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Smoke Screen
Smoke Screen
Smoke Screen
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Smoke Screen

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In the wee hours of the morning, four men in latex masks enter the elegant Montclair Hotel in midtown Manhattan. After detaining the night staff, Frank Belmonte, one of the best jewel thieves in the business, breaks into the safe deposit boxes held by the rich old inhabitants of the hotel. "Frankie Rocks" takes roughly ten million dollars' worth of jewels from the boxes. The heist seems to be running smoothly until some unexpected guests arrive at the hotel and the burglars are forced to take them as last minute hostages. But these are no ordinary hotel guests, and three of the four thieves aren't really looking for jewels. Their agenda is one of national security. One of the hostages is a renegade Cuban doctor who has smuggled a deadly airborne virus out of the Angolan jungle. The Cuban government has threatened to unleash this epidemic on America unless the President meets Castro's demands for an immediate, complete end to the economic embargo on Cuba. To thwart this international blackmail, CIA director Linwood Cutshaw needs to capture the doctor before he releases the virus on American soil, but he must create a smoke screen, so the Cuban authorites won't know the doctor has fallen into U.S. government hands. Cutshaw has recruited Teddy Tedesco, an honest ex-NYPD detective, two ex-CIA operatives, and Frank Belmonte for this nervy scheme—but only Belmonte believes they are out for the jewels. All at once their elaborate plans go awry and the thieves must face the unexpected. The quirky team of Teddy and Frank is forced to work together to root out the missing jewels while the enraged Cuban doctor prepares to inflict a new black plague on millions of unsuspecting Americans. An electrifying and all too believable caper, SMOKE SCREEN twists unpredictably toward an explosive denouement.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 26, 2014
ISBN9780990392385
Smoke Screen
Author

Vincent Patrick

Vincent Patrick has a work background appropriate for a novelist’s book jacket. Born in the Bronx, New York, he finished both high school and engineering college at night and has had a remarkable range of jobs. He’s been a door-to-door Bible salesman, bartender, restaurant owner, Standard-bred Pacer owner, vice-president of an engineering consulting firm, teacher in a community college (writing fiction in the off-hours from his late teens.) After the publication of his first novel, The Pope of Greenwich village, he wrote screenplays for many years, including the script for the movie of Pope of Greenwich Village (with Micky Rouark and Eric Roberts) and for the movie of his second novel, Family Business (Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Mathew Broderick, Directed by Sidney Lumet.) He says that he wrote SMOKE SCREEN as 'a thriller with an emphasis on character, including the villain's.'

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    Smoke Screen - Vincent Patrick

    PRAISE FOR SMOKE SCREEN

    A NEW YORK TIMES '1999 NOTABLE BOOK OF FICTION '

    A TWISTING, EXPERTLY CRAFTED THRILLER.People

    A REFRESHINGLY TAUT, INTELLIGENT WORK OF SUSPENSE.Publishers Weekly

    RAZOR SHARP… a tidal wave of action… Vincent Patrick's latest is BASICALLY A TEXTBOOK STUDY ON HOW TO WRITE A TERRIFIC THRILLER.Chicago Tribune

    "A NARRATIVE THAT SATISFIES ON ALL SORTS OF LEVELS… The best thing about Smoke Screen is its characterizations. Both Teddy and Frank are complete, beguiling personalities, their droll exchanges about life on opposite sides of the law always interesting." — New York Times/Book Review

    Patrick is an expert plotter who never tips his hand (and holds some fabulous cards).Baltimore Sun

    SMART, FAST, GRIPPING: everything we want from realistic suspense.Kirkus

    Patrick draws the reader into this CRISP, INTELLIGENT THRILLER WITH UNCONVENTIONAL CHARACTERS WHO ARE A PLEASURE TO BE WITH. It will keep you guessing — and caring — to the very end.Nick Pileggi

    "TIGHT, SHARP AND MOVING LIKE A ROCKET, Smoke Screen puts me in mind of The Asphalt Jungle, Riffifi, Odds Against Tomorrow and all the other great Heist-gone-wrong novels and movies of the past fifty years. Merging New York street-smarts with international skullduggery, Vince Patrick has written A GRITTY, INTELLIGENT THRILLER THAT JUST WON'T LET GO." — Richard Price

    BOOKS BY VINCENT PATRICK

    The Pope of Greenwich Village

    Family Business

    Smoke Screen

    SMOKE SCREEN

    Vincent Patrick

    Copyright © 1999 - 2014 by Vincent Patrick

    All Rights Reserved

    This edition published in 2014 by Vincent Patrick

    All text is identical to the 1999 edition.

    Distributed by Smashwords

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission of the author.

    This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

    Cover Design by Eric Bryant

    Author Photo by Lisa Patrick

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Patrick, Vincent.

    Smoke Screen

    I. Title.

    ISBN: 0990392341

    ISBN-13: 978-0-9903923-4-7

    FOR

    GLEN AND RICHARD

    Table of Contents

    PRAISE FOR SMOKE SCREEN

    BOOKS BY VINCENT PATRICK

    PROLOGUE

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    V

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    XI

    XII

    XIII

    XIV

    XV

    XVI

    XVII

    XVIII

    XIX

    XX

    XXI

    XXII

    XXIII

    XXIV

    XXV

    XXVI

    XXVII

    XXVIII

    EPILOGUE

    REVIEWS FOR THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE

    REVIEWS FOR FAMILY BUSINESS

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    PROLOGUE

    ON ANGOLA'S EASTERN BORDER, 1989

    The doctor sat behind the wheel of the Land Rover and watched the three lanky Quioco natives struggle as they poled the big log raft beneath him through a large grove of acacia trees that stood in three feet of water. They were having trouble maneuvering, and finally hung up the raft on a cluster of tree trunks. The technician, seated beside the doctor in the open-top vehicle, cursed softly in Russian — a curse the doctor didn't recognize — then stepped out to help the natives push off. He hadn't been in Africa long, the doctor decided. When they were free and into clear water again the Russian stayed with them, poling the final fifty yards or so to the eastern bank of the river. The doctor remained seated in the Land Rover. He sucked the final puffs from his cigar, then chucked the little stub into the water and watched it move downstream in the slow current. The husky Russian would be good for not much more than tasks like poling, he thought, since he was a poorly trained technician and of only average intelligence. His commitment was suspect, too.

    The raft scraped up onto the bank, and the Russian now joined the natives in lashing it hard to two widely spaced trees. The doctor started the Land Rover's engine and drove it forward slowly, in first gear. It made the transition from raft to dry land with barely a jolt, but he kept moving until he was well up on hardpan before killing the engine. He lit a fresh cigar and drew on it with only the smallest sense of accomplishment. They were in Zaire. All very well, but it meant only that the easiest leg of the mission was behind them.

    He paid the three Quiocos, then watched them pole into the darkness toward Angola without a backward glance, while the Russian checked that the cans of gasoline and the chests of field equipment were secure. He started the engine, shifted into first, and moved slowly up an incline, away from the water toward foliage thick enough to shield them from any early-morning river traffic. The Russian uncapped a bottle of vodka and held it toward the doctor, who looked at it disdainfully and said nothing. The Russian took a long swig of it, then smacked his lips loudly and exhaled a long, tired sigh. It was a plaintive sound the doctor had often heard from Russians after months in Africa. The Russian waited just a minute before raising the bottle to his lips again and draining a quarter of it in one prolonged draft, after which he sighed once more.

    That's unwise on this continent, the doctor said, as he brought the Land Rover to a stop. They conversed in English — the doctor's far more fluent than the Russian's — unless the Russian was excited or had drunk more than his usual measure of vodka, in which case he lapsed into his native tongue. The doctor understood more of it than he let on.

    The Russian smiled, then took another long gulp before tucking the bottle back into its case. He rolled out a sleeping bag a few yards from the vehicle, zippered himself into it, and immediately fell into a deep sleep. The doctor was short enough to lie comfortably on his side across the front seats of the Land Rover, his knees only slightly bent. He covered himself with a thin blanket and asked Saint Theresa to protect him for the next twenty-four hours, an invocation he had managed to make every night of his life since kindergarten — fifty-three years' worth of prayer, often under terribly adverse conditions. It took only a few minutes for him to doze off.

    He bolted upright at the Russian's first scream, instantly awake, his head clear and his hands gripping the AK-47 as he dove to the floor of the Land Rover. There was no sign of humans or animals. The Russian continued to scream and thrash wildly inside his sleeping bag. In the dim, predawn light it took a few moments for the doctor to see that the ground around the sleeping bag was moving. A mass of several million driver ants were foraging on a front twenty or thirty feet wide. The bag itself was barely discernible under a thick coating of the large, black ants. The front would reach the Land Rover in a few minutes. He started the engine, then pulled one of the dozen jerry cans of gasoline from under a bungee cord, unscrewed the top, drenched his legs and shoes and arms and hands with gas, then walked forward deliberately onto the mass of ants.

    Ants! he shouted in Russian. Driver ants! and poured gas all over the sleeping bag and onto the Russian's head. While the Russian continued to scream, both in panic and pain, the doctor unzippered the bag. Ants seemed to erupt out of it like a flow of black lava. He poured the remaining gas onto the Russian's body and dropped the can beside the bag as he pulled him erect. The Russian ran toward the river, bellowing now in a way the doctor had once heard a tethered cow bellow and stomp when overrun by driver ants. The doctor got into the Land Rover and drove gently in reverse for twenty feet or so before turning 180 degrees and heading for the river. Ahead of him, the Russian dove into the water and undressed in a squatting position. The doctor reached the riverbank as the Russian threw his last item of clothing ashore and walked out to shoulder depth, where he scrubbed his body with his bare hands and occasional handfuls of river mud, taking deep breaths then submerging his head and scrubbing his hair while underwater. After a bit he walked out of the water and stood on the bank in front of the doctor. His body, especially his torso, showed hundreds of tiny cuts, which the doctor knew were caused by the ants' very efficient mandibles — he had looked at driver ants under high magnifications. He had also heard village elders describe criminals being executed in years past by tying them to the ground near driver ant nests. The Russian slapped and picked at half a dozen spots on his body.

    These tiny ones — even the scrubbing didn't dislodge the little bastards, he said.

    Those are just heads, the doctor said. Your scrubbing broke their bodies away. The heads are still biting. A driver ant can have its body severed and the head will continue to work the jaws for hours. He nodded his head admiringly, and added, You've been attacked by one of the world's supreme predators.

    He carried the vodka bottle to the naked, quivering Russian. The best use for this would be to sterilize those cuts, he said.

    The Russian took the bottle with a mumbled curse and lifted it to his lips.

    ***

    They arrived twelve hours later just outside the tiny village that was their objective. While still a few miles away the doctor tensed expectantly, then made an effort to dampen his optimism. The reports that had reached him in Luanda were no different from the dozen others he had gotten during his seven years in Angola, each of which had proved a disappointment. He kept his hopes high, though, as certain now as he had been each time previously that this would be the one. The Russian slumped in the passenger seat, still demoralized by the ant swarm, and seemed to become uneasy as they got closer. The doctor swung into a wide arc to approach the village upwind.

    They came upon the clearing suddenly and stopped at the edge to survey it from the Land Rover. There was the usual arrangement of large straw huts. No activity, no sounds. Dozens of small rodents that the doctor recognized as voles scurried off into the bush, many more than ought to be here. It was a good sign. The Russian pointed downwind, toward thirty or more bodies that lay in a neat row at the far edge of the clearing. Their hands weren't tied behind them and they hadn't been shot. Clearly the bodies had been laid there by villagers who had then run away. The doctor opened one of the equipment chests. He and the Russian pulled on plastic, hooded coveralls, flexible plastic boots that fit over their own, and surgical gloves. They wound several layers of duct tape tightly around the boot tops to form an air seal between boots and coveralls, then did the same gloves-to-coveralls. Finally, they pulled hooded respirators over their heads and wrapped tape around their necks, where the respirator hood ended. The doctor spent long minutes on this seal, knowing it was the most suspect part of his defense. As they left the Land Rover, the doctor, for the first time since leaving Luanda, removed the ignition key. He dropped it unobtrusively on the floor in back. He had doubts about the Russian's nerve.

    There were more bodies in the huts. While he examined several of them, the Russian counted the dead. Sixty-eight. The doctor had never seen — had never even read of — symptoms as devastating as these. They had all bled from their eye sockets and had clearly vomited blood uncontrollably. Most of them had no fingernails or toenails, which had fallen off before they died. There were dozens of holes in each body — the skin must have peeled away in patches then actual holes formed through which they had hemorrhaged, holes that from the look of them might easily have been caused by a very aggressive bacterium. He didn't believe it was a bacterium, though. His gut told him that this was a viral hemorrhagic disease, and likely a brand-new one. Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever — none of them caused actual holes in the skin or this kind of excessive bleeding from eye sockets.

    In one of the huts a young woman was still alive, though in a coma. She had all the symptoms that the dead exhibited and was, at the most, hours away from dying. He drew blood from her into two vacutainers then held chloroform-soaked gauze over her nose and mouth until her heart stopped. He directed the Russian to collect blood from the most recently deceased victims, those in the huts. Meanwhile, the doctor performed a hasty autopsy on the young woman. He took a scalpel from his kit and forced himself to pause for a ten-count, to remind himself that this was by far the most dangerous procedure he would be performing this day. The body would surely spurt blood that would drench his protective suit, and scalpels frequently skidded off bones to nick the suit, or worse, pierce his skin — a postmortem required a heavy hand much of the time. Don't rush, he told himself, then inserted the scalpel at the sternum and pulled hard in a straight line down to the pelvis, blood flooding out and covering his arms and the front of his suit as he had known it would. He made long, horizontal slices at the top and bottom of his vertical cut to form an H, then folded back the two flaps. He shook his head in disbelief at the devastation. It was like nothing he had ever seen — an attack unrivaled by anything described in the literature. Every organ was ravaged, as if an army of maggots had feasted on it, the liver reduced to the consistency of jelly. It seemed to be melting before his eyes. He snipped out pieces of liver, spleen, lymph nodes, and lung, then cut through for a piece of kidney, and placed the samples carefully into small, sterile, containers. The terrible damage to her lungs made him hopeful that the mode of transmission was airborne.

    He and the Russian began to pack the samples into the smallest of three large, nesting thermos bottles. That bottle would be placed into the next largest one and the space between packed with flakes of dry ice they would make on the spot from a tank of carbon dioxide, then the cover put on the second thermos, which in turn would be set inside the third, largest one, again the space between them filled with dry ice. Finally, the nested thermoses would be sealed inside a plastic bag packed with cotton toweling that the doctor would soak with bleach. It would be more than enough insulation for the virus — and he now had no doubt that it was a virus — to get back safely to Luanda, where the dry ice would be replaced. In a pinch, he reckoned, the present packaging would see the virus safely to Havana.

    I want the blood samples divided now, the Russian demanded suddenly. Half and half. In separate thermoses. It's a better way than later. He spoke Russian.

    The doctor pretended to understand only part of what was said — he had pretended from the beginning that his Russian was poor, never letting on that he had lived and studied in Moscow for two years in the early 1970s. It gave him a small advantage in any situation. He rose from his squatting position and asked, haltingly, for the Russian to repeat it, then said that he might have a fourth thermos in the Land Rover, which would allow them to double-pack each of their samples. He went to the vehicle and searched through an equipment chest for a thermos he knew wasn't there, then returned empty-handed to where the Russian was already dividing the vacutainers and sample jars. When he was just behind the squatting Russian he deftly lifted his sidearm from its holster and, saying nothing, shot the Russian once in the back of the head. Moscow would have no need of these specimens, he thought, given the degeneracy they were regressing into. As he dragged the body across the ground and into the hut where the woman's open body lay, he regretted for a moment that his shot had ruined a respirator — they were not easy to come by in Africa — then remembered that he would be off this continent for good in just a few days. While he doused the two bodies and the sides of the hut with gasoline, he allowed himself to anticipate what home would be like after seven years out here. If this virus he was taking with him was new and was all it appeared to be — and especially, God willing, if its transmission was airborne — then this would be a virus of which dreams are made and he would receive a hero's welcome. A very private one but a hero's welcome nonetheless.

    I

    THE OVAL OFFICE, 1995

    The secretary of state, Martin Anderson, fingered his page of notes impatiently while he waited for the phone call to end. Sharing the couch with him and skimming his own set of notes was the thirty-five-year-old Jaime Burne-Valera, his troubleshooter for Latin American affairs, a Harvard-educated, second-generation Bostonian acknowledged privately by everyone at State to be Anderson's intellectual superior. His grandfather, Don Guillermo Valera, a Venezuelan poet and political orator whose epic poem, Song of the Liberator, was a modern Spanish classic, had befriended and admired Jose Marti during the revolutionary's long exile from Cuba and later joined Marti in New York City where he helped found the Cuban Revolutionary party in 1893. Don Guillermo, during a weekend speaking engagement in Boston, had been introduced to the socially prominent, rebellious, eighteen-year-old Abigail Burne, an ardent feminist, at an afternoon tea in a Beacon Hill mansion. The couple had checked into the Ritz-Carlton a few hours later and remained in their suite for three days, after which Abigail sent for an Episcopalian minister, a second cousin, who married them in the hotel. Jaime's Latin genes, though outnumbered three-to-one, had acquitted themselves magnificently, in his coloring, hair texture, and an intense but private pride in his centuries-long Castilian heritage.

    The President's phone call was approaching the ten-minute mark. Anderson glanced across at the Vice President, whom experience had taught to come forearmed with reading material — he perused an open folder on his lap — then at Tom Crowley, the young adviser who had a tighter grip on the President's ear than anyone else in the White House except the First Lady. What wisdom the holder of the world's most important job might glean from this ambitious yuppie was beyond Anderson. Tom stared blankly at the ceiling, the look of a man who had been through this often and knew of no solution but patience. All four of them studiously kept from watching the President, who, half an hour late because of a lengthened jog, had then taken the call just minutes into the meeting, and now fed himself a slow but steady stream of corn chips from a bowl on the desk as he spoke into the phone. The secretary had alerted the President yesterday that he would be placing what might well be a grade-one security matter on the presidential plate. He hadn't expected to be interrupted by a call about the replacement of a second-level deputy at Agriculture.

    I need to think about it some more, the President finally said. I want to sleep on it.

    He hung up and turned to the secretary.

    You're on, Andy.

    As you know, Mr. President, we've had Burne-Valera here meeting from time to time with Castro's people to see if we couldn't quietly work out a deal on refugees. Well, the Cubans requested a meeting for Monday and Jaime went.

    He motioned for Jaime to speak.

    I've always met quietly in my hotel room with Jorge Fuentes, who is very much a second-level deputy in their diplomatic corps, almost precisely my counterpart, in fact.

    Tom Crowley studied Jaime intently, and noted his remarkable equanimity in describing himself as second-level. Was it truly a lack of ego? Or supreme self-confidence? Or, most likely, a pose. In any event, it baffled him, since he harbored a constant resentment that the person seated in the President's chair was not himself.

    It was Fuentes I expected on Monday, Jaime continued. Instead, I was driven to the outskirts of Havana, to an unmarked office in a converted house. A while later the door opened and in strode Mr. Fidel Castro.

    It got everyone's attention, especially the President, who blurted out, "Fidel himself?" then looked to his secretary of state and said, You never told me that, Andy.

    I believe I did, sir. You were up to your neck in the Iranian mess.

    The President, easily star-struck in any event, asked Jaime, with a touch of reverence in his voice that bordered on obeisance, What was the first thing he said to you? It was Crowley's guess he hoped to hear that Fidel had sent warmest regards to the bright young President of the great United States. If so, Jaime disappointed him.

    "He informed me that he could recite all of Books Three and Four of my grandfather's Song of the Liberator by heart. Then observed that were Don Guillermo alive today he would surely take up residence in Havana."

    The President turned to Anderson, annoyed.

    Fidel himself. I wish you had made that clear yesterday, Andy. It puts this in a whole different light. He turned to Crowley and said, Have somebody locate Millicent. I want her in on this.

    As Crowley hurried from the room the President said, Let's wait till she gets here. There's no point her having to play catch-up.

    He reached for a corn chip and then the phone.

    Things were off to the usual unfocused start, Anderson thought. The President had only been half listening yesterday.

    ***

    Tom Crowley dispatched an assistant to find the First Lady, with instructions to inform him when she arrived at the meeting. He didn't return to the Oval Office, knowing that nothing substantive would be discussed until she arrived. He had known yesterday after Anderson's call that she ought to be included but the President had said no, they could call her in if need be. Everyone would now kill twenty minutes until she arrived. This seemed to be how a good part of every day passed, cobbling together things that should have been planned more carefully the day before. Ultimately, though, her presence would be well worth the delay, since no one could better manipulate the President into making a decision, something Crowley had watched her do more than once. Each time it put him in mind of sheepdog trials he had once watched in Maryland in which a single border collie in an open field would circle and dart for hundreds of yards and manage to drive a sheep, without ever touching it, into a small pen — a place it didn't want to enter. Since then, Crowley and a select few sometimes referred to the First Lady as the border collie. Without her nipping at his heels, even a grade-one security matter could sit on the President's plate for a long, long time.

    He went into his office and found Linwood Cutshaw, the CIA director, seated comfortably in an armchair skimming a thick report. Crowley wasn't surprised to find him there. It had been planned yesterday during a phone call the President had placed after hearing from Anderson, requesting that Cutshaw bring to this morning's meeting whatever he might dig out overnight bearing on the possibility of Fidel Castro having some major new weapon. The President had then told him who would be attending.

    Will you extend me the liberty of being candid — maybe even blunt — Mr. President? Cutshaw had asked, sweetening up a Carolina drawl as he always did when speaking to the President.

    You go right ahead, Cutty, the President had said in a sweetened drawl of his own.

    I've worked in this town a long time. When you hear the name Fidel Castro, it has about the same effect as hearing that a girl you've been pokin' has the clap. Makes you kind of suck in a big mouthful of air. Fidel has a long history of burning people in this town. Jack Kennedy underestimated him at the Bay of Pigs and the Mariel boatlift helped cripple Jimmy Carter and a whole lot of other politicians, too. My very own agency was laughed at for years because otherwise sane people here spent a lot of time figuring out how to make the man's beard fall out. A bunch of those people took early retirements, 'cause the beard's just what became public. Over a drink sometime I'll treat you to some Fidel-schemes hatched over here that'll curl your hair. Mr. President, initiatives to deal with Fidel Castro tend to put people in positions like mine on some damn slippery slopes and with all due respect to your secretary of state — loyal to a fault, I'm sure — he's not the man I'd choose to be protecting my flanks if I ever find myself sitting at a microphone stutterin' up at a congressional committee. Which is pretty much where I see that slippery slope leading to. Naturally, I'll attend the meeting if you tell me to. But I could speak a lot more openly — I could be a lot more flexible in the options I lay out for you — if I met just with you, the First Lady, and Tom Crowley. That's a group I'd be happy to go behind enemy lines with.

    The President had paused before replying.

    Just be at the damn meeting, Linwood. And if you've got a problem giving me a hundred percent at all times, say so, 'cause frankly, I don't need a dog that won't hunt, is what the President, after he hung up, thought he should have said. He didn't. Although it had flashed through his mind that if Cutshaw's monologue wasn't insolent it was certainly condescending, his natural instincts had caused him to say, Hell, Linwood, who you so afraid of up there on the hill? then laugh for a bit before adding, I'd rather have you coming from a comfortable positron. You wait in Tom's office and we'll talk after Andy and the others leave. Just the team you want to go behind enemy lines with.

    Now Crowley indicated the thick report in Cutshaw's hand.

    Anything good in there? he asked as he settled in behind his desk.

    Cutshaw glanced up and gave young Crowley a brief, patronizing smile before returning to his reading.

    He's one arrogant son of a bitch, thought Crowley, even by the standards of Washington.

    ***

    Half an hour later Tom Crowley's phone rang. The First Lady was in the Oval Office. Crowley locked his desk drawers, though he wondered why, as he did so, certain that Cutshaw could and would pick the locks if he grew curious. He left Cutshaw to his reading and note-making, and went into the meeting. The border collie had been brought up to speed and was listening intently, along with the others, to Jaime Burne-Valera describe his meeting with Castro. Her presence already had the President more focused — the corn chips had either been finished or put away.

    He was wearing the fatigues you always see him in, Jaime said. "Up close you realize they're tailor-made. We shook hands and he said that usually he would spend twenty minutes asking questions about the States. 'I lived for a few years in Manhattan,' he reminded me. 'On Eighty-fourth Street. But what I have to say today is too important. I don't want to diminish it with small talk.'

    "When he spoke there wasn't a hint of bluster or posing. His voice was soft. 'Nothing I say here is meant as a threat,' he said. 'That isn't my purpose. Also, I don't wish to convince you of anything. Be clear about that. Just listen carefully and relay this with great accuracy to your President. You're to be nothing more than a very precise messenger. I mean no disrespect in using that term. Cuba — poor, tiny, beleaguered Cuba — finds itself able to make extraordinary demands on the United States, and to have those demands met. This will happen within weeks. When I present your President with this dilemma, he won't have much time to respond — days perhaps — and some of my demands will require him to have set processes in motion earlier, to have moved political pieces into place, to have suitable public statements prepared, maybe to have the secret agreement of congressional leaders. If he doesn't do these things in advance, he won't be able to act in time and that will be a tragedy. I'm not asking today for any response from your government — I will do that when I do it. This is simply for your leaders to study. To be prepared for. And to recognize the origin of an upcoming small disaster that will soon occur in the U.S. There is no way your government would accede to our demands based upon a verbal threat. You need a demonstration of our power first. And you will soon get one, and know exactly from where it came.'

    "I started to say that the United States doesn't take kindly to threats but he shut me up. It was the only time his temper flared. 'You haven't been listening,' he berated me. 'Would Cuba's head of state demean himself by threatening a messenger?' He waited for an answer and I said calmly that I assumed not. 'There is no threat,' he said. 'What your President will soon get is an actual demonstration, which will speak for itself. When your scientists study it they will tell him that we have the capability to quietly decimate perhaps forty percent of your population, to…' "

    The Vice President interrupted, He used the words 'quietly decimate'?

    That's an exact translation, Jaime said. "Tranquilamente devastar. It stuck in my mind clearly just because it seemed such an odd choice of words."

    What do they want? the President asked.

    Anderson spoke. He'll want an immediate, complete end of the embargo. Scheduled airline service between Havana and the U.S. Public recognition by the President of his legitimacy as Cuba's head of state. Public recognition of the United States' failed Cuba policy. I would think those are for openers.

    The President laughed. For the price I'd pay for that in Florida, these guys better have a couple of workable H-bombs.

    That's precisely the sense I came away with, Mr. President, Jaime said very seriously. That he believes he's got something on that scale.

    It sobered everyone. After a long silence, the First Lady turned to the President and asked, with some surprise in her voice, Shouldn't we have Lin Cutshaw in on this?

    The President stroked his chin thoughtfully before answering, which Tom Crowley recognized as a signal for her not to pursue this, a signal Crowley had decoded a year ago. Neither the President nor the First Lady knew he was aware of it.

    I don't want him in too early, the President said. I'll get to him later. He stood up, signaling that the meeting was over. Let's all think some more about this. I don't have to say, not a word about this leaves the room.

    As they stood, Anderson said, Just one parting thought. I spent hours yesterday mulling this over. It's just a preliminary thought but I think it's worth putting on the table.

    Go ahead, the President said.

    If they've really got something, these demands aren't as disastrous as they seem at first blush. There might be…

    The Vice President interrupted forcefully, "Let's not even think about that. The United States of America cannot cave in to blackmail."

    Meeting these demands would be political suicide, Crowley said.

    I'm not advocating it, Anderson said. But let's not close any options too soon.

    Let's close this one, the Vice President said. Right now. Blackmail is an issue we've got to take a stand on.

    The President showed a momentary irritation. The Vice President shouldn't have used the take a stand phrase, Crowley thought. It cut pretty close to the bone for the President.

    The President waved them out, and said, Let's all do what I just said. Let's all think some more about this.

    The Vice President, Martin Anderson, and Jaime Burne-Valera filed out, leaving behind the trio with whom Linwood Cutshaw had magnanimously agreed to meet.

    Bring Cutty in, the President said to Crowley.

    ***

    Cutshaw started off in his usual preemptory manner, draping his jacket over the back of the couch, then setting a six-inch-high stack of reports on the carpeted floor with just enough of a thud to draw attention to the obvious — that a lot of people had stayed up all night assembling them and that he was the person in the room in command of all this knowledge. He asked for the details in the tone that Crowley assumed he must use when seated with subordinates in his office overlooking the wooded countryside of northern Virginia. It irritated the President, who, Crowley was pleased to see, was not going to treat this meeting as an open-ended bull session in which everyone, including the Chief Executive, revealed all. Often, during Oval Office meetings, Crowley mused upon what a healthy thing it would be if the President played poker once a week with cronies, as Harry Truman had — it might accustom him to holding his cards closer to his vest.

    There are no details, the President said. Just some rumblings over at State about Castro having an important new weapon. Probably all hot air but Andy's concerned.

    Cutshaw paused long enough to make the point that he recognized a bald-faced lie when he heard one, and then kept them waiting for a long minute while he scanned the two pages of his own tiny, handwritten notes before laying them down and speaking. "Important new weapon. That's what we've focused on. Nuclear's the first thing we analyzed. Chances of that are essentially zilch. It's such a major undertaking to bring in the talent and resources that we would have picked up on it, and there's nothing on the screen of him getting stuff from places like Pakistan or China. So forget nuclear.

    It really leaves chemical or biological. Chemical's far less likely — it requires pretty large quantities of stuff and an elaborate delivery system. If they've got anything — and we believe they well might — it's biological.

    There was a silence while they absorbed it; then the President asked, You believe he might have something?

    A virus, Cutshaw said.

    How bad is that? the First Lady asked.

    About as bad as it gets, if they've got the right virus.

    What does 'the right virus' mean? she asked.

    One way to think about it is a virus as lethal as the HIV/AIDS virus — neighborhood of ninety percent — but one that goes from infection to full-blown disease in maybe a week instead of four or five years, and is airborne, like a common cold or influenza virus instead of needing an exchange of bodily fluids.

    Does anything close to that exist? the President asked.

    Cutshaw nodded. Indeed they do. And now imagine someone getting that virus — he slowed his speech and emphasized every word — "into a big, enclosed, crowded space. Maybe right over in the Smithsonian, with its fifty thousand visitors a day. Say only five thousand were to be infected and carry the virus back with them to the fifty states before anyone had a hint there was a problem. Each of them on an airplane sharing recirculated cabin air with a few hundred other passengers who are going to disperse to other planes and other places. Each of those five thousand men, women, and children might easily infect a hundred people just while traveling. And each of those people …"

    He trailed off and gave them the tough, knowing look of a veteran cold warrior who had evaluated a lot of doomsday scenarios in his time. His audience of three were properly affected, the President especially. This was not the kind of problem he had ever confronted.

    You said Castro might really have something like this, the President said. Why?

    There have been hints. Airy little rumors over the years in the Miami and Jersey City expatriate communities that a doctor down in the Zapata swamp seemed to be running some funny experiments. There were also rumors from Angola and Zaire that a Cuban doctor might have carried samples of a deadly virus off the continent. Nothing substantial but enough to find their way into reports. Where they just sat, 'cause there's always whispers floating around out there about some new doomsday weapon. Then, last year, the World Health Organization held a week-long virology conference in Copenhagen and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta sent four of their virologists. One of them was a fellow with contacts in the intelligence community.

    What's that mean? the President interrupted. With contacts?

    Cutshaw studied the three of them for a few moments before answering, his lips pursed appraisingly, as though wondering whether it was prudent to pass this sort of classified information on to the President. Watching him, Crowley found himself more admiring than angry at the man's enormous arrogance. He sensed that the President was intimidated by it, and made a mental note that there were things to be learned from Cutshaw, who now apparently concluded that his audience could be trusted.

    "All through the cold war the military conducted research on biological warfare, a lot of it right over at Fort Detrick in Maryland. The CDC in Atlanta kept clear of it. There are a lot of humanitarian types work down there, besides which some of the epidemiological studies they deal with need

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