do you expect this pandemic to last?” Tildy finally asked.
“The normal flu season usually starts in late October and peaks in February, sometimes running till May. This just happens to hit us right at the time influenza should begin slacking off, but as I said, we don’t know anything about this critter. Maybe shorter, maybe longer. And of course, influenza mutates like crazy. So it could become less virulent, or more.”
“You’re going to scare the crap out of people when the news gets out,” the agency man observed.
“And that’s a public health problem as well,” Bartlett said. “There will be runs on the stores. Pharmaceuticals, groceries, batteries, gas, guns, you name it. Hospitals will be overwhelmed, not just with sick people but with the worried well. The course of infection varies, but given the speed of its advance in some of those stricken, we expect several deaths en route.”
“People dying on airplanes,” Commerce said.
“And in airports, train stations, yeah.”
“We’re talking about a shutdown of the entire transportation system,” Commerce said accusingly.
“Exactly,” the tone-deaf Bartlett said, as if Commerce were proposing a wonderful idea. “As much as possible, we need to urge people to shelter in place. It would be best to announce it this morning so that preparations can be made—the National Guard called up, police reinforced, borders closed, sports and entertainment facilities shuttered, nonemergency cases discharged from hospitals, schools closed, public meetings postponed, and the government shut down. In addition, any travelers need to get home at once, before the pandemic takes root in America.”
The deputies simply stared at her.
15
In the Royal Court
Prince Majid piloted the helicopter over the Sarawat Range. Below them was the twisting road leading from Mecca up the steep escarpment—the road that Mohammed bin Laden, Osama’s father, had built, the road that finally united the kingdom into a single entity, establishing the father as a hero and propelling the son toward his own fateful destiny. Atop the escarpment was the resort town of Taif, and beyond that, the endless desert, like a sea, flat and calm, broken only by long sepia waves of sand.
The shadow of the helicopter glided across the desert like a spider. “You can’t judge from above,” Majid said. “Some places are quite beautiful and full of mystery. But it is also what it appears to be—a big nothing. Emptiness. This is the soul of Arabia. You have to understand that to really know who we are. We live always with the idea that the desert awaits our return. For centuries we lived with scarcity—a camel, a tent, dates, we even ate the insects! Like some primitive tribe that knows nothing of automobiles or kitchen stoves or markets or even running water. This was the life my grandfather led for most of his years on earth. And he was king!
“And then came oil, and we left the desert, but the desert didn’t leave us. It is inside us, this emptiness. It waits for us, as we sit in our palaces in the cities. The desert knows that one day the Arabians will return to her. She is a patient mother. But also a kind of monster. Everything will be taken away from us. One returns to the desert with nothing.”
Majid steered toward a highway that sliced through the desert, its margins blurred by the ever-encroaching sand. The two friends felt themselves enclosed, not only in the capsule of the helicopter, but also by a kind of forbidden knowledge. The world outside the space they inhabited was dimly aware of the looming peril, but the dread the two men carried in their hearts would be shared and spread, and soon everyone would know the solemn contest that humanity was facing.
“Of course, illness is always present during hajj,” Majid said. “People bring diseases from across the planet. Meningitis, typhoid, cholera—we have dealt with all of them. Last year, we congratulated ourselves: a pilgrimage with no epidemic at all. And yet, I always imagined such a disaster awaited us. This has been my greatest fear. It feels to me like a curse on Islam. This disease came from Muslims and now it infests our most holy place. We are the victims, but the world will blame us for this.”
Other roads became visible on the desert floor, and then Riyadh, the capital, a low-slung city with a handful of skyscrapers, appeared on the horizon. Majid steered away from the main part of the city toward a complex of buildings housing the royal palace and the Shura