Biowar

77

At 3:00 A.M., even Washington, D.C., seemed like a ghost town, deserted and eerie. The streetlights seemed to glow brown instead of yellow, and the blinking traffic lights did more to create the fog than cut through it. Rubens and his entourage — his car was sandwiched between two vans packed with an NSA Black Suit security team — raced through the streets, veering up Pennsylvania Avenue. They were going not to the West Wing but the White House itself, summoned by Marcke for an in-person update.

One of the night staff had forwarded a copy of the executive branch’s daily news summary of headline stories appearing in the morning papers and on the morning news shows. “Killer Epidemic” led all the major papers. An unnamed CDC official — undoubtedly Lester — was booked on all three networks.

Crisis makes the man, Rubens thought to himself as they drove. It was an idea he firmly believed. Indeed, he had lived it, welcoming the challenges that came with responsibility. William Rubens had thrived on crisis and had reason to believe that he handled grave stresses well. And yet some crises were too much for any man. Some problems were beyond solution; a tidal wave was best not confronted but merely survived.

In politics, those who succeeded generally chose the latter path. The best way to Secretary of State surely led in that direction — go along, go along, get past this, stay away from that. Survive.

No, Rubens decided, he was not a man who settled for survival. Nor was that what was needed now. The threat would be conquered, or he would be conquered by it.

Rubens left his security team outside and went up the stairs, his feet shuffling against the stones and then gliding across the carpet. The President was waiting with George Hadash in the Blue Room. The large room in the center of the first floor of the house was more often used by tourists than the President, but the staff had brought in some coffee urns and arranged the chairs in a semicircle. Rubens might have thought he was back at school, sitting in one of Hadash’s informal seminars on the intersection between diplomacy and technology.

“The secretaries of state and defense are on their way,” said the President, who took a cup of coffee and sat on one of the chairs. “Health, CDC, Ms. Marshall — they’re coming as well. But I want you to give me the full story first, Billy. What’s the situation?”

“Man-made disease sold to a syndicate run by Radoslaw Dlugsko, a Polish weapons trafficker who among other things operates a front company called UKD. We’ve tracked three probable sales. One was to a Swedish company. We’ve compromised their computers and done a physical check on the shipment. We believe the bacteria in question wasn’t involved, but to be safe I’d recommend alerting their authorities. We’re in the process of completing the same procedure on an operation in Syria. We hope to have further data on that very shortly. But in the meantime, we have the last shipment tracked to a facility in Russia. According to our information, it’s to be shipped to a military base within six hours.”

“Where exactly?”

“Chechnya.”

“Chechnya?”

“Yes. Two weeks ago, the Third Battalion of the Second Armored Division/Special moved to that base. That unit is trained to deal with NBC warfare.”

“They’re planning to use it in an operation?” asked Marcke.

“I don’t have intelligence on that,” admitted Rubens. “But we cannot take the chance.”

“Do you think the Russians would indiscriminately use biological weapons?” asked Marcke.

“They may feel that, because of the way the disease is spread, it’s not indiscriminate. It’s liquid contact on the skin. It can be passed by person to person apparently through saliva contact — but we’re still working on the exact mechanics.”

“Go over the outbreak in America,” said Hadash. “Now, before the others get here.”

“At last count, there were fifty-three confirmed cases. We have a test. And we have a cure.”

“A cure?” said Hadash.

“An Asian fungus that works like penicillin. It cured one of my agents. We’re in the process of having it shipped back here for both study and use.”

“How many of those fifty-three are going to die?” asked Marcke.

“Probably all of them,” said Rubens, resisting the temptation to hedge.

“How many more people are going to get it?” asked Marcke. The President wore a blue oxford shirt with rumpled tan pants and Docksiders — about as dressed-down as he got. In contrast, Hadash was dressed in his normal business suit.

“Until we know for sure how it’s spread, it’s impossible to say how many cases we’ll get,” said Rubens. “But if the latest theories are right, then we should start to bring it under control soon. Dr. Lester is pretty confident that that’s going to happen. The wave that we’re seeing now are mostly medical people who weren’t aware of what they were dealing with. That will stop.”

Marcke nodded, though Rubens could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced. The media reports exaggerated the confirmed cases fourfold, and though the President had been told they were wrong, the specter of a widespread contagion was difficult to shake.

Precisely why they must act decisively, thought Rubens. And precisely why he must lay out the situation forcefully, without sugar coating, with a definitive plan.

“Even though we will contain this outbreak,” he told the President, “it remains a very dangerous weapon. If we lost the Russian strain now, there’s no telling where it would end up.”

“I agree,” said Hadash.

“Where is it?” asked Marcke.

“Moscow,” said Rubens. “A lab in the basement level of Botkin Hospital.”