Plague

Jack Gross raised his hand. 'It's the chance my people have been waiting for, Mr. Gaines. It's the chance to show up these weak-kneed liberals for what they really are. It's the chance to make the GOP a pure and concerted and effective machine again.'

Herbert Gaines ran his hand through his white hair. 'And you want me to help you? Is that it?'

'We want you as our figurehead. Captain Dashfoot to the rescue.'

Herbert Gaines found himself a kitchen stool and sat down. He was thoughtful and grim-faced.

'Mr. Gross,' he asked, after a few moments, 'is this epidemic really serious?'

Jack Gross nodded. 'As far as we can tell, between six and seven thousand people are dead, and many more are dying.'

Herbert Gaines looked up. 'So there must be great fear and panic in those places? In Florida and Georgia?'

'There is. The police and the National Guard have cordoned off the Florida state line, as far as they can. And no one, but no one, is allowed out.'

Herbert Gaines got up from his stool and walked across to the kitchen window. He stared out at Gabriels Park for a while, then he said, 'Mr. Gross, you're asking me to do something that conflicts with my sensitivities.'

'I'm sorry, Mr. Gaines. I don't get you.'

The old movie actor turned around. 'If there's an epidemic in the south, and people are dying, then the last thing I want to do is make political capital out of it. It's against my nature to advance myself through the fear and suffering of others. I have made terrible personal mistakes in my life, Mr. Gross, and I have been fortunate or unfortunate enough not to have been punished for them. I don't intend to add callousness and exploitation to my list of sins.'

Jack Gross smiled. 'Well, I understand your objections. But there's no reason why they should stand in your way. You have to see this thing in its historical context. A chance like this may never happen again.'

'A chance like what? A chance to put the squeeze on the public's uncertainty and fear? A chance to sweep into power on a tide of dead bodies? I'm not interested, Mr. Gross.'

Jack Gross sighed. 'I really think you're being oversensitive, Mr. Gaines.'

Herbert returned to his blender, and mixed his vegetables into a reddish-green froth. He poured the juice into a tall glass of crushed ice, and sipped it. He didn't look at Jack Gross, and was obviously waiting for him to go.

Jack Gross stared at the floor. 'I didn't want to do this, Mr. Games,' he said softly.

Herbert Gaines patted his lips with a Kleenex. 'Do what?' he said impatiently.

'Exert pressure.'

'Don't make me laugh," said Herbert Gaines. 'What possible pressure could you exert on me?'

Jack Gross shrugged, still staring at the floor. 'There's always Nicky,' he said.

'What do you mean by that?'

Jack Gross was silent. He just smiled.

'What do you mean by that?' Herbert snapped.

Jack Gross looked up. 'I mean that our patriotic duty sometimes has to come before our personal opinions and that it always has to come before our personal pleasures.'

'Is that a threat? By God, you'd better not threaten me, Mr. Jack Gross.'

Jack Gross took his hat off his knee and parked it neatly on his head.

'I'll make myself plain, Mr. Gaines. We need you, and we need you now. If you don't oblige us with your assistance, then some friends of ours will have to pay you a visit. Those friends of ours come from Chicago, Mr. Gaines, where the stockyards are, and they've had a lifetime of experience with stud bulls like Nicky. When those stud bulls won't behave, they take their stockman's knives, the sharp ones with the hooked blades, and they castrate them.'

Jack Gross said all this with the same radiant smile on his face with which he had first walked in. At the kitchen door, he turned and said, 'Think about it, Mr. Gaines. I'll be in touch.'

Then he let himself out of the apartment, and closed the door behind him.

Herbert Gaines, pale-faced, went slowly into the bedroom, and stared for a long while at Nicky, sleeping peacefully on the satin sheets. 'Oh, God… ' he murmured, with a shiver and went back into the living-room to find the brandy.

At two-thirty, just before the court hearing Glantz vs Forward went back for its afternoon session, the news finally hit the streets that Florida and parts of Georgia were stricken with plague.

The New York Post brought out a special edition with a front-page photograph of Miami's ruined Civic Center, and a banner headline saying SUPER-PLAGUE SWEEPS SOUTH, THOUSANDS DIE. A kind of nervous ripple went through the city, and the lunchtime bars stayed crowded until well after three as New Yorkers watched the special half-hourly TV reports on the effects of the epidemic.

The President, looking tired but, trying to sound optimistic, explained in a special interview that 'everything humanly possible has been done to contain the outbreak.' He announced that the entire state of Florida was quarantined until further notice, and that ocean bathing was prohibited all the way from Cape Fear to Key West.

'It appears on first examination that a possible source of the plague bacillus is pollution of the ocean by raw sewage, although where this sewage is coming from, and how such an unusual and virulent bacillus could have developed within it, are still mysteries. This year's unusual climatic conditions, in which the currents in the ocean are running counter-clockwise, may be a contributing factor.'

The President wound up by saying that he intended to pray for the sick and the dying, and that the best medical brains in the country were working on antidotes.

Ivor Glantz, sitting with his attorney Manny Friedman in a dark and busy Wall Street bar, watched the President fade from the TV screen next to the bottles of Jack Daniels, and shook his head.

'You know what that means?' he said seriously.

'Sure,' said Manny Friedman, rustling impatiently through a sheaf of pink legal papers. 'It means the end of civilization as we know it. Now, can we please go over these patents?'

'It means,' said Ivor, 'that they haven't yet found a way to cure it. If they could cure it, or contain it, they'd say so. But they can't. You see what the paper says? «Super-plague». Ordinary plague responds to Sulfamides or HafEkine antiserum, but this one evidently doesn't.'

'Ivor,' interrupted Manny impatiently, 'today is the most crucial day of all. Can we just concentrate on your bugs, and leave the President's bugs alone?'

Ivor checked his watch. 'We'd better get back to court anyway. But I'd sure like to know a little more about this plague. Do you realize — this could be an entirely new disease? Some new strain of bacillus, totally unknown?'

They collected their things together and went out into the humid afternoon street. Manny hailed a cab, and they drove through heavy traffic towards the court house. Ivor, sweating in his dark, too-tight suit, mopped his forehead with a clean handkerchief.

The cab-driver, a big-nosed Czech in a cloth cap and horn-rimmed spectacles, was rapping about the plague.

'If you ask me,' he said, swerving imperturbably across three lanes of traffic, 'if you ask me it's the Soviets.'

'How do you make that out?' asked Ivor. 'Are you a buddy of Kosygin?'

The cab-driver laughed. 'You gotta be kidding. If you ask me, the Soviets is responsible for half the troubles this country's got. They bought our wheat, correct? Well, they bought our wheat so that they could trade good American grain for worthless roubles, right? I mean, what good's a rouble to anyone? Grain — that's different. You can offload a loaf of bread any place.'

Ivor grinned. 'You wouldn't be Polish by any chance?' he asked.

'Am I hell,' said the cab-driver.

The courtroom, dusty and badly-lit, looked as if a burglar had just rifled it. Sheaves of paper spilled on to the floor, and volume after volume of legal books and evidence, files and clippings lay scattered all over the attorneys' desks. It was the debris of a four-day hearing.