The Hidden Vector: A Spy Thriller

by Mathew Snyder

  She wrestled with her own suit, a mass of blue plastic that enveloped her thin arms and legs. As she struggled to enter the transparent hood, he approached to help. She raised her hand, and he stopped short of clutching the suit at her chest. He backed away and let her wriggle into the suit.

  They entered the primary hallway through another air lock. Now they were in the full biosecurity environment. There were BSL-4 facilities like this across the globe, built by governments and universities, each strictly controlled to prevent catastrophe. This place was hidden from all others, a containment within a building within a complex in a place that no one knew. How did they accomplish this? It didn’t matter. He would do his work as slowly as he could. Then he would find a way out if he could.

  He followed her to the lab marked with a black alpha. Work benches with glass hoods covered the walls. Metal stools with plastic seats were arranged neatly in the center of each hood, unused and unmoved. In the corner stood a stainless-steel autoclave, obscured by a half-dozen coils of pneumatic tubes hanging from above. The textured floor scuffed and scraped his heavy rubber boots as he walked.

  Everything within the room flowed away from harm. Vents diverted air about the room to avoid the drift of microbes. Somewhere above, filters scrubbed the air free of contaminants. So below, great vats and plumbing drained away fluids, cleaning them with elaborate sequences of filters to prevent microscopic ruin from escaping. The room contained the danger, driving it and controlling it as part of a considered plan. He was part of that plan now, a piece of equipment employed to control the dangerous pathogen they desired. Their interest in him was mechanical, a filter to be replaced once it outlived its utility.

  She directed him to one of the hoods. He approached and coupled his suit to one of the yellow hoses. Rushing air again filled his suit. It cooled his back and limbs, and he became aware of the uncomfortable body heat that built up so quickly. He placed himself on the stool and arranged his hands on the hood to balance while he examined the space.

  From behind, she grabbed his tether and cut off the air supply flowing into his suit. The sound vanished in his ears and he started. What is she doing? He began to panic, but she placed her other hand on his shoulder and shouted into his visor.

  “I’m going to retrieve the samples for today’s work. Prepare your space,” she said.

  She released his hose and the flow of white noise again filled the space within his suit. He took deep breaths to relax. She was just speaking to him. That was all. He reminded himself she would not be his executioner.

  He investigated the workstation. A centrifuge occupied the left portion of the hood. Pipettes and shell vials were in easy reach. He found drawers with labels and tapes and a marker for samples. All of it was neatly arranged and undisturbed, awaiting his arrival. How long have they known about me?

  She returned to the room with a small white box that she placed on the hood next to him, then stepped away to attach a pneumatic hose to her own blue suit.

  With care, he opened the box. It cradled two slender vials of his own blood. This was no surprise. He recalled Hector draining the blood from his arm what seemed like a decade ago. This was a portion of his blood from a time the virus had resurged in his body. Since, the antiviral treatment had tamed his blood, though not exactly purified it.

  They expected great and terrible things from his blood. From these smaller vials—or at most two or three more like them—he must revive the demon his comrades in Russia had created at VECTOR. He had corrupted the data he had access to there. He had destroyed every sample he could, save the one he injected into himself. A desperate act but a necessary one. They would make more, he did not doubt. But it would take time. His efforts were wasted now that he knew the truth. He would not be a whistleblower. He was a prisoner now more than ever before.

  He wanted to smash the vials on the ground and let the fluid that was once from his body flow down the drain. But the vials kept him alive, so long as Hector needed them. He regretted ever injecting himself with the virus. He was foolish to think he could develop more of the cure once safely outside Russia. There was no journalist waiting for him in Istanbul. It was these people. They had fooled him all the way along.

  The idea wasn’t his. At first it was Masoumeh’s back in Iran. Kamran lived under the mullah’s regime far too long in Iran to misunderstand the man’s curiosity about his work. When Masoumeh suggested that he procure a sample as they ate together one fall afternoon in the university lounge, he knew who Masoumeh was. What he was. That was how it happened—Masoumeh calculating his suggestion as one explains an equation. Iran wished to possess the virus. Kamran wished for his family to live as they were accustomed. He agreed seven long years ago to bide his time in the exchange program with Russia and find a way to get a sample out.

  The way out was madness. Injecting himself with the virus was never the plan. Defying Masoumeh was never his plan, but that plan ended when he watched his countrymen rise up against the regime. He dared to hope for revolution that summer, then watched it die on his laptop in his Koltsovo dormitory. He worried the Russians would find out and interrogate him. Maybe send him back.

  The Basij shot a young woman in Tehran that summer. Her name was Neda, and he watched the shaking camera as blood flowed from her mouth and her nose, pouring out as easily as one pours out tea. He watched the brilliant red cover her lovely face until his stomach folded in on itself and he wanted to vomit. He later read she called out her last words. “I’m burning,” she had said. “I’m burning.” He found her photograph and fell in love with her face. He read everything about her. She studied poetry and music. He longed for her, even knowing he would never see her. Each time he watched her terrifying death on his laptop, rage like a cancer grew in his stomach. He wept. He watched it many times while someone said to her over and over “Neda, don’t be afraid.” He did all of this for her, despite his fear. All for Neda.

  Masoumeh’s plan died with her. It took him almost ten years to craft a new plan. The Turkish journalist said she could give him protection. Once the opportunity arrived, it took him only three days to book his flights and barely an hour to complete his sabotage in the lab. Injecting the virus was the only way to carry it undetected. He remembered watching the needle enter his skin and feeling the same sick sensation in his stomach. His antiviral treatment would work, or he would die. He had taken only the few pills he had developed for himself, and barely enough for that. Everything fell to the efficacy of his own work. He would carry out the first human test on himself as an act of survival. If it failed, others could die. But what could he do? Days ago, when his despair was deepest, he wished he had died.

  It would take the Russians months to recreate the virus. This comforted him. When he planned his escape, he dared to hope it would take years. By then he could tell the world what they were doing. He could hide away and find asylum somewhere. He fancied Paris, where he had studied briefly. The winters there were nothing like Russia’s cold and dark nights. But his plan had been for nothing. The world presumed him dead in the jetliner’s explosion. Now, it was nothing for them to kill him. He was already dead to everyone else.

  Hector demanded he grow the virus. Kamran had fled the greatest scientists in the world who would need months to grow the pathogen again. With a living sample, it would take him a week to restore their work. If there was an Allah, he had a twisted plan for men.

  In just over two hours, he emerged from the secure laboratory into a rain of chemical shower. The flashes of heat returned, welling around him in the cloying suit. Perspiration dampened his scrubs. He exited the airlock door and leaned against a table to catch his breath before he struggled with the suit’s zippered seal.

  His laboratory partner followed and helped him remove the protective suit. She stood facing him, her eyes locked downward on the zipper tab. He stared at her then, his face inches from hers with two layers of visor between them. He admired her features and wondered whether she also faced s
ome ultimatum. Or was she with them?

  With the suit’s upper half removed, he reached out to help with hers. Again, she moved to keep his hand away from her. Their eyes locked, and he stared at her while he kept his hand firm. He pulled the tab up across her chest as she simply stared back. Then he raised his gloved hands in surrender and offered her a meek smile.

  “I am only trying to help you,” he said.

  “I do not need your assistance.”

  “I meant no harm.”

  “Continue on to the showers. You first. You’ll need to undress here.”

  “Here?” he asked while looking about the tiny room.

  “Of course. Your clothes must be decontaminated.”

  He couldn’t speak. Undressing in front of his guards was shameful enough for him. For her to see his naked body was beyond humiliation. He felt flush as a wave of nausea rumbled from his stomach to his throat. The sickening feeling transformed into a kernel of resentment within him. His teeth clenched, and his thoughts coalesced into a single realization. They could beat him and shame him. They could even kill him as they almost certainly would. All of this they did with his assent. This was the consequence of his own weakness and fear. He had to shed his old self, his old pride and his vanities. These were the real levers of their power over him. How could he escape with these things inside him?

  He stepped from the protective suit and stripped away the green tunic and trousers. For a moment he stood before her naked with an intensity in his eyes directed at her. His pale and weakened body was pitiful. He knew it. He stood with his jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists at his side. She mistook his anger for shame, but he didn’t care. He left her smug look and yanked the next steel door to enter the shower and wash it all away.

  Chapter 13: Without Tether

  Bethesda, Maryland

  9:33 p.m., Saturday, June 15

  Paul watched couples dance on a parquet floor to a Marvin Gaye tune. He stayed put in a stiff padded chair at one of the large dining tables. Janey left him there so she could chat with friends and donors. Events like this brought out her best. For him, they were drudgery. She flitted through the crowd bright-eyed and smiling. Paul sagged in the chair from too little sleep. He was content to sit and sip his red wine, which was too tart and thin for his tastes. But it was something to do. The meal was much better. To Janey’s relief, their dinner companions raved about the beef tenderloin and chocolate torte. He didn’t know any of these people, but he did his best to make small talk despite the strong possibility that in eastern Europe a group of unknown killers had kidnapped an Iranian biological weapons expert.

  The dinner companions scattered to the dance floor and the bar. They abandoned maroon napkins on the white tablecloth in a ring of Rorschach blots that hypnotized him while he mulled over the last two days’ developments. Pierce’s discovery in some Romanian wine cellar had escalated the entire affair. With that, Paul’s assignment from Harley Gilchrist to root out a sleeper element fell apart in two hours. He didn’t have much choice in the matter. He had to share Pierce’s report with Suzanne, and up the chain from there. By yesterday’s end, more than a half dozen senior officers and directors had read Pierce’s report. Three of those were on Paul’s mental checklist of candidates for this Scorpio group. But the real truth was it could be any of them.

  Before yesterday morning, none of them had ever heard of Kamran Khorasani. Now meetings began with verbal reminders about security and stern faces at the faintest suggestion of WMDs. Khorasani’s expertise in biological warfare research got everyone’s attention. Even Drummond had stopped suggesting this was all about Ukraine.

  He had to focus on next steps for his team. But the inevitable cost was his work on Scorpio. Every little detail, every twist of intel he’d laid out in two weeks hoping to lure out this hidden group’s mole dissolved the moment Pierce’s report disseminated. Mention of Scorpio didn’t come up. He’d removed it from Pierce’s report. Harley had a heavy hand in avoiding its mention during two briefings yesterday. Neither he nor Harley could prevent the insider from knowing those next steps. With their secret revealed, he had to assume Scorpio knew what they knew. They’d react and adjust, and again he’d be steps behind them.

  He needed some air. He finished off the astringent wine and left his own napkin on the table. A murmur of voices floated over the dance floor music. Masses of people circulated around the mostly empty tables. He passed an older woman who sat alone to touch up her lipstick in a tiny brass mirror. She blinked and smiled at him, then returned to the compact to tend her appearance. He maneuvered through the crowd, nodding at strangers who caught his eye as he pushed past their conversation circles. Pressed in by the crowd, he smelled the alcohol on their breath. He patted a man’s shoulder to pass and made his way to a long wall of French doors that faced the green fairways of the club course.

  The air outside hung heavy with humidity that remained from the afternoon storm, though the heat had faded since sunset. Clouds rolled by overhead, shifting southeastward toward the coast. He crossed the flagstone patio and stood before a row of privet bushes that fenced off the clubhouse from the empty golf course. At the far end of the patio to his right a group of men smoked cigars and guffawed at one another’s jokes. He caught a faint scent of the smoke and the urge to savor one himself came on strong. Janey forgave most things, but smelling like an ashtray would earn him at least one lonely night in bed. She put up with much, but a relapse would earn the wrath of her silent treatment.

  “Paul?” said a distracting voice behind him. “I thought that was you. Mind if I join you?”

  He turned and saw a vaguely familiar face, a man from the Agency named Brian Crowley. Last he knew, Crowley worked under his counterpart in HUMINT managing a team of collections officers. The man had thin eyes that always seemed to be part of an unserious sneer.

  “Be my guest,” Paul said.

  Brian perched a tumbler of vodka in his left hand and extended his right to him. Paul felt obliged to shake it.

  “Nice night out here.”

  “It’s all right. Humid as hell,” he said.

  “I guess it is. Still better than in there.” Brian nodded back toward the banquet hall.

  They had that in common, at least. Paul escaped to the patio to avoid the idle chatter and the crowd’s drone that grew louder by the drink. Instead, he’d given Brian the opportunity to catch him alone. He barely knew the man. His work overseeing collections in HUMINT meant he’d probably seen reports from Pierce. There was even a chance he’d come across a reference to Scorpio. But this was no chance meeting. With that realization, his mouth dried as he tried to swallow. He had to be more alert.

  “I guess our better halves know each other. Alicia says Jane is an inspiration. Says she can barely keep up with her.”

  “That sounds like my Janey,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and forced himself to stand still. “I’m surprised we haven’t bumped into one another before at these things. Your wife been doing this long?”

  “No, this is her first event, really. I encourage her to get out and participate. This is such a good fit for her. She loves kids. She’s volunteered for the after-school program some this spring.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Listen, I’m glad I caught you out here. Just wanted to let you know I’m interested in branching out, taking on a new role. I’d love to shift over to your side of things.”

  “You know the drill. This isn’t the best place to discuss it,” Paul said. His eyebrows narrowed, and he must have given the man the frustrated frown that Janey hated so much.

  “Right, right. I understand. Just wanted to let you know personally how much I’d appreciate that. I think I can do more, you know?”

  “I think I do,” Paul said flatly.

  “That’s great. Thanks for that. And maybe not mention it just yet to my supervisor.”

  “Well, if we can’t keep secrets, what good are we?”

 
Brian’s eyes narrowed to thinner slits. His face tightened as he parsed Paul’s response. Then he belted out a laugh. His face and fading hairline flushed pink, matching his bared gums while his laughter grew long and loud enough to distract the cigar smokers at the far end of the patio.

  “That’s really great. Thanks, Paul.”

  “I think I need to get myself a drink,” he said. “Excuse me.”

  Brian raised his glass to salute him as Paul returned to the party through the French doors. Three weeks ago, he would have shrugged off the awkward encounter. Now, Harley Gilchrist had him jumping at shadows. Was Brian putting on an act? Maybe Brian was just a distraction. There was a time he handled himself better than this, when his confidence kept him alert and alive. He had survived months in Bogotá, ready for anything around any corner. Now a red-headed social climber set him on his heels. It was almost embarrassing. He had to get ahead of this thing. It had always been this way, this competitive urge within him. He could handle faster opponents, stronger ones. God doesn’t grant everyone the same gifts, his mother used to say. He had made a career of thinking ahead of better men.

  He checked his watch. Almost 2200 hours. The sun was coming up in Romania. He needed to warn Pierce. Scorpio wasn’t going to ground. If they really did have someone at Langley—and it was a wise bet they did—their reaction was obvious. They had to cut Pierce out, whatever that meant. Pierce’s work increased the pressure against Scorpio’s members, so now they had to relieve that pressure. Pierce wouldn’t need to seek them out. They would come to him.