Red (6 page)

And the opposite was true as well,
Kara thought.
If he died here, then he
would die in the forest.

He pulled down his sleeve. “Now I'll do everything in my power to help you, if you'll help me stay alive. I would say that's an even exchange. Wouldn't you?”

An unsure grin crawled across the secretary's face. “Agreed. I'll see what I can do, on the condition that you won't talk about these kinds of details in front of the media or the establishment in Washington. I'm not sure they will understand.”

Thomas nodded. “I see your point. Maybe, Kara, you could do some research for me while the secretary fills me in.”

“You want me to figure out how to make explosives?” Her brow arched.

“I'm sure Gains can put a call in to the right people. We're in canyon lands. Lots of rock, rich in copper and tin ores. We make bronze weapons now. Even if we withdraw, we'll only have a few hours to find whatever ingredients you come up with and make explosives. It has to be strong enough to knock down canyon walls along a natural fault.”

“Black powder,” Gains said.

Thomas faced him. “Not dynamite?”

“I doubt it. Black powder was first made by combining several common elements. That's your best bet.” He shook his head. “God help us. We're casually discussing which explosive will best blow up this ‘Horde' while breathing in the world's deadliest virus.”

“Who can help me?” Kara asked Gains.

He flipped open his cell phone, walked into the kitchen, punched up a number, spoke briefly in soft tones, and ended the call.

“You met Phil Grant last night. Director of the CIA. He's next door, and he'll put as many people as you need on it.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. If black powder can be found and made in a matter of hours, the CIA will find the people who can tell you how.”

“Perfect.” Thomas said.

Kara liked the new Thomas. She winked at him and left.

THOMAS TURNED to Gains. “Okay now, where were you?”

It was all coming back to Thomas. Not that he'd forgotten any of the details, but he'd felt a bit disoriented thus far. He could only be spread so thin. With each passing minute in this world, his sense of its immediate crisis swelled, matching the crisis that depended on him in the other world.

“Washington.”

Thomas ran a hand through his hair. “I can't imagine a group of politicians listening to anyone as forthright as me. They'll think I'm insane.”

“The world's about to go ballistic, Thomas. The French, the British, the Chinese, Russia . . . every country in which Svensson has released this monster is reeling already. They want answers, and you may be the only person other than those complicit in this plot to give them answers. We don't have time to debate your sanity.”

“Well said.”

“You made a believer out of me. I've gone out on a limb for you. Don't back out on me, not now.”

“Where has Svensson released the virus?”

“Come with me.”

THERE WAS a sense of déjà vu to the meeting. Same conference room, same faces. But there were also some significant differences. Three new attendees had joined through video conference links. Health Secretary Barbara Kingsley, a high-ranking officer of the World Health Organization, and the secretary of defense, although he excused himself after only ten minutes.
Something was odd about his early departure,
Thomas thought.

Eyes flittered about the room on high-strung nerves. The confident glares of last night were gone. Most of them had trouble meeting his stare.

They spent thirty minutes rehashing the reports they'd received. Gains had been right. Russia, England, China, India, South Africa, Australia, France—all of the countries that had been directly threatened this far were demanding answers from the State Department. But there were none, at least none that offered the slightest sliver of hope. And by end of day, the number of infected cities was promised to double.

Raison Pharmaceutical's report on the jacket left in the Bangkok airport took up fifteen minutes of speculation and conjecture, most of it led by Theresa Sumner from CDC. If, and it was a big
if
, she insisted, every city Svensson claimed to have infected actually had been infected, and if—again it was a big
if
—the virus did indeed act as the computer models showed it would, then the virus was already too widespread to stop.

None of them could quite grasp such a cataclysmic scenario.

“How in the name of heaven could anything like this have possibly happened?” Kingsley demanded. She was a heavy-boned woman with dark hair, and her question was greeted with silence.

This same simple question would be asked a hundred thousand times in as many clever ways as possible in the next week alone, Thomas thought.

“Mr. Raison, maybe you can give me an explanation that I would feel comfortable passing on to the president.”

“It's a virus, madam. What explanation would you like?”

“I know it's a virus. The question is how is this possible? Millions of years of evolution or however we got here, and just like that a bug comes out of nowhere to kill us all off? These aren't the Dark Ages, for crying out loud!”

“No, in the Dark Ages the human race didn't have the technology to create anything this nasty.”

“I can't believe you didn't see this coming.”

It was as close to an accusation as one could make, and it silenced the room.

“Anyone who understands the true potential of superbugs could have seen something like this coming,” Jacques de Raison said. “The balance of nature is a delicate matter. There is no way to predict mutations of this kind. Please explain that to your president.”

They looked at each other as if at any moment one of them would surely say something that would set this terrible mistake straight.

April fools!

But it wasn't April and no one was fooling.

They rallied around Sumner's repeated announcement that the virus had only been verified in Bangkok. No one else knew quite what to look for, although the CDC was working feverishly to get the right information into the right hands.

“Don't we have a plane to catch?” Thomas finally asked.

They looked at him as if his statement should require some examination. Everything Thomas Hunter said was now worthy of examination.

“The car will take us in thirty minutes,” Gains's assistant offered.

“Good. I'm not sure we're doing any good here.”

Silence.

“How so?” someone finally asked.

“For starters, I've already told you all of this. And all the talk in the world won't change the fact that we're facing an airborne virus that will infect the world's entire population within two weeks. There's only one way to deal with the virus, and that is to find an antivirus. For that I believe we'll need Monique de Raison. The fate of the world rests on finding her.”

He pushed back his chair and stood.

“But we can't speak of finding Monique de Raison here, because in doing so we'll probably tip our hand to Svensson. I believe he has someone on the inside.”

Gains cleared his throat. “You're suggesting there's a mole? Here?”

“How else did Carlos know exactly where to find me? How else did he gain access to my suite through the adjoining room? How else did he know I was sleeping when he entered?”

“I have to agree,” Phil Grant said. Thomas wondered if the man's trust of his colleagues had kept his own suspicions at bay until now. “There are other ways he could have gained access, but Thomas makes a good point.”

“Then I must say that the French government would like custody of Thomas Hunter,” Louis Dutêtre said.

All eyes turned to the French intelligence officer.

“Paris has come under attack. Mr. Hunter knew of that attack before it occurred. This places him under suspicion.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Gains said. “They tried to kill him this morning.”

“Who did? Who saw this mysterious intruder? As far as we know, Thomas is the mole. Isn't that a possibility? My country insists on the opportunity to interrogate—”

“Enough!” Gains stood. “This meeting is adjourned. Mr. Dutêtre, you may inform your people that Thomas Hunter is in the protective custody of the United States of America. If your president has a problem with that, please advise him to call the White House. Let's go.”

“I object!” Dutêtre jumped to his feet. “We are all affected; we should all participate.”

“Then find Svensson,” Gains said.

“For all you know, this man
is
Svensson!”

Now there was an interesting idea.

Gains walked from the room without a backward glance. Thomas followed.

THE SMALL jet winged westward over Thailand, bound for Washington, D.C., six hours after the first fax to the White House informed the world that everything had just changed for Homo sapiens. The CDC had now verified the virus in two new cities: New York and Atlanta. They started with the airports, following indications in Bangkok, and they hadn't needed to go any farther.

Svensson was using the airports.

Had
used the airports.

The first critical decision was now upon the world leaders. Should they shut down the airports and by so doing slow the spread of the virus? Or should they avert public panic by withholding information until they had something more concrete?

According to Raison Pharmaceutical, closing the airports wouldn't slow the virus enough to make a difference—it was too widespread already. And panic wasn't a prospect any of the affected governments were willing to deal with yet. For now, the airports would remain open.

Thomas had been awake for only four hours, but now he was eager to fall asleep. He held the thin manila folder in his hands and read the contents for the fifth time.

Kara frowned. “It might not have the kind of power you need—it's pretty slow burning—but Gains was right. Black powder is the only explosive you have any chance of pulling together in the middle of nowhere.”

“How am I going to find this stuff?”

“They tell me the kind of firepower you need isn't impossible. The Chinese figured it out nearly two thousand years ago by accident. You can be nearly 50 percent off on the combination of ingredients and still get a decent bang. And the three ingredients you'll need are very common. You just have to know what you're looking for, which you now do. Do you have sugar there?”

“Some, yes. From sugarcane, just like here.”

“If you can't get to the charcoal quickly enough, sugar will work as a fuel as well. Here's a list of more substitutes. The ratios are all there. Stall the Horde, and stall them hard. Deploy a thousand soldiers to find what you need.”

“A little research and you're ready to start commanding armies?” He grinned. “You'd be good there, Kara. You really would be.”

“You like it better there than here?”