Hidden Empire Page 5

  "Like HIV?"

  "No, more like ebola—bodily fluids getting passed."

  "So then it's not a problem."

  "It's a problem," said Torrent. "Even ebola has survivors. Not many, but some. This one is a hundred percent."

  "How many total?"

  "Three."

  "Civilians?"

  "One civilian, two health workers—a nurse and a doctor who treated the first patient. The doctor was sharp enough to call in guys in hazmat suits to deal with everything from then on, so nobody else got infected. They burned his clinic to the ground, they isolated every monkey that had the pathogen, everything was burned or frozen and removed for further study."

  "And so this is a problem how?"

  "We had a couple of scary hours there. And it occurred to us that with all our planning, we don't really know how to respond to something like this. Not medically, but politically. So we've come up with a plan and we want to run it past you."

  "I'm listening."

  "Quarantine," he said.

  "The traditional method."

  "And it has the great advantage that if you can really make it stick, it works."

  "But that's the job of the government of whatever country has the first outbreak," said Cecily. "It's not under American control."

  "That's not the kind of quarantine I'm talking about. There's not a government in Africa that can be trusted to enforce an effective local quarantine."

  Cecily thought for a moment. "You're talking about quarantining an entire continent?"

  "We could do it," said Torrent. "We can't stop it from spreading inside Africa, but we can prevent any plane or boat from leaving Africa."

  Cecily laughed. "Seriously?"

  "I'm serious we can do it, but you're not referring to that, are you?"

  "Let's see how this will play. 'Dear American people, we're going to let everybody in Africa catch this terrible disease and die, but that's okay, because they're only black people, and the rest of the world won't catch it."

  "Come on, you know me better than that."

  "That's how it'll play, and you know it."

  "Not if I give a speech in which I explain, There's nothing we can do that will stop it from spreading within Africa. But maybe we have a chance to save the rest of the world by sealing off the continent. Let the disease run its course there, let the governments in Africa handle quarantining between countries as best they can. And when it's under control, we can resume communications and the rest of the world will be safe."

  "Okay," said Cecily. "But you say it like this: It's too late to put this monster back in its cage. We have only two choices. Either it rages through the entire world, devastating every nation, killing billions of people. Or we confine it to one continent and prevent it from spreading even further. It will still do terrible damage in the continent where it first appeared. We can't do anything about that and we never could. But as President of the United States, I have no choice but to take the actions that will protect the people of this country. These actions will also protect the rest of the world, outside the continent of origin."

  "They'll just say I'm avoiding saying 'Africa.'"

  "You say it once at the beginning, then you avoid repeating it. Then when people ask you—and if the reporters don't, black leaders will—you refuse to answer any hypotheticals. 'What if this disease had first emerged in Europe? Would you quarantine Europe?' Or Britain, or Australia—whatever you say will be hopelessly wrong. So you look them in the eye and say, 'This disease originated in Africa. I have no choice about that.' And refuse to discuss it further."

  "Political results?"

  "It all depends on what happens in Africa."

  "But which way works best for us?"

  "Does it matter? Can you affect it?"

  "Assuming there's no cure, and no vaccine. If we have a cure or a vaccine, of course we'll make sure that it gets delivered everywhere we can."

  "I assumed that," said Cecily. "Politically, for you, the worst outcome is that the governments of Africa respond vigorously and the disease is confined to a few countries at most and then it dies out because they quarantined themselves and one another effectively. Then you'll look like an idiot because you consigned an entire continent to this plague, and it was never that big a threat. Torrent the mass murderer."

  "Oh, please," said Torrent.

  "Come on, you're the historian," said Cecily. She was never sure whether he was playing devil's advocate or really needed her input.

  "So how do I manage that?"

  "You promise to support African countries in taking effective measures on their own. But you'll only support those countries that respect the international quarantine. You keep making reports about who the good guys are. You make it so that African countries behaving responsibly is your program, and your international quarantine is only for the losers."

  "Okay. But are you really saying that my best political outcome is for the plague to spread disastrously through all of Africa?"

  "Sadly, that's the ugly political truth. The worse it is in Africa, the smarter you look for having confined it to that one place. And you can't keep it there forever."

  "I don't have to," said Torrent. "I only have to keep it there until the CDC comes up with a vaccine that isn't as bad as the disease."

  "Which could take decades," said Cecily.

  "Or six months," said Torrent. "Hold it in Africa till we find a vaccine, and then we'll share it with the whole world."

  Torrent always had an answer. Torrent always had a plan. The trouble was, Torrent always had more plans than he had answers, and no one could ever hope to see all of them.

  "If I find out that your administration has done a single thing to encourage the spread of the plague through Africa," said Cecily.

  "You know me better than that," said Torrent. "Besides, if I were that kind of president, then I'd just have you killed."

  "If anyone would obey such an order."

  "If I were that kind of president, then I'd surround myself with men who would welcome orders like that. But I'm not that kind of president, and I don't have that kind of executive branch under me, so you have nothing to worry about."

  But Cecily was thinking again of her old suspicions—that Torrent, with his huge network of connections, had somehow been behind the whole civil war from the start. That both Aldo Verus, who ran the Progressive Restoration that took over New York City, and General Alton, who threatened the supposed military coup that provided the Progressives with their pretext, were really set into motion by Torrent himself, one way or another.

  After all, that was the idea that first brought Torrent to her attention. Reuben had studied with Torrent in graduate school, and came home to her with the ideas from Torrent's classes.

  Torrent had the theory that people who compared America with the Roman Empire always missed the point—we weren't an empire yet, we were still a republic. By this view, America was not going to fall, it was going to change, from republic to empire. And then it would be in a position to last, as Rome had lasted, for four centuries of world domination and another thousand as a successful power among powers.

  After the civil war ended, Cecily and young Captain Bartholomew Coleman had gone over Reuben's old class notes, which were written in Farsi as a way of keeping them from prying eyes. And it became clear that Torrent regarded a civil war in America as a necessary prelude to Americans being willing to endure the rule of a benign emperor like Augustus, who kept the republican forms but ruled with an iron hand.

  She and Cole had decided that all they could do was watch and wait, to see if Torrent really thought of himself as the new Octavian, the nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar who emerged from the civil wars to become the emperor Augustus.

  It was convenient, for their purposes, that because of their vital roles in helping to bring the little civil war to an end, they remained in Torrent's confidence. Cole was still Torrent's go-to man for small clandestine military o
perations, while in the open he was an NSC staffer and in that capacity went all over the world gathering and sharing information for the National Security Adviser. And Cecily, of course, was a political consultant. Both of them had plenty of opportunities to watch what Torrent did and to see the way he thought.

  And as far as they could tell, this man had no imperial ambitions. He was working the system to make sure he got reelected—but nothing in his actions suggested that he intended to violate the Constitution at any point. Or at least, no more than any of his predecessors had done.

  But it was disturbing to know, from his semi-lighthearted remark about not being the kind of president who would have her killed, that he still had a clear idea of what a dictator would look like and how he would operate. In fact, if she were just a little more paranoid, she would interpret his remark as a serious threat to her: Whatever I do, don't turn against me, or you'll just be killed.

  And yet there was no history of Torrent's opponents disappearing, except politically. As far as anyone could tell—and Torrent did have enemies who would certainly have noticed and spoken up if there were any pattern of convenient suicides or fatal illnesses—Torrent was a politician, not an emperor in the making.

  That might just mean that Torrent was such a good historian that he had learned the lessons of such vicious dictators as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim II Sung, and Mao Zedong. They were all hated and feared, and their iron fists were covered with blood that all the world could see.

  If Torrent was determined to be Octavian, he would maneuver so that his dictatorship came as the fulfilment of the dreams of the people. Save us! they would cry, and he would modestly and reluctantly accept the laurel leaves they forced upon his head. "Just call me 'first citizen,' Octavian had said, as he carefully preserved the Senate of Rome. But only after making sure that all its members were obedient to him.

  Cole and Cecily had agreed that there were certain markers they'd watch for. One was if Torrent tried to get the Constitution amended to allow him to serve more than two terms. Another was if Torrent seemed to be laying the groundwork for the presidency to become a puppet show, as Putin had done in Russia back in the first decade of the century. Elect somebody else, but Torrent still pulls the strings.

  Either way, it would probably be the beginning of the end for the American republic. Like most of the dictatorships in the world, America would still have a lovely constitution, and there would be an active show of preserving it. But it would mean nothing, because the real power would flow through different channels. Torrent had long been a man with wide networks of influence. Could he turn it into the real government behind the facade? Of course he could.

  But was he doing it?

  The man who threatened that he could have her killed might very well be doing it.

  "I see the wheels turning," said Torrent. "What are you thinking?"

  "That I hope you never have occasion to use this quarantine plan. Because it really would apply only to Africa. There's no way to quarantine Asia, if we get a really ugly new flu out of Hong Kong or Singapore or India."

  "But we could quarantine Australia or South America—"

  "Neither of them has a history of originating worldwide epidemics."

  "So what if it's a policy that can only apply to Africa? That's the continent where the most frightening and repulsive and untreatable diseases seem to originate."

  "I know," said Cecily. "And I've told you all that first occurs to me about the political fallout from a decision to quarantine. But I'm still not sure that's the best course."

  "What, you seriously think I should let a world-killing plague loose on the world? Whom does that help?"

  "I'm thinking that it's not nice to mess with Mother Nature," she said. "I'm no expert on epidemiology, but I know the basic history. Don't historians now think that one of the great epidemics that depopulated the Roman Empire was measles? Once it spread through the world and killed a third of the population, it settled down to be a childhood disease that was usually not fatal."

  "Because the only people who lived to have children were the ones with natural resistance to the disease," said Torrent.

  "Exactly," said Cecily. "If a disease is incurable, untreatable, and unpreventable, then isn't the human race better off to endure the onslaught and eventually emerge at the other end of the disaster with a natural resistance to the disease?"

  "How would I write that speech? 'My fellow citizens, I have decided that a third of you should die so that a generation from now, this disease will be no more serious than measles.'"

  "I'm not talking about politics and speeches now," said Cecily. "I'm talking about right and wrong."

  "Well, you think about that," said Torrent, "and let me know what you come up with. But presidents don't have the luxury of ignoring politics."

  "Of course you do," said Cecily. "The only time you don't is when you care about getting reelected. And how many elections can a sitting president lose? Just one. The only price you pay for doing the right but unpopular thing is to lose that one election, and then you're done."

  "Unless they lynch me," said Torrent.

  "My, but we're sounding like Stalin's government in World War II, when they were sure that because Hitler had broken the back of their army, the people would have Stalin and his cronies all hanging from the lampposts of Moscow."

  "If I let death come into this country, when I could have kept it out, a plague so terrible that every household lost a third of its members, they'd be right to lynch me. As long as we're talking about right and wrong."

  "Let's not fight," said Cecily. "This is all hypothetical, right? The disease was stopped in its tracks, wasn't it?"

  "This time, yes."

  "And by the time such a terrible thing actually happens—a disease that doesn't wipe itself out by being too quick a killer and too hard to spread—you probably won't be president anymore, so you can relax about it."

  "I don't relax about anything," said Torrent. "I always assume that all the worst things will happen in my administration, and I plan how to deal with them."

  "Politically."

  "In every way. I didn't just ask you about the politics of it. And I meant it when I asked you to tell me what you come up with on the moral front."

  "You can be sure that I will."

  "Then you've been a great help to me.Thank you for coming in."

  "You pay me far more than my contribution is worth. Advice is supposed to be cheap."

  "Good advice is a scarce commodity. It drives up the price."

  "Averell," said Cecily, "tell me the truth. Is this Ilorin thing really under control?"

  "Yes," he said instantly. "It's already just a footnote in history—an epidemic that didn't happen. But it was so quick and devastating that it put the fear of God into our hearts, at least here in the White House. What if, what if, what if. I had to have a plan."

  "Of course you did," said Cecily. "You wouldn't be a great president if you didn't think that way."

  She headed for the door, but stopped before she reached it. "Are they preparing a vaccine for this disease? In case it breaks out again?"

  "They are," said Torrent.

  "As a high priority?"

  Torrent shrugged. "They say yes, and I make sure they're funded, but these medical researchers, their idea of hurrying is more likely to involve decades than years."

  "Speaking as a mother now, I want that vaccine to exist."

  "I'll light a fire under them," said Torrent. "I want the vaccine to exist, too. I'm too young to die."

  "If history has taught us anything, it's that diseases are smarter than we are."

  "Not smarter," said Torrent. "They just don't give up."

  MINGO'S BRIDGE

  It's not about ending our dependence on "foreign" oil. It's about having some oil left in the world to do the things that only oil can do.

  We can turn anything into electricity—sunlight, tides, rivers, coal, shale, corn, wind
, garbage, the heat of the Earth. We will never run out of electricity. So every vehicle that can run on electricity, must.

  Because there will never be a battery-powered airplane, so far as we can foresee. Nor will we have electric rockets any time soon. Even after all the oil that we've burned in the past century, we still have enough oil left to keep all our planes in the air and put new satellites in the sky for thousands and thousands of years.

  When President Eisenhower started the interstate freeway system, it was one of the great works of civilization. Now it's time to put our money into something else, to bet our future on something else.

  I'm asking Congress to abolish, by the year 2015, the transport across state lines of vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine, except hybrids, which will have until 2020.

  We are funding the development of lighter, longer-lasting, and faster-charging batteries.

  We are providing tax incentives for service stations to provide quick-charge outlets in addition to, and eventually instead of, gas pumps.

  Above all, we are embarking on a new national electric railway system. Passenger and freight service will once again reach into every city of more than twenty-five thousand people, and electric streetcars will be built for urban transport in all those cities.

  On a corporate level, we are separating the trains from the track. Just as airlines share the air routes, so also the train companies will share the new double and quadruple tracks, express and local, urban and intercity. They will compete to offer you better and better service. Comfortable seating, plenty of luggage room, continuous cellphone and broadband internet service. Onboard food and shops from popular franchises.

  The federal government will do for trains what it has done for airlines—we will maintain a Rail Traffic Administration that, using computers and highly trained operatives, will control the safe flow of rail traffic throughout America, without collisions or delays.

  These trains will go where you need them to go, they will operate on schedules that suit your needs, and within a few years you will wonder why you ever wasted time driving yourself, hour after hour, across the country or around town, then searching for a parking place.