Oh, no.
"I am so sorry."
"He was my only child. Every day I wish I had died and pray that I will soon."
"I've had personal tragedies, too," Ellen said. "Making any sense of life afterward is terribly hard. Therapy and time. That's all I can tell you. Therapy and time and reaching out to help others."
"Thank you."
Once again, Gendron assured Ellen he was able to continue,
"Is there anything unusual you can recall about your flight back to the States?" she asked, taking pains to avoid any leading questions.
"The flight back here was uneventful. But I did meet one unusual character on the flight from Freetown to London, if that's what you mean."
"That's exactly what I mean."
"He was an American engineer — interesting and very outgoing. Specialized in inspecting bridges, I think he said."
Ellen gripped the arm of her chair. "Can you describe him for me?"
"I think I can, although my memory hasn't been so good since — "
"Just do your best," Ellen said, deciding not to put the man through Rudy's writing exercise.
"Well, first of all, he was big. Not just tall, but big. Like a football player. His hair was sort of blondish and he wore thick glasses with a heavy frame."
"Anything else?"
"I can't think of anything… except, wait, he had a scar — an unusual scar — right here above his lip."
Bingo!
With some prompting now from Ellen, Gendron even recalled being bumped by the man while waiting in line at Gatwick Airport in London.
"He tripped, I think, and stumbled into me. It was like getting hit by a train. We both went down."
After extracting the same pledge of silence from Gendron as she had from the Serwangas, Ellen explained her interest in the Lassa cases and the man with the scar. Then she drove to Reagan and exchanged the rental for her Taurus. She arrived back at Rudy's cabin just after two in the morning and was relieved to find that he hadn't waited up for her.
Now she sat in his den watching the Omnivax campaign special, breathing in the lingering, earthy essence of his pipe tobacco. His Merlot was gradually stoking the fires of her resolve to speak to him. Rudy was upstairs in his study, poring over the passenger manifests, making phone calls, and being a rock of support to a woman he considered a good friend — a woman who just happened to know that he had been in love with her to the exclusion of all others for almost forty years.
How was she going to tell him what she had done? And perhaps even more important, how did she truly feel about what he had written? There was no way to answer the first question without being ready to respond honestly to the second.
Ellen splashed in another glassful of wine. This was last call, she resolved, even as she felt warm fingers working through the muscles of her face. Three glasses were quite enough. Or had it been four? The glasses weren't that big anyway.
Omnivax had clearly become the flagship of the Marquand campaign. With just over two months remaining before the election, the President's camp was laying out big bucks to get their message of beneficence, progress, and commitment to campaign promises through to the public. The documentary had initially focused on vaccinations in genera] and now had moved on to Omnivax. The narrator — unseen at the moment — was a movie star with a voice that inspired confidence and radiated authenticity. James Garner? Donald Sutherland? Ellen didn't watch enough movies or TV to be certain.
"And so," the voice was saying, "estimates are that between fifty and sixty thousand cases of potentially lethal infections will be prevented by this astonishingly potent vaccine over just the next year. I am honored to introduce to you the First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Lynette Lowry Marquand."
Marquand strolled the pediatric ward of a hospital as she spoke, "At three o'clock in the afternoon on September second, two days from today, a four-day-old child will receive the first official dose of Omnivax. I will be there for that most significant occasion, as will Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Lara Bolton, who will administer the supervaccine using this pneumatic device, especially developed for this purpose." She held up a small gun that looked something like a derringer with a flattened muzzle. "We are on the verge of the greatest advance in preventive medicine in our history — an advance that could signal the beginning of the end of infectious diseases as we know them…"
"What about the thimerosal mercury a gazillion kids have gotten dosed with?" Ellen asked out loud, aware at the same instant that her speech was thick and her glass was empty. "What about the autism? What about the seizures and brain damage and sudden death? What about the asthma and learning disabilities and ADHD? And what about the man who's flying around sowing disease and death to peddle his goddamn vaccine? What about all those?"
"What about all what?"
Rudy had entered the den carrying the manifests and other papers.
"… I am proud to say that all of our major networks will be carrying the ceremony from the Anacostia Neighborhood Health Center here in Washington, where a four-day-old child will take her place in medical history as the first official recipient of Omnivax."
"I'm watching a program that could have been written by the pharmaceutical industry's public relations unit," Ellen said, "but instead was written by Jim Marquand's. There is something about that prissy wife of his that really bugs me."
She tried to modulate her voice, which seemed like it might be too loud. Was there ever a time she had drunk like this? She followed Rudy's bemused gaze to the bottle on the table next to her. There was, at most, two inches remaining in it. Lying beside it, the corkscrew and Merlot-stained cork, proof that, not long ago, the bottle had been a virgin.
"It's the best Merlot I've found for the money," he said, gently commenting because the situation demanded he say something.
"Rudy, I'm sorry. I'm overtired and… and was lost in this show and… and I didn't realize I had finished so much of it."
"Nonsense. Good wine is to be enjoyed."
"But I really don't drink very often," she said thickly.
Rudy sank onto the tan leather couch. There was no judgment in his expression.
"So, what's the status of our friendly neighborhood vaccine?" he asked.
"Day after tomorrow a little four-day-old girl will be starting the ball rolling."
Brought to You by the Four More Years for a Better America Committee, the final credit announced. Ellen realized that she had neglected to learn who the narrator was.
"If nothing else," Rudy said, "I certainly expect the number of Lassa fever cases to drop dramatically."
"You have a point. No reason for Old Scarface to fly around infecting people anymore. Let the epidemic be cured."
"It's a little chilly in here. Would you like a blanket?"
"No, I mean yes, I mean, you stay there. I can get it myself."
Ignoring her request, Rudy withdrew a maroon throw from a refurbished old sea chest and floated it down over her lap.
Stop being so nice to me, she thought. I'm a jerk.
"Thank you," she said thickly. "I don't know how I would have done all this without you."
"Nonsense. You're the pro. I'm just the caddy."
"No, I mean it. Rudy, I — "
Rudy sighed. "Let there now be eternal ambiguity surrounding the phrase 'the shot heard round the world.' You know, before you brought me into this world of vaccinations, I more or less took the whole thing for granted. The scientists and pharmaceutical companies produce their vaccines, and their PR people make sure we know why we need their products and what horrible things will happen to us if we don't embrace them. It seemed that simple. And after their vaccines are approved by the FDA, and the CDC tells everybody they should get them, we smile gratefully and say, 'Thanks, here's a clear shot at my body. Take it.'"