There was still a discernible frisson when Raisa swept on to her working floor, even though she knew a warning would have already been given of her arrival from the reception area. She nodded to the dutiful greetings, not smiling until she reached Sergei Vasilevich Grenkov, dutifully waiting outside his deputy’s office adjoining hers. She didn’t pause, continuing past the two politely standing secretaries, knowing he would unquestioningly follow, which he did.
She turned at the sound of his closing the door, holding out her arms to be obediently embraced.
‘Good to have you back,’ said Grenkov. He was a big man, muscled in proportion to being just under two metres tall, with the thick black hair and dark complexion of his Georgian birth.
‘Good to be back.’ She led the way to the lounge area of her expansive, corner building office and said: ‘Get us some drinks. I’m exhausted.’
‘You’re famous,’ smiled the man at the cabinet.
‘I was before.’
Grenkov, who was cautious of the woman although believing he was probably the only person in the building without reason to be afraid, continued smiling on his way back with vodka for both of them. ‘Not like this. All the western press have discovered you work here. We’ve been inundated.’
Raisa paused, her glass in front of her. ‘Are there call back numbers?’
‘I instructed the switchboard.’ The operator would have logged the names and numbers without being told, but it had been automatic for the man to issue the order.
‘That’s good,’ said Raisa, her mind in the future.
‘I thought there would have been a press conference when you arrived, certainly after what the Americans put on in Alaska and what happened in Irkutsk,’ said the man.
Raisa’s face closed, her never totally lost anger bubbling up. ‘It was proposed. Lyalin cancelled it.’ Their unspeaking hostility during the trip from Irkutsk had exploded into a shouting climax just before their arrival at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport at her learning for the first time, from a casual remark from the anthropology institute director, of the minister’s refusal. He’d insisted there was nothing new or important to be announced, but Raisa knew the true reason was Lyalin’s pique at her going ahead with the media encounter without his authority and the man’s jealous determination not to allow her the public recognition she rightfully deserved.
Grenkov frowned, attuning to her mood. ‘Why?’
‘The man’s a toadying fool, happy to kiss the ass of anyone in the west who drops their trousers. He’s quite happy for us to appear to be following everyone else’s lead –’ she thrust out her glass, for it to be refilled – ‘which I’m not.’
‘I saw – heard – what you said in Irkutsk,’ prompted Grenkov, holding back from directly asking what breakthrough she had been promising.
‘Do you know what it is in the tissue sample of Gennardi Varlomovich Markelov?’ demanded Raisa, instead of answering the implied question.
‘An enzyme,’ declared her deputy.
‘Viral protein?’
‘Not from any virus we can identify. It might be parasitic but we haven’t found any parasite trace …’ He paused. ‘We have confirmed telomere loss, in all our victims.’
Raisa’s face clouded again. ‘When?’
‘As soon as the guidance came from Washington. Two days after, to be precise: the time it took us to carry out our own specific genome tests.’
‘Rough data?’
‘That’s how you ordered things to be kept, before you left,’ reminded Grenkov.
‘I want the written-up telomere results dated the 18th.’
‘The day before the British announcement?’ queried Grenkov.
Raisa nodded, sipping her replenished drink.
Grenkov remained silent too, for several moments. ‘What explanation is there for our not passing them on to you and your having announced the gene discovery first?’
‘There was a delay in your being told, by the genetic institute. As Britain made the announcement – as you already knew we had the information in Washington – the duplication would have been pointless.’
‘I understand,’ said Grenkov, uncomfortably.
‘I’ve marked the bodies I want immediately autopsied tonight,’ ordered Raisa briskly. ‘Have the tests on both the obvious victim and the youngster who clearly isn’t affected, apart from malnutrition, concentrated for the same enzyme you found in Gennardi Varlomovich. If it can’t be found in them, it must be continued through the rest of the forty-four, if necessary. I want everyone else – every science – working throughout the nights as well as days, on a shift system. I want you now, verbally, to warn every department head and every outside institute and academy we’re utilising, that I’m going to confirm those instructions by written, hand-delivered memoranda, within two hours.’ It was good – exhilarating – to be back in total control.
Grenkov didn’t immediately get up. ‘What about the media calls?’
‘I’ll also give written instructions to the switchboard. But when you speak to everyone about the work schedule – particularly those outside this building – tell them that I’ll instantly dismiss anyone talking to the media. Everything’s got to come through me.’
Grenkov nodded. ‘You going home tonight?’
Raisa looked surprised at the question. ‘I’ll stay with you. I’ve travelled a long way and I want you to bath me, before we decide what else to do.’
‘You’re going to come out of this ahead, aren’t you?’ said Grenkov.
Raisa’s expression of surprise remained. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I always intended to. I’m not losing out again.’
It took the woman almost two hours to dictate all her memoranda. Her penultimate note was to the institute switchboard that the standard response to every media enquiry had to be that Raisa Ivanova Orlov was too busy but that she would personally return calls as soon as she was able.
Her last, most carefully drafted, memo was to the president, asking for an interview.
Gregori Lyalin’s invitation was for dinner, just the two of them in the president’s private Kremlin dining room. Lyalin left the ministry with time to bathe and change at home and have an hour with his wife and daughters. The oldest girl was twelve, the youngest seven, and Lyalin spent most of the hour with Elaina smiling on indulgently while he told stories even more exaggerated than either Reynell or Amanda, of fanged dinosaurs and giant fish that walked on legs and huge mammoths and ice caves in which strange people had lived millions of years ago. Sasha accepted with the grave wisdom of a seven-year-old her father’s regret that they couldn’t have as a pet one of the dogs she’d seen pictured on television, because they were as big as a horse.
Lyalin told Elaina not to wait up but she said she would. ‘I shouldn’t neglect a husband as brave and as famous as you.’
‘You never have,’ he said.
It was only when he was escorted away from the president’s private apartment to the Kremlin’s small viewing theatre, where Ilya Savich was waiting, that Lyalin realized they were going to watch the premier of the official film of the Baikal caves. They did so with champagne already poured and the open bottle on the table between them, but neither finished their first glass. They didn’t speak, either, until the end when the president said: ‘That is almost totally beyond belief!’
‘It was astonishing,’ agreed Lyalin. During the film he’d actually thought his story to the children scarcely seemed an exaggeration after all.
‘Tell me about it as we walk,’ ordered Savich.
They didn’t hurry through the echoing corridors, with only occasional attendants or guards, and Lyalin had virtually finished his account by the time they reached the dining room and the already prepared table. There was vodka with the beluga and Georgian red with the quail.
‘What’s the latest situation?’ demanded the president.
‘Possibly 300 cases here, in Moscow,’ reported Lyalin. ‘About the same, maybe a little more, i
n Odessa. Could be as high as 1,500 in Gorky. More than that, an estimated 2,000, in Novosikirsk. What we don’t have even the vaguest estimate of is how many there might be out in the countryside. It could be thousands more.’
‘And there’s no precautions that can be taken?’
‘None.’
Savich said: ‘The IMF and the World Bank are insisting on auditing the Finance Ministry’s figures. They’re clearly suspicious that the inflation figures have been manipulated.’
‘Can we meet their target?’
‘Not by about two per cent. We’re going to need all the pressure America can exert.’
‘Do we have any promises from Washington?’
‘No commitment I can rely on. I’m sending a finance delegation, headed by the minister, to try to get more from their Treasury Secretary next week.’
‘Publicly announced?’
‘Definitely not! Which brings me to what I didn’t want to happen. How was the situation in Irkutsk allowed to arise?’
‘I was at the caves, organizing their clearing. I didn’t know any media had arrived – or that she’d organized a conference – until I walked in on it.’
‘What’s the impending breakthrough she promised?’
‘There was something that couldn’t be understood from two of the Iultin victims, before we went to Washington …’ began Lyalin, but abruptly stopped, disjointed recollections flooding in upon him. Intertwined with all the arguments he’d endured with Raisa Orlov about what should and should not be shared, the names of those two victims, Oleg Vasilevich Nedorub and Gennardi Varlomovich Markelov, kept recurring until his memory wasn’t disjointed any more.
‘What is it?’ frowned Savich.
‘Something I’ve remembered: need to check further,’ apologized Lyalin. ‘As I was saying, there was something in those two she left her staff here trying to analyse and identify. She’s being very secretive but as I understand it she expects to find a guide to what it was from the bodies we brought back.’
The other man remained frowning. ‘By “being very secretive” are you suggesting she’s refusing to tell you, the minister to whom she’s responsible?’
‘It’s not a harmonious relationship,’ allowed Lyalin, reluctant to concede the woman’s rejection of his authority.
The president pushed his plate away, sipping his wine. ‘She’s written, asking to see me personally.’
To suggest the president agree and directly order Raisa Orlov to conform would be a total admission of her rejection, Lyalin accepted. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘What would you have me do?
‘I haven’t given her the financial reasons for our cooperating as fully as we are. Which in my opinion – in the circumstances of this disease – we’d scientifically need to do whether there was a financial pressure or not,’ said Lyalin.
‘Neither should you. Nor will I,’ decided the other man. ‘Her function is strictly scientific. Ours is political. The division should remain that way. I’ll tell her any contact with the presidency has to be through you. I’ll copy the reply to you, so there won’t be any misunderstanding.’
The man was supporting him and his position, Lyalin recognized. ‘I think I should return to Washington as soon as possible. I only regard this as a short briefing visit.’
Savich nodded. ‘Stay long enough to address Cabinet tomorrow. First I’ll show them the film.’
‘I’d like to take copies back with me to America. To distribute before we make it publicly available.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Savich. ‘Let’s not have any more premature releases.’
Fort Detrick came under siege within two hours of its identification and helicopter became the only convenient, uninterrupted way of their getting in or out. It was, anyway, how they came in from Andrews Air Force base. Without any discussion, Geraldine moved into Stoddart’s quarters, relegating hers to being a dressing room with an additional spare shower. Despite the tiredness from nothing more than half sleep throughout the non-stop journey from Siberia, Geraldine only managed four hours proper rest, leaving their bed and Stoddart, bubbling soft snores, before dawn.
Accepting that he was probably trying to compensate for past failings, Geraldine very quickly acknowledged that Walter Pelham didn’t appear to have overlooked anything during their absence. There were case history precis from within the United States, Japan, Australia, Austria and France, where the fatality period of the illness was unquestionably extending – with total files upon those victims for whom he’d ordered autopsy tissue samples sent for precisely dedicated research – and progress notes where he’d asked for comparable information from India, Canada and America. He’d also ordered ornithological autopsies from all the sites within the affected countries where there was a correlation between human outbreaks and large-scale bird deaths.
Geraldine was fully up to date by the time Pelham arrived, able to discuss in detail the cases he’d specifically chosen for further Fort Detrick examination, and agreed with the austere director that the evidence of the illness becoming prolonged was significant. She, in turn, went through in matching minutiae what she hoped to learn from what had come from Siberia, welcoming his assurance that there were specialists among his now greatly expanded staff for virtually every test and experiment she was initially suggesting. Pelham remained with her, occasionally offering suggestions, when she dictated her various requests to the various scientific dedications from which she hoped they would at last be able to create a composite. She triplicated the examination she wanted on the bats, rats and dog-like carcase between ornithology, veterinary and entomology and duplicated the faeces and bat-dropping samples between the bird and animal experts. There was also duplication between botanists and entomologists in the tests she asked for on the grasses and vegetation she’d recovered. Her final instruction was to orthodontists and orthopaedists to whom she sent the bones that had littered the cave floor.
With self-imposed deadlines she began her own autopsies at once, initially seeking confirmation, not quick discoveries. Pathology director Barry Hooper and Duncan Littlejohn, the laboratory chief, worked with her and from the audible murmur through the sound-connected observation gallery she knew it was crowded with people wanting their first physical sight of the prehistoric bodies.
The elementary concentration was external. Geraldine took no longer frozen scrapings from beneath the toe as well as the fingernails of a male, illness-aged body before paring away bone from each hand and foot. She cut away a lot of the abundant hair, clearing space from which to scalpel off her skin specimens, and extended the hair sampling from the nasal and ear passages. She hesitated, remembering the undertaking eventually to return her four bodies visually externally intact, and removed two unseen, rear molars, as well as taking a lot of mouth and nasal passage swabs. The grinding function teeth were greatly worn away from what she guessed to be gnawing on the cave bones.
As the body fell open with her thorax to pubis incision, Hooper beside her said: ‘There’s no question it’s the same,’ which Geraldine thought scientifically premature although not in any doubt herself, visibly confronted by the obvious osteoporosis. Each of the organs – commencing with the heart – that she placed into the specimen containers offered in sequence by Littlejohn was sponged by age and once again her probing finger went easily into spinal and shoulder bone. So rapidly had the body frozen that no blood had dissipated or separated into serum. It remained puddled in post-mortem lividity at the shoulders and buttocks where the man had died lying upon his back, enabling Geraldine to drain at least a litre. It was only when Geraldine was taking undischarged faeces from the bowel that it occurred to her to take semen from both testes, reflecting on the sort of cloning, lost-world-Tarzan-meets-Frankenstein hysteria that the encircling paparazzi would generate if they ever discovered the sampling.
Geraldine worked just as methodically – although just as quickly – upon the remains of a skeletal male child who had been in the same
group and was therefore most likely the son of the adult upon whom she had just operated. The relationship would be the easiest genetic comparison. She matched the removal of every organ with that of the adult male and recorded that there was no spongeousness in any bone she tested, before removing some for further analyses.
Her timetable dictated that Geraldine stop after obtaining sufficient comparable organs, although she remained suited when they moved to the adjoining laboratories for her to take and pack the slides and tissue samples to ship back, with her dictated instructions, to England.
She emerged from the research buildings fifteen minutes ahead of the estimate she’d given Stoddart in her pre-dawn note. Stoddart was waiting. So was the helicopter, its engines whining on warm up. Built to be conveniently – and safely – away from the main buildings, the helicopter pad was in faraway view of the cameramen and there was a surge of movement at their recognized appearance. They were too far away for the shouted questions to reach them, drowned anyway by the rotor noise. It took three journeys and the help of two porters to load everything aboard.
As they lifted off Stoddart said: ‘Find anything you didn’t expect?’
‘We obviously didn’t expose ourselves directly,’ said Geraldine. ‘But there was a remotely measured olfactory test: they’ve got a gizmo normally used to detect poison gas. Seems the smell of these guys was indescribable.’
‘Always a bastard getting efficient showers in prehistoric caves,’ said Stoddart.
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