On the state floor of the White House, sandwiched between the enormous East Room and the sumptuously appointed oval Blue Room, was the Green Room. Once the dining room of Thomas Jefferson, the Green Room was now a parlor, usually devoted to small receptions. It was a soothing place; the green watered-silk wall coverings and striped silk damask draperies seemed to invite introspection. President Chandler liked the Green Room a lot. He often went there to relax, and he nearly always left the little parlor with a smile on his face.
He was not smiling this evening, as his chief of staff opened the door for him and stepped back to let him in. Through the open doorway came the background murmur from the East Room: numerous voices mingled with the muted tones of light orchestral music.
Perched delicately on a nineteenth-century Duncan Phyfe settee, Gregory Brenthoven rose quickly to his feet.
The president waved him back. “Sit,” he said. He nodded over his left shoulder toward the East Room. “I’ve got fourteen South American diplomats out there, and at least half of them are trying to pinch Jenny’s bottom. So let’s try to make this quick, before my lovely wife dislocates someone’s jaw and causes an international incident.”
Veronica Doyle followed her boss into the room and closed the door behind her. “The first lady
The president tugged at his bow tie, loosening it a fraction. “She is, indeed. But I still think it’s rude of our esteemed guests to leave their fingerprints on her anatomy.” He sighed and looked at Gregory Brenthoven. “What have you got, Greg?”
“Germany,” the national security advisor said.
“All right,” the president said. “We’ll get to that in a minute. First, what’s going on with the British Embassy?”
“Sir, you’re scheduled for back-to-back Situation Room briefings at nine thirty and nine forty-five,” the chief of staff said. “The topics of interest are developing events in China and the status of the British Embassy investigation.”
“That’s fine,” the president said. “But the embassy attack is on my front burner; Greg can give me the ten- cent version now.”
Brenthoven paused for a second as though mentally shifting gears.
“The casualty count has stabilized. Sixty-eight people dead and forty-nine still in treatment. With the possible exception of two who are still on the critical list and could go either way, the doctors are expecting all of the remaining victims to recover.”
“Both of those numbers are higher than the ones I got from homeland security,” the president said.
The national security advisor nodded. “Yes, sir. The FBI has been tracking down people who came in contact with the agent at the embassy, but were somewhere else when they developed symptoms. They’re using the embassy visitors’ logs as a checklist, and they think they’ve found them all now.”
“That’s one piece of good news,” the president said.
“Here’s another one, sir,” Brenthoven said. “So far, everyone who’s come down with symptoms has actually been to the embassy. CDC was right. The bio-warfare agent used isn’t robust enough to spread by human contact. The concentration level has to be pretty high to ensure infection.”
“Have we identified the agent yet?”
Brenthoven nodded. “Yes, sir. CDC ran the micrographs, and USAMRIID cross-checked them. It’s a strain of T2, a trichothecene mycotoxin that comes from corn or wheat mold.”
The president frowned. “Mold? Clark told me that the highest agent concentrations were in the carpet. If we’re talking about mold, that seems like something that could occur naturally. Can we be certain this isn’t some kind of rare natural phenomenon? I remember reading an article on Sick Building Syndrome where the ventilation ducts become infected with mold or a virus and then spread it through the building.”
Brenthoven shook his head. “No, sir. There is no room for doubt.
Natural forms of this mold grow on corn or wheat, not carpets. Besides, the agent used was not actually a mold at all; it was a chemically engineered mycotoxin that is
“So we are one hundred percent certain that this was a biological warfare attack?”
“Yes, Mr. President. We also know how the agent was introduced into the building — in carpet cleaning machines. It went right past the security dogs, because they’re trained to smell explosives, not biological agents.
The shampooing process saturates the carpets with liquid soap, but — in this case — the liquid in the machines was about 5 percent soap and about 95 percent mycotoxin. Every carpet in the building received a massive concentration of the T2 mycotoxin.”
The president tugged at his necktie. “How much do we know about the attackers?” he asked.
“There were two men, both American citizens of Middle Eastern descent — Michael Umar and Raphael Ghazi.”
“Deep-cover operatives?” the president asked.
“Possibly, sir,” the national security advisor said. “So far, three terrorist groups have claimed credit for the attack: Assi’rat, the Islamic Revolutionary Congress, and the Hand of Allah. Langley is pretty sure that none of those groups were actually involved in the planning or the attack itself. Most of the major terrorist groups are denying involvement.
We haven’t yet turned up any links between the attackers and any known organizations. There was a third man assigned to the carpet cleaning crew as well, a nineteen-year-old American Sailor named Jerome Gilbert. He was dispatched to the embassy with the other two men, but according to the logbook, he never showed up. We’re looking for all three men, but no luck so far.”
The president rubbed his eyes. “One of our Sailors was involved in a biological warfare attack on the British Embassy?”
“We don’t know that, sir,” Brenthoven said. “Seaman Gilbert was moonlighting, and he was brand new to the job. There’s a good chance that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. My guess is he showed up for work and got assigned to a crew with a hidden agenda. It’s even odds that Umar and Ghazi, the other two men on his work crew, murdered him before the attack took place — to keep him from interfering.
I wouldn’t be surprised if his body turns up in a ditch somewhere.”
“If that’s true,” the president said, “then the attackers have
“Yes, sir,” Brenthoven said. “It’s a pity we’ll never get a chance to bring them to justice.”
The president’s eyebrows went up. “Why is that?”
“They’re almost certainly dead, Mr. President,” Brenthoven said.
“They couldn’t very well arouse suspicion at the embassy by wearing gas masks or biohazard suits. They would have had to do the job in their regular work uniforms.
No masks, no respirators, no special protective equipment. I don’t see any way they could have avoided absorbing lethal concentrations of the mycotoxin.”
“A suicide mission,” the president said.
“I think so, sir,” Brenthoven said. “Standing right next to the carpet shampooing machines as they were pouring out the mycotoxin, Umar and Ghazi were probably the first people in the embassy to receive a lethal dose. It’s also likely that they were exposed to higher concentrations than everyone else — again because they were right next to the machines. So they got it
“So much for catching the attackers,” the president said.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Brenthoven said. “We’ll probably find their bodies in a day or two.”
“Do we have any other leads?” Doyle asked. “Can we trace the source of the biological warfare agent?”
“We’re working on that,” Brenthoven said. “USAMRIID thinks the mycotoxin may have been genetically modified for increased lethality and a higher rate of contagion. That should narrow the field for us a bit.
Despite the UN’s efforts to stamp them out, there are a number of biological warfare laboratories in the
