Cold Silence

by James Abel

  Stubborn then. Stubborn now, Dad told her these days. But at seventeen, the words had carried anger. When he said it now, from back in Alabama, it was with enormous pride.

  Oh, Aya.

  And then, after the birth, the terror when baby Aya had to be put on a respirator. The helplessness when Aya, age six, fell off a bike and broke her arm. The swelling feeling in her chest when the dental braces came off, and the teeth gleamed, white and straight. Aya was a straight-A kid now, popular, smart, a Web genius, and her phone rang at night with calls from boys who asked about more than homework. Aya going on group dates. Aya eyeing a Princeton University catalog last week. Aya saying, I want to be like you, Mom, and help people. I want to figure out genomes. But I can start now. You don’t have to be rich to do DNA research. A PCR costs only six hundred dollars.”

  “PCR?”

  Aya rolled her eyes, as in, You don’t know what it is? “It’s polymerase chain reaction, a way to heat up and cool down material. I know a guy at Genspace, the community lab in Anacostia? He built one with a lightbulb, an old computer fan, some PVC pipe, and an old Ardvino board.”

  When did my daughter start speaking this new language?

  Chris was awed. “Very impressive.”

  Aya saying something else now, pivoting from one subject to another. Aya saying, “Are you going to go out with Joe Rush? You should.”

  —

  The heat flooded her face. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. How did the kid come up with this stuff? Chris was sure that she’d hidden her feelings, but the face looking up at her, heart-shaped, blue eyes, cute copper-colored freckles, was canny, teasing, bright.

  “Aya, where did that question come from?”

  “I heard you talking on the phone this morning to Mr. Burke. I wasn’t eavesdropping! I was just passing the kitchen and I heard you say Joe’s name.”

  Joe. She called Dr. Rush Joe. She’d only met him once, when Chris brought her to Homeland Security on Parent-Kid Day. Aya glommed on to the guy. Even checked out Rush on the Net and somehow came up with a photo of his house in the woods and a group shot of soldiers in Afghanistan. The kid was an amazing researcher. But when it came to Rush, Chris would prefer that Aya laid off. Just the thought of Rush came with a flood of unwanted emotion, which she fought to keep off her face.

  I’m in love with a man who kills people. And his background seems common enough knowledge at the top. Boy, I sure know how to pick them.

  She wasn’t sure how the feeling for Rush had happened. She didn’t even see Rush that much, only in committee, a few hours every few months. Chemistry, that was easy to explain—the way her breath caught when he walked into a room, the way his shaving cream left a whiff of lime in his wake. The quiet way he moved and the way, when he was interested in something, he was razor focused. She’d spotted him alone one Sunday night during the Cherry Blossom Festival, 11 P.M., at the Jefferson Memorial, when she was showing out-of-town friends the sights, and he looked tormented and lonely, staring at the slogans cut into stone. The Lincoln Memorial was the famous one, the Parthenon of D.C., always shown in movies. But the Jefferson had always been her favorite, softer, almost hidden in trees, quiet, by the tidal pool. Joe had been staring at the words cut into white stone. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively. Then he had spotted her and smiled, looked embarrassed, and his mask went back into place.

  Rush emanated confidence when he knew other people were there. Yet something bleak and pained was inside.

  Chris had never had a problem acknowledging her animal side, and her animal side wanted him. In meetings she’d been struck by the way Rush saw things from different angles, and the way he did not back down when he thought he was right. She was drawn to the maverick. She liked conviction. Her instinct told her, in spite of the terrible things she’d read about him, that he was kind, a sense bolstered by the loyalty that Major Nakamura and Admiral Galli and Galli’s wife, Cindy, had for Rush.

  How can Rush be guilty of the things that Burke showed me in the file?

  “Mom, are you listening?” asked Aya.

  “One hundred percent, honey. I am so proud!”

  “Is Joe Rush coming back to Washington today?”

  “What?” She jerked. Chris hoped her daughter didn’t see the heat rising in her face, sense the warmth in her belly. “How do you know that?”

  “You said so on the phone. You like Joe, don’t you? I do. Girls think he’s cute.”

  “What girls?”

  “That time you brought me to the office, the secretaries were, like, swooning over him.”

  “Don’t say ‘like,’ I said. And I enjoy being with everyone on the committee, not just Dr. Rush.”

  “That’s not true. You don’t like Burke.”

  “He can be difficult, I admit. But he’s dedicated. Where do you get these ideas anyway?”

  “Are you going to go out with Joe?” A giggle.

  “You don’t date people you work with.”

  “How come you get quiet when his name comes up?”

  “Concentrate on your exhibit, young lady.”

  “Whenever you call me ‘young lady,’ it means I’m right!”

  Her physical reaction to Rush had started the first time she’d seen him, across a conference table. Bam! What was that expression from that old film? The Godfather? The thunderbolt? That was it. Over the head! And working with him had only deepened the feeling. She had dreams about him. Her breathing caught when he entered a room. One time on M Street she’d gotten excited just looking at a male mannequin in a shop window wearing the same pullover sweater that he did. Ridiculous! And last Christmas she’d been in the Macy’s Men’s Department, and some salesman had been spraying guys with Rush’s aftershave. The smell had hit her and . . . stupid!

  “Earth to Mom!”

  “I’m listening!”

  “Yeah? Then what did I just say?”

  “I did not come here to be tested, Aya!”

  Why was it, Chris asked herself, strolling again, looking at exhibits, why was it that with other guys after her, great guys, accomplished, smart, funny guys, athletes, a Nobel Prize–winning biologist, that Czech actor from the hit film Mrazek’s Island, all those guys calling her up, sending funny or cute e-mails, or flowers, why did she have to fall for a semihermit with secrets, just because something inside her turned to mush when he came near?

  Even in normal times, he didn’t notice her, not in the way she’d prefer to be noticed, at least by him. He was polite and deferential, just as he was to everyone else, except Burke. He ran into her once at the Kennedy Center and barely said hello. Cindy Galli had sensed her frustration, girl to girl, and since Joe and Eddie stayed in the admiral’s guest house when in D.C., Cindy had cooked a group dinner once, invited Chris, seated her beside Joe, prompted conversation with the sort of questions that a smart hostess asks when she wants two guests to hook up.

  Nothing. Joe had poured her wine, asked about Aya, listened with interest to the story about Vietnamese refugees refusing to take pills that were colored red, then excused himself and went off to bed early as he’d been up since 3 A.M. on a National Park Service evacuation—a New Mexican hiker who’d come down with hantavirus. The guy had zero interest in her. Cindy had told Chris that night, at the door, that Joe had lost his fiancée last year. “He needs time,” Cindy had said. “He’s a great person. He’s worth the wait. So are you.”

  Idiot! Fool! Can’t you go for appropriate people, ever? I mean, she thought wryly, look at my history. First, the high school football player with the brains of an antelope. Then the married college TA who I stayed away from, because married guys are wrong, but I still had the crush, so I never went out with anyone else. One at a time. Then the Olympic swim champion who told me—four weeks into it—that he regarded women as gold medals. For six years, a few dates b
ut nothing special . . . and now I fall for the killer in the file.

  You go, girl.

  As she looked over an exhibit titled, HOW GLOBAL WARMING CHANGES OCEAN CURRENTS, she recalled the way Burke had tried to poison the well for Rush a month ago.

  Chris had been in his office to eye evacuation protocols: Congress, White House, Supreme Court, how to move government if the capital was threatened. Plans were made during the Cold War, when the threat was nuclear, and were updated annually, as the nature of threats grew and changed.

  “In a protocol 80, you’d stay in the city,” Burke had said.

  “But my daughter could get out first, right? There’d be advance warning. I could send her to my dad.”

  “Chris, you know the deal. If there’s advance warning, yes. If not, we’re inside. But these plans have been around since the 1950s. Send her to Alabama, you can get a tornado. Tampa? Hurricanes! Eighty is a precaution, nothing more.”

  Burke had gone back to details, which highways would be blocked off while motorcades made their way to the underground facility at Mount Weather, Virginia. Who goes if the President decides to stick things out in Washington. Who stays if the President leaves.

  And then, excusing himself, Burke had “accidentally” left a manila file on his desk when he went to the bathroom. COLONEL JOSEPH RUSH in big black letters, sitting there, by Burke’s Remington statuette, just a foot away. She’d opened the folder. She’d been unable to help herself. She’d felt manipulated and guilty. No one’s fucking perfect, she’d told herself, knowing perfectly well that Burke would give her a few minutes to do what he wanted before wandering back.

  When she’d seen the highlighted passages, her face had gone hot.

  When Burke returned, his eyes flickered to the file, lying exactly as she’d found it. Burke’s expression satisfied. Burke knowing that she’d looked.

  COLONEL RUSH ADMITTED BEING PRESENT WHEN THE SUSPECT WAS TORTURED. HE PARTICIPATED IN THE . . .

  And, another page, another incident, ALTHOUGH NORWEGIAN POLICE NEVER ID’D THE KILLER, RUSH ADMITTED, DURING THE DEBRIEFING IN WASHINGTON, TO STRANGLING . . . HUSHED UP . . . BEST FOR ALL CONCERNED IF . . .

  I’m so stupid, she thought now. I’m making excuses for him and I don’t even know what occurred.

  The problem was, Burke didn’t lie, and she’d glimpsed the file for only forty seconds. So what had really happened? What was the unhighlighted part? Why did Burke hate Rush so much? Or was Chris blinded by chemistry?

  In love with a killer, she thought again.

  —

  Over the last two days, after the initial call from Nevada, Burke had forced changes—ordering more FBI help, shuffling staff, sharpening control in case the emergency spread. Good precautions, Chris thought, because she’d seen close up, in the Ebola outbreak in 2014, how a lack of coordination could make a manageable situation wild.

  Right now it’s only eleven dead in Nevada and forty-five in Somalia, awful, but hopefully containable, although someone’s going to have to tell the families of those soldiers and civilians who died.

  Nine minutes until she had to leave.

  Seven.

  “Good luck, Aya!”

  “Mom, I’m so scared! What if I lose today?”

  Chris thought, You don’t know what scared is, and I hope you never do . . . Chris headed out for the parking lot, telling herself that Nevada and Somalia were nine thousand miles apart, and unrelated. But not really believing it. Back to work. Burke had sent agents in a Chevy Suburban to make sure she got to Andrews on time. They would drop her back here later to retrieve her car.

  Burke had said, “You told Rush and Nakamura to take each other’s blood?”

  “Every hour. We’ll analyze it when they get in.”

  “And their flight time is nineteen hours?”

  “Twenty, including the stop in Germany to drop samples at the lab. They’ll take more blood in the air after that.”

  “Well, the marker shows up eight hours after contact, so if they’re clear when they hit D.C., they’re okay, Chris. Otherwise, quarantine them and give them antibiotics.”

  “Burke, you mean the ones that don’t work so far?”

  “Maybe they take more time to kick in. Have faith.”

  She climbed into the backseat now, two FBI guys in front, the government being the last steady customer of that pathetic remnant of a once-great corporation, General Motors. The driver’s eyes flicked to her in the rearview mirror, glanced at her ring finger on the seat top. He was checking to see whether it was bare. He was a handsome man, but Chris had no response.

  They headed downtown in light post-rush-hour traffic, on Massachusetts, then took Branch Avenue toward Camp Springs. The juxtaposition of normal sights outside—a line of idling cars at the Japanese Embassy, a bakery truck near Dupont Circle, Diamond cabs at Union Station—mixed in her mind with dire possibility. A bolt of fear hit her for Joe Rush. What if, despite precautions, he was infected? There was no way to know for sure until she transferred his blood to the Andrews Air Force Base Hospital, where lab workers waited, clad in protective gear.

  Just as they approached the base, the phone trilled. It was Burke calling from the White House, where he was getting out of a meeting.

  Burke said crisply, “It’s in South Carolina.”

  “Where?” She felt sick.

  “Charleston. A seventy-two-year-old retired ticket taker on the Long Island Railroad came into Grand Strand Medical Center last night. He and his wife both show the marker. Ray Havlicek has agents at their retirement community, going condo to condo, seeing if anyone else is sick.” Burke sighed. “Five hundred retirees in that place, and half of them together in a dining room every day.”

  “Has the couple been in Nevada or Africa?”

  “They visited a grandson in Galilee last week.”

  “Are they quarantined?”

  A sigh. “Now? Yes. But four hours went by before we learned they were there. And they sat in the waiting room for an hour before going in. Around other people.”

  The car passed into the base, past guards, barracks, lawns, runways. Up in the blue sky, Chris caught a glimpse of silver, something small and fast, angling down. She checked her watch. This might be Rush. She was unclear which emotion was stronger, the catch in her throat at his arrival, or the constriction brought on by Burke’s news.

  Chris said, “It’s a mistake not to announce it.”

  “Not our choice. The President knows he needs to get in front of it. But he’s figuring out what to say. We hope we’ll know more by tonight that will help him. Havlicek’s trying to track down any other visitors to Galilee.”

  She sat, stunned, looking out at the bright sun, the passing cars, the incoming plane, normalcy.

  Burke said, “Meanwhile, I’m asking key people to quietly move from their homes to the dorm at Homeland Security. Pack a bag. Come out to the campus when you can. Also, I’m relieving Admiral Galli. You’ll run that unit.”

  The breath caught in her throat. Burke continued. “General Homza thinks we’re dealing with seeding.”

  Seeding means that a hostile group is planting toxics in different places. A quiet attack, which spreads. An attack whose origin is harder to determine.

  “Homza believes the capital is a likely target.”

  “Aren’t you getting ahead of things?”

  “I hope so. That’s my job.”

  “What about Aya?”

  Burke said, “You can move her in with you, or you can send her away. Look, it’s just precaution, like drills. Terrorism alert level up everywhere. Airports. Amtrak. Federal buildings. I want my people in a protected area. If this gets worse, you’re separated from the general population. Better to have your things at HQ just in case.”

  “I want Rush to come with me to Nevada.”

  Pe
rsonally, I don’t want him anywhere near me. He makes me crazy. But he’s the best person for this job.

  “He’s out,” Burke said. “Plenty of FBI out West to help you.”

  “Burke, he’s smart. He sees things before other people, and in a different way. He stopped the outbreak in Alaska last year. He’s an eyewitness in Somalia, and something he saw there might be relevant. You want me? I need him. Or is there some special reason you want him out?”

  Daring Burke now. Daring him to say the thing out loud that he’d hinted at earlier. If you want me to know something, spell it out. Don’t go off to a bathroom and leave a file on a desk. Have some guts!

  But Burke caved. Or acknowledged the logic. Burke said, “He’s your responsibility then, and only if his blood work is clear. But if he goes off on his own, I lock him away. You tell him that.”

  “Have we identified the pathogen yet?”

  “It’s a hybrid. Chimera. They nailed some DNA, Gaines said, but not enough for full ID. Can’t tell yet if it’s lab made or natural. That may take some time.”

  “And what part did they ID?” Chris asked as the car stopped beside a long runway, and ahead, through shimmering air, she saw Joe Rush’s jet touch down, wheels puffing smoke, sun glinting off the windows flashing past.

  Burke told her the basic component of the Nevada pathogen. The primary bacterial foundation of the thing.

  She felt her legs go weak and flashed to Aya in her head, at a high school science fair, smiling, a kid, an innocent, her only daughter. Chris said, “Sweet, sweet Jesus.”

  Burke sighed. “I’d say that’s exactly right.”

  SIX

  “Leprosy?” I said.

  We waited in the plane for the results of our blood work, to see if we were infected. The fingers on my right hand had begun tingling, but I told myself that this was because, before landing, I’d fallen asleep on my hand. The troops surrounding our jet kept their distance, ringing us at sixty feet with M4s slung over their shoulders.