Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

He paused and sipped some water. Some of the men and women he was discussing stared at him in stunned silence.

“Their eventual goal was to attain enough power, influence, and prestige that they could literally take over the government of the United States of America, take it over, totalitarianize it, and create out of it the nation that their founders had dreamed about. This they did, by hook, ability, and crook. When they had a member President, they felt no compunction about cleverly murdering a sufficient number of Supreme Court justices and other such posts so that they could be replaced with members of the club. But, still, it was far-fetched. You can’t become the Congress, for example, not only because of the value of incumbency but also because the voters are damned obstinate. And, of course, the Institute could hardly have a native son in each state and district. And, again—what about Americans used to freedom? Would they respond to a military and governmental coup meekly? Hardly—and they have the guns and the geography to make it damned difficult for anybody who did take over to ever hold on. So what to do?”

Again a sip of water, and he continued.

“The obvious answer was a popular war, but that’s out of style. Wars aren’t popular these days, and a war on the scale of a sneak attack means annihilation. So, these bright folks thought, suppose you had a sneak attack by an unknown enemy? Some of their scientific types had continued the recombinant DNA research banned by U.S. law and international treaty. True, the Institute was interested in more than just pet germs—they were interested in designing their own, superior breed of humanity, among other things. There are lots of potentials with recombinant DNA. But what they could make, easily, on the sly, was germs—bacteria, specifically. They made the Wilderness Organism. They did it right here, in the government labs, with NDCC and NIH computers and facilities. The trouble was, they had no idea whether or not their designs worked. Now came the next part of the plan.”

He paused again for a sip, and somebody whispered, “Why don’t we just shut him up?” She was waved to silence by President Wainwright.

“So,” continued Jake Edelman, “friends in the CIA, and those who could be blackmailed—and friends in the FBI as well—combed the files, scoured the world, and plugged into the international terrorist network. The word got around. A mysterious Third World nation with a lot of money and a radical leadership had a weapon to strike at dirty old imperialistic America. They needed volunteers—and they got them, sometimes with the unwitting cooperation of governments hostile to us. The first waves were double tests—first of the engineered bacillus and its properties, as well as the vaccines against it, and second of the network that would be needed for the big job later. Small towns geographically isolated were chosen. The diseases would be studied by NDCC and NIH, of course—including the creators. Modifications could be made, corrections in the biological clocks, degree and means of communicability, everything. Since they also created a bacteriophage, a bacteria-eating virus, they eliminated the evidence as well. Many of the early experiments failed completely, or failed to work as predicted. A terrible plague became a case of the town getting the sniffles. But, after a while, the right combination popped up. They began, by using the bacteria as a catalyst for certain interactions with brain cells, to be able to get just about any effect they wanted. They made a number of strains of the stuff they’d proved out, and they were ready.”

There were uneasy murmurings and shufflings in the room now, but these were quieted by the leaders. They wanted to know just how Edelman knew these things.

“A camp was set up and run by radicals for radicals. They didn’t even know where they were—they were duped and drugged and thought they were in Africa. There their old-time revolutionary religion was recharged, and they were given lessons in how to release the organisms in major cities. In the meantime, one of their blackmail victims, an FBI agent named Harry Reed, who’d worked on the radical fugitives years ago, was assigned to eastern California and ‘just happened’ to recognize James Foley, head of one of the early small-town strike teams. We jumped at it, raided the place, and discovered the Wilderness Organism and pegged it to known terrorist fanatics.”

They were getting really upset now. Jake Edelman started to feel his one greatest fear, that they would not let him finish.

“Using the idea that we had a mysterious enemy controlling a horrible fate, we scared the American people half to death. They were willing to do just about anything to feel safe from this dreaded disease. It was much worse than soldiers of an enemy. It was silent, invisible, and permanent in its effects. They demanded protection from Congress, Congress gave extreme emergency powers to the President, and we had the military state of emergency called and the mechanics of dictatorship established and tested, and some really embarrassing enemies and problem people vanishing. The American populace was militarized and computerized faster than anyone would have believed, and mostly with its willing cooperation. They were naive and terrified.”

He was out of water now.

“So now this radical step had to produce results. There was an early slip, too—much of the Wilderness Organism’s model-building was done in NDCC computers, and this was stumbled on by a brilliant doctor, Mark Spiegelman. When taps and monitors showed that he had, in fact, discovered the domestic origins, a minor flunky in the security apparatus at Fort Dietrick panicked and had the security men murder him. It was clumsy and needless, since part of the plot was to show that the thing was indeed of domestic origin. His real crime was that he had discovered the truth too soon; it’d been planted there for later, more carefully planned discovery.

“My own team was charged with solving the mystery. I was chosen because of my impeccable reputation, if I do say so myself, and my heart condition, which would prove a convenient out if I stumbled onto the wrong things or if I followed the script and retired. Now, using the handouts I got from the conspirators, I was to slowly crack the case. Plants I placed in the large body of radicals were spotted and allowed to pass, apparently undetected. They were even spread around, to make sure that I would get word on each team before it was to hit a major city. Of course, some casualties were to be anticipated, but most we got, and the communicability of the strains was kept low. We failed to get word on the Chicago and New Orleans teams, as you know, but seem to have only localized hits. Ten, twenty thousand people in Chicago, less than a third of that in New Orleans. We also almost missed the one for D.C., but got lucky. One assumes that the important people all had their shots, anyway.

“To take the blame, Dr. Sandra O’Connell and Dr. Joe Bede were put under drugs and placed under conditions where suicide would result. We rescued Dr. O’Connell, but not Bede. One assumes that there is now a list of the ‘ringleaders’ of this conspiracy, that a purge in government and elsewhere will turn these traitors up, and that these will include a large part of Congress and other agencies not under control. Using this as a guise, the Institute personnel will now totalitarianize the nation and hold it in their absolute grip for remolding. Only one thing stands in their way, though, and it’s formidible. It’s something that will have to be faced here and now, which is why I am here.”

He paused and looked around. “Can I have some more water, please?” he asked, holding out his glass. President Wainwright smiled, took the glass, personally refilled it, brought it back and handed it to him.