Griffin knew the Arab had been suspicious ever since Rock Creek park, but al-Hassan would not expect Griffin to be waiting inside the house. Griffin had been careful to leave no indications he was there. His car was hidden in the garage of an empty house three blocks away, and he had entered Jon’s place by picking the lock on the back door. Since Jon had returned to neither Detrick nor Thurmont, Griffin was beginning to think he would not. Had al-Hassan already killed him? No, otherwise al-Hassan would not be sending men to look for either Jon or Griffin.
He moved swiftly through the dark shadows and into the study. Once the computer was up and running, he entered the password and encryption code for his secret Web site. He immediately saw the message from his old FBI partner, Lon Forbes:
Colonel Jonathan Smith is trying to find you. He also contacted Marjorie for the same reason. FBI, police, and army are looking for Smith: AWOL and sought for questioning in two deaths. Let me know if you want to talk to him.
Griffin thought, and then he checked for anything else. This time he spotted the footprints of someone who had hacked into the site, which might mean a third person was searching for him. There was nothing on the Web site to tell a hacker where he was. Still, a third tracker made him uneasy.
He exited, shut down the computer, and returned to the rear door. When he was sure there was still no one surveilling the back of the house, he slipped away into the night.
__________
8:06 P.M.
New York City
The four people who were gathered in a private room at the Harvard Club on Forty-fourth Street were nervous. They had known one another for years, occasionally on opposing sides and with conflicting interests, but now a shared attraction to money, power, and a view of the future they liked to call “clear-eyed” had brought them together in this room.
The youngest of the four, Maj. Gen. Nelson Caspar, executive officer to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, held a low conversation with Congressman Ben Sloat, who was a periodic visitor to Victor Tremont’s hidden Adirondack estate. General Caspar glanced every few seconds at the door to the room. Nancy Petrelli, secretary of Health and Human Services, paced alone near the curtained windows in her cream-colored St. John’s knit suit. Lt. Gen. Einar Salonen (Ret.), major lobbyist for the American military-industrial complex, sat in an armchair holding a book but not really reading. Neither General Caspar nor General Salonen wore their uniforms, preferring simple but expensive business suits for this clandestine meeting.
Their heads rotated almost in unison as the door opened.
Victor Tremont hurried in. “Sorry, gentlemen and lady”— a slight bow to the HHS secretary— “but I was held up by some business relating to our problem with Colonel Smith, which, I’m happy to say, is about to be settled.”
A murmur of relief spread across the room.
“How did the meeting with Blanchard’s board of directors go?” General Caspar rumbled. It was the question on everyone’s minds.
Tremont perched on the arm of a leather couch, elegant in his dinner jacket and black tie. Assurance radiated from him, and he seemed to draw his four distinguished guests toward him like a magnet. He lifted his patrician chin and laughed. “I’m now in firm control of the entire company.
General Salonen’s voice was loudest. “Congratulations!”
“Great news, Victor,” Congressman Sloat agreed. “This puts us in the power position.”
Secretary Petrelli admitted, “I wasn’t sure you could pull it off.”
“I had no doubt.” General Caspar smiled. “Victor always wins.”
Tremont laughed again. “Thank you. Thank you very much for your vote of confidence. But I must say I agree with General Caspar.”
Now everyone laughed, even Nancy Petrelli. But her laughter had little humor in it. She went right to the critical point: “You told the board? The details?”
“Chapter and verse.” Tremont crossed his arms, smiled, and waited. Teasing them.
The tension in the room grew electric. Their gazes were riveted on him.
“And?” Nancy Petrelli demanded at last.
“What did the goddamned board say?” General Salonen wanted to know.
Victor Tremont smiled broadly. “They jumped on the Hades Project like a dog on a bone.” He gazed around the room at the relieved faces. “You could see the dollar signs flash in their eyes. I thought I was in Las Vegas, and they were slot machines.”
“No qualms?” Congressman Sloat asked. “We don’t have to worry about second thoughts? Bad consciences?”
Tremont shook his head. “Remember, we hand-picked all of them. We pooled our sources so we could choose for background, interest, and risk tolerance.” His biggest problem had been getting the names past Haldane so they could be proposed and voted onto the board while old members retired or their terms expired. “Of course, now the question is whether we judged them accurately.”
“Obviously we did,” Congressman Sloat said with satisfaction.
“Exactly,” Tremont said. “Oh, they were a little green around the gills when I laid out the possible deaths without our serum, and all the deaths that will unavoidably occur before it is approved for use on humans. But I explained that on the other hand the virus wasn’t a hundred percent fatal without treatment, and they realized the deaths would extrapolate into not much more than a million or so worldwide if the government accepts our serum quickly.”
Nancy Petrelli, ever the pessimist, said, “And if the government won’t pay our price at all?”
A heavy silence dropped like a dark shroud over the small room. They looked uneasily away from the HHS secretary. It was a question that had been on all their minds.
“Ah, well,” Tremont said, “we knew that risk from the start. It was the gamble we took to make the billions we’re going to. But I doubt our government or any other government will see another choice. If they don’t buy the serum, an awful lot of their people are going to die everywhere. That’s the simple answer.”
General Caspar nodded appreciatively. “Who dares, wins.”
“Ah, yes. The motto of the SAS.” Tremont nodded recognition to the general and added drily, “But I’d like to think we take our risks for much larger and more realistic rewards than a few medals and a pat on the back from the queen, eh?”
Tremont swung his leg as he watched the four wrestle with the enormity of it. Conscience makes cowards of us all. Shakespeare’s words, or close enough, echoed through his mind. But screw your courage to the sticking point, we shall not fail. But it was not courage or Shakespeare that had made them accept the risk of the potential slaughter. Not at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It was power and wealth.
General Salonen said bluntly, “But none of us or our families will die. We have the serum.”
They had all thought it, but only Salonen had the bravery or perhaps the insensitivity to say it. Tremont continued to wait.
“How long until it begins?” Nancy Petrelli asked.
Tremont considered. “I’d say in three or four days the reality of a pandemic will strike the global conscience like a bolt of lightning.”
There was a murmur. Whether it was pity or greed it was hard to tell.
“When it does,” Tremont continued, “I want each of you to emphasize the danger to humanity. Hit the panic buttons. Then we make our announcement of the serum.”
“And ride to the rescue.” General Caspar gave a coarse laugh.
All their doubts vanished as the four conspirators united in their vision of the goal they had dreamed of for so long. It was close. Very close. Just on the other side of the horizon. For the moment, any fear of an opposition, of Bill Griffin’s potential treachery, or of Jonathan Smith’s determined investigation flew from their minds.
“Beautiful,” someone breathed.
___________________
CHAPTER
TWENTY FOUR
___________________
3:15 P.M.
High Sierras, California
“Oh, look!” Marty cried. “That’s so beautiful!” He came to an abrupt halt in the hallway, turned, and his awkward body rolled and thumped into a dim, cavernous room near the back of Peter Howell’s Sierra hideaway. He gazed transfixed at the opposite wall, his green eyes shining.
On the wall, about ten feet above the floor, transparent electronic maps glowed. Each nation was alight in a different color. Tiny blinking bulbs moved continuously across the maps. Rows of multicolored lights blazed after each name on a roster that hung next to the maps. Beneath it all, state-of-the-art computer equipment filled the wall. In the center of the room waited a leather-and-steel command chair. On either side of it stood a large globe and a file cabinet.
Smith studied the maps— Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and the parts of all three that formed the historic land of the Kurds. Then there was East Timor. Colombia. Afghanistan. Southern Mexico and Guatemala. El Salvador. Israel. Rwanda. The hot spots of tribal conflict, ethnic strife, peasant revolt, religious militancy, popular insurgency.