The White Plague (17 page)

Beckett told her.

“Thought so. I’m experiencing some breathing difficulty. I’m cold. Are my feet trembling?”

Beckett put a hand on her right foot. “No.”

“Feels like it. You know, Bill, I’ve figured out something. I’m not afraid of death. It’s dying scares the shit out of me.” She fell silent, then weakly: “Don’t forget, pal – the best damn’ autopsy…”

When she did not continue, Beckett looked up at the monitor. He could feel her pulse slowing under his hand. The monitor read ten beats per minute and dropping. Blood pressure was diving. Even as he looked, he felt the pulse under his hand stop. The monitor emitted a shrill and continuous electronic shriek.

Danzas went around the bed and turned off the monitor.

In the sudden silence, Beckett removed his hand from Foss’s neck. Tears were running down his cheeks.

“Damn him! Damn him!” Beckett muttered.

“They’re arranging for us to do the autopsies in the OR,” Danzas said.

“Oh, fuck off, you bloody French prig!” Beckett shouted.

I have always felt a certain horror of political economists, since I heard one of them say that he feared the famine of 1848 in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good.

– Benjamin Jowett, master of Balliol, Oxford

“
S
URELY,
M
ISTER
P
RESIDENT,”
the secretary-general said, “some way could be found to save what’s left of your DIC team. They seem to be so remarkably well met.”

The secretary-general, Huls Anders Bergen, was a Norwegian educated in England. He had played a number of golf games with the man on the telephone and, on those occasions, they had been Hab and Adam. But Adam Prescott was firmly seated in his office as President of the United States today. There was no camaraderie in his voice.

What is troubling him besides the obvious?
Bergen wondered. It was something that Prescott did not want to say without elaborate preliminaries. The President appeared almost to be rambling. Why should he be talking about the procedures for sterilizing infected areas, and in the same breath as the tragedy at Denver? Those procedures had been worked out and accepted by all parties. Could it be something new in the costs?

“I agree, sir, that the economic realities are a prime consideration,” Bergen said.

He listened then while Prescott played out this gambit. The costs, although now thousands of times greater than for any other disaster in human history, were clearly only a part of the President’s immediate concern.

Could he be thinking of sterilizing the Denver complex?
Bergen wondered.

The thought set his hand trembling with the telephone against his ear.

Bergen, a man who could talk bluntly when it was required of him, asked the question straight out.

“The facilities, not the people,” Prescott said.

Bergen heaved a sigh of relief. There was too much death already. This meant, however, that the rumored Colorado Plague Reservation was a reality. Infected men were to be isolated there. Why couldn’t the DIC team be sent there, then?

“Could The Team work effectively without the DIC facilities?” Bergen asked.

Prescott did not think so.

Bergen weighed this factor in his mind. Obviously, Prescott and his advisors needed the Denver military facilities. The DIC complex there could be sterilized and made useful once more for the military. But what of The Team?

“They saved us days in identifying how the plague was spread,” Bergen said. “And now that we’ve confirmed it was O’Neill, surely the four men…”

The President interrupted. He did not want to isolate such brilliant minds. But what was to be done with them when the DIC was put to the fire? There was no comparable facility available in the Colorado Reservation.

On a sudden hunch, Bergen asked: “Could they be sent to that new facility in England?”

The President was full of immediate and fulsome praise for this brilliant suggestion. Only a genius could have thought of it.

Bergen took the red phone away from his ear and stared at it, then brought the instrument back to his ear. Praise was still pouring from it. He stared across the office at the paneled wall, the dark wood door. His desk chair was the best the Danes could supply and he leaned back in it, the phone still at his ear. A child could have made the suggestion to send those men to England, but Bergen was beginning to see the President’s political problem.

If the four infected men of The Team from the DIC were on an airplane, they might crash in an uninfected region. The crash site would require the “Panic Fire.”

Bergen raised this question with Prescott, listening for subtle hints in the President’s response.

Yes, it was too bad the press and public would not accept the official label, “Newfire.” The words
panic
and
fire
had particularly noxious connotations when used together that way. More was beginning to emerge, however.

Even if a sealed aircraft did not crash, any new plague outbreak beneath the flight path could arouse powerful suspicions that the occupants had spread the infection, that it had somehow escaped and fallen upon more innocent victims. Demagogues were having a field day and it would not do to provide them and the nut fringe of fanatics with more ammunition.

“I think the French might be willing to supply an escort of fighter planes,” Bergen said. He looked at the door to the outer officer while Prescott showered him with more praise. The French ambassador was among a group patiently waiting to have lunch with him.
A word or two in quiet, perhaps?

“Mr. President, you are more than generous,” Bergen said, cutting off the new flow of praise. “Can you get volunteers for their flight crew?”

Again, the secretary-general listened. How fortunate that Doctor Beckett of The Team was a pilot – Air Force Reserve of all things! And Prescott had this knowledge at his fingertips. How well informed he was! And a long-range aircraft could be made ready. The four men would drive themselves to the airport. They would take off, pick up their escort – and their car and its surroundings would receive its bath of Panic Fire.

Oh, there was one more thing. Could the secretary-general arrange for the four men to receive positions of “useful importance” at the facility in England?

Useful importance,
Bergen mused.

He decided on a small fishing expedition. “Is it the wisest choice to send them to England? That lab at Killaloe in Ireland sounds impressive, especially with all of the new equipment you’re providing.”

“But you yourself suggested England,” Prescott said. “I naturally assumed, since it was your first suggestion, that the British facility was the superior one.”

“England it is,” Bergen agreed.

It was all very clear now. If anything went wrong, then it was the idea of the secretary-general of the United Nations. It was Bergen, after all, who made the essential arrangements and pushed this project through.

The red phone at Bergen’s ear had still more tidbits to reveal, however. Prescott had things to say about O’Neill. Bergen looked at his wristwatch while he listened. The hunger pangs were intense. Abruptly, he lifted his chin, startled.

“They think O’Neill’s in England?” the secretary-general asked. “Why do they think that?”

As Prescott explained, it made a terrible logic. The victims, if they exposed him, might be afraid to retaliate lest the Madman loose an even more terrible disaster upon them. O’Neill had threatened this in one of his letters, after all, and without more certain knowledge, no one could afford the assumption that he was bluffing.

“Why not Ireland?” Bergen asked.

Ah, yes. O’Neill’s features were known to some people in Ireland and even if he disguised himself… well, the
psychological people
thought the Irish more prone to heedless revenge. Surely, O’Neill would have considered this. It was logical that he would want to hide in an English-speaking country where he was little known and where he could blend into the background more easily. And there was England
, a certain amount of chaos and disruption
. And England was one of his target areas, a place where he had expressly forbidden those Outside to employ atomic sterilization.

It made terrifying sense, but even more, if accurate, it exposed the workings of a mind that could cut through a problem like the slash of a sword. Bergen had a certain awareness of this quality in himself. Complexities must be reduced to manageable shape and size, even if this involved pulling from a complexity only that which could be managed. Mad, O’Neill might be, but also a genius – a true genius.

“How much certainty do they attach to this idea?” Bergen asked.

Ah, yes: the Profile. This was more of the DIC Team’s doing. Prescott and others believed The Team was “getting into the Madman’s mind, learning to think the way he does.”

Bergen silently agreed. Perhaps they were doing this. Certainly, someone must do it.

“I will make the preliminary arrangements for the flight to England,” Bergen said. “Someone from my office will call on your people to work out the details.”

Having achieved his object without ever openly expressing it, the President was willing to let the secretary-general go to lunch. There was even a suggestion that they get together soon for a round of golf and, then, finally, a more somber note.

“Terrible times, yes,” Bergen agreed. “These are, indeed, terrible times, sir.”

You’ll be noting the Ulstermen no longer sing “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”

– Joseph Herity

A
S
P
RESIDENT
P
RESCOTT
replaced the receiver on his telephone, he reflected on the conversation with Bergen. Quite satisfactory. Yes, quite well done on both sides. Of course, Bergen would be calling in the counter he’d just given. There would be a quid pro quo sometime. Well, that could be an advantage, too. Bergen was too good a politician to ask for something he knew he couldn’t get.

Charles Turkwood, the President’s personal aide and confidant, stood just across the desk from where Prescott sat. The Oval Office was very quiet, not even the sound of someone typing in one of the outer offices. That was one of the things that had happened – not as much typing. More was being done in direct telephone conversation, as just now with Bergen.

Turkwood was a short, saturnine man with close-cropped black hair. Widely set cold black eyes looked out over a rather short nose. The lips were thick, chin wide and blunt. He knew himself for an ugly man, but power had its compensations. He often thought of himself as a perfect counterpoint to Prescott’s tall, gray-haired dignity. Adam Prescott had the look of a kindly and benevolent soap opera grandfather. His voice was a gentle baritone.

“He went for it, eh?” Turkwood asked, deciphering the half of the telephone conversation he had heard.

Prescott did not answer. He bent over the desk reading a copy of one of the Madman’s letters. Turkwood, perfectly capable of reading upside down, glanced at what had caught the President’s attention. Ah, yes – O’Neill’s atomic warning:

“You will think of using atomic sterilization upon the targets of my revenge. Don’t do it. I will turn against you if you do. The plague must run its course in Ireland, Great Britain and Libya. I want the men to survive and to know what it was I did to them. You will be permitted to quarantine them, nothing more. Send their nationals home – all of them. Let them stew there. If you fail to expel so much as a babe in arms who belongs in one of those nations by reason of nationality or birth, you will feel my anger.”

O’Neill said it plainly enough, Turkwood thought.

The President finished reading, but remained silent, staring out the window toward the Washington Monument.

It was one of the President’s more disconcerting habits, maintaining a long silence after a statement or a question by a subordinate. It was assumed during such periods that the President was thinking, which he often was. But a silence unduly prolonged allowed considerable time for an underling to speculate about what the President might be thinking. Even unimaginative people can imagine very dark things under such conditions.

Of all his close associates, only Charlie Turkwood guessed that this was a deliberate mannerism, cultivated for precisely the effect it achieved.

“He went for it,” Prescott said finally, swiveling to face Turkwood. “We’ll have to watch carefully now. It’s entirely a United Nations thing and we’re just going along for the ride.”

“What’ll he want in return?” Turkwood asked.

“In due time,” Prescott said. “All in due time, Charlie.”

“Sir, did the secretary-general try to bring up the question of who has ultimate control over Barrier Command?” Turkwood asked.

“Not a word. Bergen understands that we handle only one hot potato at a time whenever that’s possible.”

“Barrier Command’s a dangerous power base, sir. I can’t emphasize enough how…”

“Easy does it, Charlie. They have one job right now and only one: Quarantine the infected regions – Ireland, Great Britain and North Africa. If they try to go beyond that mandate, there’ll be time enough later to deal with them. We have to hold things together, Charlie. That’s our main job: hold it together.”

It plows up the wild hair of the sea,
I have no fear that Viking hosts
Will come over the water to me.

– “The Guardian Storm,”
an eighth-century Gaelic poem

A
LIGHT
cruiser of Barrier Command challenged the little sloop off Courtmacsherry Bay while the small boat was on a reach for the Old Head of Kinsale. The sailboat, driving close-hauled in the dull gray light of early evening, found the blustery wind cut off by the light cruiser’s towering metal side. The warship, built on the Clyde for the South Africans in the days before apartheid isolation, flew the United Nations flag from its jackstaff. It had held the small boat on radar for almost an hour while it approached and while signals flashed back and forth between it and the headquarters of Admiral Francis Delacourt, the Canadian who headed Barrier Command from his base in Iceland.