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THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC

NEXT DAY

The president stood staring through the glass doors of the Oval Office onto the Rose Garden and said, “I couldn’t be more serious. I want this entire thing to go away, Chuck. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mr. President. I understand. Believe me, we all want it to go away, but just wishing isn’t going to make it happen. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Not now.”

“I don’t care about putting it back in the goddamn bottle,” snapped Rutledge as he turned to face his chief of staff. “I just don’t want some self-aggrandizing senator forwarding her career by pulling the mask off of one of the good guys. After everything he’s given to his country, forcing Scot Harvath to wear a scarlet letter is not only unfair, it’s just plain wrong.”

“With all due respect, sir,” replied Charles Anderson, “it’s not Harvath she wants wearing that scarlet letter. It’s you.”

The president turned away from the doors and walked back over behind his desk. “Then why doesn’t she come after me?”

“She is coming after you, Jack. This is how it’s done. You know that.”

“Well, the way it’s done stinks.”

“I’ll second that,” agreed Anderson.

“You don’t ruin good people who this country depends on. If she wants me, she should come get me.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that when she gets here. If you have any compromising photographs of yourself that you’d like to hand over to me now, maybe I could get her to agree to a trade.”

The president appeared to smile, but it could have very well been only a grimace as he mentally moved on to his next topic. “What do we have from the Joint Chiefs and USAMRIID?”

Anderson removed a briefing report from the folder in front of him and said, “It’s not good. USAMRIID has cultured the illness, but it seems resistant to everything they’re throwing at it. They’ve got representatives from the CDC and the Mayo Clinic’s exotic disease department working with them now, but they’ve yet to make any progress. At least it’s still contained to that one incident in Asalaam.”

“For now,” replied the president, “and that’s only because for the moment it suits the purposes of whoever’s behind this thing. What’s our state of readiness if it makes an appearance here?”

Anderson referred back to his briefing report and replied, “First responders are going to be primary care physicians and hospital emergency rooms. We’ve put out a bulletin via the Healthwatch system to report any cases involving the symptoms we’re aware of to their local public health department. Those departments will report back to a crisis center at the Department of Homeland Security. The key is being able to contain any outbreak as quickly as possible.”

“What do we do if we can’t contain it?”

Anderson tried to calm the president. “Let’s worry about that if and when it happens.”

“Chuck, you know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time. They may have finally been able to come up with the biggest stick on the playground. A stick that spares only the most faithful to their beliefs.”

“Which makes us confident there has got to be a way around it-a way to be immunized against it.”

Rutledge wanted to share his chief of staff’s optimism, but he’d always been one to prepare for the worst and then, and only then, hope for the best. “If we can’t contain it and we can’t immunize against it, what then?”

“USAMRIID is still developing scenarios.”

“Let’s cut to the chase. What are we talking about worst case?”

The president’s chief of staff was reluctant to answer, but he had little choice. “Worst case, we initiate the Campfire protocol to guarantee we stop this thing dead in its tracks.”

The color drained from Rutledge’s face. “Making me the first U.S. president to ever authorize a thermonuclear strike on his own soil and against his own people.”

LONDON

Jillian Alcott, chemistry teacher at London ’s prestigious Abbey College, carefully picked her way through the swollen puddles along Notting Hill’s Pembridge Road. Arriving at the Notting Hill Gate Tube station, the five-foot-eight redhead with deep green eyes and high cheekbones politely but firmly shouldered her way through the crowd that had gathered at the entrance to take shelter from the storm. After collapsing her distinctive Burberry umbrella and giving it her customary three firm snaps to rid it of any residual rainwater, she tucked it beneath her left arm and removed her Tube pass from her wallet.

Though Jillian was in fine physical condition and could have easily walked the distance, saving time by cutting through Kensington Gardens, the weather was just too disagreeable for her. Ever since she was a small child, she had never liked thunderstorms.

Jillian was seven years old when her parents left her alone with her grandmother to drive inland to sell some of their livestock. It was a late Friday afternoon, and the weather began to kick up half an hour after her parents had left. She stared out the front windows of their little stone house at the enormous white caps forming on the ever-darkening Celtic Sea. Her grandmother pulled out all of her board games and they played every one of them in an effort to take Jillian’s mind off the storm raging outside. Jillian tried her absolute hardest to be brave, but with each booming knell of thunder the house shook, and she was certain the next would send the tiny structure toppling over the nearby cliffs and into the sea.

Jillian’s grandmother tried everything to calm the little girl, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, she decided to draw Jillian a hot bath and infuse it with lavender.

With the bath drawn, Jillian’s grandmother was just about to put her in when another flash of lightning blazed and all of the power in the house went out. A roaring clap of thunder followed that shook the small dwelling and rattled the windows so hard the glass seemed poised to fall out of its panes.

Jillian’s grandmother left her in the bathroom for just a moment while she went to search for candles, but she never came back.

The little girl used her hand to feel along the wall and guide her toward the kitchen. Floorboards creaked beneath her feet, and every cold brass doorknob she touched along the way sent chills racing up her spine. When she finally made it into the kitchen, she immediately sensed that something was wrong.

She called out softly to her grandmother but received no response. The candles were in a drawer on the far side of the room, but Jillian was afraid to cross the kitchen in the dark. Something inside her told her not to move. She waited and waited until another flash of lightning came, and when it did, she had the shock of her seven-year-old life. Lying on the floor was her gran. Apparently, she had tripped in the dark and in her fall had hit her head on the kitchen table. Upon seeing the pool of blood that was quickly covering the floor, Jillian screamed and ran.

She dashed into the front hall and picked up the telephone to call the police. If there is an emergency, always call the police first, her parents had told her. Jillian picked up the phone, ready to dial the number she had learned by heart, but the phone was dead.

Still in her pajamas, Jillian thought only of her gran. Grabbing her mac from the front closet, she quickly pulled it on, followed by her bright red Wellington-style boots. When she opened the front door, she was greeted by an enormous burst of wind that almost pushed her back inside. The little girl had no choice; she had to get help.

Through the storm, Jillian ran the mile and a half down their muddy road to the junction only to find that it had been washed out. She was trapped. There was no way she could cross the torrent of flood-water. There was no way she could get to the neighbors, or anyone else for that matter. There was no way she could get help. There was nothing she could do but return to the house.

When she did, she realized she would have to tend to her grand-mother. Mustering her courage, she reentered the kitchen and found a towel, intending to begin by cleaning the blood from her gran’s head wound. As she approached, though, she realized her grandmother wasn’t moving. There wasn’t even the rhythmic heave and fall of her chest as she took in air. Jillian crept closer and, placing her hand alongside her grandmother’s cold flesh, realized that she was gone.

The storm raged for two more days. Seven-year-old Jillian couldn’t bring herself to remain inside with the body of her dead grandmother lying in the kitchen, so she stayed in the barn, keeping warm beneath a pile of horse blankets. When the police finally did arrive, she wondered how they had even known she needed help.

The police came with Jillian’s aunt. When they found her in the barn, her aunt suddenly began to cry. She blamed the weather, the terrible weather. She was crying so hard that one of the policemen had to tell Jillian himself that her mother and father wouldn’t be coming home. They had died in a car accident on the way back from selling their sheep. They had fetched a good price early and were trying to beat the storm back to the farm, but they had seriously misjudged it.

One horrible storm had managed to take away the three most important people in Jillian’s life. It was no wonder that rough weather still made her feel so uncomfortable. In fact, storms had grown to become a metaphor for Jillian, representing the uncertainty and cruelty that could be disproportionately visited on one person’s life no matter how little that person had done to deserve it. It was, in part, why she had surrendered herself to a life of science. Science was a world of constants-rules and processes, which could always be counted on. The part she cared not to think about was that science was also a world that was to a significant degree cold, unfeeling, and exceedingly inhuman.

Of course there were people passionate about their pursuits, but very rarely were they passionate about other human beings. In the academic world of “publish or perish,” very few put anything above their love of science. It was indeed a cold place, incredibly enriching for the mind but not so enriching for the soul.

As a remarkably attractive woman, Jillian Alcott was a rarity in the academic world and constantly found herself treated as an object to be possessed rather than as a woman deserving of love. Throughout her education, both her fellow students and many of her professors had desired her simply for her stunning outward appearance. None of them had the courage to look beyond her all too often cold demeanor to see the person she really was. Had anyone taken the time to really study her, to study her with even half the vigor with which they pursued their vaunted scientific investigations, they might have seen a woman who had not yet been able to make it past those two horrific storm-plagued days in Cornwall when she was seven years old, a woman who, though braver than most on the outside, was still, on the inside, incredibly frightened. Life, her career, and even the prospect of learning to love someone again only to have them ripped from her, all terrified Jillian Alcott.

The worse the storm, the worse her feelings of impending doom, and today was no different. On days like this, her only comfort came from indulging herself. And though it sounded terribly cliché, even to her, the one thing that made her feel better was shopping. And her favorite place to shop was the Harvey Nichols department store in Knightsbridge.

As she exited the Tube station and raced through the rain across Sloane Street, Alcott decided that with nothing but the day’s mail awaiting her at home, she’d make an evening of it at her beloved Harvey Nics. It was either that or the television at home, and as much of a social cripple as she was, Alcott knew it was better for her to be out among the living and breathing.

Alcott decided to head up to the store’s Fifth Floor Café for something to eat before she began her shopping. Finding a small table for two, she placed her belongings on the opposite chair and sat down. The rain pounded against the glass roof and ran down the windows at the front of the café in white foamy sheets that made it appear as if she was sitting behind a waterfall. As a streak of lightning ripped through the sky, followed by a booming peal of thunder, Alcott decided she wanted a glass of wine.

Forty-five minutes later, the storm was still raging as Jillian paid for her meal. Despite the two glasses of Pinot Gris she had consumed, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something bad out there with her name on it. Blaming her unease on the storm, she got up from her table and decided that it was time to do a little shopping.

Taking the escalators to the third floor to browse through the lingerie section, she felt a chill along the back of her long, slender neck. She was even more frightened than before and didn’t know why.

As she moved through the lingerie department, her feelings of impending doom came to a crescendo and finally made sense as a powerfully built man grabbed her urgently by the arm and said, ”Come with me if you want to live.”

What are you doing?” demanded Alcott as she was muscled toward the back of the department.

“Saving your life,” replied Scot Harvath as he kept her moving toward one of the green emergency exit signs.

Alcott tried to twist out of his grasp. “You’re hurting me. Let me go.”

“Someone has been following you since you left the Abbey College.”

She had wanted to blame her unease on the storm, but on a more primal level Jillian had sensed all afternoon that something wasn’t right. It was as if she had felt someone’s eyes on her. But the only way this man could have known she was being followed was if he had been following her as well. “Who are you?”

“That’s not important right now,” said Harvath as he increased their pace.

“If you don’t stop this, I’m going to scream. Do you hear me?”

“You scream and we’re both dead.”

Alcott was about to show him she was serious when she felt something hard pressed into her back. Without even seeing it, she instinctively knew what it was-a gun. “Why are you doing this?”

“Over your shoulder, by the elevator.”

Alcott looked. “What about it?”

“The tall man standing next to it. Do you see him? Dark hair. Dark skin.”

“Yes, why?”

“He’s been sent here to kill you,” responded Harvath as he turned Jillian back around and continued to maneuver her toward the door marked Emergency Exit.

Alcott was just about to tell this man one last time that he was insane and to unhand her when she heard gunshots and all of the mannequins around them began exploding. “Get down,” yelled her captor, knocking her to the ground as they were showered with pieces of flesh-colored fiberglass.

As Alcott started to scream, Harvath counted to three and rolled off her, coming up on one knee with the compact eleven-shot,. 40-caliber Beretta Mini Cougar Type D pistol that had been waiting for him when he arrived in London. As good an agent, and a friend, as Nick Kampos was, arranging weapons for Harvath in foreign countries was something even he couldn’t do. For that, Harvath reluctantly had to call on Ozan Kalachka and ask him for a favor. A favor the man was only too happy and able to arrange.

Catching sight of their assailant, Harvath began firing.

The unsilenced weapon bucked in his hand as Harvath let loose with a deafening three-round volley. The store was in complete pandemonium, with shoppers screaming and running for their lives. Keeping low while he expertly weaved his way through the racks of clothing and display stands, the attacker was less than twenty yards away and closing fast. Harvath desperately wanted to get off another round of shots, but there were too many people in his way.

“We’ve got to get out of here now, “He said as he maneuvered back over to Alcott.

Jillian wanted to respond; she wanted to say something, but the words caught in her throat. Her heart was thudding against her chest so hard she thought for certain it would burst.

“Do you see that exit sign back there?” asked Harvath as he helped her up into a crouch.

Alcott had trouble responding, and Harvath realized that she must be in shock. Grabbing her chin, he turned her head in the right direction and asked her again if she saw the sign.

This time, Jillian nodded.

“Good. When I say go, I want you to run as fast as you can to that door. I’m going to be right behind you and-”

“Who are you?” she managed.

“That’s not important,” replied Harvath. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now, when I say go, we’re going to make a run for that emergency exit door. Do you understand?”

Jillian nodded her head.

“Okay, get ready. One, two, three, go!” yelled Harvath as he pushed Alcott forward and laid down a wide swath of cover fire behind them, careful to avoid hitting any of the fleeing shoppers. When they arrived at the emergency exit door, Harvath kicked it open and pulled Jillian in behind him. They ran down a narrow service corridor until they found the emergency stairwell and then began bounding down the stairs two at a time. Alcott’s legs seemed to be moving entirely of their own accord, her will tied to the sheer force of the man in front of her.

Instead of descending all the way to the ground floor and out some side door, as she assumed they would, they instead exited the fire stairs on the first floor and cut across the length of the store to the other side. Finding another staircase, Harvath led the way down to the ground floor, where he spirited Alcott through the perfume section and straight out the front door with the rest of the panicked shoppers.

Harvath quickly scanned the street through the torrential downpour and saw that not only were all of the buses packed, but so were the taxis. The Tube was an option, but they couldn’t get on it here. Not at Knightsbridge. It was only a matter of time before Khalid Alomari realized he’d been tricked and doubled back to look for them. They had to get out of the area as quickly as possible.

Tightening his grip around Alcott’s arm, Harvath steered her away from the department store and down the sidewalk. Without her trusty Burberry umbrella, which she had lost somewhere in the lingerie department along with her briefcase, Alcott had nothing to keep her dry. Growing colder, wetter, and more scared by the moment, she tried to think of something to say-something that would cut through all of this insanity. “Please, let me go.”

Harvath wasn’t listening. He was only concerned with putting as much distance between them and Alomari as possible, and right now that meant they had to keep moving forward-together.

Harvath was in no condition to tackle the highly skilled assassin. He was running on empty, summoning up reserves of energy and recycled adrenaline he knew he was going to pay dearly for in the very near future. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a week, but right now, sleep was not an option. Knowing that a very deadly disease could be unleashed upon America at any time was all the inspiration Harvath needed to increase his pace.

As they got closer to the South Kensington Tube station, Harvath realized he still had no idea where they were going. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. They couldn’t aimlessly wander London all night. They needed an end point, a destination. “We need to find a place where we can get out of the rain, “He said more for his own benefit than hers. “A place where we can talk. Quietly.”

“How about a police station?” replied Alcott. “They’re quiet enough, and we’ll both be safe there.”

“We can’t go to the police.”

“We can’t?” she mustered up the courage to say. “Or you can’t?”

“It’s the same thing now,” stated Harvath. “We’re in this together. “Through the rain, he could make out a pub sign about half a block down. After glancing over his shoulder he said, ”There’s a pub up ahead. We can talk there. Let’s go.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” said Alcott. “I don’t even know who you are. The only place I want to go is to the police.”

Harvath was anxious to get off the street and out of the rain. Any minute now, the area would be crawling with police. He could already hear the sirens, and even though he’d been careful to avoid showing his face to the department store’s security cameras, there was no telling if any eyewitnesses had gotten a good look at him.

Harvath needed time to think, and like it or not, for at least the near future, he and Alcott were going to be joined at the hip.

He thought about using the gun and telling her she had no choice, but playing hardball was only going to make traveling with her more difficult. He needed her to trust him. “If you don’t come inside with me, not only will you be putting your life in further jeopardy, but Emir Tokay’s as well.”

The look on the woman’s face told him that he’d struck the right chord. The resistance drained from her body, and Harvath was able to quickly steer her off the street and into the dimly lit pub.