WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Their original intent was honorable,” Baldwin tried to explain. “A war without soldiers. Isn’t that the wave of the future?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bix hadn’t recovered from his anger.
“Genetically engineered bioweapons,” Platt said in almost a whisper. It was exactly what he and Bix had discussed at the airport.
“I understand you visited the facility next door.” Baldwin paused but she wasn’t waiting for their acknowledgment. It was as if she was deciding what and how much to reveal. “There are similar facilities across the country. Most of them independently contracted so the government can deny they exist. All of them hidden in plain sight. Some as small as a field house in one of our federal parks or a test field in the middle of a farmer’s corn crop.”
“So this contamination was intentional,” Platt said.
“Yes.”
“Son of a bitch.” Bix palmed his forehead and shook his head.
“But it was not intended for schoolchildren. Someone made a mistake on one of the three orders. It was not supposed go to the NSLP.”
“Where was it supposed to go?” Bix asked.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Right.”
“I came to this party late. They’re not going to tell me those details. But I do know this much—it wasn’t supposed to stay here in the United States.”
“How did they think they’d get away with this?” Bix asked. “We have higher standards on our beef and poultry exports than on our imports. And our trading partners certainly wouldn’t accept contaminated beef.”
“Even in the best of systems it slips by, especially if it’s a new strain no one is testing for. Why do you think they chose a processing plant that tests for bacterium so often? Plausible deniability.”
Bix couldn’t restrain his anger any longer. “You know the teenagers that recovered in Norfolk are becoming ill again? This bacterium is mutating, changing … oh, but wait, that’s exactly what it was engineered to do, right?”
Baldwin didn’t answer. Bix didn’t expect her to.
He continued: “Why send us to Chicago? Why not tell me all this that first day?”
“I was told it was being taken care of. Don’t you understand? I was told to stand down by my superior. You remember who my boss’s boss is.”
She calmed herself down and glanced over her shoulder. The last of the tours had trouped through long ago.
“His boss is the president of the United States. It’s not like I can just go knock on his door and say, ‘Oh hey, by the way. That bioweapons program your secretary of agriculture and your secretary of defense developed, it almost killed over one hundred schoolkids.’”
“Might still kill them,” Platt said. Bix’s scientists were busy coming up with an antibiotic cocktail, hoping to combat the strain before it caused irreparable damage.
“What do you expect us to do?” Bix asked.
“I’m just a new undersecretary. But if the CDC and USAMRIID, along with the United States Army, take charge? Maybe it’ll make a difference.”
“Tell us what you want us to do,” Platt said before Bix could argue.