“So you’re moving it to Detrick, right? Is that safe?”
“We believe it is the safest step we can take, sir.”
“And that’s under way?”
“Yes, sir. The insulated box will be—by now has been—taken to the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in a Border Patrol helicopter. From there it will be—by now, is being—transported to Andrews Air Force Base here in a Navy C-20H. That’s a Gulfstream Four, Mr. President.”
“Thank you for the clarification, Charles,” the President said sarcastically. “One can never know too many details like that. And when the beer cooler-slash-insulated box gets to Andrews? Is everything set up there to cause another public relations disaster, like the one we had yesterday?”
“An Army helicopter will be standing by at Andrews, sir, to fly the insulated container to Fort Detrick. It should not attract undue attention, sir.”
“It better not.”
“Mr. President, what caused the, the—”
“‘Disaster’ is probably the word you’re looking for, Charles,” the President said.
“—excitement at Fort Detrick yesterday was Colonel Hamilton declaring a Potential Level Four Biological Hazard Disaster. That probably won’t happen today.”
The President snorted, and then asked, “So what’s going to happen when the insulated container from Texas is delivered to Hamilton?”
“He will determine whether the container contains more Congo-X.”
“And if it does?”
“Excuse me?”
“If it does contain more of this noxious substance—now, that’s an understatement, isn’t it? ‘Noxious substance’?—what is he going to do about that?”
“The colonel has been experimenting with high-temperature incineration as a means of destroying Congo-X. He has had some success, but he is not prepared to declare that the solution.”
“So we then have several questions that need answering, don’t we? One, what is this stuff? Two, how do we deal with it? More important, three, who’s sending it to us? And, four, why are they sending it to us?”
“Yes, sir, that’s true.”
“And you have no answers?”
“I think we can safely presume, sir, that it was sent to us by the same people who were operating the ‘fish farm’ that we destroyed in the Congo.”
“I think we can ‘safely presume’ that we didn’t destroy everything that needed destroying in the Congo, can’t we?”
“I’m afraid we have to proceed on that assumption, Mr. President.”
“And you have no recommendations?”
“Sir?”
“It seems to me our options range from sending Natalie Cohen to Moscow and Teheran to get on her knees and beg for mercy all the way up to nuking both the Kremlin and wherever that unshaven little Iranian bastard hangs his hat in Teheran.”
“There are more options than those extremes, Mr. President.”
“Such as?”
“Sir, it seems to me that if whoever sent these two packages of Congo-X wanted to cause us harm, they would have already done so.”
“That thought has also run through my mind,” Clendennen said sarcastically.
“It would therefore follow they want something. What we have to do is learn what they want.”