“True.” SecTreas nodded. “It’s called Rainbow. Because of the multinational nature.”
“Well, whoever they are, they scored some points last night. You know, I really ought to get briefed in on stuff like this. I can help, you know,” she pointed out.
“So, tell the Boss you want in.”
“I’m kinda on his shit list now, remember?”
“Yeah, so dial back on your environmental stuff, will you? Hell, we all like green grass and tweety birds. But we can’t have Tweety Bird telling us how to run the country, can we?”
“George, these really are important scientific issues I have to deal with,” Carol Brightling pointed out.
“You say so, doc. But if you dial the rhetoric back some, maybe people will listen a little better. Just a helpful hint,” the Secretary of the Treasury suggested, as he opened his car door for the two-block ride back to his department.
“Thanks, George, I’ll think about it,” she promised. He waved at her as his driver pulled off.
“Rainbow,” Brightling said to herself as she walked across West Executive Drive. Was it worth taking it a step further? The funny part about dealing with classification issues was that if you were inside, then you were inside …. Reaching her office, she inserted the plastic key into her STU-4 secure telephone and dialed up CIA on the Director’s private line.
“Yeah?” a male voice answered.
“Ed, this is Carol Brightling.”
“Hi. How’d the cabinet meeting go?”
“Smooth, like always. I have a question for you.”
“What’s that, Carol?” the DCI asked.
“It’s about Rainbow. That was some operation they ran in Spain last night.”
“Are you in on that?” Ed asked.
“How else would I know the name, Ed? I know one of your people set it up. Can’t remember the name, the guy the President likes so much.”
“Yeah, John Clark. He was my training officer once, long time ago. Solid citizen. He’s been there and done that even more than Mary Pat and I have. Anyway, what’s your interest?”
“The new tactical-radio encryption systems NSA is playing with. Do they have it yet?”
“I don’t know,” the DCI admitted. “Are they ready for prime time yet?”
“Should be in another month. E-Systems will be the manufacturer, and I thought they ought to be fast-tracked into Rainbow. I mean, they’re out there at the sharp end. They ought to get it first.”
On the other end of the line, the Director of Central Intelligence reminded himself that he should pay more attention to the work done at the National Security Agency. He’d allowed himself to forget, moreover, that Brightling had the “black card” clearance that admitted her into that Holy of Holies at Fort Meade.
“Not a bad idea. Who do I talk to about that’?”
“Admiral McConnell, I suppose. It’s his agency. Anyway, just a friendly suggestion. If this Rainbow team is so hot, they ought to have the best toys.”
“Okay, I’ll look into it. Thanks, Carol.”
“Anytime, Ed, and maybe get me fully briefed into the program someday, eh?”
“Yeah, I can do that. I can send a guy down to get you the information you need.”
“Okay, whenever it’s convenient. See you.”
“Bye, Carol.” The secure line was broken. Carol smiled at the phone. Ed would never question her about the issue, would he? She’d known the name, said nice things about the team, and offered to help, just like a loyal bureaucrat should. And she even had the name of the team leader now. John Clark. Ed’s own training officer, once upon a time. It was so easy to get the information you needed if you spoke the right language. Well, that’s why she’d gone after this job, frustrations and all.
One of his people did the math and estimated the travel times, and the answer came up England, just as he’d suspected. The triangle of time for both Bern and Vienna both apexed at London, or somewhere close to it. That made sense, Henriksen told himself. British Airways went everywhere, and it had always had a cordial relationship with the British government. So, whoever it was, the group had to be based . . . Hereford, almost certainly there. It was probably multinational . . . that would make it more politically acceptable to other countries. So, it would be American and British, maybe other nationalities as well, with access to American hardware like that Sikorsky helicopter. Gus Werner knew about it might it have some FBI people in the team? Probably, Henriksen thought. The Hostage Rescue Team was essentially a police organization, but since its mission was counterterrorism, it practiced and played with other such organizations around the world, even though those were mainly military. The mission was pretty much the same, and therefore the people on the mission were fairly interchangeable – and the FBI HRT members were as good as anyone else in the world. So probably, someone from HRT, perhaps even someone he knew, was on the team. It would have been useful to find out who, but for now, that was too much of a stretch.
The important thing at the moment was that this national counterterror outfit was a potential danger. What if they deployed to Melbourne? Would that hurt anything? It surely wouldn’t help, especially if there was an FBI agent on the team. He’d spent fifteen years in the Bureau, and Henriksen was under no illusions about those men and women. They had eyes that could see and brains that could think, and they looked into everything. And so, his strategy to raise the world’s consciousness of the terrorist threat, and so help himself get the Melbourne job, might have gone an unplanned step further. Damn. But the Law of Unintended Consequences could hit anyone, couldn’t it? That’s why he was in the loop, because it was his job to deal with the unintended things. And so here he was, still in the intelligence-gathering mode. He needed to learn more. The really bad news was that he had to fly off to Australia in less than a day, and would himself be unable to do any more gathering. Well. He’d have dinner tonight with his boss to pass along what he knew, and maybe that ex-KGB guy on the payroll could take it a little further. Damned sure he’d performed pretty well to this point. A pipe smoker. It never ceased to amaze Henriksen how such little things could break open a case. You just had to keep your head up and eyes open.
“The Interleukin isn’t doing anything,” John Killgore said, looking away from the monitor. The screen of the electron microscope was clear. The Shiva strands were reproducing merrily away, devouring healthy tissue in the process.
“So?” Dr. Archer asked.
“So, that’s the only treatment option I was worried about: -3a is an exciting new development, but Shiva just laughs at it and moves on. This is one scary little mother of a bug, Barb.”
“And the subjects?”
“I was just in there. Pete’s a goner, so are the rest. The Shiva’s eating them up. They all have major internal bleeds, and nothing is stopping the tissue breakdown. I’ve tried everything in the book. These poor bastards wouldn’t be getting better treatment at Hopkins, Harvard, or the Mayo Clinic, and they’re all going to die. Now,” he allowed, “there will be some whose immune systems can deal with it, but that’s going to be pretty damned rare.”
“-How rare?” she asked the epidemiologist.
“Less than one in a thousand, probably, maybe one in ten thousand. Even the pneumonic variant of plague doesn’t kill everybody,” he reminded her. That was about the most lethal disease on the planet, and allowed only one in ten thousand to survive. Some people, she knew, had immune systems that killed everything that didn’t belong. Those were the ones who lived to a hundred years of age or so. It had nothing to do with smoking, not smoking. having a drink in the morning, or any of the other rubbish they published in the papers as the secret of living forever. It was all in the genes. Some were better than others. It was that simple.
“Well, that’s not really something to worry about. is it?”
“World population is between five and six billion now. That’s a little more than five times ten to the ninth people, subtract four orders from that and you have something on the order of five times ten to the fifth survivors. Figure a few hundred thousand who might not like us very much.”
“Spread all over the world,” Barbara told him. “Not organized, needing leadership and scientific knowledge to help them survive. How will they even connect? The only eight hundred people surviving in New York? And what about the diseases that come with all those deaths? The best immune system in the world can’t protect you against them.”
“True,” Killgore conceded. Then he smiled. “We’re even improving the breed, aren’t we?”