by Tom Clancy
“What did you say?”
“What do you think, Skipper? Zip.” In addition to the honor of the situation, there was also the fact that Jones did most of his work with the Navy. “But—”
“Yeah, but somebody is gonna talk. Somebody always does.”
“They know too much already. The Today Show is doing a live shot from Norfolk, the Eight-Ten Dock. You can guess what they’re saying.”
Mancuso thought about flipping his office TV on, but it was still too early for the NBC morning news show—no. He did flip it on and selected CNN. They were doing sports now, and the top of the hour was coming.
“Next they might ask about another job we did, the one involving a swimmer.”
“Open line, Dr. Jones,” COMSUBPAC warned.
“I didn’t say where, Skipper. It’s just something you’ll want to think about.”
“Yeah,” Mancuso agreed.
“Maybe you can tell me one thing.”
“What’s that, Ron?”
“What’s the big deal? I mean, sure, I won’t talk and neither will you, but somebody will, sure as hell. Too good a sea story not to tell. But what’s the big deal, Bart? Didn’t we do the right thing?”
“I think so,” the admiral replied. “But I guess people just like a story.”
“You know, I hope Ryan runs. I’ll vote for him. Pretty cool stuff, bagging the head of the KGB and—”
“Ron!”
“Skipper, I’m just repeating what they’re saying on TV, right? I have no personal knowledge of that at all.” Damn, Jonesy thought, what a sea story this one is. And it’s all true.
At the other end of the line the “Breaking News” graphic came up on Mancuso’s TV screen.
“YES, I AM Nikolay Gerasimov,” the face said on screens all over the world. There were at least twenty reporters clustered on the other side of the stone fence, and the hard part was hearing one of the shouted questions.
“Is it true that you were—”
“Are you—”
“Were you—”
“Is it true that—”
“Silence, please.” He held up his hand. It took fifteen seconds or so. “Yes, I was at one time the chairman of KGB. Your President Ryan induced me to defect, and I have lived in America ever since, along with my family.”
“How did he get you to defect?” a reporter shouted.
“You must understand that the intelligence business is, as you say, rough. Mr. Ryan plays the game well. At the time there was ongoing power struggle. CIA opposed my faction in favor of Andrey Il’ych Narmonov. So, he came to Moscow under cover of advisor to START talks. He claimed that he wanted to give me information to make the meeting happen, yes?” Gerasimov had decided that downgrading his English skills would make him seem more credible to the cameras and microphones. “Actually, you can say he trap me with accusation that I was going to create, how you say, treason? Not true, but effective, and so I decide to come to America with my family. I come by airplane. My family come by submarine.”
“What? Submarine?”
“Yes, was submarine Dallas.” He paused and smiled rather grimly. “Why are you so hard on President Ryan? He serve his country well. A master spy,” Gerasimov said admiringly.
“WELL, THERE GOES that story.” Bob Holtzman muted his television and turned to his managing editor.
“Sorry, Bob.” The editor handed the copy back. It was to have run in three days. Holtzman had done a masterful job of assembling his information, and then taken the time to integrate it all into a cohesive and flattering picture of the man whose office was only five blocks from his own. It was about spin, that most favored of Washington words. Somebody had changed the spin, and that was that. Once the initial story went out, it was impossible even for an experienced journalist like Holtzman to change it, especially if his own paper didn’t support him.
“Bob,” the editor said with a measure of embarrassment, “your take on this is different than mine. What if this guy’s a cowboy? I mean, okay, getting the submarine was one thing, Cold War and all that, but tampering with internal Soviet politics—isn’t that close to an act of war?”
“That’s not what it was really about. He was trying to get an agent out, code name CARDINAL. Gerasimov and Aleksandrov were using that spy case to topple Narmonov and kill off the reforms he was trying to initiate.”
“Well, Ryan can say that all day if he wants. That’s not how it’s going to come across. ‘Master spy’? Just what we need to run the country, hmph?”
“Ryan isn’t like that, God damn it!” Holtzman swore. “He’s a straight shooter right out of—”
“Yeah, he shoots straight, all right. He’s killed at least three people. Killed, Bob! How the hell did Roger Durling ever get it into his head that this was the right guy to be Vice President. I mean, Ed Kealty isn’t much of a prize, but at least—”
“At least he knows how to manipulate us, Ben. He suckered that airhead on TV, and then he suckered the rest of us into following the story his way.”
“Well...” Ben Saddler ran out of things to say at that point. “It’s factual, isn’t it?”
“That isn’t the same as ‘true,’ Ben, and you know it.”
“This is going to have to be looked into. Ryan looks like a guy who’s played fast and loose with everything he’s touched. Next, I want this Colombian story run down. Now, can you do it? Your contacts at the Agency are pretty good, but I have to tell you, I worry about your objectivity on this.”
“You don’t have a choice, Ben. If you want to keep up, it’s my story—course you can always just reword what the Times says,” Holtzman added, making his editor flush. Life could be tough in the media, too.
“Your story, Bob. Just make sure you deliver. Somebody broke the law, and Ryan’s the one who covered everything up and came out smelling like a rose. I want that story.” Saddler stood. “I have an editorial to write.”
DARYAEI COULD SCARCELY believe it. The timing could scarcely have been better. He was days away from his next goal, and his target was about to descend into the abyss entirely without his help. With his help, of course, the fall would be farther still.
“Is that what it appears to be?”
“It would seem so,” Badrayn replied. “I can do some quick research and be back to you in the morning.”
“Is it truly possible?” the Ayatollah persisted.
“Remember what I told you about lions and hyenas? For America it is a national sport. It is no trick. They don’t do such tricks. However, let me make sure. I have my methods.”
“Tomorrow morning, then.”
34
WWW.TERROR.ORG
HE HAD MUCH WORK TO do along those lines anyway. Back in his office, Badrayn activated his desktop computer. This had a high-speed modem and a dedicated fiber-optic telephone line that ran to an Iranian—UIR, now—embassy in Pakistan, and from there another line to London, where he could link into the World Wide Web without fear of a trace. What had once been a fairly simple exercise for police agencies—that’s what counterespionage and counterterrorism was, after all was now virtually impossible. Literally millions of people could access all the information mankind had ever developed, and more quickly than one could walk to one’s car for a trip to the local library. Badrayn started by hitting press areas, major newspapers from the Times in Los Angeles to the Times in London, with Washington and New York in between. The major papers all presented much the same basic story—quicker on the Web than in the printed editions, in fact—though the initial editorial comment differed somewhat from one to another. The stories were vague on dates, and he had to remind himself that the mere repetition of the content didn’t guarantee accuracy, but it felt real. He knew Ryan had been an intelligence officer, knew that the British, the Russians, and the Israelis respected him. Surely stories such as these would explain that respect. They also made him slightly uneasy, a fact which would have surprised his master. Ryan was potentially a more formidable
adversary than Daryaei appreciated. He knew how to take decisive action in difficult circumstances, and such people were not to be underestimated.
It was just that Ryan was out of his element now, and that was plain from the news coverage. As he changed from one home page to another, a brand-new editorial came up. It called for a congressional inquiry into Ryan’s activities at CIA. A statement from the Colombian government asked in clipped diplomatic terms for an explanation of the allegations—and that would start another firestorm. How would Ryan respond to the charges and the demands? An open question, Badrayn judged. He was an unknown quantity. That was disturbing. He printed up the more important articles and editorials for later use, and then went on with his real business.
There was a dedicated home page for conventions and trade shows in America. Probably for the use of travel agents, he thought. Well, that wasn’t far off. Then it was just a matter of selecting them by city. That told him the identity of the convention centers, typically large barnlike buildings. Each of those had a home page as well, to boast of their capabilities. Many showed diagrams and travel directions. All gave phone and fax numbers. These he collected as well until he had twenty-four, a few extra, just in case. One could not send one of his travelers to a ladies’ underwear show, for example—although ... he chuckled to himself. Fashion and fabric shows—these would be for the winter season, though summer had not yet come even to Iran. Automobile shows. These, he saw, traced across America as the various car and truck manufacturers showed their wares like a traveling circus ... so much the better.
Circus, he thought, and punched up another home page—but, no, it was just a few weeks too early in the year for that. Too bad. Too bad indeed! Badrayn groused. Didn’t the big circuses travel in private trains? Damn. But that was just bad timing, and bad timing could not be helped. The auto show would have to do.
And all the others.
GROUP TWO’S MEMBERS were all fatally ill now, and it was time to end their suffering. It wasn’t so much mercy as efficiency. There was no point at all in risking the lives of the medical corpsmen by treating people condemned to death by law and science both, and so like the first group they were dispatched by large injections of Dilaudid, as Moudi watched the TV. The relief for the medics was visible, even through the cumbersome plastic suits. In just a few minutes all of the test subjects were dead. The same procedures as before would be exercised, and the doctor congratulated himself that they’d worked so well, and no extraneous personnel had been infected. That was mainly because of their ruthlessness. Other places proper hospitals—would not be so lucky, he knew, already mourning the loss of fellow practitioners.
It was a strange truism of life that second thoughts came only when it was too late for them. He could no more stop what was to come than he could stop the turning of the earth.
The medics started loading the infected bodies on the gurneys, and he turned away. He didn’t need to see it again. Moudi walked into the lab.
Another set of technicians was now loading the “soup” into containers known as flasks. They had a thousand times more than was needed for the operations, but the nature of the exercise was such that it was actually easier to make too much than it was to make just enough and, the director had explained offhandedly, one never knew when more might be needed. The flasks were all made of stainless steel, actually a specialized alloy that didn’t lose its strength in extreme cold. Each was three-quarters filled and sealed. Then it would be sprayed with a caustic chemical to make certain the outside was clean. Next it would be placed on a cart and rolled to the cold-storage locker in the building’s basement, there to be immersed in liquid nitrogen. The Ebola virus particles could stay there for decades, too cold to die, completely inert, waiting for their next exposure to warmth and humidity, and a chance to reproduce and kill. One of the flasks stayed in the lab, sitting in a smaller cryogenic container, about the size of an oil drum but somewhat taller, with an LED display showing the interior temperature.
It was something of a relief that his part in the drama would soon be over. Moudi stood by the door, watching the lesser personnel do their jobs, and probably they felt the same. Soon the twenty spray containers would be filled and removed from the building, and every square centimeter of the building would be rigorously cleaned, making everything safe again. The director would spend all of his time in his office, and Moudi—well, he couldn’t reappear at the WHO, could he? He was dead, after all, killed in the airplane crash just off the Libyan coast. Someone would have to generate a new identity and passport for him before he could travel again, assuming that he ever could. Or perhaps as a security measure—no, even the director wasn’t that ruthless, was he?
“HELLO, I’M CALLING for Dr. Ian MacGregor.”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“This is Dr. Lorenz at CDC Atlanta.”
“Wait, please.”
Gus had to wait for two minutes, by his watch, long enough to light his pipe and open a window. The younger staffers occasionally chided him about the habit, but he didn’t inhale, and it was good for thinking ...
“This is Dr. MacGregor,” a young voice said.
“This is Gus Lorenz in Atlanta.”
“Oh! How do you do, Professor?”
“How are your patients doing?” Lorenz asked from seven time zones away. He liked the sound of MacGregor, clearly working a little late. The good ones did a lot of that.
“The male patient isn’t doing well at all, I’m afraid. The child, however, is recovering nicely.”
“Indeed? Well, we examined the specimens you sent. Both contained the Ebola virus, Mayinga sub-strain.”
“You’re quite certain?” the younger man asked.
“No doubt about it, Doctor. I ran the tests myself.”
“I was afraid of that. I sent another set to Paris, but they haven’t got back to me yet.”
“I need to know a few things.” On his end of the line, Lorenz had a pad out. “Tell me more about your patients.”
“There’s a problem with that, Professor Lorenz,” MacGregor had to say. He didn’t know if the line might be bugged, but in a country like Sudan, it was not something he could discount. On the other hand, he had to say something, and so he started picking his way through the facts he could disclose.
“I SAW YOU on TV last night.” Dr. Alexandre had decided to see Cathy Ryan at lunch again for that very reason. He’d taken a liking to her. Who would have expected an eye cutter and laser jockey (for Alex, these were more mechanical specialties than the true medicine he practiced-even that profession had its rivalries, and he felt that way about almost all surgical specialties) to take an interest in genetics? Besides, she probably needed a friendly voice.
“That’s nice,” Caroline Ryan replied, looking down at her chicken salad as he took his seat. The bodyguard, Alexandre saw, merely looked unhappily tense.
“You did okay.”
“Think so?” She looked up, saying evenly: “I wanted to rip his face off.”
“Well, that didn’t quite come across. You were pretty supportive of your husband. You came across smart.”
“What is it with reporters? I mean, why—”
Alex smiled. “Doctor, when a dog urinates on a fire hydrant, he’s not committing vandalism. He’s just being a dog.” Roy Altman nearly choked on his drink.
“Neither one of us ever wanted this, you know?” she said, still unhappy enough to miss the jibe.
Professor Alexandre held his hands up in mock surrender. “Been there, done that, ma‘am. Hey, I never wanted to join the Army. They drafted me right out of med school. It turned out all right, making colonel and all. I found an interesting field to keep the brain busy, and it pays the bills, y’know?”
“I don’t get paid for this abuse!” Cathy objected, albeit with a smile.
“And your husband doesn’t get paid enough,” Alex added.
“He never has. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t just do the job for free, tu
rn the checks back in, just to make the point that he’s worth more than they pay him.”
“You think he would have made a good doc?”
Her eyes brightened. “I’ve told him that. Jack would have been a surgeon, I think—no, maybe something else, like what you’re in. He’s always liked poking around and figuring things out.”
“And saying what he thinks.”
That almost started a laugh. “Always!”
“Well, guess what? He comes across as a good guy. I’ve never met him, but I liked what I saw. Sure as hell he’s no politician, and maybe that’s not a bad thing once in a while. You want to lighten up a little, Doctor? What’s the worst thing that can happen? He leaves the job, goes back to whatever he wants to do—teaching, I guess from what he said—and you’re still a doc with a Lasker on the wall.”
“The worst thing that can happen—”
“You have Mr. Altman here to take care of that, don’t you?” Alexandre looked him over. “I imagine you’re big enough to stand in the way of the bullet.” The Secret Service agent didn’t reply, but his look at Alex told the tale. Yes, he’d stop one for his principal. “You guys can’t talk about this sort of thing, can you?”
“Yes, sir, we can, if you ask.” Altman had wanted to say this all day. He’d seen the TV special, too, and as had often happened before, there was light talk in the Detail this morning about popping a cap on the reporter in question. The Secret Service had a fantasy life, too. “Dr. Ryan, we like your family a lot, and I’m not just saying that to be polite, okay? We don’t always like our principals. But we like all of you.”
“Hey, Cathy.” It was Dean James, passing by with a smile and a wave.
“Hi, Dave.” Then she noted a few waves from faculty friends. So, she wasn’t as alone as she thought.
“Okay, Cathy, are you married to James Bond or what?” In a different context the question might have set her off, but Alexandre’s Creole eyes were twinkling at her.
