“Well, now,” Angie said, realizing that Allaire was issuing a thinly veiled warning to both her and Griff. “I find that just a little unsettling.”
“Please don’t worry, Ms. Fletcher. Knowledge about the people we’re dealing with is what keeps our government strong. The professionals who are paid to do this for us are very good at their jobs. If we had to, we could probably pull up what Dr. Rhodes had for breakfast on the day of your last birthday, which happens to be—” Allaire checked a sheet of notes on the table in front of him “—May twenty-ninth. We also know about your time together in Africa, as well as your visit a few years ago to see him on his boat in Key Largo. You were researching a story and stayed the night.”
“I don’t like this,” Griff said, feeling his face hot and flushed beneath his hood.
Allaire leveled a steely gaze at him.
“Rhodes, I frankly don’t care what you like or don’t like. To me, until you prove otherwise, you’re a terrorist who, for whatever reason, has placed your interests above your country’s. Do you think you could have just picked someone to report to us and we would blithely invite her in here? We know enough about Ms. Fletcher to trust that unlike you, she is likely to place the needs and security of her country above her own. Am I wrong about that, Ms. Fletcher?”
“No, sir,” Angie said, with firm conviction. “No, you’re not. What I report back to you will be what is happening. But I want to say again how unpleasant it feels to learn my life has been investigated to such an extent by my own government.”
“Objection noted,” Allaire said dismissively. “Okay, then, Dr. Rhodes, I hope I’ve made my point about the measures I am willing to take in the interests of national security. With that in mind, I am giving you one warning and one warning only: If you want to stay away from the inside of that cell at Florence, then don’t fuck with me again.”
CHAPTER 20
The only virus poisoning the Capitol, Ursula Ellis believed, stood on two legs with his hands resting on the House of Representatives lectern. She glared down at Jim Allaire from her perch atop the tribune and felt her hatred for the man shift into overdrive. Looking away, she made eye contact with Leland Gladstone, who was already in position on the House Chamber floor. Her aide gave her a discreet thumbs-up sign. She tried to suppress her smile. A nod to Gladstone was the signal that his message had been received.
Allaire ordered the three hundred people held captive inside the House Chamber to retake their seats, and Ellis delighted in seeing how his usually unflappable demeanor had waned. He looked gray and pinched. The mood in the room was reflecting his plummeting popularity.
“I promised you an update as soon as I had information to share,” Allaire said through the PA system. “At this very moment, there is a team of specialists on site, who are experts in all facets of the virus we may have been exposed to.”
A senator jumped to his feet.
“You said ‘may,’ sir. Is there doubt that we’ve been exposed? Could this all be for nothing?”
The question rattled Allaire, who fumbled with his words before correcting himself. “We’ve almost certainly been exposed to something,” he said. “The nature of the pathogen, however, is still in question. Cultures and other attempts at nailing down the germ are under way.”
Ellis silently applauded the representative from South Dakota for asking what she herself had long been thinking. Allaire prattled on. Half-truths and outright lies.
“The biocontainment suits you have seen are being used as a precaution,” Allaire said in response to a specific question. “In addition to examining some of you, this team of specialists will be taking blood samples. Those samples will be used to assist in determining a timetable for our release. We have to be certain there is no widespread public health threat before we give the green light to evacuate the Capitol. In the meantime, we’re working on removing seats to provide for more adequate sleeping arrangements. Also, I know the lines to use the bathroom have been long, so we’ll be providing portable waste facilities as well.”
“What about contacting our families? My cell phone is useless. What in the hell did your people do?… And why?”
The man stood on his seat, waving his cell phone defiantly. The crowd cheered until he was quickly subdued by two Secret Service agents, who clearly had not been told that transmission had been blocked on those cell phones they hadn’t already confiscated. Ursula watched with pleasure as the agents pried the device from the man’s grasp.
The mood inside the Capitol was worsening. Everybody wanted out—everyone, except perhaps for Ellis, who needed Allaire to keep the crowd imprisoned inside. Politics 101 dictated that the more people felt oppressed, the easier they would be to turn. It was her duty to expose the truth about this man, and Allaire’s mounting paranoia played perfectly in her favor.
“I understand you’re very concerned about your families,” Allaire was rambling on. “We’re working on that issue, but it’s going to take some time. Rest assured, my White House staff is getting word out to your families as I speak, informing them of the situation and sharing my personal commitment that we will resolve this crisis as quickly and efficiently as possible. Soon you’ll be able to make calls yourself. We’re working on setting up a phone bank and bringing in medications for those of you who need them. For national security reasons there will be limits on the sort of information you can share.”
Ellis cringed. This was America, dammit, not some backwater third world dictatorship. Allaire’s wife and daughter sat center to the president on the chamber floor, gazing lovingly up at him. Ellis wondered what their expressions would be in another couple of minutes.
“I know this isn’t the update that you wanted,” Allaire continued. “I know you were hopeful I would say that the crisis has passed and we can now all go. It is my deepest regret to inform you that is not the case.”
It was time. Leland Gladstone stood and raised his hand. Ellis’s heartbeat responded to an adrenaline rush.
“Mr. President,” Gladstone called out, “I found medication belonging to Senator Harlan Mackey in the bathroom. I went to give it to him, but could not find the senator here in the House Chamber. Has he been relocated to another part of the Capitol, sir?”
Ellis held her breath. She wondered what might happen to Gladstone in the aftermath of what was soon to follow. Whatever Allaire might to do her aide, Ellis would make it her first priority to undo.
“Yes. Senator Mackey has been relocated,” Allaire said. “You can provide the medication to my physician, Dr. Bethany Townsend, and she’ll see that he gets it.”
“Oh, good,” Gladstone said. “So the video I have isn’t of Senator Mackey.”
Ellis bristled from the same sense of pride she felt whenever her own gifted children excelled at something special. Allaire took a staggered step backward, but soon regained his composure.
“What video?”
“Here, I’ll show you.”
Gladstone hit the power on the digital projector he had hidden underneath his seat. He had found the projector inside a locked cabinet in the press gallery, precisely where Ursula said it would be. Sean O’Neil had provided her with the key, and Gladstone found cables there to connect the machine to his BlackBerry.
The stiletto of light filled a portion of the House Chamber’s side wall. The grainy image was of the Capitol’s east exit walkway at night.
“What is this? What is the meaning of this?” Allaire thundered, his face reddened.
Gladstone bore in.
“In the initial confusion after the outbreak, I somehow ended up on the second floor of the Capitol. I was taking some video of this ordeal when … well, when this happened.”
