“Usually I’d say it’s good to see you, Nate,” the president said. “But since you mentioned it was urgent…”
“I’m sorry to intrude on your privacy, Mr. President, but this can’t wait.”
Castilla ran a palm across his five o’clock shadow. “Does it relate to what we talked about in Houston?”
“I’m afraid it does.”
The president gestured at one of the couches. “Bring me up to speed,” he said crisply.
Five minutes later, Castilla knew more than he had ever wished to know.
“What’s your recommendation, Nate?” he asked quietly.
“Commence FIREWALL,” Mein said tightly. “We don’t want a single one of those passengers walking out of the terminal.”
Developed in collaboration with the FAA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, FIREWALL was a dedicated response to any terrorist incursion into the United States. If the warning came early enough, every port of entry would be flooded by security officials waiting for a target whose description and particulars were already in hand. Klein knew that it was too late to do this at Dulles. The best he could do was to alert every available uniformed and undercover officer in the complex and initiate a hunt. Even as agents were scrambling, the FAA would be faxing a passenger manifest to the central command post.
The president stared at him, nodded, and reached for the phone. In seconds he had Jerry Matthews, the head of the FBI, on the line, and was explaining what had to be done.
“I don’t have time to give you all the details right now, Jerry. Just get FIREWALL going. I’m faxing you a description of the suspect as we speak.”
The president took the sketch Klein held out and fed it into the machine.
“His real name is Ivan Beria, Jerry. He’s a Serb national. But he’s calling himself John Strelnikov and is traveling on a fake U.S. passport. He is not, I repeat not, an American citizen. And Jerry? This is a level-five situation.”
Five was the highest designation, meaning that the individual in question was to be considered not only armed and dangerous but a clear and immediate danger to national security.
The president hung up and turned to Klein. “He’ll get back to me as soon as the ball’s rolling.” He shook his head. “He asked— respectfully, mind you— what my sources were.”
“I appreciate your position, sir,” Klein replied.
“It’s one of my making.”
After the nightmare of Hades and the subsequent election, Samuel Castilla had sworn that the United States would never again be caught off-guard. While he respected the work of the traditional agencies, he saw a dire need for a new group— small, elite, run by a single individual beholden to no one, reporting only to the chief executive.
After a great deal of thought, Castilla had chosen Nathaniel Klein to head what would become known as Covert-One. Using funds carefully siphoned off from various government departments, employing only the most talented and trustworthy men and women, CovertOne had grown from an idea into a presidential iron fist. This time, Castilla thought, we have the chance to stop the monster instead of wading through the horror it’ll spawn.
The ringing phone intruded on his reverie. “Yes, Jerry.”
Castilla listened, put his hand over the mouthpiece, and turned to Klein.
“They have a hit on Strelnikov. Immigration clocked him in eight minutes before FIREWALL went into effect.” He paused. “Do you want to maintain the alert, Nate?”
Suddenly, Klein felt very old. Beria had fooled them again. Eight minutes was an eternity to someone like him.
“It’s a whole different ballgame now, sir. We have to go to a backup plan.” Quickly he outlined what he had in mind.
The president got back on the line. “Jerry, listen carefully….”
Even as Castilla spoke, the director of the FBI scrambled the Bureau’s elite antiterrorist teams stationed at Buzzard’s Point. A description of Beria was being sent to the computer screens of their cars. Within thirty minutes, the first squads would be interviewing taxi dispatchers, skycaps, limousine drivers, anyone who might have seen or come into contact with the suspect.
“Let me know the minute you have something,” Castilla said and ended the call. He turned to Mein. “Exactly how much smallpox was stolen?”
“Enough to start a wildfire of an epidemic across the eastern seaboard.”
“What about our vaccine supplies— besides the amount stockpiled by USAMRIID for military use?”
“Barely enough to inoculate half a million people. I’m anticipating your next question, Mr. President: how long to manufacture enough? Too long. Weeks.”
“Nonetheless, we have to try. What about Britain, Canada, Japan— can we buy from them?”
“They have less than we do, sir. And they would need that to protect their own populations.”
For a moment, there was silence.
“Is there any reason to believe that Beria came here with the express intent of unleashing the virus?” the president asked.
“No, sir. Ironically, that’s our one ray of hope. Beria has never been anything other than a killer for hire, a facilitator. His politics revolve around the price paid for services rendered.”
“Facilitator? Are you suggesting that he’s delivering the smallpox to someone over here?”
“I appreciate that it’s a difficult concept to entertain, Mr. President. After all, if a terrorist wanted to stage a biochem attack against us, it would be much safer to assemble the weapon outside the country, rather than here.”
“But the smallpox is already a weapon, isn’t it, Nate?”
“Yes, sir. Even in its raw form, it is extremely potent. Deposit it in New York City’s water supply and you create a crisis of massive proportions. But, Mr. President, if you take the same amount and reconfigure it so that it can be used in an aerosol dispersal system, you can crop dust, if you will, a much greater area.”
The president grunted. “You’re saying, why waste the potential when you can maximize it.”
“Exactly.”
“Assuming, for a moment, that Beria is a courier, how far can he get?”
“Hopefully we can contain him to the D.C. area. Beria has a couple of problems: he doesn’t speak English well, and he’s never been in this country, much less in this specific area. One way or another, he will draw attention to himself.”
“In theory, Nate. But he won’t be signing up for tours of the White House. He’ll deliver the virus and get the hell out of Dodge. Or try to.”
“Beria has to have help on this end,” Klein conceded. “But again, the geographic area is limited. We should also remember that the people using Beria do not want the virus released until it suits them to do so. That means they have to store it— safely. And that requires a very good laboratory. We’re not looking in tenements or abandoned warehouses, Mr. President. Somewhere in the surrounding counties is a state-of-the-art lab that was created just for this purpose.”
“All right,” he said finally. “The hunt for Beria is under way. We’ll also start searching for this lab. Right now, we keep a lid on what’s happening. Total media blackout. Is that about right?”
“Yes, sir. About the media: Kirov has done a yeoman’s job of keeping the situation in Russia under wraps. But if there’s a leak, that’s where it will spring. I suggest that when you call President Potrenko, you ask him what steps he’s taking to hold the blackout in place on his end.”
“Noted. Now what about this second man you mentioned, the one Beria may or may not have met in Moscow?”
“He’s the wild card, sir,” Klein said softly. “If we can finger him, we can use him to get to Beria.”
__________
As soon as he heard the double ping indicating that the aircraft was at the gate, Adam Treloar was out of his seat and moving to the forward hatch. The rest of the first-class passengers fell in behind him, creating a buffer between him and the man who could not be allowed to catch a glimpse of him.
Treloar drummed his fingers on his carry-on, impatient for the hatch to roll up. His instructions had been precise. He repeated them over and over again until he knew the litany by heart. The only question was, would he be able to carry them out without interference?.
The hatch disappeared into the bulkhead, the flight attendant stepped back, and Treloar charged past her. He set a fast pace, moving through the jetway and into a harshly lit corridor that dead-ended at an escalator. He walked down it and found himself at the immigration booths. Beyond them were the baggage carousels and the customs checkpoints.
Treloar had expected and would have preferred crowds. But Dulles was not as busy as Kennedy or Los Angeles, and no international flights had come at the same time or just a little ahead of American 1710. He went up to an empty counter and offered his paperwork to an officer who scanned the passport and asked inane questions about where he’d been. Treloar gave him the truth about his mother, how he had gone to Russia to visit her grave and tend to it. The officer nodded solemnly, scribbled something on the customs form, and waved him along.