Viral

Isaak Priest straightened his arm, pointing the gun.

Only it wasn’t Isaak Priest. Isaak Priest wasn’t real. His father had known that. This was Landon Pine, the American military contractor. The businessman whose Black Eagle Services had made billions of dollars off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, before his overzealousness got him in trouble. Perry Gardner’s partner. Who had signed on to this without knowing what it would eventually become, or cost him. Who had gotten drunk on an idea. Perry Gardner’s idea of a New Paradigm in the developing world. Who had been paid enormous sums of money, most likely, to make it operational. Then found out that he was also going to end up taking a fall, unless he discovered another way out. A way that involved bringing down somebody bigger than he was.

Charlie kept his gun at his side, knowing what was going to happen.

Then Priest turned the Beretta so that the barrel was flush against the side of his head.

And he pulled the trigger.

IN THE PACKAGE on the table was a copy of the full emergency management plan. “Fork River Township, Pennsylvania.” The real TW Paper. Pine and Gardner’s plan for remaking three African nations, “solving” the problems of Third World poverty, disease, and corruption by simply eliminating them. There was also a memory stick, probably containing details about the operation, the dream that Landon Pine had devised with Perry Gardner, and talked about once with Thomas Trent. A plan that could have worked. That could have been implemented tonight. And there was something else. Another, smaller envelope, full of registered bonds made out in $100,000 denominations. Charlie checked the dates, counted the amount. Mature bearer bonds worth nearly $2 billion.

He gathered everything into the package, shoved it inside his jacket and walked away. There was nothing else to do there. He walked down the street for a couple of blocks and called the police from the first pay phone he saw. Told them, “Isaak Priest has just committed suicide,” gave the address and hung up.

He bought a change of clothes and then headed toward the heart of the capital, thinking about the set-up. What had happened and what hadn’t. Priest hadn’t paid the investors’ money to the Muake government. He must have known what was going to happen and tried to block it. He must have reneged on the deal.

Charlie found Okoro in Joseph Chaplin’s apartment, staring at a computer monitor. Chaplin was studying aerial photographs of the city.

“It’s over,” Mallory said. “Priest is dead.”

“What?” Chaplin said. “Did you kill him?”

“No. He killed himself.”

But Charlie was still thinking through puzzles. Knowing that it wasn’t over at all.

Wednesday, October 7, Washington, D.C.

In a concrete and steel bunker sixty feet below the streets of Washington, D.C., five men and two women sat tensely around a rectangular rosewood conference table, three on each side, one at the head of the table. The bunker, located on parkland just over the Maryland border, had originally been built by the Army Corps of Engineers during the construction of the Washington subway system in the late 1970s. The half-acre bunker contained its own ventilation system, heating and lighting plants, forty-foot water wells, and an emergency communications network. With its outer layers of two-foot-thick reinforced concrete, ten-inch-thick steel-plated blast doors and angled entrance ramps with vibration isolators, the bunker was constructed to withstand the damage from a thirty- megaton bomb blast as well as the inevitable earthquake aftershocks. But its primary purpose was not as a fallout shelter. The bunker’s main function was to serve as the headquarters for the least-known arm of the government’s intelligence community, a presidential “liaison committee” known informally as the Covenant Division.

The seven members of the Covenant Division had been scheduled to meet that afternoon for a briefing on Mancala, on the operation they had authorized nearly ten months earlier. A project known as the “New Paradigm.”

But the operation in Mancala had not unfolded as expected. There had been a serious setback. That was the news that the group’s chairman had just relayed to the other six members. He was the same man who had first brought the project to them and convinced them to become part of it.

The seven men and women gathered in the room were among the most brilliant and powerful people in the country, including representatives from the fields of finance, the military, technology, and energy. They were also people who understood and supported their organization’s unique mission. The group chose its members very carefully.

This meeting, though, was an anomaly. There was an unfamiliar tension in the room, a mood of anger, resentment, and disappointment struggling to find a proper outlet.

“So we have had a setback. Something impossible to predict,” Perry Gardner said, in another attempt at summary. “The mission aborted hours before it was to become operational.”

“Priest aborted the mission,” said a former Joint Chiefs of Staff member and secretary of defense, interrupting him. “But we don’t know why.”

“No.” The chairman sighed. “A great deal of stress, presumably. Maybe guilt. We don’t know all of the reasons yet. It might be a while before we get a complete picture. As I say, we know that he took his own life and sabotaged some elements of the plan. I take full responsibility for that. But the plan will go forward,” Gardner said, looking quickly to his left. “My estimate—and I will prepare a more thorough analysis, of course—is that we can re- activate this again within three to four weeks.”

“But what about the status of the viral properties?” said a tall white-haired man, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist. “Isn’t there an enormous risk factor there?”

“No. As I said, we have built-in safeguards, which have rendered the mechanism inoperable. I will be traveling there today for a more complete analysis.”

One man in the room knew more than the others. Perry Gardner could feel it, and he avoided that man’s eyes. For nearly a year, the people in this room had been infected with Gardner’s idea, with a humanitarian mission that could have turned the wheel of history. Now, each in his or her own way, they were beginning to reject it.

“Self-inflicted gunshot wound was also how Thomas Trent died,” the man to his left said. “And it’s one of the signature methods used by the Hassan Network.”

Gardner did not respond or look at the other man, hoping that his remark would pass without comment. “Again, I want to stress that this is a setback. A battle, not a war. We still control the resources, technology, and opportunity. The objective of creating a New Paradigm, a high-tech, productive model for the so-called Third World, is still very much alive.”

“I don’t know how this could have happened, based on everything Mr. Gardner has told us,” said Richard Franklin, the man to Gardner’s left. “I, too, want to be sure that this setback hasn’t inadvertently created an unspeakable crisis. I want to make certain that the Hassan Network hasn’t gotten hold of any of this and is planning to use it as a terrorist weapon. That to me is very troubling.”

Again, no one commented. But the others were skeptical now; Gardner could sense it. There had been misgivings all along about his involvement with the Hassan Network. And it was a concern, but one that he couldn’t afford to admit. Not in this company.

Within ten minutes, the frustration and anger in the room had found a form. They had agreed to continue moving forward with the project but to strip Perry Gardner of his chairmanship. A former secretary of state was named the new chairman.

Gardner sat stone-faced, saying nothing.

“There’s another issue,” said one of the two women, a onetime chairman of the Federal Reserve. “The president of Mancala has been a silent partner on this project. He has just sent us an accounting, though, for one point nine billion dollars.”

“What?” said Richard Franklin. “How could that be?”

“The third payment was never made, he claims.”

“That’s not possible,” Gardner said, calmly. “The money went to Priest four days ago.”

“What sort of transaction was it?” asked one of the world’s most successful investors.

Gardner almost choked as he said the words: “Bearer bonds.”

“So two billion dollars in investor money is missing? And it was paid in bearer bonds?”

“I’m certain it will be accounted for,” the man known as the Administrator said.