The story of a lifetime falls right into Sean Donahue’s lap. An anonymous tipster provides evidence that suggests the United States government covered up an Ebola-like outbreak that killed the entire populace of an obscure Venezuelan village.
With help from Elizabeth Gilroy, a brilliant virologist at the National Institutes of Health, Sean figures out why the government covered up the outbreak: They caused it.
As Sean works on his story, he’s surprised by a visit from Cate Kelly, a CIA agent with whom Sean has a long and unhappy history. She tries to stop him from breaking the story: first by logic and later by force.
Sean isn’t the kind to give up. Worried about being scooped, Sean risks his reputation by publishing his story, even though he no longer holds much of the evidence and the government has promised to discredit him.
Much to his surprise, the government admits to everything in Sean’s story. A sequence of screw-ups led to an outbreak and they tried to keep it quiet to avoid embarrassment.
Except Sean knows their explanation can’t possibly be right. He’s got a choice: use his revived fame to move up and on... or keep searching, raise the ire of the government and possibly prove himself wrong.
Sean can’t help himself. He keeps asking questions. The answers show that the government’s mea culpa is covering up something much worse. Initially, it looks like Elizabeth’s boss has been secretly testing vaccines to treat hemorrhagic fever viruses (like Ebola) on people in developing countries.
Then Sean figures out that it’s not the cures they’re testing: It’s the viruses. This isn’t your typical WMD. They’ve created a fast-acting formulation a person could ingest (knowingly or unknowingly) that can be remotely detonated.
It’s a new and terrifying version of a biological suicide bomb.
The problem is that the more Sean probes, the cloudier the situation becomes. Initially, he’s positive this is the work of the CIA and that’s why Cate has tried so hard to keep him away from the truth. But Cate swears she’s trying to stop Elizabeth (with whom Sean has become romantically entangled) from selling the bioweapon to the Venezuelans.
Every piece of evidence Sean uncovers can be explained, but each woman has a different story. Obviously, one of them is lying. Sean’s life will depend on his ability to figure out which one.
This story started life as a screenplay. Feedback on that was that it was too small: It was mostly just Sean, Elizabeth and Cate. When I expanded it, it got too big for a movie. I wrote a well-received television pilot, but ultimately decided that it’s really a novel.
This is a book that combines elements of noir with a political thriller. It’s set in the Washington DC tourists never see and the nightly news doesn’t bother with. My characters are the men and women who keep the country running but whose names you will probably never know: journalists, diplomatics, intelligence officers and scientists. DC has some of the highest concentrations of each.
Sean is a traditional noir hero who personifies Raymond Chandler’s famous dictate: There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself. The woman have raised the traditional stakes. They’re not trying to get out of unhappy romantic entanglements: they’re trying to change the world (for better or worse). One of them is using Sean and the other is trying to save him. Even if you figure out which is which, you’ll wonder whether Sean will figure it out in time.