishonest as each other.
“Chairman,” he said quietly, trying to repair as much of the damage as he could. “This Administration is cost-conscious. I am sure Congress, including this Committee, would not have it otherwise. In my view, there is no such thing as an absolute requirement to protect human health. The risks must always be measured against the potential benefits. If today the Administration were to recommend to the Congress a substantially enlarged flu immunization program as a result of A-Fukushima, and if the states were to make a maximum effort to deliver that program and if, after all that, there was no outbreak of A-Fukushima in the United States this year, I might find myself accused before this Committee of squandering public funds and resources which could have been better devoted to other programs, including of course medical programs designed to save human life.”
Kimble had been looking at the other members of the SubCommittee as he spoke. While some of them, like the Chairman himself, still looked sceptical, he saw from the occasional approving nod that he was not entirely without support.
The discussion continued for some time along these lines. Other Senators intervened and Kimble replied to their questions. Eventually Matthews brought matters to a head.
“Gentlemen, we can go on like this for some time but I think there’s a risk that our deliberations could become purely theoretical. I believe that what we need at this stage is an up-to-the-minute presentation of the A-Fukushima threat. We are not in February or March any longer. We are in mid-summer and this Congress is about to go into recess. If we are going to act or react as far as A-Fukushima is concerned, we have to do so now. If we don’t it may be too late. I propose that we call our next witness, Dr Leslie Cheek, Director of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Agreed?”
There was a nod of approval from the other members of the SubCommittee.
“Dr Cheek,” Chairman Matthews continued, “what we would like from you today is your latest evaluation of the threat posed by A-Fukushima or any other flu virus for that matter to the health of the people of this country. And when I say latest, I mean latest. Preferably this morning’s news. If not, this morning, then at least last night’s.” He smiled encouragingly at the next witness.
“You may go ahead, Dr Cheek.”
As he began to speak, Leslie Cheek was clearly uncomfortable. He was a thin, worried-looking man with a scraggy neck that sat uncomfortably on a pair of narrow shoulders. He had a nasty feeling that this neck was at that precise moment near, if not on, the chopping block. He had before him the recommendations of the meeting which had been held a few weeks earlier in Atlanta, under the chairmanship of his Deputy, Dr Lowell Kaplan, head of the Center’s Epidemiology Division. He had carefully studied the conclusions of that meeting. (The record showed that Kaplan had been called away in the middle on urgent business — the Marburg affair as Dr Cheek recalled — and that after his departure the chair had been taken by James McKinney of Virology.) At the time he had agreed with the conclusions of the meeting, when they had been passed up to him. Essentially his experts had advised him that even though there was some evidence that A-Fukushima represented an antigenic shift, rather than a drift, it was not thought to represent a substantial risk. The meeting had not recommended any modification in the existing flu vaccine nor any major expansion in that season’s proposed flu immunization program.
Dr Cheek understood, of course, the reason which lay behind this expert caution. Everyone at the Atlanta Center for Disease Control remembered only too clearly the so-called ‘swine flu fiasco’ of a few years back when a major immunization program had been launched after some Army recruits in training at Ford Dix, New Jersey, went down with an unknown respiratory ailment, subsequently identified as swine flu, which hadn’t been seen in the United States since the late 1920s. And when one of these recruits died the Atlanta people had shown their concern by recommending a massive program of vaccination. As it happened, the swine flu epidemic never materialized. Instead, the Federal Government which, in a totally unprecedented way had assumed liability, was left with a host of negligence and malpractice suits to settle. Some of these were purely frivolous — one claim, alleging not only paralysis but loss of appetite and sleep, sought $900 million. But others had better foundation. The fact was that in a small but measurable number of vaccinees the so-called Guillain-Barré syndrome occurred, with occasionally fatal results.
Leslie Cheek was very well aware that, only that morning, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS had taken a pretty clear line in favour of restricting the immunization program to something fairly modest and limited. That line had, at least to some extent, been based on the conclusions of the meeting chaired by Kaplan and McKinney. If he, Cheek, were now to change that position he would have to have — taking it all together — a very convincing motive indeed.
And yet, in spite of it all, he felt uncomfortable. There were still another three or four months to go before the flu season proper began in the United States. A flu virus could travel a long way and do a lot of damage in that time. It was no good waiting until October or November to see if or how the danger developed. If the manufacturers were going to produce the vaccine in massive quantities, they had to have ample advance warning. As
a public health man, he felt it made sense to err on the side of caution. He hadn’t been at the CDC at the time of the swine flu affair, so he hadn’t been among those who cried wolf and got egg on their faces. He didn’t feel constrained in the same way.
But there was one overriding reason why Dr Leslie Cheek decided, as he took the floor that morning, to depart from his prepared text. That reason had to do with a call he had received earlier that morning.
He had been about to leave for the Hill when the telephone had rung in his room at the Madison Hotel.
“Leslie? This is Tom Stevens.” It was a voice from the past but none the less familiar. When Leslie Cheek had been with the National Institutes of Health before he went down to Atlanta, he and Stevens had been members of the same country club in Chevy Chase. They had often played tennis together and taken their drinks by the pool later. Cheek knew that Tom Stevens was “in government” somewhere but he had never found out exactly what the other man did. Tom had always been rather vague about it.
“Tom. Good to hear you! How did you know I was in town?”
“Oh, word gets around, you know.” The upper-class drawl of the Princeton man was pronounced.
Stevens came to the point.
“I know you’re going down to the Hill in a minute or two. Senator Matthews’ Office put out a list of the witnesses they’ll be hearing from this morning and it came across my desk last night. There’s something I want to talk to you about before you testify. Do you think I could stop by in a few moments and give you a lift? It’s on my way.”
Leslie Cheek had been delighted to accept the offer. The two men had ridden down Pennsylvania Avenue together in Tom Stevens’ car and, as they drove, Stevens had explained his problem.
“Look, Leslie,” he said. “This is strictly personal. Between us. I called you because I know you.”
They swung past the Executive Office Building and then the White House loomed up to the right, resplendent in the morning sun.
Stevens nodded in the direction of the historic building. “Believe me, Leslie, this is on the level. There are people in there who know I’m talking to you this morning. I don’t say the Man himself knows. He doesn’t need to know. Not yet. But there are guys on his staff, my kind of guys, who know and who approve. John Shearer is one of them. Do you follow me?”
The Virus Page 18