Schweik glanced around. Fortunately, Sandra Quinn was busy in her cubicle, and the sergeant major was in her office. Kielburger’s office was calling out again. Schweik answered in a different voice, “Pentagon. Please hold.”
She quickly dialed a number she read from a list in her top drawer. “General Caspar, please? Yes, General Kielburger calling urgently from USAMRIID.” She took him off hold, returned to her own line, and dialed again. She spoked softly but rapidly, hung up once more, and went back to her work.
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5:50 P.M.
Thurmont, Maryland
Smith finished packing in the empty house under the shoulder of Catoctin Mountain. He felt a little ill, and he figured that was no surprise. Sophia was everywhere, from the bottled water in the kitchen to the scent of her in their bed. It broke his heart. The emptiness of the house echoed through him. The house was a tomb, the sepulchre of his hopes, filled with Sophia’s dreams and laughter. He could not stay here. He could never live here again.
Not in the house, and not in her condo. He could think of nowhere in the world he wanted to be. He knew he would have to figure that out eventually, but not now. Not yet. First he had to find her killers. Smash them. Crush them into screaming masses of blood and bones and tissue.
In his office after he had left Kielburger, Smith had written up his reports and notes, printed them out, and driven a circuitous route home, watching behind. He had seen no one follow to the big saltbox house he had shared for so many happy months with Sophia. When he had finished packing for a week of any weather, loaded his service Beretta, and grabbed his passport, address book, and cell phone, he dressed in his uniform and waited for Kielburger’s call with the word from the Pentagon.
But Kielburger did not call.
It was growing dark at 1800 as he drove back to Fort Detrick. Ms. Melanie Curtis was not at her secretary’s desk, and when he checked the general’s office, the general was gone, too, but neither office looked as if it had been tidied up for the night. Very unusual. He looked at his watch: 1827. They must be on coffee breaks. But at the same time?
Neither was in the coffee room.
Kielburger’s office was still empty.
The only explanation Smith could think of was the Pentagon had called Kielburger to Washington in person, and he had taken Melanie Curtis with him.
But would not Kielburger have called to tell him?
No. Not if the Pentagon had ordered him not to.
Uneasy, and telling no one, he went back down to his battered Triumph. Pentagon permission or not, he was going to Washington. He could not sleep another night in the Thurmont house. He turned on the ignition and drove out the gate. He saw no one watching from outside, but to be sure, he circled the streets for an hour before driving to I-270 and heading south for the Capital. His mind roamed over the past with Sophia. He was beginning to find comfort in remembering the good times. God knew, that was all he had left.
He had had one good night’s sleep in three days and wanted to be sure no one was tailing him, so he pulled off abruptly at Gaithersburg and watched the exit to see whether anyone followed. No one did. Satisfied, he drove to the Holiday Inn and checked in under a false name. He drank two beers in the motel bar, ate dinner in the motel dining room, and went back to his room to watch CNN for an hour before dialing Kielburger at the office and at home. There was still no answer.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright, shocked. It was the third item on the national report: “The White House has reported the tragic death of Brig. Gen. Calvin Kielburger, medical commander of the United States Army Medical Research Institute o f Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The general and his secretary were found dead in their homes, apparently victims of an unknown virus that has already killed four people in the United States, including another research scientist at Fort Detrick. The White House emphasizes these tragic deaths are isolated, and there is no public danger at this time.”
Stunned, Smith’s mind quickly grappled with what he knew: Neither Kielburger nor Melanie Curtis had worked in the Hot Zone with the virus. There was no way they could have contracted it. This was no accident or natural spreading of the virus. This was murder… two more murders! The general had been stopped from going to the Pentagon and the surgeon general, and Melanie Curtis had been stopped from telling anyone the general’s intentions.
And what had happened to the complete secrecy everyone working on the virus was supposed to maintain? Now the nation knew. Someone somewhere had done a complete reversal, but why?
“…in connection with the tragic deaths at Fort Detrick, the army is requesting all local police watch for Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith, who has been declared absent without leave from Detrick.”
He froze in front of the motel television. For a moment it seemed as if the walls were closing in on him. He shook his head; he had to parse this out clearly. They had enormous power, this enemy that had murdered Sophia, the general, and Melanie Curtis. They were out there looking for him, and now the police wanted him, too.
He was on his own.
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PART TWO
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CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
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9:30 A.M., Friday, October 17
The White House, Washington, D.C.
President Samuel Adams Castilla had been in office three years and was already campaigning for his second term. It was a cool, gray morning in the District, and he had expected a good turnout at the Mayflower Hotel for a fund-raising breakfast, which he had canceled for this emergewncy meeting.
Annoyed and worried, he stood up from the heavy pine table he used as his Oval Office desk and stalked to the leather chair by the fireplace, where everyone was gathered. As with every president, the Oval Office reflected President Castilla’s tastes. No thin-blooded, Eastern seaboard interior decorator for him. Instead, he had brought his Southwestern ranch furniture from the governor’s residence in Santa Fe, and an Albuquerque artist had coordinated the red-and-yellow Navajo drapes with the yellow carpet, woven blue presidential seal, and the vases, baskets, and headdresses that made this the most native Oval Office in history.
“All right,” he said, “CNN says we’ve had six deaths from this virus now. Tell me how bad it really is and what we’re up against.”
Sitting around a simple pine coffee table, the men and women were somber but cautiously optimistic. Surgeon General Jesse Oxnard, seated next to the secretary of Health and Human Services, was the first to answer. “There have now been fifteen deaths from an unknown virus that was diagnosed last weekend. That’s here in America, of course. We’ve just recently learned there were six original cases, with three of them surviving. At least that’s a little hopeful.”
Chief of Staff Charles Ouray added, “Reports from the WHO indicate ten or twelve thousand people overseas have contracted it. Several thousand have died.”
“Nothing to require any special emergency action on our part, I’d say.” This was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Stevens Brose. He was leaning against the fireplace mantel under a large Bierstadt Rocky Mountain landscape.
“But a virus can spread like wildfire,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Nancy Petrelli pointed out. “I don’t see how we can in all good conscience wait for the CDC or Fort Detrick to come up with countermeasures. We need to call on the private sector and contact every medical and pharmaceutical corporation for advice and help.” She looked hard at the president. “It’s going to get worse, sir. I guarantee it.”
When some of the others began to protest, the president cut them off. “Just what kind of details do we know about this virus so far?”
Surgeon General Oxnard grimaced. “It’s of a type never seen before, as far as Detrick and the CDC can tell. We don’t know how it’s transmitted yet. It’s apparently highly lethal, since three people who worked with it at Detrick have died, although the mortality rate of the first six cases was only fifty percent.”
“Three out of six is lethal enough for me,” the president told them grimly. “You say we recently lost three scientists at Fort Detrick, too? Who?
“One was the medical commander, Brig. Gen. Calvin Kielburger.”
“Good Lord.” The president shook his head sadly. “I remember him. We talked soon after I took office. That’s tragic.”
Admiral Brose agreed ominously: “It’s blown the lid off. I’d declared the matter top secret after the first four deaths because my exec, General Caspar, reported too many amateurs were bumbling around in what could be a critical situation. I was concerned about public panic.” He paused for confirmation of the correctness of his decision. Everyone nodded, even the president. The general inhaled, relieved. “But the police were called to General Kielburger’s and his secretary’s homes when they were discovered dead. The hospital recognized the same virus that’d killed the first USAMRIID scientist. So now the newspeople have it. I’ve had to open it up, but the media knows it’s got to get its information only from the Pentagon. Period.”