The Rationing

56.

MY MEDIA DUTIES WERE FINISHED FOR THE TIME BEING. The NIH Director had summoned me back to the NIH offices, where the scientific effort to understand Capellaviridae had been massively bulked up once the crisis became public. Tie Guy was pursuing the notion that efforts to eradicate the North American dust mite had somehow created a new kind of toxicity. He had assembled a team of organic chemists to look at whether the dust mites that survived the pyrethrin-based insecticides might use Capellaviridae to metabolize the poison in a way that makes it harmful to humans. “What do the chemists think?” I asked him when I arrived at the NIH offices.

“They’re skeptical,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because there is no evidence to support the theory. The people who get sick don’t test positive for any form of pyrethrin. Also, there is no obvious explanation for how a virus can turn a compound that is nontoxic for humans into something deadly.”

“A dead end?” I said.

“I don’t think so,” Tie Guy insisted. “I went back and looked at the data again. This connection between trying to eradicate dust mites and the virulent form of Capellaviridae holds up. So does that other strange pattern we saw: when people get sick with Capellaviridae in areas where the North American dust mite is not endemic, those people have almost always moved from a region where it is endemic.”

“Moving away from an area where the virus is common is more likely to make you sick than staying there?” I said, trying to make sense of what he was saying. I was operating on relatively little sleep.

“Yeah, how weird is that?” Tie Guy said. “It’s all ass-backwards. The safest place to be is an area with no North American dust mites and no Capellaviridae. No surprise there. But the next-best place to be is an area where dust mites and Capellaviridae are common and there has been no widespread extermination effort.”

I tried to finish his thought: “And you are most at risk of Capellaviridae turning virulent if you are in an area where you try to wipe it out—”

“Where people are trying to wipe out the dust mite, the carrier, but yes.”

I continued, “And someone would be at risk if they live in an area with Capellaviridae and then move away.”

“Yes, but you’re only at risk if you move to an area without it. If you move to another area where the North American dust mite and Capellaviridae are endemic, you’ll be fine.”

“How is that possible?” I asked, completely flummoxed.

“You tell me. I’m just a data guy. Ask these people,” he said, motioning to the throng of activity all around us. There were easily twice as many people on the floor as there had been on my earlier visits. A frenetic pace had replaced the complacency that had been so disorienting before the Outbreak became public. Tie Guy continued, “There’s something to this, right?”

“It’s weird.”

“Nature fights back, that’s what it’s telling me,” he insisted.

“How so?” I asked. If I had had more sleep, maybe it would have been more obvious to me.

“Because the virus, or maybe the dust mite, or maybe both—they’re saying, ‘Don’t get rid of me. If you do, you’ll pay a price.’”

“That would be unprecedented,” I said.

“So was AIDS,” Tie Guy replied. “Evolution does some pretty crazy things.”

“You may be right,” I said. “I just don’t know how or why.”

Back in Hawaii, the President and his senior staff had finally found some moments of calm as they awaited the Chinese offer. Air Force One was refueled, but the President did not want to be caught airborne again if he needed to make a public statement in response to the Chinese move. The Chinese Ambassador’s “high noon” challenge regarding the flight path of the President’s plane, east or west, had also imbued the next takeoff with added significance. An enormous bank of cameras was parked on the runway. Before settling into his cabin for a short nap, the President phoned Cecelia Dodds in her Seattle hospital room. “I’m not taking the medicine!” she said when she picked up the phone. There was warmth in her voice but also firmness.

“That’s not a battle I’m going to win,” the President said honestly. “I want you to know that the Chinese are likely to offer onerous terms—”

“I understand completely,” Cecelia Dodds said emphatically. “Please don’t think for a minute that I’m trying to pressure you to take a bad deal. Please, no. It’s just that I’m seventy-one, and if there is not enough Dormigen, then someone else should have it.”

“Seventy-one is not that old,” the President said.

“No,” she agreed. “No, it’s not.”

“What if I were to ask you to accept the Dormigen as a personal favor to me?” the President asked sincerely.

“Mr. President, if you can promise me that we are not going to run out—that no American will die for lack of Dormigen—then of course I’ll take it. I’m not trying to make this situation harder for you. I have a lot to live for… two beautiful granddaughters, so much work left to be done.” The President did not answer. After some time, Cecelia Dodds continued, “Can you make me that promise?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” the President said. Several hours later Cecelia Dodds was moved to intensive care.

There was no calm at the NIH offices. The scientists were unhappy that the President had been so sanguine in his remarks about the number of deaths if the Dormigen stocks were depleted. Not only had he focused on the lower bound of what the NIH model was predicting in terms of fatalities, but the model itself had now been revised in the other direction. Evidence of the widespread Dormigen pilferage had filtered back to the data analysts; they were putting numbers against the quantity of Dormigen that had gone missing, which included the tricky task of trying to figure out where the stolen Dormigen would ultimately end up (wasted or helping people who needed it). The best-case scenario for incremental fatalities no longer included “zero.” It had climbed to forty-five thousand. Meanwhile, the added uncertainty had broadened the range of possible outcomes, so the worst-case scenario was now a hundred and ninety-five thousand deaths. The NIH staff had watched the Chinese Ambassador’s remarks; they were feeling the weight of the President’s dilemma.

I apologized to the NIH Director for being late. “Don’t worry about it. I think you’re going to be impressed,” she said, ushering me into a small conference room, where five binders of different colors were laid out neatly on the table. “This can be your workspace.” She pointed at the colored binders. “Those are summaries of the work done so far by each of the working groups: Capellaviridae; the North American dust mite; possible antidotes; alternative treatments to Dormigen. The organic chemists put together the red one, but they’ve just started.” The work product was impressive. Once again I found myself wondering if we had made an egregious error in keeping the Outbreak secret. If the great minds here had spent less time eating cupcakes in those early days, might we now be a week ahead? “I’ll let you peruse those,” the NIH Director said. “Each one has a summary, so you don’t have to wade into the details. We have a meeting of all the teams in the big conference room in about forty-five minutes. We’re trying to meet every six hours, around the clock.”

The Director left me to the colored binders. I sat down and picked up the one closest to me: green. The summary described the recommended protocol for treating Capellaviridae in the absence of Dormigen: fluids, rest, conventional antibiotics to deal with any secondary infection. I had little to add in this realm, so I set the binder aside. I picked up the blue binder next: Capellaviridae. The report documented everything the team had learned about the virus, which was an impressive amount in such a short time. The summary included three lines in bold text that caught my eye: Capellaviridae bears a striking resemblance to strains of the influenza virus. Some of our scientists, unaware of what they were looking at, assumed they were examining a historic strain of influenza. Not surprisingly, Capellaviridae acts on the body in nearly identical fashion to the more virulent strains of influenza. This explained what I had just read in the green binder, namely that without Dormigen Capellaviridae should be treated like a bad case of the flu. It also explained the likely fatality rate (broadly comparable to a serious flu). Creating a vaccine specific to Capellaviridae would be a straightforward task, but like Dormigen, a flu-type vaccine takes time to cultivate. Time was the one thing we did not have.

Okay, I thought, Capellaviridae is really just a nasty form of the flu that is somehow, and for some reason, passed to humans by the bite of a dust mite. I picked up the yellow binder: everything we now knew about Dermatophagoides mensfarinae, the North American dust mite. There was even a highly magnified photo of the nasty-looking critter on the cover page. Again, I perused the summary. The North American dust mite is different from other common dust mites primarily in that it bites humans. Other mites feed off human detritus, such as dead skin that has been sloughed off. The North American dust mite feeds off live skin and blood, making a tiny, painless bite that causes a modest allergic reaction in some people. The Dermatophagoides mensfarinae research group was operating on the assumption that there is some evolutionary advantage to being able to feed on live skin and blood. They estimated that this mutation in the species had taken place eight thousand to ten thousand years earlier, coinciding with the first modestly dense human settlements in North America.

That made sense. When humans started living in closer proximity to one another, this particular dust mite developed an ability to feed directly off skin and blood, rather than waiting around for discarded dead cells. I was about to pick up the black binder when the door to the conference room opened and a young woman about my age looked into the room. She was petite, with straight brown hair that hung to her shoulders. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. I looked up, waiting for some explanation. She said nothing but continued to linger in the doorway, as if deciding what to do next.

“Can I help you?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

“Someone told me you had Professor Huke,” she said. “I’m really sorry to bother you, with all that’s going on.”

“How do you know Professor Huke?” I asked. And then: “Please come in.”

She came into the conference room and stood on the other side of the table. I motioned to a seat, but she remained standing. “I took his class at Dartmouth,” she said. “Two of his classes, actually.”

“And what are you doing now?” I asked.

“I just finished a graduate program in public health. I’m doing a fellowship at the CDC. They sent me over here when the crisis broke—an all-hands-on-deck kind of thing.”

“I went to see him—Huke,” I said. “I went back to Hanover to ask him about this.”

“What did he say?”

“It was before everything was public, so he thought I was just working on some academic puzzle. He told me to pretend it was a question on a midterm exam.”

“Seems like it should at least be the final exam,” she said.

I laughed. “Yes, that’s true. He said the usual things: think like a virus, figure out the evolutionary advantage, that kind of stuff.”

“And?”

“And it doesn’t make any sense. We have a relatively benign virus that kills its host to no obvious advantage.”

“I really didn’t mean to bother you,” she said, turning to go. “It just seemed too crazy: two Huke grads in the middle of this virus crisis. I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.”

“If you really want to help,” I said, causing her to pause in the doorway, “work through this with me.” I pointed at the binders. “It’s not crazy to think of this like a Huke final exam. I feel like everything I need to know is right there. I just can’t make sense of it. My brain’s in a fog.”

“When was the last time you slept?” she asked, looking at me in a way that reminded me of the toll the morning had taken. My suit was still wrinkled from the rain. I had the remnants of television makeup on my neck and collar.

“A couple hours last night,” I offered.

“You know what the research says.”

“The research on what?”

“On how the brain works,” she said. “You can stare at that table all afternoon. You’d be better off taking a walk and not thinking about it for a while.”

“Now’s not really a great time for a walk,” I said with a hint of impatience.

She came right back at me. “Well, do you want people to think you’re working hard in this little room, or do you want to figure out the puzzle?”

Her name was Jenna. She had her Ph.D. from the Harvard School of Public Health and we did end up going for a walk. Jenna was thoughtful and smart. I have often wondered what would have happened if the loaner employee from the CDC who opened the door and said he had taken Huke’s course had been some overweight guy with a poorly trimmed beard and bad teeth. “That’s really cool,” I would have said, “but now is not a great time.” Instead, I was instantly attracted to Jenna and I wanted her to sit down in that conference room with me. I will spare you the rest of our origin story, but it does play a role in this larger narrative. What if Jenna were not so cute? I still ask her that sometimes: “What if you were a hairy guy who smelled bad? What if we had not gone on that walk?”

57.

THE CHINESE AMBASSADOR LEFT THE EMBASSY FOR THE White House shortly after two Eastern Time. The Washington police offered his black sedan an escort. The press corps, who had been camped outside the embassy, scrambled into vehicles to follow him, creating a train of vehicles that looked like a funeral procession. The President and senior advisers watched the live coverage from the conference room on Air Force One. As the Ambassador’s sedan made its way slowly through Washington traffic, the Strategist said, “He could have just e-mailed the fucking thing.”

The U.S. intelligence agencies had gathered a great deal of raw information on the Chinese deliberations around their proposal. There were sharp disagreements within the Chinese leadership over what the offer ought to be, making it difficult for U.S. analysts to discern which faction would prevail. As Yale historian Mason Freeman has explained in his excellent book on the subject, the Outbreak came at a time of political intrigue within the Chinese leadership. President Xing was being challenged from within by a group of hard-liners, including some of the top military leaders, who were urging him to take a more aggressive stance in Southeast Asia. (The use of the phrase “sphere of influence” in the Ambassador’s remarks, however inelegant it may have felt to the American audience, was meant for Beijing listeners.) The hard-liners considered the Outbreak a heaven-sent opportunity for China to cement its role as a superpower on par with the United States—a role that would be severely hampered by the South China Sea Agreement.

A separate faction within the Chinese leadership, the “pragmatists,” as U.S. intelligence analysts would come to call them, were worried that if the Dormigen terms were too onerous, the U.S. leadership would balk at the deal. (When the President had declared in his speech that morning that the nation might get through the Outbreak without any incremental deaths, it had seriously strengthened the hand of the pragmatists.) Many of the pragmatists had spent significant time in the United States, often as university students. They recognized the likely backlash that would result from any diplomatic offer that felt extortionate to the American public. Nobody likes to be charged $25 for a bottle of water, even in the desert. A cursory search of the psychology literature would have alerted the Beijing bureaucrats to the fact that humans have a profound aversion to deals they perceive to be grossly unfair, and Americans can be a sanctimonious bunch—even relative to other humans on the planet.

Chinese intelligence operatives were reporting back to Beijing that the American President’s senior foreign policy advisers were pressuring him to stick with the South China Sea Agreement. Much of this information was deliberately leaked to the Chinese. The American intelligence agencies did not know about the power struggle going on around President Xing. However, they did assume, correctly it would turn out, that making the U.S. President appear willing to accept large numbers of American casualties would strengthen his bargaining position with the Chinese government.

In the end, the hard-liners in Beijing won out, mostly for reasons to do with Chinese domestic politics. President Xing was acutely aware of the backlash that the whiff of Chinese opportunism might create among the American public. (Because of his fondness for American westerns, he considered himself somewhat of an expert on the American psyche.) He had also spent more than five years in the U.S. getting his doctorate in engineering at MIT. His understanding of American public opinion was far more sophisticated than that of the generals urging him to take maximum advantage of the Dormigen shortage. But Xing did not feel he had a sufficiently strong grasp on power to face down the military establishment, who were united on this issue. Although President Xing has never spoken publicly about his decision regarding the contents of the “Friendship Agreement,” some advisers have since intimated that he knew it was likely to be rejected. To solidify his grasp on power, President Xing gave the military hard-liners what they wanted, even as he knew they were making a major strategic blunder.

The Chinese Ambassador’s black sedan pulled into the West Gate of the White House. On the U.S. end, there had been a scramble to determine who would receive the document. The Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser were in Hawaii with the President. The Vice President was ultimately designated to meet the Ambassador as he arrived. There was a brief handshake, after which the Chinese Ambassador handed over a black binder. The Vice President turned abruptly and walked back into the White House, leaving the Chinese Ambassador standing somewhat awkwardly near his car. There was no deliberate snub intended. Rather, the Vice President was under strict instructions to have the document scanned and distributed as quickly as possible. As the Strategist had sardonically observed, it would have been much easier if the Chinese had e-mailed an electronic version.

On Air Force One, the President and his senior advisers waited anxiously as the Chinese proposal was printed and copied. Only a few minutes after the awkward handoff at the White House, a State Department aide hustled into the conference room with multiple copies, still warm. She passed them around the table; the principals began to read. The Strategist was the first to speak, to no one in particular: “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The Secretary of State said, “This is good. This is good for us.”

“It does make the decision easier,” the President replied. After just a few pages, it was clear that the Chinese “Friendship Agreement” sought to neuter the entire American presence in East Asia. There were several fluffy paragraphs about providing Dormigen in America’s time of need, but then the document changed tone entirely, listing demand after demand. The United States would have to withdraw immediately from the South China Sea Agreement and “disavow any such aggressive collective agreements in the region for a period of twenty years.”

“We knew they were going to make us scrap South China Sea,” the Chief of Staff said.

“Keep reading,” the President said. The agreement demanded that the United States withdraw all troops from South Korea and Japan within eighteen months. The U.S. would have to pledge “not to meddle in domestic Chinese decisions affecting economic development.”

“I don’t even know what that means. What does that mean?” the Communications Director asked.

The President answered, “That means no environmental restrictions, no leaning on them for trading in endangered species. It’s a catch-all for anytime we try to make them behave like responsible members of the global community.”

“Should I start drafting a statement?” the Communications Director asked.

“Let me finish reading,” the President said.

The Strategist blurted out, “Oh, my God, this is gold. Check out page thirteen, last paragraph.”

The Communications Director flipped several pages ahead and began to read: “ ‘The United States will double the number of diplomatic license plates granted to the Chinese mission at the United Nations…’” He paused, incredulous. “They’re asking for more parking permits?”

In fact, yes. As Mason Freeman’s research has subsequently uncovered, the Chinese leadership in Beijing settled their disagreements over the contents of the document by including everything—not just parking issues at the UN, but also student visas, banking regulations, and even two paragraphs on the price American zoos would have to pay to breed Chinese pandas. Every diplomatic grievance the Chinese government had broached in the previous decade found its way into the “Friendship Agreement.”

“Is this serious?” the Chief of Staff asked.

The President replied, “They think they’re holding all the cards. They’ve gone all in.”

“But parking permits?” the Strategist said.

The Secretary of State offered the best analysis of the situation in that moment. She explained, “They perceive democracy to be a weakness. They can’t imagine that we’ll say no. They feel democracy forces leaders to make shortsighted decisions, that we have no choice but to do whatever it takes to get the Dormigen. When you have maximum leverage, why not ask for the moon? Worst case, we negotiate and they get most of what they want.”

“They don’t think we’ll let anyone die,” the President said.

“And?” the Strategist asked, inviting the President to verbalize what everyone in the room knew was going to be his decision.

“We can’t sign this,” the President said emphatically.

“I’ll draft a statement,” the Communications Director said.

“We should reflect on this,” the Chief of Staff said. “Let’s take a few minutes just to consider our options.”

“There’s nothing to think about,” the President said.

“Still,” the Chief of Staff implored. “Maybe we should go around the table?”

“I agree,” the Secretary of State said. “I’ll go first. Mr. President, I appreciate what we are asking you to do here. I don’t take that lightly. I think we need to reframe our thinking. As awful as it is that we may come up short on Dormigen—and that lives may be lost as a result—I would ask you to think about this situation differently. If China made this declaration unilaterally, if they took actions to expel us from East Asia, we would not let those actions stand. We would respond militarily, if necessary.”

“Probably not to the parking thing,” the Strategist said. The Secretary of State stared at him malevolently, furious at the interruption (and relatively unaccustomed to his attempts at irreverent humor). Others in the room suppressed smiles.

The Secretary of State continued, “If the military came to you and said, ‘We think we can repel this aggression successfully, but here are the projections for casualties,’ you would find the numbers we are looking at to be an acceptable cost for defending our vital interests.”

“I understand the logic,” the President said noncommittally. He looked to the National Security Adviser.

“I agree with the Secretary,” the National Security Adviser said. “If they asked only that we walk away from the South China Sea Agreement, or postpone it, then maybe it would be a harder decision, though if I’m being honest, even that would be a dangerous capitulation. But withdrawing all troops from East Asia? From a national security standpoint, I think there is only one defensible course of action here.”

“What’s the most appropriate historical comparison?” the President asked. “Because this is not Pearl Harbor. There is no obvious aggression here that I’m asking Americans to repel.”

“Probably Kennedy and West Berlin,” the National Security Adviser offered. “The East Germans started building the Wall. If Kennedy didn’t save West Berlin with the airlift, it would have been a major capitulation to the Soviets.”

“There wouldn’t have been major casualties, even if it went wrong,” the President said. “He wasn’t asking Americans to accept thousands and thousands of lost lives.”

“That’s right,” the National Security Adviser said. “The Cuban Missile Crisis might be more apt. Kennedy had to decide if the U.S. could tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba. In facing down the Soviets, he was risking war. Maybe nuclear war.”

The President nodded in agreement. “What’s the best case for accepting the agreement?” he asked the room.

“For taking the Chinese Dormigen?” the Chief of Staff asked, trying to clarify what he was asking.

The Strategist, always keen to take any side of any issue, said, “A lot of Americans may die. You have access to the medicine that will save them. That’s your first responsibility, to protect the country.”

“Isn’t that what Cecelia Dodds is telling us?” the President asked. “It’s hard to watch people die when they could be saved. There’s something particularly terrible about that.”

“Yes,” the Chief of Staff agreed softly. “But she did tell you to stand firm with the Chinese.”

“While simultaneously reminding us of the price we’ll pay,” the President replied. “Maybe thousands and thousands of times over. All preventable.”

The National Security Adviser said, “Well, if I’m playing devil’s advocate, I would argue that America could tolerate a lower profile in East Asia. We could cede that sphere of influence to China without meaningfully impacting our quality of life. The are a lot of costs associated with being the world’s only democratic superpower.”

The President nodded to acknowledge the thought without betraying any obvious reaction. “Britain gave up its empire,” he said.

The Secretary of State interjected, “But not to the Soviet Union. Or to China. There’s a difference between acceding to independence movements and acceding to the demands of a nondemocratic power whose interests are very different from our own.”

“There are costs to leaving the world without a democratic superpower,” the President said.

“That’s right,” the Secretary of State agreed.

The Chief of Staff asked, “Who’s to say we can’t take the Dormigen and then ignore the agreement? Once we have the Dormigen, we don’t have to withdraw our troops from South Korea and Japan. Yes, they have the leverage now, but once we have the Dormigen that leverage goes away. Besides, an agreement made under duress, which this clearly is, is not legally binding.”

“You didn’t read page nineteen,” the Strategist said.

The Chief of Staff flipped through the document in front of her. After a moment she said, “Clearly I was not the only person who had that thought.” The Agreement stipulated that the U.S. would post a bond of some sort—nearly $500 billion in Treasury securities, along with the “deed” to assorted U.S. possessions in the Pacific, including Guam.

The Strategist said, “If we go back on our word, they get Guam. It’s not exactly Pearl Harbor, but close.”

The President, ignoring the comment, said, “Technically this is not duress. The Chinese government is offering us something that we are free to refuse. We can always walk away from the agreement.”

“This is just their opening offer,” the National Security Adviser offered.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” the President replied. “In any event, it doesn’t change our response if we think this is a bad deal. The more forcefully we repudiate what’s on the table, the more leverage we have to negotiate something better.”

“Is there any part of this, other than the UN parking, that we would be likely to agree to?” the Secretary of State asked the room.

The Communications Director interjected, “We probably don’t have too long before the document gets leaked to the press. Shall I draft a statement? Even if we haven’t come to agreement here, I can say something about how we are weighing—”

“No,” the President said sharply.

“No statement, or no to the idea of being noncommittal?” the Communications Director asked.

“No statement. I’d like to speak with the Majority Leader,” the President instructed. “As soon as he’s on the line, I want the room.” The advisers began filing out of the conference room so that the President could speak with the Majority Leader in private. “We should just release the agreement,” the President added.

“Leak it?” the Communications Director asked.

“Just release it to the press.”

“And what kind of statement should we make?”

“None.”

“I don’t understand,” the Communications Director said.

“Just make the agreement public,” the President said firmly. “Release it to the press. The American people should know what the Chinese government is asking in exchange for the Dormigen.”

“With respect, sir, we should try to put our own spin on this.”

“What is there to spin? It speaks for itself.”

The Communications Director looked around the room, hoping to find some nonverbal support for his case. Like all the President’s senior advisers, he was expected to walk a fine line between offering candid advice and carrying out the President’s orders. “This is our only chance to frame the story,” he said.

“Take the document to the back of the plane and hand it to a reporter,” the President said.

The Communications Director picked up a spare copy of the agreement from the conference table but did not move toward the door, prompting the Strategist to interject, “The reporters are the cranky, poorly dressed people in the last cabin.”

The Chief of Staff, seeking to ameliorate the tension, said, “Give it to the AP correspondent. She’ll share it with the press pool.”

The Communications Director continued to plead his case: “Maybe we do a photo op of some sort, with the President reading the document—”

“Just release it,” the President said angrily. “Don’t make me walk it back there myself.”

One can second-guess a lot of the decisions made during the Outbreak, from the President on down, but this moment suggests to me that there is such a thing as political talent—just like athletic talent, or entrepreneurial instinct, or acting ability. I do not know if people are born with political talent, or if they acquire it through hard work and experience, or perhaps both. I do know that the President was elected student body president when he was in high school. He was elected editor of the Law Review at the University of Virginia. If one counts every election and reelection he participated in—from high school to the White House—there were sixteen times when he got more votes than the next man or woman (and two times when he did not, which might teach the more valuable lessons). As much as we despise politicians, the President had something that his Chinese counterparts did not: a feel for voters.

58.

IT TOOK A FEW MINUTES TO CONNECT THE PRESIDENT WITH the Senate Majority Leader, who had been given a copy of the “Friendship Agreement” immediately after the Chinese Ambassador delivered it. “How are you doing, Mr. President?” the Majority Leader asked.

“I’ve had more enjoyable trips to Hawaii,” the President said. “What do you think of the Chinese offer?”

“I’m in shock,” the Majority Leader said. “Do they really expect us to accept this?”

“It’s an opening bid,” the President replied.

“Yes, but they’ve completely ceded the moral high ground. Did you see that thing about the UN parking? They come across as completely opportunistic, predatory even.”

“That was my reaction,” the President said.

“Are you going to make a counteroffer?” the Majority Leader asked.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think there is a deal to be had. Never mind troops in Korea and Japan, at a minimum they are going to ask us to walk away from the South China Sea Agreement.”

“Yes,” the President agreed.

“That leaves us in a tough spot.”

“The NIH has raised their fatality projections because of all the Dormigen that’s gone missing,” the President reminded him.

“If you turn away the Chinese offer, you’ll have my complete support,” the Majority Leader assured him. “I want you to know that. I’m confident I can get the Senate behind whatever you decide.”

“I don’t care about the Senate, to be honest,” the President replied. “Could you sell it to a Rotary Club?” The President had enormous respect for the Majority Leader’s emotional connection to Main Street. The President’s senior advisers could speak compellingly of the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Majority Leader could connect with Americans who had never heard of the Berlin Airlift and had only a vague sense of how the Cuban Missile Crisis played out. That was why the President called him first.

There was a pause as the Majority Leader considered the question. “This situation with Cecelia Dodds, that makes it harder. They moved her to intensive care, you know.”

“Yes,” the President acknowledged.

“It reminds people of the reality. If we have to go to some kind of rationing… shit. A lot of people are imagining someone they love in that ICU, not able to get the pill that would send them home healthy.” There was a brief silence during which the President did not respond. The Majority Leader continued, “On the other hand, I think the Chinese have made it easier for us. This offer they’ve made says a lot about their designs in the region. If you were to give in to them, it would feel like appeasement.”

“Yes, but when people start dying in hospitals because there’s no Dormigen, is anyone going to care about troops in South Korea?” the President asked.

“I don’t think that’s the right way of looking at this,” the Majority Leader said. “You can’t make it about South Korea or carbon emissions or overfishing or any of that other wonky stuff. I can’t sell any of that at a Rotary meeting. I can’t justify Americans dying because we’re trying to play policeman around the world.”

“Okay,” the President said, inviting him to continue.

“But nobody likes a bully. Nobody likes to be taken advantage of. Most Americans know enough history to appreciate that there are good guys and there are bad guys and that you can’t let the bad guys get away with doing bad things. You’ve got to stand up to them.”

“I need to make this about standing up to China,” the President said.

“I think that’s right,” the Majority Leader affirmed. “When the United States needed medical help, the Chinese leadership made a grab for power. It’s like someone who knows you’re at the hospital visiting your sick wife, so they break into your house.”

“But they haven’t violated any laws,” the President pointed out. “They’re not actually doing anything wrong, other than driving a hard bargain. Isn’t that what diplomacy is about? I don’t think the analogy works.”

“Then find a different one,” the Majority Leader said quickly. “How about this: You need heart medicine to keep you alive. One week you come up a little short and you can’t afford it. Your rich neighbor comes over to your house and says, ‘Sure, I’ll spot you the money for your medicine. Just let me fuck your wife.’ How about that?”

“I’m not sure that would work with a Rotary Club.”

“If you fix the language, it would work real well. People get that.”

“Did you watch the Chinese Ambassador’s remarks?” the President asked.

“Yes. He made the whole situation seem like some kind of showdown—that whole flying east or west thing.”

“That language came from Beijing.”

“I assumed as much.”

The President said, “I spoke to the Australian Prime Minister. She’s worried we’ll ditch our commitments to the region.”

“Of course she is.”

There was a long silence. As the Majority Leader would later describe it, he waited patiently for the President to steer the conversation. Eventually the President said, “Let me bounce an idea off you.”

59.

JENNA PERSUADED ME TO TAKE A WALK, TO GET OUT OF THE NIH building and clear my head. I had been awake since before dawn; I had not had enough sleep in the week before that. “Let’s see a movie,” she offered.

“I can’t do that,” I said quickly. “It feels totally wrong.”

“You’re not going to figure this out by grinding away,” she implored. “That’s not how inspiration works. What you should do is go home and sleep for twelve hours.”

It was late afternoon and the spring day was turning cool. We did not plan where we would walk, but we headed toward the Capitol Mall, which felt like a logical place to go. The cherry blossoms were past their peak—they came early that year—but the view was still beautiful. Even in my most cynical moments, I appreciated the majesty of the Capitol, the White House, and the monuments in between. I had never taken the time to explore the city properly as a tourist, but I did pause on occasion to reflect on whatever monument or historical site I happened to wander past. Even on my busiest, most self-absorbed days, I could not rush by the Vietnam Memorial without giving some thought to the names on the wall, and, by extension, to the decisions that got them there. I was always affected by the mementos left at the base of the wall: a single boot, or a can of Pabst beer, or a Chicago Cubs hat—mundane objects that clearly had enormous significance for those who had taken the time to leave them behind.

One day some months earlier I had accidentally shown up for a meeting at a Starbucks near the Mall an hour early. There was no sense in heading back to my office, so I took advantage of the found time to walk through the Roosevelt Memorial, wondering how the man was able to confront the unique challenges of the Great Depression and World War II. How might the U.S. have fared with lesser leadership? With someone who lacked FDR’s remarkable ability to reach and persuade the American people? Sometimes I wondered if the tourists—guidebooks in hand, checking off site after site—were really processing what they were seeing. Never mind the dates or the height of the sculpture or the other details that can get in the way of really thinking about FDR. The whole system had been under assault. Some really smart people had given up on capitalism, attracted by the false allure of communism. Another group of smart people were ready to ditch the untidiness of democracy for the efficiency they were seeing in Italy and Germany. How did FDR get out of bed in the morning? And by that, I do not mean anything to do with his paralysis, because to focus too much on the fact that he was in a wheelchair is to miss the essence of what really made him so extraordinary.

Jenna and I sat on a bench in the shade with a nice view of the Washington Monument. I was struck by the sense of normalcy that was returning to the city, barely twelve hours after the first news of the Outbreak had gone public. It was as if the public, unable to see any obvious manifestation of a crisis, began to assume that things must not be so bad. Shortly after we sat down, a Chinese tour group walked loudly by, following a guide carrying a large orange umbrella. Even in the moment, I appreciated the irony. I looked at my phone, where the first details of the Chinese offer were being reported. Jenna said, “Twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes what?” I asked.

“You’ve got twenty minutes to think and talk about Capellaviridae. After that, give your mind a break.”

“The White House just released the details of the Chinese Dormigen offer,” I said.

“And?”

“It’s even more unreasonable than we expected,” I said, reading the first stories as they appeared. News organizations were rushing to get out their own versions of the story, but the “Friendship Agreement” was long enough that it required time to read and digest thoroughly. As a result, minutes after the Communications Director walked copies of the document to the back of Air Force One, media outlets began releasing details in bursts. The Associated Press was first, just three minutes after getting the report, posting: “Chinese Government Issues Demands for Dormigen.” Bloomberg followed shortly thereafter with more specifics: “Beijing: Ditch South China Sea Agreement, Withdraw from ‘Chinese Sphere of Influence.’” The New York Times and other publications posted the whole agreement to their sites. The public immediately fixated on the incongruity of Beijing demanding a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region and more parking permits at the UN. The pettiness of the latter somehow threw the sacrifice of the former into sharper relief.

Jenna was reading from my screen. “I assume the President’s not going to accept that,” she said.

“He’s going to make a statement in forty-five minutes.”

“Okay, then you get an hour to think about Capellaviridae.”

“How about if I think about it for the rest of the day, if I promise to get ten hours of sleep?” I pleaded.

“That’s probably better.”

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” I began. “The places where people are getting sick from Capellaviridae are the places where there have been intensive efforts to get rid of the North American dust mite.”

“Right.”

“And Capellaviridae is also prone to turn virulent when people move away from a region where dust mites are endemic to one where they are not.”

“Yes.”

“That’s odd, right?” I asked. Jenna nodded and I continued. “If you strip away everything else we think we know, that’s the bit that feels strangest. The dust mite is the vector, but for some reason once you are carrying Capellaviridae, you are better off if there are still dust mites around.”

“It could be just some kind of statistical aberration,” Jenna offered.

“Maybe,” I said skeptically, my voice trailing off as ideas bounced around. “Okay, there are three crazy things about lurking viruses that we can’t explain.”

“And they are?”

“First, the virus infects humans for no particular reason. Humans don’t spread it, so there is no obvious advantage to the virus from infecting humans.”

“Okay.”

“Second, the virus is benign most of the time, then suddenly virulent, for no obvious reason.”

“Right. And third?”

“The virus is somehow more likely to be benign when the vector—the dust mite—is still present.”

“None of it makes any sense,” Jenna said.

“Maybe they make sense together,” I suggested. “That’s the Huke final exam question: How do these things make sense together?”

Jenna laughed. “Except we never got the required reading.”

“Then we’ll just have to figure it out,” I said.

We began tossing around ideas and theories. Eventually the time drew near for the President’s statement.

“Shall I stream it?” I asked.

60.

THE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR HAD ISSUED SPECIFIC instructions to the traveling press corps: a handful of print reporters were to stay on board Air Force One; the cameras were to be on the tarmac, presumably because the President would be making his statement from the stairs of the plane, or on the tarmac. The print reporters balked at being told to stay on the plane. The Home Depot Media correspondent demanded to get off. “You can do whatever you want,” the Communications Director told him. “But if you get off the plane, you’re not getting back on. Anything the President says will be piped back here in the cabin, so you’ll hear it in real time. Trust me on this one.” By and large the press corps did trust him, something he had earned over time. The Communications Director could parry and obfuscate with the best of them, but he was never overtly dishonest. He had been a political reporter and an international correspondent for nearly twenty years, mostly television, before the President had tapped him to cross to the “dark side.” Reporters were always skeptical of paid flacks, but at least the Communications Director was a former member of their guild.

The television cameras were lined up on the tarmac, awaiting the President’s appearance. The front door to Air Force One remained closed. There was no staircase in place. “Why isn’t the front door open?” a CNN cameraman asked a low-level staffer who’d been left behind on the tarmac with the cranky reporters.

“There will be a statement in ten minutes,” the staffer answered. Shortly after that, the staircase at the rear of the plane was wheeled away and the door was closed.

“You better not screw us on this,” the CNN cameraman growled. The other members of the press were growing similarly concerned.

“Just make sure you’re recording,” the staffer said loud enough for all the camera crews arrayed on the tarmac to hear. “I promise you will get what you want.” There was a whir as the engines on Air Force One came to life and the plane began to move forward. On board, the Captain instructed the passengers to fasten their seat belts. The press corps began texting and calling one another frantically, trying to assess what was happening. What about the President’s statement? A Reuters reporter on the tarmac threw his headphones to the ground in fury, screaming about the perfidy of the Communications Director, the President, the pilot, and everyone else associated with this dirty trick.

“I promise you that if you stand here and pay attention, you’re going to get the story,” the staffer said calmly. He was convincing enough that most of the reporters turned their attention back to Air Force One, which was taxiing steadily away from them.

“I’ve got plenty of stock footage of Air Force One taking off,” the CNN cameraman said angrily. “Now how the hell am I supposed to get back to Washington?” The staffer ignored the chorus of complaints. When Air Force One reached the end of the runway, the plane turned slowly, preparing to take off past the reporters into a gentle breeze. The camera crews focused on the plane, trying to make the best of what little they were being offered. The 747 accelerated steadily, the front wheels leaving the ground right as the plane passed the press corps arrayed on the tarmac. Seconds later, Air Force One was aloft.

“Whooptie-fucking-doo,” a Home Depot Media camerawoman yelled.

“Don’t stop filming,” the staffer said. Once again, something about his tone was convincing. The camera operators focused on the plane as it ascended away from the airport. Roughly ten seconds later, Air Force One banked sharply and began a slow 180-degree turn back toward the airport. The plane, still flying relatively low, passed over the assembled press corps, who stared at the hulking jet in confusion. As the plane flew overhead, ostentatiously low, an AP reporter suddenly grasped what was happening. “Which way is west?” she yelled to no one in particular. “Which way is west!”

The camera operators looked to the staffer, who pointed toward Air Force One as it flew away from them. “That way is west.”

“Holy fuck!” the CNN cameraman yelled. “He’s flying west! He’s flying west!” As the cameras focused on Air Force One, the plane climbed steeply, the roar of the engines drowning out the yells of the reporters capturing the moment.

On board Air Force One, the Captain made his now-famous announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, please make yourselves comfortable. We will be touching down in Canberra, Australia, in approximately ten hours.” The effect was electric as reporters scrambled to report what was happening. In Washington, where I was watching all of this on my phone from a bench on the Capitol Mall, it was opening day for the Washington Nationals, who were playing the Atlanta Braves. There were two outs in the bottom of the third inning (the Nationals at bat), when the game was halted temporarily. The home plate umpire signaled a pause; the Braves pitcher stepped off the mound, perplexed.

The stadium’s PA system boomed to life with the familiar voice of the Nationals’ home announcer: “Ladies and gentlemen, please excuse this interruption.” There was a scattering of boos as fans protested the break in the action. “We have just been informed that three minutes ago the President of the United States took off from Honolulu…” The announcer paused slightly for dramatic effect, after which he articulated each word slowly and forcefully. “Air Force One is currently westbound, headed for Canberra, Australia.” There was a short silence as the crowd processed what they had been told, and then a sustained, visceral cheer. In a gesture that has now become synonymous with the moment, the Braves pitcher turned slowly toward center field and pointed at the American flag.

In Seattle, where hundreds of people had gathered outside the hospital where Cecelia Dodds now lay in intensive care, a murmur went through the crowd. Most had not gathered in protest, but rather to honor her life and acknowledge her sacrifice. Still, when the news of Air Force One’s westward departure spread quickly through the crowd, there were cries of shock. “He just pulled the plug on her!” someone yelled. That was not an accurate description of what had happened—but it was not wholly inaccurate, either. Time was running out: for Cecelia Dodds and for thousands of others.

We have no information on the reaction in Beijing, but one can easily infer that President Xing had seen enough westerns to know what had just happened to him.