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 be-
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fore 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?”
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“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
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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
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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.