by Alan Gold
“Thirty seconds people. And counting,” The makeup artist quickly dabbed a sudden shiny spot on DeLile’s forehead and rapidly disappeared.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .” The director stopped speaking and held up his hand using his fingers to count them into DeLile’s introduction.
“The killing of all birds flying over Great Britain. Is it possible? Could it happen in the United States? Could the bald eagle be hunted down as a killer not of wildlife but of human beings? And could the British government really be planning to exterminate all the cute little feathered friends in a species holocaust on the other side of the Atlantic? Yes, if you believe rock megastar, environmentalist, and animal activist Jay Silvester. Jay, we’ve just seen a clip of your press conference just a few moments ago when you stunned the entire world by your announcement. Can this be true? What information do you have that tells you England is planning a mass culling of all of its bird population?”
He gave her his best and most endearing smile and said softly, “I don’t say things which aren’t backed up with fact, DeLile. Look at every statement I’ve made these last dozen or more years, about global warming, poverty, overcrowding, the rising cost of food, mass starvation, and you’ll see that it’s all come true.
“In the case of the Brits killing their birdlife because of these isolated and possibly unconnected deaths in London, all I can tell you is that I’ve had an advanced copy of the report that the rapid response team is going to be giving to the British prime minister and to the World Health Organization in the next few hours. I have to say that the report is utterly shocking. Remember that this doesn’t come out of nowhere. During the scare with bird flu not so long ago, South Korean officials murdered all the poultry in Seoul to stop the spread of any new outbreaks. They killed fifteen thousand chickens, ducks, pheasants, and turkeys. There wasn’t much of an outcry because these tragic animals were caged or farmed and were going to be killed and eaten anyway.
“But what Britain is planning to do is entirely different, and I don’t think that the British people, most of whom are animal lovers, are going to stand for it. They’re planning to lay poison traps to murder the birds where they roost. By the tens of millions. The voice of Britain will be extinguished; birds will die in excruciating agony. It’s monstrous, and I just hope that our president takes a stand against this barbarity and persuades the prime minister not to agree. There are other ways to stop the spread of this virus, and there’s no proof that birds are responsible for spreading it.”
DeLile asked, “But how can you be so sure that birds aren’t responsible for the outbreak? After all, hundreds of innocent Britons have been killed by this virus and to date, nobody’s come up with a source.”
“Listen up, DeLile, if you know anything about history, you’ll realize that when people are in a panic, they always look for someone or something to blame. Women with warts were burned as witches in the middle ages . . . do you know why? Because the populace, the Church, and the authorities didn’t know the cause, they blamed people who were feared . . . old women who looked off. They called them witches. Nobody knew until the last century that rats and fleas spread the Black Death, the terrible bubonic plague in centuries past that wiped out a third of the population of Europe. So who did they blame? Who did they slaughter? Foreigners living in their midst.
“And it’s not just diseases which make people go crazy like the British government is doing today. Whole communities of innocent Jews were burned to death and hunted down because some Christian kid was killed. Without any proof, they accused the Jews of killing Christian kids and drinking their blood.
“I could go on and on. The wrong people have been blamed and killed because of our irrational fears. And now the British government is going to kill every bird in the United Kingdom because they’re so terrified of this sudden outbreak. Well, maybe, just maybe birds are responsible. But every bird? Caged birds in pet shops? Pet budgies bringing joy to some little old woman in Birmingham? Pigeons in central London? And why suddenly now? Why suddenly have birds become responsible for all these deaths?
“Look, DeLile, I’m no scientist. I’m just an ordinary rock singer, trying to do his best for today’s kids and future generations. That’s why I honestly believe that we should all think deeply about these issues. It seems to me that a top-ranking group like this rapid response team should be looking at all possible sources, like fleas or spiders or mosquitoes or rats, as the likely reservoirs for this virus. Maybe like the Black Death, this virus was transported into England by a stowaway rat on a cargo plane or in the hold of a ship that had just come from Africa or Asia. But to kill all the birds of England . . .” He shook his head sadly and looked down at the floor, fighting back tears.
DeLile reached over and touched his knee. And thirty-seven million Americans felt his pain.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH WHITE HALL, LONDON
“Who?” asked Debra Hart.
“The secretary of state,” said the breathless receptionist. “The American lady,” she whispered in her British accent.
“Who?” she repeated in astonishment.
The receptionist told her again.
“The American secretary of . . .?”
Debra heard an angry “oh for God’s sake, give me the phone.” Suddenly one of the world’s most familiar voices came on line.
“Doctor Hart. This is Secretary of State Jenny Tan. I’m in reception and would like to see you immediately.”
“Yes. Of course. Sure. I’ll be right there.”
A moment later, Debra’s astonished colleagues saw her run from the conference room without an explanation. She descended the stairs three at a time, ran down a corridor, burst past two armed security guards who hollered after her, and ran across the public areas into reception.
“Secretary Tan, what an unexpected surprise. I had no idea you were in London,” Debra said, out of breath and desperate to compose herself.
“Neither did anybody else, Doctor Hart. Can we go somewhere private?”
Debra led the secretary of state and four members of her entourage back in the direction from which she’d just come. They walked in silence. The demeanor of the secretary was an indication that any conversation would be low on civilities and high on purpose. And having been locked in meetings all day at the Health Department, Debra had no idea what was wrong.
One of the senior people from the Health Department paced ahead so that the guards on security detail would allow the secretary through without any further embarrassment. Her sudden and unannounced appearance had strained the normally staid British civil servants into apoplexy. Known for impetuousness—she had once turned up uninvited to the Russian president’s dacha with a bottle of vodka and spent the entire night drinking until he’d agreed to join with the US in a peacekeeping force in some African trouble spot—the decision to seek out the leader of the rapid response team had been hers and hers alone. It had been made without consultation with her president or the British prime minister, just after she’d just turned off the cable news channel and the interview between DeLile Carpenter and Jay Silvester.
They walked in strained silence toward the suite of offices set aside within the Health Department for the rapid response team. As they entered the conference room, the ten men and women looked up from their deliberations and were shocked to see the US secretary of state standing there. And from the look on her face, she wasn’t a happy woman.
Everybody stood as the secretary entered the room. She sat in Debra’s chair at the head of the table.
“Madam Secretary, I don’t understand why you’re here. Why you didn’t let us know you were coming,” said Debra, knowing that serious trouble was brewing.
“Is it your intention, Doctor Hart, to recommend the culling of all birdlife in Great Britain?”
Debra looked at her in shock. “How did you . . .”
“Yes it is,” interrupted Daniel Todd.
“No it’s not,” insisted Debra.
“We simply haven’t come to that decision yet. Anyway, how did you find out about it? We haven’t released our interim findings yet. We’ve sent a draft to the secretary of health in Washington because of the political nature of what we’re about to do, but that was top secret. Did he tell you?”
“No, I found out from NBC,” she said, the restrained fury in her voice making her position apparent. “DeLile Carpenter and Jay Silvester have just had a charming little fireside chat on NBC in front of tens of millions of Americans, telling them precisely what your report is recommending. It’s out there, Doctor Hart. In the public arena. So right now, some Joe Schmuck on the streets of Hoboken knows more about your decisions than the president of the United States of America.”
Stunned, Debra said, “It can’t be.”
“It is.”
“But how?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out. I can’t tell you what an unmitigated disaster this is. I’ve come over here to have a private conversation with the British prime minister to try to convince him not to kick you out of his country, that we should all cooperate and show the Third World how we work together. And just when he’s approved the idea, suddenly we’re into media hysteria about species genocide. About killing all the birds in England. The prime minister has called an emergency meeting of his cabinet at Number Ten and God only knows what decisions will be made. It could be the end of your work here. He could demand that your team leaves. Now what the hell kind of security are you running in this place?”
“I can assure you, Madam Secretary, that our security is watertight. Every scientist sitting at this table has been thoroughly vetted by the FBI, Europol, and MI6. We’ve taken our security protocols from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, which was based on CIA modus operandi. All our notes, discussion papers, CDs, PowerPoints, and discs are numbered and logged and released strictly on a need-to-know basis from a secure server by way of a code known only to me and my counterpart in the UK. The distribution list is to the men and women assembled here, as well as the British minister of health, the secretary of health in the States, and the director-general of the World Health Organization and the secretary-general of the United Nations, and . . . and that’s it. Every memo is encrypted and when it’s received, decryption can only be done through a formula known exclusively between the recipient and the sender. If a leak has occurred, Doctor Tan, it’s occurred somewhere further up the pipeline and not from this room.”
“That remains to be seen. These gentlemen are security experts from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. They’ll be examining every aspect of your security systems from top to bottom. When they’ve finished, they’ll report to me because I’ll be mounting an investigation to determine where this leak came from, and when I’ve . . .”
Debra steeled herself and said, “No, you won’t.”
Everybody in the room looked at her in amazement, not least Jenny Tan.
“Excuse me?”
“I said you won’t be investigating the security of the rapid response team. You won’t be placing your spooks in here, and there will be no report coming to or from you.”
“Doctor Hart, are you aware of who you’re talking to?”
“I’m well aware, Madam Secretary. But are you aware that our mandate to operate doesn’t come from the United States government, or from the British, but from the secretary-general of the United Nations, the General Assembly, and the World Health Organization? This team is mine to lead, not yours to investigate. We will naturally cooperate fully and closely with these gentlemen because we must find and plug the security leak, but if they wish to work with us, then they’ll work under my direction and report to me and my counterpart from the UK, Professor Lord Soames. We will report jointly to the secretary-general, and he may, if he chooses, report to you and the president.”
Debra had never spoken to anybody as important in this way before. She wondered where her strength had come from. And she wondered how soon her neck would be on the chopping block—after all, she was only a couple of miles from the Tower of London.
The ethereal silence filled every nook and cranny of the walnut veneered room. The creaking leather chairs were silent as not one single person moved a muscle, other than Jenny Tan’s middle finger drumming on the tabletop. For interminable moments, nobody breathed.
The US secretary of state nodded. “You’re quite right. It was my error of judgment, for which I apologize, especially if I caused you or your team any embarrassment. My purpose in being here is to avoid any future leaks and subsequent panic, which is, I’m sure, your aim as well. Would you be willing to have these gentlemen assist you in the security issue?”
Debra nodded, barely able to speak. “Of course.”
“Good. You’re a ballsy lady. Now, can you please fill me in on this bird culling issue. We’ve got a real problem, and I need to be able to handle it.”
Again, Daniel Todd spoke out. Despite being witness to a potential volcanic eruption between the two women, he saw that the emotions in the room were settling and found his voice. “Actually, Madam Secretary, it’s probably not birds at all. It’s more likely to be bats.”
“Bats?”
Daniel nodded. “It’s possible that it’s birds, but the nature of the virus we’ve taken from the first victims is a pathogen which is often associated with the blood of bats. We’ve found parvovirus and other coronaviruses which are known to infect many animals like chickens and pigs and are passed on to humans. SARS is a typical trans-species viral infection, and there are many similarities between what’s infecting these British people and the SARS virus which infected Asians. My view as a biologist is that it’s bats which are the reservoir of these pathogens.”
“And have bats been found?” asked Jenny Tan.
Daniel shook his head. “No, but we’ve found bat guano in an oak tree and on the ground inside the school where the infection was first reported. A school where the first victim was a pupil.”
“And are there bats in this oak tree?” she asked.
Debra interrupted. “That’s the interesting thing,” she said. “We know from interviewing the uninfected children that there was a small colony of a hundred or so roosting in the tree until the first infection. Something scared them away, presumably to find a new roost site. We have no idea where they are now. We reported this to the secretary of health in Washington, and the minister in London, who are monitoring our work on behalf of the secretary-general and the WHO.”
“So where the hell did this pop singer get the idea that we’re going to kill all the birds?” she asked.
“In our report, we included birds as a possible reservoir, but we only ever said that birds could be the source; we never ruled them out, but likewise we never said that they were, nor that we’d be advising the British government to cull all birds. Our report was largely about the bat population. Obviously, the person who leaked the report isn’t a scientist, because they’ve misunderstood what we said.”
“Misunderstood? If what you’re telling me is in the report, then I don’t think anybody misunderstood what was being said. This is a case of media manipulation, deliberate lying for headlines. We have to fight fire with fire, so I need to put out a statement denying that we’re calling for the extinction of all birds in the UK,” said Jenny Tan. “Is that okay with you guys?”
“Yes,” said Debra.
“No,” said Daniel at the same time.
Jenny Tan looked at both scientists. “Let’s not get precious here, guys. We’re in crisis mode.”
“Can I just say two words to you, Secretary Tan,” said Daniel. “Palm oil.”
“’Scuse me?” said the secretary of state.
“Palm oil. Innocent and innocuous enough. Used in thousands of foodstuffs around the world. It’s ubiquitous. But where does it come from? Malaysia and Indonesia. The governments of those two countries, in concert with growers, are currently bulldozing and destroying areas of forests and jungles the equivalent s
ize of six hundred football fields every hour . . . every hour . . . habitat for all sorts of endangered animals, in order to plant palm oil to satisfy the food industry. Bats in these two countries are having their traditional habitats and food sources destroyed by mankind to supply the insatiable demands of the human food industry. Coincidentally, it’s also sending the Sumatran tiger and the orangutan to the point of extinction. But some of the earlier outbreaks of these sorts of terrible plagues have been in Malaysia and Indonesia. Villages, which I’ll bet my bottom dollar, are on the flight paths of bat colonies which are desperately searching for food, fruit, or flying insects. The sources of fruit are being bulldozed, and the insect populations are either being sprayed or are relocating because their traditional jungle habitat is under constant destruction. Without food sources, the viral load in the bats’ blood is massively increasing, and I’m certain that the viruses are mutating and causing the problem. But I’ve got to prove it. I have colleagues right now in these countries and dozens of others around the world catching bats in these types of areas to investigate their blood. We should know the answer soon.
“If I’m right, then these stressed-out bats are the source of the infections and people below their flight paths are dying of terrible and previously unknown diseases. It’s probably bats, but it could just as likely be birds or fleas or flies or mosquitoes or something which uses the air to find a food source. So to say that we’re not going to cull flying animals is premature. We just don’t know at this early juncture,” said Daniel.
He looked at Debra for support, but she just shrugged.
Jenny looked at them both. “Okay, guys, let’s get this sorted. Now.”
5
THE OFFICES OF CHAT UPTOWN MANHATTAN
Tom Pollard, president of Citizens for Humane Animal Treatment, was still basking in the glory of Jay Silvester’s overwhelming success. Pollard had been called everything from a self-gratifying jerk-off merchant by a right-wing blog artist to a PR genius by the Wall Street Journal. Today, he was certain in the knowledge that his PR coup would cement his reputation as the leader of the animal rights movement throughout the world.