EIGHTEEN

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC

NEXT DAY

The president stood staring through the glass doors of the Oval Office onto the Rose Garden and said, “I couldn’t be more serious. I want this entire thing to go away, Chuck. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mr. President. I understand. Believe me, we all want it to go away, but just wishing isn’t going to make it happen. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Not now.”

“I don’t care about putting it back in the goddamn bottle,” snapped Rutledge as he turned to face his chief of staff. “I just don’t want some self-aggrandizing senator forwarding her career by pulling the mask off of one of the good guys. After everything he’s given to his country, forcing Scot Harvath to wear a scarlet letter is not only unfair, it’s just plain wrong.”

“With all due respect, sir,” replied Charles Anderson, “it’s not Harvath she wants wearing that scarlet letter. It’s you.”

The president turned away from the doors and walked back over behind his desk. “Then why doesn’t she come after me?”

“She is coming after you, Jack. This is how it’s done. You know that.”

“Well, the way it’s done stinks.”

“I’ll second that,” agreed Anderson.

“You don’t ruin good people who this country depends on. If she wants me, she should come get me.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that when she gets here. If you have any compromising photographs of yourself that you’d like to hand over to me now, maybe I could get her to agree to a trade.”

The president appeared to smile, but it could have very well been only a grimace as he mentally moved on to his next topic. “What do we have from the Joint Chiefs and USAMRIID?”

Anderson removed a briefing report from the folder in front of him and said, “It’s not good. USAMRIID has cultured the illness, but it seems resistant to everything they’re throwing at it. They’ve got representatives from the CDC and the Mayo Clinic’s exotic disease department working with them now, but they’ve yet to make any progress. At least it’s still contained to that one incident in Asalaam.”

“For now,” replied the president, “and that’s only because for the moment it suits the purposes of whoever’s behind this thing. What’s our state of readiness if it makes an appearance here?”

Anderson referred back to his briefing report and replied, “First responders are going to be primary care physicians and hospital emergency rooms. We’ve put out a bulletin via the Healthwatch system to report any cases involving the symptoms we’re aware of to their local public health department. Those departments will report back to a crisis center at the Department of Homeland Security. The key is being able to contain any outbreak as quickly as possible.”

“What do we do if we can’t contain it?”

Anderson tried to calm the president. “Let’s worry about that if and when it happens.”

“Chuck, you know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time. They may have finally been able to come up with the biggest stick on the playground. A stick that spares only the most faithful to their beliefs.”

“Which makes us confident there has got to be a way around it-a way to be immunized against it.”

Rutledge wanted to share his chief of staff’s optimism, but he’d always been one to prepare for the worst and then, and only then, hope for the best. “If we can’t contain it and we can’t immunize against it, what then?”

“USAMRIID is still developing scenarios.”

“Let’s cut to the chase. What are we talking about worst case?”

The president’s chief of staff was reluctant to answer, but he had little choice. “Worst case, we initiate the Campfire protocol to guarantee we stop this thing dead in its tracks.”

The color drained from Rutledge’s face. “Making me the first U.S. president to ever authorize a thermonuclear strike on his own soil and against his own people.”

NINETEEN

LONDON

Jillian Alcott, chemistry teacher at London ’s prestigious Abbey College, carefully picked her way through the swollen puddles along Notting Hill’s Pembridge Road. Arriving at the Notting Hill Gate Tube station, the five-foot-eight redhead with deep green eyes and high cheekbones politely but firmly shouldered her way through the crowd that had gathered at the entrance to take shelter from the storm. After collapsing her distinctive Burberry umbrella and giving it her customary three firm snaps to rid it of any residual rainwater, she tucked it beneath her left arm and removed her Tube pass from her wallet.

Though Jillian was in fine physical condition and could have easily walked the distance, saving time by cutting through Kensington Gardens, the weather was just too disagreeable for her. Ever since she was a small child, she had never liked thunderstorms.

Jillian was seven years old when her parents left her alone with her grandmother to drive inland to sell some of their livestock. It was a late Friday afternoon, and the weather began to kick up half an hour after her parents had left. She stared out the front windows of their little stone house at the enormous white caps forming on the ever-darkening Celtic Sea. Her grandmother pulled out all of her board games and they played every one of them in an effort to take Jillian’s mind off the storm raging outside. Jillian tried her absolute hardest to be brave, but with each booming knell of thunder the house shook, and she was certain the next would send the tiny structure toppling over the nearby cliffs and into the sea.

Jillian’s grandmother tried everything to calm the little girl, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, she decided to draw Jillian a hot bath and infuse it with lavender.

With the bath drawn, Jillian’s grandmother was just about to put her in when another flash of lightning blazed and all of the power in the house went out. A roaring clap of thunder followed that shook the small dwelling and rattled the windows so hard the glass seemed poised to fall out of its panes.

Jillian’s grandmother left her in the bathroom for just a moment while she went to search for candles, but she never came back.

The little girl used her hand to feel along the wall and guide her toward the kitchen. Floorboards creaked beneath her feet, and every cold brass doorknob she touched along the way sent chills racing up her spine. When she finally made it into the kitchen, she immediately sensed that something was wrong.

She called out softly to her grandmother but received no response. The candles were in a drawer on the far side of the room, but Jillian was afraid to cross the kitchen in the dark. Something inside her told her not to move. She waited and waited until another flash of lightning came, and when it did, she had the shock of her seven-year-old life. Lying on the floor was her gran. Apparently, she had tripped in the dark and in her fall had hit her head on the kitchen table. Upon seeing the pool of blood that was quickly covering the floor, Jillian screamed and ran.

She dashed into the front hall and picked up the telephone to call the police. If there is an emergency, always call the police first, her parents had told her. Jillian picked up the phone, ready to dial the number she had learned by heart, but the phone was dead.

Still in her pajamas, Jillian thought only of her gran. Grabbing her mac from the front closet, she quickly pulled it on, followed by her bright red Wellington-style boots. When she opened the front door, she was greeted by an enormous burst of wind that almost pushed her back inside. The little girl had no choice; she had to get help.

Through the storm, Jillian ran the mile and a half down their muddy road to the junction only to find that it had been washed out. She was trapped. There was no way she could cross the torrent of flood-water. There was no way she could get to the neighbors, or anyone else for that matter. There was no way she could get help. There was nothing she could do but return to the house.