Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

"I just take 'em off the fax machine," the sergeant pointed out.

"Okay." Price took the message and headed aft. To where Ben Goodley was. It was his job to be around to tell the President what he needed to know about the important happenings in the world—or, in this case, to evaluate the importance of a message. Price shook the man's shoulder. The national intelligence officer opened one eye.

"Yeah?"

"Do we wake the Boss for this?"

The intelligence specialist scanned it and shook his head. "It can wait. Adler knows what he's doing, and there's a working group at State for this." He turned back into his seat without another word.

"DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING," Klein told the policeman. "Best for you to stand right by the door, but if you want to follow us around, don't touch a thing. Wait." The physician reached into the plastic trash bag he'd brought along, and pulled out a surgical mask in a sterile container. "Put this on, okay?"

"Anything you say, Doc."

Klein handed over the house key. The police officer opened the door. It turned out that there was an alarm system. The control panel was just inside the door, but not turned on. The two physicians put on their own masks and donned latex gloves. First, they turned on all the lights.

"What are we looking for?" Quinn asked.

Klein was already looking. No cat or dog had come to note their arrival. He saw no bird cages—part of him had hoped for a pet monkey, but somehow he knew that wasn't in the cards. Ebola didn't seem to like monkeys very much, anyway. It killed them with all the alacrity it applied to human victims. Plants, then, he thought. Wouldn't it be odd if Ebola's host was something other than an animal? That would be a first of sorts.

There were plants, but nothing exotic. They stood in the center of the living room, not touching anything with their gloved hands or even with their green-trousered legs, as they turned around slowly, looking.

"I don't see anything," Quinn reported.

"Neither do I. Kitchen."

There were some more plants there, two that looked like herbs in small pots. Klein didn't recognize their type and decided to lift them.

"Wait. Here," Quinn said, opening a drawer and finding freezer bags. The plants went into those bags, which the younger physician sealed carefully. Klein opened the refrigerator. Nothing unusual there. The same was true of the freezer. He'd thought it possible that some exotic food product… but, no. Everything the patient ate was typically American.

The bedroom was a bedroom and nothing more. No plants there, they saw.

"Some article of clothing? Leather?" Quinn asked. "Anthrax can—"

"Ebola can't. It's too delicate. We know the organism we're dealing with. It can't survive in this environment. It just can't," the professor insisted. They didn't know much about the little bastard, but one of the things they did at CDC was to establish the environmental parameters, how long the virus could survive in a whole series of conditions. Chicago at this time of year was as inhospitable to that sort of virus as a blast furnace. Orlando, some place in the South, maybe. But Chicago? "We got nothing," he concluded in frustration.

"Maybe the plants?"

"You know how hard it is to get a plant through customs?"

"I've never tried."

"I have, tried to bring some wild orchids back from Venezuela once…" He looked around some more. "There's nothing here, Joe."

"Is her prognosis as bad as—"

"Yeah." A pair of gloved hands rubbed against the scrub pants. Inside the latex rubber, his hands were sweating now. "If we can't determine where it came from… if we can't explain it…" He looked at his younger, taller colleague. "I have to get back. I want to take another look at that structure."

"HELLO," GUS LORENZ said. He checked his clock. What the hell?

"Gus?" the voice asked.

"Yes, who's this?"

"Mark Klein in Chicago."

"Something wrong?" Lorenz asked groggily. The reply opened his eyes all the way.

"I think—no, Gus, I know I have an Ebola case up here."

"How can you be sure?"

"I have the crook. I micrographed it myself. It's the Shepherd's Crook, and no mistake, Gus. I wish it were."

"Where's he been?"

"It's a she, and she hasn't been anywhere special." Klein summarized what he knew in less than a minute. "There is no immediately apparent explanation for this." Lorenz could have objected that this was not possible, but the medical community is an intimate one at its higher levels; he knew Mark Klein was a full professor at one of the world's finest medical schools.

"Just one case?"

"They all start with one, Gus," Klein reminded his friend. A thousand miles away, Lorenz swung his legs off the bed and onto the floor.

"Okay. I need a specimen."

"I have a courier on the way to O'Hare now. He'll catch the first flight down. I can e-mail you the micrographs right now."

"Give me about forty minutes to get in."

"Gus?"

"Yes?"

"Is there anything on the treatment side that I don't know? We have a very sick patient here," Klein said, hoping that for once maybe he wasn't fully up to speed on something in his field.

" 'Fraid not, Mark. Nothing new that I know about."

"Damn. Okay, we'll do what we can here. Call me when you get there. I'm in my office."

Lorenz went into the bathroom and ran some water to splash in his face, proving to himself that this wasn't a dream. No, he thought. Nightmare.

THIS PRESIDENTIAL PERK was one even the press respected. Ryan walked down the steps first, saluted the USAF sergeant at the bottom, and walked the fifty yards to the helicopter. Inside, he promptly buckled his belt and went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later he was roused from his seat again, walked down another set of stairs, saluted a Marine this time, and headed into the White House. Ten minutes after that, he was in a sleeping place that didn't move.

"Good trip?" Cathy asked, one eye partly open.

"Long one," her husband reported, falling back to sleep.

THE FIRST FLIGHT from Chicago to Atlanta left the gate at 6:15 A.M., Central Time. Before then, Lorenz was in his office, on his computer terminal, dialed into the Internet and on the phone at the same time.

"I'm downloading the image now."

As the older man watched, the micrograph grew from top to bottom, one line at a time, faster than a fax would come out of a machine, and far more detailed.

"Tell me I'm wrong, Gus," Klein said, no hope in his voice at all.

"I think you know better, Mark." He paused as the image finished forming. "That's our friend."

"Where's he been lately?"

"Well, we had a couple of cases in Zaire, and two more reported in Sudan. That's it, as far as I know. Your patient, has she been—"

"No. There aren't any risk factors that I have been able to identify so far. Given the incubation period, she must almost certainly have contracted it here in Chicago. And that's not possible, is it?"

"Sex?" Lorenz asked. He could almost hear the shake of the head over the phone.

"I asked. She says she's not getting any of that. Any reports anyplace else?"

"None, none anywhere. Mark, are you sure of what you've told me?" As insulting as the question was, it had to be asked.

"I wish I weren't. The micrograph I sent is the third one, I wanted good isolation for it. Her blood is full of it, Gus. Wait a minute." He heard a muffled conversation. "She just came around again. Says she had a tooth extracted a week or so ago. We have the name of her dentist. We'll run that one down. That's all we have here."

"All right, let me get set up for your sample. It's only one case. Let's not get too excited."

RAMAN GOT HOME shortly before dawn. It was just as well that the streets were almost entirely devoid of traffic at this time of day. He was in no condition for safe driving. Arriving home, he followed the usual routine. On his answering machine was another wrong number, the voice of Mr. Alahad.