As if on cue, Carter approached him and said, “Sir, Ryan Chappelle has just arrived. He’s the Regional Director for the Counter Terrorist Unit.”
“I remember him,” Barnes said. He stood up and walked over to the transparent shield. On the other side stood a short, balding, ferret-faced man holding a radio to his ear. Next to him stood Mitch Rasher, his closest advisor. Just having Rasher on the premises made Barnes feel better.
“Mr. President, I’m sorry,” Chappelle said.
“Don’t be sorry, just fix it,” Barnes replied. “First, tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I have some answers for you, sir,” Chappelle replied, “but it’s not a complete picture yet. What we know is that there were actually two terrorist plots in the works. Our agents stopped terrorists from firing rocket-propelled grenades into this building. But at the same time, an eco-terrorist group managed to—”
“I know what they managed,” said Barnes irritably. “Why didn’t your people know about this?”
Chappelle fidgeted and Barnes knew instantly that Chappelle was uncomfortable speaking truth to power. “Well, sir, we had people on the case. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn about this meeting until the last minute.”
Barnes looked at Rasher through the glass and frowned deeply. The meeting had been Rasher’s idea. The secrecy had been his idea, too. Rasher, an entirely political animal, believed the stories of Xu’s daunting negotiating skills and hadn’t wanted to expose his man to any public scrutiny if he failed to win concessions from China. Secret negotiations were only valuable if they remained secret.
“The press?” Barnes asked.
Mitch Rasher, on his own radio, said, “Controlled. No one’s come up the hill but our people, and we’re putting the word out that there was an attempted robbery up here. The Vanderbilt is going along with it.”
“That’s something then,” Barnes allowed. “Is NHS here? Do they have a vaccine?”
“ETA is five more minutes,” Rasher said.
“But,” the CTU man said, “but frankly, sir, we already had NHS investigating other exposures. They don’t have a vaccine yet.”
“So you think this idiot on the DVD was telling the truth?”
Suddenly a blond man pushed his way through the crowd of staffers and security people and began talking to Chappelle. He looked like hell — his shirt was torn, the side of his face was turning purple, and there were streaks of what must have been blood on his sleeves and pants. Barnes couldn’t hear him through the radio, but it was clear from Chappelle’s expression that he didn’t like the newcomer.
“. what the hell do you mean he got away?” Chappelle snapped. “How could you let him get away?”
Jack glared at Chappelle. “If you hadn’t refused the backup I needed at Lee’s house, he wouldn’t have gotten away. Not to mention the fact that if I had listened to you, I wouldn’t have gone up to that house in the first place, and you’d be standing in the middle of a bomb site rather than a quarantine zone!”
Chappelle opened his mouth, then shut it, realizing that everyone around them, including the President, was listening to their argument. Jack saw the wheels turning in the director’s head: he had screwed up the call on Marcus Lee, but at the same time, he would never take the political heat. Lee had been cleared by the Secret Service, and they had been stationed at the residence. That snafu would be blamed on them. Thanks to Jack Bauer and Nina Myers, CTU had been the only Federal agency with any clue to what Lee was up to.
Jack glanced at Mercy to make sure she was all right. She nodded, reading his thoughts. They had a lot of talking to do; he knew that. But it would have to wait a little longer.
“Well,” Chappelle said at last, “we need to find al-Libbi.”
“Forget about the terrorist!” Barnes demanded. “Find me the vaccine. According to the message, we’ve got less than ten hours.”
Jack looked at the Secret Service man next to the President. “Bring me that waiter.”
The other two quarantined agents brought him over and slammed him up against the Plexiglas. Someone held a radio to his ear.
“Your name is Stan,” Jack said.
“You have to let me go,” said Stan. “If you don’t, you won’t hear from him.”
“Him? You mean Bernard Copeland?” The waiter reacted physically to the name, his facing draining of color. Jack continued. “We won’t hear from him anyway, Stan,” Jack said. “He was murdered this afternoon. By one of your people.”
The edges of Stan’s mouth sank into a deep frown. “You — you’re lying.”
“I think Frankie did it,” Jack stated, looking at Mercy as though waiting for a second opinion. “She seems like the type.”
It was the oldest trick in the interrogator’s handbook, to act like one knew more than one did. Of course, in this case Jack was almost certain he was right.
The reaction on Stan’s face proved it. “Oh shit,” he muttered. “Oh my god. She’s crazy.”
“Stan,” Jack said in the tone of a reproachful parent. “I want to remind you what this means. You’ve been exposed to the virus like everyone else in there. The guy you were counting on to vaccinate you is dead. Your life span can now be measured in single digits. Tell us what you know.”
Stan talked. But in the end, what he had to say was interesting without containing anything vital. Stan’s role in the ecoterrorist plot was no different from the role of true believers in any organization. He’d been recruited for his zeal and been sold on a dangerous role, but never been told the deepest secrets of the group. But he did confirm Jack and Mercy’s suspicions about Frankie Michaelmas. “She’s a nutcase,” Stan said. “The rest of us wanted to find some way to get the world’s attention, but she wanted to find some way to hurt people. She’s the one that got the idea of trying to contact real terrorist groups. She said no one would really take us seriously until we defended the Amazon the way Hamas defends Palestine.”
“And look how that’s worked out,” Mercy murmured.
The waiter could feel the anger on both sides of the Plexiglas rise, and all of it was currently directed at him. “Copeland didn’t go for it. None of us did,” Stan said defensively. “I got the feeling Frankie was contacting them on her own, ’cause she kept coming to us with new ways to organize. We broke into small cells, and almost no one knew everything that was going on except Bernie. Bernie liked the part. He was really paranoid about people knowing what we were doing, especially the Federal government.”
“Let’s get to the important part, Stan,” Jack said. “Who else in your group has the vaccine, or knows where to get it?”
Stan shook his head. “Man, if I knew, I’d tell you. I don’t want to die of this stuff. I know there are some others, but I don’t know them. But I’ll bet Frankie knows.”
Jack turned to Mercy. “I’m going to go talk to her. You want to come along?”
Ayman al-Libbi sat in the passenger seat of Muhammad Abbas’s rented Chrysler 30 °C, bleeding on the brand-new leather seats. The bullet had blown some of the flesh off his left side, but the round itself must have glanced off his ribs.
He was sure at least one of them was broken. But he did not think he was dying.
“Drive a little faster,” he said, as cool as ever. “The other cars move faster than you do.”
Abbas obeyed. “The safe house is fifteen minutes from here. You can make it?”
The terrorist nodded. “I can make it. How could I do otherwise? This whole affair has just become so much more interesting.” He patted the pocket of his jacket, which contained two small glass vials.
“How are you feeling?” Jack asked as he headed down the freeway away from the Vanderbilt Complex and back to CTU.
“I’m fine right now,” Mercy said. “I don’t feel anything. Except pissed off. I feel really pissed off.”
Jack took one hand off the wheel and put it over her hand. “We’re going to find this vaccine. You’re going to live,” he said.
She put her hand over his. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Besides, there are more important people than me to worry about. Like your daughter. How is she?”
Jack gritted his teeth. “I’ll call soon. I get the feeling Copeland kept his promises. If he really didn’t give her the weaponized version of the virus, then she’s got hours left.”
“You’ve got to be exhausted,” Mercy said. “I know I am.”
