in fewer words, Nancy. Someone thinks they have a cure for this thing? Where? How?”
Nancy Petrelli glanced with considerable animosity toward her fellow cabinet members and the other advisers who were ready to jump on her again. “As I said, sir, his name is Victor Tremont. He's CEO and chairman of Blanchard Pharmaceuticals, a large international biomedical company. He says a team at Blanchard has developed a cure against a virus found in monkeys from South America. Animal testing has been highly positive, a veterinary use patent has been granted, and everything's under review by the FDA.”
Surgeon General Oxnard frowned. “It hasn't been approved by the FDA even for animals?”
“Or ever tested on humans?” Secretary of Defense McCoy demanded.
“No,” the HHS secretary said, “they had no intention of using it on humans. Dr. Tremont thinks this unknown virus may be the same monkey virus but contracted now by humans, and I'd say ? considering the circumstances ? we'd be idiots not to investigate further.”
“Why would anyone develop a cure for a monkey virus?” the secretary of commerce wanted to know.
“To learn how to combat viruses in general. To develop mass production techniques for the future,” Nancy Petrelli told them. “You've just heard Ken and Norman say emerging viruses are an increasing danger to the world with all the access to what were once remote areas. Today's monkey virus can be tomorrow's human epidemic. I'd say we can all appreciate that now, can't we? Maybe we should consider the possibility that a monkey-virus cure just might cure humans, too.”
The hubbub erupted again.
“Too damn dangerous.”
“I think Nancy's right. We don't have a choice.”
“FDA would never allow it.”
“What do we have to lose?”
“A lot. It could be worse than the disease.”
And: “Does it sound a little funny to anyone else? I mean, a cure for an unknown disease just appearing out of nowhere?”
“Come on, Sam, they've obviously been working on it for years.”
“A lot of pure research doesn't have a practical use at first, then suddenly it does.”
Until the president again banged the table.
“All right! All right! We'll discuss it. I'll listen to any and all objections. But right now, I want Nancy and Jesse to go to this Blanchard Pharmaceuticals and check it out. We have a disaster on our hands, and we certainly don't want to make it any worse. At the same time, we could use a miracle right about now. Let's all hope to hell this Tremont knows what he's talking about. Let's do more. Let's pray he's right before half the world is wiped out.” He stood up. “All right, that's it. We all know what we have to do. Let's do it.”
He strode from the room with a far more positive stride and manner than he felt. He had young children of his own, and he was frightened.
In the soundproof backseat of her long black limousine, Nancy Petrelli spoke into her cell phone. “I waited until the situation appeared to be as grim as possible, as you suggested, Victor. When I saw that everyone was ready to concede all we could do was put on Band-Aids and hand out a lot of TLC, I dropped our bombshell. There was a lot of gnashing of teeth, but in the end I'd say the president's position is, basically, he's ready to take any help he can get.”
“Good. Intelligent.” Far away in the Adirondacks, Tremont smiled in his office above the placid and peaceful lake. “How is Castilla going to handle it?”
“He's sending me and the surgeon general up to talk to you and report back.”
“Even better. We'll put on a science-and-humility show for Jesse Oxnard.”
“Be careful about it, Victor. Oxnard and a few others are suspicious. With the president looking for anything positive, they won't do more than mutter, but give them any suggestion that something isn't right and they'll pounce.”
“They'll find nothing, Nancy. Trust me.”
“What about our colonel Jon Smith? Is he out of the picture?”
“You can count on it.”
“I hope so, Victor. I really hope so.”
She clicked off and sat in the dark limo, her manicured fingers tapping rapidly against the armrest. She was excited and afraid. Excited that everything appeared to be going exactly as planned, and afraid that something… some small chink they had forgotten or ignored or had not dealt with… could go wrong.
In his office, Victor Tremont looked out at the distant dark shadows of the high Adirondacks. He had reassured Nancy Petrelli, but he was having a harder time reassuring himself. After al-Hassan missed Smith and his two friends in the Sierras, all three had vanished. What he hoped was that they had gone into hiding and posed no further threat that they were hunkered down, afraid for their lives.
But Tremont could take no chances. Besides, from every piece of information he had been able to learn about Smith, it seemed obvious to him that Smith was not the type to give up. Tremont would continue to keep everyone watching for him. Smith's chances of doing damage, or even surviving, were not good. Tremont shook his head. For a moment he felt a chill. A not-good chance with a man like Smith was not the same as no chance at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Once considered the cradle of civilization, the city of Baghdad sprawled on a dry plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. A metropolis of contrasts, it seemed to shudder in the morning light. From turquoise-tiled domes and minarets, muezzin wailed across the rooftops of the exotic city, calling the faithful to prayer. Women dressed in long abayas glided like black pyramids through the narrow byways of the old suq and toward the glassy, modern high-rises of the new city.
This ancient city of myth and legend had been invaded many times across the millennia ? by Hittites and Arabs, Mongols and the British ? and each time it had survived and triumphed. But after a decade of U.S.-led sanctions, that long history seemed irrelevant. Life in Saddam Hussein's shabby Baghdad was a day-to-day struggle for the basics ? food, clean water, and medicine. Vehicles lumbered along palm-lined boulevards. Smog stank the sweet desert air.
Jon Smith had been thinking about all this as the taxicab had rushed him through the gray city streets. Now as he paid off the driver, he looked carefully around at a once-expensive neighborhood. No one appeared too curious. But then, he was dressed as a U.N. worker with an official U.N. armband and a plastic identification badge snapped to his jacket. Also, taxis were everywhere in this grim, embattled city. Driving a cab was one of the few occupations most middle-class Iraqis were already prepared to do: They still had at least one operating family car, and Saddam Hussein kept the price of gas low, less than ten U.S. cents a liter.
As the driver sped away, Smith surveyed the street again and warily strode across to what had once been the American embassy. The windows were shuttered, and the building and grounds were in disrepair. There was a sense of abandonment about the compound, but Jon pushed on through. He rang the bell.
The United States still had a man in Baghdad, but he was Polish. In 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, Poland assumed control of the imposing American embassy on P Street Northwest. Since then, even when U.S. bombs and missiles fell, Polish diplomats held forth from the embassy, representing not only their nation's interests in Iraq, but America's. From the great shuttered embassy, they handled passport questions, reported on local media, and occasionally passed sub-rosa messages between Washington and Baghdad. As in all wars, there were times when even enemies needed to communicate, which was the only reason Saddam Hussein tolerated the Poles. At any moment, the mercurial Hussein could change his mind and imprison them all.
The embassy's front door swung open to show a big man with a snub nose, thick gray hair, and shaggy eyebrows that were lowered over intelligent brown eyes.
