Bat out of Hell

by Alan Gold

  After the president’s phone call, Secretary Tan had hustled her to leave the Department of Health and drive to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square where a helicopter was waiting to take them to Air Force Two parked in a secure area of London’s Heathrow Airport. It had all been so last minute, so rushed, that she hadn’t had time to get a change of clothes from the rooms set aside for her in a Ministry apartment in Kensington. And she suddenly realized that she was wearing a knit top and jeans, ideal for clothes beneath a lab coat, but hardly appropriate for a press conference with the president of the United States.

  She stood and walked over to the secretary of state’s table. All four people looked up in surprise.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Madam Secretary, but I’ve just realized that I left in such a hurry that I don’t have any suitable clothes for a press conference. Would it be possible to stop off at a dress shop in DC before we go into the White House?”

  Jenny Tan smiled. “Debra, there’s a full wardrobe of men’s and women’s clothes in every conceivable size and shape and color kept in the basement of the White House. The staff there will give you something gorgeous to wear, and if it doesn’t fit perfectly, there are seamstresses who’ll do an instant alteration. No cost. Stop worrying; you’re not the first person who’s suddenly needed to get dressed into something special. These days, the White House operates twenty-four-seven and nobody in the building comes to work dressed for every unexpected occasion.”

  Debra smiled in relief, thanked the secretary, and returned to her seat, wondering how she could get a job in the White House without spending $500 million to become president.

  ***

  They were the most famous corridors, the most famous walls. She’d seen accurate representations on the television program The West Wing, as well as thousands of shots from TV news footage. She felt a sense of familiarity when she walked along the carpeted passages, through doors, down stairs, and past paintings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. But despite her familiarity, when she walked into the Oval Office with its regency colors and heraldic carpets, she was overcome by the alchemical power of the place, a power that transformed base thoughts into lustrous ideals. This was the Oval Office, where John Kennedy had conceived of mankind leaving the boundaries of this earth and where Bill Clinton had tried to bring peace to the fractious world. And sitting behind the famous desk, made from the wood of the HMS Resolute, a present from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford Hayes in 1880, sat Nathanial Jefferson Thomas, president of the United States of America.

  Dressed in a beautiful Armani duck-shell-blue suit with black high-heel pumps and a silk red scarf tied like a choker around her neck, her hair and makeup freshly done in the White House beauty salon, Debra was led into the office by the president’s butler. Once deposited in the center of the room, the butler silently disappeared, leaving just Debra, Jenny Tan, and two of her advisors standing.

  The president came around his desk, kissed Jenny on the cheek, and shook Debra’s hand. “Good to see you again, Debra. I hoped to be able to show you around the White House in more pleasant circumstances as I promised you in Rome. Still, you’re here, and we’ve got a situation on our hands.”

  They sat down on the comfortable lounges facing each other, the presidential seal standing out from the rest of the carpet. She glanced down at it. She’d seen images of it a thousand times from photos that showed the young son of President Kennedy hiding underneath the desk, to dramatic long shots of President Nixon talking to the Apollo 11 astronauts. But she was one of a tiny minority of people who had ever been invited into this office and who had been privileged to see the carpet and its seal close up.

  President Thomas noticed that it had captured her attention. “He’s hardly known today except to historians of the presidency, but Rutherford Hayes, the nineteenth president of the United States was responsible for the creation of that seal which we use on the carpet. He was also responsible for acquiring the presidential desk. His election was fiercely disputed because he won by only a single electoral vote, and so he was the only president in our history to be elected by the decision of a congressional commission. Unless, of course, you count that prostitution of our democracy when President George W. Bush beat Al Gore because of the close call with the Florida vote being decided by the Supreme Court.”

  She listened in admiration of his knowledge. Both of them had doctorates in science from prestigious American universities, yet she had stayed in research all of her life, and he had used his doctorate to build a spectacular business career followed by an unprecedented rise in politics. She bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from becoming too much like a girl.

  “Okay, Jenny, fill me in,” he said.

  Jenny Tan explained what she’d been doing with Debra Hart and her rapid response team during the past three days. It was obvious that the source of the problem was bats. Bats, she insisted. Not birds or fleas or rats or anything else.

  “Can you prove it beyond all measure of doubt?”

  She shook her head and nodded to Debra to tell her to take up the explanation.

  Debra cleared her throat and said “No, sir, we can’t give an unequivocal scientific determination because, as of yet, we don’t have the proof. There’s the percentage risk that some species of bird might be carrying this particular viral load, like migrating birds carried the avian flu, but the British scientists we’ve been working with have killed and examined dozens of birds from different common species and the only viruses they’re carrying are the normal ones that don’t cross boundaries into humans. They’re completely harmless to us and most other mammalian animals.

  “You see, Mr. President, the virus that is killing the British is confined to a narrow vector. A flight path that fans out from a single point into a narrow cone and weaves through the air over the outer suburbs of London, but the narrow cone remains intact, which means that a group of creatures is keeping in contact with each other in flight. While some species of birds, especially migrating birds, fly like that, it’s much more likely to be bats. And that’s what we said in our confidential report, where we said it was probably bats, but we covered ourselves by saying it could be birds until we’ve excluded them. We didn’t think the report would leak so we may have been a bit too loose in our statements.

  “To prove it was bats, we’ve followed the flight path by identifying the incidents of infection, and it falls within the dimensions of a cone. We know where it started . . . at the school in Cricklewood in North London because that’s where the first infection was detected. And we monitored the spread of the infection northeast. Unfortunately, the bats were disturbed by all of our activity on the ground and they’ve roosted somewhere else. We don’t yet know where. And we don’t know where they swarm to in order to feed. But we’ve monitored the infection en route so we know in which direction they’re flying,” she told him.

  “But why can’t we track them by satellite navigation?” asked the president. “We’ve got the world’s most sophisticated equipment in geostationary orbit around the globe. We can photograph a fly on a horse’s ass in Siberia. Surely, we can identify a swarm of bats at night with ground or over-the-horizon radar or satellites. Can’t we?” The president demanded.

  “We’ve tried everything, boss,” said Jenny Tan. “The British Royal Air Force has observation aircraft flying at night over the flight path; we’ve used the radar equipment at Royal Air Force Brize Norton in Carterton near Oxford but nothing positive. We’ve had loads of false positives but nothing concrete so far. Because it’s so close to London, we have thousands of birds and bats and planes and helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft flying over or near the area. Sure, we’ve seen what we think might be a swarm of a hundred or so bats, but it could be birds or even a strange weather phenomenon. We’re never sufficiently confident to be certain, and by the time we’ve directed a helicopter to the coordinates, they’re long gone . . . and they don’t appear again the following
night. It’s very frustrating, Mr. President. It’s almost as though they know we’re trying to find them, and they’re getting clever at keeping out of our way.”

  “Okay,” said the president, “so if and when you find them, what will the British do?”

  “Clear the area of human beings within a five-mile radius and fumigate the roost with an anesthetic gas which will put them to sleep. Some will drop to the ground; some will cling there. They’ll all be collected in biohazard vans, taken to an ultra-high security lab, and we’ll examine the blood and other tissues. The area in which they’ve roosted will be cleaned up by hazmat security teams to ensure that any viruses that are in the soil or on the ground will be removed.

  “If any trace of the virus is found, the bats still alive will be quarantined and used for experimentation. We’ll try different things to see if we can find an agent that can fight the virus,” Debra told him.

  The president looked at his watch. “Okay, time to go out and face the press. Secretary Tan has told you about the protocols for a conference of this nature. Jenny will stand on my left, you just behind us both on my right. I’ll speak first, explaining that there is no immediate intention to kill the birds and that it’s almost certain that the reservoir of this outbreak is bats; then I’ll introduce you and explain why you’re at the White House; after that, I’ll then call on Jenny to give a perspective of what we’re doing about this sudden outbreak of these viruses throughout the world and the problems that we’ll encounter if we don’t adopt proper measures to fight them. She’ll talk about restricting travel, migration, isolation . . . and that’s why we’re contemplating such draconian measures. But she’ll also stress that the chance of the vectors being birds is incredibly small.

  “I’ll call for questions. If one of the reporters asks specifically scientific questions, I’ll turn and nod to you, Debra. You then step forward, I’ll step back and to the right of the microphone, and you step forward front and center and answer the question succinctly. Just answer the specifics of the question . . . don’t add or volunteer additional information that you think that they should be told. If you do, you’ll only open yourself up to cross-questioning and dilute the impact of what I have to say. This is a press conference in which we tell the world that we’re not going to wipe out birds. It’s not a lecture on the science of these viruses. Remember that, Debra . . . we have to convince the world that we’re not bird killers. Nothing more. Okay?”

  Debra nodded and smiled. She looked confident as they stood to walk from the Oval Office into the Rose Garden, where hundreds of people had gathered and were seated awaiting the president. But in her knotted stomach, she felt anything but confident.

  6

  THE OFFICES OF CHAT UPTOWN MANHATTAN

  Exhausted from travel exacerbated by the time difference between California and New York and having caught very little sleep on the red-eye, Tom Pollard, president of Citizens for Humane Animal Treatment, turned off the live broadcast from the White House, swiveled around to look at his assistants, and asked, “Well?”

  “That fucks us up. Totally. We’re screwed. The president has just derailed the train. We can’t expect Hollywood to pretend to know more about the science of these viruses than the White House, can we?” said his PR assistant, Jackie Medway. “Now that the president has said that no birds will be culled, it’s the end of our campaign. Who’s going to go out on a limb for bats?”

  Pollard turned to another assistant, who nodded in agreement with Jackie. Others in the room signified their agreement with her.

  “Which is why I’m president of CHAT, and you’re not,” he said. “This is just the break we’ve been hoping for. A flat denial by the White House. And presumably, the British prime minister will say the same thing from 10 Downing Street or from the House of Commons. With a bit of luck, the secretary-general of the United Nations will do exactly the same thing. Straight out, 100 percent denials. Perfect. Couldn’t be better for us.”

  His team looked at him in wonder, frowning at his denial of the obvious.

  “Okay, give,” said Jackie. “What’s going on in that Machiavellian mind of yours?”

  “Why is everybody rushing to deny something? What are they hiding? What secret reports are there that they’re too scared to show the public? Why don’t they make everything available on the web? And then we’ll believe them. And when they do put everything on the World Wide Web, we’ll demand to know what they’ve kept hidden from us, locked in their secret buildings and offices. Is there something going on that is just too frightening, too dangerous for us to know? Is the entire world population in danger? Will this be a repeat of the Black Death that killed a third of the population of Europe? Why aren’t they telling us what’s really going on? The media has been muzzled, but I demand a face-to-face meeting with the president of the United States so I can put these very questions directly to the man in whose hands is the fate of all humanity, these questions about the survival of the human race. I must speak to him and him alone . . . and when he refuses to meet with me, I’ll demand to know what he’s hiding.”

  Tom Pollard sat back in his chair with a smirk on his face. “Pure media manipulation. It’ll keep things going until the next outbreak and the next animal they’re going to victimize.”

  “You can’t. This is too serious to run a scare campaign like that, Tom,” Jackie insisted. “You’ll just drive people into a frenzy. It’s too irresponsible. And our organization is about protecting animals from people, not about finding the truth behind human diseases. Our mandate is animal welfare. You’re letting this Hollywood stuff go to your head.”

  “Bullshit. We’re trying to stop the mass killing of birds in England and probably other places as well. A campaign like this will drive people right into our hands; we’ll have a huge increase in membership and the donations will keep us afloat for a thousand years.”

  He could feel the unease in the room. People were shuffling uncomfortably in their seats.

  “Okay, what don’t you like?” he asked.

  His staff looked sheepishly at each other; nobody was overly willing to speak first in case they incurred the wrath of their boss. But Jackie had made her feelings plain, and so she was less inhibited than the others were. “Look, Tom, the Hollywood thing was manna from heaven. And you exploited it brilliantly. But now there’s been a blanket denial by the president himself; we’re in a corner. We’ve done our job; it’s time for us to back off. To contradict the president and the weight of scientific evidence he’s got, we’ll effectively have to call him a liar and that’ll put us offside with a hundred million Americans. This could backfire on us really badly.”

  Tom sighed. He was surrounded by drones. What had Jay Silvester called them . . . myrmidons? His office was full of myrmidons, robotic individuals who couldn’t think outside the square, who lived their lives within parentheses just doing what they were told to do by their boss. But when this was over and things began to calm down, he’d have to fire the lot of them, get in new staff, women with balls who shared his vision, who could contribute and add to his ideas, not have people try to shoot him down just because they didn’t share in the brilliance of his vision. When he joined CHAT, it had been a Mickey Mouse organization begging for donations. Now it was international, front page, and feared by world leaders. When he first came on board, it had been a boy’s club; he’d gotten rid of most of the men and replaced them with women who did what they were told.

  “Guys, we have two separate and distinct jobs in this organization. They are to protect all animals from the cruelty of human beings and to grow CHAT into a global institution that will prevent the abuse of animals. Nothing that the president said undermined our approach through our Hollywood friends. He’s just told the world that if birds are found to be the source, the British government, or indeed our own, will eradicate bird populations. Look at what the Asian governments ordered when the bird flu epidemic happened. Tens of thousands of birds murdered and all for
what? A couple of human deaths in rural areas, probably caused by malnutrition, overcrowding, or drinking contaminated water or something. What we’re looking at here is a massive overreaction by authorities that will lead to a mass extinction . . .”

  Jackie interrupted, “Tom, the report said that it was almost certainly bats and almost certainly not birds. We can’t keep going on about birds being in danger of species extinction when everybody now believes that the culprit has been proven to be bats.”

  “What if I could get a couple of top-line scientists to say that these viruses could be spread by birds? High-profile scientists. Nobody could say specifically that birds don’t spread these diseases because nobody’s yet proven that bats do. And that puts us on the front pages again, demanding more proof before anything is done to harm the bird population. Right?”

  “And which reputable scientist is going to put his nuts on the line to make a statement like that?” asked Jackie.

  Again, Tom smiled his legendary smirk. “Leave it to me. Okay, everybody out. I have calls to make.”

  STUDIO 4 BBC WHITE CITY, LONDON

  With only four hours sleep since the early-morning phone call from Tom Pollard, author, environmentalist, and commentator Gerard Sobel desperately needed the cup of coffee that the assistant floor manager handed him. It was BBC coffee, weak, tepid, and colored sludge brown, the antithesis of the Nespresso machine coffee he’d recently given himself as a gift, but it was an approximation of what he needed, for which he was grateful.