Edelman’s expression was grim, but he smiled slightly at the last and took the plush chair. He was at the corner of the long double conference tables; he could see just about everybody in the room.
“Go on, Inspector. Don’t be shy. We’re you’re biggest fans,” said Attorney General Gaither.
Jake looked at the President. “May I have some wafer?” he asked meekly. The President smiled, nodded at an aide, who got up, poured some from a pitcher on a little table to one side, brought it to Edelman, and resumed his seat.
The audience really was attentive and expectant. Edelman was to be the proof of the pudding; if he gave the official version, then all was well. If he did not, there was still enough time to paper over mistakes.
“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen,” Jake Edelman began. “I wish to tell you tonight of all that my department and its capable staff, with the help of a lot of people throughout government, discovered about this conspiracy against our country. I hope you will bear with me until I am completely through.”
They were peering at him expectantly.
“The story starts many years ago, in the turbulent years when Presidents were killed or forced from office, when our enemies made spectacular gains abroad while we did nothing. A lot of people saw this as the end of civilization. Many of these were corporate heads, millionaires, men of influence and power. They formed the Institute for Values and Standards, and endowed it with over a hundred million dollars.”
There were murmurings in the room, and a few whispers of “He knows,” but they calmed down. They wanted to know all that he knew.
“This Institute endowed research in forbidden areas, masked by the corporation’s international operations, and at the same time picked the best young minds they could find in every field. Poor families in particular were targeted, and lavish scholarships were offered. Ideological purity was stressed, as well. These people were young, ambitious, bright, and, of course, malleable. The Institute saw to their philosophical upbringing—wasn’t above eliminating those who later strayed or would not stick to the path. This elite, brought up in much the same way the criminal syndicates of America were brought up and replenished, slowly attained position and power in government and industry. All doors were open to them. Their names read like a Who’s Who in American government, business, and industry. In fact, their names are a lot of the current Who’s Who.”
He paused and sipped some water. Some of the men and women he was discussing stared at him in stunned silence.
“Their eventual goal was to attain enough power, influence, and prestige that they could literally take over the government of the United States of America, take it over, totalitarianize it, and create out of it the nation that their founders had dreamed about. This they did, by hook, ability, and crook. When they had a member President, they felt no compunction about cleverly murdering a sufficient number of Supreme Court justices and other such posts so that they could be replaced with members of the club. But, still, it was far-fetched. You can’t become the Congress, for example, not only because of the value of incumbency but also because the voters are damned obstinate. And, of course, the Institute could hardly have a native son in each state and district. And, again—what about Americans used to freedom? Would they respond to a military and governmental coup meekly? Hardly—and they have the guns and the geography to make it damned difficult for anybody who did take over to ever hold on. So what to do?”
Again a sip of water, and he continued.
“The obvious answer was a popular war, but that’s out of style. Wars aren’t popular these days, and a war on the scale of a sneak attack means annihilation. So, these bright folks thought, suppose you had a sneak attack by an unknown enemy? Some of their scientific types had continued the recombinant DNA research banned by U.S. law and international treaty. True, the Institute was interested in more than just pet germs—they were interested in designing their own, superior breed of humanity, among other things. There are lots of potentials with recombinant DNA. But what they could make, easily, on the sly, was germs—bacteria, specifically. They made the Wilderness Organism. They did it right here, in the government labs, with NDCC and NIH computers and facilities. The trouble was, they had no idea whether or not their designs worked. Now came the next part of the plan.”
He paused again for a sip, and somebody whispered, “Why don’t we just shut him up?” She was waved to silence by President Wainwright.
“So,” continued Jake Edelman, “friends in the CIA, and those who could be blackmailed—and friends in the FBI as well—combed the files, scoured the world, and plugged into the international terrorist network. The word got around. A mysterious Third World nation with a lot of money and a radical leadership had a weapon to strike at dirty old imperialistic America. They needed volunteers—and they got them, sometimes with the unwitting cooperation of governments hostile to us. The first waves were double tests—first of the engineered bacillus and its properties, as well as the vaccines against it, and second of the network that would be needed for the big job later. Small towns geographically isolated were chosen. The diseases would be studied by NDCC and NIH, of course—including the creators. Modifications could be made, corrections in the biological clocks, degree and means of communicability, everything. Since they also created a bacteriophage, a bacteria-eating virus, they eliminated the evidence as well. Many of the early experiments failed completely, or failed to work as predicted. A terrible plague became a case of the town getting the sniffles. But, after a while, the right combination popped up. They began, by using the bacteria as a catalyst for certain interactions with brain cells, to be able to get just about any effect they wanted. They made a number of strains of the stuff they’d proved out, and they were ready.”
There were uneasy murmurings and shufflings in the room now, but these were quieted by the leaders. They wanted to know just how Edelman knew these things.
“A camp was set up and run by radicals for radicals. They didn’t even know where they were—they were duped and drugged and thought they were in Africa. There their old-time revolutionary religion was recharged, and they were given lessons in how to release the organisms in major cities. In the meantime, one of their blackmail victims, an FBI agent named Harry Reed, who’d worked on the radical fugitives years ago, was assigned to eastern California and ‘just happened’ to recognize James Foley, head of one of the early small-town strike teams. We jumped at it, raided the place, and discovered the Wilderness Organism and pegged it to known terrorist fanatics.”
They were getting really upset now. Jake Edelman started to feel his one greatest fear, that they would not let him finish.
“Using the idea that we had a mysterious enemy controlling a horrible fate, we scared the American people half to death. They were willing to do just about anything to feel safe from this dreaded disease. It was much worse than soldiers of an enemy. It was silent, invisible, and permanent in its effects. They demanded protection from Congress, Congress gave extreme emergency powers to the President, and we had the military state of emergency called and the mechanics of dictatorship established and tested, and some really embarrassing enemies and problem people vanishing. The American populace was militarized and computerized faster than anyone would have believed, and mostly with its willing cooperation. They were naive and terrified.”