Germ

Kendrick shrugged. "Could be anyone. Jews, African-Americans. Asians, Caucasians. I guess you can say Litt's become less discriminating with age."

The president looked from Kendrick back to the flowing data on the screen. He reached out and, using a finger from each hand, jabbed key after key, apparently at random. "Stop this thing! Stop it—!"

Kendrick hit the spacebar. The names froze in place.

"This is obscene," the president said, angry, disgusted. He stood, stepped purposely for the door, stopped. He studied the glass in his hand, drained it. Without turning, he said, "Your assessment can't be right. A biological attack with a pathogen that affects everybody? White dots would cover the entire red pattern. Everyone would succumb. Imprecision and mass casualties are the hallmark of biochemical weapons. What's the point in identifying a thousand victims out of millions?"

"I said could be anyone, not everyone. Litt knows who his virus will kill. He chose them."

The president turned. "Chose them?"

Kendrick reclined back into the sofa, draping one arm across the seat back, the other raised to pull the pipe from his mouth. "Apparently Litt has designed a strain of the Ebola virus that seeks out specific individuals through their DNA. Once released into the atmosphere, the virus probably travels from host to host like a flu bug, but harmless. It checks the DNA of each host, comparing it to some set of instructions he has encoded within the virus. If it matches, it turns into full-blown Ebola; if it doesn't, it moves on to another host . . . until it finds a match."

Kendrick was calm, relaxed. He knew Jack Franklin. The man had not reached the pinnacle by following anyone's lead, by drinking anyone's Kool-Aid. He had a habit of responding differently from the people around him. If you wanted him to remain calm, you came at him in a tizzy; if you wanted him worked up—

Kendrick sighed. His eyes fluttered. He appeared ready to fall asleep. "Jack," he said, "Karl Litt has created a programmable virus. A fatal virus. No one has to get near the target. The assassin is the virus: invisible, silent, unstoppable. If you breathe, it will find you."

The president picked up the decanter. His arms lowered to hang at his sides, empty glass in one hand, whiskey in the other. He made no move to unite the two. He walked around the coffee table and dropped onto the sofa, his features drawn tight.

"Where'd the DNA come from?"

"You name it. We leave our DNA everywhere. If hospitals aren't drawing it out of our veins, we're leaving it in the combs we use, the clothes we wear, the envelopes we lick . . . Doesn't matter. Somehow, he got it. At least enough to slaughter ten thousand men, women, and children."

"Are these people he knows? Personally?"

"Not likely."

"Then why? Why do such a thing?"

"Because he can. Once the world believes he can select people at random to die so brutally, and that he's willing to do so with impunity, don't you think they will do anything to appease him? He can hold whole countries hostage. Demand anything: a hundred billion dollars, a million people for slave labor. Anything. Random, selective death. Anyone, anywhere. It's the power of God."

The president shook his head dismally. "Ten thousand American citizens?"

"For a start."

"God have mercy."

"Mmmm." He pulled once on the pipe, then turned it around to study the meerschaum rendition of Michelangelo's God, letting tendrils of smoke drift lazily out of his slightly parted lips. After a minute, he leaned over and carefully placed it on the table. "But we should not have such mercy."

"What do you mean?"

"I have one more thing to show you." He moved his finger over the laptop's track pad, grateful his hand had stopped shaking. The names scrolled.

The president moved to the edge of the sofa, leaning to watch. Kendrick caused the names to slow, then stop, then reverse. Then stopped again.

The president made a sharp noise, the way one would upon witnessing an accident. He grasped the laptop's monitor. The plastic made a popping noise as his knuckles burned white from the force of his grip. Kendrick could almost feel the air around him heat up.

Three names glowed on the screen, white letters on a black background. In format and content, they were similar to the other 9,997 names. But these and these alone would seal Litt's fate.

Kendrick suspected that the top one—John Thorogood Franklin of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC—by itself meant little to this man; he was strong enough to give his life if necessary. It was the next two that cinched it: the First Lady and their eleven-year-old son, a boy so loved and doted upon by his father that the media had— not so inaccurately—credited him with inspiring a familial inclination not seen in a chief executive for decades, and in so doing carrying the election for his dad.