These were the thoughts that Indian intellectuals had begun to bandy about. The Prime Minister was never confused with the intellectuals. He did, however, have a brilliant sense of which way the intellectual winds were blowing. The U.S. Ambassador to India, a former senator from New Hampshire, was a keen enough observer of Indian politics to spot an opportunity in all this. We should be thankful that the Ambassador was not one of those political hacks who make huge contributions to a presidential campaign and then find themselves ambassador to a country that they cannot find on a map. Rather, the Ambassador had started his career in the Foreign Service and had been a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate. The President had offered him the post as a consolation after he was beaten unexpectedly in a Democratic primary. He knew politics. He knew diplomacy. And he understood the needs and wants of the Indian Prime Minister. As the South China Sea Agreement drama was unfolding, the Ambassador passed an urgent message along to the Secretary of State: If we play our cards right, India might be the solution here.
When the Secretary of State and the U.S. Ambassador were finally able to speak, shortly after Air Force One had touched down in Australia, the Ambassador laid out his thinking: “If we can create a political win for the Indian Prime Minister, he’ll give us whatever Dormigen we need.”
“He turned down our earlier inquiries without a second thought,” the Secretary of State said skeptically.
“That was then. This is now,” the Ambassador explained. “There are murmurings in the press and elsewhere that this could be India’s shining moment on the world stage, the perfect opportunity to poke a finger in China’s eye.”
“Do they have enough Dormigen?” the Secretary of State asked.
“Yes,” the Ambassador answered confidently. The Secretary of State did not ask how the Ambassador would know something like this. She assumed that the resident spooks in New Delhi had done their homework.
“Okay, then, I think we should pursue a conversation,” the Secretary of State said.
“Yes, well, there’s one caveat,” the Ambassador said.
“Of course there is. What?” the Secretary of State asked.
“The Prime Minister is going to have to think this is his idea. If we ask again for the Dormigen, we’re not going to get it. He needs to offer it to us. It has to be his shining idea, and Indian voters need to know that.”
“Really?” the Secretary of State asked. She was intolerant of the exigencies of politics in the best of times. Now, having slept little and facing a deadly deadline, the Secretary of State was even less patient with such silliness. “Really? We’re facing down a hundred thousand deaths, and he needs to feel this is his idea? Are we dealing with a teenager?”
The Ambassador laughed. “That would not be a bad guide for the negotiations. But if I’m being more charitable, I’d say that one does not become prime minister in a country of a billion people, many of them illiterate, without some rather coarse political calculations.”
“Okay, fine. How do we make this his idea?” the Secretary asked.
“I was hoping you would have a suggestion,” the Ambassador answered.
The Secretary of State relayed the conversation to the President, who seized on the possibility eagerly. “It can’t be too hard to feed this idea to the Prime Minister,” the President said. “I don’t care who gets the credit.”
“Washington is full of people who think they’ve come up with other people’s brilliant ideas,” the Strategist offered.
“Exactly,” the President agreed. “Can’t we do a poll, something that shows that Indian voters want to come to the rescue here?”
“There’s not enough time,” the Strategist said. “We need three or four days to do a decent poll. And that’s in the U.S.; India is even more complicated.”
“Give me something here,” the President said in exasperation. “I’m tired of people telling me what I can’t do.”
“Poll results, on the other hand—I could do that in about five minutes,” the Strategist said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the Secretary of State asked suspiciously.
“It means we create the results we want and leak them to an influential Indian news source,” the Strategist explained.
“Oh, for God’s sake, that’s exactly the kind of thing that will make people around the world even more paranoid about American meddling,” the Secretary of State said.
“Let’s worry about that next week, when people aren’t dying of Capellaviridae,” the President said.
“With all due respect, sir, we should think very carefully—”
“I just did,” the President said sharply. “Make it happen. The two of you. I want the Indian Prime Minister to wake up tomorrow and think that his entire political future depends on shipping huge quantities of Dormigen to the United States. How you make that happen—that’s your job.”
69.
LIONEL GISCARD ARRIVED AT THE NIH OFFICES WITH GREAT fanfare. He had long gray hair and a carefully manicured goatee. He wore a blue suit with a florid purple shirt and a paisley silk scarf around his neck that he wrapped and unwrapped frequently, almost like a nervous tic. Giscard was stylish for a fifty-year-old man; by NIH standards he looked like a fashion model (with a great accent). Giscard’s arrival caused a frisson of excitement. Those who knew him greeted him effusively. Others waited to be introduced. I was surprised by how all the charges of bad behavior melted away in his presence—scientific celebrity. I also recognized that celebrity can be relative. As soon as Giscard stepped out of our scientific den onto the street, he became just another old guy with a goofy-looking scarf.
The NIH Director ushered Giscard into a conference room, where the Capellaviridae team was assembling. I was seated at the table; the Director introduced me as the resident Capellaviridae expert. “Okay, yes,” Giscard said. “But I am not familiar with your work. You publish on Capellaviridae, yes?”
“I did my doctoral work on it,” I said.
“And since?”
“I work on the staff here.”
“Ah, yes, I see.” His tone could not have been more dismissive. He immediately turned and looked around the room. His gaze settled on Jenna, who was seated in the back of the room in one of the chairs reserved for junior staff.
“Good to meet you,” I said sarcastically as Giscard made a beeline for Jenna, like a wolf that has spotted a baby rabbit limping in the grass. From across the room I watched as Giscard shook Jenna’s hand, placing his other hand lightly on her arm. She laughed at something he said. Some of the senior scientists waited patiently to meet Giscard while he finished his flirtation.
The NIH Director called the room to order. She introduced Giscard to the senior staff and gave a brief overview of our progress to date, including a summary of my “hostage hypothesis.” “But of course,” Giscard said. “This makes perfect sense. I have been working on a paper to this effect. In French, we say ‘preneur d’otages,’ the taker of hostages.” Like so much else with Giscard, it is hard to know if this was the truth, an exaggeration, or a complete falsehood. He claimed he was working on a paper with a theory of lurking viruses similar to what I had proposed. “You were invited to the conference in Toronto, yes?” he asked me.