Then it was time to get Megan up. She was curled up in her full-body sleeper, the blue one with Casper the Friendly Ghost on it. She was outgrowing it, he saw. Her little toes were pushing at the plastic feet. They did grow so fast. He tickled her nose, and her eyes opened.
“Daddy!” She sat up, then stood to give him a kiss, and Pat wondered how kids woke up with a smile. No adult ever did. And the day began in earnest with another trip to the bathroom. He noted with pleasure that her training pants were dry. Megan was catching on to sleeping through the night—it had been a struggle for a while—though it seemed a very strange thing to be proud about, he thought. He started to shave, a daily event that utterly fascinated his daughter. Done, he bent down so that she could feel his face and pronounce it, “Okay!”
Dinner this morning was oatmeal with sliced banana and a glass of apple juice, and watching the Disney Channel on the kitchen TV while Daddy returned to his paper. Megan took her bowl and glass to the dishwasher all by herself, a very serious task which she was learning to master. The hard part was getting the bowl into the holder properly. Megan was still working on that. It was harder than doing her own shoes, which had Velcro closures. Mrs. Daggett had told him that Megan was an unusually bright child, one more thing to beam with pride about, followed by the sadness, always, of remembering his wife. Pat told himself that he could see Deborah’s face in hers, but the honest part of the agent occasionally wondered how much of that was a wish and how much fact. At least she seemed to have her mother’s brains. Maybe the bright expression was what he saw?
The ride in the truck was routine. The sun was up now, and the traffic still light. Megan was in her safety seat, as usual looking at the other cars with wonderment.
The arrival was routine also. There was the agent working in the 7-Eleven, of course, plus the advance team at Giant Steps. Well, nobody would ever kidnap his little girl. At the working level, rivalry between the Bureau and the Service largely disappeared, except for the occasional inside joke or two. He was glad they were there, and they didn’t mind having this armed man come in. He walked Megan in, and she immediately ran off to hug Mrs. Daggett and put her blanky in her cubby in the back, and her day of learning and play began.
“Hey, Pat,” the agent at the door greeted him.
“‘Morning, Norm.” Both men enjoyed an early-morning yawn.
“Your schedule’s as screwed up as mine,” Special Agent Jeffers replied. He was one of the agents who rotated on and off the SANDBOX detail, this morning working as part of the advance team.
“How’s the wife?”
“Six more weeks, and then we have to think about shopping for a place like this. Is she as good as she seems?”
“Mrs. Daggett? Ask the President,” O’Day joked. “They’ve sent all their kids here.”
“I guess it can’t be too bad,” the Secret Service man agreed. “What’s the story on the Kealty case?”
“Somebody at State is lying. That’s what the OPR guys think.” He shrugged. “Not sure which. The polygraph data was worthless. Your guys picking up on anything?”
“You know, it’s funny. He sends his detail off a lot. He’s actually said to them that he doesn’t want to put them in a position where they’d have to—”
“Gotcha.” Pat nodded. “And they have to play along?”
“No choice. He’s meeting with people, but we don’t always know who, and we’re not allowed to find out what he’s doing against SWORDSMAN.” A wry shake of the head. “Don’t you love it?”
“I like Ryan.” His eyes scanned the area, looking for trouble. It was automatic, just like breathing.
“We love the guy,” Norm agreed. “We think he’s going to make it. Kealty’s full of crap. Hey, I worked his detail back when he was V.P., okay? I fuckin’ stood post outside the door while he was inside boffin’ some cookie or other. Part of the job,” he concluded sourly. The two federal agents shared a look. This was an inside story, to be repeated only within the federal law-enforcement community, and while the Secret Service was paid to protect their principals and keep all the secrets, that didn’t mean they liked it.
“I think you’re right. So things here okay?”
“Russell wants three more people, but I don’t think he’s going to get it. Hell, we have three good agents inside, and three doing overwatch next door”—he wasn’t revealing anything; O’Day had figured that one out—“and—”
“Yeah, across the street. Russell looks like he knows his stuff.”
“Grandpa’s the best,” Norm offered. “Hell, he’s trained half the people in the Service, and you oughta see him shoot. Both hands.”
O’Day smiled. “People keep telling me that. One day I’ll have to invite him over for a friendly match.”
A grin. “Andrea told me. She, uh, pulled your Bureau file—”
“What?”
“Hey, Pat, it’s business. We check everybody out. We have a principal in here every day, y’dig?” Norm Jeffers went on. “Besides, she wanted to see your firearms card. I hear you’re pretty decent, but I’m telling you, man, you want to play with Russell, bring money, y’hear?”
“That’s what makes a horse race, Mr. Jeffers.” O’Day loved such challenges, and he’d yet to lose one.
“Bet your white ass, Mr. O’Day.” His hand went up. He checked his earpiece, then his watch. “They just started moving. SANDBOX is on the way. Our kid and your kid are real buddies.”
“She seems like a great little girl.”
“They’re all good kids. A couple of rough spots, but that’s kids. SHADOW is going to be a handful when she starts dating for real.”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
Jeffers had a good laugh. “Yeah, I’m hoping ours’ll be a boy. My dad—he’s a city police captain in Atlanta—he says that daughters are God’s punishment on ya for being a man. You live in fear that they’ll meet somebody like you were at seventeen.”
“Enough! Let me go to work and deal with some criminals.” He slapped Jeffers on the shoulder.
“She’ll be here when you get back, Pat.”
O’Day passed on the usual coffee refill across Ritchie Highway, instead heading south to Route 50. He had to admit that the Service guys knew their stuff. But there was at least one aspect of presidential security that the Bureau was handling. He’d have to talk to the OPR guys this morning—informally, of course.
ONE DIED, ONE went home, and at roughly the same time. It was MacGregor’s first Ebola death. He’d seen enough others, heart-attack failures-to-resuscitate, strokes, cancer, or just old age. More often than not, doctors weren’t there, and the job fell on nurses. But he was there for this one. At the end, it wasn’t so much peace as exhaustion. Saleh’s body had fought as best it could, and his strength had merely extended the struggle and the pain, like a soldier in a hopeless battle. But his strength had given out, finally, and the body collapsed, and waited for death to come. The alarm chirp on the cardiac monitor went off, and there was nothing to do but flip it off. There would be no reviving this patient. IV leads were removed, and the sharps carefully placed in the red-plastic container. Literally everything that had touched the patient would be burned. It wasn’t all that remarkable. AIDS and some hepatitis victims were similarly treated as objects of deadly contamination. Just with Ebola, burning the bodies was preferable—and besides, the government had insisted. So, one battle lost.
MacGregor was relieved, somewhat to his shame, as he stripped off the protective suit for the last time, washed thoroughly, then went to see Sohaila. She was still weak, but ready to leave to complete her recovery. The most recent tests showed her blood full of antibodies. Somehow her system had met the enemy and passed the test. There was no active virus in her. She could be hugged. In another country she would have been kept in for further tests, and would have donated a good deal of blood for extensive laboratory studies, but again the local government had said that such things would not take place, that she was to b
e released from the hospital the first minute that it was safe to do so. MacGregor had hedged on that, but now he was certain that there would be no more complications. The doctor himself lifted her and placed her in the wheelchair.
“When you feel better, will you come back to see me?” he asked, with a warm smile. She nodded. A bright child. Her English was good. A pretty child, with a charming smile despite her fatigue, glad to be going home.
“Doctor?” It was her father. He must have had a military background, so straight of back was he. What he was trying to say was evident on his face, before he could even think the words.
“I did very little. Your daughter is young and strong, and that is what saved her.”
“Even so, I will not forget this debt.” A firm handshake, and MacGregor remembered Kipling’s line about East and West. Whatever this man was—the doctor had his suspicions—there was a commonality among all men.
“She will be weak for another fortnight or so. Let her eat whatever she wants, and best to let her sleep as long as possible.”
“It will be as you say,” Sohaila’s father promised.
“You have my number, here and at home, if you have any questions at all.”
“And if you have any difficulties, with the government, for example, please let me know.” The measure of the man’s gratitude came across. For what it was worth, MacGregor had a protector of sorts. It couldn’t hurt, he decided, walking them to the door. Then it was back to his office.
“So,” the official said after listening to the report, “everything is stabilized.”
“That is correct.”
“The staff have been checked?”
“Yes, and we will rerun the tests tomorrow to be sure. Both patient rooms will be fully disinfected today. All contaminated items are being burned right now.”
“The body?”
“Also bagged and to be burned, as you directed.”
“Excellent. Dr. MacGregor, you have done well, and I thank you for that. Now we can forget that this unhappy incident ever happened.”
“But how did the Ebola get here?” MacGregor demanded—plaintively, which was as far as he could go.
The official didn’t know, and so he spoke confidently: “That does not concern you, and it does not concern me. It will not be repeated. Of that I am certain.”
“As you say.” After a few more words, MacGrcgor hung the phone up and stared at the wall. One more fax to CDC, he decided. The government couldn’t object to that. He had to tell them that the outbreak, such as it was, was closed out. And that was a relief, too. Better to go back to the normal practice of medicine, and diseases he could defeat.
IT TURNED OUT that Kuwait had been more forthcoming than Saudi on forwarding the substance of the meeting, perhaps because the Kuwaiti government really was a family business, and their establishment happened to be on a very dangerous street corner. Adler handed the transcript over. The President scanned it quickly.
“It reads like, ‘Get lost.’ ”
“You got it,” the Secretary of State agreed.
“Either Foreign Minister Sabah edited all the polite stuff out, or what he heard scared him. I’m betting on number two,” Bert Vasco decided.
“Ben?” Jack asked.
Dr. Goodley shook his head. “We may have a problem here.”
“ ‘May’?” Vasco asked. “This goes beyond ‘may.’ ”
“Okay, Bert, you’re our champ prognosticator for the Persian Gulf,” the President observed. “How about another forecast?”
“The culture over there is one of bargaining. There are elaborate verbal rituals for important meetings. ‘Hi, how are you?’ can take an hour. If we’re to believe that such things did not take place, there’s a message in their absence. You said it, Mr. President: Get lost.” Though it was interesting, Vasco thought, that they’d begun by praying together. Perhaps that was a signal that had meant something to the Saudis but not the Kuwaitis? Even he didn’t know every aspect of the local culture.
“Then why are the Saudis low-keying this?”
“You told me that Prince Ali gave you another impression?”
Ryan nodded. “That’s right. Go on.”
“The Kingdom is a little schizophrenic. They like us, and they trust us as strategic partners, but they also dislike us and distrust us as a culture. It’s not even that simple, and it goes round and round, but they’re afraid that too much exposure to the West will adversely affect their society. They’re highly conservative on what we call social issues, like when our Army was over there in ‘91, and they requested that Army chaplains remove the religious insignia from their uniforms, and seeing women drive cars and carry guns drove them a little nuts. So, on one hand, they depend on us as guarantor of their security—Prince Ali keeps asking you about that, right?—but on the other hand they worry that in protecting them we might mess up their country. It keeps coming back to religion. They’d probably prefer to make a deal with Daryaei than to have to invite us back to guard their border, and so the majority of their government is going to run down that track in the knowledge that we will come in if asked. Kuwait’s going to be a different story. If we ask to be allowed to stage an exercise, they’ll say ‘yes’ in a heartbeat, even if the Saudis ask them not to. Good news, Daryaei knows that, and he can’t move all that fast. If he starts moving troops south—”
“The Agency will give us warning,” Goodley said confidently. “We know what to look for, and they’re not sophisticated enough to hide it.”
“If we run troops into Kuwait now, it will be perceived as an aggressive act,” Adler warned. “Better we should meet with Daryaei first and sound him out.”
“Just so we give him the right signal,” Vasco put in.
“Oh, we won’t make that mistake, and I think he knows that the status of the Gulf countries is a top-drawer item with us. No mixed signals this time.” Ambassador April Glaspie had been accused of giving such a signal to Saddam Hussein in the summer of 1990—but she’d denied Hussein’s account, and the latter wasn’t all that reliable a source of information. Maybe it had been a linguistic nuance. Most likely of all, he’d heard exactly what he’d wanted to hear and not what had actually been said, a habit frequently shared by heads of state and children.
“How fast can you set it up?” the President asked.
“Pretty fast,” the Secretary of State replied.
“Do it,” Ryan ordered. “All possible speed. Ben?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I talked with Robby Jackson already. Coordinate with him for a plan to get a modest security force rapid-deployed over there. Enough to show that we’re interested, not enough to provoke them. Let’s also call Kuwait and tell them that we’re here if they need us, and that we can deploy to their country if they so request. Who’s on-deck for this?”
“Twenty-fourth Mech, Fort Stewart, Georgia. I checked,” Goodley said, rather proud of himself. “Their second brigade is on rotating alert-status now. Also a brigade of the 82nd at Fort Bragg. With the equipment warehoused in Kuwait, we can do the match-up and be rolling in as little as forty-eight hours. I’d also advise increasing the readiness state of the Maritime Pre-Positioning Ships at Diego Garcia. That we can do quietly.”
“Nice job, Ben. Call the SecDef and tell him I want it done—quietly.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I’ll tell Daryaei that we offer a friendly hand to the United Islamic Republic,” Adler said. “Also that we’re committed to peace and stability in that region, and that means territorial integrity. I wonder what he’ll say ...?”
Eyes turned to Bert Vasco, who was learning to curse his newly acquired status as resident genius. “He might just have wanted to rattle their cage. I don’t think he wants to rattle ours.”
“That’s your first hedge,” Ryan observed.
“Not enough information,” Vasco replied. “I don’t see that he wants a conflict with us. That happened once, and everybody watched. Ye
s, he doesn’t like us. Yes, he doesn’t like the Saudis or any of the other states. But, no, he doesn’t want to take us on. Maybe he could knock them all off. That’s a military call, and I’m just an FSO. But not with us in the game, and he knows it. So, political pressure on Kuwait and the Kingdom, sure. Beyond that, however, I don’t see enough to be worried about.”
“Yet,” the President added.
“Yes, sir, yet,” Vasco agreed.
“Am I leaning on you too hard, Bert?”
“It’s okay, Mr. President. At least you listen to me. It wouldn’t hurt for us to generate a Special National Intelligence Estimate of the UIR’s full capabilities and intentions. I need broader access to what the intel community’s generating.”
Jack turned. “Ben, the SNIE is ordered. Bert’s on the team with full access, by my order. You know, guys, giving orders can be fun,” the President added, with a smile to break up the tension that the meeting had generated. “This is a potential problem, but not a ball-buster yet, correct?” There were nods. “Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. Let’s keep an eye on this one.”
SINGAPORE AIRLINES FLIGHT 26 landed five minutes later, coming to the terminal at 10:25 A.M. The first-class passengers, having enjoyed wider, softer seats, now enjoyed quicker access to the entry rigmarole which America inflicts on her visitors. The traveler recovered his two-suiter from the carousel, and with his carry-on slung on his other shoulder, picked a line to stand in, in his hand held his entry card, which declared nothing of interest to the United States government. The truth would not have been pleasing to them in any case.
“Hello,” the inspector said, taking the card and scanning it. The passport came next. It seemed an old one, its pages liberally covered with exit and entry stamps. He found a blank page and prepared to make a new mark. “Purpose of your visit to America?”
“Business,” the traveler replied. “I am here for the auto show at Javits Center.”
“Uh-huh.” The inspector had scarcely heard the answer. The stamp was placed and the visitor pointed to another line. There his bags were X-rayed instead of opened. “Anything to declare?”
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