J. D. Rothery chaired the meeting in his office in L’Enfant Plaza. The office was six hundred square feet with thick wall-to-wall carpet, a large redwood desk, and a sitting area with three leather couches and two overstuffed armchairs. Two walls were solid windows and the other two richly paneled with bookcases and original canvases. Present were Craig Simms, Deputy Director of the CIA, and Tony Warner, Director of Intelligence Analysis with the National Security Agency. Jim Allenby arrived as the meeting started. He had just flown in from Miami on a Bureau Gulfstream.
“Jim, you’re back from the crime scene. What have you got for us?” Rothery asked.
“Some good news mixed with a whole lot of bad. All four members of one Cuban-American family are dead. There’s no doubt we’re dealing with the same hemorrhagic virus we had in Austin and San Diego. Source of contamination was a TGIF restaurant in Miami. The restaurant is under quarantine, but we suspect the terrorists planted a set of infected silverware and the Chavez family was the unlucky party. The dishes have all been through a commercial washing machine with temperatures on some of the cycles that will kill the virus.”
“No chance of the virus spreading?” J. D. asked.
“At the restaurant, we suspect not. At the house, we’re hopeful. These people lived inside that house for four days since they ingested the virus, and there are levels of contamination in the home. But our experts think they’ve got it contained.”
“So what’s the good news?” Simms asked.
“At first, we thought we were going to have a media circus on this one,” Allenby replied. “The father, Enrico Chavez, was a bit of a public figure in the Cuban community, having run for municipal office. But the press hasn’t suggested his murder was politically motivated, and we’re fine with them taking that stance. And it turns out there’s no immediate family in the United States. All relatives are still in Cuba. And without immediate family banging on the door and demanding autopsy results and answers to questions, this might blow over quicker than we thought. We don’t have to answer to anyone who isn’t directly related to the Chavez family. So we can deflect the questions, and as long as no one on our end does anything stupid, we should be able to hunker down until this blows over.”
“The bodies are at Fort Detrick?” J. D. Rothery asked.
“Yes. Dr. Henning flew down yesterday afternoon. We expect a report back sometime this afternoon.”
“Who is he forwarding the report to?” Simms asked.
“I’ve requested copies go out simultaneously to all four agencies,” Allenby said. This was political maneuvering at its best: Keep everyone in the loop at the same time. “Henning estimated he would have the results of his autopsies by four this afternoon, so you should have reports on your desks by six, six-thirty at the latest.”
Simms nodded his approval. “Thanks, Jim.”
“What does the president have to say, Tony?” Rothery asked the NSA agent.
“He wants to be kept up to date on every detail,”Tony Warner replied. “I briefed him this morning on the situation, and he’s very concerned. The connection between Austin, San Diego, and now Miami is more than just troublesome. The White House is viewing this as a definite terrorist threat, and the fact that they can disseminate this virus whenever and wherever they want has the president looking seriously at upgrading the terror alert status from yellow to orange.”
“Probably a bad idea,” Craig Simms said. “If the media sees the government moving to a higher alert status, they’re going to question why. We’ll end up answering a lot more questions, and someone somewhere is going to piece this thing together. And when that happens, we’ll have a lot of panicked people on our hands.”
“The scary thing is that these guys have got the virus in the first place,” Tony Warner said. “We’ve been monitoring a lot of activity over the past few years, and we never saw anything like this coming. I’d like to know where they got it.”
“I’ve got to agree with Tony,” Simms said. “CIA has kept a close watch on this sort of thing. We know the scientists who’ve got the know-how to create these things, and this has totally blindsided us.”
“Okay,” Rothery said, cutting Simms off. “We don’t know where it came from. I agree that’s not a good thing, but focusing on the idea that this couldn’t have happened isn’t going to get us anywhere. It did happen and it’s still happening. We’ve got a rogue virus on the loose and in the hands of some group that’s ready to use it against us.” He looked back to Simms. “Craig, what about the labs you’ve been watching-any unusual activity since last Friday?”
“No. We’ve coordinated better satellite coverage with Tony,” he nodded toward the NSA man, “but nothing we’re seeing is out of the ordinary. The traffic in and out of the labs is about the same as we’ve been seeing for the last couple of months.”
Rothery was silent for a minute. The look on his face conveyed the seriousness of the situation. He looked at each man, locking eyes for a few seconds, then said, “One more incident with this virus and we are moving on those labs, Craig. I’m sorry if we blow the lid off your surveillance, but this is getting damned serious. We need to know where this bug is coming from and who has it.”
Simms nodded. “I’ll put a contingency plan in place to take out the al-Qaeda operatives we’ve identified at the same time we raid the labs. We’ll find an upside to this somewhere, J. D.”
“Thanks, Craig,” Rothery said. His eyes scanned the room again. “Gentlemen, we have a potential crisis here and we have to chop it off at the knees. So far, what I’ve seen from every person in this room is absolute cooperation between agencies, and that’s exactly what we need right now. Know this: Each of you has the full cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security. There is no request you can make of us right now that we will not do everything humanly possible to respond to. My line is open twenty-four seven to each man in this room. And when we merge the resources of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS, there is nothing we cannot do. We will find the source of this virus, and we will eliminate it.”
He stood up to indicate that the meeting was adjourned. He turned to Jim Allenby. “Jim, excellent work keeping the lid on the Miami thing.”
Allenby nodded and filed out with the rest of the men. They split up and left individually in dark cars with tinted windows. Allenby glanced about as he drove onto the street from the parking garage. He knew the sight of these four men together on a Thursday afternoon would create a media storm that would be difficult to extinguish. Top operatives of the country’s premier spy and investigative agencies didn’t get together for coffee and donuts. They met in times of crises. And right now there was no spin the Department of Homeland Security could put on this that was positive.
Rothery waited for an hour after his visitors left before calling his driver and departing the office. He sat in the backseat of his chauffeur-driven Lincoln, watching the procession of D.C. monuments slide past. Washington was a beautiful city, especially in the summer when the trees and shrubs were in full foliage. They slowed for traffic, and the J. Edgar Hoover Building caught his attention. He personally thought they should rename that structure. They continued on Pennsylvania, past the White House, and then over the Potomac on the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. Roosevelt’s monument seemed to shimmer in the afternoon sun, surrounded by the nature and wildlife the twenty-sixth president had so dearly loved. The island with all its boardwalks and trails disappeared as they increased speed and headed up the George Washington Memorial Parkway toward McLean.
The car slipped into his driveway, and he dismissed his driver after requesting a six-thirty pickup the next morning. He walked the last few yards to his home, a low-slung ranch-style brick house surrounded by mature hickory. He opened the front door and heard the television from the back of the house. His daughter, Marissa, eighteen and registered to start her first year of college at Harvard next week, peeked out from the family room.
“Hi, Dad,” she said, smiling. She was an attractive young woman, with her mother’s finer features and his tenacity. Boys had been calling constantly since she was thirteen, but so far she’d been very choosy and had dated only a handful of eligible men. She met him halfway down the hall and gave him a big hug. “How was work?”
“Interesting,” he said. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”
“I’m going to college in six days,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be in a good mood?”
“No more parents for a while.”
“None. And tons of keg parties and visitors popping into the dorms at all hours of the night. I mean, that’s what you did when you were in Harvard, right?” She grinned and let him go. “Mom called to say dinner will be late. They teed off late today and she won’t be home until seven or so.”
“Okay,” Rothery said, watching her head downstairs to her space. She liked to be upstairs when he and his wife were not home, but the minute they arrived she headed to the basement and her fully accessorized bedroom. The chief of DHS walked through his house to the private backyard. He sat on the interlocking stone patio and put his feet up on the glass table. The trees swayed in the breeze and the barely audible gurgle of the distant garden fountain tickled his ears. He closed his eyes, the rigors of the office slowly dissipating into the warm evening air. The sound of the patio doors opening caused him to turn slightly and see who was there. It was Marissa.
“Dad, what do you think this is?” she asked. She came closer, gesturing at the side of her head.
He sat up and looked at his daughter. Her eyes were red, tiny veins almost obscuring the white. The color of her skin wasn’t right: It was gray and mottled with dark patches. A trickle of blood ran between her nose and her upper lip. She wiped at her ear and her hand came away stained red. More blood. Rothery jumped from his chair and stared. Dark fluid was forming at the edges of her mouth, and as quickly as she wiped it away, more of the dark, viscous fluid appeared.
“I don’t feel very well, Dad,” she said, falling forward. He caught her and almost dropped her on the stones, she was so hot. Burning up.
“Oh God,” Rothery screamed. He had seen the pictures of the victims in Austin and San Diego. He knew exactly what he was looking at. Hemorrhagic fever. The virus. He let his daughter slip to the ground and grabbed for the telephone. He hit the talk button and dialed his office. No answer. He dialed Jim Allenby. Voice mail. He hung up and dialed 911.
“Emergency,” the voice said.
“I need an ambulance,” he said. He recited his address.
“Yeah, you and everyone else,” the dispatcher said. “You think you’re the only one with the virus. Think again, buddy.”
He jerked awake, sweat running down his face and staining his shirt. His heart was beating faster than he had ever felt it, and his breath was coming in short gasps. Marissa stood in front of him with a scared look on her face.
“Dad,” she said. “Wake up. You were having a nightmare.” She was fine, her skin nicely tanned, her face and mouth showing concern but healthy. “Are you okay?”
He took a couple of deep breaths. “Yes, Marissa, I’m fine. Thanks for waking me. Must have had too much coffee today.” His breathing was returning to normal.
“Okay,” his daughter said hesitantly. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Yeah, sure, honey.”
She reentered the house and closed the door behind her. A nightmare. She had called it a nightmare. Was that it? he asked himself. Was it a nightmare?
Or was it a premonition?