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“Mark? Mark who?” the professor asked.
“Wait, wait, back up, Alex. Why did you call here?”
“We have two patients on my unit, and they’ve both got it, Gus.”
“In Baltimore?”
“Yes, now what–where else, Gus?”
“Mark Klein in Chicago has one, female, forty-one. I’ve already micrographed the blood sample.” In two widely separated cities, two world-class experts did exactly the same thing. One pair of eyes looked at a wall in a small office. The other pair looked down a conference table at ten other physicians and scientists. The expressions were exactly the same. “Has either one been to Chicago or Kansas City?”
“Negative,” the former colonel said. “When did Klein’s case show up?”
“Last night, ten or so. Yours?”
“Just before eight. Husband has all the symptoms. Wife doesn’t, but her blood’s positive . . . oh, shit, Gus …”
“I have to call Detrick next.”
“You do that. Keep an eye on the fax machine, Gus,” Professor Alexandre advised. “And hope it’s all a fucking mistake.” But it wasn’t, and both knew it now.
“Stay close to the phone. I may want your input.”
“You bet.” Alex thought about that as he hung up. He had a call to make, too.
“Dave, Alex.”
“Well?” the dean asked.
“Husband and wife both positive. Wife is not yet symptomatic. Husband is showing all the classic signs.”
“So what’s the story, Alex?” the dean asked guardedly.
“Dave, the story is I caught Gus at a staff meeting. They were discussing an Ebola case in Chicago. Mark Klein called it in around midnight, I gather. No commonalties between that one and our Index Case here. I, uh, think we have a potential epidemic on our hands. We need to alert our emergency people. There might be some very dangerous stuff coming in.”
“Epidemic? But–”
“That’s my call to make, Dave. CDC is talking to the Army. I know exactly what they’re going to say up at De-
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trick. Six months ago it would have been me making that call, too.” Alexandre’s other line started ringing. His secretary got it in the outer office. A moment later, her head appeared in the doorway.
“Doctor, that’s ER, they say they need you stat.” Alex relayed that message to the dean.
“I’ll meet you there, Alex,” Dave James told him.
“AT THE NEXT call on your machine, you will be free to complete your mission,” Mr. Alahad said. “The timing is yours to decide.” He didn’t have to add that it would be better for him if Raman erased all his messages. To do so would have appeared venal to one who was willing to sacrifice himself. “We will not meet again in this lifetime.”
“I must go to my workplace.” Raman hesitated. So the order had really come, after a fashion. The two men embraced, and the younger one took his leave.
“CATHY?” SHE LOOKED up to see Bernie Katz’s head sticking in her office door.
“Yeah, Bernie?”
“Dave has called a department head meeting in his office at two. I’m leaving for New York to do that conference at Columbia, and Hal’s operating this afternoon. Sit in for me?”
“Sure, I’m clear.”
“Thanks, Cath.” His head vanished again. SURGEON went back to her patient records.
ACTUALLY THE DEAN had told his secretary to call the meeting on his way out the door. David James was in the emergency room. Behind the mask he looked like any other physician.
This patient had nothing at all to do with the other two. Watching from ten feet away in a corner of the ER already set aside for the situation, they watched him vomit into a plastic container. There was ample evidence of blood.
It was the same young resident working this one, too.
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“No traveling to speak of. Says he was in New York for some stuff. Theater, auto show, regular tourist stuff. What about the first one?”
“Positive for Ebola virus,” Alex told her. That snapped her head around like an owl’s.
“Here?”
“Here. Don’t be too surprised, Doctor. You called me, remember?” He turned to Dean James and raised an eyebrow.
“All department heads in my office at two. I can’t go any faster, Alex. A third of them are operating or seeing patients right now.”
“Ross for this one?” the resident asked. She had a patient to deal with.
“Quick as you can.” Alexandre took the dean by the arm and walked him outside. There, dressed in greens, he lit a cigar, to the surprise of the security guards, who enforced a smoking ban out there.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“You know, there is something to be said for these things.” Alex took a few puffs. “I can tell you what they’re going to say up at Detrick, sure as hell.”
“Go on.”
“Two separate index cases, Dave, a thousand miles apart in distance, and eight hours apart in time. No connection of any kind. No commonalties at all. Think it through,” Pierre Alexandre said, taking another worried puff.
“Not enough data to support it,” James objected.
“I hope I’m wrong. They’re going to be scrambling down in Atlanta. Good people down there. The best. But they don’t look at this sort of the thing the way I do. I wore that green suit a long time. Well”–another puff–“we’re going to see what the best possible supportive care can do. We’re better than anyplace in Africa. So’s Chicago. So are all the other places that are going to phone in, I suppose.”
“Others?” As fine a physician as he was, James still wasn’t getting it.
“The first attempt at biological warfare was undertaken by Alexander the Great. He launched bodies of plague victims into a besieged city with catapults. I don’t
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know if it worked or not. He took the city anyway, slaughtered all the citizens, and moved on.”
He got it now, Alex could see. The dean was as pale as the new patient inside.
“JEFF?” RAMAN WAS in the local command post going over the coming schedule for POTUS. He had a mission to complete now, and it was time to start doing some planning. Andrea walked over to him. “We have a trip to Pittsburgh on Friday. You want to hop up there with the advance team? There are a couple local problems that have cropped up at the hotel.”
“Okay. When do I leave?” Agent Raman asked.
“Flight leaves in ninety minutes.” She handed him a ticket. “You get back tomorrow night.”
How much the better, Raman thought, if he might even survive. Were he to structure all the security at one of these events, that might actually be possible. The idea of martyrdom didn’t turn his head all that much, but if survival were possible, then he would opt for that.
“Fair enough,” the assassin replied. He didn’t have to worry about packing. The agents on the Detail always had a bag in the car.
IT TOOK THREE satellite passes before NRO was willing to make its estimate of the situation. All six of the UIR heavy divisions which had participated in the war game were now in a full-maintenance stand-down. Some might say that such a thing was normal. A unit went into a heavy-maintenance cycle after a major training exercise, but six divisions–three heavy corps–at once was a bit much. The data was immediately forwarded to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments. In the meantime, the Pentagon called the White House.
“Yes, Mr. Secretary,” Ryan said.
“The SNIE isn’t ready yet for the UIR, but we have received . . . well, some disturbing information. I’ll let Admiral Jackson present it.”
The President listened, and didn’t need much in the
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way of analysis, though he wished the Special National Intelligence Estimates were on his desk to give him a better feel for the UIR’s political intentions. “Recommendations?” he asked, when Robby was done.
“I think it’s a good time to get the boats at Diego moving. It never hurts to exercise them. We can move them to within two steaming days of the Gulf without anybody noticing. Next, I recommend that we issue warning orders to XVIII Airborne Corps. That’s the 82nd, 101st, and 24th Mechanized.”
“Will it make noise?” Jack asked.
“No, sir. It’s treated as a practice alert. We do those all the time. All it really does is to get staff officers thinking.”
“Make it so. Keep it quiet.”
“This would be a good time to do a joint training exercise with friendly nations in the region,” J-3 suggested.
“I’ll see about that. Anything else?”
“No, Mr. President,” Bretano replied. “We’ll keep you informed.”
BY NOON, THE fax count at CDC Atlanta was over thirty, from ten different states. These were forwarded to Fort Detrick, Maryland, home of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases– USAMRIID–the military counterpart to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. As chilling as the data was, it was just a little too chilling for snap judgment. A major staff meeting was called for just after lunch, while the commissioned officers and civilians tried to get their data organized. More senior officers from Walter Reed got in their staff cars for the ride up Interstate-70.