A Heartbeat Away

by Michael Palmer

  He looked over at Salitas for suggestions.

  “We need to think bigger, Mr. President,” Salitas, a graying MIT grad, said. “We should disrupt all communications—cellular, landline, Internet, TV broadcast, for say, a five-mile radius around the Capitol.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “We can try.”

  “And still allow me to broadcast to the people?”

  “With any luck.”

  “Do it.”

  Salitas crossed to the communications center at the far side of the room and began making calls.

  “Okay, it’s time,” Allaire said. “I’m going to brief you all. Soon I’ll share this information with the other victims out there.”

  “Victims?” HHS secretary Kate Broussard asked.

  “Yes, Kate. Victims. That’s what we are now. All of us.” He described the message on the teleprompter. “Assuming the exploding glass containers in those bags and briefcases contained aerosolized WRX3883, we must consider that every single person inside the Capitol tonight has been exposed or will soon be exposed to one degree or another.”

  “What on earth is WRX3883?” Broussard said.

  “It’s a biological agent we’ve been tracking for some time now.”

  From his position across the room, Salitas’s eyes narrowed. He gave what Allaire took to be a look of warning.

  “Whose biological agent? Are we talking Al Qaeda?” Admiral Jakes managed to ask between sudden spasms of coughing.

  “No. Genesis has taken credit for this one. It’s a virus we know about, though. Apparently they stole it.”

  “Why weren’t we made aware of this before? What does it do?”

  “I’m sorry, Archie. I chose to keep all information about the virus in house until we knew more of what we had. The microbe was ours. It was initially developed at Columbia University in New York. We took it over and were working on it at a Level Four containment facility in Kansas. About nine months ago, I pulled the plug on the project. Apparently, Genesis found a way to steal some.”

  “Well, now that it’s been released, how real is the threat to public health?” Broussard asked.

  Once again, Allaire and Salitas exchanged minuscule glances.

  “This is a flu variant,” Allaire said. “It … um … attacks respiratory functions much the same way a flu virus would, only more rapidly.”

  Broussard, a Ph.D. in immunology, frowned.

  “So this is like weapons-grade flu?” she said. “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s not a type A flu virus, specifically,” Allaire said, assuming Broussard would know that type A influenza was the only one of the three classes of the virus that had ever caused a pandemic.

  Vice President Henry Tilden spoke for the first time.

  “What can we expect? Symptoms? Spread? Outcome? Is this like SARS?”

  Tilden, a former senator from Alabama, had come close to defeating Allaire in the primaries before his first election, and had been appointed as his running mate as a political concession to Southern conservatives. He was respected for his laconic wit and his cool under fire, but like most of the vice presidents before him, had all but disappeared from sight during his first term.

  “I don’t know, Henry. I intend to contact our experts at the Centers for Disease Control.”

  Hank Tomlinson, the sturdily built Capitol Police chief, pushed himself to his feet.

  “And just how did somebody manage to sneak this virus inside the Capitol and detonate fifteen weapons?” he asked. “There was only one entrance open, and we had our most sophisticated screening equipment in operation. In addition, we did an inspection of every bag or briefcase.”

  “Well, Hank,” Allaire said, “as head of the security unit here, that’s something I expect you to figure out.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tomlinson muttered.

  He took his seat and kept his eyes fixed on his hands.

  “We’ve got to tackle this like any crisis situation,” Allaire said, “and that means first things first. I promise you, we will overcome this challenge. And we’ll do it together.”

  “What do you need us to do, Jim?” Tilden asked.

  “While we’re in this waiting game for data about the virus, we need to focus our efforts on two fronts: people and communication. The perception that the entire U.S. government is in imminent danger will send the global economy into a tailspin. We need to minimize that as much as possible.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Craft a message, Henry. You can use my speechwriters if you need them. Let the world know that we’re going to be okay, but until we’re absolutely sure there is no immediate public danger of the virus spreading, we’re going to err on the side of caution. You can say there was an exposure to a highly contagious pathogen. But our microbiologists are hard at work identifying it, and breaking it down. Let the people know that we’re going to be okay, but we need time to complete our thorough assessment.”

  “Got it,” Tilden said, seeming actually buoyed to have been given the responsibility.

  Allaire watched as the man furiously wrote down notes.

  “Work with Megan on this, Henry. Let me read what you have when you’re ready. We’ll use Connie Lawson from NBC to break the story. She’s got the right demeanor to keep facts ahead of emotions.”

  Admiral Jakes raised his hand.

  “Mr. President, I will mobilize—” He stopped to cough—deep and wet.

  “—mobilize the military,” Allaire finished for him.

  Jakes, in his mid-sixties, looked gray and almost glassy-eyed. Broussard and McAndrew, seated on either side, subconsciously slid their chairs away an inch or two, and glanced over at him with mixtures of apprehension and revulsion. Allaire nodded at Salitas, who ended a phone call and brought the admiral a cup of water.

  “I want to divide everybody out there into three groups. Each group will be relocated to a different room within the Capitol complex to facilitate resource distribution. Admiral, I would like you to be the leader for the C Group. You’ll mobilize in the Senate Chamber and set up operations there. Assign the other chiefs to help with each group, and also the Capitol Police.”

  “Who will be in my group?” Jakes asked.

  “Gary and I will personally oversee the group designations. We’ll need a little time to complete the list.”

  Uneasy looks were exchanged. Allaire sensed the team thought his chosen task was unbefitting a president in the midst of a crisis situation. But they could not know that at the moment, the assignment he had given to himself and Salitas was the most important of all.

  “What should we do in the interim?” the admiral managed.

  He coughed again. A sheen of perspiration had materialized across his forehead.

  “Make a list of supplies you think you will need,” Allaire went on. “Kate, I’d like you to lead Group B and Henry will take the A Group. A Group can stay in the House Chamber, and we’ll move people assigned to Group B into Statuary Hall. Confer among yourselves as to what you think we’ll need for a twenty-four to forty-eight-hour stay. Enlist help from the rest of the Cabinet and anyone else you wish. Megan will act as my liaison. I’ll leave it up to you to work out bathroom usage, but it’s important that we don’t mix the groups as we move people around.”

  “Why is that?” Broussard asked.

  “For inventory control, Kate. We’ll manage our supplies by group size and we don’t want people thinking they can freely migrate between them.”

  The Health and Human Services secretary did not look as if she were buying Allaire’s plan any more than his explanation of what they were up against.

  “Yes, Jim,” she said through nearly closed lips.

  Sean O’Neil was instructed to mobilize the Secret Service agents to maintain security.

  “Report back to me as you make progress. Megan, please make an announcement that in twenty minutes I’ll address the House Chamber. At that time I’ll give an update on our statu
s and share our plans to take care of everyone while we’re sorting things out.”

  The White House chief of staff nodded.

  “Jordan and Hank, stay here for a few minutes. You, too, Doc. The rest of you have your assignments. Stay calm, delegate to others, and remain in control of the situation. You are the leaders here. I expect you to lead. Good luck.”

  With the press of a button, the hydraulics concealing the Hard Room kicked in and opened the wall.

  Gary Salitas remained behind as well, though he had not been asked. The room emptied out, and the hydraulic doors closed. Those asked to remain took their seats again.

  The president sighed, then inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.

  “Well, my friends,” he began, “I need to start by saying that what I just shared in this room is not exactly the truth.”

  CHAPTER 6

  DAY 1

  10:05 P.M. (EST)

  Angela Fletcher had ridden only half of her daily ten miles on the stationary bike when the high-def broadcast of the State of the Union Address on her new Sony went dark. Using the remote, she switched channels on her cable box, but got the same black screen on all the networks. Other channels, those not broadcasting the president’s address, seemed to be working perfectly. The major networks, however, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News included, were all broadcasting the same thing, which was nothing at all.

  From her perch atop the bike, surrounded by a mélange of houseplants, every one of which she could name, Angie turned her set off, then on again, and did the same with the cable box. In that time, the stations managed to display their version of a technical difficulty announcement, letting viewers know they were working on the problem.

  Angie hopped off the bike and crossed her airy living room to the kitchen, where she grabbed a bottle of vitamin-enhanced flavored water from the fridge. At thirty-eight, despite her disciplined vegetarian lifestyle and deep knowledge of herbs and nutrition, she knew her metabolism had begun to slow. The changes in her hips told her so every day, even though it was likely that she was the only one aware of them.

  The bike and a set of weights were her way of battling back. Best of all, for someone who struggled to sit through most movies, plays, and concerts, the equipment allowed her to multitask to her heart’s content. E-mail and riding. CNN and lifting. Reading and pedaling. Unless she were asleep, at the most five hours a night, she always seemed to be doing something, and something else at the same time. That trait had been a constant source of dismay and even annoyance to her boyfriend, Bill Collins. But had been were the operative words now that Collins was a thing of her past.

  On her way back into the living room, Angie grabbed her BlackBerry to check e-mail. Nothing about the loss of signal had arrived in her inbox. Just the usual digital mountain of PR pitches from some of the brightest minds in science. They all wanted the same thing—a story in her paper, The Washington Post, and more important, for the paper’s respected science reporter, Angie Fletcher, to cover whatever latest breakthrough or discovery they felt needed covering.

  Angie tried the television again. Nothing new. She had voted for Allaire, as had most of her friends, and like them, she had been looking forward to tonight’s speech. She loved that his background was at least as much about medicine and science as it was about politics. In addition, his oratory skills could make a laundry list sound important, so Angie felt more than a little disappointed to be missing any part of the first State of the Union message of his second term.

  Figuring that Webcasts might be working, she used her BlackBerry and tried CNN.com and then her own paper’s Web site. Both ran virtually identical headlines in bold lettering: Broadcast Interruption at State of the Union Address. Utterly curious now, Angie checked, but could not find, any links to a more detailed explanation.

  It had been six months or so since she had moved from Georgetown to the refurbished brownstone in the highly desirable Dupont Circle area of D.C. Her neighbor in 2B, the unit directly below her one-bedroom condo, worked at the White House, and Angie considered asking if he had heard anything unusual going on at the Capitol. Instead, she decided to towel off and cab it.

  She darted into the kitchen, still clutching her BlackBerry, then suddenly paused to grab a spray bottle from the counter to spritz her herb garden, which seemed nearly ready to harvest, at least the mint anyway. The queen of ADD, Collins had called her, more than once. So what, she thought, racing into the bedroom to throw on a pair of slacks and a bulky fisherman’s sweater.

  She hurried back into the living room and over to Horace, on whom she kept her coat, hat, and gloves. The movers had said nothing about hauling an adult human skeleton, but she did notice them exchanging uneasy glances when they unpacked him.

  Over the months she had dated Collins, a lobbyist for the insurance industry, he continually found it odd that she had a skeleton in her living room, and that her cluttered bedroom looked like a college dorm. But she assured him that Horace had everything to do with an innate curiosity for all things biological and not some Goth fetish he needed to fear, and that her bedroom was always impeccably neat—just not when he happened to be there.

  Collins’s lack of appreciation for Horace should have been a sign right from the start, but he was urbane, witty, and handsome as hell—clearly in the top ten of D.C. eligibles, as her girlfriends had ranked him. That was undoubtedly why she had hung on as long as she did, although ultimately, it was he who had decided they should “see other people.” As tired as Angie was of dating, and as anxious as she was to connect with a mate for life, and as aware as she was of the statistics on maternal age and fertility, the breakup was a two-ton weight off of her back.

  She slipped her toasty peacoat off of Horace’s shoulders and grabbed the red wool cap from the top of his stand. There was something going on at the Capitol complex. She could feel it. Her instinct for news was what made her one of the most sought-after reporters at The Post. She understood that any story breaking on Capitol Hill would be covered by the political and national teams, and would probably have nothing to do with her expertise in science and technology. But the thought of missing out on an event unfolding in her own backyard was unacceptable, and the sudden, specific, universal loss of signal from the State of the Union screamed “Event!”

  Having decided to spring for a cab, she was searching for her purse underneath the piles of stuff on her kitchen chairs, when her phone rang. She frowned at the name on her caller ID. Before she met Bill, it had been John Davis, chief of staff to one of the more powerful congressmen on the Hill. Davis had pursued Angie with such intensity that it made her at first uninterested and soon, uneasy. He had not called since her last plea just a few months ago that as nice as he was, it simply wasn’t going to happen between them—especially since she was dating someone else. She let his call go to voicemail.

  Then he called again.

  Strange, even for someone as persistent as John, she thought. He had to know she was watching the president’s speech. In fact, unless he had been fired, he had to be at the president’s speech. Perhaps he had lost the signal and did not get put through to voicemail. When he called for a third time, she answered.

  “John?”

  “Angie! Thank God you’re there,” Davis said in a coarse whisper. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

  It sounded as though he were afraid somebody might overhear.

  “John, what’s going on? I’m on my way to the Capitol right now to see why all the broadcasts have gone dead.”

  She located her purse, grabbed the brush on the chair beside it, and pulled it twice through her shoulder-length hair—reddish brown that day, and most of the time. Then she gathered it back in a ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie, flashing for a pleasurable moment on how annoyed Collins was when she wore it that way.

  “I don’t think you’ll get within five hundred yards of this place,” Davis was saying, “but I need your help. I think I may have been exposed to something. We all have.”


  “We all? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m at the Capitol and I’m talking about everybody at the State of the Union Address having been exposed to something biological, a virus, Allaire said.”

  “Oh my God!” The news sent Angie’s heart racing. “Are you all right?”

  “For now, maybe. But I’ve started coughing and I’m really freaking out. We all are.”

  “Hang on a second.”

  She pulled on her peacoat and hat, and grabbed one of the ubiquitous spiral-bound notebooks that dotted the landscape of her life.

  “You still there?” Davis asked.

  “I’m here, I’m here. Now try to calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know. It was some sort of biological weapon or something, we’ve been told. Allaire said Genesis has something to do with it.”

  “Damn. John, I can barely hear you. Can you speak up?”

  “I can’t. I don’t want to be spotted. The Secret Service and Capitol Police are confiscating all our cell phones. I’m guessing Allaire doesn’t want to start a panic.”

  “Is that why the broadcast went dark?”

  “I didn’t know it had.”

  With her phone tucked beneath her ear, Angie rubbed on some ChapStick, scribbled some notes in a shorthand only she could decipher, and turned the television back on. CNN was reporting only that something had occurred inside the House Chamber and they were working hard to get more information. Someone’s grainy, shaky cell phone transmission filled the screen.

  Angie heard sirens blaring in the background and watched with widening eyes as the commotion unfolding within the camera’s view intensified. She remembered having the same sickening feeling when the first reports of the 9/11 attacks began trickling in. Something truly horrible was taking place now as it did back then.

  “Where are you exactly, John?” she asked. “What sort of attack was it? Is anybody hurt? When did it happen?”