“If this is true—and even if it is not, and Russian scientists alone worked with it—it had to have become immediately apparent to them how incredibly dangerous it is.”
“Why is it so ‘incredibly dangerous’?” the President interrupted yet again.
Hamilton looked at Clendennen a long moment, then carefully said: “With respect, Mr. President, I believe I’m repeating myself, but: The Congo-X in my laboratory, when placed under certain conditions of temperature and humidity, gives off microscopic particles—airborne—which when inhaled into the lung of a warm-blooded mammal will, in a matter of days, begin to consume the flesh of the lung. Meanwhile, the infected body will also be giving off—breathing back into the air—these contaminated, infectious particles before the host has any indication that he’s been infected.
“When I was in the Congo and saw the cadavers of animals and humans who had died of this infestation, I told the President—our late President—that the Fish Farm, should there be an accident, had the potential of becoming a greater risk to mankind than the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl had posed.”
“That’s pretty strong, isn’t it, Colonel?” the President asked.
“Now that I have some idea of the danger, Mr. President,” Hamilton said, “that was a massive understatement.”
“Is there a way to kill this material?” Naylor asked.
“I’ve had some success with incineration at temperatures over one thousand degrees centigrade,” Hamilton said, looked at the President, and added: “That’s about two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, Mr. President.”
“I seem to recall the secretary of Defense telling me that the attack produced that kind of heat,” the President said.
“Then where did the two separate packages of Congo-X come from?” Secretary of State Natalie Cohen asked.
“There’re only two possibilities,” Ambassador Montvale said. “The attack was not successful; everything was not incinerated and someone—I
suspect the Russians—went in there and picked up what was missed. Or, the Russians all along had a stock of this stuff in Russia and that’s what they’re sending us.”
“Why? What do they want?” Cohen asked.
“We’re not even sure it’s the Russians, are we?” Mark Schmidt, the director of the FBI, asked.
“Are we, Mr. Director of National Intelligence?” the President asked. “Are we sure who’s been sending us the Congo-X?”
“Not at this time, Mr. President,” Montvale replied.
“Have we the capability of sending someone into the Congo?” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Mason Andrew asked. “To do, in the greatest secrecy—what do they call it?—‘damage assessment’?”
“Not anymore,” Natalie Cohen said.
There was a long silence.
“Madam Secretary,” the President asked finally, icily, “would I be wrong to think that you had a certain Colonel Costello in mind when you said that?”
She met his eyes.
“I had Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Castillo in mind, yes, sir,” she said. “I was thinking that since he managed to successfully infiltrate Colonel Hamilton into the Congo and, more importantly, exfiltrate him—”
“Weren’t you listening, Madam Secretary, when I said that in this administration there will be no private bands of special operators? I thought I had made that perfectly clear. Castillo and his men have been dispersed. He was ordered by my predecessor to—the phrase he used was ‘fall off the face of the earth, never to be seen again.’ I never want to hear his name mentioned again, much less to see him. Is everybody clear on that, absolutely clear?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Secretary Cohen said.
There was a murmur as everyone responded at once: “Yes, sir.” “Yes, Mr. President.” “Absolutely clear, Mr. President.”
“Mr. President, there may be a problem in that area,” Porky Parker said.
The President looked at him in surprise, perhaps even shock. The President thought he had made it absolutely clear to Parker that the spokesman’s role in meetings like this was to listen, period.
“What did you say, Jack?” the President asked softly.
“Mr. President, Roscoe Danton of The Washington Times-Post is looking for Colonel Castillo.”
“How do you know that?”