She was waiting for the explanation. But she knew that the explanation might not come. That was the deal they’d made at home, about both their jobs. It’s okay to ask a question about secret business, but only once. If there’s no answer, drop it.
“It is a… village. Angie, did he say… This will sound odd, but did he tell you what the first attack, uh, is?”
She sounded astounded. “You don’t know?”
“Just tell me if he gave specifics.”
All air seemed to have drained from the White House. It was obvious how the stranger had reached Angie. Any Google search would produce her Facebook page or Twitter account, and the name of the K Street firm where she worked. After that, any scan of the online corporate directory would produce the names of employees. Easy to access a Facebook page or phone number. Next thing you know, you’ve reached Kyle through a back door.
“Angie, keep your secretary’s phone. We’ll want it.”
She knew not to push things. He’d met her in a foreign affairs class at Princeton, where they’d both aspired to Washington careers. They understood the nature of secrets and how to try to keep them from interfering with marriage. That meant she needed to shut up now and answer questions. Which was easier said than done. At first the privilege of knowing secrets makes you sexy and important to your spouse, Kyle thought. After a while, it gets aggravating. Then maddening. Then suddenly one day you’re strangers. The secrets seem more real than family.
“Kyle, he said if you doubted anything, turn on any local New York broadcast. He said New York will be covering the first attack by now. I’ve got New York up on my screen here. I see… oh God… I see lots of ambulances.”
Kyle hung up fast and got the Deputy Under Secretary out of the Roosevelt Room, where he was sharing bagels with an FBI rep, Ray Havlicek, and where they were congratulating each other for not panicking over the initial threat. Together they accessed the inset wall monitors. Up swam CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. Kyle fumbled with the channel changer. Chris Mathews disappeared, and local New York One popped up.
Kyle held his breath at the sight of ambulances pulling up before a large gray hospital on Manhattan’s York Avenue. The rolling banner read, Victims brought to Cornell Medical Center. Kyle waited with bile in his throat to hear the word bomb. But instead the reporter in front of the hospital was talking about malaria.
“Malaria?” said Havlicek, puzzled. “Turn up the sound.”
The newswoman said, “Health department officials are baffled at the scope of the outbreak. Nineteen people have fallen ill so far, and seven have died. The city was sprayed against mosquitoes in June, but summer is peak times for insects. I did some research, and malaria has not been present in New York to any substantial degree since the 1800s. Back then up to fifteen hundred people here died annually from the disease. Last year New York had only two hundred cases, and virtually all had visited tropical countries.”
“This can’t be it,” Havlicek said. But he sounded like he was making a wish, not stating a fact.
The reporter said, “The strange and terrifying thing is, none of today’s victims have left the U.S. recently, I’ve learned. They are coming in from different parts of the city. This strain is unusually virulent. It’s a deadly mystery, playing out at area hospitals. Officials fear widespread panic if the disease spreads.”
Kyle muted the sound as the reporter started taking “man on the street” responses. The hot dog vendor being interviewed looked scared. In the Roosevelt Room, the lox on the side table by the bagels was starting to smell rancid.
“Kyle? Malaria?” the Deputy Under Secretary said.
“Maybe the caller heard about this and he’s just taking credit. You know. Coincidence.”
Maybe he’s in New York. If we move fast, we can get him.
Shaking his head, the Deputy Under Secretary said, “But how could you spread malaria intentionally? I thought you had to be bitten by a mosquito to get it. Right?”
“We better call Gaines at CDC.”
Kyle turned to the window. The curtain was open, and he saw quick bursts of movement from insects in the Rose Garden. A dragonfly. A butterfly. Kyle realized there was a mosquito on the glass, outside. He watched it take a step on its spindly legs, fascinated. The insect buzzed back into the air. Now there were two mosquitoes there. It was impossible to tell one from the other. If one was infected, you’d not know from appearance which one it was, he saw with horror.
The little thermometer outside the window read ninety-one degrees, Kyle saw. An especially hot summer in Washington.
Kyle said, under his breath, “Bombs, but not bombs.”
Five hours later there were eighty-seven known victims in New York, nineteen dead from blackwater fever and rapid-onset cerebral malaria. Then the first victim showed up at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey. That’s two cities. The threat was three, Kyle thought.
Seven hours later the death toll topped thirty. The first case that came into a hospital in Philadelphia was a homeless veteran who’d been sleeping in a park by the Schuylkill River. By then, the national networks had the story, the White House was in a panic, and the beast down the hall, the press corps, needed blood, just like the mosquitoes.
By dusk, with malaria the lead story on all global networks, and eighty-one more ill, Kyle was in the middle of a raging argument over whether to reveal the phone threats to the news media, or keep them secret until after the national party convention next week.
Kyle argued that the news should be released, in case a member of the public might aid the investigation.
“And tell them what?” the Chief of Staff snapped. “That maybe we’re under biological attack? Maybe there are cells all over the country? That we have no fucking idea who they are or where they come from? You want to explain what that would accomplish, Kyle, except to cause panic?”
“There will be panic anyway.”
“For all we know your caller saw this on TV and claimed credit. There’s no proof it’s connected. Look, we’ve got the Detroit mass shooting to deal with. The China thing. The gun control. You want to announce? Then give me something positive! A hero! A clue! Something the President can announce as progress! The security agencies can do their jobs just as well if we keep this in-house for a bit. We’ll send out health warnings. Try to keep calm.”
“You mean keep quiet until after the convention.”
A hard stare. “I mean that you calm down right now. I mean that politics is like a good marriage. You love and respect each other, but you don’t tell each other every thing every minute of the day.”
The only thing all present agreed on was that as the sun went down, temperatures were still eighty-eight degrees along much of the East Coast. Excellent weather for mosquitoes.
Kyle was told in no uncertain terms not to ask more about a small Syrian village with the name of Tol-e-Khomri.
He decided to try to learn more about it anyway.
Quietly, so his boss would not find out.
THIRTEEN
Rain drummed on the tent in which the Brazilian Federal Police imprisoned us on the island. The SWAT team had arrived four days ago by helicopter, after Izabel called Brasília for help. Eddie and I slept on cots, as two stern-looking uniformed guards stood outside, armed with combat shotguns. Eddie saw a doctor daily, and we were fed well, beans, fresh fish, rice, and greens, while a forensics team went over the charred house and blackened lab, the bodies of the dead, and tissue/blood samples from three other survivors that Izabel and I had rescued before the clinic roof collapsed.