“A zoonotic pathogen is the perfect biological weapon,” Davis said. “All you have to do is find one, whether it be a virus, bacteria, a protozoa, or a parasite. Isolate it, then it can infect at will. If you’re clever, two versions could be created. One that only moves from animal to human, so you’d have to directly infect the victim. Another, mutated, that moves from human to human. The first could be used for limited strikes at specific targets, a minimal danger of the thing passing beyond the person infected. The other would be a weapon of mass destruction. Infect a few and the dying never stops.”
She realized what Edwin Davis said was all too real.
“Stopping these things is possible,” Daniels said. “But it takes time to isolate, study, and develop countermeasures. Luckily, most of the known zoonoses have antiagents, a few even have vaccines that prevent wholesale infection. But those take time to develop, and a lot of people would be killed in the meantime.”
Stephanie wondered where this was headed. “Why is all this important?”
Davis reached for a file on the glass-topped table, beside Daniels’ bare feet. “Nine years ago a pair of endangered geese was stolen from a private zoo in Belgium. At about the same time, some endangered rodents and a species of rare snails were taken from zoos in Australia and Spain. Usually, this kind of thing is not that significant. But we started checking and found that it’s happened at least forty times around the world. The break came last year. In South Africa. The thieves were caught. We covered their arrest with phony deaths. The men cooperated, considering a South African prison is not a good place to spend a few years. That’s when we learned Irina Zovastina was behind the thefts.”
“Who ran that investigation?” she asked.
“Painter Crowe at Sigma,” Daniels said. “Lots of science here. That’s their specialty. But now it’s passed into your realm.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “Sure Painter can’t keep it?”
Daniels smiled. “After tonight? No, Stephanie. This one’s all yours. Payback for me saving your hide with the Dutch.”
The president still held the elephant medallion, so she asked, “What does that coin have to do with anything?”
“Zovastina has been collecting these,” Daniels said. “Here’s the real problem. We know she’s amassed a pretty hefty inventory of zoonoses. Twenty or so at last count. And by the way, she’s been clever, she has multiple versions. Like Edwin said, one for limited strikes, the other for human-to-human transmission. She operates a biological lab near her capital in Samarkand. But, interestingly, Enrico Vincenti has another bio lab just across the border, in China. One Zovastina likes to visit.”
“Which was why you wanted fieldwork on Vincenti?”
Davis nodded. “Pays to know the enemy.”
“The CIA has been cultivating leaks inside the Federation,” Daniels said, shaking his head. “Hard going. And a mess. But we’ve made a little progress.”
Yet she detected something. “You have a source?”
“If you want to call it that,” the president said. “I have my doubts. Zovastina is a problem on many levels.”
She understood his dilemma. In a region of the world where America possessed few friends, Zovastina had openly proclaimed herself one. She’d been helpful several times with minor intelligence that had thwarted terrorist activity in Afghanistan and Iraq. Out of necessity, the United States had provided her with money, military support, and sophisticated equipment, which was risky.
“Ever hear the one about the man driving down the highway who saw a snake lying in the middle of the road?”
She grinned. Another of Daniels’ famed stories.
“The guy stopped and saw that the snake was hurt. So he took the thing home and nursed it back to health. When the snake recovered, he opened the front door to let it go. But as the rattler crawled out, the damn thing bit him on the leg. Just before the venom drove him to unconsciousness, he called out to the snake, ‘I took you in, fed you, doctored your wounds, and you repaid that by biting me?’ The snake stopped and said, ‘All true. But when you did that you knew I was a snake.’”
She caught the message.
“Zovastina,” the president said, “is up to something and it involves Enrico Vincenti. I don’t like biological warfare. The world outlawed it over thirty years ago. And this form is the worst kind. She’s planning something awful, and that Venetian League, of which she and Vincenti are members, is right there helping her. Thankfully, she’s not acted. But we have reason to believe she may soon start. The damn fools surrounding her, in what they loosely call nations, are oblivious to what’s happening. Too busy worrying about Israel and us. She’s using that stupidity to her advantage. She thinks I’m stupid, too. It’s time she knew that we’re on to her.”
“We would have preferred to stay in the shadows a bit longer,” Davis said. “But two Secret Service agents killing her guardsmen has surely sounded an alarm.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Daniels yawed and she smothered one of her own. The president waved his hand. “Go ahead. Hell, it’s the middle of the night. Don’t mind me. Yawn away. You can sleep on the plane.”
“Where am I going?”
“ Venice. If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, then by God we’ll bring the mountain to him.”
THIRTY-TWO
VENICE
8:50 A.M.
VINCENTI ENTERED THE MAIN SALON OF HIS PALAZZO AND READIED himself. Usually, he did not bother with these types of presentations. After all, Philogen Pharmaceutique employed an extensive marketing and sales department with hundreds of employees. This, however, was something special, something that demanded only his presence, so he’d arranged for a private presentation at his home.
He noticed that the outside advertising agency, headquartered in Milan, seemed to have taken no chances. Four representatives, three females and a male, one a senior vice president, had been dispatched to brief him.
“Damaris Corrigan,” the vice president said in English, introducing herself and her three associates. She was an attractive woman, in her early fifties, dressed in a dark blue, chalk-striped suit.
Off to the side, coffee steamed from a silver urn. He walked over and poured himself a cup.
“We couldn’t help but wonder,” Corrigan said, “is something about to happen?”
He unbuttoned his suit jacket and settled into an upholstered chair. “What do you mean?”
“When we were retained six months ago, you wanted suggestions on marketing a possible HIV cure. We wondered then if Philogen was on the brink of something. Now, with you wanting to see what we have, we thought maybe there’d been a breakthrough.”
He silently congratulated himself. “I think you voiced the operative word. Possible. Certainly, it’s our hope to be first with a cure-we’re spending millions on research-but if a breakthrough were to happen, and you never know when that’s going to occur, I don’t want to be caught waiting months for an effective marketing scheme.” He paused. “No. Nothing to this point, but a little preparedness is good.”
His guest acknowledged the explanation with a nod, then she paraded to a waiting easel. He shot a glance at one of the women sitting next to him. A shapely brunette, not more than thirty or thirty-five, in a tight-fitting wool skirt. He wondered if she was an account executive or just decoration.
“I’ve done some fascinating reading over the past few weeks,” Corrigan said. “HIV seems to have a split personality, depending on what part of the globe you’re studying.”
“There’s truth to that observation,” he said. “Here, and in places like North America, the disease is reasonably containable. No longer a leading cause of death. People simply live with it. Symptomatic drugs have reduced the mortality rate by more than half. But in Africa and Asia it’s an entirely different story. Worldwide, last year, three million died of HIV.”