All the networks simultaneously switched to the underground government complex beneath Virginia, an hour from where I sat. I saw the President interviewed by a blond ABC reporter, famed, Vanity Fair had said in a profile, for her “sympathetic eyes.” Both people sitting with legs crossed, in maroon leather chairs before a roaring fireplace, as if they were at the White House, not on a set designed to look homey a hundred feet belowground.
UNDER MOUNT WEATHER.
“God is with America,” the President said.
“Sir, would you comment on the latest Wikileaks report that you’ve okayed a plan to bomb terrorist camps in Mali and Nigeria?”
“The enemy doesn’t need spies. Just Wikileaks,” the President joked.
“Don’t you think the public has a right to know war plans?”
“If you’re asking whether they need to know everything that happens every second, no. I make decisions based on hard information, after consultation with some of the best prepared security staff on Earth.”
“Then it’s true. You’ve authorized massive attacks in retaliation for the infection.”
“You shouldn’t spread baseless rumors.”
“I’m not the problem, sir.”
The President didn’t look particularly safe in his bunker. He didn’t look confident. He looked exhausted.
“Why don’t Americans trust each other anymore?” he said.
The sandwich tasted better than a sirloin steak at Peter Luger’s. The quiet was a blanket. When I opened my eyes, I was slumped in the chair, and the clock told me that I’d slept for hours. It was 4:30 A.M. I smelled like a man who’d sweated through his outerwear.
I needed a shower. But first I trudged into the den, my missing toes throbbing. I turned on the admiral’s computer, muted the sound, and found local news, for the headlines. Then I rummaged through the admiral’s collection of DVDs for one of his favorite documentaries, A History of the Potomac River, which we’d watched together the last time I’d stayed overnight. I inserted the DVD so the TV could show it, and scrolled to a four-minute segment I recalled where the only sound was the capital’s river, swelling over rocks, falling into pools, turgid, pure, unadulterated, turned-up sound.
Only then did I call Eddie’s number. He picked up on the second ring.
“One, where the hell are you? Are you okay? It’s four forty in the morning. Do you need help?”
“C-c-cold out here,” I said.
“What is that I hear? Water?”
“Eddie, someone came after me,” I said. “At the cathedral. Someone was waiting. The song. The Sixth Prophet. Remember the song? We need to get to Burke or Havlicek. Or both, because someone told them I was there.”
I meant, Tell as many people as possible because one of them is a traitor.
“Who came after you?”
“He said his name was Robert Morton. One guy. Alone.”
The scene on the computer switched from weather to local crimes, video recordings. Have you seen these suspects? A store video froze looters in a Best Buy. A gas station video showed thieves turning on the pumps, waiting with five-gallon containers to fill them up.
Eddie said much, much too patiently, “Come in, One. We’ll explain together. I can meet you. I’ll get a car. You and me, man, Uno and Dos, just like back in the sunny Korangal Valley!”
I froze. In Korangal Valley, Afghanistan, we were separated and sent on different missions. Eddie’s telling me that someone is there with him, listening in right now.
“Gotta go,” I said. “I’ll call back in five.”
I hung up, pulled out the SIM card, and smashed it with a hammer I’d taken from a tool kit beneath the sink. Eddie was not allowed to leave the hospital grounds. He’d never come and get me. He’d warned me that we were being monitored and now I knew what I had to do to protect him.
It was not to call him back.
Because if someone sent Robert Morton after me, or if that someone got reports from whoever had listened in to us now, I’d put my best friend in the line of fire if I told him more.
I cursed. I would call Eddie anyway. I hoped he knew enough to change his room after this, add locks, bar his door, watch his back as he moved around the hospital complex. The crushing weight was a ball in my lungs. But Eddie and the admiral would have access to people I didn’t. Eddie and the admiral might get through and get a response when I could not.
I couldn’t stop myself if I wanted to at this point.
I was punching in his number again with the next cell phone when, shocked, I saw myself on the computer screen. The footage had been shot from a police squad car. I was holding Robert Morton’s pistol while Morton ran away. There was a dead man — the man whom Morton had shot — lying on the curb. A woman, his wife, screamed and pointed at me from the house.
I felt a barb move into my intestines. I heard my breathing pick up. They say cameras can’t lie. This one zeroed in on me, then switched to a rape attack near the Dupont Circle Metro entrance. Have you seen these men? Call this police phone number if you have. Reward!
When I’d first called Eddie, I’d hoped there was little chance of anyone on his end having the ability to track me, at least not quickly. All the better equipment would be allocated to major security — for terrorist suspects, interstate hijackers, gasoline thieves, or border crossings; to the larger emergency, not street crimes in Washington, D.C.
But if the problem is our own people, and they feel threatened, they’ll use every means to find me. They’ll make up a bullshit story. They probably have the power to do that.
“Joe? I lost you there for a second,” Eddie said when I reached him again. His voice was calm.
He knows exactly what I’m doing. Take the risk! The more who know, the better. There will be good people in the mix. I’ll hope Eddie gets through to one of them.
I ran down the story quickly, watching the second hand on the wall clock move. A man saying he was Robert Morton had tried to kill me. He’d shot the homeowner near the hospital complex, on 37th Street, not me. He’d punctured my tires and offered me a ride. He’d grilled me about the progress tracking the disease, and attacked me when I asked about a “Sixth Prophet.”
I sound lame even to myself, I thought, but pressed on.
“The police will have that car, Eddie. They’ll have his prints. Hair. DNA!”
“Come in, Joe, and we’ll both tell them.”
I pictured Eddie in a room with police or FBI agents. Guys in suits. Guys with access credentials, guys who could move around legally, not like me.
“The… river…” I gasped. “Cold here. Sleepy.”
I smashed the phone to bits, in the process chipping off the top of Cindy Galli’s Shaker-era antique wooden table. I’ll pay you back.
I tried the admiral and got his voice mail. Leave a message. I did. I tried Burke, and reached an assistant to an assistant, who sounded distracted as I ran down information. I heard a yawn. I was talking to someone so low down in importance that he thought I was a random nut. So much for access.
Try Havlicek. But the number he’d had days ago was disconnected. Ray was probably using a new phone.
By now someone at the FBI or in Burke’s office had probably recognized me from the police video.
I need sleep. I should lie down…
But then I remembered Chris Vekey, who had told investigators that I’d gone to the cathedral. What else had she told them? That I stayed here when in Washington? If they knew that, sooner or later someone would swing by.