Secretary of State Knight was shocked. “The pharmaceutical company wants money up front?”
Chief of Staff Ouray scowled. “I thought this was pro bono.”
The surgeon general shook his head, chiding them. “No one provides vaccines or serums for nothing, Charlie. You think the flu vaccine we want everyone in the nation to have every winter is free?”
Nancy Petrelli explained, “Blanchard incurred enormous expense developing the biotechnology and facilities to produce the antiserum in quantity to see if it could be done so we'd have such facilities in the future. They expected to recoup over a long period. But now we need it all and fast. They're way out on a financial limb.”
“I don't know about this, Mr. President,” Norman Knight worried. “I guess I have some reservations about `miracles.' ”
“Especially when they don't come cheap,” Ouray added, an edge of sarcasm in his voice.
The president slammed his fist onto his desk, jumped up, and paced into the center of the room. “Dammit, Charlie, what's the matter with you? Haven't you been listening these last few days?” He prowled back behind his desk and leaned over it, facing them. “Almost one million dead! Untold millions who could be dying any day. And you want to argue about dollars? About a reasonable return for stockholders? In this country? We preach that economic view as the only right and fair way, dammit! We can end the scourge of this awful virus right now. This minute. And it'll be fast and cheap compared to what we spend every year fighting flu, cancer, malaria, and AIDS.” He spun on his heel to peer out the Treaty Room window as if looking out on the entire planet. “It could really be a miracle, people!”
They waited unspeaking, awed by the righteous rage of their taciturn leader.
But when he turned to face them again, he had calmed himself. His voice was quiet and compelling. “Call it God's will, if you like. You cynics and secularists are always doubting the unknown, the spiritual. Well, there are more things on heaven and earth, gentlemen and lady, than are dreamed of in your philosophies. If that's too highbrow for you, how about `Don't look a gift horse in the friggin' mouth'?”
“It doesn't appear it's going to be exactly a gift,” Ouray said.
“Oh, for God's sake, Charlie. Give it up. It's a miracle. Let's enjoy it. Let's celebrate. We'll have a big ceremony accepting the first shipment up there at Blanchard's headquarters in the Adirondacks. A beautiful setting. I'll fly there, too.” He smiled as the ramifications struck him. At last there was good news, and he knew exactly how to use it. His voice rose again, but this time in excited anticipation. “In fact, let's bring all the world leaders in by closed-circuit TV. I'll give Tremont the Medal of Freedom. We're going to stop this epidemic in its tracks and honor those who've helped us.” He gave a wicked grin. “Of course, it's not too shabby for our political aspirations either. After all, we've got to think of the next election.”
Amid the gilt and marble of his office, the deputy minister smiled.
The important Englishman said, “Everyone who goes into Amazonia needs a permit from your ministry, correct?”
“Very true,” the deputy minister agreed.
“Including scientific expeditions?”
“Especially.”
“These records are open to the public?”
“Of course. We are a democracy, yes?”
“A fine democracy,” the Englishman agreed. “Then I need to examine all the permits granted twelve and thirteen years ago. If it's not too much trouble.”
“It is no trouble at all,” the deputy minister said cooperatively and smiled again. “But, alas, the records from those years were destroyed during the time of a different government.”
“Destroyed? How?”
“I am not certain.” The deputy minister spread his hands in apology. “It was a long time ago. There was much turmoil from unimportant factions that wished a coup. Sendero Luminoso and others. You understand.”
“I'm not certain I do.” The important Englishman smiled, too.
“Ah?”
“I don't recall an attack on the interior ministry.”
“Perhaps when they were being photocopied.”
“You should have a record of that.”
The deputy minister was unperturbed. “As I said, a different government.”
“I will speak with the minister himself, if I may.”
“Of course, but, alas, he is out of the city.”
“Really? That's odd, since I saw him only last night at a concert.”
“You are mistaken. He is on vacation. In Japan, I believe.”
“It must have been someone else I saw.”
“The minister is unremarkable in appearance.”
“There you are, then.” The Englishman smiled as he stood and bowed slightly to the deputy minister, who returned a pleasant nod. The Englishman left.
Outside on the wide boulevard of the elegant old city famed for its colonial architecture, the Englishman, whose name was Carter Letissier, flagged down a taxi and gave the address of his Miraflores house. In the taxi, his smile evaporated. He sat back and swore.
The bastard had been bought. And recently, too. Otherwise, the minister would have allowed Letissier to waste his time in the files only to discover the records really were missing. Instead, the records must not have been destroyed yet. But Letissier also knew they would be gone by the time he could get an appointment with the minister. He glanced at his watch. The ministry was closing. Given the normal lazy habits of Peruvian deputy ministers, the records would not actually disappear until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
Three hours later, the grand offices of the Ministry of the Interior were dark. Armed with his 10mm Browning semiautomatic, Carter Letissier broke in dressed completely in black and wearing the black boots and antiflash hood with respirator of the British SAS counterterrorist commando. At one time he had been a captain of the 22nd SAS Regiment, a proud and memorable period in his life.
He went directly to the filing cabinet he had learned contained Amazonian documents, found the section on permits, and extracted the folders for the two years he needed. He erected and flicked on the minute lamp he had brought with him. Under it, he opened the folders and photographed the pages with his minicamera. As soon as he had finished, he returned everything to where it belonged, collapsed his light, and slipped back out into the night.
In his private darkroom in the Miraflores house, Letissier, now a wellknown importer of cameras and equipment to Peru, developed the film. When the negatives were dry, he made large prints.
Grinning, he dialed a long series of numbers and waited. “Letissier here. I have the names of those who led scientific teams to the location you wished in the years you wished. You have paper and pencil ready, Peter?”
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
The old industrial city of Syracuse was nestled in the autumn-colored hills of central New York state, a land of rolling farmland, ample rivers, and independent-minded people who enjoyed the great outdoors from the safety of their sprawling lakeside metropolis. Jonathan Smith knew all this because his grandparents had lived here, and he had visited them yearly. A decade ago, they had retired to Florida, where they had fished, surfed, and happily gambled until first his grandmother had died of a heart attack, and then within three months his grandfather had followed, too lonely to go on.
Jon gazed out the window of the rented Oldsmobile that Randi was driving. As they sped along, she shifted lanes, preparing to leave Interstate 81 going south to join Route 5 east toward where they hoped to find Marty.
