“The President authorized transmittal of Mrs. Payne's medical records from Bethesda Naval to the CDC. Her blood type matches residue found in the hypodermic.”
He was holding something back, Dare knew. Offering her the security of facts before venturing into the unknown.
“What else, Scottie?”
“It's the fact of the hypodermic that has these people concerned. Apparently anthrax is an airborne infection. It's a germ we inhale. Or a spore, as Estridge calls it. It invades the lungs and causes symptoms similar to a chest cold, followed by respiratory shock and death. But Krucevic injected his bug directly into the Veep's bloodstream.”
“Go on,” Dare said.
“So the infection is systemic.”
She frowned into the darkness.
“But he also injected her with an antidote. Or so we hope. That would be systemic, too — wouldn't it?”
“Yes and no. The normal treatment of an unvaccinated patient exposed to anthrax inhalation is a four-week cycle of antibiotics, along with a three-part program of follow-up vaccination. It's damned persistent in the human body. Krucevic claimed that this particular bug is about ten times as virulent. He also claimed to have an effective antibiotic. Something specific to his engineered anthrax strain. But the CDC is highly skeptical. If Krucevic can knock out that deadly a bacillus in one shot, they say, then he's making medical history. They'd like to meet the guy.”
Dare's heart sank.
“They think she's still sick.”
“They think she's going to die in a matter of days,” Scottie said.
“Can we save her? If we get to her soon?”
It was an unfair question, Dare knew — one Scottie could never answer. He avoided it with predictable grace.
“What worries the CDC is the bacillus's tendency to cause ulcers. There's a form of anthrax infection common to livestock workers — they get it from infected sheep — that leaves open sores on the hands and arms. Estridge says the CDC is afraid that a blood-borne infection like Mrs. Payne's could result in secondary ulceration of her major organs. Heart, liver, the lining of the stomach, you name it.. ..”
Dare winced.
“She could be bleeding inside.”
“And completely shut down over the next forty-eight hours. The woman should be in an intensive-care unit.”
“But surely Krucevic would have considered that. He's a biologist himself.”
“Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he never intended for Sophie Payne to survive.”
“But he injected his own son with the stuff!”
“He said that he did,” Scottie cautioned. “But what do we really know, Director?”
“Nothing,” she retorted, “and we don't have to know. All we have to do is assume. We have to project every possible scenario for the Vice President; we have to be prepared to offer solutions. That's why we exist, remember?”
Scottie was silent.
“Get somebody at the CDC working on this bug,” Dare ordered, “because when the Vice President comes home and I mean when, Scottie she'll need a treatment regimen already in place.”
“Got it,” he replied, and hung up.
Dare pressed her hands against her eyes and considered making coffee. Something about trees and an ax fluttered on the edge of her consciousness. She brushed it aside and called the President.
Three
The Night Sky, 3:47 a.m.
Caroline Carmichael is soaring across the Atlantic at thirty-nine thousand feet, an arrow shot straight at the heart of Central Europe; but in her fitful dreams, she crouches low in her grandfather's dew-drenched furrows and waits, tensed, for pursuit.
The smell of damp Salinas earth rises from the morning fields and mingles with the dense musk of artichoke leaves, with the flare of garlic flowers from across three hectares, with creosote and diesel fumes from the black ribbon of highway.
It is August 7, 1969, and she is exactly five years old. Her father has been gone for most of her life, gone somewhere in Asia without being dead, in a plane that failed him when he least expected it. She knows his face and name by heart, she knows the outline of his story as another child might know Santa Claus — Bill Bisby, Salinas hero, with the fields of artichoke and garlic in his blood; Bill Bisby, a flyboy at twenty-two, with his finger on the afterburner; Bisby the careless warrior, her daddy. A kind of elf, with his short, dark hair and his open grin, one hand waving forever before the cockpit shield comes down. Bill Bisby, who might just slide down her chimney come Christmas.
Your daddy was a hero, Grandpa whispers in her ear. Your daddy died for his country. Your daddy might be coming back, some day. It'd be just like you to fool us all. You've got to make your daddy proud.
A screen door slams. Caroline cocks her head and watches as Grandma shakes the crumbs from Grandpa's napkin, then turns back into the house without a glance for the warming day, without a hint of Caroline crouching secret in the acrid furrows. Grandma's lips are folded in a line as straight as an ironed napkin edge; her eyelids are red. Caroline bites hard at a hangnail trailing from her thumb.
Her knees are dirty, and one of them bleeds. Her hair has not been combed. She has been up for four hours, up since the last hour of darkness and the irrigation machines rolling like giant spiders across the landscape. She is waiting there among the green leaves, the scent of garlic and artichoke, for a last glimpse of her mother.
Brakes squeal as a truck slows at the crossroads, turning toward Gilroy, its outline shimmering like a mirage in the morning heat. Caroline ignores it. She has heard such things from birth, as common as birdsong and the whisper of surf when the wind blows from the west. Her ankles ache from crouching and she needs to pee, but she stares unblinking at the farmhouse's front door.
And there, thrusting carelessly through it in her worn jeans, blond hair flying, a pack already slung over her back, is Jackie. She clatters down the sagging wood steps. She shoves open the VW van's battered door and hurls her heavy rucksack — army green, probably from a surplus place, the irony of it lost on her — into the back. Then turns and waits for Jeremy. Or is it Dave? Last year it was Phil.
Caroline rubs at her streaming nose with a dirty hand, then wipes it on the skirt of her dress. Grandma would purse her lips and frown; she would think, inevitably, Just like her mother. When Jackie is gone, Caroline will creep into the house and stand furtively before the washbasin, before anyone sees. Have they missed her yet? Are they worried? Do they remember that it is her birthday?
The man with the beard and the long hair, the leather vest and the bell-bottom jeans with heart-shaped patches and peace signs scrawled in ink, avoids the door altogether. He shuffles around the far corner of the house from the direction of the privy, his thin frame curled in an eternal question mark. He stares at his own shoes as he walks. A mongrel dog lopes at his heels, tongue dangling. Its breath reeks of raw meat and decay, the good-natured slobber left in Caroline's lap.
“Carrie!” her mother calls. She cups her hands to her mouth and bellows again.
“Carrie! Shit! Where the fuck did that kid go?” Caroline crouches closer to the earth and tries not to breathe. Jackie turns, impotent and furious, her gaze roaming over the morning fields. Her daughter kneads the soiled cotton of her dress between hot and damp fingers. There was yelling last night, too, when she was supposed to be asleep; shouts and demands and a bitter sobbing that might have been her grandmother's. They would not let Jackie take her away, Grandpa said, cutting off the tears; they owed that much to Bill. And to the child. It was no life for a five-year-old, in the back of a van. It was no life for Jackie.