Final Epidemic (16 page)

He had just settled into his seat near the front of the room—TV jocks, many of them minicelebrities in their own right, got the prime seats and the best camera angles—when his cellular phone vibrated. The built-in caller ID showed an extension number at NBC News’s Manhattan headquarters. It could only be one person.

“Talk to me, Dara,” Sorenson said, without preamble.

“Did they start yet? No, don’t talk—just listen.” It was the voice of Dara Chadwick, a former on-camera talent until she succumbed to the enticements of a network V.P.’s title. Now she managed international news operations—
as much,
Sorenson thought,
as anyone could supervise that bunch of hard-news cowboys.

“You won’t believe what we have,” Dara said, stuttering slightly in her excitement. “Or how much we’re paying for it. We just took the satellite download from Moscow. We have
tape,
Jase. The quality’s for shit, but that just makes it more effective. God, Jase. It’s
killer
television—”

“Take a deep breath,” Sorenson said. “Then start over, slower.”

“The President—he mentioned Russia has this flu? Well, he’s got
that
right, Jase. And you won’t believe what the cold-blooded bastards did about it this morning.”

Sorenson listened to her description, scribbling fiercely all the time.

“How many?” He waited impatiently. “Then an estimate, damn it.” Another pause, longer. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “And we’ve got all this on tape?”

There was a sudden movement as, around him, the assembled journalists rose to their feet in a gesture of respect, if not to the incumbent, then to the traditions of the room. Automatically, Sorenson whipped off his glasses and rose with them.

On the raised dais, in front of an ornate backdrop that read
THE WHITE HOUSE
, the President of the United States walked with a purposeful stride to the lectern. He nodded to the senior journalist from the Associated Press, and the session began.

“Cue it up,” Sorenson muttered to Dara, ignoring the frowns this breach of etiquette elicited from the reporters seated on his either side. “Just make sure it’s ready. You’ll know when. Be set to roll when he calls on me.” He listened for a moment. “Good. Uh-huh. Stand by.”

He raised his hand, waited impatiently as the President instead chose the CNN reporter, raised his hand again. Finally, after several cycles, the President nodded to him.

“Sir, I have a question about the severity of this outbreak, here and in Russia,” Sorenson said. “Particularly as to the options open to both countries.”

“Jason, I’ve already responded that we’re still assessing the situation,” the President said smoothly. “President Putin and I are in agreement that we act vigorously, but I can’t yet
comment on the specific steps we’ll take in our two countries.”

He started to call on another reporter, but Sorenson’s voice rose.

“A follow-up, Mr. President,” he said, still standing.

For once, let New York be on the ball,
he prayed silently.

“Mr. President, at this very moment, viewers tuned to NBC are watching videotape shot this morning in Moscow. It shows Russian helicopters releasing what appears to be nerve gas on a crowd there. These people had been cordoned off earlier by armed troops—because, we are told, a deadly disease was raging in this section of the city.”

There was a sound as if an entire roomful of people had suddenly inhaled. Then the assembled journalists began to murmur, a buzz rising around the briefing room. Only Sorenson was silent, his eyes locked on the man at the lectern.

“I—I don’t know that I can—”

Sorenson’s voice overrode the suddenly ashen President.

“Our analysts have reviewed the videotape, Mr. President. They project that on the tape, sir, at
minimum
tens of thousands of people are being subjected to a lethal gas. Tens of thousands dead or dying, on the streets of Moscow.

“And my question, Mr. President, is this: What made the Russians decide they had to murder their own people? More to the point, sir—exactly how bad is this influenza virus?”

Kamikuishiki Village, Yamanashi Prefecture
Central Japan
July 22

More than two hundred specially trained members of the Kôan Chôsachô, the agency of Japan’s national law enforcement responsible for public security, surrounded the walled Aum compound in the postmidnight blackness. They moved, quietly but quickly, through the light undergrowth that was, aside from the dark night, their only cover.

Group Lieutenant Hideo Hayakawa felt on his forehead the cool tang of the air that flowed from the heights of Mount Fuji. It was the only part of his body not covered by Kevlar, ballistic nylon or the heavy black twill of his assault coveralls. Even his hands were covered by tight black gloves. Unconsciously, the index finger of his right hand tapped lightly against the trigger guard of a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine pistol strapped across his chest. Two flash-bangs—small explosive bombs designed to disorient defenders with their intensity of noise and light—were clipped to his belt.

Through his earpiece, clear as if the man were standing beside him, Hideo heard his unit commander’s voice.

“Thirty seconds.”

Hideo lifted his hand from his weapon and tapped twice
against the side of his head; the earpiece doubled as an induction microphone, picking up the vibrations and sending a wordless response that acknowledged the command. His left hand held the detonator, and a hair-thin wire leading from it to the puttylike substance pressed against the hinges of the compound gate.

It was not the policeman’s first visit to the Kamikuishiki compound. The previous had come several years before, two days after the fanatics inside had attacked the Tokyo subway system with poison gas. It had been a night raid then, too, and Hideo remembered the way the crickets had filled the air with their ceaseless, ancient melodies.

Then as now, the police units were accompanied by biochemical-warfare experts from the Japanese military. The sight of the soldiers, whose protective gear appeared to be far more cumbersome than the body armor Hideo and his team wore, was not reassuring to the policeman. If anything, it was an unnecessary reminder of what they might indeed face in the next few minutes.

In their briefing, the Kôan Chôsachô assault teams had been told of the urgency of the situation. The Americans, they were informed, had made their request to the highest level of the Japanese government. They required all information on the Aum without delay; even more desperately, they needed information that only Aum leaders could be expected to have—particularly the person, or possibly group of persons, who might be called sensei. And they needed the information immediately.

It was not necessary to provide details of whatever dilemma the Americans faced; as professionals, the Kôan Chôsachô needed none. But they were also policemen and trained in both investigation and assessing motive. Nor had Hideo and his compatriots forgotten the incident in the Tokyo subways. Without fanfare, the more curious among them immediately began to tap into the network of mentors, protégés
and other contacts that exists in every law enforcement operation.

It was not long before the exact nature of the Americans’ concerns was common knowledge among the Kôan teams. This time, it was said, the Aum fanatics had attacked both the Americans and the Russians—not with poison gas, but with some kind of untreatable, incurable plague germ.

Hideo shivered. He was a brave man and valued his honor highly. But he did not relish wading into a den of religious death-seekers, to face weapons for which there was neither defense nor cure. Better to stand at a safe distance—which, for the MP5, was anything up to thirty meters—and blast away all remnants of this black-minded cult. Sensei or not.

“Ten seconds.”

The voice sounded inside his skull, as if his conscience were chiding him for his attack of cowardice. It steeled him. He glanced at the others on his team, dark shadows pressed against the lighter stone wall. All professionals, all prepared to follow him to whatever waited inside.

“Three, two, one—
detonate
!”

The C-4 exploded with a noise that was somehow both sharp and flat, silencing the crickets as if a switch had been thrown. The acrid smell of pyrotechnics and scorched metal filled the night air, and the planned chaos of the attack surged forward.

Two of his men formed the vanguard, kicking past the collapsed gate and rushing across the courtyard inside. Simultaneously, another assault group appeared from the far side of the expanse, pincering with Hideo’s men on the main building. There, an ornate mahogany door proved no match for the solid-slug shotgun blast that shattered the lockset. In a choreography precise in its execution, the invaders moved through a series of unlighted and unoccupied rooms. They charged down a wide corridor toward a wall of modern glass doors that opened, Hideo remembered, to a large auditorium. He skidded to a stop behind an arching free-form sculpture of
heavy polished wood. From there, his submachine gun commanded both of the corridors as well as the auditorium entrance.

“Kami-Six actual,” Hideo whispered, confident that the induction transmitter was picking up every word. “Main building access achieved. No resistance encountered.”

His team now flanked the auditorium entrance. Hideo’s second, a sergeant who had also been present on the first raid here, made an interrogative gesture with his black-gloved hand. In it he held the gray canister of a flash-bang.

Hideo shook his head once. His weapon at the ready, he spun around the statue in a crouching run. In an instant he had joined his men, flattening himself against the flanking wall. The policeman listened closely; aside from the noise of the other Kôan attack teams across the courtyard, he heard nothing.

“Kami-Six actual,” he whispered. “No hostiles encountered. Entering auditorium.”

He signaled to his sergeant to follow, and eased open one of the glass doors.

The stench that rose to greet him was horrendous, and unmistakable.

Mingled with it was the still-lingering, smoky perfume of a hundred candles.

Hideo risked a quick look inside, holding his breath as he did so.

A few of the larger candles, once tall as a man but now reduced to guttering stubs, still burned. They cast a flickering light, illuminating the carnage that covered the floor like a thick, uneven carpet.

Moscow
July 22

“They were all dead?” Alexi Malenkov’s voice was carefully neutral. If it was an attempt by the Russian to mask his own turmoil—to push it aside simply in order to allow himself to function—it was done with a competence that Beck envied.

Beck nodded, also carefully professional.

“Not the flu, thank God. The Japanese police believe it was poison, a mass suicide. There were three hundred and seventeen bodies. All had been dead two, perhaps three days when the raid occurred.”

“This does not help us, my friend,” Alexi said. “It tells us nothing.”

“At the very least, it confirms your theory about where this virus originated,” Beck said.

“To confirm what we already knew is but cold comfort, Beck.”

“It tells us is that the Aum felt there was a pressing need to self-destruct,” Beck argued.

Alexi shrugged, and Beck saw defeat in the gesture.

“You wish to use logic on those whose actions defy it,” the Russian countered. “Allow me, also. They fear the death
they have unleashed—so they kill themselves?” He laughed bitterly.

“Maybe they did it to escape capture,” Beck countered. “Maybe they did it to protect their last secret.”

“I believe you try to convince yourself that there is still some chance, some small possibility, that we can coerce an antidote from these murderous madmen. This will not happen. Accept it. There is no antidote, no vaccine, because none was ever developed. The Aum saw no need for one. This lunatic act of self-immolation proves it.”

And he’s probably right,
thought Beck.

He berated himself for not having foreseen it: the long trial of Asahara, the death sentence with which it had recently culminated, the final
Götterdämmerung
of the faithful themselves—all fit the traditional pattern that doomsday cults tended to follow. Beck disagreed with Alexi, but only as a matter of semantics: for the Aum, mass destruction
was
logical, simple and direct. The outside world was poised to destroy its Divine Leader, which meant that it intended to destroy Aum. For the cult, there was no recourse other than a preemptive action, and to make that action an Armageddon for all.

Alexi’s voice broke into Beck’s thoughts.

“And so—where does this now leave us?”

“It leaves us with Davidovich,” Beck said.

“Ah, yes—the CIA’s man inside the Aum,” Alexi said mockingly. “Or is it the other way around? No matter. Have you now rethought your prejudice against our methods of interrogation?” He stopped abruptly. “I am sorry, Beck. At times, I speak before I think.”

Beck fixed him with a level gaze. When he spoke, it was in a conversational voice that betrayed no sign of emotion.

“CIA records indicate Davidovich, described as a Russian national, was an agent-in-place here in Russia. He was covered as a journalist, Carson says. He insists that the only
product Davidovich delivered was basic, low-level political and economic intelligence. Is that accurate, Alexi?”

“That is perhaps what he delivered to CIA,” Alexi said. “In part. But it was not the activity in which he was engaged, either as CIA or as an Aum.”

“Then what, Alexi? What was his assignment?”

“For the cultists, he was engaged as a provocateur. His instructions were to find and offer assistance to the various extremists that exist in the
Rodina,
in Russia.”

“He was talent scouting,” Beck said, and Alexi nodded grimly.

“I will provide you with the transcript of his interrogation. It is interesting reading. Our friend was to find in Russia those who oppose the direction our society has taken. Such people can be useful to groups like Aum, which deal in terror. We are today a turbulent nation. There is no shortage of ideologues who would embrace violence.”