The Cobra Event

by Richard Preston

  Then she went into a hallway. Down the hall was a door standing half open. It led to Kate’s bedroom.

  It was a beautiful room, with bare brick walls, illuminated by a skylight. It was cluttered with a teenager’s life. There was an unmade bed, a poster for Phish on the wall—the drummer Jon Fishman strutting onstage wearing a dress. There was a poster of a Vermeer painting: a young woman playing the clavichord. In the closet she found baggy jeans, tight silk tops, little strap dresses, a short leather jacket. Kate must have been sensitive and hip, somewhat arty. There was an old bureau. A maple box containing odd bits of junky jewelry. There was a desk with a computer, and a table piled with bric-a-brac. There were joke dolls, a row of flutes and pennywhistles lined up next to each other, made of wood, plastic, reed, and steel. In the center of the table stood a dollhouse. This had to be Kate’s art table. There were small antique boxes, large new metal boxes. Small metal cans and tubes. A can that said, “Twinings Earl Grey Tea.” Plastic containers of all shapes and colors. Delicate boxes made of wood. Everything was well organized and ordered.

  Austen had been wondering about the issue of drugs. She opened the drawers in the desk and opened some of the boxes, looking for drug paraphernalia. There was nothing like that to be found. She began to rule out Dr. Dudley’s hypothesis that Kate might have been a drug user. This was not the bedroom of a druggie.

  Kate had had quirky taste and an unusual sense of color and shape. Austen switched on her electronic camera and began to take photographs of the room. The light from the skylight gave everything a cool radiance. Momentarily she felt as if Kate were standing in the room with her; it could not be so, but she felt the existence of a world next to ours. That world was real, in a sense, for Kate was present in the arrangement of the objects, which had not been moved or touched since her death.

  Austen opened up a box. Inside it was a mechanical toy beetle. It stared at her with sad green jeweled eyes. She put it down in the spot where she had found it, reluctant to move Kate’s arrangements. In another box was a miniature cast-metal car. The camera focused automatically. She began shooting everything. There was a box full of bird feathers: from blue jays, a cardinal, a crow, and a banded feather that she thought might have come from a red-tailed hawk, but she wasn’t sure. There was a box made of wood with a polygon painted on it. She tried to open it but it had a puzzle catch she couldn’t figure out, so she took a picture of it. She photographed a sharp-looking jagged metal spring. She photographed a chunk of green malachite. An old skeleton key in a padlock. The skull of some small bird, maybe a sparrow. An amethyst geode. Then there was the dollhouse. Kate seemed to be taking it apart. She stepped back and took a picture of the dollhouse. She took a picture of the whole room. She wondered if she would ever look at these pictures again. They might hold information. Or maybe not. She jotted a few notes in her green epi notebook.

  Tracking

  AUSTEN FOLLOWED the same route to school that Kate had taken every morning: she walked to Union Square and then took the subway to the Upper East Side, trying to get a feel for Kate’s world. The Mater School was situated in a quiet, wealthy neighborhood, among town houses. Austen arrived there at three o’clock in the afternoon. The headmistress, Sister Anne Threader, had ordered a morning assembly and chapel, and then had canceled classes but had kept the students in school for a day of reflection and prayer. She had dismissed school shortly before Austen arrived, but some of the students had elected to stay, and Sister Threader had seen no way to argue with that. She was a tiny woman in late middle age, with straight white hair and piercing eyes. She wore a pale blue dress rather than a nun’s habit. “Kate was a much loved person here,” she said to Austen. She led her to the art room. Three students were there, sitting around, doing nothing. They were subdued, in shock, and had been crying.

  “Where is Mr. Talides?” Sister Anne asked them.

  “He went home,” one of the students said. “He was feeling really bad.”

  “I’m so angry, Anne,” another young woman said to the headmistress. It was Jennifer Ramosa. She had been crying with rage about that which she could not change.

  “God understands your feelings,” Sister Anne said. “He loves Kate as you love her, and he understands your being angry.”

  “I saw her die,” Jennifer said. Her voice trembled.

  Sister Anne took Jennifer’s hands. “Life is a mystery, and death is a mystery when it occurs. When you are reunited with Kate you will have answers, but for now what we need to be asking is what Kate would want us to do.”

  Austen felt the question herself. What would Kate want of her?

  “Kate never got a chance,” Jennifer said.

  “We don’t know that,” Sister Anne said. She suggested that they all pray.

  Finally the headmistress said, “This is Dr. Alice Austen. She is here to try to find out what happened to Kate.”

  “I’m a doctor working with the City of New York,” Austen said.

  “Kates was one of my best friends,” Jennifer Ramosa said. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “I think she would want us to find out what happened,” Austen said. Then she said, “May I look around the room?”

  She poked around the art room while the girls watched her, and Sister Anne spoke quietly with them. Nothing seemed unusual. There were coffee cans gobbed with paints. Tubes of gesso, canvas on stretchers. Kate’s project area had been a table in the corner. On it stood more of Kate’s things and a very large construction that looked like a house, sort of a dollhouse, but larger and more complicated.

  Austen turned and faced the students. “Did the art teacher, Mr. Talides, get close to Kate when she was ill?”

  Two of the girls nodded.

  She turned to the headmistress. “Do you have his home telephone number?”

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON on Thursday now, still the first day of Austen’s investigation, and rush hour was beginning. It was about thirty hours since Kate Moran had died, thirty hours since Peter Talides had been in close proximity to Kate during the agonal phase of her illness. If Talides had been infected with something, he would probably still be in the incubation period, and he might well be asymptomatic, showing no signs of illness. Austen did not think that an infectious agent would cause any but the most subtle sign of illness during thirty hours or so. But she wanted to get in touch with Talides, have a look at him, and to keep track of him.

  She got on the N train headed for Queens. Twenty minutes later she stepped off the train at the elevated station at Grand Avenue. A set of dilapidated iron stairs debouched into a bustling neighborhood of small markets, dry-cleaning shops, hair parlors, a Greek restaurant, a gas station. She tried to figure out where to go. She walked a few blocks into a quieter neighborhood and found herself in a small park. There were some Doric columns and a bronze statue of a man in a robe. Curious, she went over to the statue. It was Socrates—him all right, with his misshapen face and bushy beard. Under him were engraved the words “Know thy self.” The name Talides—she realized that this must be a Greek neighborhood. It began to dawn on her just how exquisitely local are the neighborhoods of New York City. She was looking at a biological system of bewildering complexity.

  She kept going, turning up a side street. Peter Talides lived in half of a small duplex house made of brown brick. She rang the front doorbell.

  Talides opened the door immediately. He was a pudgy man, with a kindly, sad face. His living room was also his studio. There were canvases stretched on frames, coffee cans holding paint and water, paintings piled up against the wall. The colors were bold and vibrant.

  “I apologize for the mess,” he said. “Please sit down.”

  She sat in a threadbare easy chair. He sat on a swiveling stool. He sighed a deep sigh. He seemed on the edge of tears.

  “I’m very sorry about what happened,” she said.

  Peter Talides thanked her for her concern. “My life is the school and my painting. I live alone. I have no
illusions about my talent. But—” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “I try to make a small difference with the kids.”

  “Can you describe what you did to try to save Kate?”

  “I—” He sighed. Long pause. “I tried to remember how to give rescue breaths. I couldn’t remember…how…I had the lessons, but I couldn’t remember—I’m sorry, this is very difficult for me.”

  “Did you put your mouth to her mouth?”

  “Very briefly, yes.”

  “Was there blood?”

  “She had a—bloody nose.”

  “Did any of the blood get on you?”

  His voice trembled. “I had to throw away my shirt.”

  “Could I look at your face more closely?”

  He sat on the stool, uncomfortable and embarrassed. She looked at him carefully.

  “Do you have a cold?” she asked.

  “Yes. Runny nose. Stopped-up sinuses.”

  Austen took a deep breath. “Have your eyes been bothering you?”

  “Yes. They bother me when I have a cold or allergies. I have frequent allergies.”

  “Can you describe the sensation in your eyes?”

  “It’s nothing. Just itchy, runny. Like an allergy.”

  “I’m concerned.”

  “About me? I feel okay.”

  “I can’t give you an exam—I’m not a clinician.” She did not mention to him that she also did not have a license to practice medicine in New York, and so she was barred by law from doing a patient exam. “I’d like for you to go to a hospital emergency room with me. We’ll get a medical team to work you up.”

  He looked startled.

  “But it’s probably nothing,” she said.

  “I really don’t want to go to the hospital. I feel okay.”

  “If you don’t mind—may I just look at your tongue?”

  She didn’t have a tongue depressor. But she reached into her knapsack, felt around, and found a small case. From it she removed a penlight. She switched it on and asked him to say “ah.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “Well, your tonsils are a little reddened. It looks like you have a cold,” she said. “Could I—I’m sorry—could I just look at your eyes?” He was reluctant. He seemed very nervous now.

  She went around the room, closing the venetian blinds. Then she did what was called a swinging flashlight test. She pointed the beam of light first into one pupil and then into the other. The color of the irises seemed completely normal. He had deep brown eyes. She watched the responses of his pupils to the beam of light. She thought she saw a delayed response. That might be a subtle indication of brain damage.

  This is ridiculous. I’m overreacting, she told herself. There’s no clear evidence that Kate had an infective disease. There’s been no human-to-human transmission.

  She said, “If your cold changes in any way, would you please call me?” And she gave him her cellular-phone number and the number at Kips Bay. “Call me anytime, day or night. I’m a doctor. I expect calls.”

  On her way back to the subway station, she wondered if she had done the right thing. As a lieutenant commander in the United States Public Health Service, Alice Austen had the legal power to order a person into quarantine. Even so, officers with the C.D.C. virtually never invoke this power. It is C.D.C. policy for field medical officers to work quietly, to avoid drawing attention to themselves, and to refrain from doing anything that might create a climate of fear in the public. She glanced at Socrates. He had no advice to give, except that she know herself.

  Unknown

  BACK AT KIPS BAY that night, Alice Austen felt exhausted, and also ravenously hungry. You forget to eat during investigations. She found a Thai take-out restaurant and brought back boxes of food to her room. Mrs. Heilig gave her a disapproving look as she carried them into her bedroom. She sat at a desk and ate noodles and lemongrass chicken with her Boy Scout knife, fork, and spoon set. Meanwhile, she telephoned Walter Mellis at home on her cellular phone. She did not want Mrs. Heilig to overhear the conversation, and she had a feeling that Mrs. Heilig would try to listen if she could.

  “So what’s up?” Mellis said.

  “Walt—this thing has me scared. It could be an unknown infective agent that destroys the brain. It would be a virus, not a bacterial infection. I think—” She stopped. She put her hand to her forehead. It was covered with sweat.

  He was silent on the other end of the line.

  “I think we may have done a hot autopsy this morning. Without strong biosafety containment.”

  There was a pause. “Good Lord!” he said. He hadn’t really expected anything like this.

  “I’m going on observation, Walt.” She explained her findings, the rings in the eyes, the swollen, glassy brain covered with red spots, the blood blisters in the mouth and nasopharynx. She mentioned the unidentified lumps of material that seemed visible in the brain cells of the index case, Harmonica Man. “If it’s an infectious agent, it’s really bad,” she said.

  “No lab results from the second case, the girl?” he asked.

  “It’ll be another day.”

  “What lab is doing the work?” he asked.

  “I wanted to talk with you about that. The city health department’s lab is testing for bacteria. But it can’t test for viruses—they just can’t do that.”

  “Look, if you think this is serious, then we need to get samples here to C.D.C. so we can start doing some testing.”

  “That’s what I wanted to arrange with you.”

  “I’ll take care of it through Lex. How soon can you return?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I still have some street work to do.”

  “What kind of street work?”

  “You were the one who preached John Snow at me.” There was a pause while she ate Thai noodles.

  “All right,” he said.

  She took a long shower, collapsed into the carved bed, and pulled the blankets up to her chin. When she was a girl, around ten years old, and the family was vacationing in a little resort motel on the seashore of New Hampshire, she had sometimes had trouble falling asleep. Her parents had put her on a folding steel cot in a room with her younger brother. She had loved to curl up with a Nancy Drew mystery book, her head nestled in the pillow, which smelled faintly of mildew and the sea. She had read all of the Nancy Drew mysteries as a girl. This made her think about her father, living alone now in Ashland, near the lake. I’ve got to call Dad, she thought.

  She could hear Mrs. Heilig padding around the kitchen, and then a television went on. For a long time, she could not fall asleep. Her window looked out on First Avenue. Late into the night, sounds of traffic came through the glass, trucks rumbling, taxis honking, the occasional ambulance heading for one of the emergency rooms. The normal sounds of the city. She thought: this can’t be as bad as it seems. I haven’t shown any connection between these two cases. The Moran girl’s death may not have anything to do with Harmonica Man. The traffic moved on the avenue like blood swishing through an artery.

  The Ladies’ Room

  AL GHAR, IRAQ, THURSDAY

  MARK LITTLEBERRY was standing over Hopkins in the cloud of dust left by the truck containing the portable lab. He was holding a plastic sample tube. Without a word to Hopkins, he grabbed the swab out of his hand and jammed it into the tube. “Truck sample number one!” Littleberry put the tube in his shirt pocket.

  Hopkins stood up, brushing dust off.

  “Did you get a look, Will?”

  “Yeah. What was it?”

  “It was—”

  The minders arrived and crowded around. They seemed almost hysterical.

  “What was in that truck?” Littleberry demanded.

  “I shall inquire,” Dr. Fehdak said.

  Littleberry let loose a stream of unprintable language.

  The Kid’s face darkened. He spoke in Arabic.

  This was nothing, Dr. Mariana Vestof said. It was a routine delivery of a vaccine.

&
nbsp; “I shall try to get information on this,” Dr. Fehdak said.

  “Why did one of the men in the trucks speak Russian to me?” Hopkins asked.

  “You must be mistaken,” Dr. Fehdak said.

  Hopkins and Littleberry looked at each other.

  “The inspectors need a rest room!” Littleberry suddenly shouted. “According to the terms of Security Council agreements, inspectors are to be accorded private use of rest rooms whenever they ask for them.”

  Hopkins and Littleberry were led back into the building. When they arrived at the door of the rest room, they noticed that some of the minders were snickering. Others were jabbering on their radios.

  “I think it’s a ladies’ room,” Littleberry said to Hopkins. “Just go in.” They closed the door after themselves and locked it.

  DR. AZRI FEHDAK was in a state of shock. He was seeing his life pass before his eyes. Hopkins had noticed one of the foreign advisers. And Fehdak wasn’t certain, but he thought he had seen Hopkins holding a swab inside the truck. He wondered if Hopkins had taken a photograph. It would be virtually impossible for these two inspectors to convince the United Nations that they had seen anything of a military nature. But the swab…if anything was proven, Dr. Fehdak was likely to be shot by his own government, for having allowed U.N. inspectors to take a swab inside that place.

  Dr. Mariana Vestof looked grim. “That rest room is for the female technical staff,” she said. “It is not for those men.”

  “Perhaps they are nervous,” Dr. Fehdak said.

  One of the minders, an intelligence official named Hussein Al-Sawiri, pounded on the door. “Everybody healthy?” he asked.

  No answer.

  The Kid rattled the door. “It’s locked,” he said. “They locked it.”

  THE LADIES’ ROOM was gleaming and antiseptic, set with green and white tiles.