“We’re stalled, Mr. President,” the National Security Adviser said. She was a black woman, surprisingly young-looking, who had risen through the ranks of the military. She was teaching at West Point when the President asked her to join the administration. Perhaps it was my imagination, but everything about her seemed slightly more impressive than the rest of us: she was fitter, she spoke more forcefully, she even sat straighter in her chair. “With regard to India, sir, we have moved backwards.”
“India?” the Strategist asked, genuinely perplexed. “They wanted a hundred billion dollars. How can we move backwards from there?”
“Now they are not even willing to do that,” the National Security Adviser said.
“They’ve taken that offer off the table?” the President asked.
“Yes, sir. They claim they have many untreated illnesses. The Prime Minister feels it would be inappropriate—”
“Politically stupid,” the Strategist interrupted.
The National Security Adviser looked at him sternly, clearly annoyed at being interrupted. She continued, “The Prime Minister believes it would be inappropriate to ship Dormigen out of the country at a time when there is still unmet need within the country.”
“Come on,” the Strategist said. “There is unmet need because the Indian health system is corrupt and inefficient, not because they don’t have enough Dormigen. They just can’t get it to where they need it.”
The National Security Adviser looked at the President as she answered, “Be that as it may, we cannot count on receiving any Dormigen shipments from the Indian government.”
“Not even for a hundred billion,” the President said.
“No, sir.”
“Isn’t this just a negotiation?” the Secretary of Defense asked. “Like hiring a taxi in Delhi?”
“Perhaps, sir,” the National Security Adviser said. Her speech was as crisp as her white, starched shirt. She spoke in perfect sentences. “However, my sense is that the Prime Minister is not willing to take the risk of putting the interests of the United States ahead of those of his own people. In fact, if we do enter into some kind of negotiation, there is a risk, knowing the man, that he might walk away without consummating a deal and use the whole situation to his own political advantage.”
“He’ll walk away and make the whole thing public?” the President asked.
“Yes, sir. It would be a huge publicity coup for him. He would be seen as standing up to the United States on behalf of the people of India.”
“That’s his shtick,” the Strategist said.
The National Security Adviser continued, always addressing her comments to the President, “As you know, there is an ongoing corruption investigation in India into military contracting. Several ministers have resigned. The opposition has seized on the situation to go after the Prime Minister. He’s on the political ropes. This would be a great distraction for him.”
“Okay, where else? What are our other Dormigen options?” the President asked.
“We need to discuss China, sir,” the National Security Adviser said.
“Not yet,” the President said. “I want to know what our other options are.”
“We’ve hit a wall,” the Chief of Staff said. “There are a few more loose commitments, but in terms of Dormigen shipments, there aren’t any more big ones to report. We’re about where we were yesterday.”
“How about Latvia?” the Strategist asked, deadpan.
“Latvia shipped us seven hundred fifty doses,” the Chief of Staff answered, trying to suppress her annoyance.
“I don’t understand,” the Speaker of the House said. “We’re looking at a massive epidemic and we can’t get our allies to loan us a week’s worth of Dormigen? Have we pointed out to them that we invented the drug in the first place? If it weren’t for us—”
The President interrupted, “Look, I’ve made fifty phone calls in the last few days. It’s hard to get any responsible leader to ship a meaningful quantity of a lifesaving drug out of the country, especially with the Capellaviridae epidemic out there.”
“Most of these countries are not seriously affected by Capellaviridae,” the NIH Director said.
“That could change tomorrow,” the President answered. “Then they go down in history as the leader who shipped their Dormigen to the U.S. just as a major epidemic hit. No politician wants to take that risk.”
“So they’re afraid of the politics?” the Speaker of the House asked. It was like she was wearing different glasses from the rest of us, with special lenses that saw only politics, wherever she looked.
“I don’t think you heard what the President was saying,” the Chief of Staff said. “I’ve listened in on a lot of the calls. They’re afraid of making a huge, deadly mistake.”
The National Security Adviser spoke up forcefully: “There’s one other thing, ma’am, if I may be frank here.”
“Of course,” the Chief of Staff said.
“There’s a lot of anger out there, a lot of pent-up frustration with the United States.”
“We invented Dormigen!” the Speaker interjected. “The United States is the only reason they have any Dormigen at all. Billions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money for all the research and development. What exactly are they frustrated about?”
“Well, Madam Speaker, they are frustrated by a lot of things,” the National Security Adviser responded. She turned slightly to face the Speaker and spoke in complete sentences, even when she was angry. “They are frustrated that we withdrew half of our funding for the United Nations. They are frustrated that we shut our borders to immigrants from Yemen and Syria and Turkey. They are frustrated that we are the richest country in the history of civilization, but we refuse to allow the world’s poorest countries to sell us their products.” The National Security Adviser paused for effect, and then finished her delicately crafted paragraph. “Those would be a few examples.”
She might as well have reached across the table and slapped the Speaker across the face. Even I—with a political knowledge gleaned mostly from the Internet while searching online for more interesting things—was aware that the Speaker had spearheaded all of the policies the National Security Adviser had ticked off, along with several others that could have made for a second paragraph. After Donald Trump’s political success with his “America First” agenda, opportunistic politicians across the political spectrum had rushed to create their own knockoffs, the policy equivalent of those fake handbags spread across the sidewalk in New York City. Who cares who designed the original product if people like it? The Speaker had asserted her leadership of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in large part by dressing up the Trump agenda in left-wing clothing. She had argued, for example, that we could not help the poorest Americans if we were shipping “a huge chunk of our tax revenues” to corrupt countries overseas. She said it was unreasonable for Americans to make sacrifices to deal with climate change while “the most polluting countries in the world are doing nothing.” And so on. Her relations with the Tea Party were frigid but when it came to votes in the House, they often voted together, a new voting bloc of the populist left and right. The President had run for the White House in part to fight against this new isolationism. Like so much else he had done, the Speaker considered it a personal affront and a political assault.
“What about privatizing Dormigen production?” the Speaker asked defensively.
“Yes, that came up in a few of the conversations, but no one seems to care why we have a shortage,” the Chief of Staff answered, somewhat ruefully. She looked at the President. “Do you remember what Cedrek told us?”
“The French President,” the National Security Adviser interjected for the benefit of the rest of us.
“No, I don’t remember,” the President said.
The Chief of Staff continued, “He said—I even wrote it down . . .” She flipped through a legal pad and then continued, reading from her notes: “ ‘The Americans have been stealing
our lunch money for fifty years and now you come asking to borrow some change.’ ”
“Stealing their lunch money?” the Speaker said incredulously. “That has no basis in reality. Half these countries have been free-riding off of our military for the last century. South Korea? Please tell me that South Korea has shipped us Dormigen.”
“South Korea has been very generous,” the Chief of Staff said.
“They should be, given all we’ve done for them,” the Speaker declared.
“I’ll mention that to them,” the President replied.
The National Security Adviser said calmly, “With all due respect, Madam Speaker, many of these countries perceive that the United States has been insensitive to their needs, especially in recent years. Whatever the objective reality, their perception is what matters here. You are welcome to tell them they should feel more grateful, but I suspect that will just make the problem worse.”
“What about killing them with kindness?” the Senate Majority Leader said. He had been largely silent since our early meetings. In the Cabinet Room, he sat with his jacket buttoned, his huge paunch creating what looked like an Olympic ski jump onto the table. But now his inner LBJ had been activated. “Everybody is willing to make some kind of deal, if we sweeten it enough.”
“I’m not sure that’s true in this case,” the Chief of Staff said. “This is more about national pride.”
“It could actually make things worse,” the National Security Adviser added. “If a leader is seen as taking a big payoff from the U.S., and then they come up short on Dormigen in their own country, even just a few deaths, it would be a political nightmare. Why take the risk?”
“Maybe we make them a deal they can’t refuse,” the Senate Majority Leader said. “These countries don’t really want to be on the wrong side of the United States.” The room was silent as the participants around the table absorbed the Majority Leader’s thought. He continued. “They’ve got a surplus of Dormigen—”
“Maybe they have a surplus,” the Acting HHS Secretary interrupted. “They can’t be sure exactly what they will need.”
“Okay, fine,” the Majority Leader continued. “They are likely to have a surplus and we need what they have. With the resources of this government, I find it hard to believe we can’t make some kind of deal happen.” He shook his head in mock amazement, as he had done so many times to such great effect at Rotary Club speeches and sports banquets and Fourth of July parades.
“Remember, we’ve already collected over a million doses,” the Chief of Staff answered. “Our allies have contributed what they think they can afford to do without. Now it gets harder.”
“Then isn’t this really just about China?” the House Speaker asked, though it did not really sound like a question. “Isn’t that what we should be talking about? That offer is on the table. That one solves our problem in one stroke.” We had been briefed that morning on the President’s upcoming visit to the South China Sea. If he was going to make that trip—land on the carrier, as our Pacific allies were expecting—he needed to leave in about forty-eight hours. One meeting in Hawaii had already been stripped from the schedule; there were briefings in Guam and the Philippines that could be canceled as well, buying more time. But two days was the max before Air Force One had to be wheels-up to make the South China Sea Conference, the culmination of America’s effort to build a bulwark against Chinese meddling in the region. The South China Sea Agreement had been in negotiation, on and off, since the Obama administration: nine signatory nations; 711 pages, including addendums on fishing, mineral rights, endangered species, even fighting piracy; and one high-profile landing by the U.S. President on an aircraft carrier to put a fine point on it all. No wonder the Chinese were willing to give us a million doses of Dormigen to ditch the whole thing.
The President slapped the conference table, somewhere between a tap and a bang, and said, “Why are we not making more progress on the virus? I don’t understand that. That’s where we need to beat this thing. We should not be begging the rest of the world to fix this problem. I need better options.”
The NIH Director answered quickly, perhaps a tad too defensive: “Mr. President, we’ve got three teams working around the clock on this thing, and they’ve made remarkable progress in a short amount of time. Usually it takes decades to confront a disease like this. We have weeks.”
“Then this is when you need to dig deeper, think differently,” the President demanded. “Can you not see the stakes here? What we need is the Manhattan Project and what we’re getting is a government task force.” The President looked around the room as he made his motivational speech, or whatever it was. He never made eye contact with me, but I could feel my neck and face flushing. I was, after all, the only one in the room specifically because of my purported expertise on viruses.
The Strategist said, “To be fair, the Manhattan Project took at least a couple of years.” He typed quickly on his phone. The President ignored him. After a moment of silence, the Strategist read from his phone, “Yeah, four years, one hundred and thirty thousand people. You got to love Wikipedia, right?”
“Maybe we should take a short break,” the Chief of Staff said.
“Fine,” the President agreed. “But I’m telling you, these options are not good enough.”
“One thing,” the Acting HHS Secretary said, raising his hand slightly. “I’ve said this before, but I think we need to discuss what happens if we come up short on Dormigen. I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but I think we need a plan.”
“I agree,” the Secretary of Defense said.
“That’s for Congress to decide,” the House Speaker said.
“No, actually, it’s not,” the President said.
The Speaker replied, “Since when does Congress not have a say—”
The Chief of Staff cut her off: “I’ll put it on the agenda for this afternoon.”
“One more thing,” the Communications Director interjected, speaking for the first time I could remember. Mostly he just sat at the end of the table checking his phone, reading and typing messages. He was a former cable news political correspondent, trimmer and younger than the others in the room, with a full head of hair and a nicer suit. He and the President were the only two who consistently looked good on television. “The blogosphere is starting to heat up,” he said, looking at his phone. “I’m getting some inquiries.”
“What exactly?” the Chief of Staff asked.
“The President canceled the Hawaii meetings, the Speaker has been at the White House for three days in a row, that kind of thing. They’re starting to smell a story.”
“Are there any leaks?” the President asked.
“Not yet.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” the President asked in the same impatient, ornery tone that he had been using for most of the morning.
“I’ve got some ideas,” the Communications Director assured him.
“Like what?” the President asked.
“We don’t need the whole group for that,” the Chief of Staff said, closing her leather legal pad holder. “Okay, everyone, let’s come back in twenty minutes.”
The participants stood and whipped out their phones and other devices. I got up and wandered over to a table with cookies and coffee, more out of a need to do something than because I needed cookies or coffee. The President’s comments had struck a chord. Were we really working as aggressively as we might on Capellaviridae? For all the effort, we still had no new insights on lurking viruses. We had no clue what triggered Capellaviridae to turn fatal, not even any decent theories. I was the one who was supposed to be making progress on that front.
I made one call during that break and sent one text. The call was pure genius. The text turned out to be a complete disaster.
29.
DURING THE BREAK, THE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR USED his phone to show the Chief of Staff a short video clip of the Speaker of the House arriving at the White House. “CNN is ru
nning this over and over,” he told her.
“Do you think she tipped them off?” the Chief of Staff asked.
“Maybe. It makes her look presidential. Why else would a camera crew happen to be there when she arrived?” the Communications Director suggested.
“We can’t prove it,” the Chief of Staff said.
“Of course not. I just thought you should know.” The Communications Director was still looking down at his phone. “Oh, fuck,” he said.
“What?”
“Fox is reporting that there is some crisis related to the Saudi coup attempt.” He continued to read, and then said, “Where do they get this crap?” He began to read from his phone: “Sources close to the White House are reporting that Saudi Arabia’s nuclear strike force has been put on high alert in the wake of a coup attempt, prompting other nuclear powers in the region to respond in kind.” Saudi Arabia had only been a nuclear power for a handful of years. After Iran acquired the bomb, the other major powers in the region scrambled to even the playing field. The Saudis had the resources to spend freely, so they were the first to get the bomb (allegedly with the assistance of the Israelis, who believed that a nuclear Saudi Arabia would be the best counterweight to a nuclear Iran). Egypt followed soon thereafter. Given the instability of the region, there was a chronic fear of some kind of nuclear incident. A press person for the Joint Chiefs of Staff had refused to comment on the Fox nuclear alert story, which merely incited more interest.
I stood in a corner of the conference room, sipping coffee idly. The President’s admonition was replaying itself in my mind. We really did need the virus equivalent of the Manhattan Project. There was no excuse for not doing everything—anything—that might be remotely productive. With that in mind, I called Dartmouth’s Department of Biological Sciences, where I spoke to a friendly administrative assistant. Professor Huke had retired several years earlier, but he was still living in the area. She gave me his phone number. I gathered my thoughts for a moment and then dialed. Professor Huke’s wife answered. He was outside working in the garden, she said, and would call me back as soon as he came in.
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