by Larry Bond
Now that he didn’t need to be on his guard, now that they were done and others could watch out for him, fatigue rolled over Ferguson like a tsunami wave. He closed his eyes, drifting. The song he’d heard in the background of the club played in his head. It was Cole Porter, an old love song. The music swelled and he got up to dance.
Ferguson turned to find a partner, and there was Thera, dressed in a long gown, pearls draped from her neck. He was in a tux.
“Shall we dance?” he asked.
“I’d love to,” she said.
He took her hand and swirled her once, then held her close. And in the dreamworld that had suddenly descended on him, everything was perfect.
~ * ~
39
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“The site is secure,” Corrine Alston told the President. “The decontamination teams are another two hours away.”
“The bacteria has been contained?”
“We think so. Two of our people were at the edge of the camp. They’re going to be isolated, but we don’t think they were infected.”
“A cure?”
“We hope they weren’t exposed,” said Corrine. “The Russian scientist is cooperating. But the strain is resistant to antibiotics. The people who were exposed may very well die. At a minimum, they’ll be very sick.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said President McCarthy.
“Dan Slott is arranging for medical care to be flown in.”
McCarthy got up from his desk and walked to the small globe at the side of his office, spinning it around slowly until he was looking at Iran. “We’re going to announce the Iran nuclear treaty tonight, Corrine. Very good work.”
She felt a little embarrassed to be thanked, since she had had almost nothing to do with it.
“Ferguson and his people, and Colonel Van Buren, they really did a fantastic job,” she told the President. “And, I should mention, T Rex—the assassin who killed our CIA officer two years ago—he’s dead. He was a renegade MI6 agent.”
“MI6?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sometimes you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, can you, Miss Alston?”
“No, Jonathon, sometimes you can’t.”
McCarthy didn’t say anything else. Corrine, with more work to do, left the President staring at the globe.
~ * ~
