Patient Zero

Chapter Ninety-One

The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Saturday, July 4; 6:01 A.M.

GRACE AND I had a quiet breakfast in the mess hall before first light, then she headed off to muster her team while I made a call. I was hoping I’d wake Church up and get to hear him when he was off balance, but he answered on the first ring. Fricking robot.

Instead of “Hello” he asked, “Is there a problem?”

“No. I wanted to touch base about the Liberty Bell thing. You still cool with me taking Echo Team to Philly?”

“Of course,” he said, and it implied that I’d have heard different if he’d changed his mind. The communication flow with him was going to take some getting used to. I’m used to a lot more bureaucracy. “I advised the President of our concerns with safety during the holiday, and he approved all of my recommendations. The gears are already turning to get the pharmaceutical companies involved. The President will address a closed emergency session of Congress tomorrow. The full resources of the United States, England, and the other allies will be thrown against this now.”

Church briefly outlined the steps he was taking to bulk up security at the top twenty Fourth of July events scheduled across the country. It meant mobilizing tens of thousands of additional police and military, and though that had to be a red-tape nightmare Church seemed confident that it would all be handled. I guess having a rubber stamp from the Commander in Chief lit a lot of fires under the right asses. Points for Church.

“My question,” I said when he’d finished, “is what our actual status is going to be down there in Philly? I mean we can’t exactly flash DMS badges, can we?”

“We don’t have badges,” he said. “I also discussed this with the President and obtained authorization for Echo Team to roll as a special detachment of the Secret Service. How familiar are you with their protocols?”

“I can fake it.”

“Last night I called a friend in the garment industry and appropriate clothes should be arriving by six-thirty. IDs were already sent by courier and Sergeant Dietrich has them.”

“You don’t like wasting time, do you?”

“No,” he said, and hung up.

I smiled and shook my head. So this is what it felt like to be in the major league.

I found Dietrich and got the material Church had sent. IDs for everyone plus a detailed set of notes from Church that included the names and numbers of the people we planned to interview.

I found Grace in the computer trailer. I told her about my call to Church. “How is it that he has this much power over the President? I mean who is Church?”

Grace shook her head. “I’ve heard some bits and pieces of things over the last couple of years that add up to his having the goods on a lot of people in Washington.”

“The goods? As in blackmail?”

“I think he quite literally knows where all of the bodies are buried, as the saying goes. He has leverage on a lot of power players and he uses it to get what he wants.”

“Good thing he’s on our side.” I paused. “He is on our side, isn’t he?”

“God, I hope so.”

“How’d he get all this dirt?”

“I can make a guess,” she said, arching an eyebrow, and then she tilted her head in the direction of the complex array of computer terminals that filled the room.

“MindReader?”

She shrugged. “It makes sense. It’s brilliant at digging into everyone else’s business without leaving a trace that it was there. That’s one of its unique and most dangerous features. With MindReader he can sneak into the Pentagon, read whatever files he wants, and then exit without leaving the usual signature. I’ve seen him do it.”

“Holy smoke.” I stared at the computer as if it was Aladdin’s lamp. “You ever heard the expression, ‘If that were to fall into the wrong hands it’d be curtains for the free world’? Well, that pretty much applies here.”

“Too right it does. There are only a handful of people in the world who have access, and Church has to personally grant us access through his mainframe router to allow us to log on each day. It’s no joke, and even though MindReader doesn’t leave a trace in other computers, all searches and operations are logged on his hard drive.”

“So Big Brother really is watching,” I mused.

“All the time.”

“Does the man ever sleep?”

“God, I’ve never seen him so much as yawn. I think he’s a cyborg.”

“At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe there’s something in those vanilla wafers.”

She picked up a printout. “These are the names of the agency directors who have sent staff to the DMS. Nearly half of them will be in Philadelphia today for the Liberty Bell event, either as guests or on the job. Because the First Lady, the Vice President’s wife, the wives of fifty congressmen, and over a hundred members of Congress are all attending the event, it’s a security mishmash. Most of the chiefs will be there to make sure their individual Indians don’t let anyone of importance get scalped.”

“I know, I was originally assigned to the detail. How’s this helping us?”

“The President, at Mr. Church’s urging, has contacted each of these directors to put themselves at our disposal. We can set up meetings, and we can interview them personally.”

“During a major event?” I goggled.

“Well we’d have to pick our moments,” she conceded.

I was skeptical. “All well and good, but how can we interview them with all of the speeches and rallies going on?”

“The rededication only lasts two hours.”

“Good point,” I said. “Okay, let’s mount up and ride.”