The four doctors trod cumbersomely over to the two world leaders and immediately started to draw blood.
“Mr. President, my name is Dr. Diebold. I am going to draw a blood sample to confirm whether or not you’ve been exposed.” The doctor spoke through a microphone built into his squarish plastic headgear.
Barnes nodded. “How much do you know about this virus already?” he asked.
Barnes could see the doctor’s frown through the clear plastic face screen. “Enough to know what it can do, sir. Not enough to stop it. Not yet.”
Barnes turned to Xu and flashed a smile as the other doctor drew blood from the Chinese leader. “Quite an evening, eh?” he said breezily.
“Astounding,” Xu said, his eyes like thin pencil lines behind his glasses. “I am surprised the terrorists could strike so close.”
Barnes, who had been briefed on all the recent events, was ready for that one. “I’m surprised, too. Of course, if a man can work for Chinese intelligence for years as a double agent without being noticed, I suppose anything can happen.”
The American President smiled at the Coke-bottle eyes as the Chinese leader’s face, for once, became readable. Barnes knew he would hear no more about this.
Getting out of CTU had not been difficult. The unit had a lockdown mode for security crises, and avoiding that would have taken some doing. But a hastily slapped-together quarantine was no problem for Jack.
Jack followed Mercy’s directions to the house on Fourteenth Street. Jack expected to find squad cars in front and police tape girdling the house. Instead he found that the entire house had been tented, and the houses on either side of Copeland’s had been evacuated.
“NHS is taking this seriously,” he said.
They got out and walked up to the front of the house, where a uniformed officer and a harried-looking man in a burgundy sweater holding a clipboard met them.
“I’m sorry, the house is off-limits,” he said. “Nothing to worry about, just some asbestos cleanup, but the city—”
Jack showed his identification. “We know what’s going on. We need to get in.”
The man stepped back, shaking his head. “I’m from NHS. If you know what’s going on, you don’t want to go in there.”
Mercy started past him. “I’m the one who made the first call. I don’t think there’s contamination inside. He didn’t keep the virus here. Even if there is, I don’t care.”
“Why don’t you care?” the NHS man said.
“Because I’ve already been exposed. Now you’re wasting my time.”
The man’s reaction was visceral. He recoiled from Mercy as she walked up to the door. She turned to Jack. “You want to stay out here just in case?”
Jack considered. Mercy knew more about Copeland than she did. If there was evidence to be found, she was better suited to find it. And he’d be no good to anyone if he infected himself. He hefted his cell phone, indicated he would wait for her call. “Go,” he said.
9:13 P.M. PST Bernard Copeland’s Residence
The front of Copeland’s house included an airlock similar to the one she’d seen at the Vanderbilt Complex. She entered it and then strode into the house.
It was dark. She felt around the walls until she found the light switch and turned it on. The house was very much as she’d left it, except that Copeland’s body had been removed and only the bloodstains marked where he had lain.
There was a certain symmetry to Copeland’s death, and to Frankie’s, she thought. Copeland wanted to be a terrorist for a decent cause, and had been murdered by a more pragmatic, if cold-blooded, killer who understood that terrorism was inherently indecent. Frankie, in turn, had been destroyed by the very weapon she tried to usurp for terrorist purposes. Maybe there really was justice in the universe. But no, there would be no justice unless they uncovered Copeland’s secrets and replicated the vaccine, which meant justice relied, as it did so often, on the determination and stubbornness of fallible mortals like her.
Mercy thought justice ought to choose better champions.
Thirteen. Forty-eight. Fifty-seven. The numbers had no relation to one another that she could figure out, nor could the analysts at CTU find a connection. So their relationship had to be in connection with something else. An address. Most of a phone number? Something…
Mercy wandered the house, soaking in her impressions of Copeland. The house was meticulously kept, befitting a scientist and researcher. Copeland had planned his viral attack on the President with the utmost care. He had even created a contingency plan for dealing with investigators like Jack and Mercy. He was a planner, he was exacting. He was also careful. His operators were fragmented, few of them knowing the whole picture. So she guessed that the numbers were a combination to a safe or a code of some kind. Copeland would keep information (meticulous) but he would hide it (careful).
And he was corny.
There was a moment in Mercy’s investigations when her thinking fell into a groove, when her mind seemed to find the right element, and all of a sudden all extraneous items were redacted. Gone. Leaving only the answer before her, clear and distinct.
The book. It was that book with the stupid title. Mercy searched the bookshelf in the hallway but found nothing. She found a den with a television and two bookshelves packed with titles. Still nothing. She ran upstairs to Copeland’s bedroom, and she found it. An old, nearly faded copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, sitting on his night-stand. The pages were permanently curled upward by a hundred rereadings. Mercy opened it and saw notes scribbled on the first page, and the second, and the third. Some of the scribblings were illegible, others seemed to be short phrases or incomplete thoughts that Copeland had set down and forgotten.
Mercy flipped to page thirteen, and smiled.
Al-Libbi’s phone rang. He opened the connection without saying a word.
“You should praise Allah, my friend. Only a moment ago you went from being on our death list to being our most desired ally.” It was the voice from the Iranian ministry.
“If it is the will of Allah,” Ayman said, not really caring if Allah had anything to do with it, as long as he had a home. “Now, to deliver the package to you, I will need some help…”
Jessi tapped on the glass door of Christopher Henderson’s office. Henderson looked up unhappily; it had been a long day and he was looking forward to a moment’s rest. He’d just sat down for a few minutes, rubbing his eyes. NHS had all but taken over CTU to evaluate the threat of the virus. He’d just gotten word from Dr. Diebold that the station had tested negative, and that all personnel were cleared.
“Do you have a minute?” Jessi asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to Jack Bauer,” she said. “And I haven’t seen any of the updates because the NHS wouldn’t let me near the computers—”
“It’s all clear now,” Henderson said.
“I was just wondering if Jack…if anyone’s heard from Kelly Sharpton.”
Henderson sat back. “Jack didn’t—? No one told you?”
“Jack sent me back here with the prisoner earlier. That’s the last thing I heard from either of them.”
Henderson stood up. “Jessi, I’m sorry. There was a fire-fight. Sharpton went with Jack. He was…Jessi, he was killed.”