The laminated hospital ID badge hanging from the breast pocket of his lab coat identified him as Dr. Richard Warren. He looked like any one of the fifty young interns and residents who frequented the wards on the third floor of Columbia Memorial. He wore the usual stethoscope draped around his neck, and his face had the slightly harried appearance that seemed to mark most doctors young enough to still be scrambling for a foothold in the world of HMO-driven medicine. But his name was not Richard Warren, and he was not a doctor. And the two men who walked behind him were not hospital orderlies, despite their green scrubs and hospital IDs.
To the casual eye, all three men blended in perfectly with their surroundings. A careful observer might have noticed that the trio moved with the animal grace of athletes, or that their eyes swept the hallway with the mechanical precision of radar scanners. But — thanks to the closure of DC General, the patient load at Columbia Memorial was nearly forty percent over rated capacity, and the third-floor staff had its hands full just staying on top of emergencies.
The man who was not Dr. Warren stopped at the nurse’s station and flipped through the rack of stainless steel clipboards until he found the chart for Room 31, Bed 4. The floor nurse glanced up from her own paperwork just long enough to register his lab coat and ID. He nodded without speaking, and she returned to her work.
The patient’s name was Isma’il Hamid. His diagnosis was listed as diffuse peritonitis and inflammatory bowel obstruction, secondary to perforated appendicitis. He was on a regimen of high-dose antibiotics and, according to his chart, was responding well to treatment.
The counterfeit doctor closed the chart and returned it to the rack. His pair of bogus orderlies followed him down the hall toward Room 31.
About twenty minutes later, the orderly delivering dinner to Room 31 discovered that Bed 4 was empty. Isma’il Hamid was gone.
CHAPTER 32
U.S. Department of State
Executive Summary on Siraj
Section VII Impact of Sanctions
[Synopsis and Recommendation(s)]
1. Synopsis:
A. In last week’s statement to the United Nations Security Council, Siraji President Abdul al-Rahiim accused the UN of playing politics with hunger. “My people are starving,” he said. “The sanctions against my country are squeezing the life out of my citizens. You sit in judgment over what you refer to as my excesses, and yet you ignore the fact that it is your resolution and your sanctions that condemn the Siraji people to slow death.”
When reminded that food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies are exempted from standing UN sanctions, Abdul al-Rahiim had no comment.
(See Appendix-B, Tab-C for a full transcript of President Abdul al-Rahiim’s remarks.) [Cross-index 737465616c7468626f6f6b732e636f6d]
B. Even as Abdul al-Rahiim claims that his people are suffering, he persists in obstructing humanitarian supplies intended for the citizens of Siraj. Despite Abdul al-Rahiim’s protests, his regime continues to export food in exchange for hard currency. In many cases, the exported foodstuffs are diverted directly from humanitarian shipments. Less than a week ago, ships charged with enforcing the UN blockade against Siraj seized the container ship MV
C. Not since Saddam Hussein have we seen a Middle Eastern leader whose motives are so unambiguously mercenary. Abdul al-Rahiim has built twenty-one palaces for himself since the UN blockade against his country was imposed. He continues to use all resources at his disposal to rearm the Siraji military and to finance his opulent lifestyle. His priorities are clear, and they do not include the welfare of the Siraji people.
2. Recommendation(s):
A. It is overtly obvious that relaxing or lifting the sanctions against Siraj will bring no relief to the inhabitants of the country. Such a move will only offer an already dangerous man increased leverage for destabilizing this politically fragile region. State recommends no change in U.S. position regarding the standing UN sanctions against Siraj.
President Chandler dropped the state department summary on the briefing table and settled into his plush, gray-leather swivel chair. Except for the seat belts and the obvious fact that ordinary office furniture was rarely bolted to the floor, the chair would have looked at home in any high-powered corporate boardroom.
At its cruising altitude of thirty-six thousand feet, the huge Boeing 747 200B was slicing easily through the bright morning sky. So far, the flight had been free of turbulence. Even so, the president fastened his seat belt almost immediately after sitting down. He would have preferred to leave the seat belt off, but safety protocols dictated otherwise. There were people in the world who would attack the presidential jet if given the chance, and the pilots might be forced to take evasive maneuvers with little or no warning.
As long as the captain of the aircraft kept the “Fasten Seat Belts” light turned off, anyone else on the plane was free to sit without buckling in.
This was a minor source of irritation to Frank, but as one of the pilots had once pointed out, the president’s safety was a matter of immediate national security. The lives of the president’s staff and the press corps, as valuable as they were, could not be considered a national security issue.
Of course, the president could have ignored the safety guidelines.
Many presidents had. But there were too many people who spent their lives trying to protect him — too many whose jobs and training would require them to sacrifice their own lives in order to save his. He owed it to them to do what he could to protect himself. And that meant, among other things, fastening his seat belt even when he didn’t feel like it.
He gave the belt an extra tug. It was a nice seat belt, as seat belts went.
Like every one on the plane, the buckle was embossed with the presidential seal.
Satisfied that he had done his tiny part to comply with the safety protocols, the president looked up at the small group of people on the opposite side of the briefing table.
National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven sat directly across from him, flanked on the left by White House Chief of Staff Veronica Doyle, and on the right by Undersecretary of State Lawrence Mitchell.
The president leaned forward and rested his arms on the briefing table.
“Let’s start with China.”
Brenthoven glanced at his notebook. “Both sides have stepped up their military air presence over the Taiwan Strait, sir. About three o’clock this morning local time, a pair of Taiwanese Mirage 2000s made simulated attack passes on three Chinese J-10s. Nobody actually launched, and none of the aircraft crossed the invisible line down the middle of the strait, but they traded lock-ons with their fire control radars and generally crowded the hell out of each other.”
“Playing chicken?”
