TSK
Chapter Nineteen – Part 1
5:20 AM
The telephone was ringing again; he could hear it from where he lay. Just as it had rang a few minutes earlier and still; he could nothing about it. Dimly he heard the answering machine pick it up and begin recording the message. It was too far away from where he lay to make out the words, but he was almost positive that he knew the voice.
It was someone he knew. Maybe they would come, he thought.
He heard the click as the call ended and closed his eyes. He couldn't put a name to the voice and yet, somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought that maybe the person would come.
He closed his eyes again, as he lay there on the cold tile of his bathroom floor, unable to even summon up enough strength to crawl back out to the bedroom.
Maybe was all he could hope for.
Maybe.
TSK
Chapter Nineteen – Part 2
5:20 AM
Once again, the call went to the answering machine and, once again, Billy left a coded message requesting Smyth to report in.
"I don't care if he did call in and put himself on an unscheduled leave," Billy grumbled after he hung up the phone.
Billy had no more than finished that sentence when his phone did ring. He snatched it up in his hand quickly, hoping that it was Smyth.
Instead, he found himself talking to McJohn.
He listened quietly, then grabbed his pen and began jotting notes down onto a legal pad. After nearly filling the entire page up, McJohn finished his list.
McJohn asked him if he had any questions.
"Yes, I do. I already know that I've got an unaccountable. If it were any of the other guys, I'd say he was out high timing it with some floozy and just ignoring his check-ins, but this is Dr. Smyth."
"Right. Thanks."
Billy hung up the phone and looked down at the list. He thought it was long and yet, he knew McJohn had a much longer list to deal with it.
"God help us," Billy prayed.
TSK
Chapter Nineteen – Part 3
Billy walked out into the bullpen and headed straight to the workstation where Cheryl Carrington was located. He noticed that she already had two assistants with her, Ana and Jan. The three women were already hard at work.
"Ladies," he greeted them.
"Good morning Mr. Melrose."
"Good morning, sir."
"I wish it was. I need your help. Do the three of you know what a Magna Alpha, double red, all birds to roost, ASAP means?"
"Yes, sir," Cheryl responded. "All employees need to return to the Agency immediately and we've obviously got something very big going down."
Billy nodded.
"As of right now, I need to contact each and every employee, from agents down to janitorial. We also need to check the logs of everyone who has come in this building in the last seven days. I need every name on those lists to file a PWS-15 immediately."
"What's a PWS-15?" Jan asked him.
"It's a personal whereabouts sheet. I need to know every where an employee has been, every person that they've come into contact with and I need it yesterday."
"Same for the outside visitors?" Ana inquired.
"Everybody. If I've got agents out in the field, if they have not been in the building or in contact with anyone who has been in the building in the last seven days, I need them to stay put. Isolate themselves until further notice."
"Right away," Cheryl responded.
"Oh, then I need every agent to contact each member of their network. Same rules apply. If they've been in personal contact with anybody from the intelligence community, CIA, FBI, any of the other departments, we need to know."
All three women nodded.
"Can I ask what's going on?" Ana said.
Billy sighed.
"I might as well tell you. The Agency is about to become an isolation facility. We've got the potential for a major epidemic and we're doing all we can to nip it in the bud. Once everyone is in the house or located, nobody leaves, nobody else comes in and then we all pray."
Billy handed her the list he jotted down.
"I need several copies of that made, please. You can each keep one, I need one, make additional."
Cheryl took the page from him.
"May I ask what kind of epidemic?"
Billy looked at all three women.
"The plague," he told them. "It's the plague."