As final assignments went, this wasn't a bad one.
Cole assumed that the meeting was now over, but at least he had the sense not to stand up to leave until he was dismissed. Because President Torrent wasn't done yet. He nodded to the aide standing at the door he had come through, and the door opened again.
In walked, of all people, Jared Austin—"Babe"—the North Carolina boy who had declared himself the token white southerner in Rube's jeesh. And with him was a young African boy—clearly African, not African-American, from the respectful way he carried himself and the way his face betrayed no emotion at all.
"Folks, I'd like you to meet Chinma. As far as we know, he is the last living member of the Ayere tribe."
"You mean those pictures were real?" asked the Navy chief.
Cole had not doubted the pictures going around the internet were real, he was simply unsurprised by atrocity stories from Africa.
"Former special ops captain Jared Austin took it upon himself to make sure the pictures of the massacre of the Ayere tribe were released online before notifying anyone above him of their existence. Without a context, however, and without any official word, nobody knows what to make of them. I think you know how many pundits have declared the pictures to be fakes."
Cole caught a flicker of emotion from young Chinma. An expression of contempt.
"So I am going on the air at ten p.m tonight to introduce Chinma to the American people. You see, Chinma is the monkey-catcher who first caught the sneezing flu and unknowingly passed it to other humans.
"I want it understood that Chinma was not doing anything illegal by catching putty-nosed monkeys. Cercophithecus nictitans, from whose species name we derived the name of the nictovirus, are neither rare nor protected, and there was quite a demand for the capture of intact troops of the monkeys in order to study their reputed language ability. He was aiding science and harming no one.
"Chinma is continuing to cooperate fully with medical researchers who have stuck him so full of needles I'm surprised you can't see through him." Several men laughed, but Cole noticed that the most response Chinma showed was a flicker of a smile. "But he is not here because he was the original vector for transmission from monkeys to hu
mans.
"No, I brought him to you because he happened to be high in a tree the day that robbers came into his village."
And Cole realized: This kid took the pictures of his own village, his own family, being slaughtered. There was no chance he could have fought the armed men who came to destroy his people. But he could record their faces. And Cole bet that while Westerners might suppose the pictures to be fakes, or ignorable, as Cole had, those pictures must be playing very differently in Nigeria and throughout Africa.
The government thugs had killed everyone they saw—this despite the fact that everyone still alive in Chinma's village had already had and recovered from the nictovirus. Chinma's village was the least likely place in Nigeria for someone to catch the disease. But helpless, angry oligarchies carry out stupid, pointless cruelties. It's how they reassure themselves that they are still in power.
"This, my friends," Torrent was saying, "is the legal basis for our intervention in Nigeria. Chinma's pictures include three slightly blurry but identifiable shots of a general in the Nigerian army personally shooting a baby—Chinma's nephew—that had been tossed into the air for target practice. We have a great deal of other evidence that the Nigerian government's solution to the epidemic is to slaughter any southern Nigerians who live near the Muslim sections of the north, creating, in effect, a firewall to block infection.
"In the long run, this policy will not work—the World Health Organization reports that the nictovirus is already in the north among the Hausas. Meanwhile, Chinma's pictures are the incontrovertible documentary evidence of this policy of genocide and of the commission of war crimes. By international law, Nigeria now has no federal government, and we will intervene to prevent any further attacks by the Hausa military against southerners. Even in the midst of a devastating epidemic, the natural laws of humanity still apply, and we will act to protect those southerners who survive the disease from the criminal acts of their former government."
The Chief of Naval Operations asked the obvious question. "Is young Mr. Chinma able to answer questions from the media? Because the European media are going to claim that he's part of an American scam."
"Like the moon landing," murmured the NSA.
"We all know how America is constantly searching for opportunities to expend American lives and money in pursuit of highhanded imperialism," said Torrent. "Naturally, it is to be assumed that we are really seizing Nigerian oil."
Everyone chuckled, but Cole thought that it wasn't really wise to say such things. Even if Torrent was quoted accurately, irony disappears in print and these words would be taken at face value, as a rare moment of candor from an American president.
Torrent had not forgotten the original question. "Chinma speaks English quite well," said the President. "Though it's his fourth language."
"English is my favorite language," said Chinma.
His voice—high, not yet changed, but clear and firm—brought surprised laughter, and the boy looked confused.
"No problem, son," said Torrent. "They're laughing because they're happy and relieved you speak English better than the average American college freshman."
The President went on telling the story of how Chinma happened to have a camera and notebook, and how he and half his tribe had survived the nictovirus, only to be massacred. It was a sad story, but Cole could see the gleam in the President's eye. This boy's heroism was accomplishing more than making public the crime committed against his people.
He was a survivor, first of the terrifying disease, and then of an equally terrifying act of genocide. Then, grimly determined to get justice for his murdered family, he brought his story to Americans, and Americans got him out of Nigeria and brought him here to safety. Americans loved stories in which Americans are the good guys.
President Torrent had obviously used this meeting as a dry run for the press conference, and it looked like a slam dunk. Suddenly this disease was not about masses of people in far-off Africa—it was about this sad but engaging boy, his suffering, his terrible losses, and his heroism. It helped that the bad guys in this story were Muslims, though Torrent was careful not to make a big point of it. The American people were used to hearing of Muslims doing unspeakable things, but now they had unforgettable pictures.
There would certainly be international protests when Cole started taking special ops teams into Nigeria to bring the fear of God into the hearts of these heartless murderers, but American support for the actions would be almost unanimous.
Cole tuned out the continuing questions and comments, most of which boiled down to praise for Chinma, which, since there were no cameras in the meeting, meant that they were sucking up to the President and not to the public.