Ode To Defiance Chapter 17

12

Besieged

Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

—Churchill

When Ping awoke again, Chance was just sitting down. Ping blinked her eyes clear and asked for the inevitable sitrep. “So, what’s been happening while I’ve been out?”

Chance gave her a quick rundown.

Dash’s ad hoc solution to the epidemic that raged through the

Chiron

seemed to be working. People were coming down with the new UVR Rubola at an alarming rate, and everyone was resigned to getting the disease eventually, including Chance. But she was oddly upbeat about it because deaths so far were few, and mostly confined to the elderly.

When the controls and comms systems for the ship had come back to life, Amanda ordered the massed peacekeepers preparing to breach to stand down. Just in time, as it turned out; they’d already set charges on over a dozen windows. Instead of breaching, they all stayed safely outside with no risk from the plague.

A handful of people on the other ships did have the disease, but the Condition Zebra had locked them into sealed compartments in time. Everyone in the compartments with them was becoming sick, but using Dash’s treatment, once again few were dying.

Some of the near-deaths, however, lingered. Colin Wheeler in particular remained in a coma. No one was sure if he would ever come out of it.

Ping looked at her in dismay. “Oh, wow. So I guess that explains why Colin hasn’t come by.” She looked around curiously. “Which begs the question, why hasn’t our heroine of the day wandered through? Where’s Dash?”

Chance looked like she’d been struck with a baseball bat. “That’s what I’ve been waiting to tell you.” She took Ping’s hand in hers.

Ping grasped Chance’s hand in both of hers, a fierce grip that was almost threatening. “No. Don’t tell me that.”

Chance hung her head. “Dash is gone. The little Bali girl with the white coat and glasses is dead.”

Ping screamed and jerked upright, ripping half her stitches, then collapsed back again. “I don’t believe it. I need to see her.” She tried to rise again.

Chance put her hand—the one Ping didn’t have clenched in hers—on Ping’s shoulder and pushed her down. “No.” Her voice turned commanding. “Let me tell you exactly what you are going to do. You are going to lay in that bed until I tell you you can get up. Then you’re going to exercise, and you’re going to train with me.”

Ping’s nostrils flared, and the fire once again entered her eyes.

Chance continued, “And you’re going to get so good that you can beat that guy who stabbed you with one hand tied behind your back. And then we’ll get them.”

Ping’s muscles flexed as if ready to jump straight to part two of the plan, then relaxed again. She turned pensive. “I don’t understand it.”

Chance frowned. “What?”

“How could Jam have allowed it? Even if it meant losing the chance to find the big bad boss guy, she would’ve saved Dash above all else.”

Chance sighed. “I’ve wondered about that myself. I don’t think she had a choice.”

“But—”

“They probably did it suddenly, the last thing. Jam didn’t know until it was too late.”

Ping slumped. “That would explain it.”

After a long pause, Ping made an unusual confession. “It’s a good thing Jam was the one who had to go, you know.”

Chance looked at her quizzically. “You mean, instead of you?”

Ping nodded slightly. “If it’d been me, I wouldn’t have been able to control myself. I would’ve wound up killing them before we ever found the real bad guy.” She sighed. “I guess she really is the stronger one, after all.”

Admiral Edwin Beck listened patiently as the Chief Advisor spoke at length. Finally, he interrupted, “But, sir, if we destroy their reef, they’ll all die of starvation.”

The Advisor’s voice was implacable. “All they have to do is cure the disease, then we can ship them all the food they want. They’re supposed to be the smartest people on the planet, Admiral. Meanwhile, if they send bots to harvest the fish from the reef, and the bots carry the virus to the reef, somebody could pick up the disease a month from now and carry it home. That must not happen.”

Admiral Beck pressed his thumb and middle fingers to his temples. “Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. Let me know when it’s done.”

“Yes, sir.” Beck hung up the line and turned to his adjutant. “So, Lieutenant, any idea what we use these days to destroy an agricultural reef? I don’t think it’s ever been done before. Would Agent Orange do the trick?”

Lieutenant Lambert grimaced. “I don’t know, Admiral. It certainly works in the wetness of a jungle, but a reef of kelp and algae seems like another whole class of problem. Let me investigate.”

Beck nodded, then turned back to the main display in the Combat Information Center of his flagship, the aircraft carrier

John F. Kennedy

. He frowned at the disposition of forces. He had a problem.

Basically, he didn’t trust the Russians and the Chinese to hold any of the key parts of the blockade for a moment. He shot out orders. “Tell the

Vella Cruz

to stay on station on the southeast channel that allows ships through the reef. Our task force will take the northern channel.” He peered at a ship on the display to the southwest. “The

Heinlein

. Is that the SpaceR spaceport ship?”

One of the radar operators answered. “Yes, sir. The BrainTrusters routinely fly copters with passengers out there. Of course, they also send ferries, but the ferries have to go through the channel. The copters, though, go straight across.”

Beck sighed. “And I’m told a pair of copters flew directly west to a small yacht while we were still underway to get here?”

One of his intelligence officers answered that one. “Yes, sir. A number of peacekeeper copters later flew out there to detain the escapees, but they had vanished. The BrainTrust peacekeepers flew back home. Word is the yacht was empty, and the escapees were nowhere to be found.”

Beck grimaced. “So people who are potentially infected landed on that yacht and disappeared?”

The intelligence officer winced. “Yes, sir.”

This virus sounded terrifyingly deadly. A certain level of aggressiveness that would normally be considered far excessive seemed appropriate. “Get the

John Paul Jones

out there to check that yacht.” The

John Paul Jones

was an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, immense overkill for the next orders. “Make sure there’s no one aboard, then destroy it.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And if another yacht comes within copter range, I want to know about it an hour earlier.”

He frowned at the

Heinlein

. He thought about destroying it as well. But that would create more problems than it solved, not the least of which was that lots of Americans took ferries out to the

Heinlein

to travel all over the world.

Technically the ship was not part of the quarantine; his job was best interpreted as ensuring it did not

become

part of the quarantine. “Position the cruiser

Port Royal

in the lane between the archipelago and the

Heinlein

. If any copters try to fly between them, shoot them down. No warnings, no discussion. Just kill them.” If someone wanted to argue with him about rules of engagement, they could do so after the risk of a devastating pandemic was over.

One last thing. “And someone please get me a line to whoever’s in charge on the BrainTrust. Amanda Copeland, as I recall.” It would only be polite to warn her that any attempt to reach the

Heinlein

would be met with deadly force.

It would also be polite to mention he was going to destroy her food supply.

Not for the first time, Mediator Joshua found himself cursing his fate. He just could not disentangle himself from these crazy events aboard the BrainTrust.

Over a year ago he’d turned mediation duties for the

Chiron

over to Mediator Chibuzo, moving to the much more suitable dispute resolutions afforded by the billionaires aboard the

Haven

.

Normally, a mediator had a cabin aboard the ship where he mediated. But the

Haven

had no room for a lowly mediator. It hadn’t really bothered him, since he was quite content with his cabin on the

Chiron

and he enjoyed the walk between the ships to get to and from work.

But he’d been at home, sipping tea, when the alarms had wailed and the hatches had slammed shut all over the ship. He’d missed the action as the terrorists came and went, but the virus had not missed him.

And of course, as he finally started to recover from the UVR Rubola, a secondary infection set in. The flu, of course—the current one spreading from Southeast Asia.

So he lay in the hospital bed having feverish but happy dreams of just dying. Oh, he wanted to die.

Fate demanded more from him, however. It seemed he would be required to pass through Hell before he could get to the dying.

An enormous cavalcade rolled through the door to his bedside. Amanda spoke apologetically. “Joshua, we need a mediation.”

He couldn’t believe his ears. “Chibuzo,” he coughed out.

Chance shook her head. “He was on board the

Elysian Fields

when we locked down the ship.”

A man he didn’t recognize, who looked the worse for wear with a greenish-yellow bruise covering one side of his face, said with a slurred urgency, “We need you to put this terrorist in the brig.” He pointed at a woman, one of the CDC scientists Joshua had seen hurrying around the ship.

The accused terrorist pointed back. “And he needs to be put in the brig for assault.”

A wheelchair pushed by a bot rolled in quietly. A wan-looking Ping smiled at him. “Perhaps you should put them both in the brig, in adjacent cells.”

Chance one-upped her. “Or perhaps you should put them both in the same cell and let the survivor go free.”

Ping quickly endorsed Chance’s proposal. “Trial by combat.”

Amanda looked to the skies. “Please, we’re here for a mediation.”

Ping wouldn’t let go. “Still, there’s something to be said for the classics.”

Joshua took as deep a breath as he could without coughing. Mediating another dispute with Ping involved. Now that was a classic.

The fellow with the bruise held up a badge. “I’m FBI Agent Cameron Ballard, Acting Assistant Director of the Directorate on Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

In the typical Ping case, the most battered person in the room was typically the assailant. He couldn’t help making a prediction. “Let me guess. I will shortly hear that you assaulted this person—”

“Velma Highwalker, your Honor.” The woman nodded relatively crisply considering that she was covered in the rubola rash.

Joshua continued, “Thank you. You assaulted her, and…” he looked at the bruising carefully, “Chance over here struck you in the head with one of her signature MMA moves.”

Chance smiled broadly but shook her head. “Velma did it all herself. A well-executed strike for someone who only began training recently.”

It looked like Velma and Chance were going to high-five each other. Joshua realized he had neither his usual block of wood nor a suitable desk for striking with it to call for order.

He interrupted the looks of satisfaction. “Ms. Highwalker, exactly how did Mr. Ballard assault you?”

Velma’s look of outrage was peculiarly distorted by the rash. “He said he was taking me into custody. Taking me back to America to be thrown in jail for the rest of my life.” She turned to give Ballard an arch look. “When I refused, he grabbed me by the wrist.” She held up the offended hand.

Ballard growled, “She still needs to come back to the States with me. I’m quite certain she’s one of the terrorists unleashing these plagues.”

Joshua turned to ask Amanda about this just as Amanda rolled her eyes. He decided she’d just answered his question.

He looked at Ballard and Highwalker. “So let me get this straight. He grabbed your wrist, and you knocked him out with a kick to the head?”

Velma looked a little sheepish but nonetheless stubborn. “Yes, Your Honor.”

For no good reason, Joshua looked at Ping. “Couldn’t you people, just once, under-react for a change?”

The women in the room responded with a moment of stricken silence.

Joshua sighed. It occurred to him that he was already in the middle of this mediation, and it still wasn’t clear who the perpetrator was. Or what the crime was. There was supposed to be one alleged perpetrator and one alleged crime. A normal court of law would go berserk with this.

But Joshua was a Mediator on the BrainTrust. He rose to the occasion. He would postpone dying a little while longer.

“On the charge of assault, perpetrated by one Cameron Ballard against one Velma Highwalker, no compensation is granted, the perpetrator having already received adequate punishment at the hands of the victim.” OK, one down.

Joshua banged his hand against the rail of his bed in a pathetic attempt to duplicate the sound of a gavel. “Now let’s discuss this terrorism accusation.”

Agent Ballard presented his evidence. “We all know the three key parts of identifying a guilty party, Your Honor.”

Joshua thought about interrupting since he normally corrected people when they called him “Your Honor,” but he just didn’t have the strength. He was still hoping to die, he reminded himself. It put things in perspective.

Ballard explained his theory of means, motive, and opportunity: only virologists had the means, everyone had the opportunity, but Velma uniquely had the motive. “This doesn’t prove she’s guilty,” he admitted, although the expression on his face clearly suggested he thought it did. “But it puts her high on the list. Plus, her multiple escapes from the hands of the law are also suggestive, as well as illegal on their own. We must take her back to the States for questioning.”

Amanda interrupted, “Not likely, with the blockade in place. And the doors to the

Chiron

sealed, for that matter.”

Ballard nodded. “Which is why she needs to be kept in the brig until we can depart. I can’t afford to lose her again.”

Chance threw up her hands in exasperation. “This is crazy. Velma is one of the most productive and helpful members of the team.”

Ballard gave her a penetrating stare. “Are you sure she’s not sabotaging you? Giving you recommendations that sound good but in fact, lead you away from the answer?”

Chance pulled out her tablet. “Quite the contrary. She’s one of our most reliable predictors of what experiments will succeed and which will fail. Take a look.”

She threw the results on her tablet up on the one display screen that was not hooked up for medical diagnostics and explained the CEREBRUM prediction market. Velma was ranked second, having won the second-largest pot of cash for the accuracy of her forecasts.

Ballard’s eyes gleamed. “Clearly, to rank so well, she has to have insider knowledge. Only a member of the terrorist team could do that well.”

Chance blew a raspberry. “Then a week ago you would have accused me.” She showed them the historical trace: Chance and Velma had traded rankings in the intervening days.

Joshua intervened. “I think, Agent Ballard, your analytical strategy leaves much to be desired. Or do you insist I put Dr. Dixon in the brig as well?”

Ballard looked distracted; his mind had clearly wandered. “Actually, you may be right. But who is this person who is ranked first by a huge margin?

That

looks like a terrorist team member, and that’s clearly a pseudonym.” He turned to Chance with an accusatory stare. “Who is Florence Nightingale?”

Chance’s faced twisted. She sobbed.

Joshua knew his brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, and he was pretty sure he was about to embarrass himself, but the mediation called for him to ask, “Chance? Agent Ballard has a legitimate question. Who is Florence Nightingale?”

Chance looked away from everyone. “It was a secret. Of course, everyone knew, but she wanted it to be a secret. I should have removed her from the board, but…”

She shook herself and turned back to Joshua. Her voice steadied. “Joshua, look at the list. Who is missing? Who would you have expected to be at the top?”

Joshua studied the list. Yup, his mind was definitely not up to par. So who would he have expected to be at the top of the list? He didn’t know any medical researchers, except of course for Chance and…his heart sank. “Dash?”

Chance nodded.

Ballard rubbed his hands together. “Another suspect.”

Joshua struggled to get out of the bed to wrap his hands around Ballard’s neck. No use. “Agent Ballard, you really are an imbecile.”

Amanda stepped forward and carefully explained to the agent why Dash was the most outrageous proposed perp he’d picked yet. “And on top of all that, she was murdered by the terrorists when they boarded the ship.” She blinked as a moment of realization shook her. “Of course. They had special instructions to kill her. They knew that, above all things, they had to kill her to stop her from foiling their plans.”

Ballard looked around the faces in the room, then started looking as if he wanted to escape. With a momentary burst of something like empathy, he said the only legitimate thing. “I’m so sorry.”

Joshua closed his eyes; it was surprising how much better he felt without the glare of the lights. “Agent Ballard, you have repeatedly made rash accusations against the people on this ship, each accusation being more ridiculous than the last. I am trying very hard to figure out why I should not put you in the brig until the quarantine is lifted and we can kick you back to America.”

Ballard’s stubbornness returned. “I’m still sure the real perp is here on the BrainTrust.”

Joshua was still crafting a choice set of crucifying words when Amanda spoke ever so softly. “Don’t put him in the brig, Joshua.”

Joshua stared at her in amazement.

Amanda continued. “He’s right about the fact that the perp has to be a virologist. A world-class virologist.” She waved a hand. “Now, when Agent Ballard tried to lock up the whole CDC, he was out of his mind. There are plenty of world-class virologists elsewhere.”

Her voice lowered. “But we’ve brought them all here, Joshua. People from all over the world, from Europe and Russia to South America, have answered our invitation to come and fight this existential battle. We know who all the world-class virologists are, and they’re almost all here.” She slumped. “And there’s another thing. Have any of you wondered, why Uwais and Sabaah didn’t bring guns?”

Chance thought out loud, working toward an answer. “We couldn’t use guns for fear…” Her voice faded as she saw where this was going.

Amanda continued, “For fear the ricochets would hurt our own people.”

Chance straightened her shoulders, acknowledging the deduction. “But they would not have feared ricochets. Not unless one of theirs was here too.”

Amanda finished grimly. “So, Joshua, it might be helpful if Agent Ballard continued his investigation because there’s a very good chance that, at this point, he’s right.”

The days faded, one into the other. The epidemic rose and fell in its own rhythm, related yet distinct, as the world watched from afar. Most found the attack on the BrainTrust horrifying. Most outside of Iran and America found it scarier than either of those earlier attacks because they understood it was a direct assault on those most likely to cure the next epidemic.

Of course, in some places, the BrainTrust assault was viewed as an opportunity.

Pascha rocked lazily on the lap of the Premier of the Russian Union, nuzzling his neck.

The Premier knew why she was so attentive, of course. He was even a little sad he would deny her.

Pascha asked in a little-girl voice, “Please could I speak with my sister?”

The Premier cleared his throat and pushed her mechanically off his lap. “You know you can’t. This is a one-way connection.”

She snuggled against him. “Could I at least stay while she brings you up to date?” Her whole body melded to his. “I promise I will make it worth your while.”

He took a deep breath. “And that is why you can’t stay.” He ran his fingers through her hair. “You are far too much of a distraction.”

The alarm on his cell went off. He spoke a little harshly. “Go now.”

Pascha went, rocking her hips to remind him of what he was losing.

His wallscreen lit up with a view of Pascha’s sister, Tascha. Except neither he nor anyone else had called her Tascha for many long years. She was now Trixie, the administrative assistant of the American Chief Advisor.

The Premier watched as Trixie casually tossed aside the dress she was wearing and started applying lipstick while nude.

The Premier did so love these conversations, even if they were one-way.

Trixie spoke with clipped haste. “I have to meet him in the Oval Office in five minutes, so this has to be quick. Basically, Chiefy has decided to keep the BrainTrust blockade in place even after they declare the epidemic over. Even after they develop a cure. Since he destroyed their food supply, he figures he can starve them into delivering Dr. Dash.”

She lifted an eyelid to start applying liner. “I reminded him she was thought to be dead. He said, ‘Oh, right. We’ll demand Dr. Dixon instead.’ You may remember, Chance Dixon was Dash’s intern, and she is now the only person on Earth who knows how to rejuvenate the President for Life enough to keep him alive so Chiefy can continue to boss everyone around.”

She grimaced into her mirror, checking her teeth. “That’s the big news. I presume you want to support him in extending the blockade for blackmail purposes.” She stood quite still for a moment, looking at herself in the mirror and carefully erasing the lines of intelligence from her face until she achieved her usual presentation as a perfect blond bimbo.

She stepped back from the mirror and wriggled, a sensuous move that belonged in a dance club. She blew him a ditzy kiss. “Give my love to my sister.”

She touched the screen, and it went dark.

A butler-bot assigned by Mediator Joshua followed Agent Ballard as he led his newest guest, Hilaal el-Mousa, through the Red Planet deck to a conference room that was now dedicated to his investigation.

He pursed his lips as he thought about the rest of that mediation after Amanda had supported him. First of all, Mediator Joshua had needed a lot of convincing that Ballard would be an asset, even though he agreed investigation was necessary. Much against Ballard’s normal instincts, he decided to share some information. He pulled up the artist’s renditions of the terrorists made by combining all the scientists’ descriptions, plus some poor but interesting images of the terrorists taken surreptitiously with cell phones during their time on the Red Planet deck. He showed them how the integrated image compared to a pair of Middle Eastern-looking men caught on cameras in the various places where the Blue Rubola-carrying PEZ dispensers had been placed along the coasts of America.

Chance had studied the pictures for a while, then a light had dawned. She called BrainTrust security and got the video of the men seen stealing a CRISPIER. Those men had also done an excellent job of concealing their faces, but in the end, everyone agreed that these were all the same people.

Once this continuity of enemies was established, they realized this afforded an explanation of how Uwais and Sabaah had gained such smooth control of the

Chiron’s

systems. They could have investigated and physically manhandled her computers while on board to snatch the CRISPIER. Review of videos of the time suggested that the maintenance bots in charge of the command, control, and computer systems had done significant unscheduled maintenance; a hunt for indications that the thieves might have tampered with the bots and subverted them to tamper with the network was still underway.

Ballard himself figured the other terrorist, the one still hiding in plain sight under his nose on the

Chiron

, was the one who had prepped the ship’s systems for takeover by Uwais, but he kept this assessment to himself.

After much discussion of the pros and cons of letting the FBI agent roam free, Joshua granted him the right to investigate. Then the mediator had collapsed in his bed and shooed them all away so he could die in peace.

But Joshua had not dismissed Ballard without a remarkable number of carefully detailed instructions. He had not only required Ballard to let this bot follow him around, practically touching him, he’d also required that Ballard under no circumstances touch anyone else. If someone refused to answer civil questions, Joshua himself would review the justification for the interrogation and make a case-by-case assessment. The bar for imposing a forced interrogation, Joshua had made clear, would be quite high.

Joshua had also forced Ballard to recant his conviction that Velma was involved. Ballard conceded she had no motive for either fomenting nuclear war in the Mideast or infecting the

Chiron

—and herself—with rubola. If he wanted Velma to answer any more questions, he would forward those questions to Chance.

Ah, yes…Chance. He half-suspected her. Not only had she been neck and neck with Velma on the CEREBRUM rankings before, but since the mediation, her forecasting had improved markedly. Florence Nightingale was gone from the boards, but Chance now bid fair to establish a similar lead.

The logic he had used to conclude that the highest-ranking forecasters were more likely to be terrorist insiders had not changed. It was a real possibility. So at one point he’d brought Chance into this small conference room and asked her a few questions. In the midst of the questions, he’d complimented her on her remarkable march up the CEREBRUM board.

She’d rubbed her ear and winced. “Yeah, I’ve really upped my game.” She looked away in dismay. “You know, one of Dash’s last undertakings was learning how to think like Colin. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but I’ve now come to realize that while she was studying to be Colin, I was studying to be Dash.”

She touched her forehead. “She’s here with me now, you know.” She blinked away tears. “I used to make my predictions for CEREBRUM as myself. As Chance. But now I’m trying very hard to make predictions for Dash. As Dash. What would Dash think?” She looked back at Ballard. “Did that make any sense? I’d guess not.”

Ballard had assured her it did, although she was correct that it did not. Regardless, no amount of digging, and no amount of contact with his people back home in the Bureau could find a wisp of a motive for Chance. He gave it up.

He’d interviewed a lot of people, most of whom he did not suspect before he interviewed them and most of whom he suspected even less after he finished. He wanted to make sure that the real culprit understood that everyone except Velma was assisting him, no big deal.

His current number one prime suspect in this swirling international stew of virologists was Jubair el-Parani. Ballard was more or less sneaking up on that interview sideways, which was why he was interviewing Jubair’s friend Hilaal first.

Ballard had radically altered the conference room for his goals. The walls had been set to stark blank white, and the temperature had been lowered until it was as chilly as it could be without being too obvious. Only three chairs remained, all bare of padding and offering no armrests.

Back at FBI headquarters, when they did real interrogations, the interrogators’ chairs were comfortable, but here in these friendly question-and-answer engagements, Ballard was as uncomfortable as his suspect.

The whole idea was to make the suspect want to get out of the room as soon as he reasonably could by answering questions hastily, without the careful thought that might enable better concealment of the truth.

Part of the usual technique involved having an interrogator who looked like, sounded like, and shared many beliefs with, the target. Ballard had tried to recruit the peacekeeper Aar as his second chair, but Aar had just laughed. “Trust me, the last person you want in that room when interviewing a Muslim is a Sikh unless you can persuade them that torture is a real possibility. Then my presence would enhance your credibility.”

So for this interrogation, the third chair was empty.

Ballard started, as per standard technique, with questions to put the suspect at ease while he watched for gesture baselines that might later give something away. Flicking the eyes to the right often indicated reaching for a memory, while a flicker up to the left might indicate the creative thinking associated with a lie.

Ballard really wanted to use the nine-step Reid technique on everyone here, but he was certain Joshua would brig him for it before he made any progress, so he stuck to the earlier steps in questioning a suspect/witness.

He kept his nose in his tablet, to ease the pressure on Hilaal. Of course, his tablet was hooked to the vidcam on the wall, so Ballard was studying a crisp image of Hilaal’s face and posture as he asked his questions.

As they chatted, Hilaal became increasingly more comfortable despite the harsh light and spine-crunching chairs. When he smiled, warmly and sincerely, Ballard too felt ever more comfortable. He reminded himself to sit more erect.

Finally Ballard delivered an obvious question. “You’re a Sunni, right? How do you feel about Iranians? They’re Shiites, if I understand correctly.”

Hilaal looked worn and tired. “Radical factions on both sides have been trying to kill everyone for centuries. Ever since the death of the Prophet Muhammad.”

Ballard persisted. “Still, it would have been a boon to you if the Iranians and Israelis killed each other.”

Hilaal frowned. “Such massive death is a boon only to murderers and radicals, Agent Ballard. I’ve often wished everyone would stop killing each other. There’s a long distance between that and wanting to wipe everyone out.”

Ballard changed topics. “I understand Jubair el-Parani is the one who invited you to come here.”

Hilaal nodded. “We were friends in college, at the American University in Beirut. We competed, more or less, to see who could get the best grades while taking the most classes and graduating soonest. Truth is, he’s the smart one. In the end, he won, as you can see from the CEREBRUM scores. I think he’s currently ranked third behind Chance and Velma.”

He shook his head. “We met after the Israelis obliterated a Hezbollah action team, a missile strike on the edge of the campus.” He shook his head. “A lot of good people died that day.” His somber eyes filled with sorrow. “‘Collateral damage,’ of course.”

“How upset did that Israeli strike make Jubair?”

Hilaal turned pensive. “I think we were all pretty upset at the time.” He looked down and clenched his hands. “I hate to say it, but he never really recovered from that attack. He buried himself in his lab.”

“How well is his lab equipped? Do you think he could have developed these plagues?”

Hilaal shrugged. “Maybe. It seems unlikely. The terrorist has developed three different viruses in a very short time. I don’t think you could do that without a CRISPIER unless you developed those viruses over a much longer period of time and had them sitting on the shelf, waiting to be used.”

“Does he have a CRISPIER in his lab?”

Hilaal blinked in surprise. “I haven’t seen his lab recently, so I wouldn’t know. But I didn’t think anybody had a CRISPIER outside the BrainTrust.”

“So you think the viruses had to be developed here?”

Hilaal frowned. “I hadn’t really thought about it that way. Now that you’ve forced me to think about it, I suppose that whoever did it had to have spent years developing these viruses, and is merely launching them in quick succession.” He rubbed one of the rashes from the UVR Rubola that had not quite faded.

Ballard switched topics. “I see you’ve mostly recovered from the rubola.”

Hilaal smiled. “The whole ship was lucky that Dr. Dash figured out how to ameliorate the disease before…”

Ballard waved it away. “Does it strike you as a surprising coincidence that Jubair never developed the disease? That he was immune?”

“He wasn’t the only one. Maybe ten percent came through the epidemic untouched. I think there were a dozen or so on this deck alone who had no symptoms, like Jubair.” He frowned as he thought about the probable deduction and said, “I suppose if the perpetrator were here on board the

Chiron

, he would be one of the ones who was immune. Certainly that makes sense to investigate.”

Finally Ballard held out photorealistic renditions of the two terrorists who had boarded the

Chiron

. “Do you know who these men are?”

Hilaal glanced and answered. “Oh, yes. These are the attackers who came for Dash.”

“Had you ever seen them before this?”

Hilaal squinted, closed his eyes, and held his hands over his face. “I’ve tried to remember if I’ve ever seen them before. I don’t think so.”

“What about Jubair? Did he know them?”

Hilaal put his hands back down and shrugged. “Not that he’s said to me.”

Chance finished her report for the interested movers and shakers of the BrainTrust. She and Amanda were in the same conference room together, but the others attended by wallscreen since they were outside the

Chiron

quarantine. “We’ve started producing the cure for UVR Rubola here locally, and I expect in forty-eight hours we’ll have everyone on the BrainTrust vaccinated. Both our pharmaceutical factories in Benin and Mexico will create small stockpiles, but honestly, I doubt they’ll be needed. There’s no hint the terrorists deployed it anywhere but here.”

Ben Wilson sighed with relief. “At least that’s taken care of.”

Dawn pressed on to the next critical item. “So how long after everyone’s vaccinated can we get the blockade lifted?”

Amanda scowled as she rose from her chair. “And therein lies a major problem. I just got off the phone with the Chief Advisor. He said in no uncertain terms that the blockade would continue until we met an additional requirement.”

Dmitri, the BrainTrust’s Russian arms dealer, put his face in his hands and groaned. “Let me guess. He won’t lift the blockade until we give him Dash.”

Matt leaned forward. “Doesn’t he know Dash is dead?”

Amanda shook her head. “I informed him. I don’t think he believes it, but he agreed to a compromise. He’ll acknowledge the epidemic has ended, terminate the quarantine, and lift the blockade…after we give him Chance.”

Everyone looked at Chance, whose eyes widened. “Whoa. News to me.” She glanced at Amanda. “So, it’s the same old demand, really. Rejuvenate the President for Life or face the consequences.”

Dawn’s mouth puckered into a thin line. “Would it work to trade Chance? Chance, are you OK with this?”

Chance gave her a wan smile. “Honestly, I’d rather not. A new lease on life for that creep?” She shuddered. “I’d pass if we had another choice.”

Dmitri added, “And you can bet that the Russians will back this play, and part of the deal will be that Chance will have to rejuvenate the Premier as well.”

Ben noted, “I can see where this ends up. If Chance goes, she’ll never be allowed to come back, will she?”

Amanda’s expression grew even grimmer. “Unlikely.”

Matt, who spent more time on logistics than the others, brought them back to the major problem with keeping Chance. “So, Amanda, how much food do we have in the archipelago? How long can we last? Long enough to do any good?”

Amanda took a deep breath. “We maintain only a thirty-day supply of food. We’ve already used up over a week of that.”

Ben’s eyes bulged. “Thirty days? That’s it?”

Amanda’s shoulders slumped. “Colin insisted we wouldn’t need more. He assured the Consortium in the early days that ‘the stochastic genius of the BrainTrust would feed everyone in the event of an emergency.’ Nobody quite understood what that meant, but storage space on our ships was so dear, everyone agreed to follow his advice. The question never came up again, until now.”

Chance tilted her head to the side and banged her ear; as she had explained apologetically to everyone, the UVR Rubola had left her with a lingering ear infection, and it bothered her at random times. She gurgled a laugh. “Colin’s in a coma, he may never recover, and he’s still the one running the game plan.”

Dawn joined her laughter. “Looks like it.” She shook her head. “Well, one thing is certain. We aren’t handing Chance over to that bastard.”

Chance looked doubtful. “It may come to the point where we have no choice.” She winced and banged her ear again. “But I’m perfectly happy to see how Colin’s plan unfolds first.”

Matt concurred. “By all means, let the Chief Advisor do battle with Colin. Even in a coma, my money’s on our guy.” He turned grim. “Though it’s never a bad idea to have a backup plan. I’ll investigate ways of breaking the blockade with the Black Titan.”

Amanda interrupted the long pause that ensued. “That’s it, then? Shall we meet again, say, when we have forty-eight hours of food left?”

Everyone assented, and the wallscreen images blinked out until only Matt was left. “Chance, if it comes down to it, I can get you off the archipelago.”

Chance considered it, then shook her head. “Wouldn’t make any difference. He could still insist on my surrendering myself. If it meant the survival of the BrainTrust, I’d go.”

Matt acquiesced. “I still don’t think it will come to that.”

Chance’s expression turned thoughtful. “Nor do I, Matt. In truth, I think we’ll figure something out, and it will all be fine.”

When Ballard told Jubair he had a few questions, Jubair tapped his tablet and asked irritably, “Do we really need to do this? I have experiments in process.”

Ballard gently insisted, and Jubair threw up his hands and followed him, although he kept up a continuous stream of criticisms of anything that pulled him away from his work. By the time Ballard waved Jubair to the table in the conference/interrogation room, he was considering committing murder himself.

Jubair frowned as he sat, squirming to find a comfortable position. “Where did you find these awful chairs?”

Ballard grimaced as he sat down. “Trust me, I hate them at least as much as you do.” He’d spent so many hours in these torture devices, he wanted to confess to the crime himself.

Ballard tried to continue in this vein to establish a rapport with mutual sympathy, but to no avail.

Jubair squirmed around in his chair and leaned forward to bring his anger and distrust into the open. “Forget all this good cop stuff. We all know what you did to the people in the CDC. Straight from your old playbook, isn’t it? Steven Hatfill and Bruce Ivins.”

The agent winced. In 2001, a series of letters with anthrax had been mailed around the country, killing five people and endangering many more. For years, the FBI had pursued Steven Hatfill with sufficient vigor that Hatfill had won a multi-million-dollar harassment award. Eventually the FBI stopped targeting this man who was most probably innocent and turned their attention to Bruce Ivins. Under the FBI scrutiny, Ivins committed suicide. The FBI closed the case, effectively declaring it a success.

Cameron Ballard had indeed been following this playbook when he launched his assault on the CDC: harass the small numbers of people with the means to conduct the attack until one of them cracked. It had seemed so sensible when he started. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d wound up here.

Jubair wasn’t finished. “So now you’re dead certain that the man behind the attack is me or Hilaal, two Sunnis with world-class credentials who, if we follow your stereotypes, want to see Iran, Israel, and the United States all dead. You’re as certain that it’s one of us now as you were a little while ago that it was Velma.”

Ballard decided the better part of valor was to avoid responding to this outburst. Instead, he sidled up to the questions he wanted to ask. “Speaking of Velma, I see you’re number three in the CEREBRUM rankings, just behind her.”

Jubair sat back and smiled. “I hope to pass her now that I’ve gotten the hang of it.”

Ballard smiled back. “Are you surprised Hilaal is just ninth?”

Jubair frowned. “I am.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I think he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of how CEREBRUM works. It’s not just a matter of which prediction you think is right, it’s a matter of how confident you are and what the odds are at any given moment.” He shook his head. “You know, there are days when he shows flashes of being every bit as good as I am.”

Jubair’s eyes sparked with anger. “But it’s even more ridiculous to think Hilaal is the culprit than to think it’s me. He may be the most compassionate man I know.” He thought about it for a moment. “Besides, as a Doctor Without Borders, where could he have a lab?”

Ballard pulled out the renditions of the shipboard attackers. “Know who these people are?”

Jubair glanced at them. “The people who attacked us.”

“Ever seen them before they came here?”

Jubair rolled his eyes. “No. And no.”

In the end, Ballard released Jubair to hustle back to his experiments. The agent reconnected his tablet to the general wifi and discovered a message from his team back in the Hoover building in D.C. He smiled. At last, they had a break.

Ballard practically ran down the passages as he called Joshua and Amanda. “We’ve got him,” he crowed.

Joshua still lay in the hospital bed, though his mood had improved considerably when his fever and chills finally broke. “Show me.”

Ballard explained as he connected his tablet to the free monitor. “I’ve had my people searching for connections between anyone here and those two men who attacked the

Chiron

. They finally found something.”

On the screen everyone watched a nightmare scene unfold. Sirens were blaring, smoke coiled from the wreck of a building in the background, and all the people running to and fro were smudged with soot. The camera tilted and twisted to focus on a wild-eyed Jubair. He turned to speak to someone off-camera, and the camera turned once again to bring the other participant into focus.

Sabaah.

Ballard commented. “I just finished interviewing Jubair. He said he’d never met the attackers before.”

On-screen, Jubair shouted something at Sabaah. Sabaah nodded and ran off camera one way while Jubair went the other.

Amanda watched and muttered, “It was a disaster scene. He might not remember.”

Ballard clenched his fists to keep from screaming. “He lied to us! He’s in on it!”

Joshua looked back and forth between the two of them. “Amanda may be right.”

Ballard’s eyes bulged. “Your Honor, you can’t just disregard this.”

Joshua sighed. “But while Amanda may or may not be correct, Agent Ballard is certainly correct.”

Ballard blurted, “Yes!”

Joshua disregarded this and turned to Amanda. “Do we have any peacekeepers under quarantine with us?”

Amanda sighed. “Still recovering from rubola.”

Joshua shrugged. “Very well. Have Chance and Velma escort Jubair to the brig.”

He pondered the matter for a moment. “We’ll try to deal with this more definitively after we’re clear of this current quarantine, but for now, we’ll hold Jubair in custody.”