Pandemic

Always protective of her staff, Savard stepped in. "Even in ballistics, a far more traceable science, you need to find the gun before you can match a bullet to it. Short of what we've known for some time — that the powder on those letters was consistent with what the Iraqis and Soviets were producing in the eighties — we will never be able to narrow down the origins until you and your colleagues. find us some source material to compare it to." She leaned forward in her seat and eyed Clayton steadily. "Find us a smoking gun, Alex, and we'll tell you if it's the right one."

Clayton chuckled. "I'm not packing today, Gwen."

Though Savard maintained a healthy suspicion for anyone associated with the CIA, Clayton's ability to laugh at himself and his organization — an exceedingly rare characteristic among the spies she'd met — endeared Clayton to her. In spite of his brash, reckless demeanor, she liked the guy. Not quite enough though to ever accept one of his offers for coffee or a movie.

"So, in summary, you've made no progress on the anthrax case," Moira Roberts interjected with a heavy sigh. In just a few months on the job, the Deputy Director of the FBI had already cemented her reputation as a humorless and brusque bureaucrat In her early forties like Gwen, Roberts was one of the youngest deputy directors in the FBI's history, but with her gray hair and formless matronly wardrobe, few realized she was still on the young side of middle age. "Dr. Savard, is there any possibility we can move on to variola major?"

Gwen Savard resisted the rising ire. Who was this woman trying to impress by tossing around esoteric phyla names? Even the people in the know, and Roberts wasn't one, always referred to it as smallpox. But Gwen refused to let Roberts draw her into another confrontation in front of the whole committee. She wasn't about to give the otherwise male group more locker-room fodder with another demonstration of alpha females butting heads.

"No problems with smallpox," Gwen said, realizing the irony of her remark but choosing not to rephrase it. "Vaccine production is on schedule. We should have 300 million doses available by spring. The logistics of the vaccination program are still being hashed out. Public Health estimates a minimum of one year to inoculate the majority of the population."

The group discussed the smallpox vaccination program a few minutes longer, before moving on to monkey pox. Every week the committee covered all the communicable big hitters of bioterrorism: anthrax, botulism, stnallpox, Ebola, cholera, the plague, Q fever, typhoid, shigellosis, brucellosis, and tularemia. The panel cut across all government and scientific agencies. Aside from CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security, there was at least one representative from the Centers for Disease Control, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, and the Department of the Environment.

The last item on the agenda led to a sobering discussion on the vulnerability of the East Coast's water reservoirs to tampering, one of the committee's favorite topics. And with good reason.

Clive Graves pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose again and sorted through the notes in front of him. "It would not necessarily involve a significant amount of the botulism toxin either. If they could push the water concentration to a level in the neighborhood of one nannogram per milliliter, we are talking about thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, of fatalities," he said in a delivery so flat that he managed to make one of Gwen's greatest fears sound tedious.

Moira Roberts nodded somberly. "We can only provide so much security for every reservoir in the country," she said. "This is another example of why it is so vital that we have better information on terrorist activity abroad."

"Of course, Moira, if only the CIA did our job better we would be worry-free." Clayton laughed facetiously. "Let's not forget how long the last batch of terrorists was operating on our soil before they acted," he said calmly.

Roberts eyed him coolly. "There's no reason to finger-point, Mr. Clayton. I am merely suggesting that local security alone will not remove the threat."

"And I am telling you," Clayton said, matching her clipped tone, "that the CIA cannot track every person on the planet with a petri dish and a hate-on for the States."

Rubbing her temples, Savard sat back and allowed the heated debate to rage on concerning the level of security at water reservoirs. While Clayton and Roberts squared off, the rest of the group fractured into its usual factions — the scientific and environmental types on one side, the security and military types on the other.

After about fifteen circular minutes, Savard reluctantly cut Clayton off in midsnipe at Roberts. "We've only got a few minutes left for roundtable discussion," Gwen said.