“Earth to Mom!”
“I’m listening!”
“Yeah? Then what did I just say?”
“I did not come here to be tested, Aya!”
Why was it, Chris asked herself, strolling again, looking at exhibits, why was it that with other guys after her, great guys, accomplished, smart, funny guys, athletes, a Nobel Prize — winning biologist, that Czech actor from the hit film Mrazek’s Island, all those guys calling her up, sending funny or cute e-mails, or flowers, why did she have to fall for a semihermit with secrets, just because something inside her turned to mush when he came near?
Even in normal times, he didn’t notice her, not in the way she’d prefer to be noticed, at least by him. He was polite and deferential, just as he was to everyone else, except Burke. He ran into her once at the Kennedy Center and barely said hello. Cindy Galli had sensed her frustration, girl to girl, and since Joe and Eddie stayed in the admiral’s guest house when in D.C., Cindy had cooked a group dinner once, invited Chris, seated her beside Joe, prompted conversation with the sort of questions that a smart hostess asks when she wants two guests to hook up.
Nothing. Joe had poured her wine, asked about Aya, listened with interest to the story about Vietnamese refugees refusing to take pills that were colored red, then excused himself and went off to bed early as he’d been up since 3 A.M. on a National Park Service evacuation — a New Mexican hiker who’d come down with hantavirus. The guy had zero interest in her. Cindy had told Chris that night, at the door, that Joe had lost his fiancée last year. “He needs time,” Cindy had said. “He’s a great person. He’s worth the wait. So are you.”
Idiot! Fool! Can’t you go for appropriate people, ever? I mean, she thought wryly, look at my history. First, the high school football player with the brains of an antelope. Then the married college TA who I stayed away from, because married guys are wrong, but I still had the crush, so I never went out with anyone else. One at a time. Then the Olympic swim champion who told me — four weeks into it — that he regarded women as gold medals. For six years, a few dates but nothing special… and now I fall for the killer in the file.
You go, girl.
As she looked over an exhibit titled, HOW GLOBAL WARMING CHANGES OCEAN CURRENTS, she recalled the way Burke had tried to poison the well for Rush a month ago.
Chris had been in his office to eye evacuation protocols: Congress, White House, Supreme Court, how to move government if the capital was threatened. Plans were made during the Cold War, when the threat was nuclear, and were updated annually, as the nature of threats grew and changed.
“In a protocol 80, you’d stay in the city,” Burke had said.
“But my daughter could get out first, right? There’d be advance warning. I could send her to my dad.”
“Chris, you know the deal. If there’s advance warning, yes. If not, we’re inside. But these plans have been around since the 1950s. Send her to Alabama, you can get a tornado. Tampa? Hurricanes! Eighty is a precaution, nothing more.”
Burke had gone back to details, which highways would be blocked off while motorcades made their way to the underground facility at Mount Weather, Virginia. Who goes if the President decides to stick things out in Washington. Who stays if the President leaves.
And then, excusing himself, Burke had “accidentally” left a manila file on his desk when he went to the bathroom. COLONEL JOSEPH RUSH in big black letters, sitting there, by Burke’s Remington statuette, just a foot away. She’d opened the folder. She’d been unable to help herself. She’d felt manipulated and guilty. No one’s fucking perfect, she’d told herself, knowing perfectly well that Burke would give her a few minutes to do what he wanted before wandering back.
When she’d seen the highlighted passages, her face had gone hot.
When Burke returned, his eyes flickered to the file, lying exactly as she’d found it. Burke’s expression satisfied. Burke knowing that she’d looked.
COLONEL RUSH ADMITTED BEING PRESENT WHEN THE SUSPECT WAS TORTURED. HE PARTICIPATED IN THE…
And, another page, another incident, ALTHOUGH NORWEGIAN POLICE NEVER ID’D THE KILLER, RUSH ADMITTED, DURING THE DEBRIEFING IN WASHINGTON, TO STRANGLING… HUSHED UP… BEST FOR ALL CONCERNED IF…
I’m so stupid, she thought now. I’m making excuses for him and I don’t even know what occurred.
The problem was, Burke didn’t lie, and she’d glimpsed the file for only forty seconds. So what had really happened? What was the unhighlighted part? Why did Burke hate Rush so much? Or was Chris blinded by chemistry?
In love with a killer, she thought again.
Over the last two days, after the initial call from Nevada, Burke had forced changes — ordering more FBI help, shuffling staff, sharpening control in case the emergency spread. Good precautions, Chris thought, because she’d seen close up, in the Ebola outbreak in 2014, how a lack of coordination could make a manageable situation wild.
Right now it’s only eleven dead in Nevada and forty-five in Somalia, awful, but hopefully containable, although someone’s going to have to tell the families of those soldiers and civilians who died.
Nine minutes until she had to leave.
Seven.
“Good luck, Aya!”
“Mom, I’m so scared! What if I lose today?”
Chris thought, You don’t know what scared is, and I hope you never do… Chris headed out for the parking lot, telling herself that Nevada and Somalia were nine thousand miles apart, and unrelated. But not really believing it. Back to work. Burke had sent agents in a Chevy Suburban to make sure she got to Andrews on time. They would drop her back here later to retrieve her car.
Burke had said, “You told Rush and Nakamura to take each other’s blood?”
“Every hour. We’ll analyze it when they get in.”
“And their flight time is nineteen hours?”
“Twenty, including the stop in Germany to drop samples at the lab. They’ll take more blood in the air after that.”
“Well, the marker shows up eight hours after contact, so if they’re clear when they hit D.C., they’re okay, Chris. Otherwise, quarantine them and give them antibiotics.”
“Burke, you mean the ones that don’t work so far?”
“Maybe they take more time to kick in. Have faith.”
She climbed into the backseat now, two FBI guys in front, the government being the last steady customer of that pathetic remnant of a once-great corporation, General Motors. The driver’s eyes flicked to her in the rearview mirror, glanced at her ring finger on the seat top. He was checking to see whether it was bare. He was a handsome man, but Chris had no response.
They headed downtown in light post-rush-hour traffic, on Massachusetts, then took Branch Avenue toward Camp Springs. The juxtaposition of normal sights outside — a line of idling cars at the Japanese Embassy, a bakery truck near Dupont Circle, Diamond cabs at Union Station — mixed in her mind with dire possibility. A bolt of fear hit her for Joe Rush. What if, despite precautions, he was infected? There was no way to know for sure until she transferred his blood to the Andrews Air Force Base Hospital, where lab workers waited, clad in protective gear.