Executive Orders

52 SOMETHING OF VALUE

"EVER BEEN HERE BEFORE John?" Chavez asked as their aircraft descended to meet its shadow on the runway.

"Passed through once. Didn't see much more than the terminal." Clark slipped off his belt and stretched. Sunset was descending here, too, and with it not the end of a very long day for the two intelligence officers. "Most of what I know comes from books by a guy named Ruark, hunting and stuff."

"You don't hunt—not animals, anyway," Ding added.

"Used to. I still like reading about it. Nice to hunt things that don't shoot back." John turned with part of a smile.

"Not as exciting. Safer, maybe," the junior agent allowed. How dangerous could a lion really be? he wondered.

The rollout took them to the military terminal. Kenya had a small air force, though what it did was a mystery to the visiting CIA/Air Force "officers," and seemed likely to remain so. The aircraft was met, again, by an embassy official, this one the Defense attache, a black Army officer with the rank of colonel, and a Combat Infantryman's Badge that marked him as a veteran of the Persian Gulf War.

"Colonel Clark, Major Chavez." Then his voice stopped. "Chavez, do I know you?"

"Ninja!" Ding grinned. "You were brigade staff then, First of the Seventh."

"Cold Steel! You're one of the guys who got lost. I guess they found you. Relax, gentlemen, I know where you're from, but our hosts do not," the officer warned.

"Where's the CIB from, Colonel?" the former staff sergeant asked on the walk over to where the cars were. "I had a battalion of the Big Red One in Iraq. We kicked a few and took a few." Then his mood changed. "So how are things at home?"

"Scary," Ding replied. "Something to remember, bio-war is mainly a psychological weapon, like the threat of gas was against us back in 91."

"Maybe so," Clark responded. "It sure as hell's got my attention, Colonel."

"Got mine, too," the Defense attache admitted. "I got family in Atlanta. CNN says there's cases there."

"Read fast." John handed over the last data sent to them on the airplane.

"This ought to be better than what's on TV." Not that better was the right word, he thought. The colonel rated a driver, it seemed. He took the front seat in the embassy car and flipped through the pages.

"No official greeting this time?" Chavez asked.

"Not here. We'll have a cop where we're going. I asked my friends in the ministry to low-profile this one. I have some pretty good contacts around town."

"Good call," Clark said as the car started moving. Getting there only took ten minutes. The animal dealer had his place of business on the outskirts of the city, conveniently located to the airport and the main highway west into the bush, but not too close to much else. The CIA officers soon discovered why.

"Christ," Chavez observed, getting out of the car.

"Yeah, they're noisy, aren't they? I was here earlier today. He's getting a shipment of greens ready for Atlanta." He opened a briefcase and handed something over. "Here, you'll need this."

"Right." Clark slid the envelope into his clipboard.

"Hello!" the dealer said, coming out of his office. He was a big man and, judging by his gut, knew his way around a case of beer. With him was a uniformed police officer, evidently a senior one. The attache went to speak with him, and move him aside. The cop didn't seem to object. This infantry colonel, Clark saw, knew how the game was played.

"Howdy," John said, taking his hand. "I'm Colonel Clark. This is Major Chavez."

"You are American Air Force?"

"That's right, sir," Ding replied.

"I love airplanes. What do you fly?"

"All sorts of things," Clark answered. The local businessman was already half in the bag. "We have a few questions, if you don't mind."

"About monkeys? Why are you interested in monkeys? The chief constable didn't explain."

"Is it all that important?" John asked, handing over an envelope. The dealer pocketed it without opening it to count. He'd felt how thick it was.

"Truly it is not, but I do love to watch airplanes. So what can I tell you?" he asked next, his voice friendly and open.

"You sell monkeys," John said.

"Yes, I deal in them. For zoos, for private collectors, and for medical laboratories. Come, I will show you." He led them toward a three-sided building made of corrugated iron, it looked like. Two trucks were there, and five workers were loading cages onto it, their hands in thick leather gloves.

"We just had an order from your CDC in Atlanta," the dealer explained, "for a hundred greens. They are pretty animals, but very unpleasant. The local farmers hate them."

"Why?" Ding asked, looking at the cages. They were made of steel wire, with handles at the top. From a distance they appeared to be of the size used to transport chickens to market… viewed closer, they were a little large for that, but…

"They ravage crops. They are a pest, like rats, but more clever, and people from America think they are gods or something, the way they complain on how they are used in medical experiments." The dealer laughed. "As though we would run out of them. There are millions. We raid a place, take thirty, and a month later we can come back and take thirty more. The farmers beg us to come and trap them."

"You had a shipment ready for Atlanta earlier this year, but you sold them to someone else, didn't you?" Clark asked. He looked over to his partner, who didn't approach the building. Rather, he separated from Clark and the dealer, and walked on a line away from it. He seemed to be staring at the empty cages. Maybe the smell bothered him. It was pretty thick.

"They did not pay me on time, and another customer came along, and he had his money all ready," the dealer pointed out. "This is a business, Colonel Clark."

John grinned. "Hey, I'm not here from the Better Business Bureau. I just want to know who you sold them to."

"A buyer," the dealer said. "What else do I need to know?"

"Where was he from?" Clark persisted.

"I do not know. He paid me in dollars, but he was probably not an American. He was a quiet fellow," the dealer remembered, "not very friendly. Yes, I know I was late getting the new shipment to Atlanta, but they were late in paying me," he reminded his guest. "You, fortunately, were not."

"They went out by air?"

"Yes, it was an old 707. It was full. They were not just my monkeys. They had gotten them elsewhere, too. You see, the green is so common. It lives all over Africa. Your animal worshippers need not worry about extinction for the green. The gorilla, now, I admit that is something else." Besides, they mainly lived in Uganda and Rwanda, and more was the pity. People paid real money for them.

"Do you have records? The name of the buyer, the manifest, the registration of the airplane?"

"Customs records, you mean." He shook his head. "Sadly, I do not. Perhaps they were lost."

"You have an arrangement with the airport officials," John said with a smile that he didn't feel.

"I have many friends in the government, yes." Another smile, the sly sort that confirmed his arrangement. Well, it wasn't as though there was no such thing as official corruption in America, was it? Clark thought.

"And you don't know where they went, then?"

"No, there I cannot help you. If I could, I would gladly do so," the dealer replied, patting his pocket. Where the envelope was. "I regret to say that my records are incomplete for some of my transactions."

Clark wondered if he could press the man further on this issue. He suspected not. He'd never worked Kenya, though he had worked Angola, briefly, in the 1970s, and Africa was a very informal continent, and cash was the lubricant. He looked over to where the Defense attache was talking to the chief constable—the title was a holdover from British rule, which he'd read about in one of Ruark's books, and so were the shorts and kneesocks. He was probably confirming that, no, the dealer wasn't a criminal, just creative in his relationships with local authorities who, for a modest fee, looked the other way when asked. And monkeys were hardly a vital national commodity, assuming the dealer was truthful about the numbers of the things. And he probably was. It sounded true. The farmers would probably be just as happy to be rid of the damned things just to make the noise stop. It sounded like a riot in the biggest bar in town on a Friday night. And they were nasty little bastards, reaching and snapping at the gloved hands transferring the cages. What the hell, they were having a bad day. And on getting to CDC Atlanta, it wouldn't get much better, would it? Were they smart enough to know? Damned sure Clark knew. You didn't ship this many to pet stores. But he didn't have enough solicitude to waste on monkeys at the moment.

"Thank you for your help. Perhaps someone will be back to speak with you."

"I regret that I could not tell you more." He was sincere enough about it. For five thousand dollars in cash, he thought he should do more. Not that he'd return any, of course.

The two men walked back toward the car. Chavez joined up, looking pensive, but not saying anything. As they approached, the cop and the attache shook hands. Then it was time for the Americans to leave. As the car pulled off, John looked back to see the dealer take the envelope from his pocket and extract a few bills to hand over to the friendly chief constable. That made sense, too.

"What did you learn?" the real colonel asked.

"No records," John replied.

"It's the way they do business here. There's an export fee for those things, but the cops and the customs people usually have an—"

"Arrangement," John interrupted with a frown.

"That's the word. Hey, my father came from Mississippi. They used to say down there that one term as county sheriff fixed a guy up for life, y'know?"

"Cages," Ding said suddenly.

"Huh?" Clark asked.

"Didn't you see, John, the cages! We seen 'em before, just like those—in Tehran, in the air force hangar." He'd kept his distance in order to duplicate what he'd seen at Mehrabad. The relative size and proportions were the same. "Chicken coops or cages or whatever in a hangar with fighter planes, remember?"

"Shit!"

"One more indicator, Mr. C. Them coincidences are piling up, 'mano. Where we goin' next?"

"Khartoum."

"I saw the movie."

NEWS COVERAGE CONTINUED, but little else. Every network affiliate became more important as the «name» correspondents were trapped in their base offices of New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and the news devoted a great deal of time to visuals of National Guardsmen on the major interstate highways, blocking the roads physically with Hummers or medium trucks. No one really tried to run the blockades there. Food and medical supply trucks were allowed through, after each was inspected, and in a day or two, the drivers would be tested for Ebola antibodies, and given picture passes to make their way more efficiently. The truckers were playing ball.

It was different for other vehicles and other roads. Though most interstate highway traffic went on the major highways, there was not a state in the Union that didn't have an extensive network of side roads that interconnected with those of neighboring states, and all of these had to be blocked, too. That took time to accomplish, and there were interviews of people who'd gotten across and thought it something of a joke, followed by learned commentary that this proved that the President's order was impossible to implement completely, in addition to being wrong, stupid, and unconstitutional.

"It just isn't possible," one transportation expert said on the morning news.

But that hadn't accounted for the fact that National Guardsmen lived in the country they guarded, and could read maps. They were also offended by the implied statement that they were fools. By noon on Wednesday there was a vehicle on every country road, crewed by men with rifles and wearing the chemical-protective suits that made them look like men (and women, though that was almost impossible to tell) from Mars.

On the side roads, if not the main ones, there were clashes. Some were mere words—my family is right over there, give a guy a break, okay? Sometimes the rule was enforced with a little common sense, after an identification check and a radio call. In other cases, the enforcement was literal, and here and there words were exchanged, some of them heated, and some of those escalated, and in two cases shots were fired, and in one of them a man was killed. Reported rapidly up the line, it was national news in two hours, and again commentators wondered at the wisdom of the President's order. One of them laid the death on the front steps of the White House.

For the most part, even those most determined to make their way to their cross-border destinations saw the uniformed men with guns and decided that it wasn't worth the risk.

The same applied to international borders. The Canadian military and police closed all border-crossing points. American citizens in Canada were asked to report to the nearest hospital for testing, and there they were detained, in a civilized way. Something similar happened in Europe, though there the treatment differed from one country to another. For the first time, it was the Mexican army which closed America's southern border, in cooperation with U.S. authorities, this time against traffic mainly moving south.

Some local traffic was moving. Supermarkets and convenience stores allowed people in, mainly in small numbers, to purchase necessities. Pharmacies sold out of surgical masks. Many called local hardware and paint dealers to get protective masks made for other uses, and TV coverage helped there by telling people that such masks, sprayed with common household disinfectants, offered better protection against a virus than the Army's chemical gear. But inevitably, some people overdid the spraying, and that resulted in allergic reactions, respiratory difficulties, and a few deaths.

Physicians all across the country were frantically busy. It was rapidly known that the initial presentation of Ebola was similar to flu symptoms, and any doctor could relate that people could think themselves into those. Telling the truly sick from the hypochondriac was rapidly becoming the most demanding of medical skills.

Despite it all, however, people dealt with it, watched their televisions, looked at one another, and wondered how much substance there was to the scare.

THAT WAS THE job of CDC and USAMRIID, aided by the FBI. There were now five hundred confirmed cases, each of which had been tied directly or indirectly to eighteen trade shows. That gave them" time references. It also identified four other trade shows from which no illnesses had as yet developed. All twenty-two had been visited by agents, all of whom learned that in every case the rubbish from the shows had long since been hauled off. There was some thought that the trash might be picked through, but USAMRIID waved the Bureau off, and said that identifying the distribution system would mean comparing the contents of thousands of tons of material, a task that simply was not possible, and might even be dangerous. The important discovery was the time window. That information was made public at once. Americans who had traveled out of the country prior to the start dates of the trade shows that were known to have been focal centers were not dangerous. That fact was made known to national health services worldwide, most of which tacked on from two days to a full week. From them, the information became global knowledge within a few hours. There was no stopping it, and there was no purpose in keeping the secret, even if it were possible to do so.

"WELL, THAT MEANS we're all safe," General Diggs told his staff at the morning conference. Fort Irwin was one of the most isolated encampments in America. There was only one way in and out, and that road was now blocked by a Bradley.

That wasn't true of other military bases; the problem was global. A senior Army officer from the Pentagon had flown to Germany to hold a conference with V Corps headquarters, and two days later collapsed, in the process infecting a doctor and two nurses. The news had shaken NATO allies, who instantly quarantined American encampments that dated back to the 1940s. The news was also instantly on global TV. What was worse in the Pentagon was that nearly every base had a case, real or suspected. The effect on unit morale was horrific, and that information, also, was impossible to conceal. Transatlantic phone lines burned with worry headed in both directions.

THINGS WERE FRANTIC in Washington, too. The joint task force included members of all the intelligence services, plus FBI and the federal law-enforcement establishment. The President had given them a lot of power to use, and they intended to use it. The manifest of the lost Gulfstream business jet had started things moving in a new and unexpected direction, but that was the way of investigations.

In Savannah, Georgia, an FBI agent knocked on the door of the president of Gulfstream and handed him a surgical mask. The factory was shut down, as were most American businesses, but that executive order would be bent today. The president called his chief safety officer and told him to head in, along with the firm's senior test pilot. Six FBI agents sat down with them for a lengthy chat. That soon evolved into a conference call. The most important immediate result was the discovery that the lost aircraft's flight recorder hadn't been recovered. That resulted in a call to the CO of USS Radford, who confirmed that his ship, now in drydock, had tracked the lost aircraft and then had searched for the sonar pings of the black box, but to no avail. The naval officer could not explain that. Gulf-stream's chief test pilot explained that if the aircraft hit hard enough, the instrument could break despite its robust design. But it hadn't been going all that fast, the Radford? skipper remembered, and no debris had been found, either. As a result of that, the FA A and NTSB were called in and told to produce records instantly.

In Washington—the working group was in the FBI Building- looks were exchanged over the masks everyone was wearing. The FAA part of the team had run down the identity of the flight crew and their qualifications. It turned out that they were both former Iranian air force pilots, trained in America in the late 1970s. From that came photos and fingerprints. Another pair of pilots, flying the same sort of aircraft for the same Swiss corporation, had similar training, and the FBI's legal attache in Bern made an immediate call to his Swiss colleagues to request assistance in interviewing them.

"Okay," Dan Murray summarized. "We got a sick Belgian nun and a friend with an Iranian doctor. They fly off in a Swiss-registered airplane that disappears without a trace. The airplane belongs to a little trading company— the leg-alt will run that down for us pretty fast, but we know the flight crew was Iranian."

"It does seem to be heading in a certain direction, Dan," Ed Foley said. Just then an agent came in with a fax for the CIA Director. "Check this out." He slid it across the table. It wasn't a long message.

"People think they're so fuckin' smart," Murray told the people around the table. He passed the new dispatch around.

"Don't underestimate 'em," Ed Foley warned. "We don't have anything hard yet. The President can't take any action at all on anything until we do." And maybe not even then, his mind went on, as gutted as the military is right now. There was also the thing Chavez had said before flying off. Damn, but that kid was getting smart. Foley wondered whether to bring that up. There were more pressing matters for now, he decided. He could discuss it with Murray privately.

CHAVEZ DIDN'T FEEL smart as he dozed in his leather seat. It was another three-hour hop to Khartoum, and he was having dreams, fitful ones. He'd done his share of flying as a CIA officer, but even on a plush executive jet with all the bells and whistles, you got tired of it in a hurry. The diminished air pressure meant diminished oxygen, and that made you tired. The air was dry, and that dehydrated you. The noise of the engines made it like sleeping out in the boonies with insects swarming around all the time, always ready to suck your blood, and you could never make the little bastards go away.

Whoever was doing whatever was happening wasn't all that smart. Okay, an airplane had disappeared with five people aboard, but that wasn't necessarily a dead end, was it? HX-NJA, he remembered from the customs document. Hmph. They'd probably kept records because they were shipping out people, rather than monkeys. HX for Switzerland. Why HX? he wondered. «H» for Helvetia, maybe? Wasn't that an old name for Switzerland? Didn't some languages still call it that? He seemed to remember that some did. German, maybe. NJA to identify the individual aircraft. They used letters instead of numbers because it made for more permutations. Even this one had such a code, with an «N» prefix because American aircraft used that letter code. NJA, he thought with his eyes closed. NJA. Ninja. That generated a smile. The sobriquet for his old outfit, 1st Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment. "We own the night!" Yeah, those were the days, humping the hills at Fort Ord and Hunter-Liggett. But the 7th Infantry Division (Light) had been deestablished, its standards furled and cased for retirement, or maybe later use… Ninja. That seemed important. Why?

His eyes opened. Chavez stood, stretched, and went forward. There he woke the pilot with whom Clark had had that little tiff. "Colonel?"

"What is it?" Only one eye opened.

"What's one of these things cost?"

"More 'n either one of us can afford." The eye closed back down.

"Seriously."

"Upwards of twenty million dollars, depending on the version and the avionics package. If somebody makes a better business jet, I don't know what it is."

"Thanks." Chavez returned to his seat. There was no sense in trying to fade back out. He felt the nose lower and heard the engines reduce their annoying sound. They were starting their descent into Khartoum. The local CIA station chief would be meeting—excuse me, he thought to himself. Commercial attache. Or was it political officer? Whatever. He knew that this city wouldn't be as friendly as the last two.

THE HELICOPTER LANDED at Fort McHenry, close to the statue of Orpheus that someone had decided was appropriate to honor the name of Francis Scott Key, Ryan noted irrelevantly. About as irrelevant as Arnie's idea for a fucking photo opportunity. He had to show he was concerned. Jack wondered about that. Did people think that at times like this the President threw a party? Hadn't Poe written a story like that? "The Mask of the Red Death"? Something like that. But that plague had gotten into the party, hadn't it? The President rubbed his face. Sleep. Have to sleep. Thinking crazy shit. It was like flashbulbs. Your mind got tired and random thoughts blinked into your mind for no apparent reason, and then you had to fight them back, and get your mind going on the important stuff.

The usual Chevy Suburbans were there, but not the presidential limo. Ryan would ride in the obviously armored vehicle. There were cops around, too, looking grim. Well, everybody else did, too. Why not them?

He, too, was wearing a mask, and there were three TV cameras to record the fact. Maybe it was going out live. He didn't know, and scarcely looked at the cameras on the short walk to the cars. They started moving almost at once, up Fort Avenue, then north onto Key Highway. It was ten fast minutes over vacated city streets, heading toward Johns Hopkins, where the President and First Lady would show how concerned they were for other cameras. A leadership function, Arnie had told him, picking a phrase he was sure to recognize as something he had to respect whether he liked it or not. And the hell of it was, Arnie was right. He was the President, and he couldn't isolate himself from the people—whether he could do anything substantive to help them or not, they had to see him being concerned. It was something that did and didn't make sense, all at the same time.

The motorcade pulled into the Wolfe Street entrance. There were soldiers there, Guardsmen of the 175th Infantry Regiment, the Maryland Line. The local commander had decided that all hospitals had to be guarded, and Ryan supposed that was one of the things that did make sense. The Detail was nervous to have men around with loaded rifles, but they were soldiers, and that was that— disarming them might have made the news, after all. They all saluted, masked as they were in their MOPP gear, rifles slung over their shoulders. Nobody had threatened the hospital. Perhaps they were the reason why, or maybe it was just that people were scared. Enough that one cop had remarked to a Service agent that street crime had dropped to almost nil. Even the drug dealers were nowhere to be seen.

There were not very many people to be seen anywhere at this hour, but all of them were masked, and even the lobby was heavy with the chemical smell that was now the national scent. How much of that was a necessary physical measure, and how much psychological? Jack wondered. But, then, that's what his trip was.

"Hi, Dave," the President said to the dean. He was wearing greens instead of his suit, masked like everyone else, and gloved, too. They didn't shake hands.

"Mr. President, thank you for coming." There were cameras in the lobby—they'd followed him in from outside. Before any of the reporters could shout a request for a statement, Jack pointed, and the dean led the party off. Ryan supposed it would look businesslike. Secret Service agents hustled to get ahead as they walked from the elevator bank to the medical floor. The doors slid open to reveal a busy corridor. Here there was bustle and people.

"What's the score, Dave?"

"We have thirty-four patients admitted here. Total for the area is one hundred forty—well, was the last time I checked. We have all the space we need for now, and all the staff, too. We've released about half of our patients, the ones we could sign out safely. All elective procedures are canceled for now, but there is the usual activity. I mean, babies are being born. People get sick from the normal diseases. Some outpatient treatments have to be continued, epidemic or not."

"Where's Cathy?" Ryan asked, as the next elevator arrived with a single camera whose tape would be pooled with all the networks. The hospital didn't want or need to be crowded with extraneous people, and while media management people had made a little noise, their field personnel weren't all that eager, either. Maybe it was the antiseptic smell. Maybe it affected people the same way it affected dogs taken to the vet. It was the smell of danger for everyone.

"This way. Let's get you suited up." The floor had a doctors' lounge, and one for nurses. Both were being used. The one at the far end was "hot," used for disrobing and decontamination. The near one was supposed to be safe, used for suiting up. There wasn't time or space for all the niceties. The Secret Service agents went in first and saw a woman in bra and panties, picking a plastic suit that was her size. She didn't blush. It was her fourth shift on the unit, and she was beyond that.

"Hang your clothes over there." She pointed. "Oh!" she added, recognizing the President.

"Thank you," Ryan said, taking his shoes off and taking a clothes hanger from Andrea. Price examined the woman briefly. Clearly she wasn't carrying a weapon. "How is it?" Jack asked.

She was the charge nurse for the floor. She didn't turn to answer. "Pretty bad." She paused for a second and then decided she had to turn. "We appreciate the fact that your wife is up here with us."

"I tried to talk her out of it," he admitted to her. He didn't feel the least bit guilty about it, either, and wondered if he should or not.

"So'd my husband." She came over. "Here, the helmet goes on like this." Ryan experienced a brief moment of panic. It was a most unnatural act to put a plastic bag over one's head. The nurse read his face. "Me, too. You get used to it."

Across the room, Dean James was already in his. He also came over to check the President's protective gear.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yeah." Jack was sweating now, despite the portable air-conditioning pack that hooked on his belt.

The dean turned to the Secret Service personnel. "From here on, I'm the boss," he told them. "I won't let him get into any danger, but we don't have enough suits for you people. If you stay in the corridors, you'll be safe. Don't touch anything. Not the walls, not the floors, nothing. Somebody goes past you with a cart, get out of the way. If you can't get out of the way, walk to the end of the corridor. If you see any kind of plastic container, stay clear of it. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." For once, Andrea Price was cowed, POTUS saw. As was he. The psychological impact of this was horrific. Dr. James tapped the President on the shoulder.

"Follow me. I know it's scary, but you are safe in this thing. We all had to get used to it, too, didn't we. Tisha?"

The nurse turned, now fully in hers. "Yes, Doctor."

You could hear your breathing. There was the whir of the A/C pack, but everything else was muted. Ryan felt a frightening sense of confinement as he walked behind the dean.

"Cathy's in here." He opened the door. Ryan entered.

It was a child, a boy, aged eight or so, Jack saw. Two blue-clad figures were ministering to him. From behind he couldn't tell which one was his wife. Dr. James held his hand up, forbidding Ryan from taking another step. One of the two was trying to restart an IV, and there couldn't be any distractions. The child was moaning, writhing on the bed. Ryan couldn't see much of him, but he saw enough for his stomach to turn.

"Hold still now. This will make you feel better." It was Cathy's voice; evidently she was doing the stick. The other two hands were holding the arm in place."… there. Tape," she added, lifting her hands.

"Good stick, Doctor."

"Thank you." Cathy went to the electronic box that controlled the morphine and pushed in the right numbers, checking to be sure that the machine started functioning properly. With that done, she turned. "Oh."

"Hi, honey."

"Jack, you don't belong here," SURGEON told him firmly.

"Who does?"

"OKAY, I HAVE a line on this Dr. MacGregor," the station chief told them, driving his red Chevy.

His name was Frank Clayton, a graduate of Grambling, whom Clark had seen through the Farm some years earlier. "Then let's go see him, Frank." Clark checked his watch, did the calculations, and decided that it was two hours after midnight. He grunted. Yeah, that was about right. First stop was the embassy, where they changed clothes. American military uniforms weren't all that welcome here. In fact, the station chief warned, few things American were. Chavez noted that a car followed them in from the airport.

"Don't sweat it. We'll lose him at the embassy. You know, sometimes I wonder if it wasn't a good deal when my folks got kidnapped out of Africa. Don't tell anybody I said that, okay? South Alabama is like heaven on earth compared to this shithole."

He parked the car in the embassy's back lot and took them inside. A minute later one of his people walked out, started the Chevy, and headed right back out. The tail car went with him. "Shirts," the CIA resident officer said, handing them over. "I suppose you can leave the pants on."

"Have you talked to MacGregor?" Clark asked.

"On the phone a few hours ago. We're going to drive over to where he lives, and he's going to get into the car. I have a nice quiet parking spot picked out for our chat," Clayton told them.

"Any danger to him?"

"I doubt it. The locals are pretty sloppy. If we have anybody tailing us, I know what to do about it."

"Then let's move, buddy," John said.

"We're burning moonlight." MacGregor's quarters weren't all that bad, located in a district favored by Europeans, and, the station chief related, fairly secure. He lifted his cellular phone and dialed the doctor's beeper number—there was a local paging service. Less than a minute later his door opened, and a figure walked to the car, got in the back, and closed the door a second before it moved off.

"This is rather unusual for me." He was younger than Chavez, John was surprised to note, and eager in rather a shy way. "Who exactly are you chaps?"

"CIA," Clark told him.

"Indeed!"

"Indeed, Doctor," Clayton said from the front seat. His eyes checked the mirrors. They were clear. Just to make sure, he took the next left, then a right, and then another left. Good.

"Are you allowed to tell people that?" MacGregor asked as the car pulled back onto what passed locally as the main drag. "Do you have to kill me now?"

"Doc, save that for the movies, okay?" Chavez suggested. "Real life ain't like that, and if we told you we were from the State Department, you wouldn't believe us anyway, right?"

"You don't look like diplomats," MacGregor decided. Clark turned in the front seat.

"Sir, thank you for agreeing to meet with us."

"The only reason I did so—well, the local government forced me to disregard normal procedures for my two cases. There's a reason for those procedures, you know."

"Okay, first of all, could you please tell me all you can about them?" John asked, switching on the tape recorder.

"YOU LOOK TIRED, Cathy." Not that it was all that easy to tell through the plastic mask. Even her body language was disguised.

SURGEON looked over to the wall clock behind the nursing station. She was technically off duty now. She would never learn that Arnie van Damm had called the hospital to make sure the timing went right for this. It would have enraged her, and she was mad enough at the whole world already.

"The kids started arriving this afternoon. Second-generation cases. That one in there must have got it from his father. His name is Timothy. He's in the third grade. His dad's on the next floor up."

"Rest of the family?"

"His mom tested positive. They're admitting her now. He has a big sister. She's clean so far. We have her sitting over in the outpatient building. They set up a holding area there for people who've been exposed but don't test out. Come on. I'll show you around the floor." A minute later they were in Room 1, temporary home of the Index Case.

Ryan thought he must be imagining the smell. There was a dark stain on the bedclothes which two people— nurses, doctors, he couldn't tell—were struggling to change. The man was semiconscious, and fighting the restraints that held his arms to the bed bars. That had the two medics concerned, but they had to change the sheets first. Those went into a plastic bag.

"They'll get burned," Cathy said, pressing her helmet against her husband's. "We've really dialed up the safety precautions."

"How bad?"

She pointed back to the door and followed Jack into the corridor. Once there, with the door closed behind them, she poked an angry finger into his chest.

"Jack, you never, ever discuss a patient's prognosis in front of them, unless you know it's good. Never!" She paused, and went on without an apology for the outburst: "He's three days into frank symptoms."

"Any chance?" Her head shook inside the helmet. They walked back up the corridor, stopping in some more rooms where the story was dismally the same.

"Cathy?" It was the dean's voice. "You're off duty. Move," he commanded.

"Where's Alexandre?" Jack asked on the way to the former physicians' lounge.

"He's got the floor upstairs. Dave has taken this one himself. We hoped Ralph Forster would get back and help out, but there aren't any flights." Then she saw the cameras. "What the hell are they doing here?"

"Come on." Ryan led his wife into the changing room. The clothing he'd worn to the hospital was bagged somewhere. He put on scrubs, in front of three women and a man who didn't seem all that interested in ogling any of the females. Leaving the room, he headed for the elevator.

"Stop!" a female voice called. "There's a case coming up from ER! Use the stairs." And obediently, the Secret Service Detail did just that. Ryan led his wife down to the main floor, and from there out front, still wearing masks.

"How are you holding up?"

Before she could answer, a voice screamed, "Mr. President!" Two Guardsmen got in the way of the reporter and cameraman, but Ryan waved them off. The pair approached under armed scrutiny, uniformed and plain-clothes.

"Yes, what is it?" Ryan asked, pulling his mask down. The reporter held the microphone at full arm's length. It would have been comical under other circumstances. Everybody was spooked.

"What are you doing here, sir?"

"Well, I guess it's part of my job to see what's going on, and also I wanted to see how Cathy is doing."

"We know the First Lady is working upstairs. Are you trying to make a statement to the nation—"

"I'm a doctor!" Cathy snapped. "We're all taking turns up there. It's my job."

"Is it bad?"

Ryan spoke before she could explode at them. "Look, I know you have to ask that question, but you know the answer. These people are extremely ill, and the docs here, and everyplace else, are doing their best. It's hard on Cathy and her colleagues. It's really hard on the patients and their families."

"Dr. Ryan, is Ebola really as deadly as everyone has been saying?"

She nodded. "It's pretty awful, yes. But we're giving these people the best we got."

"Some have suggested that since the hope for the patients is so bleak, and since their pain is so extreme—"

"What are you saying? Kill them?"

"Well, if they're really suffering as much as everyone reports—"

"I'm not that kind of doctor," she replied, her face flushed. "We're going to save some of these people. From those we save, maybe we can learn to save more, and you don't learn anything by giving up. That's why real doctors don't kill patients! What is the matter with you? Those are people in there, and my job is fighting for their lives—and don't you dare tell me how to do it!" She stopped when her husband's arm squeezed her shoulder. "Sorry. It's a little tough in there."

"Could you excuse us for a few minutes?" Ryan asked. "We haven't talked since yesterday. You know, we are husband and wife, just like real people."

"Yes, sir." They pulled back, but the camera stayed on them.

"Come here, babe." Jack embraced her for the first time in more than a day.

"We're going to lose them all, Jack. Every one, starting tomorrow or the next day," she whispered. Then she started crying.

"Yeah." He lowered his head on hers. "You know, you're allowed to be human, too, Doctor."

"How do they think we learned anything? Oh, we can't fix it, so let 'em all die with dignity. Give up. That's not what they taught me here."

"I know."

She sniffed and wiped her eyes on his shirt. "Okay, back under control now. I'm off duty for eight hours."

"Where are you sleeping?"

A deep breath. A shudder. "Maumenee. They have some cots set up. Bernie's up in New York, helping out at Columbia. They have a couple hundred cases there."

"You're pretty tough, Doctor." He smiled down at his wife.

"Jack, if you find out who did this to us…"

"Working on it," POTUS said.

"KNOW ANY OF these people?" The station chief handed over some photos he'd shot himself. He handed over a flashlight, too.

"That's Saleh! Who was he, exactly? He didn't say and I never found out."

"These are all Iraqis. When the government came down, they flew here. I have a bunch of photos. You're sure of this one?"

"Quite sure, I treated him for over a week. The poor chap died." MacGregor went through some more. "And that looks like Sohaila. She survived, thank God. Lovely child—and that's her father."

"What the hell?" Chavez asked. "Nobody told us that."

"We were at the Farm then, weren't we?"

"Back to being a training officer, John?" Frank Clayton grinned. "Well, I got the word, and so I went out to shoot the pictures. They came in first class, by God, a big ol' G. Here, see?"

Clark looked at it and grunted—it was almost a twin to the one they were using for their round-the-world jaunt. "Nice shots."

"Thank you, sir."

"Let me see that." Chavez took the photo. He held the light right up against it. "Ninja," he whispered. "Fucking ninja…"

"What?"

"John, read those letters off the tail," Ding said quietly.

"HX-NJA… my God."

"Clayton," Chavez said, "is that cellular phone secure?"

The station chief turned it on and punched in three digits. "It is now. Where do you want to call?"

"Langley."

"MR. PRESIDENT, CAN we talk to you now?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, sure, come on." He needed to walk some, and waved for them to follow. "Maybe I should apologize for Cathy. She's not like that. She's a good doc," SWORDSMAN said tiredly. "They're all pretty stressed out up there. The first thing they teach 'em here, I think it goes pnmum non nocere, 'First of all, do no harm. It's a pretty good rule. Anyway, my wife's had a couple of hard days in there. But so have all of us."

"It is possible that this was a deliberate act, sir?"

"We're not sure, and I can't talk about that until I have good information one way or the other."

"You've had a busy time, Mr. President." The reporter was local, not part of the Washington scene. He didn't know how to talk to a President, or so others might think. Regardless, this one was going out live on NEC, though even the reporter didn't know that.

"Yeah, I guess I have."

"Sir, can you give us any hope?"

Ryan turned at that. "For the people who're sick, well, the hope comes from the docs and the nurses. They're fine people. You can see that here. They're fighters, warriors. I'm very proud of my wife and what she does. I'm proud of her now. I asked her not to do this. I suppose that's selfish of me, but I said it anyway. Some people tried to kill her once before, you know. I don't mind danger to me, but my wife and kids, no, it's not supposed to happen to them. Not supposed to happen to any of these people. But it did, and now we have to do our best to treat the sick ones and make sure people don't get sick unnecessarily. I know my executive order has upset a lot of people, but I can't live with not doing something that might save lives. I wish there were an easier way, but if there is. nobody's told me about it yet. You see, it's not enough to say, 'No, I don't like that. Anybody can do that. We need more right now. Look, I'm pretty tired," he said, looking away from the camera. "Can we call it a day for now?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President."

"Sure." Ryan turned away, walking south, just wandering really, toward the big parking garages. He saw a man smoking a cigarette there, a black man about forty, in defiance of the signs that prohibited the vice within sight of this shrine of medical learning. POTUS walked up to him, heedless of the three agents and two soldiers behind him.

"Got a spare?"

"Sure." The man didn't even look up as he sat on the edge of the brick planter, looking down at the concrete. His left hand held out the pack and a butane lighter at arm's length. By unspoken consent they didn't sit close together.

"Thanks." Ryan sat down about four feet away from the man, reaching to hand the items back.

"You, too, man?"

"What do you mean?"

"My wife's in there, got the sickness. She work with a family, nanny, like. They're all sick. Now she is, too."

"My wife's a doc, she's up there with 'em."

"Ain't gonna matter, man. Ain't gonna matter at all."

"I know." Ryan took a long pull and let it out.

"Won't even let me in, say it too dangerous. Takin' my blood, say I gotta stay close, won't let me smoke, won't let me see her. Sweet Jesus, man, how come?"

"If it was you who was sick, and you knew that you might give it to your wife, what would you do?" He nodded with angry resignation.

"I know. The doctor said that. He's right. I know. But that don't make it right." He paused. "Helps to talk."

"Yeah, I guess it does."

"The fuckers did this, like they say on TV, somebody did this. Fuckers gotta pay, man."

Ryan didn't know what to say then. Somebody else did. It was Andrea Price: "Mr. President? I have the DCI for you."

That turned the man's head. He looked at Ryan in the yellow-orange lighting. "You're him."

"Yes, sir," Jack answered quietly.

"You say your wife is workin' up there?"

A nod. A sigh. "Yeah, she's been working here for fifteen years. I came in to see her, and see how it is, how it's going. I'm sorry…"

"What'd'ya mean?"

"They won't let you in, but they let me in."

He grimaced. "Guess you gotta see, eh? Tough what happened with your little girl last week. She okay?"

"Yeah, she's fine. At that age, well, you know how it is."

"Good. Hey, thanks for talking with me."

"Thanks for the smoke," the President said, standing and walking to Agent Price. He took the phone. "Ed, it's Jack."

"Mr. President, we need you back. We have something you need to see," Ed Foley told him. He wondered how he would explain that the evidence was hanging on the wall of a conference room in CIA Headquarters.

"Give me an hour, Ed."

"Yes, sir. We're getting it organized now."

Jack hit the END switch on the phone and handed it back. "Let's move."