Biowar

94

Rubens reached the Art Room as the birds disintegrated.

“What’s the situation?” he asked Telach.

“I aborted the strike on the hospital.”

“What?”

“Tommy found Kegan. The Russian strain is a fake. So was the Syrian. We have the lab tests,” said Telach.

“You countermanded my order without calling me?”

“I had five seconds to make a decision. I made it.”

Her lower lip trembled slightly as she continued, but the tremor wasn’t anything near as bad as the other day. Rubens listened without interrupting, realizing even before he heard all of her reasoning that she had made the right decision.

With all its high-tech gear, satellites, and fancy gizmos, at its core Deep Black was no different from any other organization. Its success depended on the ability of its people to make judgments and execute at the moment of crisis. Rubens knew that; his main asset as head of Desk Three, his real ability, was in finding the people who could do that. He had personally selected everyone in this room and all of the field ops as well. He was a phenomenally good judge of character.

So how had he failed to figure out what Marshall was up to?

A momentary blip, a necessary reminder that he was not perfect.

To be humble was the most difficult and yet important task, one he would struggle with his whole life.

Telach, too, had struggled. But she was over it, beyond whatever had troubled her.

“Very well,” Rubens told her as she finished. “You did well:”

“Thank you, boss.”

Her voice seemed uncharacteristically tender. Rubens turned away quickly and looked around the Art Room. “Where do we start?”

Nearly twelve hours later — after debriefing the teams, calling the President, calling Hadash, spending a long lunch with Brown — William Rubens leaned back in his office chair and closed his eyes. He’d come upstairs to see to his paperwork so he could take the next few days off, but even the most routine memorandum was beyond him. Dr. Lester called him to confirm that the epidemic had begun to abate, with no new cases reported in the past twenty-four hours. The first shipment of the medicine was just arriving from Thailand; many of those already infected would die, but the disease itself no longer presented the outsize threat they had mobilized against.

“Due to your people,” added Lester.

“Yes,” said Rubens. “Thank you.”

A moment after he hung up, the phone rang again. He looked at the receiver for a second, then reached over and picked it up.

“Rubens.”

“Marshall.”

“Yes?”

“You’re very good,” she said. “Far better than I gave you credit for.”

Another time, he might have strung her along for a while, but now he simply said he was tired.

“You had lunch with Lincoln?” she asked.

“Admiral Brown happened to have an appointment with him.”

“Which you arranged?”

Rubens didn’t answer. He had, in fact.

“And you urged him not to resign.”

“I told him he would be a fool.”

“Do you actually think you can influence him?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You told him you didn’t want the job?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. And apparently loudly enough to have several people nearby hear.”

“What was the purpose of that? Some sort of trick?”

“To remove temptation,” he said.

“You honestly don’t want to be Secretary of State?”

Of course he did. But he couldn’t.

“No,” said Rubens.

“I take it this means you’re holding to your position regarding biometric IDs.”

Actually, he had gone beyond that, drafting a detailed memo on the proposal and who stood to gain from it, along with financials on the two companies that included information about key stockholders. The memo — unsigned and mailed from Reston, Virginia — would find its way to the professional gossipmonger tomorrow. A payback, and an investment.

“I’ll remember this, Billy.”

Rubens winced. He hated to be called Billy.