I stared at him in horror. “Why the hell would—?”
“Proactive defense,” Church cut in.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” said Hu, “that someone is inevitably going to develop airborne Ebola. You busted one lab yourself, Captain.”
“Yes, and those were nutcases, Doc. What are our guys doing? Working on a cure—?”
“A cure, a treatment, or some prophylactic stratagem,” said Hu.
I didn’t like it, but I understood it. Ebola is about 97 percent contagious and almost always lethal. Obtaining research samples was necessarily difficult, because if a terrorist organization ever launched a weaponized version of it and we hadn’t done our homework we wouldn’t live long enough to regret the lack of preparedness. Still sucked, though.
“Bloody marvelous, isn’t it?” Prebble said with a tight smile. “And your lot brought the virus here by the gallon. Can’t say I’m very happy about it.”
“Can’t say I am, either,” said Church. “After 9/11 there was an overwhelming fear of being perceived by the public as unprepared. It was a bigger concern than actually developing a workable response to a biological attack. That pushed several likely pathogens into active testing immediately rather than waiting until a secure facility could be built somewhere in the U.S. And there may have been a secondary agenda. Some of the people who put this plan together may not have wanted to risk testing on U.S. soil. They felt it was more ‘prudent’ to exploit the protection of an ally with a strong military in case of an attack by a terrorist group.” He glanced at me. “No, Captain, don’t look at the logic too closely. It doesn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny.”
“Politics,” said Prebble, giving that word all the bile it deserved.
“Politics,” agreed Church. “By U.S., British, and international law this lab is illegal. It was black book authorized following 9/11, but it was approved too hastily and then given to a private company to manage. If you try to make sense out of that you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Aye,” said Prebble. “I can’t stand on a pedestal here, because we made the same mistakes. America wasn’t the only country scrambling to retrofit itself for antiterrorism and counterterrorism preparedness.”
“You guys are killing my idealism here,” I said.
“Let’s hope that’s all we kill,” said Ashton. It wasn’t a joke and nobody smiled.
“So,” I said, “we seem to be busting our ass to get there, but everything you’re telling me is past tense.”
Hu said, “This morning, FIRE senior researcher Dr. Charles Grey came into work and brought his wife and son with him. They passed through all the security checkpoints, and he used his keycard to get them all into the bioresearch wing. Totally against all protocols, of course. We reviewed the security tapes, and when one lab tech tried to protest Grey flat out threatened to fire the guy. The tech backed down, more concerned for his job than for protocols.” He sneered. “Accidents are always about the human element.”
For once I could find no fault with his statement.
Church called up a floor plan on the tabletop computer. “FIRE is built in layers, with a false front around the exterior to make it look like an inexpensive university-level lab. There are offices and staff rooms, and so on, built in the outer ring. They connect at two points through air locks to the main lab complex. Inside there is another and much more sophisticated air lock that accesses what they call the Hot Room. That’s where the work on the class-A pathogens is done, and there’s a glass-enclosed and pressuresealed observation tank in the center—the staff calls it the fish tank—and the biological vault is in there. Everyone working in the Hot Room can see the bio-vault, so nobody working there will be surprised when it’s opened. There are also warning lights and buzzers of different kinds that go off when the unlocking codes are being entered.” Church looked up from the screen. “Dr. Grey called the entire staff into the Hot Room and shortly after that the video surveillance system went out.”
“How? Aren’t those systems supposed to have redundancies?”
“Yes,” Church agreed, “so we can presume that they were deliberately taken off-line.”
I thought about that. “Then he can’t be doing this alone. No way the security cameras are controlled from the Hot Room or the other labs.”
Prebble smiled approvingly. “Good call. No, the fail-safe on the surveillance system has a set of manual controls, and they are in the security office on the other side of the complex. So figure at least one other person. Could be more.”
“Is there a shutdown protocol?” I asked. “And is that connected to the door seals?”
Hu said, “There are manual controls for all functions of the outer lab and the Hot Room, but it’s only used when the bio-vault is locked and the fish tank sealed. They use it when they’re installing new equipment or making repairs to doors and such, and under those conditions the bio-vault with the active samples is sealed and guarded. That system is connected via satellite uplinks to coded routers in a national security satellite. The uplink has been terminated at the source. Same for the hard-lines that connect to the TAT-fourteen transatlantic telecommunications cable. The satellite and cable are functioning normally, but both report a disconnection.”
“There’s got to be a fail-safe … a dead man’s switch.”
“Sure,” said Hu. “But like everything, there is a bypass to it. Bug has pinged it and he’s sure that the system has been taken off-line. In fact, the only way to bypass this kind of security is through deliberate and coordinated human action.”
“Shit.”
“You can’t prevent human error,” said Hu fussily. “You can only advise against it and encourage adherence to rules.”
“It gets worse,” said Church. “Because the main lab is not part of any active virus research protocols, it has looser safety features. In fact, it can be manually integrated into the main air-conditioning system for the whole lab facility.”
I could feel the blood drain from my face. “What kind of moron would approve that design?”
“The bureaucratic kind,” said Church.
“Christ. Can the vents be blocked from outside?”
“Under normal circumstances, yes, but it appears that at some time prior to today Grey or someone working with him disabled the vent overrides. We’ll have to review weeks of security tapes and logs to see who worked on it, and that’s beside the point. It’s damage done. The vent controls have been entirely routed to the Hot Room. All Grey has to do to flood the building is throw a switch.”
“What are the options? Can you disable the electrics? Cut the power?”
“Essential services like venting, lights, and air-lock functions have battery backups. It’s a safety measure to make sure the automatic seals never lose power.”
“What about an electromagnetic pulse? How fast can you drop an E-bomb on the place?”
“This is a hardened facility,” said Prebble. “We’ve examined the option of carpet bombing the facility, but we would need an exact mix of bunker busters and fuel air bombs, and that’s tricky. Destroying the building is easy … making sure we fry every single microscopic germ is another matter altogether, and our best computer models give us only a probability of ninety-four percent success.”
“And since we’re talking about airborne Ebola, that might as well be zero,” said Hu.
“Yes,” agreed Prebble, “and prevailing winds are not in our favor today. On the other hand, there’s a carrier just over the horizon and I’ve had a quiet word with the captain. He’s an old mate of mine. If there’s so much as a wee hint that the facility’s outer containment is failing, then I make a call and we’ll all be having tea with Jesus before you can say ‘oh, shite.’”
“You’d drop a nuke?” I asked, appalled. “And only part of my concern is based on the fact that we’re flying there. Dropping a nuke on an illegal American bioweapons lab would be …” I fished for a word bad enough to describe it and came
up short.
“I agree,” said Church grimly. “Aside from the physical damage and risk of fallout, neither country would recover from the damage to their credibility on a global scale. It would truly be catastrophic.”
“Nevertheless, gentlemen,” said Prebble, “should things turn against us I’ve prepared a set of recommendations for the Prime Minister that includes a nuclear option.”
“Let’s make sure that things don’t turn against us,” said Church quietly. “We have several overlapping quarantine protocols in operation, and a Chinook is flying in rolls of industrial-grade quarantine draping. We’ll disable all of the external cameras and then drape the building. That should give us an extra step toward first base in the event of a containment breach. Once that’s in place we’ll roll out our primary response.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Me, in a hazmat suit, with a gun.”
“Can you recommend something else?”
“Sure. A whole bunch of shooters in hazmats with guns. Seal the outer doors, take out the inner doors with an RPG, burn everything else with flamethrowers, let Dr. Grey be the one having tea and crumpets with the Messiah, and we call it a day.” I looked at Church. “But that’s not the play you’re going to call, is it?”
He said nothing for a moment. This was the kind of moment in which he’d usually reach for a NILLA wafer while the rest of us sorted it out and got into the same mental gear as him. Prebble hadn’t supplied any cookies. Church looked almost wistful. He said, “You’re the senior DMS field commander on-station, Captain. Do you see that as the best tactical option?”
I sighed. “No.”
“And why not?” Church asked, like Socrates guiding a student through a logic puzzle. I hated when he did this.
“Because with that plan we don’t get to ask any questions … and we need to know why he’s doing this.”
Church and Prebble nodded.
There was a faint bing-bing and then the pilot’s voice said, “Touchdown in five, gentlemen.”
Interlude Sixteen
T-Town
Mount Baker, Washington State
Three and a Half Months Before the London Event
Hugo Vox stood in the doorway to Circe’s office. His face looked haggard, his eyes dark.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Circe couldn’t speak. It felt like a steel hand was clamped around her throat.
Grace … ? Her mouth formed the name silently as the first tears fell.
Vox nodded. “Down in the Bahamas. A big DMS action. I don’t have the details, but the word is that she died in combat. A lot of people died. The DMS took a lot of losses. It’s … it’s a terrible tragedy. For them … and for all of us.”
“Grace,” Circe murmured, finding a splinter of her voice, but the name stuck in her throat. “God …”
“I know you two were close,” said Vox.
Circe put her face in her hands. “I just saw her the other day!”
“The DMS was facing something really big. Something really, really bad. From what Gus Dietrich told me, Grace may have saved us all. That new guy, Ledger, was able to wrap it up, but Grace Courtland did her part. Yes, ma’am, she did her part indeed. Best of the best, she was.”
Circe shook her head, not wanting to hear more. Not now.
Vox turned away, and then paused. He turned back for just a moment and watched Circe’s shoulders tremble with the first wave of sobs. He opened his mouth to say something, but he left it unsaid. He sighed and lumbered out.
Interlude Seventeen
McCullough, Crown Island
St. Lawrence River, Ontario, Canada
Four Months Ago
The two silent Korean guards came for Gault and Toys an hour later and led them down the hallway, the end of which was blocked by a gorgeously embroidered brocade tapestry that depicted a scene from the Book of Revelation. Gault bent and slowly translated the Latin stitched along the border.
“‘Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time. The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition.’”
“I must have missed that in catechism,” murmured Toys.
One of the guards slid the tapestry aside to reveal an elevator door. The guard pressed his palm to a geometry scanner and tapped in a complex entry code. The elevator door opened silently. Toys was impressed with the sophistication of the equipment. The security precautions matched the exacting standards he had always encouraged Gault to use.
The elevator took them deep into the heart of the island. When the doors opened, one guard indicated that they exit, but neither of the two Asians moved to join them. Gault and Toys exchanged a brief wary glance before stepping out into a hallway that had been carved from raw bedrock. There was a set of large and ornately carved teak doors to their right, and as they stepped forward the doors opened toward them without a sound.
They entered a massive chamber. One wall of the chamber was covered floor to ceiling with flat-screen TV monitors; the other walls were hung with tapestries as ancient and elegant as the apocalypse drapery upstairs. The center of the room was dominated by a massive oak table around which there were seven great thronelike chairs and seven expensive leather chairs of the kind Toys had once bought for Gault’s private office. On the far side of the table a chair that had a higher back than all the others sat on a dais. It stood empty.
The lights were low except for green-globed lamps positioned for each of the chairs. All but one of the lamps had been angled to spill light toward the center of the table, leaving the person in each chair cast in shadows.
Six of the great chairs were occupied, but the one closest to where Gault and Toys stood was empty. Likewise, six of the leather chairs were occupied. Every face was in shadow, but Toys knew that those faces were turned toward Gault.
“Yes,” he heard Gault murmur.
“What?” Toys asked under his breath.
Gault looked at Toys for a long moment, his eyes glassy and distant.
“Sebastian—?” Toys prompted.
Gault did not answer. Instead he took a step deeper into the room.
“Welcome,” said a familiar voice, and they turned as a man in one of the thrones leaned into the spill of light. “Sebastian, Toys … it’s so good to see you both,” said the American in his booming bull voice. It was difficult for Toys to reconcile the gruffness of this man with the elegant majesty of his mother. They were not only unalike as people, but to Toys it seemed as if they had to be from different species also.
“Welcome!” said the others seated at the table.
Gault nodded silently and, Toys thought, with genuine reverence.
Because of all the grandeur of the room, the moody lighting, the thrones, and the setting, Toys wouldn’t have been surprised if the men at the table had been wearing hoods or masks, or at the very least black tie. But the American wore an ordinary three-button Polo shirt and had a pair of sunglasses tucked into the vee. He looked ready for a quick nine of golf rather than a clandestine meeting in an underground chamber beneath a castle.
Gault gestured vaguely to the room. “What is all this?”
The American laughed. “It’s pretty much exactly what it looks like, boys. We’re a secret society.”
“A ‘secret society’?” Toys laughed. “Are you taking the mickey?”
“No, I’m serious as a heart attack.”
Gault folded his arms and cocked a disbelieving head to one side. “Ri-i-ight. An actual secret society. Like, what? Like the Cabal?”
“They’ve been smashed flat by the DMS.”
“The Trilateral Commission?”
“More effective.”
“The Illuminati?”
“Right ballpark.”
Toys muttered, “Somewhere Dan Brown just had
an erection.”
Everyone at the table laughed.
“Seriously … who are you and what is all this?” demanded Toys.
The American smiled and shrugged. It was a very Gallic shrug even though he was pure New England.
“How would you like me to answer that?”
“I presume ‘straightforward’ is a nonstarter?”
Another chuckle rippled through the seated figures.
“If we ever decide on a membership pamphlet, it will go something like this,” said a man on the right side of the room, and then he spoke in a formal and ominous voice. “We have many names. History knows us as the Sargonai, the heirs and kinsmen of Sargon of Mesopotamia, first emperor in the history of mankind.”
The man who spoke wore the robes of a Saudi. Moreover, Toys knew him. It was impossible that he was here. In America, in New York of all places, where even the mind-numbed street people would attack him without hesitation.
“‘Sargonai’?” Gault echoed with a smile.
Another leaned forward, a fat man with Slavic features. “It’s just a cover name, one of many we’ve used, but we don’t call ourselves that. Not anymore.”
“Why not?” drawled Toys. “It’s catchy. It would look great on souvenir coffee mugs.”
“Hush,” barked Gault.
“No,” said the Saudi, “let him have his voice. If you are welcome here, then so is your Conscience. As you see, we each have one.”
Around the room the people seated in the leather chairs leaned into the light. Four men, two women. Most of them nodded, one waved, and the one seated next to the American saluted with a steaming cup of coffee.
“‘Conscience’?” Gault asked.
The Slav answered that. “It is the policy of the Trust that each of us has a Conscience who is free to speak his or her mind. They may offer advice, provide intelligence, and participate in all of our discussions. All great kings have had such as they, and they’ve worn a thousand disguises—chamberlain and general, jester and body servant, spouse and lover. Trust is the determining factor; mutual interest and a shared vision are the chemicals that combine to cement their relationship together.”
The King of Plagues Page 18