‘I’m not here in any official capacity. Like I said on the phone, my employer isn’t exactly happy with me. But you’re right, we shouldn’t stay here. It’s too public.’
‘No offence, but I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t care that you’re FBI.’
‘I’m not. Not really. Not any more.’
Kaitlin eyed him.
‘I was fired. Officially, put on suspension, which is the Bureau’s way of trying to get rid of me and keep me quiet at the same time.’
‘Why would they want to keep you quiet?’
‘Because I know too much. Listen, you’re smart to be distrustful, but we can’t talk about this here. I’ve been working out of a storage unit, cash only, so the Bureau can’t track my cards.’
Kaitlin shook her head. ‘No way. I’m not going.’
‘I know you’ve been working on your own investigation and we might each have a missing piece that the other one needs.’
‘I’m not going to help you to carry out whatever revenge you want to get on your former employer. That’s insane.’
Was this some kind of set-up? Kaitlin couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t really be sure of anything at all these days.
‘No, no, no, that’s not what this is about. I was suspended because I was investigating. They didn’t want me to keep digging.’
‘I thought that was the whole point of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to, you know, investigate?’
‘I wasn’t officially on the 702 case.’ Dennison stared into his Scotch for a moment. ‘My daughter was on that flight. FBI protocol. You don’t investigate cases where you have a personal connection. Gets in the way of objective thinking.’
Kaitlin looked at Dennison in a new light. She could see it now – that hidden corruption of grief in the flicker of the eyes, the sag of the facial muscles, like a mist settling on the features.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply, knowing there was nothing else to say.
‘She was about your age. Her twenty-second birthday was seven weeks ago.’
‘Emily. That was her name, right?’ Kaitlin said, realising.
Dennison nodded.
‘I should have put it together before. Emily Dennison – I’ve read over the passenger list, like, thousands of times. She was one of those people who …’ She hesitated, then continued. ‘I didn’t think she was worth digging into. She was just a student.’
‘Yeah. Art history.’ Dennison sucked in a steadying breath. ‘She was studying abroad. Rome. She’d had such a great time. She couldn’t wait to show her mom and me all of her photos. She liked shooting on film.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Dennison jerked, throwing off his grief, refocusing. ‘Listen, I don’t buy the bird excuse either. I think there’s something much, much bigger at play here. But both of us are already being watched closely by the Bureau and who knows who else. So, we can’t talk about this in public.’
Kaitlin studied him as she made her calculation. After a moment, she nodded her assent.
The storage unit was on that endless dismal strip of featureless industrial sprawl and the lowest of low-rent motels between JFK and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Dennison killed the engine of his sedan and led the way through a maze of units in the reek of spilled oil and vehicle fumes.
Stay sharp, Kaitlin told herself. Get ready to run.
Dennison heaved up the roll-top door of his space and ushered her inside before wrenching it down again. A strip light shone across piles of documents and walls covered with newspaper clippings, maps and photographs.
‘Apologies for the mess,’ the agent muttered.
‘No different to my dorm,’ Kaitlin replied.
She eyed a chart with lots of strings going back and forth between images and scrawled notes. It was ten times more complicated than the pieces of background information she’d stuck to her own wall in the dorm.
Dennison noticed. ‘There’s a reason TV uses the whole—’
‘Murder board thing?’
‘Whatever you want to call it. It’s a helpful way to organise your thoughts.’
‘Heard of computers?’
‘You millennials,’ Dennison sighed.
Kaitlin allowed herself a smile. Maybe he was OK.
Dennison shuffled through a handful of files. ‘Let me catch you up on where I am.’ He handed one of the files over. ‘Here’s a report from the National Transportation Safety Board from three weeks after the crash.’
Kaitlin flicked through the pages. ‘I don’t see anything about 702 in here.’
‘I know. I think that’s why it’s been overlooked. But it does mention a civil aviation accident team that was sent out to Kuala Lumpur on the fourth of May. But there were no crashes in Malaysia that year. So why were they there? And then, this.’ Dennison thrust another file into her hand. ‘One of the investigators on the Kuala Lumpur team attended a private lecture on … OK … “viral attacks on aircrafts”. And the Kuala Lumpur team came through Heathrow, which is, yeh know – interesting, to say the least.’
Kaitlin felt a flicker of unease. Dennison had grown increasingly manic, almost babbling, his hands trembling.
‘What exactly is your theory?’ Kaitlin couldn’t help but feel that this was getting a little out of hand.
‘I don’t think the plane crashed. I think it was diverted. I think this is all a massive government cover-up.’
‘A cover-up of what?’
Dennison turned away, searching another heap of files as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘If we can find where the plane is, then we can expose it all.’
‘Expose what?’
‘There was a doctor on the plane, from the University of Damascus. Dr Mohammad Aziz.’
Kaitlin steadied herself. OK, this was something. She thought back to her interview with the psychic witch and her account of the doctor wanting his wife to sit next to him.
‘Aziz. The one studying immunology,’ she said.
‘I think he brought a virus on board.’
‘What are you saying? Biological warfare?’
‘It’s a serious national security concern.’
‘I looked into that, but there wasn’t any concrete evidence. And then your colleague got in my way before I could find anything more.’
‘Who? Agent Gerard? She just spouts the company line. She’s not dedicated to finding out the truth.’
Dennison’s eyes blazed. Kaitlin felt her unease grow.
‘The FBI, they’re all part of this,’ he gushed. ‘And they want to keep me quiet, but they won’t. They don’t know about this storage unit yet. But it’s all here. The answers are all here. I just need to find them.’
Kaitlin looked from his face to the jumbled room. Obsession seemed to be the norm for everyone who got sucked into the Flight 702 orbit, herself included, but Dennison seemed further gone than most.
‘Look at this,’ he continued, waving a paper at her. ‘This formula was in one of Dr Aziz’s research papers. It’s all theoretical, supposedly. A worst-case scenario hypothesis.’
She backed towards the door. ‘I’m sorry, Agent Dennison, but I really need to get out of—’
‘But what if there actually is a disease that’s capable of 7h:100c:95f?’
Kaitlin stared. ‘What did you just say?’
‘It’s a formula: 7h:100c:95f. How scientists describe the spread of disease.’ Dennison ranged around the unit, scrubbing one hand through his hair.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Take Ebola, say. One of the deadliest viruses in the world today. That has a spread formula of 74d:100c:56f.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘A person infected with Ebola would lead to a hundred more cases in seventy-four days. Out of those hundred cases, fifty-six will be fatal.’
‘OK, so, then 7h:100c:95f is—’
Dennison waved a hand at her. ‘Right! Seven hours, one hundred cases and ninety-five deaths. From each infected person. Can you imagine h
ow fast a disease like that would spread in a city like New York?’
Kaitlin felt a jolt of panic. Yes, Dennison seemed off-kilter. But what if he was right?
‘Do you think this new disease could be real?’ she demanded.
‘I think Dr Aziz was developing it in Iran and I think he was bringing it here.’
‘Why would he want to do that?’
‘Plenty of reasons. Maybe he’d been radicalised, maybe he needed a facility to study it in, maybe he just wanted to sell it to the highest bidder. The why doesn’t matter. I think the government knew what was happening. And so, they diverted the plane. There’s a shadow.’ He rustled through his files until he found the one that he was looking for. ‘There’s a shadow in a satellite photo over Greenland. It doesn’t look like much, but I think it’s proof that the plane landed there.’
‘A shadow?’
Dennison tapped his finger on the image. ‘Yeah, see? It’s slight but irregular. There are no clouds there, no structures. What else could it be?’
Kaitlin felt the world spinning around her. She was so deep into all this now, it was hard not to lose perspective. What was real, what wasn’t real?
‘Why would the government keep it there?’ Dennison asked. ‘Why? That’s another thing. I think the pilot tried to make a call out. Why else would her phone suddenly turn on? The captain was going to call out to tell the world what was happening on the plane, so the co-pilot had to kill the captain and take over.’ He stopped and jabbed a finger at her. ‘You need to go to Atlanta.’
Kaitlin reeled at the sudden shift, barely able to keep up.
‘There’s a medical conference there. Some of Dr Aziz’s colleagues are attending. I can’t go. The FBI is watching me too closely, but you need to talk to them. Find out more about Aziz’s research.’
‘I can’t just go to Atlanta!’
‘Why not? Are you telling me you haven’t followed up leads with less than that?’
How could she tell him she didn’t trust his judgement enough to throw everything down and head to Georgia?
‘One of the scientists Dr Aziz worked with, Professor Marshal, he and Aziz met when they worked on a study together at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The work they did together was classified, but it was included in the Bureau’s file on Dr Aziz.’
‘What kind of study was it?’
‘That wasn’t in the file. Not even the FBI knew. Go to Atlanta and ask Dr Marshal about what the CDC was paying him to do. Hell, if you can, go to the CDC itself. See what you can find out.’
‘Why would they tell me anything?’
‘You’re a smart girl, Kaitlin. You’ve made it this far. You’ll come up with something. Don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want to know if something this deadly exists?’
Back in her apartment, Kaitlin sat on her bed, lulled by the drone of traffic from the street below. Could she trust Dennison? Or was he just sending her way off course like Flight 702?
There was also a more practical problem. How could she afford to get to Atlanta when money was increasingly tight? She couldn’t ask her parents for any more cash. She’d felt guilty enough the first time, and she knew that she’d have to tell them what the money was for. They’d just swamp her in a lecture about what a wreck she was making of her life, and maybe they were right.
She also wasn’t sure that she could trust Dennison’s judgement, not by a long way, but there was a niggling voice at the back of her head that kept taunting her: what if he’s right? If it was a lead, she couldn’t afford to ignore it.
After half an hour wrestling with her guilt, she realised she only had one choice. She pulled out her phone and called Amelia.
12
Kaitlin leaned against the wall in the deserted corridor, listening to the applause rumbling through the closed doors of the lecture hall. Atlanta was warmer than NYC at this time of year; a balmy seventy-five degrees but unpleasantly sticky with it. She’d never visited Georgia before, wasn’t sure she wanted to this time.
She felt so grateful for Amelia. Her friend’s family was loaded, but Kaitlin knew that she’d have loaned her the cash for the flight even if Amelia was down to her last few bucks. She was endlessly generous and despite the huge amounts of money Amelia had grown up with, she was the most grounded, down-to-earth person Kaitlin had ever met, making friends with anyone who crossed her path, regardless of their status or background.
The applause drained away and a low voice began to speak, tearing Kaitlin’s thoughts away from her friend and back to the task in hand. She drew herself up and was ready when the door opened and a man in his mid-fifties stepped out after completing his talk. This was the guy Dennison suggested might be a good contact. Marshal was slim and bald, with silver-framed glasses that had no doubt once been fashionable.
‘Professor Marshal?’ She showed what she hoped was a disarming smile. She’d become pretty good at them since she’d started on this path.
‘Yes. Do I know you?’
‘No, I’m sorry. My name is Kaitlin Le. Do you have a minute to talk?’
‘A minute. Are you attending the conference?’
No doubt he was curious about her young age. Understandable. She ignored him. ‘I actually want to talk about Dr Aziz.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘I’m studying biology at Georgia Tech and I was really interested in Dr Aziz’s work. I’m so sorry to hear that he was on Flight 702.’
‘It’s a huge loss. He was an excellent scientist.’
‘Do you know why he was coming to America?’
‘For a conference – one that I was chairing, actually. On immunology. He was to be a keynote speaker.’
‘That’s fascinating. Do you happen to know what his speech was going to be about?’
‘As you’re aware, Dr Aziz’s expertise was in human resistance to biological attacks. His experiences in Damascus … well, he was very motivated. Seeing all the suffering from those chemical attacks, he feared that there were plenty more coming. Something worse.’
‘What do you mean?’ Don’t push too hard. Play dumb.
‘Chemical attacks are hard to escape, but you typically know they’re happening and they’re not always deadly. It’s not the same for biological attacks. Mohammad’s fear about biological weapons was that by the time we noticed a population suffering, it would be too late to reverse. He wanted to get ahead of it.’ Marshal showed a wan smile. ‘He’d always been a bit doomsday about things, to be frank. And looking at the situation in Syria, well … who was to say he was wrong?
‘The problem is, if you look at a chemical attack, you know how it’s going to work. You know how long it’ll be effective. What the range is, the likely casualties and so forth. With biological strains, it’s a whole different story. You don’t know how things are going to work. How the virus may spread and mutate.
‘Viruses are very strange things, neither quite living nor exactly dead. They need to invade living organisms to replicate. You simply can’t control them once they’re released.’ He paused. ‘At least, not with any certainty.’
‘So, was this the area that you and Dr Aziz collaborated on?’
‘Collaborated? Not really. Let’s say our interests often overlapped.’
The lecture droned on through the door.
‘How so?’ Kaitlin pressed.
‘Mohammad was very dedicated to public health, clearly, and I’m a microbiologist. Even without weaponised viruses, one of the greatest threats to public health is bacteria and how well a country’s infrastructure is equipped to handle that bacteria.’
‘Oh, interesting.’ Kaitlin turned her practised smile on the professor. He lit up, enjoying the attention. ‘So, you and Dr Aziz would …’
‘Mohammad would cover the human side and I’d cover the micro side. I’d look at specific bacteria or a virus, what it was capable of, and Mohammad would focus on how the human immune system would respond.’
‘An
d weren’t you involved with a grant that he received?’
Marshal frowned.
‘The two of you did a study at the CDC, right?’
‘How do you know that? That study never went public.’
‘Why is that?’
Marshal’s face darkened. He was suspicious now. Maybe she’d punched the right button.
‘That was years ago. I can’t imagine it would be relevant to anything you’re studying in school.’
‘Why? Was the study unsuccessful?’
‘Just because something was successful doesn’t mean it stays current.’
‘So, it did work?’
The conference hall door swung open and a woman poked her head out.
‘Professor Marshal? You’ve got a few questions, if you’re happy to take them.’
‘Fine. Thank you.’ He turned back to Kaitlin. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to bring this conversation to an end.’
‘Was Dr Aziz developing biological weapons?’ Kaitlin blurted. It wasn’t elegant, but it might be her only chance.
Marshal’s face reddened with simmering anger. ‘That’s not an accusation you can just throw around, especially not here.’
‘Please, Professor Marshal. This is important.’
‘Mohammad was studying the effect of different viruses and bacteria on the human immune system. He was not weaponising science. He’d never do that.’
‘Do you know that? For sure?’
‘What are you implying?’
‘We think we know who someone is, but that isn’t always …’ Kaitlin gathered herself. ‘People have secrets.’
‘Yes, I believe they do. And it’s clear to me now that you yourself are keeping several.’
Marshal spun away from her, back into the lecture hall.
As she stepped out into the hot sun, she checked her phone and saw she had a missed call from her dad. She felt a sudden wave of panic. Her father never called her. It was always her mom who made contact on behalf of both of them.
Fumbling, she rushed to return the call. Her heart was in her throat. Surely something couldn’t have happened to her mom?
The second she heard it connect, she babbled, ‘Dad, is everything OK?’
There was a long period of silence that made her heart pound even faster before, at long last, her father replied, ‘Kaitlin. How are you?’
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