dating someone else. She let his call go to voicemail.
Then he called again.
Strange, even for someone as persistent as John, she thought. He had to know she was watching the president’s speech. In fact, unless he had been fired, he had to
“John?”
“Angie! Thank God you’re there,” Davis said in a coarse whisper. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
It sounded as though he were afraid somebody might overhear.
“John, what’s going on? I’m on my way to the Capitol right now to see why all the broadcasts have gone dead.”
She located her purse, grabbed the brush on the chair beside it, and pulled it twice through her shoulder- length hair—reddish brown that day, and most of the time. Then she gathered it back in a ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie, flashing for a pleasurable moment on how annoyed Collins was when she wore it that way.
“I don’t think you’ll get within five hundred yards of this place,” Davis was saying, “but I need your help. I think I may have been exposed to something. We all have.”
“We all? What are you talking about?”
“I’m at the Capitol and I’m talking about everybody at the State of the Union Address having been exposed to something biological, a virus, Allaire said.”
“Oh my God!” The news sent Angie’s heart racing. “Are you all right?”
“For now, maybe. But I’ve started coughing and I’m really freaking out. We all are.”
“Hang on a second.”
She pulled on her peacoat and hat, and grabbed one of the ubiquitous spiral-bound notebooks that dotted the landscape of her life.
“You still there?” Davis asked.
“I’m here, I’m here. Now try to calm down and tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know. It was some sort of biological weapon or something, we’ve been told. Allaire said Genesis has something to do with it.”
“Damn. John, I can barely hear you. Can you speak up?”
“I can’t. I don’t want to be spotted. The Secret Service and Capitol Police are confiscating all our cell phones. I’m guessing Allaire doesn’t want to start a panic.”
“Is that why the broadcast went dark?”
“I didn’t know it had.”
With her phone tucked beneath her ear, Angie rubbed on some ChapStick, scribbled some notes in a shorthand only she could decipher, and turned the television back on. CNN was reporting only that something had occurred inside the House Chamber and they were working hard to get more information. Someone’s grainy, shaky cell phone transmission filled the screen.
Angie heard sirens blaring in the background and watched with widening eyes as the commotion unfolding within the camera’s view intensified. She remembered having the same sickening feeling when the first reports of the 9/11 attacks began trickling in. Something truly horrible was taking place now as it did back then.
“Where are you exactly, John?” she asked. “What sort of attack was it? Is anybody hurt? When did it happen?”
“Slow down, Angie. Slow down.”
“Are you sure it was Genesis?”
“Angie, I’m afraid I’m going to die. I’m afraid we’re all going to die.”
Angie’s heart beat faster.
“I want to help you, John. Just try and help me help you.”
“O … okay.”
“How did the attack occur? How was the virus delivered? Did you see it?”
Davis coughed. Angie shivered at the sound.
“I saw it. There were like misty plumes of smoke coming out of people’s bags and briefcases and purses, from some sort of microbomb, it sounded like. Massachusetts Congresswoman Dawn Bloom, two rows in front of me, had one go off right beside her.”
Angie stuffed her gloves inside her laptop case, and dropped in the ChapStick, half a dozen pens, and another notebook.
“What’s happening now?”
Davis partially stifled another cough.
“The president has ordered everybody back to their original seats. He’s blocked the doors with armed guards. Angie, I’m really scared. You know more about bioweapons than anybody I know. What the hell could it be? Oh, shit, I think they’ve spotted my phone. I’m going to keep talking as long as I can.”
“John, I’ll do whatever I can to find out and help.” Davis coughed again—deep, moist, and racking. “John, are you okay? Talk to me!”
“They’re here for my phone.… Listen, you bastards! This is America. We have laws. You can’t do this!”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER 7
The small group remaining in the Hard Room exchanged surprised looks except for Gary Salitas, whose attention remained fixed on Allaire.
The friendship between the two men dated back nearly twenty-five years, to the meeting of a select presidential commission on drug abuse in the inner city. The meeting, one of a number of such showcases to which Salitas had been invited over the years, was also among the more frustrating, with each of the political and academic lights determined to impress or outdo the others in terms of their rhetoric and posture.
Just when Salitas had been wondering if he could endure the rest of the afternoon, a lean, angular man stood up without asking to be recognized and began to speak. His name plaque read JAMES ALLAIRE, M.D.; CLEVELAND, OHIO, and he was angry. He was angry that people were speaking of Latin American cartels and minimum prison terms, of deposing dictators and passing stiffer new laws; of more presidential select commissions. But not once had anyone mentioned the abject hopelessness of inner-city children. Not once had anyone suggested a connection between drug use and classroom size. Not once had anyone offered the blueprint for a partnership between business, industry, and programs designed to provide every one of those children with a computer.
Allaire spoke for less than five minutes that day, but his eloquence, conviction, and the power of his words were unforgettable. And by the time the physician from Ohio had finished his remarks, gathered his notes, and strode from the room, Gary Salitas had vowed to hitch his wagon to the man’s star.
To this day, not once had Salitas regretted that decision.
“I will explain as much as I can in a moment,” the president began. “First, though, I want to be certain you know Jordan Lamar.” He nodded toward the stocky, baby-faced man several seats to Salitas’s right. “Jordan’s official title is architect of the Capitol. Jordan, this is my personal physician, Dr. Bethany Townsend, head of the White House Medical Unit.”
“We’ve met,” Lamar said, shaking Townsend’s hand and making certain that she knew the fifth member of the group, Hank Tomlinson, the chief of the fifteen-hundred-member Capitol Police force.
“Okay, then,” Allaire said. “Between the two of them, these men know every detail of the Capitol complex, from the surrounding topology to the nature and location of the facilities, passageways, and points of entry and egress. As of this moment, I am ordering a joint operation, to be conducted between the Capitol Police Board,
