by Graham Brown
Across the desk from him stood one of the NRI’s best young minds, Walter Yang, a geneticist out of Stanford. If he wasn’t working in the lab, Walter was living online as a devotee of massive multiplayer computer gaming and anything that might lead to a hive mind. He seemed impressed with Arnold’s digs.
“This office rocks pretty hard, Mr. Moore.”
Rocks. Moore did not think it rocked, unless that meant it did not suit him.
Moore’s new suite at the Virginia Industrial Complex was a study in order and ultramodern design. It impressed others, especially its designers, and it bothered the hell out of Arnold Moore.
It was too sterile for him, too precise and lacking in individuality.
Even the walls bothered him. They were special Kevlar-coated glass, which could be turned instantly opaque at the press of a button. Someone’s idea of hip, high-tech décor, apparently designed to go with the NRI’s mission. When told about it, Moore had assumed someone was joking: the head of a secret agency working in a glass cube? He’d darkened the walls on day one and had yet to allow the light back in.
“Yes,” he said politely. “You would think that, Walter. Part of the joy of being young. Things can rock. Now talk to me about this UN virus.”
Walter cleared his throat and looked down at his notes. And Moore realized his own level of crankiness had reached an intraday high. The UN had been quarantined for three days and the natives were growing restless. The only saving grace was that Claudia Gonzales had arrived at work so early, she’d opened the offending letter before most of the staff had even arrived.
“Sorry,” Yang said.
“Don’t be,” Moore said. “Just tell me some good news.”
“We do have good news,” Yang insisted. “The CDC has exhausted its review of the sample and determined that it matches nothing in the database.”
“So we’re dealing with an entirely new virus?”
Yang nodded.
“How exactly is that good news?” Moore asked.
“It relates to the pathogen’s virulence,” Yang said.
Moore stared at him.
“We define virulence as the ability of a pathogen to cause disease,” Yang said. “It depends primarily on three things: the ability of the pathogen to infect cells; the ability of the pathogen to spread and what routes it takes to spread — what we call vectors; and finally, the damage it does to the infected cells.”
“Okay,” Moore said. “So tell me where we’re winning.”
“Well,” Yang said. “The epidemiology of this virus is quite impressive. It shows incredible speed and effectiveness at invading a host cell. It seems to attack all cells in the body. And so far our tests indicate it would spread through a large number of vectors.”
“In English, Walter,” Moore asked.
“Sorry, Mr. Moore,” he said. “I’ll try to be clear. In general, certain viruses attack only certain types of cells. Respiratory viruses attack cells in the lungs. Herpesvirus attacks skin cells. But this UN virus is highly and rapidly infectious across a wide range of, if not all, types of cells in the human body. That is extremely unusual.”
“We see this in Ms. Gonzales?” Moore asked.
Yang nodded. “A CDC check shows that she is dealing with the infection in many different areas. Bronchial cells, muscle cells, liver, kidney, and lymphatic cells. Basically every system in her body shows traces of the infection.”
Moore exhaled wearily. “Unless you’re the beneficiary of her insurance policy, this doesn’t qualify as good news, either.”
“No,” Yang said. “I mean, of course we’d prefer to see a smaller cellular range, and to be honest we’d certainly prefer a contagion that had fewer open vectors to be transmitted through, but—”
“How contagious?” Moore asked.
“Our tests confirm that it has the ability to spread in an aerosol, through sneezing and coughing like the common cold, through insect vectors like mosquitoes and ticks, etc. Just like malaria or West Nile virus, and through birds, like H1N1 or SARS.”
Neither did this news seem to qualify as positive, but Moore guessed Yang would get around to that. “How did it get into the ambassador’s system?”
“The envelope was lined with plastic,” Yang said. “In effect, it was hermetically sealed. The interior of the envelope was a vacuum until she tore it open. The note inside was written on special paper that reacted with oxygen and the heat of her fingertips. As it turned red it generated heat, which caused the virus and a thin layer of gel it had been deposited on to aerosolize. As she read the letter, the ambassador breathed it in.”
“And the red coloring?” Moore asked. “The blood on the letter?”
“A cheap parlor trick,” Yang said. “A side effect of the heat. Like invisible ink reappearing.”
“Someone has a flair for the dramatic,” Moore said. And yet, he reminded himself, no one had claimed responsibility. Something didn’t add up.
“Because of that and the other things it’s able to do, the CDC is calling it the Magician virus.”
“Great,” Moore said. “Now that we have it named, I’m ready for the good news.”
“Oh yeah,” Yang said. “Here’s the cool part, the really interesting part. So this virus is highly contagious outside the body and extremely infectious in the body. But aside from a fever and a monster headache, Ms. Gonzales is doing well. In fact this virus, which seems to be attacking every cell in her body, doesn’t seem to do much once it wins the high ground.”
Moore shifted in his seat. It seemed an odd bit of luck, too odd to actually be luck. “What are you telling me?”
“Most viruses take over a cell, inject their DNA, and force it to produce millions of copies of itself. Then they explode out of the cell, killing it or leaving it to die and moving on. The cell death all over the body causes the sickness. This UN virus enters a cell, forces the cell to reproduce its copies, and then — bizarrely — leaves the cell intact, with a small remnant of its DNA now encoded into the DNA of the affected cell.”
“Remnant?” Moore asked suspiciously. “What kind of remnant? Does it do anything?”
“We’re studying it now,” Yang said. “But it seems to be completely inert.”
Moore looked around his office, thinking and wondering. He considered the design of the room, how it seemed useless and excessive to him but had a purpose in the mind of the designers.
The Magician virus sounded like the brilliant creation of some disturbed mind. Most likely the mind of Ranga Milan. He guessed that this useless bit of DNA left behind had some purpose to its designer as well.
“I’ll take that as a stroke of good luck and something we shouldn’t count on continuing,” he said. “But I want you to study it. Let the CDC work on the main virus, and by all means keep up with them, but I want you to look at that inert DNA coding and figure out if it means anything, anything at all.”
Walter Yang stood. “What about the quarantine?”
Arnold was already reviewing his notes, head down.
“What do you mean?” he said without looking up.
“CDC wants to send the ambassador home.”
Moore stopped and looked up. “No,” he said. “Hell no. Anybody tries to bust that quarantine you stop them. Shoot them if you have to. Understand?”
“I’m not issued a weapon, Mr. Moore.”
“Then get one,” Moore said.
Yang seemed unsure, so Moore decided to be clear. “Listen to me,” he said. “We’re involved in this for a number of reasons, most of which I can’t explain to you or the CDC. But one thing that you should know is Claudia Gonzales once worked for the NRI. Ten years ago she was one of us. That may be an odd coincidence or it might mean something. The bottom line is, we’ve been put in charge through a presidential order and until I say so, until we know for sure that this bug isn’t a Greek bearing some mysterious gift, nobody leaves quarantine. Nobody. Got me?”
Yang nodded firmly, seeming far more su
bdued than when he’d come in. Getting growled at by the boss when you figured you’d done well could do that to a person.
“Good work,” Moore said. “I’m sorry the crusty old bastard you work for didn’t say it earlier.”
Yang hesitated.
“Yeah,” Moore said. “I’m talking about me. Now get out there and dig. A lot may depend on what you find.”
Yang nodded, then left the office with some juice in his step. Moore’s intercom buzzed. The voice of Stephanie Williams, the NRI’s director of communications, came through loud and clear.
“Arnold, you got a second?”
“All yours,” he said. “What do you have for me?”
Because of Hawker’s unique cover, Williams had set up special channels of communication with Hawker that no one else in the organization aside from Danielle and Arnold Moore knew about.
She also kept track of the two agents when they were on assignment.
“I have information on Hawker and Danielle,” she said.
“What’s the word?” he asked.
“I’m afraid you’re going to be busy.”
That did not sound good. “I’m already busy, Ms. Williams.”
“We’re getting radio chatter from France on the police bands. Something about a house exploding, a shoot-out, and a high-speed chase in central Paris. Suspects are Americans. One male and one female.”
Moore cringed. “Good God,” he said. It never rained but it poured.
CHAPTER 12
Danielle sat in handcuffs, waiting in the private office of the commandant of the Police Nationale in central Paris. Hawker sat next to her, cuffed as she was, and seemed to be favoring his right shoulder.
For the moment they were alone.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Landed on my shoulder when the house blew up,” he said. “Hitting the water didn’t help it much.”
To be honest, she was surprised he’d even survived. “Why’d you go after them on that bike anyway?”
He looked at her. “Why did you run to the river?”
“I thought they were getting away.”
“There you go.”
She exhaled in exasperation. “Yes, but all I wanted to do was spot the boat and contact the police, not risk life and limb five times over on some insane stunt. That may have been the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “There’s a lot of competition for that title.”
He made it a point to be funny, but the situation was not all that humorous. They’d been here for three hours, allowed no outside contact, not even with the embassy. Their papers had been confiscated and they hadn’t even been questioned yet. The situation could go either way: They could be released, or if a pissing match developed, they might not see the outside world for months.
To be honest, she wondered why they were being held in this office and not some dark cell. It made even less sense that they were being held together. Perhaps the commandant did not want the world to know they were there. Perhaps he was watching or listening, hoping they would give something away.
At that moment the door swung open. In walked Commandant Lavril, chief of the Paris police. He eyed them with some disdain and closed the door gently before walking to the chair behind his desk.
It was a massive, incredibly impressive desk, the kind that told anyone sitting across from it where the power resided in this particular room, the kind that might protect one from a bomb blast or a tornado or a meteor strike if one hid underneath it.
Danielle wondered how the hell they’d even fit the giant desk into this small room. Maybe the walls had been built around the monstrosity.
“Your papers check out,” the commandant said, flipping through the pages of their passports. “Your consulate confirms that you are here as part of your embassy’s security detail.”
He dropped the passports and glared at them.
She and Hawker had been given covers. No one at the embassy would recognize them on sight, but they’d been told what to say if something happened — as it quickly had.
“So that gives you the right to carry guns in my country,” Lavril said. “But not the right to use them on French citizens or to blow up our buildings.”
“You seem awfully concerned with the people who tried to kill us,” she said.
He shrugged. “They are French, you are not.”
“I promise you if a Frenchman was mugged on the streets of Washington, we wouldn’t be asking him what he did to provoke the attack.”
“You might,” Lavril said, “if he blew up half a block in Georgetown.”
The brawl was coming; she could feel it. She would go for the high ground and the commandant would stand and defend it. But begging was not her way.
“I don’t know how long you intend to hold us,” she said, “but you and I both know what’s going to happen. Sooner rather than later, a call is going to come in. From the right person in my government to the right person in yours. And after long conversations, which you will never know about, someone else is going to call down here and you’re going to be forced to release us whether you like it or not.”
Lavril simmered and she wondered if she’d hit close to the mark. Maybe that call had already come in.
“So are we free to go?” she asked.
Hawker smiled and held up his hands as if Lavril might just unlock them right then and there.
“No,” Lavril said drily, “you are anything but free.”
Hawker’s false smile faded and he dropped his hands with a noticeable wince from the shoulder pain.
Lavril continued. “At best, I will allow you to contact someone. But not until I find out what you were doing here. And what exactly is going on.”
“What’s going on,” she began, “is that two American citizens were almost killed at the hands of the terrorists on French soil. It can’t look good for the Sûreté that we had to save ourselves.”
Lavril laughed confidently. “We are no longer called the Sûreté, madam.”
Strike one.
“But since we are freely offering opinions, I will share one of mine: I have had two terrorist incidents in three days. Both involving Americans. It would take much to make me believe they are unrelated.”
“What you believe is irrelevant to me,” Danielle said.
“What I believe will prove to be incredibly relevant to you,” Lavril corrected. “I assure you of that.”
He looked at her oddly and then at Hawker.
“What about you?” he asked. “Do you speak?”
Hawker glared at Lavril. “Better to hold one’s tongue and be thought a fool,” he said finally, “than to speak out and confirm it.”
“So you are a fool,” Lavril said.
“I must be,” Hawker said. “How else would I end up in here?”
“Hmm,” the commandant mumbled. “I don’t think either of you are fools. And the fact that you quote the proverbs is more telling than you know. My nurse tells me you are a man covered in scars. Bullet wounds, knife wounds, even a few broken bones that seemed to have healed a little bit off.”
Because several pieces of shrapnel from the building had cut into Hawker and his shoulder had been injured, the first thing the police had done was remove his shirt, pull out the shrapnel, and stitch him up.
Two stitches here, three stitches there. Some gauze and tape on a third smaller cut.
They had of course relayed Hawker’s physical description to Lavril, partially because it would have seemed noteworthy and also because scars could help identify people. As far as Danielle knew, Hawker wasn’t in anyone’s database, but she couldn’t be sure.
“By their fruits you shall know them,” Lavril said, quoting scripture himself. “You are a killer: an assassin. Sent here to clean up a problem your government has been aware of for years.”
Danielle rolled her eyes. “Oh come on.”
“Monsieur Milan was on Interpol’s list,” Lav
ril reminded everyone. “No doubt he was on your list as well. One of your most wanted. Admit it, you came here for him.”
The words soaked in as Lavril glared down at them.
“And if you killed him,” Lavril added, “then you are responsible for the deaths of my officers, my men. In which case I will not release you, even if God himself calls on your behalf.”
He leaned back in his chair, tapping his pen on the desk like a drummer, waiting.
Now Danielle understood. In a way, she couldn’t blame Lavril. She’d lost people under her charge before. There was no deeper well of determination than finding a way to right such an act.
“We didn’t kill Ranga Milan and we didn’t kill your officers,” she said. “You know that. We came through customs two days after it happened. Besides, if we’d killed Ranga or your men, do you think we’d still be here?”
“Then you must have a different target,” he said.
Danielle remained still.
Lavril got up and came around to the front of the desk. He folded his arms, leaning back, resting against it.
She guessed it was a deliberate, practiced move. Sitting on the low-slung couch, with Lavril towering over them, they were at a distinct disadvantage.
“Perhaps your target was these terrorists — as you call them,” he said. “Though I must admit they seem a little out of their depth.”
He picked up a rap sheet of sorts.
“Roland Lange,” he said, apparently naming one of the men. “Two counts of purse snatching last year. Three counts of disorderly conduct, and minor assault. He’s gone from swearing at the police from the crowd, to a slab in the morgue, with a hunk of metal where his liver should be.”
Danielle squirmed a bit.
Lavril continued to read. “Dibea Monsigne was once an accomplice in a bungled car theft. Has been charged with two counts of assault for fights he seemed to have lost … public drunkenness … disorderly conduct.”
Lavril put the paper down. “The others are similar. Criminal masterminds one and all. And now they’re dead.”
