"And they swallowed the story?"
50
"They had no reason not to," said Bass. "Besides the President, Secretary of Defense Wilson, and myself and a handful of scientists, no one else knew exactly what Vetterly had discovered. As far as the Joint Chiefs were concerned, the project was simply another low-budget experiment within the ugly realm of chemical-biological warfare. They suffered no qualms; nor did they ask embarrassing questions before writing it off as a failure."
"What was the purpose of circumventing the armed-forces power structure?"
"Eisenhower was an old soldier who abhorred mass-kill weapons." Bass seemed to shrivel in his chair while he collected his thoughts. "I am the last surviving member of the Quick Death Team," he continued slowly. "Unhappily, the secret will not die with me, as I had once hoped, because Mr. Pitt, here, accidentally discovered a long-lost source of the disease strain. I did not bare the facts then-nor will I now-to the men who run the Pentagon, for fear that they would consider recovering Vixen 03's cargo and storing it, in the name of national defense, against the day it might be unleashed against a future enemy."
"But surely if it came down to protecting our country . . ." Sandecker protested.
Bass shook his head. "I don't think you understand the true horror of the Quick Death organism, Admiral. Nothing known can impede its deadly effects. Allow me to cite an illustration: if five ounces of QD were delivered over Manhattan Island, the organism would seek out and kill ninety-eight percent of the population within four hours. And no one, gentlemen, no human, could set foot on the island for over three centuries. Future generations could only stand on the New Jersey shore and watch the once-mighty buildings erode and crumble over the bones of their former inhabitants."
The other men around the table paled; their blood ran cold. For a while no one spoke. They sat frozen, visualizing a city entombing three million corpses. It was Pitt who finally broke the uneasy silence.
"The people in Brooklyn and the Bronx-they would not be affected?"
"QD organisms spread in colonies. Strangely, they do not travel by human contact or by the wind. They tend to stay localized. Of course, if enough of the biological agent were delivered by aircraft or rockets, theoretically blanketing all of North America, the entire continent would become barren of all human life until the year 2300."
"Is there nothing that can kill QD?" asked Steiger.
"H-two-oh," answered Bass. "The organism can only exist in an atmosphere with a high gaseous-oxygen content. You might say it suffocates when immersed in water, just as we do."
"It strikes me as odd that Vetterly was the only one who knew how to produce it." This from Pitt.
Bass smiled thinly. "I would have never permitted one man to keep the critical data to himself."
"So you destroyed the doctor's records."
"I also falsified all orders and paperwork I could lay my hands on that related to the project, which included, by the way, the original flight plan of Vixen 03."
Steiger sat back and sighed with apparent relief. "At least that's one part of the puzzle that won't bug me any longer."
"But surely the project left tracks," Sandecker said spe3ulatively.
"Skeletons still lie on Rongelo Island," said Pitt. "And what keeps unsuspecting fishermen or yachtsmen off its beaches?"
"I'll answer your question in reverse," said Bass. "First, all nautical charts of that area designate Rongelo Island as a dumping ground for hydrogen cyanide. The shores are also ringed with buoys warning of danger."
"Hydrogen cyanide," Giordino repeated. "Sounds like bad medicine."
"Truly. It is a blood agent that interferes with all respiration. In certain doses it causes almost immediate death. This is spelled out on the charts and in six languages on signs attached to the buoys." Bass paused and pulled out a handkerchief and patted the sweat that gleamed on his bald head. "Also, what few records that remain dealing with the QD project are lying deep in a Pentagon high-security vault that contains documents classified as FEO."
"FEO?"
" 'Future eyes only,' " Bass explained. "Each file is sealed and marked with a date when it can be opened. Even the President lacks the power to examine a document's contents before the specified time. It has been referred to as the closet where our nation's skeletons are kept. The file on Amelia Earhart, UFOs, the truth behind the government's insistence on the swine-flu shots in the mid-seventies, political scandals that make the old Watergate stories seem like Boy Scout adventures. They're all there. The QD-project file, for example, cannot be opened until the year 2550. By then, President Eisenhower hoped, our descendants would fail to glean its true implications."
The other men in the NUMA conference room had never heard of the Future Eyes Only file, and they were astonished.
"I suppose the next obvious question," said Pitt, "is why, Admiral, are you taking us into your confidence?"
"I requested this meeting to clear the air on Vixen 03 because I find myself in the position of having to trust someone to recover the QD in the aircraft and destroy it."
"You're asking a great deal," Sandecker said. He relit another cigar and puffed it to life. "If the Pentagon gets wind of this, we could all be branded as traitors."
"A disagreeable possibility that cannot be overlooked," admitted Bass. "Our only comfort would be in knowing that public and moral opinion stand on our side."
"Somehow I've never quite been able to picture myself as a savior to mankind," Giordino mumbled.