Rice was not alone in the room. DCI Clarence Hood was present as well.
"Mister President, thank you for seeing me."
"Please take a seat, Director. I thought it best if Clarence sat in on this."
She nodded to him as she sat down. Clarence Hood had become a personal friend.
"Sir, I requested this meeting because I believe we are facing a threat unlike any we've dealt with before."
"That sounds ominous, Director," Rice said.
"You already know what we discovered from the papers of North Korea's defector. I followed up on that."
She briefed the two men on everything that had happened, ending with the raid on the Zurich laboratory.
"So that's why you wanted the safe house," Hood said.
"Why wasn't I told about this operation?" Rice said.
"Sir, that's why I'm here now. Until I had definite proof of what these people were doing, I felt you had no need to know."
"If the Swiss find out we're responsible, they'll make a lot of trouble."
"They won't find out, Mister President. I guarantee it."
"They better hadn't. You are certain it was the Russians that took the samples from the North Koreans?"
"Yes, sir, I am. We determined that through satellite surveillance. Then our source verified our finding before he was killed."
"This Adam person?"
"Yes, sir."
"Mm. Go on."
"Sir, there can only be one reason AEON subjected human subjects to this terrible disease. They are working to create a vaccine against it or have already done so."
Hood sighed. "You think they intend to release it."
"That's right," Elizabeth said. "It's a perfect terrorist weapon. There's no cure that we know of and it's always fatal."
"I can understand one of the fundamentalist groups wanting to do something like that," Rice said. "They hate everyone who doesn't believe as they do and they justify it as God's will. But why would a group of successful business men do such a thing? It doesn't make sense."
"I can only speculate on that," Elizabeth said. "AEON seems to want a world they can dominate and control. They've demonstrated that they have no concern for the cost in human life. I don't think they have any agenda beyond dominance."
"Amoral," Hood said.
"Totally. They have no ethical or moral considerations."
"Who else is part of this organization besides Gutenberg and Dass?" Rice asked.
"I can't answer that," Elizabeth said. "But we do know those two are leaders. Sir, the resources at my disposal aren't enough to tackle this by myself."
"I can set up full surveillance on Gutenberg and Dass, Mister President," Hood said. "They might lead us to the others."
"Do it," Rice said.
"Yes, sir."
"We could look into Gutenberg's finances," Elizabeth said. "Whatever else is going on, money must be part of it. Terrorist acts require funding. If we find a money trail, we can follow it. Dass is the one with the facilities to handle the samples and develop any vaccine or cure. We need to know what he's doing as well."
They waited as Rice considered what they'd said.
"All right," he said. "I want this kept between the two of you. Spying on foreign nationals influential in finance and industry is a mine field, politically speaking. We get enough flak about surveillance as it is from our supposed allies. They don't like us finding out when they act against our interests."
"If they don't like it, perhaps they should stop doing it," Hood said.
"Make sure the media never hears you say that," Rice said. "I'd hate to lose you."
CHAPTER 26
The windows of Alexei Vysotsky's office looked out across the Yasenevo District outside of Moscow, all the way to the golden onion domes of the Kremlin. In summer, hundreds of trees made a sea of leafy green stretching all the way to the river. In the winter, as now, the bare branches revealed the grimy urban sprawl surrounding the modern office building that housed Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service.
The sun cast watery light from a thin curtain of high, cold sky. Outside, the temperature hovered somewhere below zero. Vysotsky's office was hot and stuffy. He sat at his desk with his collar open and cursed the engineers who had designed a system that roasted you or left you in freezing cold.
The temperature of the room was the least of Vysotsky's concerns. He'd just finished reading a summary of the contents of Gutenberg's encrypted drive. Valentina had sent him a headache of the first order. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, took out the vodka and poured a drink. He downed half, topped off the glass, and put the bottle back. Then he opened the report on Gutenberg's computer.
The material was an intelligence officer's dream, a treasure trove of names, numbers and personal observations. There were two encrypted files. The first was a private journal. Alexei couldn't believe a man so powerful would be so careless as to keep a record like this. It was more than a diary. It was as if Gutenberg was making notes for future generations, a kind of contemporary history. If the material was a dream, it was also a nightmare. Alexei had a big problem on his hands, big enough to destroy him if he wasn't careful.
3 February
The Korean samples have been procured. The information Kamarov obtained from his nephew was perfect. His men had no trouble with the train or the guard detachment. No witnesses. No casualties on our side. The samples will be in Zurich tomorrow.
Konstantine Kamarov, Vysotsky thought, and his bastard nephew Vladimir. Traitors, both of them. They killed my men.
A sudden wave of anger swept through him. If Kamarov had been in the room, Alexei would have wrapped his hands around the man's fat throat and squeezed until blood ran out of his eyes.
A dull pounding in Vysotsky's head signaled that his blood pressure was heading for the roof. He forced himself to take a breath and relax. It wouldn't help to give himself a stroke.
Konstantine Kamarov was one of the most powerful men in the Federation, one of the Oligarchs who'd come out of the darkness after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His nephew was Vladimir Kamarov, Deputy Director of SVR and Vysotsky's boss.
I need to make sure his loving nephew doesn't find out about this file, Vysotsky thought. I'll tell him about it just before I put a bullet in the back of his head.
The second encrypted file outlined a plan to test the virulent plague in Brazil before releasing it on a wider scale in China. It cited examples from history and modern times of what happened when a country's medical infrastructure failed and life-threatening disease spread among the population. There was a detailed analysis of how Gutenberg's consortium of banks could provide the loans required to finance recovery and establish dominance. The graphs and charts were convincing. The profit margins and net gains were impressive. The document projected two hundred million deaths in China alone and discussed the costs of cleaning up the aftermath. An addendum to the file discussed how much profit could be made from sales of the vaccine.
Vysotsky finished his drink and poured another. He was a man hardened by years of working as an officer in one of the most brutal and secretive intelligence organizations that had ever existed. He'd seen many things in his career, but nothing to match the pure evil of what Gutenberg was planning.