Final Epidemic Read Online Free PDF Page B

wallet to you right there. What, ten feet from where I was standing? Nice touch.”
    “I like to get in a little fieldwork every now and then,” Andi said. “Keeps my tradecraft from getting too rusty.”
    “Touché,” Beck said. “Okay. What’s this about, Larry? I gather all that sugar on the phone this morning was just bullshit to get me down here. All you had to do was ask me.”
    “You’re wrong, my friend. I am indeed about to offer you a consulting contract. But not to research the history of the CDC, or whatever the hell I told you.”
    Beck frowned. “Why the cover story?”
    “We have a for-real, double-barreled public health emergency,” Krewell said, “and you’ve been drafted.” He made a gesture with his thumb. “I have a roomful of silverbacks down the hall. Right now, they don’t know how to do anything but bare their fangs and growl at one another. And throw dung, when they get the chance. They are one scared pack of old gorillas, I kid you not. But they’re the ones who will have to go back to the President, damn soon, and give him our official recommendation.”
    “The President? Larry, what the hell is going on?”
    “All that stuff you wrote for the Company on epidemics, pandemics, bioplagues, remember? The disruptions, the riots—hell, the whole ball of social breakdown they could create? I’ll tell you—you painted one hell of a picture. Scared me, when the CIA sent over a copy.”
    Beck looked at his friend blankly. He realized that his heart had begun to beat faster, and that his face suddenly felt numb.
    Krewell looked at his wristwatch.
    “As of seventeen hours ago, ol’ buddy, you officially became a prophet.”
     
    More than a dozen people were seated around the polished mahogany of the circular conference table, and as almost as many were in the theater-style chairs behind them. Each principal had been allowed only one aide; some, recognizing the sensitivity of the subject matter, had elected to come alone.
    It was nearing lunchtime, and the meeting evidently had been going on for some hours. Plates and saucers, some bearing scraps of long-cold scrambled eggs and crusts of toasted muffins, still littered the table. The breakfast crockery had been pushed to the side to clear a space for legal pads or laptop computers, depending on each participant’s note-taking preference. Only two or three people were squinting down, Beck noticed, trying to decipher the undersized screen of a Palm Pilot. Audio recorders might have been useful to these unfortunates; given the nature of the subject matter and its potential political sensitivity, these were strictly prohibited.
    Despite an efficient air-conditioning system, the tang of burned coffee lingered in the air.
    It mingled with a tantalizingly familiar odor that at first Beck could not place. Then it hit him: it was the smell of tobacco, and that fact alone confirmed to Beck that this was no ordinary meeting. Whoever was smoking had reached a stress level high enough to need a cigarette; needed one badly enough to ignore this most sacred of federal regulations.
    And, Beck thought, has the clout to get away with it.
    “Mr. Secretary, I would suggest that our most urgent need is to determine if we are indeed facing a threat. We should not forget the swine flu debacle that Jerry Ford initiated under much the same circumstances. More people died from the vaccine than even caught that flu.”
    The voice came from the far edge of the table, from the only person in the room who was still wearing a suit jacket. He was clearly not the smoker. Unlike the others, he appeared sleek and composed, and his eyes were bright as a ferret’s. From television, Beck recognized him as the junior senator from Pennsylvania.
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Fred. That was 1976,” another voice objected. “Mr. Secretary, rehashing what happened more than two decades ago is not a valid comparison. At least the Ford administration wasn’t afraid to act when