blamed it for the cyberattacks. Meantime, he was also charging the U.S. with the sabotage of Russian nuclear plants. In that, at least, he was telling the truth. He was able to produce the only surviving member of the CIA hit team, who laid out Tildy’s assassination plot very persuasively.
It was a war of viruses, biological and virtual, and in both the U.S. was at a disadvantage. Its biological weapons program had been dismantled, whereas in Russia it simply went underground. If Kongoli was the product of many years of inspired biological engineering, who knew what else the Russians had stored in their secret laboratories? Smallpox, Marburg, Ebola, all waiting in line to be put in play. These were the harvest months for Fancy Bear, as the viral seeds planted on Western computers were finally ripening.
Garcia had been summoned to the Cosmos Club, where presidents and Nobel Prize winners and Supreme Court justices came together to celebrate their importance. He was immediately struck not by the grandeur of the place, but by the air conditioning, which seemed lavish in a way that he had never appreciated before. He was shaken by nostalgia for a life he had once had and never properly appreciated. He moved around in a cloud of loss.
The maître d’ in the club’s capacious dining hall immediately sized up Garcia with a disdainful glance. He might as well have been carrying a bedroll and a backpack, as were so many citizens these days. But when Garcia mentioned the name Richard Clarke, the supercilious eyebrows rose higher in acknowledgment. “Table fifty-two,” the maître d’ said to the hostess.
Even here, in the lair of the mighty, Garcia observed the aftereffects of the influenza. The highly ornamented room was scarcely populated. The chandeliers were lit, but dimly. The carpet was stained and full of lint, like an artifact of the French empire, long past its glory days. Even the hostess’s blouse was rumpled and probably hadn’t been washed in some time. She opened a frosted-glass sliding door, which led to a small dining room with a table for two.
“You do like your privacy,” Garcia observed.
“Privacy is the most valuable commodity in this town,” Clarke said. “What do you want to drink? Something in a bottle, you can’t trust the ice.”
Garcia could tell that Clarke was looking him over, evaluating the damage. He knew how he looked, emaciated, the pallor of Kongoli still clinging to him. Clarke, on the other hand, appeared more than fit; he was rejuvenated and battle-ready. He ordered the crab cakes. Garcia had the scallops.
“Tomorrow morning, Russian troops will enter Estonia,” Clarke said. “It’s Putin’s next step in his grand design. First there was Crimea. Then Ukraine. Now come the Baltics.”
“How do you know this?”
Clarke shrugged. “Check the wires in the morning. AFP will have it. Too bad the Post will be behind the curve. Again.”
“And what will the president do?”
“What he should do is sink their fleets. Bomb their refineries. Mine their ports. Send cruise missiles through every window in the Kremlin. We all know what they’re up to. We’ve been at war for years, only we wouldn’t admit it. We didn’t label cyberattacks as real war. We didn’t think of Kongoli as a weapon of mass destruction.”
“You’re sure it was them?”
“How do you explain a novel disease that devastates the West and leaves Russia…not untouched, but not destroyed? You think it’s coincidental that our grid is taken down, our communications disrupted, our economy in ruins, and just at this moment Russian troops march into the Baltics?”
“Several million people died in Russia. You honestly think Putin would do that to his own people, not to mention to the hundreds of millions who’ve died around the world?”
“Would you be asking this question if Stalin were alive?”
“No.”
“Well, he is.”
51
A Farewell Kiss
Henry knocked on his neighbor’s door. The house belonged to Marjorie Cook, who had lived there long before Henry and Jill moved onto the block. No one answered. He had yet to see any of his neighbors; the whole street appeared to be vacant. The house across the street had been burned.
As he turned away, the door suddenly opened. “Henry,” a voice said.
“Hello, Marjorie.”
“I didn’t expect to see you again.” Marjorie stood behind the screen door, wearing a faded housecoat and holding the handle as if it were a barricade protecting her against disaster. “I thought you were all gone. Well, I didn’t know what to think, to be honest. Tell me you aren’t the only one.”