Chapter 71. Decisions
Small-time hood Mickey Kowalski didn’t like what he heard on the news. Those bitches were right. She had probably given him that fuckin’ virus when she kissed him. Never trust bitches, man. They are all nothin’ but lyin’ whores, Mickey thought. What was he going to do? He had to get tested. That was for sure. He decided to go to his regular internist, a last-in-his-class quack named Dr. Bernard McGuire, whose office was in the floor above a local taxidermist’s shop. He was escorted that morning by the receptionist into a small examination room, where he was asked to take off his shirt and sit on a padded table covered in butcher block paper. A few minutes later, the doctor, bald and overweight, came into the small room with a clipboard.
“Mickey, you never call. You never write. It’s been like two years since you have come in for a visit. What gives?”
“Hey, Doc. Let’s cut the small talk. I got a situation here. I think I caught something from this lady.”
“A lady, heh? Listen, Mickey, don’t worry. We will do a blood test, and if you caught a venereal disease or something, it will show up and we can take care of it.”
“Um, no, Doc, it’s not like that. It’s not a venereal disease. It is something much worse, like cancer.”
“Mickey, you cannot catch cancer from someone who has it.”
“Um, yeah, I know that, Doc. It’s not really cancer, you know. It’s something really bad.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Mickey?”
“Hey, Doc, have you heard about this Ebola virus thing on the news?”
“Yes,” said the doctor suspiciously.
“Well, Doc, I think it might be that.” The doctor looked at him skeptically.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, Doc, it’s like this. I really can’t say. But supposin’ that’s what it was. Could you give me a pill or medicine or somethin’ for that?”
“No, Mickey. I would have no idea how to cure that. But I am sure you don’t have that. They said on the news that the virus came from Brazil. Have you been in Brazil lately?”
“No.”
“Well, then what do you have to worry about? It is probably just a stomach flu or something. Listen, you sit tight and I will have the nurse take some blood, and we will take from there, okay?”
“Sure, Doc.”
“And when are you going to get me Jets tickets again?”
“Soon, Doc, I promise.” The doctor left, and Mickey waited for a few minutes, until the nurse came in and took several vials of blood. After getting a cotton swab and a Band-aid, Mickey Kowalski left the doctor’s office and drove back to the warehouse where his two captives were being held. He was going to keep his distance from those bitches this time.
Atlanta, Georgia. Jacob Roessler’s House.
Murielle Winston had tried everything to get out of the locked refrigerator. Her only sustenance was the bottles of wine. She had nothing to eat. After several days, she collapsed from the gunshot wound to her leg, the lack of food, and the cold temperatures. Unless someone rescued her soon, she was going to die in here. Where was her husband Charlie, she wondered?
Washington, D.C. The White House Situation Room.
It had been 48 hours since the terrorists’ demands were posted on You Tube. There was not much time left. At 6:00 p.m., the President had another meeting in the Situation Room. Sheila Simms, Director of Homeland Security, addressed the President.
“Madame President, unfortunately, we have some very bad news. It appears as though one of the 112 people who entered the country from Brazil before the border lockdown was Ron Fielding, Jr, a 26 year-old bank teller from Boston who had been to the soccer game. There is another Ron Fielding, Jr., who is in his fifties, who works for the I.R.S., lives in Newton, Massachusetts, and has a very similar sounding address. The individual we put in quarantine was the Ron Fielding, Jr. from the I.R.S., not the Ron Fielding from the Bank of Boston. This morning, the Ron Fielding, Jr. who had been to Brazil showed up at work with full-blown Ebola symptoms, and worked all morning, where he probably came into contact with over two hundred people.”
“Oh my God,” said the President.
“We were notified of this discrepancy by the C.D.C. this afternoon, after they received a call from Massachusetts General Hospital, where Mr. Fielding was taken for treatment. Agents from USAMRIID and the FBI are on the ground in Boston. We quarantined every person in the bank that we could find, and our agents are now combing through surveillance tapes and bank records to find everyone who interacted with Fielding this morning. But the terrible truth, Madame President, is that due to this error, it is possible that the Mackinac Ebola Virus may be out.”
“I’m speechless.”
“It gets worse. Our friend from Minnesota, Tom Bergman, was admitted to a hospital in St. Paul tonight with full-blown Ebola symptoms. You may remember that this is the gentleman who immediately went on a fishing trip after returning from Brazil. This morning, he came into contact with several service station employees along his route, and perhaps other customers. Two of the three service stations where he stopped did not have surveillance cameras, so we have no way of identifying persons with whom he may have made contact. And our two kidnapped women from New Jersey still are missing. That is a lot of loose ends, Madame President. With the terrorists’ ransom only 24 hours away, I want to make sure you are aware that there is now a very real possibility that this virus could get out into the population and kill millions of our citizens. Here is a simulation, Madame President.” On the board was a map of the United States, which showed a few red dots in Boston, one in Trenton, and one in Minneapolis. “Here is the situation now. Here is what we could be looking at in one week. This is one month. This is six months.” The President stared at the screen as the number of red dots multiplied. “As loathsome as the option may be, Madame President, I think you should think strongly about giving in to the terrorists’ demands. If we can get the antidote into the hands of hospitals quickly, we could contain this thing.”
The President’s Chief of Staff, Amy Miller, was irritated. “Sheila, complying with the terrorists’ demands means murdering 52 people in cold blood, on video.”
Sheila Simms was unruffled. “Twelve of those 52 are dead. So it’s only 40 people. And as unpleasant as that may be, I would rather have 40 dead Serbs than millions of dead Americans.”
“Madame President,” said Miller, “Have you talked to President Clinton? What does he have to say?”
“He is really annoyed by this whole thing because he said that he advocated for intervention in Bosnia ever since 1992 but he couldn’t get Congress to go along with him. He thinks that blaming him for the delay in intervention is ridiculous. On the other hand, he doesn’t want millions of dead Americans, either. While he did not say so explicitly, I get the sense from him that if our backs are up against the wall, and it is the only way to save everyone, President Clinton will come through for us.”
“What about these forty so-called war criminals?” asked Miller. “I cannot imagine we can grab forty citizens of other countries off the streets in the time we have available.”
“It’s not going to be a problem,” said Hank Armstrong, CIA Director, from across the room.
Everyone looked at Armstrong nervously.
“You have all forty men?” asked Miller.
“As I said, Ms. Miller, let’s just say it is not going to be a problem.”
“But we don’t even know if the terrorists are telling the truth when they say they have an antidote. It could all be a lie,” said Miller.
“That’s true,” said the President. “And if we asked them for a sample of the antidote as a show of good faith, they would deny us, because they would know we would replicate the sample on our own. So we really have no way of knowing whether they are telling the truth about the antidote. On the other hand, we have surveillance tape of Graciano taking the bat in a cage all the way from Tanzania. He already had the tissue and blood samples. He didn’t need the bat. He went to a lot of trouble to bring the bat half way across the world. That tells me that he was trying to develop the antidote.”
“That’s a pretty slender reed on which to rest a decision to murder forty people,” said Miller.
“Amy, that’s why I get to make decisions like these. Is there any hope for an antidote of our own, other than what we have from AVI?”
“We have our lab and five labs across the country working on it. Nothing so far,” said Bjorn Jendel, who was standing by live on a satellite feed.
“We just have to find them. Hank, Sheila, will you please find these sons-a-bitches? Let’s reconvene here in an hour.”
The President walked out of the Situation Room and headed to the Oval Office to do some thinking. Her time was running out.