by John Whitman
Jack lay down on the table, filled his lungs with air, and let out a huge breath. Thirty minutes, he said to himself. Think of all the times thirty minutes was too short. Let this not be one of those times.
11:29 A.M. PST Century Plaza Hotel, West Los Angeles
The real meetings didn’t even take place at the Federal Building. The eight world leaders would have a perfunctory meeting at the Federal Building later in the day, but the real work would take place in secluded rooms far from the noise of contention. The protestors had chosen the Federal Building as a symbol of governmental abuse, and because the Century Plaza Hotel was private property and so the owners could deny them access without cause.
So while thousands gathered on all sides of the Federal Building, half a mile away at the Century Plaza Hotel, in a conference room guarded by multiple rings of security, eight men who controlled massive areas of the globe sat in discussion about the future of the world.
Well, thought President Barnes, not really eight. After all, the G8 still included France and Italy, for Christ’s sake, and neither one of those “powers” was going to shake the world any time soon. But there was German Chancellor Gerhardt Schlessinger sitting across the table from him, and Russian President Novartov to his right, and those were men to be reckoned with. Japanese Prime Minister Kokushi Matsumoto, always a strong ally, was stationed to Barnes’s left, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Christopher Straw, sat at the far end of the table. Straw, of course, might as well have been in Barnes’s pocket.
French President Jacques Martin was, as usual, talking. “…I want the language on the environment revised by our staff,” he intoned in his heavily accented baritone. “If it is not, we will issue our own statement. I want it clear that France considers these environmental concerns to be important.”
Russian President Novartov smiled. He had the hungry look of a predator. His smile came across as a threat. “Wasn’t it France that blew up a Greenpeace vessel?”
“Years ago.” Martin brushed the comment aside. “The environmental constituency grows. I want them to know we are acting.”
Barnes raised a finger. “You want them to think we are acting,” he corrected. “We all know that the only real issue on the table at this summit is China.”
China. The word hung in the air like an impolite comment the group could neither ignore nor accept. China was the loutish neighbor down the street that no one wanted to invite to the party, but everyone wanted to be friends with.
“Look,” Christopher Straw said obsequiously, “let’s take this down to brass tacks, shall we? We’re not really letting them in without addressing the human rights issues, are we? I can’t imagine voting for it.”
“I find myself agreeing with the Prime Minister,” Novartov said, as though the fact surprised him. “China still has much change to do in its human rights record before sitting at the table.”
Schlessinger of Germany shifted in his seat. “This is a waste of time. We will all have our finance ministers, our trade representatives, and others, debate the real issues of the day. You know as well as I that China will not be denied.”
“I do not know it,” Novartov replied curtly. But he softened his tone almost immediately. “But, in the end, I will listen to our collective wisdom, of course.”
“The world turns, Mr. President,” Martin rumbled. “It will not be stopped.”
Barnes sat back in his chair. He wasn’t comfortable with philosophical talk; he especially disliked Martin’s pompous French pseudo-intellectualism. But he also knew the Frenchman was right. China was coming at them all like a tidal wave, and if it wasn’t invited into the G8 it would eventually make the G8 obsolete.
Of course, there were other truths floating around, unspoken truths. Like the fact that Russia couldn’t care less about China’s human rights record. Russia wanted to exclude China because the two countries’ rivalry went back decades, and Novartov had no interest in allowing his hated opponent to the southeast to grow any stronger if he could help it. The Russian President’s gut reaction — snapping at Schlessinger — interested Barnes more than his soft-sell follow-up. He wondered what Novartov had in mind for his next move. The human rights issue was a convenient cover for all of them to use — it allowed them to bully China (if China could be bullied at all) into making trade concessions.
“But again, the environment,” Martin began when no one else spoke up. “You must be aware that five thousand people came up from South America, mostly from Brazil. Cinq milles! It is unheard of, is it not? Brazil will be the next to force a seat at our table. We must control the environmental issue now.”
Novartov laughed. “I will pay attention to the issue when the trees can vote.”
“If they haven’t all been cut down by then,” Barnes said darkly.
11:35 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack stared at the tubes sticking into his abdomen. A diluted saline solution was still flowing into his body, creating pressure around his stomach. He imagined the solution mixing with his blood, filtering out the chemical transmitter. It tingled, but that was only in his head. He’d received a local anesthetic so there was no pain, but his mind still created the ghost of a feeling. The brain simply could not acknowledge the fact of foreign objects injected into the membrane lining his organs without attaching some sensation to it.
Six minutes on the machine. Twenty-four minutes to go.
The conference room phone beeped. Before it rang a second time, Henderson was in the room. “You’ll want to hear this.”
He slapped the speaker box and said, “Go ahead, Tony. I have Jack.”
“Hey, Bauer,” Tony said fuzzily.
“Tony, you sound like hell.”
“Thanks. Damn, my nose is bleeding again, hold on.” There was a pause. They heard Tony shuffling around. Then he came back on. “I’m back. Jack, I found the mole.”
Jack’s eyes lit up. “Hold on to him for twenty-three more minutes.”
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere. That’s the problem. I noticed something going on the video monitors down here. He clubbed me. I’d be dead if it weren’t for the other surveillance guy here, McKey. He fought Dyson — that’s the subject — until I came to. I put Dyson down, but he’s not regaining consciousness. He might be in a coma.”
Jack bit his lip. This was the lead he needed. More work had gone into this one clue than anyone around him knew. He wished Tony had had the foresight to put on kid gloves, but he couldn’t blame Almeida for fighting to survive. “Don’t worry about it,” he said with difficulty. “What do we have to go on? Are we digging into his background?”
“I have Jessi Bandison on it,” Chris said. “So far, no connections to al-Libbi. But something will turn up.”
“What triggered the attack?” Jack asked. “You’ve been with those guys all morning, right? There must have been something specific.”
“I was about to sound the alarm… oh, shit!” Tony yelled, as though he’d just remembered something. “My brain must still be fractured. I was reaching for the phone to call because I saw that detective, what’s her name, Bennet? She was grabbed.” In his still-quavering voice, Almeida described Mercy Bennet’s kidnapping.
Jack tried to will the frustration out of his body. “This never would have happened if she hadn’t come to meet with me. I should have done a better job of dodging her.”
Tony said, “I’ve already been in contact with LAPD. They’re on the lookout for the blue van, but the angle was too bad for us to get a license plate. They gave me the information Bennet was focused on.” Tony told Jack that Theodore Ozersky, a.k.a. Willow, had been taken into custody, and he passed along the name of Frankie Michaelmas.
“Okay,” Jack said. “We need to deal with Ozersky eventually. Is he cooling his heels for now?”
“He’s okay, there’s no hurry there,” Tony said. “I’m taking Agent Dyson to the hospital. I might have myself checked out, too.”
“Good,�
� Henderson said. “Keep us informed if he comes around.”
“We should add in Gordon Gleed,” Jack said. “He’s deceased. That’s the murder that started her investigation. There’s bound to be some connection.”
Chris Henderson scowled. “Well, then, we’d better get our asses in gear. There’s a terrorist plot happening tonight, and we don’t have a clue yet what it is.”
Jack looked at the tubes in his stomach and growled like a caged animal.
Twenty minutes left.
11:40 A.M. PST West Los Angeles
He sat back in his chair. He slipped a maracuja leaf into his mouth and chewed it slowly. The Spanish had called the maracuja “passionflower” because the broad white flowers somehow reminded the conquistadores of the Passions of Christ. The native population was much more practical, of course, and had long understood the maracuja’s natural properties. When taken in large doses, it acted as a sedative. In smaller quantities, such as he now absorbed, the maracuja had a pleasant, tranquilizing effect.
There was a small GPS tracker on the table next to him. The tiny blue dot was stationary at a location corresponding to CTU headquarters. He recalibrated the device, and a tiny red dot appeared at the Federal Building. Both Jack Bauer and his daughter were being well behaved.
He had just received a call from some of his operatives. Detective Mercy Bennet was in hand, and currently being transported to one of his two remaining safe houses in Los Angeles — the first having been used up during his temporary imprisonment of Jack Bauer. The involvement of CTU and the investigation by the LAPD both caused him anxiety, but now he felt the maracuja’s chemicals easing through his body like ice water flowing into his veins, and he relaxed. He wondered if he should have killed Jack Bauer. He was not squeamish; he had killed people before, but only when necessary, and he had not perceived it as necessary to kill the CTU agent. It was almost beyond the realm of possibility that CTU or any other government agency could discover his purpose. Few of his own people knew his real name or his whereabouts, and they were true believers. None would betray him willingly. By tomorrow, of course, everyone would know him, but by then he would be safely out of the country. He only needed to delay CTU for a few more hours.
No, it wasn’t Jack Bauer who disturbed him most. It was the LAPD detective who had thrown a monkey wrench into his own plans. He had her under wraps now, but how long would that last? Her absence would soon be noticed.
The man shrugged. Maybe it was the effects of the maracuja, but he found himself adopting a very Zen quality. The day would play out as fate would have it.
He picked up a vial that lay on the table next to the GPS. Its contents were clear liquid, basically water, but this was water no one should drink. In that liquid swam one of the most aggressive viruses nature had ever manufactured, a hemorrhagic fever so violent that it would kill a human being within hours. He had learned to weaken its strain ever so slightly. The smaller, weaker strains killed within a day, and they could be destroyed inside the body if the antidote were delivered on time. It was this smaller, weaker cousin that he had introduced into Kim Bauer’s body. She might feel ill, but she was in no real danger for another day.
11:45 A.M. PST Federal Plaza, West Los Angeles
As far as Kim Bauer was concerned, the demonstration was a bust. The weather had grown much warmer than anyone expected, she was surrounded by hot and sweaty people (none of whom, as far as she could tell, had bathed), and Brad Gilmore had turned out to be a major league dork. And to top it all off, she felt like she was coming down with something.
“I’m burning up,” she said to Janet York, one of her best friends, who looked as bored with Teen Green as she felt.
“I’m so sticky it’s disgusting,” Janet said, tugging at her shirt to air herself out. “How much longer?”
Kim checked her watch. “We’re supposed to stay during school hours if we want credit on the political science project.”
Janet rolled her eyes. “As if.” She glanced at their chaperone, Marshall Cooper, who was busy separating Brad Gilmore and another boy who had begun to wrestle for no apparent reason. “You want to skip out? We can hit the mall or whatever.”
Kim touched her forehead and felt beads of sweat. That is so attractive, she thought sarcastically. “Maybe skip out, but I don’t think I want to go shopping or anything. Let’s just get out of here.”
11:51 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack’s cell phone rang. “Bauer.”
“Agent Bauer.”
It was the voice of his former captor. “What?” he demanded. He waved to Henderson and motioned for him to track the call. Henderson nodded and ran silently out of the room, hailing Jamey Farrell as he did so.
“I want to express my appreciation that you’re being a good boy. I trust you haven’t told anyone about our little arrangement.”
Jack glanced at all the people working around him. “Not a soul,” he lied.
“Unfortunately, it seems your daughter isn’t behaving quite so well. I trust she’s not being taken to a hospital?”
Jack frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What I’m talking about is the fact that your daughter has now left the Federal Building and is heading west on Wilshire Boulevard. I want to remind you, Agent Bauer, that I am not bluffing. No doctor you find in Los Angeles will have a cure for the fever she’s about to contract. Once her symptoms start, she’ll be dead before they can even diagnose it.”
“I haven’t talked to Kim in over an hour,” Jack replied. “Maybe she’s just going to get lunch.”
“We’ll see. If she travels more than one mile from the Federal Building, you’ll never hear from me again.”
The phone clicked off. Henderson came back in, and Jack knew by the look on his face that they hadn’t had time to trace the call.
He slammed his fist onto the table. Three more minutes.
11:55 A.M. PST Federal Plaza
Kim hadn’t walked far when her phone rang. “Hey, Dad,” she said.
“Kim, listen, I had to run to the office for a minute, but I’m coming back soon. You’re still there, right?”
“Where else would I be?” Kim said.
Bauer grinned wryly. He couldn’t fault his daughter for being a good liar. He was pretty accomplished himself. “Great,” he lied back. “I just want to check up on you. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Kim snapped her phone shut and sighed at Janet. “Guess I’m sticking around.”
11:56 A.M. PST Minas Gerais, Brazil
Rickson Aruna waddled up to the house of Constantine Noguera. It wasn’t quite noon yet and already his hip was hurting him. He was getting too old to be the constable of the village, but of course no one else would do the job. They all said it was because he, Rickson, had performed so ably over the years, but in truth it was because no one else wanted to bother. The town was dirty, the pay was low, and most people considered him more of a gossip than a policeman. And, of course, when he did need to act as a policeman, the cause was far too serious for most of these peasants: there were disturbances caused by the drunken antics of the timber cutters, and now and then the protests and sabotage of the environmentalists.
Usually with the environmentalists and the timber cutters it was political, and the federal police became involved. At these times Rickson was eager to step aside. He was a caretaker of the town, not a defender of the forest. He did not like the timber people — he had grown up in a town farther up the river, but now that whole area was clear cut, and erosion had washed half the land into the water. But he was only one man, and he was not inclined to fight the powerful companies from the north.
But the silence from Constantine Noguera’s house, that was something he could deal with. Rickson rapped his knuckles on the rough-boarded door of Noguera’s house. “Constantine!” he called. “How drunk can you be?”
There was no answer, not even a groan from inside.
Rickson pound
ed on the door again. “Constantine, get up! No one has seen you all day. Come out. The sun will do your hangover some good!”
Again there was no answer. Once more Rickson pounded on the door. This was too much for the old door. The lock broke and the door creaked open. Rickson Aruna found himself staring into Noguera’s little shack, with its front room that served as a kitchen and living room and its one back room for sleeping. The stench of decaying flesh assaulted Rickson’s nostrils and he staggered back. Rickson braced himself and entered, pushing through the stink until he reached the bedroom. When he got there he gagged, choking back bile. His nose had already told him Noguera was dead, but he was not prepared for what he saw: Noguera’s body lay on his bed. The flesh looked as if it had turned to slag on the bones, and huge pustules had erupted all over the body.
Terrified, Rickson tried to hold his breath. He had seen these marks once before, when he was a child and the disease had swept through his village. This was in a time long before modern doctors and medicines. He did not know if the doctors had a name for this disease, or if they had even heard of it. But the old women of his childhood knew it. They called it uña de gato.
6. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
12:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack Bauer practically pulled the tubes out of his body himself.
“Hey, let that finish draining!” Dr. Viatour yelled. Thirty minutes after injecting the dialysis solution into his body, the doctors had drained it away, filling a clear plastic tube with a disgusting-looking, bile-colored liquid.
Dr. Viatour said, “This is the solution post-filtering. In theory, it’s filtered impurities out of your blood, including this chemical marker, whatever it is.”
“What do you mean, in theory?” Jack asked.
Viatour shrugged. “Well, peritoneal dialysis works. It’s performed all the time. But usually it’s done three or four times a day for patients with kidney dysfunction. I don’t know anything about this chemical marker, so I can’t tell you if one treatment has done the trick.”
