Cha Tsuni, Vice Minister of Health, gave a barely perceptible nod. A microbiologist and by far the least-known of CPA weaponeers, Cha was accorded special status. Few outside his laboratories in Tsinghai province knew exactly what he was doing. Cha adopted the serenity of a mandarin, the oral grace of a poet. Somehow this mannered image did not seem incongruous as he outlined his plan for mass destruction.
"The RUS would not be surprised," he began, placing his palm over the map's flat Mongolian expanse, "to find our mongol clients defecting as we expand our air bases in the Gobi Desert. They have had the same problem," he added with the barest of sarcasms. “They probably would welcome such a general defection, a migration to safety among the Buryat people — something like a pincers surrounding Lake Baikal.
"It is possible that such an exodus would be turned back by force, but the RUS needs laborers and, for the moment, can feed them. Now, esteemed comrades, I ask you what would happen if it should be discovered that refugees had spread smallpox into the Baikal region?"
The response was immediate consternation save Chang, who had already heard the arguments. Once eradicated from the globe except for laboratory strains, smallpox could be spread easily by immunized carriers. When CPA infantry advanced into the epidemic, they would be protected by vaccination. Such a weapon could be countered within a few months, of course, but by that time the Irkutsk region would be in Chinese hands. So would the Baikal-Amur railway, and by a lightning thrust northward China could cut the Russian Union of Soviets in two. The natural resources of Siberia could then be at SinoInd disposal, and an armistice might be quickly arranged with RUS leaders whose troops might not advance into an epidemic. Time enough, after that, to deal with America and the other allies. American concentration into urban clots had made it easy to diminish its gross national product a hundredfold. Under such circumstances, — and always assuming that Canada would not prove too meddlesome — an encroachment on the US might prove interesting.
Jung Hsia: "And why did we not use this tactic earlier?"
"Because we did not know what similar weapons the enemy might use in retaliation," Chang supplied. "But paranthrax is sweeping the eastern portion of the United States to such effect that we should be able to make the RUS see reason. They have not, hence probably will not, use germ warfare on this continent. In other words, after one quick success we might obtain a pan-Asian moratorium on biological weapons."
"A dangerous presumption," said Wu. "And the others?"
"Americans are more vulnerable than we, and less advanced in the precise tailoring of microbes," Cha smiled. “Even with their delivery systems, they could not destroy us as easily with microbes as we could destroy them. Besides: it was India, not we, who spread paranthrax on them. We have already expressed regrets, by suitable channels, to the Americans about that."
Jung stared at his relief map and sighed. “How quickly the tactics become a simple matter of ethnocide."
"I think not," Chang replied smoothly. "The US/RUS allies will surely see, and soon, that the statistics of genocide favor us. It will not be long before atmospheric contamination has risen so high that the RUS and US will be begging one another not to drop another nuclear device anywhere on the globe."
"Curtailing their own special advantage," Wu put in.
"Exactly. As I have already told you," Chang added obliquely, "our own, ah, delivery system is well underway in Szechuan. Only China is so experienced in coordinating thousands of small industrial centers. Only we know just how many small factories are contributing to the devices. Not even Casimiro must discover it in India; there is no way to maintain a secret that is shared by five hundred members of a democratic Parliament."
There had already been one leak from the Lok Sabha, India's lower house of Parliament, on the Florida invasion. This was only a minor irritant in the Yangku war room, for neither the invaders nor their delivery system were importantly Chinese.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Quantrill quickly discovered, on awakening Sunday morning, that Texas A & M was more than a football team in east Texas. It was a research center and a military training university as well, with far-flung research stations. He was slower to realize that he was becoming an honorary Texan as the story of his Oak Ridge exploit flashed across the sprawling high-tech campus.
He was scanned, anesthetized, treated, and fitted with a padded thigh crutch before breakfast. Over steak and eggs, in talk with his rescuers, he realized that an entire regimental combat team had been en route to recover the when, driven by his own internal demon, Quantrill appeared under the craft. Yes, he'd started the grass fire; no one asked why. Yes, he'd been scared witless when he had nearly slid from the cargo platform. He saw no point in wondering aloud why he had felt such an insulating calm before and after that moment. Quantrill had never studied differential response to stress, never wondered why a few people in every generation are predisposed by their glands to become gunfighters, stuntpeople, circus aerialists.
Then David Chartrand, the civilian captain of the Norway, sprang the good news and the bad news. The captain's own son had vanished with the Air Force Academy, and this youngster refreshed older, better memories for the reflective Chartrand. "I could name millionaires who want this thing, Ted: it's a delta pass. Anywhere a delta goes in this country, you can go," he grinned, handing Quantrill a coded plastic card. "Not just the Norway but the Kukon, the Mobile, and the rest. Just don't show it around too much; you could get mugged for it. And when you've finished your eggs, I want to introduce you to the country."
The egg- laden fork stopped in midair. "To the what?"
Now the bad news: "The whole country, son. Some people from ABC and CBS want you on a newscast."
There was absolutely no point in his chewing the rest of those eggs, Quantrill decided, because there was no possible way he could swallow them. He had been videotaped once at school; had found it harrowing. Almost, he wished himself back on that swaying cargo platform.
Still, he went with Chartrand and the tall, gum-chewing cargomaster, Bernie Grey. Emerging from the pneumatic pod that had shushed them cross-campus underground, Quantrill tried to smile back at a dozen people who scurried about with lights, cameras, coffee. His smile faded as he recognized ABC's Juliet Bixby and Hal Kraft of CBS. Both were familiar media faces, and Quantrill thought his breakfast insecure.
Bernie Grey, slender-muscled and long-haired, volunteered for the first setup interview. It was Bernie who had first mistaken Quantrill for an enemy. Bemie struck out with the fair Juliet, but seemed unabashed. Chartrand, unfailingly polite, minimized his role and heaped credit on Quantrill. The youngster in the yellow flight suit, a romantic figure with his limp and his external thigh crutch gleaming in the light, provided that rarity of the moment: an attractive man-child, a diffident and inspirational model. Bixby and Kraft did not share Quantrill's worry; if the kid broke down or had an erection on camera, well, that's what editing was for. Ted Quantrill was now public property; he just hadn't been completely processed yet.
Thanks to sensitive cameras, Quantrill was spared the ferocious heat of earlier media victims. He sweated all the same, perched on a stool as he had been told, the injured leg stretched out as if by necessity. The last part of the interview was transcribed as follows.
Q: How did you know the Norway had been hijacked, Ted?
A: Rumor around Oak Ridge.
Q: You're not from Tennessee, though.
A: From Raleigh. In North Carolina, ma'am. (SUDDENLY ANIMATED) I'd sure like to know if my parents are okay. Dad is Captain Hurley Quantrill and mother's Janine Quantrill.