Without waiting for a response he opened the drawer next to him, pulled out a skull cap and swivelled it on one hand like pizza dough.
‘Roberta has a built-in neuro-navigation system. Using infrared, CT and MRI technology, she can construct a 3D image and accurately localise each part of your brain, better than ever before.’
‘Just relax, Dr Williams,’ Roberta soothed. Neeson fitted the cap over Noah’s head.
‘Don’t mess up my hair,’ Noah replied as the robotic arm connected electrodes to the cap, inserting their wires into her hard drive. ‘Watch the screen, Doctor,’ she commanded gently.
Both men looked up at the screen. ‘There we go,’ Neeson said. ‘It’s beautiful – God is an artist.’
Noah shook his head.
‘Stay still. That –’ he reached up and pulled the image out of the screen, holding it in his hands, ‘is your frontal lobe – your faith engine as it were. The emotional aspects of religious experience are in the temporal lobe here –’ he pointed again, ‘and here in the medial frontal gyrus.
‘The Faith Inhibitor, or FI-85, targets the frontal lobe and interacts with it to stop the generation of faith. Yours,’ he brought the image of Noah’s brain closer to his eyes and peered over his glasses, ‘is in perfect working order despite your refusal to use it.’ He clapped his hands together, extinguishing the image.
‘Thanks for that. So what’s making you so hard about this decoy vaccine?’ Noah pried off the skull cap and ran his hands through his hair.
Neeson laughed. He wheeled his chair back from the microscope towards his computer.
‘Watch the screen,’ he instructed. ‘The first image is our vaccine.’
Noah recognised the structure of the vaccine that was administered in the Western Alliance. It was a pure vaccine, the crowning glory of Abre de Libre’s pharmaceutical range. The vaccine only contained the viral vector EBL-47, engineered to create immunity against Ebola.
‘This next one will also be familiar. Roberta, show Dr Williams what we were looking at, would you?’
‘Of course, Doctor.’ Roberta’s voice startled him.
Another image came up on the screen. The torso of the vaccine was the same but it had an additional strand of cells that tilted the structure’s symmetry. It was EBL-47-E.ALL, the vaccine that was administered to the Eastern Alliance after the war, as part of the Armistice Accord – although the citizens of the east were unaware their vaccine was any different.
‘And now, one last vaccine,’ Neeson spoke again.
The third image looked identical to the second image. Noah looked at Neeson and shrugged.
‘Exactly,’ Neeson replied, shaking his head. ‘This is the vaccine from your fellow in India.’ He reached up with a pointer and drew a circle around the extra strand of cells. The Faith Inhibitor.
‘It always looks like a broken limb to me.’ Noah moved closer to the screen.
‘It’s more of a grafted limb,’ Neeson replied. ‘The Faith Inhibitor strand is attached to the EBL-47 molecule, in the vaccine. The inhibitor needs this section here,’ he pulled the image out with one hand and pointed to the EBL-47 with his other, ‘to piggyback into the bloodstream.’
‘Piggyback?’ Noah challenged. ‘It’s more of a Trojan Horse.’
‘I prefer to think of it as an enhancement. Trojan Horse has such negative connotations.’
‘Depends on whether you’re Greek or Trojan.’
‘Given the current geopolitical division of the world, we are the Greeks. But in the end everyone felt sorry for the Trojans.’
‘They brought the bloodshed on themselves.’ Noah shrugged.
‘You should write foreign policy.’
‘I only execute it.’
Neeson laughed, turned and threw the image back onto the screen. ‘In the new vaccine, the one Hassan Ali and others are using, this section here –’ Neeson pointed again to the additional cells that usually constituted the Faith Inhibitor, ‘is a decoy.’
‘I thought you said the entire vaccine is a decoy.’ Noah looked at Neeson who couldn’t take his eyes from the screen.
‘It is. The entire vaccine is pointless, a kind of complex placebo. It’s extremely difficult to create it – you would need to know your virology, be fluent in genetic modification, and possess a laboratory almost as sophisticated as this one. This wasn’t cooked up by some bored PhD student or even her disgruntled university head of virology. No – whoever’s behind it had skill and patience. And an ideology.’
‘A passionate anti-vaxxer?’ Noah suggested sceptically.
‘Maybe,’ Neeson mused. ‘I’m the scientist, not the spy. Although I’ve always thought you’d enjoy life more if you did more science than spying.’
‘I might live longer. This isn’t the work of an anti-vaxxer. At best, they protest and launch court battles against us, the WHO and the pharmaceutical companies they think are driving their armchair conspiracies. At worst, they bomb vaccination clinics and assassinate vaxxers.’ Noah looked at his old friend, noticing for the first time how his hands shook a little. How Neeson compensated for the tremor by plunging his hands into the deep pockets of his lab coat. How he always diverted conversations back to the screen and the images in front of them. Neeson had been his mentor and guide through the complex world of virology for almost two decades. Neeson wasn’t that young anymore either.
‘This –’ Noah pointed at the images on the screen. ‘This doesn’t fit the profile of an anti-vaxxer.’
‘Then what? A bioterrorist perhaps – someone trying to breach the Immunity Shield so that when another outbreak of Ebola occurs more people die?’
Noah shook his head. ‘When I told Hassan that there was an Ebola outbreak in his population set – that he had put people at risk – he looked terrified, like he had no idea that would happen.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Neese – of course I lied to him. I needed to know what he was planning to do next. I lied to him and then I broke his fingers – and then I left him and his colleagues to our Wet Team.’
Neeson shrugged. ‘Hackman told me about the rest of the interrogation – the bit that was for your ears only: an energy that wants to be remembered; wants to be loved. God’s plan, perhaps?’
Noah couldn’t get Hassan’s words out of his mind either. ‘God doesn’t have a plan.’
‘I thought you said God doesn’t exist.’
‘He doesn’t, at least not to me anymore. He doesn’t exist, ergo he doesn’t have a plan. Don’t tell me you buy the divine dog shit this guy was peddling? He was delirious with pain; you can’t rely on the credibility of suspects under torture.’
‘So says the professional torturer?’
‘Yes – when the professional scientist starts believing a suspected bioterrorist is being guided by God.’
‘We are all guided by God, Noah – even you, if you would just let yourself listen to Him.’
‘Does God have a plan for you too?’ Noah laughed bitterly.
‘He does. I didn’t realise it until recently.’
‘Let me guess – he helps you deliver the Faith Inhibitor through the Global Vaccination Programme? Eradicating faith and therefore religion in the Eastern Alliance was his will? God helped you put himself out of a job in fifty percent of the world.’
‘Seventy-two percent by population,’ Neeson corrected him. ‘They are reproducing much faster than us.’
‘They had a head start,’ Noah replied. ‘The East lost more than half its population during the Great Pandemic but still comprised sixty-four percent of the world at the end of the outbreak.’
‘So Hackman likes to remind me. He’s terribly insecure about that. Anyway, enough about God’s plan for me. When you find this ghost, I want his vaccine – keep that in mind when you’re doing Hackman’s will.’
‘You already have his vaccine.’ Noah motioned to the image on the screen.
‘I want all of it – the research, the failures and past iterations,
the future ones. It’s the process of synthesis as much as the outcome. How God created man is as important as man himself.
‘Have a look.’ Neeson moved away from the microscope.
‘I don’t know what I’m looking for,’ Noah hesitated.
‘That’s because you never read the journal articles I send you. You’ve been around these organisms enough to recognise their resilience. Now I want you to admire their artistry. Take a look,’ Neeson urged again.
Noah positioned himself at the eyepiece and focused the lens.
Neeson instructed the bionic arm: ‘Roberta, maximum magnification please – slowly, he may be young but he doesn’t have my eyes.’
‘You have beautiful eyes, Doctor,’ Roberta replied.
‘Thank you,’ both men responded and laughed.
Noah heard whirring and felt the arm brush against him as it adjusted the lens, the strength and angle of the light.
Neeson continued. ‘There are only three microscopes in the world – here, Atlanta and New York – that can show you what you are about to see. Just relax your eyes.
‘Focus on the signature please, Roberta.’
Noah heard the whirring again as the arm made adjustments, sliding the viewfinder and plate. A familiar design came into sight.
‘All people – not just artists, but bombmakers, geneticists and virologists – we all have a signature. We cannot help but leave our mark. It’s in our nature – even God leaves His mark on all things He creates. Call it hubris, vanity or simply a need to be known. A desire to be understood. That infinitesimally small structural tag you see there – it’s present in all of the decoy vaccines we found. It is deliberate.’
It is beautiful, Noah thought. It was a circle inside a square. Inside the circle was a geometric symphony of shapes; a complex series of connected and overlapping triangles that created a mesmerising pattern of stars – stars within stars within stars.
A universe.
‘How many virologists could create this?’ Noah didn’t lift his head from the scope.
‘In the East? Only four or five I know of,’ Neeson replied.
‘You?’
‘Of course. The signature makes me wonder . . . was it just for him, or was he trying to tell us something?’
Noah looked up at the enlarged image of the signature on the screen. There was no beginning to the pattern and no end. No inception and no completion. There was only continuous energy.
‘He’s trying to tell us something,’ he replied.
Chapter 7
Noah sat in Neeson’s lab, alone. He was still looking at the image of the structural tag.
It was the artist’s signature. The scientist’s way of telling them who he was. His father had explained the pattern’s meaning to him many years ago. Before the war. Before his death. Before Sera.
He opened another search box and typed the word ‘mandala’ from Sanskrit, a symbol that signified the universe. A tool that was supposed to create a sacred space and guide man towards his inner-self.
He added more terms to the mainframe’s search algorithm: ‘Theology, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam’. It narrowed the search too quickly but he was prepared to take the risk. He was starting to understand the ghost and he sensed commitment to a cause. An underlying urgency and a plan.
*
That evening he spoke to his newly assembled team in a data analysis room on Subterranean 13 of the Bio Building. They were surrounded by the enormous screens that were used to track the behaviour and movement of diseases, people, governments and armies.
‘You’ve read the case files and watched the interrogations. You know what we’re looking for.
‘Your security clearance has been temporarily bumped up, but please remember that all of your keystrokes will be monitored by Internal Affairs so do not use your new status to access irrelevant but interesting information, betray your country or download top secret pornography.’
Some of the younger analysts laughed nervously. Like all agents and military personnel who had permission to gather intel on or enter the Eastern Alliance, they were the guardians of the Sixth Virus Eradication Policy. The vaccine had worked in the East, but Bio was vigilant and prepared for the possibility that one day that might change. The analysts were as integral to its success as the Bio scientists that supervised the Global Vaccination Programme. All of them had been chosen by Noah for their proficiency in analytic tradecraft. He’d trained all of them.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ Crawford put his hand up. He had never lost his Ivy League prettiness and slightly smug wit, even after a decade in the service.
‘Yes, Crawford?’
‘You’ve asked us to start with the breaches in India, Pakistan, Assam and Bangladesh. I was just wondering about the other countries in the South Asian Sector. Should we broaden our search for potential breaches in Sri Lanka and Nepal too? We could use the profiles of the current breaches to guide us.’
‘Excellent idea.’ Noah nodded. ‘Their historic vaccination records are being run and crosschecked by the mainframe. Nepal has been quiet for years; I think there was a bad case of total regicide towards the end of the war, but aside from that, nothing.’
‘Is there ever a good case of total regicide?’ Garner asked, her voice deadpan.
Noah laughed. ‘We shouldn’t overlook them just because they’re politically quiet and officially enthusiastic vaccinators. The same for Sri Lanka. If anything, the fact that we haven’t detected a breach in those countries makes them suspicious. If I was the ghost, I would target zones away from my own country to protect my location.’
‘Unless that’s what you wanted Bio to think you were doing,’ Garner replied. ‘So what do we know about him, sir?’
He admired her focus. She was as proficient in the field as she was in the analysis room, but after a few bad missions she’d asked to be rotated out of active duty. He understood.
‘We know he makes contact with the WHO vaxxers through the internet. He’s clearly good enough to sit in the tall grass of a number of chatrooms and then get the hell out of there when his work is done. We’re trying to trace him back from the forum Hassan Ali and his buddies used. He’s covered his tracks well, so either he’s hyper-tech literate or he has friends who are. I’m guessing the latter.’
‘What about the other sectors in the Eastern Alliance? From a chatroom he could contact the Middle East, Africa and the rest of Asia – there are a bunch of countries that would make good targets.’ Garner was looking at the map on the second screen. ‘We haven’t even talked about Afghanistan.’
Noah followed Garner’s gaze to the map. It showed a world divided into two separate alliances, each one divided into sectors. Along the borders between the two sides, there were Security Militarised Zones and armies that prevented the movement of people, and the Information Shield, which prevented the movement of knowledge from one side to the other.
‘We are looking at the other sectors. Hackman has briefed other teams for that. My team – this team is looking at South Asia. The problem is that a ground search will take too long and it’ll raise alarm. We want to find the ghost quickly and quietly.
‘He could be based anywhere in the Eastern Alliance but I think he’s inside South Asia and, so far, he’s limited his activities to that sector.’
‘How can you tell?’ Crawford asked. When Noah didn’t answer, Crawford repeated the question. ‘Based on what, sir?’
Noah didn’t know why he was certain the ghost was in the South Asian Sector – there was just something about him. He didn’t even have anything to base that assumption on – he just knew the ghost was a man.
‘He hasn’t contacted any other sector, yet. If he had, we’d know about it. The Middle East would have gone mad. We wouldn’t need to find the breach. The breach would find us. No, he’s starting close to home. He’s developing and testing the decoy vaccine until he gets it right. He’s moving carefully. I know we’re behind him but if we read him right, we can cat
ch him.’
He could just tell.
‘Cyber Surveillance is setting up a dummy vaccinator as bait in various chatrooms, but, Garner –’
‘Yes, sir?’ she looked up from the file.
‘I want you to supervise them – you’ve a good eye for that work.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In your packs are the more detailed search matrices. Look at the breaches and the people involved in them.’ He began pacing as he rattled off questions.
‘Who are these vaxxers? Who do they work with? Look at the population sets they gave the decoy to – were they chosen for a reason? What do they have in common?’
Crawford raised his hand again but Noah ignored him.
‘The mainframe has run this algorithm already – the results of its search and cross-references are in your file. Look at those results and then keep looking – you can do better than the mainframe.’
He heard some of the analysts laugh confidently. He put his hands up to quieten them.
‘Yes, yes – you’re all geniuses, I know. I want you to look at each of these vaxxers and tell me why they did it; then tell me where the other breaches are – current and future.’
‘What about you, sir?’ Crawford asked, without insubordination. They were all curious to know what Noah’s gut was telling him.
‘I’m hunting a ghost,’ he replied. ‘Starting with the virologists in the South Asian Sector who could have developed a vaccine this sophisticated. It requires skill and facilities – there aren’t many who have it. Dr Neeson has identified four virologists in the Eastern Alliance.’ Scientists Neeson knew and respected.
‘Will you review these virologists against the existing breaches and perpetrators in the same way?’ Garner asked. ‘Look at who they’ve trained or worked with?’
‘I will. The mainframe is analysing that right now. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a match. But like you said, if one of these guys is the ghost, he’s more likely to target population sets and vaccinators who have no relationship with him. Nothing that could trace them back to him.’
The Barrier Page 5
