Chapter 45

William Melrose sat at his desk, staring down at a pile of paperwork in front of him. He barely registered the opening and then closing of his office door. When he glanced up, his eyes came into direct contact with those of Lee Stetson.

Usually, the Section Chief was the one who did the scrutinizing, always on the lookout for telltale clues as to what was going on behind the sometimes very private walls that agents built around them.

This time, Billy felt as though he were the one under the microscope.

"Something I can do for you, Scarecrow?"

"No," Lee replied. "But there is something that you can do for me."

"And that would be?"

"That would be get off of your feet and get some rest. No offense Billy, but you look like hell."

"I'll note that in the file," Billy grumbled.

"Come on Billy," Lee insisted.

"Lee, in case you haven't noticed, we've got a plague to contend with. I've got sick employees, I've got panicked employees, I've got missing ones and I've got ones that I'm trying to keep out of harm's way. I've got a pile of messages higher than the Washington Monument and I've got a lot of answers that people are demanding. I don't have time to rest."

Lee walked right up to the edge of Billy's desk and leaned over it, bracing himself on the palms of his hands as he looked straight at his supervisor.

"And you're going to join the really sick employees if you don't take some downtime."

"I don't have time for downtime," Billy retorted loudly. Then, lowering his voice, he returned Lee's stare. "We're down a director, in case you hadn't heard."

"I heard, loud and clear," Lee replied. "We don't need to be down a Section Chief as well. That would mean they'd bring Dirk out of retirement and I'm really not so sure that I could handle him."

Billy snorted.

"The day they bring him back, I'm packed and off to Hawaii, permanently."

"Well, well, well. Finally, something we agree on."

"Look Lee, I know you mean well. But I've got to make replies back to people, very important people. You might know a few of them, like the President."

"Okay, so I'm sure they want to know that everything is being taken care of as efficiently as possible. It is, what more do they need to know?"

Billy leaned back in his chair.

"For starters, they want to know how this got by the radar."

Lee turned around and walked over to the window, glad that Billy's blinds were still pulled down.

"Yeah, I was asking the same question when PD-2 came to town," Lee told him.

Then he turned around, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looking down at the floor.

"Believe me Billy, if I could have prevented this, don't you think I would have? The first inkling of anything was from Rhonda. And she didn't have much. It took TP until the wee hours of the morning to find anything printable, up until then it was just a few overheard conversations that didn't translate into anything. It was already too late."

"I know," Billy answered him. "The President has a legitimate reason to be concerned. I would be too, especially since almost the entire intelligence community was targeted."

"Scary, I know."

"Damn scary," Billy leaned forward.

"Do you know what we've got on our hands? This is a precursor to a bioterrorism attack. A deliberate release of a disease causing agent into the general public. Extremely hard to detect, delayed symptoms, and easily passed from one person to another. The CDC would classify it as a Category A agent. You want to know what I've learned about that?"

Lee didn't answer the older man, as he knew Billy was going to tell him anyhow.

"A Category A agent has both a high potential for maximum impact and an extremely high potential for large-scale dissemination. According to McJohn, this Yersinia pestis bacterium or the pneumonic plague has a history of biological warfare use. It dates back for centuries. This little bug has everything in its favor, including the fact that it can slip right through security checks the world over. Any crackpot out there, given the right capability, can infect anyone else."

"I know that."

"Infect one person Lee, just one. Put that individual on a plane, a train, a ship or back at their home office. By the time they get sick enough for anyone to figure out what the hell is going on, do you know how much damage can be done?"

Yeah Billy, as a matter of fact I do," Lee retorted back.

Tired and frustrated and worried, Lee launched into a full-scale tirade, his voice rising with each word.

"I've got a wife who has it and she's petrified that she may have infected her two sons with it and, right now I don't know exactly where the hell they are because she's too sick to be able to give me the information. So, yeah, I think I understand exactly what is going on here."

Lee strode right up to Billy's desk and slammed his hands down on the edge, hard enough that Billy actually felt it shake beneath the Scarecrow's rage.

"Maybe the President would like to tell me what the hell I tell her if I don't find Phillip and Jamie before it's too late. Maybe he'd like to tell me how to explain to her that her sons died because she works for a government intelligence agency that's supposed to serve as a peace keeping unit, protecting individuals and maintaining law and order among the masses. Maybe he'd like to tell her that her husband couldn't find her sons in time because he was being held in lock down in an isolation unit."

Lee inhaled briefly.

"How do I explain that one to her, huh? You said it yourself from day one, she's got great instincts, she's a natural and she loves her job. How do you tell your wife that it was because of her job, the one where she thought she was making a difference?"

Lee moved to Billy's couch, his voice lowering a little as he sat down.

"How do you explain to her that this was the type of difference she made, huh? How Billy? How?"