Petrelli frowned. “But, dammit, Jesse, we have no assurance the two viruses and the serum will interact the same way in the human body.” She saw Tremont again frown at her curiously, as if he doubted he had heard her accurately. “If Dr. Tremont is going to offer himself as our guinea pig, he should be infected with the real virus. Or, at least, we should test the two viruses to see if, perhaps, they are identical.”
Inside, Tremont seethed with rage. What the hell was she doing? She knew damned well the serum wasn’t 100 percent effective— no serum or vaccine was. He had this contingency covered, yes, but she didn’t know that. Outwardly he continued to nod. “She’s right, of course. That’d be best. But taking the time to compare viruses would be an unnecessary delay. I assure you I’m quite willing to be infected with the real virus. Our serum will cure it. I’m certain.”
“No.” The surgeon general slapped his knees in disagreement. “There’s no way we can let you do that. But the families of the victims are already clamoring to be helped, so it makes more sense to ask them if they’d be willing to let their sick relatives try it. That way we’ll find out what we need to know and maybe save a doomed life, too. Meanwhile, I’ll have Detrick and the CDC compare the viruses.”
Petrelli objected, “The FDA will never approve.”
Oxnard countered, “They will if the president tells them to.”
“The director would probably resign first.”
“That’s possible. But if the president wants the serum tested, it will be.”
Nancy Petrelli appeared to think about this. “I’m still against using the serum without the usual series of thorough tests. However, if we’re going to go ahead, then it does make more sense to try to save someone who’s already sick.”
The surgeon general stood up. “We’ll call the president and present both suggestions. The sooner we start, the more lives we’ll have a chance to save.” He turned to Victor Tremont. “Where can we phone in private?”
“I have a line in the conference room. Through that door.” Tremont nodded to a door in the right wall of his office.
“Nancy?” Jesse Oxnard asked.
“You make the call. No need for both of us. Tell him I concur in everything.”
As the surgeon general hurried out and closed the door, Victor Tremont swiveled in his chair to bestow a cold smile on the Health and Human Services secretary. “Covering your ass at my expense, Nancy?”
“Giving Jesse the negative to work against,” Nancy Petrelli shot back. “We agreed I’d do the nay-saying, so he focuses on the positive, the advantages.”
Tremont’s tones gave no indication of his anger. “And a really good job it was, too. But, I think, more than a little self-protection, too.”
Petrelli bowed to him. “I learned from a master.”
“Thank you. But it does show a shocking lack of faith in me.”
She allowed herself a curt smile. “No, only in the vagaries of chance, Victor. No one has ever found a way to outwit chance.”
With that thought, Tremont nodded. “True. We do our best, don’t we? Cover all possible contingencies. For example, I would insist we conduct the tests, and I assure you the virus would be harmless before it reached me. But there’s always that little residue of chance left, isn’t there. A risk for me.”
“There’s risk for all of us in this project, Victor.”
Where the discussion would have taken them, Nancy Petrelli never found out. At that moment the door from the conference room opened, and Surgeon General Oxnard reentered the room, a great bear of a man with a relieved smile.
He said, “The president says he’ll talk to FDA, but meanwhile we’re to start looking for volunteers among the victims. The president is optimistic. One way or the other, we’re going to test this serum and beat back this godawful virus.”
__________
Victor Tremont laughed long and loud. Yes! He had done it. They were all going to be rich, and it was only the beginning. At his desk, he smoked his Cuban cigar, drank his single-malt scotch, and rocked with laughter in private celebration. Until his cell phone rang in the bottom drawer.
He yanked open the drawer and snatched up the phone. “Nadal?”
There was a brief delay of wireless phoning from a long distance. Then there was the self-satisfied voice: “We have located Jon Smith.”
This was proving to be his day. “Where?”
“Iraq.”
Momentary doubt assaulted Tremont. “How did he ever get inside Iraq?”
“Perhaps the Englishman from the Sierras. I have found it impossible to learn anything about him. There is no certainty Howell is his correct name any more than Romanov. That leads me to believe he has much he wishes to be unknown.”
Tremont nodded angrily. “Probably MI6. How did you locate Smith?”
“One of my contacts— a Dr. Kamil. I assumed Smith would be trying to find our test cases, so I alerted all the doctors I knew. Not that many are practicing now in Baghdad. Kamil reported Smith wants to know about the survivors as well.”
“Damn! He can’t be allowed to find that.”
“If he does, it will not matter. He will never leave Iraq.”
“He got in.”
“He did not then have Saddam’s police and the Republican Guards looking for him. Once they know the American intruder is there, they will seal their borders and hunt him down. If they do not kill him, we shall.”
“Dammit, Nadal, make sure you do this time!” Tremont snarled, and remembered their other problem. “What about Bill Griffin? Where is he?”
Already humbled by Tremont’s anger, al-Hassan’s face grew stonier. “We are watching everywhere Jon Smith has been, but Griffin appears to have vanished from the earth.”
“That’s just perfect!” In a rage he punched the cell phone’s off button and glared unseeing across the office.
Then the day’s triumphs returned to make him smile. No matter what Jon Smith found in Iraq, and despite Griffin, the Hades Project was going forward according to plan. He sipped his whiskey and his smile broadened. Even the president was on board now.
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10:02 A.M., Fort Irwin,
Barstow, California
The man had followed Bill Griffin’s rented Toyota pickup from Fort Irwin. He stayed at a safe distance, never too close or too far back, on the two-lane road and then on Interstate 15. He was waiting for him to land somewhere relatively permanent. A place where Griffin would return and where he would sleep. Griffin knew the man would have followed him all the way to Los Angeles if necessary until he was certain Griffin would remain in one place long enough for backup to arrive.
Now from behind the curtains of the Barstow motel room, Griffin saw the man get out of his Land Rover and head toward the motel office. An ordinary man in a nondescript brown suit and open-necked shirt. Griffin had never seen him before. He would have been surprised if he had. Still, he recognized the almost imperceptible bulge of a pistol under the man’s suit coat. The man would check whether Griffin— or whatever name the customer in unit 107 was using— was registered for the night. Then he would make his phone call.
Griffin grabbed one of the motel’s bath towels. He raised the rear window, climbed out, and circled behind the units to where he could see into the office. His stalker was showing a fake badge or official ID to the motel clerk. The clerk studied the register, nodded, and turned the register so his questioner could view it.
Griffin trotted to the man’s Land Rover and slipped into the backseat of the high vehicle, crouched down, and waited. Quick footsteps hurried to the Rover, and the front door jerked open.
As it slammed shut, Griffin raised up, a silenced Walther PPK 6.35mm in his right hand, the bath towel in the other.
The man was dialing his car phone.
In a single motion, Griffin dropped the towel around the man’s head and fired once. The man’s head snapped back. With the towel Griffin caught most of the blood and brain matter. He quietly lowered the slumped body. Sweating, he got out, pushed the body into the passenger seat, and climbed behind the wheel.
Far out in the desert, he buried his stalker. Then he drove back into Barstow and left the car locked on a side street. Tired and angry, he walked to his motel, checked out, and drove toward Interstate 15. At Fort Irwin he had learned that Jon Smith had been interested in Tremont’s “government scientists” and Major Anderson’s service in Iraq during Desert Storm. When he reached Interstate 15, he turned the pickup toward Los Angeles and its international airport. He had decisions to make, and the best place to do that was on the East Coast.
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