‘The problem that Louis and I have is this: because you won’t tell us what we need to know, we have to hurt you to extract the information. However, we don’t want to damage you, because then you’re no good to us or your wife and three children back in Mumbai.’
The man’s head snapped up, one eye widening a little.
‘Yes, that’s the limbic system activating in your brain. It’s primitive but important. It hasn’t evolved much over the thousands of years that man has walked the earth because it hasn’t needed to. When in danger, it makes us fight or run. Judging by the look in your eye, you’d like to fight me.
‘That’s good,’ Noah said agreeably, leaning his tall frame back in the chair. ‘It was a strong reflex from the beginning; strongest in those that survived and propagated the species.
‘Interestingly,’ he continued, as though they were in a lecture hall instead of an interrogation room, ‘while our limbic system didn’t change much, our higher-level thinking evolved rapidly, enabling us to create more sophisticated and previously unimaginable ways to fight each other.
‘You won’t win a fight with me, but flight is still an option for you. Of course, there are only so many places a family can run to.’
The man understood. ‘I’ll talk,’ he rasped through his dry lips and broken teeth. One eye was now completely blinded by swelling, the other bloodshot and fearful.
‘Excellent, thank you.’ Noah placed Louis gently on the cement floor next to his chair and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped. He used to teach Body Language at the academy. This posture indicated confidence, physical strength but a willingness to exercise restraint, and emotional interest in the other person’s opinions.
‘You’ll be surprised by how much we know already, so save your strength while I fill you in,’ he said kindly. ‘We know you switched out the Ebola vaccine and replaced it with your own. Like our vaccine, your substitute is engineered to create Ebola antibodies – except that your antibodies are decoys.
‘They don’t create immunity in a population set – but whenever the blood serum of those population sets were scanned, the Haema Scanner detected enough of the antibody markers to think that the population had been fully vaccinated. You subverted the Global Vaccination Programme, and we missed it every time.’
Hassan nodded slowly, the expression on his face changing.
‘Yes,’ Noah continued, ‘you should be proud. No one’s fooled the Haema Scanner before. Your vaccine is more sophisticated than anything we’ve seen.’
‘How did you catch me?’ the man whispered.
‘We didn’t – you were caught by the virus.’
‘What?’
‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’ Noah replied. ‘The problem with Ebola – I should say the main problem with Ebola,’ he corrected himself, ‘is that it still exists. Despite the most effective vaccination programme ever designed, despite almost one hundred percent herd immunity, it still exists. Its will to live is stronger than even our own. Imagine the limbic system in that virus – that’s one tough fight reflex, don’t you think?’
Hassan was silent. Noah continued. ‘When you switched our vaccine out, and vaccinated your population set with the substitute, you created a gap in the Immunity Shield. You and your friends undermined herd immunity. The virus was watching, waiting quietly for just this moment to attack.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Hassan shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
‘Let me be clearer then.’ Noah unclasped his hands and ran them through his hair again, wiping away the sweat on the back of his neck. ‘We were alerted to your decoy vaccine by an outbreak of Ebola in a set you vaccinated two months ago.’
‘No, no . . .’ Hassan shook his head. ‘It’s not possible . . .’
‘No one tells Ebola what’s possible and what’s not. You think we killed its life cycle with the vaccination programme? Ebola is millions of years older than us – we just slowed it down.’ Noah pulled out his handheld from his pocket and flicked through various screens until he found what he was looking for.
‘Maharashtra 310. Remember that one? A small village on the banks of the Narmada River. It’s one of India’s cleaner rivers.’
‘When?’
‘A week ago – the Department for Biological Integrity and the WHO went in quickly and contained it. You might have read about a typhoid scare. We didn’t want to start a panic. The surviving population set tested positive for the antibody markers even though forty percent of the village died of Ebola. Further analysis in Bio’s lab in London, using a new scope, picked up your decoy.
‘Let me assure you, Hassan, we will test every population set you’ve ever vaccinated. We will find the other gaps in the Immunity Shield – hopefully before it’s too late.’
‘Too late?’ the man asked, dazed.
‘Ebola is always evolving and when you give it a host – as you did – you give it an opportunity to improve; to change itself into variants that we are defenceless against. Our vaccine, EBL-47, only protects us against Ebola Strains 1 to 47.
‘If Ebola establishes itself in one population and mutates, it can be carried – across communities, countries and continents – like last time. It will create another pandemic.
‘That’s why you shouldn’t have done what you did.’ Noah sounded like a scolding parent. His throat closed a little. He swallowed hard.
‘Tell me about the decoy vaccine. In the past, anti-vaxxers have used placebos. They’re a little pedestrian, don’t you think?’
‘Placebos don’t pass the scanner,’ the man whispered.
‘That’s right, eventually someone walks into a hospital, a high security building or an airport and sets off the Haema Scanner. But your decoy is special. It’s sophisticated and stealthy. The scanners had no idea.
‘How did you develop it?’
‘We didn’t,’ Hassan replied. ‘We’re bacteriologists; that virology expertise was beyond us. Someone else delivered it to us.’
‘The source,’ Noah replied simply. ‘Give me the source.’
‘I don’t know the source – none of us do. The decoy arrived with our usual pharmaceutical shipments and we just administered it, as agreed.’
‘Agreed with whom?’
‘We communicated online. We never met or spoke. I swear it on my children.’
Noah exhaled. His Cyber Surveillance team had told him all of this already. He leaned back in his chair, and lifted one foot onto his knee, indicating calm amiability.
‘You’ve worked for the WHO for seven years. You’ve had postings all across the South Asian Sector and, in the next round of promotions, you were considered likely to receive a lucrative job in the Middle Eastern Sector. You were highly trained and specially vetted for competence, discretion and commitment to the Global Vaccination Programme.
‘Your pension, while decent for a public employee, is largely comprised of share options in Abre de Libre – the pharmaceutical company that supplies the cocktail of vaccines and boosters that, until recently, you administered on an almost daily basis.’
‘You know everything about me.’ Hassan licked the blood and sweat from his lips again.
‘I know you’re not an anti-vaxxer. You’re no conscientious objector. I hate those guys, I really do. I hate their sanctimonious bullshit about personal freedom and the right to choose. I hate their bogus science and the assumption that people are so stupid they’ll listen to any alarmist crap. Of course, people are stupid but that’s beside the point. The point is I hate them and their complete lack of regard for the safety of the herd and future herds.’
Future herds. He pushed through the pain, seeking comfort in the familiar cadence of his rant. ‘I hate them so much I can pick them a mile away, so I can tell – you’re not one of those rabid, antibiotic-refusing, organic-only fuckers.’ He paused. ‘So what I want to know is why – why did you do this? Why did you put yourself – and your family – at such risk?’
Th
e man remained silent. Noah’s hands clenched.
Why? He always wanted to know why. His ex-wife, Maggie, said it was a big part of his problem. Maybe she said it was a big part of many of his problems. But it helped him create order in a world of chaos and grief.
He shook his head and focused on the task at hand.
‘I asked you a question,’ he repeated softly.
Chapter 2
Hassan Ali dropped his head, tears merging with the sweat on his heaving chest.
Noah couldn’t hit him. He had to leave the cranium undamaged and Hassan didn’t care about the rest of his body – yet. There were pain thresholds they hadn’t explored but Noah was running out of time. Hackman would expect answers tonight.
Hassan was running out of time too.
‘I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t let anyone touch you again.’
Hassan raised his head slowly, suspiciously. Noah looked over his shoulder and nodded at the camera behind him. The door opened. A colleague dressed in army fatigues entered, bearing a metal briefcase.
‘Take Louis, would you?’ Noah said. ‘I don’t like him seeing this part.’ He handed the skull to the soldier before the man left the room.
On the side of the briefcase was a small scanner. Noah swiped his security tag against it and the case clicked open. A row of ten small glass vials slept snugly in a bed of grey foam.
‘Do you know what these are?’ he asked.
Hassan shook his head, blinking his good eye rapidly.
‘It’s EBL-23: a much earlier – and failed – iteration of the Ebola vaccine.’
‘No, no, no . . .’ Hassan shook his head vigorously. He pulled against his restraints, rocking his chair.
‘Don’t do that. Falling over, tied to a chair, hurts a lot more than just falling over.
‘You will remember that the successful development of the vaccine EBL-47 is one of our greatest achievements. After four years of the Great Ebola Pandemic and World War R, vaccination saved us from almost certain extinction in 2025. Success sometimes rides on the back of years of failure.’ His father used to tell him that when he was a boy, although perhaps he had meant it in a different context.
‘Please don’t be alarmed. I’m not going to use this on you.’ Noah shook his head regretfully. He was comfortable with hurting people. That was an unfortunate but necessary part of the process.
But he hated the look Hassan would give him in a moment – when he explained what he would do with the vaccine in the briefcase.
‘Look at me, Hassan.’ Noah slapped the man’s face again as his eye began to bulge. ‘You are going to disappear into a cell or you’ll be executed. There won’t be a trial. No passionate human rights lawyer is going to storm in here with a habeus corpus writ and a camera crew. It’s just me and my colleagues – and you. You and your family, that is.’
Noah held Hassan’s jaw in his hands. ‘If you talk – your wife and children will simply never know what happened to you. They will wonder about you every day, some days more than others. They will suffer the tortuous uncertainty of a loss not fully realised. At best.’
He tightened his grip on the man. ‘At worst – I won’t use this vaccine on you.’ He picked out one of the small vials. ‘I won’t even use it on your wife. I’m sure you’re ready to sacrifice her for your cause, whatever it is.’
Noah tossed the vial in his hand so its sealed mouth was in his fingertips. ‘Your children are innocent. I know they had no part in this. You were prepared for them to spend the rest of their lives without a father, possibly without a mother.
‘But were you prepared for me?’ He looked at Hassan. ‘You see, if necessary, I will use this on your three children, sweet as they are.’
And there was the look he hated.
Noah wasn’t weakened by fear the way some agents were. He felt fear, but it was a necessary reflex, primal but vital. He was grateful to his limbic system and he used it to stay alive.
The man tied to the chair looked at him with a different, deeper kind of fear. Hassan’s bare feet twitched as urine trickled down his legs and pooled between his crushed toes. He sobbed.
Noah turned away.
The question remained.
‘Why, Hassan? What did you think you would achieve by substituting the vaccine? Why did you do it?’
‘Because it’s wrong,’ the man replied. ‘What you’re doing – it’s wrong. I’ll tell you everything I know, but, I beg you – leave my children alone. This was me, Assif and Sumith from the clinic. You arrested them already. You have all of us. The children are so young – so young.’ He broke down again.
‘Tell me everything and I’ll see.’ Noah knew what it was like to plead with the doctors, to bargain with God. The doctors had apologised and God – God had remained silent.
‘The vaccine is poison. You’re changing us with it.’ Hassan raised his face.
‘What do you mean? We’re trying to protect you from a resurgence of Ebola.’
‘I’m not talking about Ebola,’ Hassan interrupted. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’
‘I don’t –’
‘You know – you are so lucky you know.’ Hassan talked over him now, in a hurry to speak.
‘The vaccine makes us forget things – who we are, why we’re here, whom we belong to.’ He closed his eyes as if praying, except Noah knew this man could not pray. But his words echoed the lessons of his childhood.
‘You’re insane – the vaccine doesn’t make you forget anything,’ he lied. ‘It protects you from a virus that nearly wiped out all of humanity. It keeps you and your children safe.’
A thought occurred to Noah suddenly. ‘Have you vaccinated your own children?’
‘Yes,’ Hassan opened his eyes and replied sadly. ‘I vaccinated them. I didn’t know any better. It was only later I realised . . .’
‘Realised what?’ Noah slapped Hassan’s face. Something was wrong. ‘What did you realise?’ he shouted.
‘Be at peace, brother, please don’t be angry with me. I’ll tell you.’ Hassan dabbed his swollen lower lip with his tongue, licking the fresh blood. ‘A year ago I started to feel things I’d never felt before.’
‘I need more than “feelings” if I’m going to save your children.’
Hassan flinched. ‘I don’t know how to describe it better than that.’ He shook his head. ‘It told me what to do; it told me the vaccine is poisoning us.’
‘A voice inside you told you that?’ Noah repeated.
‘Yes, a voice. It told me what to do . . . come closer.’ Hassan coughed and lowered his head. ‘Come closer.’
Noah leaned in, his face next to the broken man, his body tense and ready in case Hassan tried anything, despite his restraints.
Hassan whispered feverish words into Noah’s ear.
*
The air in the back room was thick with the smell of sweat. Men and women looked at Noah, waiting for instructions. He sat down, studying Hassan on the monitor.
‘Let’s give him time to think.’ He needed time too. ‘I don’t believe this population set is the only target – there must be more in India.’
He was sure that was the endgame; no one went to this much trouble for a single Immunity Shield breach. There were more and they had to find them.
He turned to the soldier next to him. ‘Talk to Garner at Bio. Tell her we need to check the herd immunity of all of the population sets this guy has covered over his career.’
‘What are we looking for, Chief?’ the soldier asked.
Noah tried not to show his impatience; they were all tired. This was the third interrogation in the sleepless week that had followed the detection.
‘We are looking for vaccine tampering – deliberate breaches of the Immunity Shield.’ He spoke slowly and clearly. ‘We’ll start with the Ebola outbreaks that have occurred since the shield went up. There haven’t been many. And I think we need to be prepared for a wider check: across all of the Eastern Alliance – we
want to find the breaches before Ebola does.’
‘All of the East? But that’s . . .’
‘Yes, that’s half the world. In fact, population wise, Asia, the Middle East and Africa now comprise far more than half the world.
‘If we want to ensure the safety of our part of the world, and the stability of their part, then we can’t allow any gaps in the Immunity Shield. Global herd immunity must be maintained.’
‘Got it.’ The soldier stood up and then stopped. ‘What did he say, Chief? When he whispered to you – what did he say?’
‘Nothing – the mad ramblings of a terrified, tortured man,’ Noah said.
‘What should I put in the transcript? The surveillance system couldn’t hear him. You’ll need to . . . give me details, sir.’
‘There’s nothing to give – he was talking rubbish. Let me see the replay. But keep watching him. Keep recording.’
The soldier clipped the file of the interrogation and brought it over to Noah on a handheld. He pressed play.
‘The vaccine makes us forget things – who we are, why we’re here, whom we belong to.’
Then Hassan had whispered to him: ‘It is an energy. All around us. Inside me. It has names . . .’
Hassan had whispered low and fast, but Noah had heard every word. He knew what each individual word meant. His father had taught him the same names. But in the strange sequence Hassan used, they were incomprehensible.
Like the words, ‘I’m sorry, Dr Williams, there’s nothing more we can do for her.’
‘It is beautiful,’ Hassan had said. ‘It guided me. It yearns to be felt by others.’
He replayed the words in his mind again and then stared at the man on the monitor.
*
Noah pushed through the metal door. It was heavier against his body this time. Hassan opened his eyes.
‘Water?’ he pleaded.
‘Not yet,’ Noah replied. ‘Who told you to do this?’ He didn’t know how to structure the question without conceding the premise of the previous answer.
‘I don’t understand –’
‘Someone created a decoy vaccine for you. You replaced the EBL-47 with your decoy. Why? Which population sets have you breached? Which sets are you going to breach next?’ The questions were tumbling out too fast.
The Barrier Page 2
