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He had weights in his basement, and always found time to do some bench pressing and curling. He ran in the mornings to keep his legs in shape. Since his divorce he found concentration and work easy, but sleep difficult. In some ways the loneliness of his profession suited him. In other ways he felt empty and rootless, adrift in a life that didn’t really belong to him.
He e-mailed his daughter in Florida every day, and spoke to her on the phone once a week. She was ten now, and very busy with her own life. He spoke to his ex-wife as seldom as possible.
The apartment building loomed before him with its combined aura of home and of homeless-ness. Lights were on in all the units except his own. Sighing, he turned off the car.
There was a girl sitting on the steps. As he drew closer, carrying his briefcase, he recognized the aggressive young reporter from the foyer at Walter Reed.
‘No comment,’ he said. ‘I’m off duty.’
‘My name is Karen Embry,’ she said, getting to her feet and holding out a hand. ‘I don’t want a story.’
Kraig stood looking at her without taking her hand. She was of medium height, maybe five five, but she seemed smaller because she was visibly underweight. The journalist’s typical lean-and-hungry essence was evident in her, but there was something else as well, something downright undernourished and, Kraig thought, sad. She had long dark hair, which she obviously made the most of. Her complexion was fair, her eyes large and dark. She was very pretty, or would have been had she been anything but a reporter.
These impressions kept him from sweeping by her into the condo without a word.
‘If it isn’t a story, what do you want?’ he asked.
‘Just a couple of minutes of conversation,’ she said.
He looked at his watch. ‘It’s been a long day,’ he said.
‘I work long hours,’ she said. ‘My sources tell me that Everhardt is really sick. That there’s no way he’ll be coming back.’
Kraig shrugged. ‘I really couldn’t say. I’m not a doctor, Miss – what did you say your name was?’
‘Embry. Call me Karen.’ Now that his eyes were adjusting to the dim light Kraig saw that there was something unusual about her features. Something European, perhaps – though there was no trace of an accent in her voice.
‘How come I haven’t met you before?’ he asked.
‘I moved down here from Boston fairly recently,’ she said. ‘I’m working freelance. I specialize in public health stories.’
‘That’s nice,’ Kraig said.
There was a silence. The reporter knew Kraig wasn’t going to give her anything she could use. But, like any good journalist, she wanted to establish him as a contact.
‘I heard it was something about the decision-making process,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Everhardt. Something to the effect that he can understand things – some things at least – but can’t make decisions based on what he knows. So he can’t act. He’s paralyzed.’
Kraig turned toward the parking lot, beyond which a sad vista of apartments and two-story office buildings blocked the horizon.
‘No comment,’ he said.
‘I heard the White House is really worried,’ she said. ‘Without Everhardt for the polls, they’re not sure the president can hold off Colin Goss.’
‘I’m not a pollster,’ Kraig said.
She nodded. ‘A lot of people are concerned about the viability of the administration. The voters are terrified of another nuclear attack like the Crescent Queen. Goss has been pulling a lot of strings in Congress. If anything happens to make the president look weaker than he is already, there might be a resolution asking him to resign. This Everhardt thing certainly doesn’t make him look stronger.’
Kraig said nothing. He knew Colin Goss was putting pressure on the administration. Frankly, he thought it would be better for the country if Goss was in that hospital bed instead of Dan Everhardt. Goss was a true menace. In this sense, Kraig did have a political mind.
‘That’s not my department,’ he said.
There was a silence.
‘I heard that some of the doctors think Everhardt’s problem may be functional,’ she said.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Kraig asked.
‘Mental. Emotional. Everhardt has been under a lot of stress recently. Maybe he cracked under the strain.’
Kraig was looking at her face now. There was an odd concentration in her eyes, almost an animal concentration. He wondered for a split second whether she was on something, some sort of upper. But he rejected the idea. She was simply a newshound, ready to knock down any obstacle that stood between her and a story. Her kind didn’t need uppers. The stories themselves were their drug.
‘Everhardt is a good man,’ she said, ‘but he’s not really cut out for the presidential wars. Consider the way Colin Goss had him buffaloed on Washington Today. Maybe the pressure was getting too great for him.’
Kraig cut her off. ‘I don’t have anything for you,’ he said.
‘As I say, I don’t want you to leak anything,’ she said. ‘I just want …’
Kraig gave her a dark smile. ‘What is it you want, Miss Embry?’
‘Call me Karen. Please.’
Kraig was not taken in by her friendliness.
‘What is it you want?’
‘I don’t want to chase windmills,’ she said. ‘I would like to have a contact who can help me stay on the right track. I really don’t want to print things that aren’t true.’ She hesitated. ‘Call it a friend I want,’ she said. ‘And I can be a friend in return.’
Kraig gave her a long look. A tough reporter, wise to every angle an evasive government would try to pull on her. Looking for a scoop, and willing to trade. Trade what?
Something told him not to blow her off completely.
‘Then stop jumping to conclusions,’ he said, ‘and start looking for better sources.’
‘That’s why I’m here.’ That intent look was still in her eyes.
‘I have work to do,’ Kraig said, taking out his keys. ‘See you.’
He went inside and closed the door. The ceiling light in his foyer sent dim rays into the empty apartment. He felt an urge to turn on all the lights in the place and fill it with music, as quickly as possible.
But after hanging up his coat he looked out the window to see if the girl was gone.
She was standing on his steps, looking at the closed front door. She had pretty shoulders under that long hair. She must be cold out there.
He felt an impulse, half sexual and half pure loneliness, to let her in and give her a drink. He hesitated for a long moment. Then he reached for the doorknob. At that instant she started down the steps to the parking lot. She moved quickly, all business, her car keys in her hand. Yet as she opened the car door she looked younger, almost girlish.
Sighing, Kraig turned back to the emptiness of home.
7
November 17
Eighteen hours after she left Joseph Kraig’s apartment Karen Embry stood in a hospital ward in Des Moines, Iowa, staring at a little girl.
The girl’s arms were curled around a ragged teddy bear. Her fingers were frozen against the fur. The creases in her hospital gown remained exactly as they were when it was put on, for she had not moved since they brought her in. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling of the ward, as though the answer to a long-pondered riddle would appear there at any minute.
The ward was crowded. There were no medical facilities in the affected part of the state capable of handling the victims. The majority had been taken by ambulance or National Guard transport to hospitals in Sioux City and Des Moines.
The epidemic that had spread through a dozen towns in five counties now seemed to have stopped. No new victims had been found since the initial outbreak. This fact came as a relief to the public health officials, but did little for the harried medical professionals who were struggling to deal with fifteen hundred gravely sick adults and children.
A cold front was sweeping across the Midwest and the Plains states, bringing wind chills below zero. Local inhabitants were wearing down jackets and parkas they had not expected to need for another month. Visitors, like Karen, found themselves underprotected against the intense cold.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta had sent a team of specialists to investigate the epidemic. Unfortunately for them, there were no unaffected citizens to interview. Every man, woman, and child in each affected town had been struck down by the mystery illness.
Karen learned all this upon her arrival at the university hospital in Des Moines from the CDC official in charge, Mark Hernandez. Though Hernandez was not happy to see Karen, he had been instructed by his superiors that good relations with the press were crucial at this sensitive time.
He helped Karen put on anticontamination gear. ‘It’s almost certainly unnecessary now,’ he said, ‘but we’re still being careful.’ He took her to a quarantined ward lined with beds occupied by immobile, empty-eyed patients of all ages. Overworked nurses were busy feeding and caring for the patients.
It was a disturbing sight. Men, women, and children, still looking healthy and well fed, lying silent in their beds. They looked like film extras hired to play the role of the sick.
Karen was struck by the look in their eyes. They seemed to be hypnotized from within. It was a fixed stare, but not suggestive of dementia. There was something almost visionary about it.
When she remarked on this to Dr Hernandez, the doctor shrugged. ‘It is strange. But so far we haven’t been able to attach any significance to it.’
‘I’m puzzled by the symptoms,’ Karen said. ‘Shouldn’t there be fever or chills or nausea, or something to indicate the internal disorder?’
‘Off the record?’ the doctor asked.
Karen nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m puzzled myself.’ He shook his head. ‘The symptoms make no sense. All the vital signs are normal. The patients seem conscious, but their will seems to be paralyzed. Their power to act, even to feed themselves.’
‘Were any of them able to walk?’ Karen asked.
The doctor shook his head. ‘Judging by where we found them, the illness stopped them in their tracks. If they were sitting, they just stayed there. If they were standing, they remained standing until weakness made them keel over. It’s like being struck by lightning. They just froze.’
Karen was thinking of Vice President Everhardt, lying helpless in a bed at Walter Reed. She wondered whether he looked like the patients here.
‘What is your people’s thinking on this?’ she asked.
Hernandez shrugged unhappily. ‘Frankly, we don’t know what to think. We’re concentrating on life support, nutrition, and so forth. We’ve quarantined the communities involved. We’re analyzing water and soil samples, even the air. It’s possible that something got in there and affected the whole population. Whatever it was, it didn’t affect anyone else. Each pocket of infection is completely encapsulated. People in the surrounding communities are healthy.’
He looked at Karen. ‘But even if we find a vector, we still don’t understand the symptoms. They’re not like anything infectious I’ve ever seen or heard about. The body keeps functioning normally, but the patient is incapable of action.’
‘Have you heard about the vice president’s illness?’ Karen asked.
‘Yes, I have. Why?’
‘It presents some intriguing parallels to this one,’ Karen said. ‘Lack of voluntary motor capacity, inability to respond to commands, but apparently normal perception and vital signs.’
‘Really,’ the doctor said. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I never reveal my sources,’ Karen smiled. ‘It was told to me off the record in Washington. You might want to talk to your people there, though Walter Reed is buttoned up tight.’
‘I’ll think about it.’ The doctor shook his head slowly as he scanned the ranks of helpless victims. ‘If it’s the same disorder, that could be a bad sign.’
‘For Everhardt?’ Karen asked.
‘For all of us.’ The doctor shook his head. ‘If a thing like this ever started to spread … and us without a clue as to how to treat it …’
As they were leaving the ward they passed the bed in which the little girl lay holding the teddy bear.
‘How did that get here?’ Karen asked.
‘I think they found her at home,’ said Dr Hernandez. ‘She was in her playroom. I suppose one of the paramedics brought it along to keep her company here.’
Karen looked more closely at the child’s eyes. Did she know where she was? From her glassy stare the reporter could not tell.
For the first time the tragedy around her struck Karen. What if this little girl never moved again, never spoke again?
Karen took her leave of Dr Hernandez and went downstairs to the hospital cafeteria. Her stomach was rumbling, for she had eaten nothing since early this morning. Unfortunately smoking was not allowed in the hospital. She would have to wait for a cigarette until she was outside.
She put a tuna sandwich, a granola bar, a container of yogurt, and a bag of potato chips on a tray and filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee.
As she was carrying the tray toward a window table a familiar voice sounded in her ear.
‘Miss Embry. You get around, I see.’ It was Joseph Kraig, the Secret Service agent she had talked to last night. He was sitting alone at a table for four. He looked unhappy and somewhat more tired than the first time she saw him.
‘So do you,’ Karen said. ‘May I join you?’
‘Why not?’ He pushed back a chair for her. She threw her coat over one of the unoccupied chairs and sat down.
‘That doesn’t look warm enough for you,’ Kraig said.
‘I haven’t been outside much,’ she said. ‘Have you?’
‘Now that you mention it, no.’
He watched her peel the top off her yogurt.
‘You don’t look as though you eat enough,’ he said.
She shrugged off the comment, sipping at her coffee with a look of distaste. ‘I hate hospitals,’ she said. ‘My grandmother was in a succession of them when she was dying. If I never see one of these cafeterias again, it will be too soon.’
Kraig nodded. He had his own hospital memories. He did not care to revisit them.
