I lost in Nigeria.” He had thought of June despite his duties, but hadn’t quite got up the nerve to call her on purely personal business. And his responsibilities had been pressing. He was just now getting organized and familiar with them.
“I thought you might have been tied up. Anyway, I was… well, I’m free tonight and tomorrow. I thought maybe…”
It must be as hard for her as it is for me, Doug thought. “I’d like to see you, June. What do you want to do? We didn’t have much of a chance to talk about our personal life or likes and dislikes in Nigeria.”
“I’m not much for the night life. How about if we met for dinner someplace?”
“Sure. You name it.”
“How about Morgan’s? They have seafood, but there’s other things on the menu, too. And we won’t need reservations on a week night.”
“Sounds good. What time?”
“Is seven all right?”
“That’s fine. See you there. And thanks for calling, June. I need to get away from here for a little while.”
June Spencer put the phone down slowly. She was scared in a way, but it was time for a change.
Besides, she knew he needed a soothing hand, some sympathy, someone to care. Visions of his grim countenance had haunted her ever since their arrival in Atlanta, as well as dreams of gunfire and the sounds of swooping jets and clattering helicopters. She hadn’t mentioned that she had asked Amelia to find out when he would be off duty.
Doug dressed casually in slacks and a short sleeved shirt, with a light windbreaker to conceal the little forty caliber automatic he was licensed to carry. Traffic seemed lighter than usual as he drove through the streets near the main CDC complex. Its new additions stood out in contrast to the old architecture; he thought it superior. He picked up the Loop and headed east, while noticing that the people who were out and about were handling their vehicles as though their minds were somewhere else. He listened to an all-news radio station as he drove and thought that many of the drivers might be tuned to the same station. There was only one topic; the Harcourt virus. It hadn’t yet reached epidemic proportions in the Americas but overseas, particularly in Africa and Europe it was rapidly headed in that direction. Nigeria was already devolving into anarchy. Whites took their lives in their hands simply by showing their faces.
South Africa hadn’t reached that stage yet, but rumors were rife and the number of blacks coming down with the disease was steadily increasing. In America… he turned the radio off. Enough. Tonight he wanted to forget business.
The parking lot at Morgan’s Seafood and Steakhouse was only a quarter filled, a rarity for the popular middle class restaurant this time of evening. June was already there, seated on one of the little benches in the waiting alcove. She stood up when she saw him come in the door.
Doug stopped, then came forward the last few steps. With her light brown, almost blond hair washed and fluffy, wearing a simple but attractive spring dress of pale green with a white belt that tucked in the waist, and with makeup that subtly altered her appearance, she was very pretty—and very appealing. He couldn’t help but grin his appreciation.
“You look great.”
“Thank you.” June glanced down, as if reassuring herself that it was her he was talking about, then smiled back at him and took his arm.
The under-worked hostess showed them to a table in the corner. No one else was seated near, which was puzzling to Doug, despite the dearth of customers. He looked around, wondering why that was while he pulled out the chair for June and held it until she was seated.
June’s laugh tinkled with her explanation. “I tipped the hostess to get us a table away from everyone else in case we talked business. She won’t seat anyone near us unless it gets crowded.”
“Good thinking. I really wanted to leave the CDC behind for awhile, but I doubt that we’ll be able to avoid it.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
Service was quick. They agreed on a carafe of the house chablis and it appeared a moment later. Doug asked for a little time to examine the menu before they ordered, though he already knew what he wanted.
A medium seafood platter and baked potato always satisfied.
“I want the seafood platter and baked potato,” June said, laying the menu down.
Doug laughed. “Great minds. That’s what I’m having. I’ve only eaten here once and that was a couple of years ago. I hope it’s still as good.”
“Me, too. Don’t you get out often?”
He picked up his wine glass and sipped reflectively. “It’s taken me a long time to get over Doris’ death. I more or less buried myself in work for a while and didn’t go anywhere, even though I really didn’t have to work, what with the insurance settlement. I moped around the house for a few weeks, then sold it and took a little apartment. Most of the time I don’t bother with it, though. The quarters at the security building are all right.”
June could appreciate his actions as well as the faraway look on his face. “We picked different ways to grieve,” she said. “I just went home and stayed with my parents and helped them some with my two little sisters. I’m like you; I don’t really have to work either, but after a while I couldn’t stand the idleness.
Staying home so much just kept the sadness working.” She grinned as if sharing a guilty secret, then let it out. “Then last year I tried to write a novel, but I guess I don’t have the talent. No matter how much I worked on it, it still didn’t sound readable to me. I finally abandoned it.”
Doug had to laugh, then quickly explained when he saw the pained expression on her face. “I’ve written a few short stories and tried to sell them. No luck, or probably more accurately, no talent.”
“I guess anyone who likes to read a lot has thought about writing,” June said.
“Uh huh. It’s harder than it looks, though, isn’t it?”
“Tell me about it!”
Appetizers arrived, a platter of cold crab claws intermingled with small boiled shrimp.
Doug dipped a shrimp in sauce and looked around the almost empty restaurant. “I wonder what the people in Washington are thinking right now?”
“Nothing constructive, I’ll warrant,” June said.
Mary Hedgrade’s face was lined with worry. It was never comfortable to be the bearer of bad tidings. In some countries, she thought she might be executed for bringing such news to the head of state, especially with the blunt concluding statement that not only did the CDC not have a cure or vaccine for the Harcourt virus, but there were no prospects for either in the immediate future.
President Marshall shifted his gaze uneasily around the conference table, trying to find a way to deflect the onus of Mary’s words to someone else. She was telling him things he didn’t want to hear.
“I didn’t know,” the President of the United States said. “I swear I didn’t know!” His voice came out muffled. He raked his hands through his hair and looked accusingly at Edgar Tomlin, the National Security Director. “Why the hell wasn’t the FBI after those people? God knows they’ve been trying to force blacks back to secondary citizen status for fifty years! How come you let them start a goddamned epidemic before arresting them?”
“Because the bastards got smart. They took off to South Africa and helped the white supremacists there with money, and took that crazy geneticist from Sweden with them,” Conrad Seigler said. “We’ll get them, though. We’ve tracked them back to America and we still have agents looking for the Swede. We think he stayed in South Africa.” Seigler was the current head of the CIA and for a change this one looked the part, or at least as popular culture depicted spies, with dark hair and eyes that shifted constantly.
“We believe you, Mr. President. How would you have known? You don’t have any scientific background,” Secretary of State Joshua Brenham said. That was true in a sense, he thought. The capability for creating man- made epidemics had been included in presidential briefings ever since 9/11
but hardly anyone really believed it would ever happen. Certainly not the president. He barely understood the rudiments of science. He’d even made political hay of his lack until this came up. He probably had forgotten he even had an official science adviser. Now it was coming back to haunt him.
President Marshall Marshall dropped his hand from his hair to the table and twined the fingers of both hands
