“I will if it keeps it out of your hands.”

“But you haven’t heard yet what we plan to do with it!” This was said in a genial, protesting fashion.

Gideon said nothing. Blaine wanted to have his say—let him.

“I was in the British intelligence service known as MI6. Captain Gurulé here is CIA. Dart is not just involved in NEST but has also worked for a black agency at DIA. Because of our mutual background in intelligence, we all know something you don’t, which is this: America is secretly at war. With an enemy that makes the old Soviets look like the Keystone Kops.”

Gideon waited.

“The very survival of our country is in the balance.” Blaine paused, took a deep breath, and began again. “Let me tell you about this enemy. They are single-minded. They are sober, extremely hardworking, and highly intelligent. They have the second largest economy in the world and it is growing at five hundred percent the rate of ours. The enemy has an immensely large and powerful military, they have advanced space weapons, and they have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world.

“This enemy saves forty percent of what they earn. They have more university graduates than America has people. In the enemy’s country, more people are studying English than there are English speakers in the entire world. They know all about us and we know almost nothing about them. This enemy is ruthless. They operate the last imperial, colonialist power on earth, which occupies and brutalizes many of the formerly independent countries surrounding it.

“This enemy has brazenly and openly stolen trillions of dollars of our intellectual property. In return, they send us poisoned food and medicine. They don’t play by the rules of international law. They are corrupt. They oppress freedom of speech, oppress the free exercise of religion, and murder and imprison journalists and dissidents on an almost daily basis. They have openly cornered the market in those strategic metals critical to our electronic world. This enemy, having little oil, now dominates the world’s technologies and markets in solar, wind, and nuclear power. As such, they are on track to become the new Saudi Arabia. This enemy has accumulated almost two trillion of our own dollars through unfair currency and trade practices. If dumped on the world market, this sum would be enough to annihilate our currency and wreck our economy in a single day. Basically, they have us by the bollocks.

“Worst of all: this enemy despises us. They see how we conduct business in Washington, and they’ve concluded that our democratic system is an abject failure. And they think we Americans are weak, lazy, whiny, self-important global has-beens, inflated with a false sense of entitlement. In this, they are probably correct.”

Blaine’s rolling, mesmerizing speech ceased, leaving him breathing heavily, his face slick with sweat. Gideon felt sick to his stomach, as if the words had been physically bludgeoning him. Still he held the smallpox up.

“They have the population, the money, the brains, the will, and the guts to beggar us. They have specific plans to do this. And they are in fact doing it. While America just sits on its arse, doing nothing in return. It’s a one-sided war: they’re fighting, we’re surrendering.”

The novelist leaned forward. “Well, Gideon, not every American is ready to surrender. Those of us in this room, along with a small group of other like-minded individuals, are not going to let this happen. We’re going to save our country.”

Gideon desperately tried to order his thoughts. Blaine was a powerfully persuasive and charismatic speaker. “And the smallpox? Where does that come in?”

“Surely you can now guess where that comes in. We’re going to release it in five of the enemy’s cities. The enemy’s great vulnerability is their population density and their dependence on trade. As the virus spreads like wildfire through the virgin human population, the world will impose a quarantine on the infected country—it will have no choice. We know that for a fact: response to a smallpox event is detailed in a highly classified NATO plan.”

He smiled triumphantly, as if the operation had already taken place. “With a quarantine, that country’s borders will be sealed. Everything will be stopped or blocked: flights, roads, railroads, ports, even trails. The country will remain quarantined as long as the disease is present. Our epidemiologist tells us it might be years before the disease can be recontained. By that time, the enemy’s economy will be back where it was in the fifties. The eighteen fifties.”

“They’ll lash out with nuclear weapons,” Gideon said.

“True, but right now they don’t have all that many, and not of high quality. We will take down most of their missiles in flight. A few of our cities might be hit, but then we will massively retaliate. After all, it is war.” He shrugged.

Gideon stared at him. “You’re crazy. They’re not our enemy. This whole plan is insane.”

“Really, Gideon, you’re smarter than that.” Blaine held out his hand in a supplicating gesture. “Gideon. Join us, please. Give me the smallpox.”

Gideon backed toward the door. “I won’t be part of this. I can’t.”

“Don’t disappoint me. You’re one of the few with the brains to see the truth in my words. I’m trusting you to think about this—really think about what I’ve said. This is a country that only a generation ago murdered thirty million of their own people. They don’t place the same value on human life that we do. They’d do it to us—if they could.”

“It’s monstrous. You’re talking about murdering millions. I’ve heard enough.”

“Think of Alida—”

“Shut up about Alida!” Gideon found his arm trembling, his voice cracking, the soldiers backing away in fear as he waved the puck about.

“No!” Blaine entreated him. “Wait!”

“Tell the soldiers to lay down their guns! Now it’s my turn to count to five. One—!”

“For God’s sake, no!” Blaine cried. “No here, not near Washington. You release that smallpox, you’ll do to America what we were going to do to—”

“Look into my eyes if you don’t believe it. Tell the soldiers to put down their guns! Two…”

“Oh my God.” Blaine’s hands shook. “Gideon, I beg you, don’t do it.”

“Three…”

“You won’t do it. You won’t.”

“I said, look into my eyes, Blaine. Four…” He cocked his hand. He really was going to do it. And—finally—Blaine saw that.

“Lower the guns!” Blaine cried. “Lay them down!”

“Five!” Gideon screamed.

“Down! Down!”

The guns went down with a clatter, the soldiers clearly terrified. Even Dart and the lieutenant threw their weapons down.

“Hands up!” Gideon demanded.

All hands went up.

“You son of a bitch, don’t do this!” Dart yelled.

Gideon edged around, past the laboratory table, one hand still raised, the other behind his back. He had very little time. He reached the door, pushed it open with his knee. Then he spun around, took a fresh grasp on the puck, and hurled it to the floor with all his might, simultaneously darting out and racing down the hall.

As he ran, he heard the puck shatter, the broken pieces ricocheting around the ready room—and then an absolute chaos of shouting, scrambling, running, while, rising above it all, came a great and terrible roar from Blaine, like a lion speared through the heart.

Simon Blaine stumbled backward with a cry as the puck struck the floor and split open, spewing its contents with a puff of condensation, the pieces of plastic and glass bouncing off the door frame and skittering across the floor. He could see the crystalline powder melt on contact with the floor.

With lightning clarity his mind saw the future: the sealing off of Washington and its suburbs, the quarantine, the inexorable spread of the disease, the frantic and useless vaccination efforts, the galloping pandemic, the mobilizing of the National Guard, the riots, the ports closed and borders sealed, curfews, states of emergency, bombing sorties, war along the borders with Canada and Mexico… And of course the total collapse of the US economy. He saw these things with a certainty born of knowledge. These were not speculations: this was exactly how it was going to happen, because he had already seen it happen to the enemy in their computer simulations, over and over again.