‘The wire services are reporting an outbreak of illness in southern Tennessee that has features in common with last week’s outbreak in Iowa,’ she said. ‘You’re familiar with that, sir?’
‘Yes, I am.’ The director had been informed as a matter of routine about the outbreaks in Iowa and Tennessee but had not given the matter much thought, since it was outside his field of expertise.
‘Do you consider the outbreaks to be a public health concern?’ Karen asked.
‘Certainly. The public health people are looking into it.’
‘But not a terrorism concern.’
‘We have no reason to suspect that.’
Karen pushed an errant lock of her dark hair away from her eyes.
‘Let me ask you hypothetically, Mr Director – suppose that terrorists possessed a chemical or biological weapon capable of affecting large groups of people in a short period of time. Do you think the radical terrorist organizations would shrink from using such a weapon on a mass scale?’
‘I couldn’t say for sure,’ the director replied. ‘But I would not like to find out. I want to be sure that none of the terrorist groups ever develops that capability.’
‘Do the outbreaks in Iowa and Tennessee put thoughts like this into your head?’
The director thought for a moment.
‘They would if the disease we found there could be linked to any known toxin or pathogen.’
‘And it has not?’
‘No, it has not.’
‘Are you saying, sir, that it is the same disease in both locations?’
‘No, I’m not,’ the director replied with some irritation. ‘I’m only relating what I’ve been told by the public health authorities.’
‘You’re saying that neither disease presents symptoms associated with known pathogens or toxins?’
‘To my knowledge, neither. That’s correct.’
‘What if a toxin or pathogen as yet unknown to the authorities had in fact been used?’
The director shrugged this off. ‘You’re talking about a hypothesis for which we have no evidence. It’s hard for me to comment about such things.’
He made a point of calling on other reporters for the next several minutes. Karen let him get away with it, for she was confident he would look at her sooner or later. He had noticed her beauty.
When his eyes darted to her she pounced. ‘You’re aware, Mr Director, that Vice President Everhardt’s illness is baffling the physicians at Walter Reed,’ she said. ‘Are you concerned that a man so important is ill, and nobody knows why?’
The director was taken off guard.
‘I don’t know that to be true,’ he said. ‘The doctors are evaluating the vice president’s condition and giving him the best possible treatment. I don’t know that they are ‘baffled,’ as you put it.’
‘But no one at Walter Reed or in the White House has been willing to comment on the situation,’ Karen said. ‘Don’t you think the public has a right to know what the vice president is suffering from?’
The director frowned. ‘I’m not really the person for you to be asking about that,’ he said. ‘I’m not a physician, and I’m not close to the situation. I’d suggest you speak to the doctors.’
‘They’re not talking.’
The director was ruffled by Karen’s questions. It had been a long time since he had been grilled this way by a reporter. Her questions were maddening because he didn’t have good answers to any of them.
‘Sources have told me,’ she pursued, ‘that the vice president’s illness has features in common with the outbreaks in Iowa and Tennessee. Is there any truth to that?’
‘None at all, to my knowledge,’ the director replied. ‘Miss Embry, at the risk of offending you, I think we should stick to the topic at hand.’
‘The topic, as I understand it, is terrorism,’ Karen countered. ‘It seems clear that terrorism and public health are two issues that can’t be separated easily.’
‘Nor can they be connected easily,’ the director said. ‘Not without hard evidence.’
He did not call on Karen again. The news conference petered out amid questions about the ongoing Chechen uprising in Russia and the India-Pakistan conflict.
As the reporters were packing up their equipment the director’s press secretary appeared at Karen’s side. A tall, handsome man who looked strikingly like a male model, he had kept a low profile during the news conference.
‘I’m Mitch Fallon,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘Why haven’t we met before?’
‘I moved here from Boston last spring,’ Karen said. ‘I’m doing a series of articles on politics and public health issues.’
‘Well, it’s good to have you here,’ he smiled. ‘However, I must say you seem to have a slight tendency toward the hypothetical.’
She smiled. ‘Back in the eighties, who could have guessed that the money being used to support the Contras in Nicaragua was coming from Ronald Reagan through the Ayatollah Khomeini? Sometimes the wildest hypothesis is less strange than the truth.’
‘I have to agree with you there.’
He studied the young reporter. Her look of permanent skepticism seemed superimposed over a face that, at rest, would have communicated something quite different. Something soft and even girlish that she had long since renounced.
‘Do you have any evidence for your theories about the Crescent Queen?’ he asked. ‘I mean, about terrorists having the capacity to make and deliver nuclear weapons.’
There it was again – nucular. Karen had to suppress a smile. Was Fallon mispronouncing the word out of loyalty to his boss? There was no way to know.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s just a possibility I’ve been wondering about. I thought it was strange that all the known terrorist organizations denied being involved. Something about that had a ring of truth. They’re ruthless people. They don’t care about public opinion. They wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.’
‘What about the illness in Iowa, and the Tennessee problem?’ he asked. ‘What got you interested?’
‘I try to keep tabs on the news from the various public health organizations,’ she said. ‘I just thought the stories sounded strange. I’ve done articles on the major viruses, HIV and Ebola and Marburg and so on. I flew out to Iowa a couple of days ago, by the way.’
‘Did you learn anything?’
‘A little, here and there.’
He was looking at her with apparent admiration for her beauty, though she sensed a harder scrutiny behind it.
‘What evidence do you have that such a thing might be intentional?’ he asked.
‘None,’ she said, not taking her eyes off him.
‘What makes you think the connection is even possible?’ he asked.
‘It seems to me that it’s just a matter of time,’ she said. ‘If you look at the terrorist activity over the last couple of decades – Lockerbie, Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center, and of course the Crescent Queen – it’s obvious that the terrorists have been coming into possession of better and better technology. They’re not the old-fashioned bomb-in-the-suitcase types. They’re twentieth-century men, like everybody else. And with countries like Iraq and Libya