“I’ll try, Harlan. But if it’s not possible?”
There was no hesitation in Harlan this time. “Kill him, Orrin. Find out what he’s up to or not, but I don’t want him back at that hospital. We have to hope he’s the only one, of all of them, who may be figuring this out.”
Orrin Sykes clicked off and, dwarfed by the massive cathedral up the hill, sighed and missed Harlan. He missed the people back home. His friends. He wanted to go home.
It would be simple to walk up to Rush and just pull a trigger, but Orrin had asked him to try to do more.
There has to be a way, thought Orrin.
Far up the driveway, in the dusk, a lone figure appeared on the cathedral steps.
Rush?
THIRTEEN
Back in 1980, at the height of the Cold War, the FBI commissioned a study by Stanford psychologists to predict public reaction to a biological attack on the United States. Academically titled “Probability Analysis of Mass Fear Among Certain Populations,” the study used as a premise that an unknown enemy had released a rapidly spreading infectious agent in the United States.
“Our purpose is to assist decision makers in designing effective policy,” the authors wrote after crisscrossing the country for months, taking surveys.
I’d read the report, one more attempt to mask anarchy as controllable. The researchers had driven from city to city, administering five hundred true-false or multiple-choice questions to sixth graders in Little Rock, Montana convicts, Ohio steel workers, welfare moms in Oakland, migrant farmers in California, Wall Street brokers, corn farmers, teachers, long-haul truckers, bank clerks, house painters, heart surgeons.
If law enforcement in your city ceased operating, and you were ill and knew you were infectious, would you:
a. lock yourself in your home
b. attempt to relocate to a possibly safer area
c. consider the use of firearms justified
d. go to a designated hospital
The dryly written report predicted an initial phase of mass confusion, during which, “eighteen percent of people will panic, while 23 percent willfully ignore health announcements and refuse to take precautions, not believing that the illness is infectious. Seven percent will flee, believing that safety lies elsewhere. Four percent will secure their homes, hoard food, even attack strangers. Between 2 and 5 percent ‘will turn to crime,’” the summary stated, as if prediction were fact. “We expect a brief period of mass confusion but general cooperation, followed by rapid descent into anarchy, and an abandonment of all essential services. Therefore, we recommend a quick establishment of martial law, and the temporary closing of mass news outlets in order to minimize confusion and promote a common agenda.”
Which had not happened.
I stood on the steps of the National Cathedral with an encrypted cell phone in hand, knowing that I was once again going to anger Chris Vekey. I saw in my mind’s eye the frightened worshippers at my back, kneeling, praying, lips moving, eyes staring at the miracle windows inset into gray stone. I didn’t need a ten million dollar report to confirm the obvious — that the illness was in the initial phase, and things would worsen if it wasn’t contained.
In 1980, when that report was written, our government had, for all its faults, still functioned more efficiently than under the unstable collection of extremists who currently kept the nation in gridlock. I punched numbers into the phone, readying arguments. But Chris didn’t answer. The person I really wanted to speak to did.
“Aya, did you mean what you said about wanting to help?” I asked.
“Yes, Joe.” She sounded breathless, eager.
“Put your mom on the phone, please.”
I explained to Chris that I could use a researcher to replace the staffers Burke had pulled from the investigation. Aya could access social media with ease. She could surf the Net probably better than me, or half the adults I knew. She could check backgrounds on people, public records, at least. She could monitor news reports. She wasn’t a pro, but she was competent, and I needed all the help I could get.
I took her silence for serious consideration until she said, “Only hours ago we were told to stick to the medical end. Are you out of your mind, Joe? If she looks into things, they can backtrack what she did on her computer. Then she’s in trouble, too.”
I argued into cold silence. I had not forgotten. I simply wanted Aya to look at public records, not government ones.
“You’re not dragging her into this.”
Chris hung up.
I started down the driveway. At its foot, the block was deserted. Lights came on in some small homes, but residents in others might have left the city, as they were dark. I was preoccupied, thinking that once I returned to the hospital, I’d be busy with patients, and conducting even the most basic Internet searches would be difficult.
It was so quiet here that I heard my footsteps on snow, heard the distant organ start up in the cathedral, and the muffled swell of voices came through the revolving door as someone else went in or out. It was the daily 5:30 P.M. evensong. Men and women, books open, voices raised. A pair of headlights came on down the block.
The choristers, singing.
I thought, Two locations. Africa and Nevada. Two pairs of strangers. Two outbreaks. One song.
As I left Woodley Road and walked onto the small side street where I’d parked the 4Runner, my phone rang. I saw it was the number I’d just telephoned. My spirits rose. I hoped it was Chris, calling back. I was wrong. It was Aya.
“Joe, I heard what you asked. I want to help. Mom went out. I’m alone in our room now. They put us in a student dorm. I can keep a secret if you can.”
Go for it, I thought.
I asked her to get from Eddie the names of the two grad students in Somalia who had been singing about the Sixth Prophet. “Try to find background on those guys. They’re from the State University of New York at Albany, they said. Maybe you can access the school website. Try to find any phone numbers. Home addresses, family. Departments. Maybe we can call one of the faculty members at home.”
“Duh! I know how to look up things. It’s not like I’m five years old, Joe.”
“Don’t personally contact anyone. Stay on the computer. If nothing comes up, just stop. Move on to the next guy.”
“Sure.”
“This all stays between you and me.”
“Of course. If I tell Mom, she’ll kill me.”
“She’ll kill me more than you. Also, look up the Sixth Prophet. I don’t know who it is, or if it even means anything. The Sixth Prophet. Check links with disease. Or religions. Any references over the last five years at all. Song lyrics. Online sermons. Prophecies. Try Galilee. Cults. Collect it all.”
“Thanks! I’m going crazy without something to do!”
“And, Aya, don’t forget what I said about—”
She cut me off, her disdain making her sound exactly like her mom. “You don’t have to tell me twice. Don’t tell anyone. You know what Mom said? She said if she was a man, a dad instead of a mom, you wouldn’t have gone against her wishes. Joe? Is that true? You don’t respect women as much?”
“Maybe we should forget this,” I said, but I also wondered uncomfortably if Chris had had a point.
“No!” Long pause. “Um, I, I better tell you that, uh…”
“Tell me what?” I asked, a drumbeat of alarm beating in my head.