by Nancy Kress
“And you, Agent Cavanaugh? Do you think that the FBI is going to assassinate you two?”
“No,” Cavanaugh said slowly, “I don’t.”
“Then what?” Broylin sat back, waiting. Cavanaugh thought he’d never seen eyes so observant. Broylin, he remembered, had started out as a prosecuting attorney in white-collar crime, where instead of bodies stuffed in auto trunks, you got educated, smooth-talking men who gave themselves away in the details.
“No,” Cavanaugh said. “You tell me ‘then what.’ Not the other way around.”
“All right,” Broylin said. He placed his hands flat on the desk in front of him. The fingers were long and thin. “I’m not going to threaten or bribe you—or Dr. Anderson. Implicit threats have already been tried, and neither of you gave up your investigation. Nor would you now, I think. “Nor am I going to discredit you with the press. This isn’t the Hoover FBI anymore. And the press isn’t the respectful lackey it usually was in 1955 either. They’d jump all over this story, and you’ve uncovered enough truth that you’d stay credible anyway.”
Melanie drew in a sharp, short breath.
“Nor am I going to attempt to convince you that what you’ve found is wrong, because it’s not. As far as it goes, anyway.”
Melanie said, “It’s true. It’s … true …” Cavanaugh glanced at her, but she’d caught herself before she reached either explosion or tears.
“I said, ‘as far as it goes.’ Which is not far enough. So of all your choices, Agent Cavanaugh, I’m going to tell you the truth. The rest of the truth.”
Cavanaugh got out, “And then …”
“And then you two will be the ones with a choice to make.” Broylin opened his desk drawer and drew out an unmarked green folder, but didn’t hand it to Cavanaugh. “What I’m going to say, I have authorization to tell you. But only because the circumstances are so unusual.”
Melanie demanded, “Authorization from whom?”
“Wait,” Broylin said. “The facts first. Fact one: There are people, important people, who disagree violently with the decision to tell you what I’m going to tell you. Fact two: You would never be told this if you hadn’t pushed the Bureau to this point. Fact three: What I am going to tell you could, conceivably, place you both in physical danger, although not from the FBI or the CIA. Shall I go on?”
“Yes!” Melanie said. “You’re only trying to intimidate us!”
“No, I’m not. Those are facts. Here are more. The infected Anopheles mosquitoes that began the malaria reading epidemic were in fact en route from Fort Detrick to a location in Virginia when they were released by the car crash. However, they were not developed at Fort Detrick. They were there because a Counterintelligence team, a joint FBI/CIA effort, had captured the mosquitoes in an intelligence operation conducted against a foreign government that was working within the borders of the United States.”
“Oh, right!” Melanie said. “What foreign government?”
For the first time, Cavanaugh saw a sign—a very little sign—of anger in Peter Broylin. The director’s left hand tensed, and his wedding ring slid slightly along the tautened flesh of his ring finger. That was all.
“Please wait, Dr. Anderson. The Anopheles captured by the FBI and CIA were analyzed and, yes, bred at the army’s Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick. Access to the project was highly restricted, as you can imagine. But labs take up physical space, as you well know. Many people knew something was going on in those restricted labs, although they had no clear idea what. With any operation of any size, there are always fringe people who are not included but think they should be, and some of them make shrewd guesses. One of those people—we now know who—ran an unauthorized dirty-tricks cell of nonarmy personnel. One of those made the hate calls to you, Dr. Anderson, a fact that has only come to light in the last week.”
Melanie said nothing, but her face told Cavanaugh she believed none of it.
Broylin continued. “At Fort Detrick, the Medical Research and Development Command used the captured and bred Anopheles to develop a virus that would counter malaria reading. They couldn’t, as you surmised, use it in Maryland. Too many visiting scientists. The virus would instantly become the public property of the international scientific community, and its value as a counterweapon would be gone. The CIA reasoning, of course, was that if one nation could discover how to genetically alter malaria to fatally attack sickle-cell hemoglobin, so could other nations. The United States needed to hold the vaccine as a secret counterweapon in case we ever needed it. USAMRIID knew nothing about the vaccine. Colonel Colborne assured us that USAMRIID could stop the epidemic in southern Maryland using well-applied vector-destruction techniques, and the FBI/CIA Counterintelligence force let them go ahead and do it.”
Broylin looked directly at Melanie. She said, reluctantly, “They succeeded. But not all nations can afford ‘well-applied vector-destruction techniques.’”
“My point precisely. The vaccine should be saved for locales or conditions where vector destruction is impractical. Jungle terrain, impoverished nations, battlefield conditions. So we didn’t use it in Maryland.”
Melanie said, “But you did in Congo! You killed so you could test!”
“No, Dr. Anderson. We didn’t.”
Broylin finally pushed the green folder toward Cavanaugh. He opened it. Copies of a half-dozen short CIA documents, each stamped with highly restricted clearances, each paper slashed with blacked-out words, sentences, phrases. Cavanaugh began to skim.
Broylin said, “We didn’t start or end malaria reading in Congo, Dr. Anderson. Someone did, yes, but it wasn’t us. It was another nation.”
“Bullshit! You said you captured the infected Anopheles from an enemy nation and you developed the vaccine at Fort Detrick—and that nobody else had it yet! It was your little secret!”
“That’s true. We developed it, and we kept it from the scientific community for reasons I’ve explained. The ‘enemy nation’—”
“Developed the same vaccine, just by sheer coincidence? I don’t believe it, Broylin!”
“I was going to say, the ‘enemy nation’ is the error in your reasoning. No enemy nation developed the vaccine. Nor do any know that the United States has it.”
“Then what the hell is going on?”
Broylin didn’t answer. He looked at Cavanaugh, who had finished skimming the thin sheaf of documents. He wished he could have time to study them more closely, but he knew he wouldn’t get the chance. He would never see these particular papers again.
He was surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. “The same nation both started and ended the epidemic in Congo, Melanie. And, yes, it was a test. They had the genetically altered mosquitoes because they had created them. And they had the vaccine because we gave it to them.”
“What?” Melanie said.
Cavanaugh looked not at her, but at Broylin. “We gave the vaccine to them because they’re not an enemy nation at all; they’re one of our allies.”
“Oh, my God,” Melanie said. Broylin said nothing. He wasn’t going to confirm or deny, Cavanaugh realized, at least not yet. Broylin was going to let Cavanaugh do what the FBI had hired him to do in the first place: put things together.
He put it together.
“The FBI does counterintelligence against foreign agents within our borders. That’s why the Bureau was working with the CIA when the team busted the original lab that created malaria reading. The other country was creating it here rather than abroad because … because …”
Despite herself, Melanie came to his aid. “Because in the United States there’s more equipment, more talent, everything much easier to hide. Scientific equipment can be openly ordered, with no comment, from thousands of different sources.”
“Yes,” Cavanaugh said. “And we caught one of our allies at it, right under our noses.” God, the accusations and counteraccusations that must have gone on behind locked doors. Over secure hotlines. In diplomatic pouches. It must ha
ve been a zoo.
Cavanaugh continued. “So the United States appropriated the infected Anopheles, sent them to Fort Detrick, bred them to research and create a vaccine … Where were the mosquitoes going when that car hit a deer near the Potomac River Bridge?”
Broylin said, “I can’t tell you that.”
Pharmaceutical house, Cavanaugh guessed. Historically, Fort Detrick had contracted out some phases of its bioweapons work. Or maybe the mosquitoes had been going to another military installation. It didn’t really matter. This particular batch of bugs never got there.
“Go on,” Broylin said, and Cavanaugh did.
“Detrick created the vaccine. Just before or after malaria reading got loose. They couldn’t use the vaccine here, but they didn’t need to. However, the other nation knew the U.S. must be working on a counterweapon. Nothing else is logical. The other nation wanted the counterweapon, whatever form it took. We didn’t trust them—”
“Surprise, surprise,” Melanie said bitterly.
“—so they forced our hand. They started a second malaria reading epidemic where the scientific community wouldn’t really notice anything strange unless they were looking for it. In Congo. Where malaria reading could easily spread horrifically unless the United States supplied the only existing way to stop it. The vaccine.”
“This is an ally?” Melanie demanded. “Who is it?”
Cavanaugh concluded simply, “So in order to stop the deaths in Africa, we gave our ally the vaccine. Because we had no choice. If we went in and administered it ourselves, it would have to be through the CDC, who’d certainly notice its effect on the epidemic curves. And who would then tear every atom of the vaccine apart. They’d want to use it everywhere in the world, blowing its use as a counterweapon. And the ally nation would end up with the vaccine anyway; they’d just analyze the villagers’ blood samples. So we let our ally have it, and they administered it through Doctors Without Borders, who are too damn overworked to analyze anything.”
“Who?” Melanie said. “It has to be one of the signatories of the World Health Organization, Brian Spencer got his meds from WHO. Israel? Germany? One of the South American nations? Malaria is endemic in South America!”
No, Cavanaugh thought. Not South America. Not Israel, not Germany.
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Broylin said. “Not now, not ever. Information here is given on a need-to-know basis. You know enough already to understand what happened, and why, and the position in which you’ve put the United States internationally.”
Ireland, Cavanaugh thought.
Michael Sean Donohue had IRA connections, a fact that had never hit the press. They’d been too busy jumping on his part-black ancestry. The key was the level of evidence.
Melanie thought the FBI had enough hard evidence—“not just circumstantial!” she’d cried—to convict in a court of law. But Melanie wasn’t a lawyer. Neither was Cavanaugh, but like all agents, he’d picked up a fair amount of law. The U.S. government lacked the hard evidence to convict the terrorists. That meant this investigation was still going on, and it was probably a joint effort of the American and Irish governments, maybe even the Brits as well, against a common enemy within friendly borders.
It had been some radical branch of the Irish Republican Army that had created malaria reading. And it had been the Irish Republican Army that Broylin had meant when he’d said “… could, conceivably, place you both in physical danger, although not from the FBI or the CIA.”
The IRA, whose savage tactics—if not ultimate aims—were condemned by even the Irish government. The IRA, who had always enjoyed rich backing among Irish-Americans. The IRA, who hadn’t hesitated before this to kill off civilians in its quest to break Northern Ireland free of England. Who, of course, knew how fast the immigrant population of London was growing. Cavanaugh suddenly saw, as clearly as if it had been included in Broylin’s green folder, his own initial reading about sickle-cell trait. From an on-line encyclopedia:
IN ANCIENT TIMES, VEDDOIDS CAME FROM THEIR HOME IN INDIA ACROSS THE RED SEA LAND BRIDGE INTO AFRICA. WITH THEM THEY CARRIED THE GENE THAT CODED FOR AN ABNORMAL FORM OF HEMOGLOBIN: THE SICKLE-CELL GENE. SICKLE-CELL TRAIT IS STILL VERY COMMON IN CERTAIN SECTIONS OF INDIA. …
And in Indians who immigrated to London.
But, wait—wasn’t London too cold to support malaria mosquitoes? Cavanaugh remembered more of his reading. London had been plagued with malaria every summer, right up until the midnineteenth century. The disease came in the spring on sailing ships, flourished all summer, and died off in winter, only to sail in again next spring. Oliver Cromwell had suffered from malaria all his life. And Oliver Cromwell’s London wasn’t the urban heat sink that the great city was today. Over one summer, malaria reading could create enough death and panic in London to bring down the British government. Which was, in fact, what it had been created to do.
Malaria had not been created to destroy blacks, after all. It had only been tested on them, in order to force the United States to share the vaccine. And the test site was Congo only because in that vast rain forest of disease and poverty and isolation, more death would just blend right in. It was as cold-blooded an action as Cavanaugh and Melanie had feared all along. A monstrosity, an abomination.
But not by the United States.
All this tore through Cavanaugh’s mind in an instant, almost before Broylin had finished his last sentence. Cavanaugh couldn’t reply. He sat, mute and dazed by the gut-loosening shock of relief.
Melanie repeated, “Who? If you think we’re going to buy your concoction without even being told who created the epidemic … Besides, all you’ve really given us is an alternate set of possible circumstances! You haven’t given us any good reason to believe the alternate set is the truth.”
“I’ve given you everything I can,” Broylin said. “Except this. Watch.”
He pressed a button. A very large projection suddenly appeared on a blank wall to their right. A world map, in colors that did not correspond to national boundaries.
Broylin, still seated behind his desk, said, “Light green indicates areas where virtually none of the population is positive for sickle-cell trait. Dark green indicates roughly three to ten susceptible individuals per hundred square miles. Blue, a concentration of susceptible individuals that could cause personal suffering but not political disruption. Red, a population in which an unchecked epidemic of malaria reading could cause considerable economic disruption, political consequences, and human suffering.”
Cavanaugh stared at the projection. The FBI didn’t do this kind of international forecasting. The map had CIA woven all through it. London was red.
Melanie shot back, “An epidemic wouldn’t cause that much disruption if we stepped in with the vaccine for everybody.”
Broylin said, “There are places on earth where that just isn’t feasible.”
Cavanaugh followed Melanie’s gaze. She stared at Africa. Africa, where no vaccination program, no matter how well planned, had ever succeeded against the poverty, the tribal conflict, the shaman resistance, the rain forest and desert and isolation. Yamdongi had been only one small village, carefully targeted. In a city like Kinshasa, malaria reading would be more than politically devastating; it would be an unstoppable apocalypse.
Cavanaugh said carefully, “But there are places where it is feasible to efficiently administer vaccines. The United States, as we’ve already seen. Or London.”
Broylin didn’t react. “Yes. The largest risk, as Dr. Anderson well knows, is to Africa.”
Melanie said, in a different voice, “Who created malaria reading, Dr. Broylin?”
“As I said before, I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you this: The United States knows who it is, and so do at least two of our allies. We’re working with them to trace the disease all the way back to, not only its creators, but to its funding on two continents. We need time to get them all, and enough evidence to convict under the laws of tw
o different nations. It’s an international effort being carried out by very high levels of the governments involved. And I’ll promise you this, Dr. Anderson. If the investigation isn’t finished one year from today, you will sit again in that same chair in this same room, and I’ll personally tell you who created malaria reading. Until then, your government needs your silence.”
Broylin turned to Cavanaugh. “You told me before, Agent Cavanaugh, that I had to make a choice about you and Dr. Anderson. Now it’s you two who must make a choice: go to the press or stay silent. If you go to the press, two things happen. First, our investigation is compromised, perhaps fatally. Second, every nation in the world will know that malaria reading is a bioweapon and that a counterweapon exists. They’ll start working on duplicating it immediately. That may force the original developers of the disease to use it now for their own political purposes, if they’re going to use it all. Thousands could die. Or millions. Possibly tens of millions, if Africa is again the target.”
Melanie cried, “But I don’t even know if your story is true!”
Broylin said, “You know as much as I can tell you. You have to make your choice from that. Both of you, taking into account the needs and national security of your country.”
That last, Cavanaugh realized, was intended for him, even though Broylin continued to look at Melanie. So Broylin didn’t have every angle covered after all. He’d misjudged Cavanaugh. He’d expected that patriotism would ensure Cavanaugh’s silence, once Cavanaugh understood the danger to his country. Patriotism, loyalty, national security.
But Broylin was wrong. The Director belonged to another generation. He’d gone through Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon. Patriotism wasn’t a given to that generation; you had to convince people of it, through logic and argument. Maybe even Melanie thought that way.
But Cavanaugh was thirty-two. The United States didn’t have to earn his loyalty. He wanted to be loyal, to believe … in something. To hold Robert Cavanaugh, all the United States had to do was to convince him that his country was not a monster.
