Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(114)

The White House Treaty Room had always been his favorite. He had to admit that his late predecessor’s interior decorator had hit a home run with the room’s simple elegance. The off-white walls and ceiling perfectly framed the dark furniture, and even the wildly colorful rug somehow added to the room’s comfortable feel. Its location next to the Yellow Oval Room on the second floor of the White House made it the perfect private office.

Hearing the distant rumble of thunder, President Gordon walked to the window that looked out across the Truman Balcony over the South Lawn. As a flash of lightning ripped the sky, he began a slow count. Six, seven, eight. The rumble was louder this time, only a mile and a half away. Fat raindrops spattered the room’s eastern window, although none carried beneath the overhang to strike the panes where he stood.

Sliding the latch, the president lifted the window, letting the damp, musty-smelling air fill his lungs. The Secret Service hated for him to stand by a window, much less open one. Didn’t matter. He was the boss and he’d do as he’d always done, exactly as he pleased.

Washington, D.C., rarely got thunderstorms this late in the year, November lending itself more to cold, foggy rain. Tomorrow some damn fool congressman would probably be on television claiming this was proof of global warming.

Gordon glanced up at President Grant’s portrait staring down at him, as if he were expecting something. Shit. The whole f*cking world was expecting something.

The news out of Africa couldn’t have been better. Although there’d been some trouble with rioting at distribution centers that ran out of serum, the Marines had quelled the mobs with no loss of American life. And from every region where the nanite formula had been delivered, the effectiveness of the treatment stunned the world monitoring organizations.

Doctors Without Borders reported the complete eradication of HIV and AIDS in the injected populations. Not just AIDS. Every single known disease was being wiped out across Africa. There were even reports of late-stage Ebola virus infections being cured.

But such success had a price. Riots had broken out in countries that were not on the early distribution list. Despite the extensive US production program, the United Nations was up in arms over the limited quantities of serum currently available. They wanted nanites and they wanted them now. When the United States refused to publish the procedure for manufacturing the nanite serum, several countries established scientific programs to reverse engineer the formula by extracting blood from people who had received the injections or by stealing shipments of formula from the distribution centers.

The Russians and Chinese had gone so far as to threaten a military response if the United States failed to assist them in setting up their own production facilities, only backing down after President Gordon threatened to stop all serum shipments.

Not that everyone was thrilled with the worldwide distribution of nanites. Several Muslim leaders had issued a fatwa proclaiming that the serum was a product of Satan and that anyone using it was condemned, both in this life and the next.

Gordon shook his head. No virgins for them.

Numerous American Christian groups hadn’t been happy about the nanite serum either. Between the religious nuts and the right-wing conspiracy theorists, the Secret Service was so busy following up on presidential death threats that he couldn’t sneeze without five agents throwing their bodies on top of him.

The sound of the secure phone ringing brought the president out of his reverie. Returning to his chair, he lifted it to his ear.

“Yes?”

“Mr. President, this is Bob Adams.”

“Okay Bob, what’s wrong.” A call from his national security advisor this late at night was never good news.

“We’ve got a problem at Henderson House.”

“Go on.”

“Last night, a janitor without the appropriate clearance gained access to the underground levels and then escaped from the building. So far he’s managed to evade the special security teams sent out to collect him.”

“Why am I just now finding out about this?”

“Apparently, Dr. Frell felt the situation could be contained before he reported it.”

“That stupid bastard!”

“Unfortunately, it gets worse. The janitor was using a false identity.”

“How’d it pass security checks?”

“That’s just it. This was a very professional job, fake background investigation, the works. We still don’t know how he managed it. From items our team found in the hotel where he’s been living, we know who it was.”

“And?”

“And it was Freddy Hagerman. DNA samples from blood found on razor wire at Henderson House confirm it.”

George Gordon clenched his right fist so tightly that his fingernails dug into the skin of his palm, the small cuts healing before he could notice. The name left him cold. Freddy Hagerman. The f*cking New York Times reporter who had broken the Priest Williams story.

“Listen to me, Bob. You know as well as I do what a public release of information on that program would do to us, to the country.” President Gordon paused. “I want this moved to absolute top priority. I don’t care what it takes; I want you to nail that son of a bitch before he can go public. You follow me?”

Bob Adams cleared his throat. “Yes, Mr. President.”

“And get me Dr. Frell. I want his ass on the next plane to D.C.” President Gordon slammed the telephone into its cradle without waiting for a response.