The Viral Epiphany (25 page)

“The
Seawolf
?
 
I…I’m not sure exactly sir, but I believe she’s out patrolling somewhere off the New England coast.
 
I haven’t heard of any plan to return to Bremerton soon.”

“Find out, and wherever she is have her come to SUBASE New London and be ready to sail again by tomorrow.
 
Get Marine One ready to fly me from Andrews to New London tonight.
 
I’m putting Operation Silent Running into effect.”

The chief of staff felt the hairs rise on his neck and swallowed hard.
 
“Yes, sir,” he said and then quickly left the room.

Twenty-Five

           
Long after sunset, President Cranston, walking alone and pensive, returned to the Situation Room in the underground section of the west wing of the White House. He wore a comfortable dark blue shirt underneath a navy blue sweater, informal beige chinos and white jogging shoes.
 
He sat down slowly in his usual chair at the middle of the conference table, then leaned his elbows on the polished wooden tabletop, and rested his chin on his hands.
 
The large array of television screens on the wall that could provide video connectivity to anywhere in the world was silent.
 
No one was manning the communications console that, in the past, had provided secure voice connections to any and all of the world’s leaders.
 
Before him, one of the bright red numeric clocks on the wall ticked off the seconds. The numbers on the clock confirmed that day had now passed into darkness in Washington D.C., while the one below it showed that it was time for a new day of desperation to dawn across Asia.

           
He lightly rubbed his right hand over the armrest of his chair and took in the new furniture.
 
The room had been significantly remodeled since it had originally been built under the orders of President Kennedy all those long years ago.
 
He could feel that these chairs weren’t like the old ones. They weren’t made of leather.
 
The room now looked more like it was designed for high-powered business planning sessions than as a war-room for creating strategies that could save the nation.
 
For a moment he recalled the memories of his youth. He had been very young during the Cuban missile crisis – a time when nuclear war seemed imminent.
 
He shook his head slowly.
 
JFK actually had it easy,
he said to himself,
I wonder what he would do if he were here now?
 
Then he laughed softly.
 
He never really understood the real priorities anyway…

He held up his copy of the List and read the names again to himself.
 
The List held the names of a very select group of people.
 
Almost all had been named because they possessed a particular skill or because they held a key position in government or industry.
 
They met very rarely and only in times of extreme crisis.
 
They hadn’t convened in this room since the triple assassination crisis in Europe almost three years ago.
 

President Cranston had crossed off most of the names earlier in the afternoon.
 
It’s too late for most of these people to do anything now,
he had said to himself as he crossed them off.
 
Of the names that remained on the list only one didn’t fit into any particular category. That was Charlie Goodfellow.
 
He was on the list because he and the President had known each other since they were in college together, and that was good enough.
 
Good old Charlie,
he thought to himself while he awaited the arrival of the small group,
always dependable. Sure he’s made a mistake now and then.
 
That last one was a big one too, but with Charlie you always know where his loyalty lies, and that is more important than anything.
 
Charlie was on the short list, as were a few others.
 
They were people he could depend on now, in these last hours.

           
As the numeric clock readout changed from 19:59:59 to 20:00:00, there was a soft knock on the door.
 
Then it opened and a group of seven people walked in.
 
Unlike the President who greeted them, the men wore coats and ties and all had polished their shoes for the occasion.
 
The only woman in the group was dressed more informally, but her air of self-confidence more than made up for her lack of formality in clothing.

           
“Gentlemen, and madam,” the President said when they were all seated, “Let me get right to the issue at hand.
 
I don’t need to tell all of you that we are facing a crisis of historic proportions.
 
This disease, Asian Fever, has been expanding rapidly.
 
As I’m sure you all know, most of Southeast Asia has been devastated and the rest of Asia is probably not far behind.
 
In our own United States the city of Honolulu, in particular, has been hard hit. Satellite surveillance photos, taken earlier today, show the scenes of death and destruction there all too clearly. The speed with which the catastrophe occurred in Honolulu is due, no doubt, largely to its close links to Southeast Asia. It must be that large numbers of people carrying the disease entered Hawaii before we had even thought to put any controls in place…and that is why the disease progressed there so quickly” He paused and looked around the room.
 
Everyone nodded in agreement.

           
“Gentlemen, that is no reason for us to relax.
 
Computer projections for the course of the disease in continental America, and the whole world for that matter, do not look encouraging.
 
In fact they are bleak.
 
There are already thousands of cases in our major cities and the number is growing daily and rapidly.
 
People are on the verge of panic everywhere.
 
Our economy, our way of life, is on the edge of ruin, gentlemen.”
 

He paused again and looked around expectantly at each of them, but no one indicated that they had anything to say.
 
“I know you don’t have any simple solutions.
 
I certainly don’t, but I need your ideas now.
 
We need to do something to stop this disease. Does anyone have anything at all to suggest?”
 
There was only silence.

           
“Harry,” he said turning to Dr. Harry Fields, the director of the CDC, “we’ve talked several times already.
 
Is there anything new you can tell us?
 
Is there any hope for a cure or something that can at least slow the disease? Can’t your people do anything? Surely there is something that can be done, if only to buy us time!”

           
“Sir, we are working simultaneously on two things: a cure and a vaccine to prevent the disease.
 
Even so, we are facing major obstacles.
 
The disease organism is a retrovirus.
 
That is very, very bad news.
 
You may recall that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is a retrovirus and I’m sure you know how difficult it has been to find either a cure or vaccine for that disease.
 
We’ve been working on that problem for what?
 
Twenty years? More? I don’t know.
 
I’m sorry.
 
It doesn’t look good.
 
We have no quick answers, sir.”

           
President Cranston’s lips parted slightly as he stared at Harry, but he said nothing for several seconds. “Charlie?” the President said at last, turning to Charles Goodfellow, the UNAPS representative in the meeting. “What about you?
 
Can your people help in any way at all?”
 
There was a tone of resignation in his voice as if he already knew the answer.

           
“Well, sir. I’m sure we can do something,” Charles said with an air of confidence in his voice.
 
“As you know our expertise is in dealing with exactly these types of outbreaks.”
 
He turned for a moment over towards Harry, and then back to the President.
 
“Of course we’re not in the vaccines and cures business like the CDC. We’re in the people management business, and we’ve found that proper population control measures are essential.
 
Quite a bit can be done to slow or sometimes even stop the advance of diseases. You just have to have a good plan. And, you need to have a really good understanding of the situation.”

           
“I see,” the President said with a slight smile towards Charlie, “so do you think you might be able to step in and stop this disease in its tracks – at least here in America?”

           
Charlie smiled reassuringly at the President, “Sir, I have a high degree of confidence that some very valuable things can be done.
 
I can’t promise that we can save everybody, but my guess is we can save some and because of that our nation will be able to weather the storm and in the end we’ll be stronger than ever.”

           
The President nodded and turned to the person sitting beside him, Admiral Walter Mason, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “What do you think, Admiral? Is there anything the military can do to help too?”

           
“Yes, sir!” the admiral said.
 
“While we don’t have a cure either, we can certainly do crowd control; we can provide emergency transportation where needed; we can provide food from our stockpiles; we can provide medical assistance with our mobile hospitals; and we can provide security as needed.
 
I believe we could be a significant factor for success and we would be happy to have UNAPS on our team, helping us in this regard.
 
We stand ready to take charge of the situation upon your orders.”

           
President Cranston nodded his head at the Admiral but said nothing.
 
He turned next to a group of three men who sat at the far end of the conference table.
 
“Gentlemen, you are three of the country’s leading experts on economic matters. I think we would all agree that a strong economy is the heart of society.
 
Even if everyone were to survive this disease an economy in chaos would only lead to more suffering and death.
 
I am well aware of the toll this disease is taking on the world economy and what it is now starting to do to our own. Is there anything we can do to mitigate the damage?
 
The threat to the health of our economy is as important as the threat to our physical health.

           
“Well, sir.” replied Robert Brinkman, the chairman of Brinkman, Stevens, and Bridges, the largest investment firm in the United States, “First of all, I agree with you.
 
We need to preserve the fundamentals of our economic system.
 
There would be utter chaos without it.
 
However, I believe I speak for my two colleagues here when I say that in many ways we are powerless to control the entire economic impact of this terrible disaster.
 
As a whole the nation is bound to suffer great economic hardship for some time to come. The best we can probably do is what, in military parlance, would be called a triage operation.
 
We have to try to save those that have the best chance of survival.
 
It is a difficult decision similar to what battlefield surgeons have to make all the time, but it has to be done. Having given this subject considerable thought we believe that there are indeed some protective steps that can be taken by and for a small number of some of America’s leading families, those that account for some of the more significant wealth.
 
If we can save these people and their economic capabilities the nation should be able to recover and regain its strength when the course of the disease abates.”

           
“I see, and are you taking those steps?”

           
“Oh, yes.
 
Defensive measures are already being taken, although quietly.
 
We don’t want to alarm the general population and certainly not the average investor.”

           
“No, of course not,” President Cranston replied as he quickly glanced at his watch before looking back at him, “What sort of defensive measures?”

“Their assets are now being converted into tangibles such as gold, diamonds, mining reserves, water reserves, anything that has innate value. We are disposing of all currency dependent holdings.”

           
“What about U.S. Treasury Bills?” President Cranston asked in surprise, “Aren’t those a safe place for their money too? I thought that U.S. treasuries were always the safest thing anyone could own.”