by Dorian Paul
She held up one finger to her lips. Once the press broadcast news that Tivaz TB killed more quickly than Ebola, Paris would be gripped by fear. And rightly so. How could they possibly protect every child when the children's normal incomplete immunity made them a target? Close all pre-schools? Keep the kids indoors? Ban birthday parties? "Wait until we're inside to talk about that. You've established quarantine?"
"Oui. The children are isolated in our infectious disease unit, set up especially for a biological emergency. Our staff is trained as first responders. The finest equipment is at your disposal."
As it had been for Leila and Sandra. No, the fate of these young children resided inside the biomaterial cases Ian unpacked from the van's cargo area and the choices she'd make in administering the two vaccines.
"We've obtained the children's medical records. The nursery school is associated with Lycée Rue Barthel. You know of it, Madame?"
Not until this morning, but the entire world now shuddered at its name. "You gave Dr. Berger access to the records when she arrived?"
"Certainement." He struck the elevator button with the authority of the man ultimately responsible for every medical decision within these walls and she hoped she could rely on him should things deteriorate to a state of panic. "We must proceed through the control room to reach Dr. Berger. Prepare yourself, Dr. Ashe."
He placed his hand on a dull chrome lever and paused, as if to prepare himself more than her. The instant he opened the door she understood why and was grateful Ian stood behind her, a bulwark against the scene she confronted.
Parents wailed before a wall of video monitors that displayed the hospital ward where their children lay. Bed upon bed, and every one filled with a small body obscured by a containment bubble. Men cursed at the screens while holding frenzied women. One woman tore at her hair. Another struggled against her man's embrace to raise hands toward heaven.
Who among these parents would lose a child? She had to face the possibility all might, including that forty-something woman, whose fists pummeled her husband's chest. And the young mother, hardly more than a child herself, who wept alone in a corner as if mourning the death of her toddler already.
"Sir, is Dr. Berger through there?" Ian asked.
At the chief's nod, Ian wheeled his precious payload toward an unmarked door manned by two policemen. One mother screamed and pulled at Ian's jacket in an attempt to follow. Others surged, sensing this was the route to their children. Above their pain, a high keen rose from a wizened old woman in a blue cassock and matching scarf.
"That is Sister Cecilia," the chief explained. "She begs to be allowed to comfort the children."
If she were part of a religious order dedicated to tending the sick, perhaps she could help the nurses. "Explain to her she'll need to suit up."
"We have done so already. She refuses. She says these children need the touch of love, the laying on of hands."
She remembered how she had longed to stroke Leila's cheek but . . . "We can't allow anyone to enter the ID unit without a positive pressure suit."
As though the good sister understood her fate rested with Claire, she shook a twisted, aged finger at her and then at a monitor displaying a helmeted doctor assessing vital signs, while the chief translated the nun's impassioned outburst. "She says the children should not die surrounded by creatures in frightening costumes in an Infectious Disease unit. She is old. She understands this will be her final act of charity." The chief touched her arm. "Dr. Ashe, who are we to say she cannot act according to her conscience?"
Certainly she was in no position to. She'd stood aside while Sandra prescribed her own medicated death by morphine. Why should she revoke this nun's decision to end her life by being true to her calling? But when another torrent of colloquial French rose from the sister's lips, she knew if she allowed Sister Cecilia in the ward the parents would demand access too. "No. We can't let her go in. Otherwise we'll never maintain quarantine. Ask her to minister to the parents. They need comfort every bit as much as their children. Perhaps more."
"You are right," the chief allowed. "On both counts."
She bit her lips. All she knew was she was a researcher, and this man and his staff were far more experienced than she in managing grief-stricken families. The best use of her skill was to plan a counterattack against her microscopic enemy.
***
"We've isolated and cultured sputum samples," Francine reported with the same precision she'd used with Sandra. "It's TB, and we've identified the unique DNA strand Roscoe used in his vaccine."
Neither woman breathed the word Tivaz aloud. "I was told there are forty two infected patients."
"Yes, all children."
"No adults? Teachers? The nurse herself?" Claire asked.
"All have tested negative, but remain in quarantine."
Francine pointed at the neat stacks on the table. "I've reviewed the children's records for conditions that could affect the immune response, and stratified the patients. Age, last known weight, existing medical conditions, family history if relevant."
Exactly the analysis needed to establish treatment regimens.
"How much vaccine was Roscoe able to produce?"
"Six vials."
Francine eyed the two stainless steel boxes Ian guarded. "Six of the original DNA vaccine and six of the new protein antigen vaccine?"
Don't I wish. "A total of six, three each."
Francine schooled her face, although she knew as well as Claire that this wasn't enough vaccine to treat forty-two patients. "Roscoe must have worked very hard to produce such a quantity."
"He did, and we hope to receive a similar amount in twenty-four hours. The entire lab is pitching in, with the exception of the theoretical team."
"Ah, the theoretical team."
Francine's murmured remark summoned the ghost of Sandra, that team's strongest advocate, and Claire asked Ian to leave the room.
As soon as the door shut behind him, Francine asked, "What in God's name will we do? We haven't nearly enough vaccine."
"We'll do what Sandra would. Design our own clinical trial."
Chapter 25
"Who?" David asked his assistant in London from the back seat of the French police vehicle.
"Geoffrey Hitchens."
"Am not acquainted with the name. Any other messages?"
"Mr. Hitchens says you had an appointment with him yesterday."
David gulped back scalding French coffee. Damn. Hitchens, his father's solicitor. Would his father allow for circumstances when he heard today's news . . . even though he'd neglected the appointment with the family solicitor yesterday?
"Ring Mr. Hitchens back with my apologies. Tell him I shall reschedule soon. Insist he bill me for the missed appointment." Not that the man would with all the estate business his father provided, but at least if his father spoke to Hitchens the man might put in a good word for him.
With lights flashing and sirens blaring, the police car penetrated the media circus surrounding Lycée Rue Barthel. They whisked him inside to a gymnasium locker room converted into a makeshift decontamination unit, and he dressed in one of the positive pressure suits Claire wore every day, and he'd practiced in once before. As a boy he'd played at being a lunar astronaut, but shuffling through the quarantine perimeter in this unwieldy suit was worlds removed from such sport.
The schoolyard where children usually shouted was soundless, except for the whoosh of filtered air through the purifier of his helmet. He plodded across loose cobblestones, aware how thankful he was that the first attack occurred here, and not in London where his sister's two youngsters were in play school. Only this morning, French parents rushed through the now deserted courtyard to drop off their toddlers before hurrying away to do the world's business – file a legal brief, fine-tune a promotional campaign, sell perfume in the Galleries Lafayette. At present they waited in hospital to see if Claire and her team could save their children, along with their own hopes and dreams for their
offspring. Damn Varat. He should be drawn and quartered.
Something flickered in an upper window.
He sought the shelter of a portico, ten meters distant, but found it impossible to bend his knees enough to tuck and roll in the bulky suit, and scrambled as fast as he could, knowing he was an outright target. It seemed to take an eternity to reach the shadow of the doorway. Sweat streamed down his sides and he licked his salty lips while scanning the windows. Had it been sunlight reflecting off glass, or a face he'd seen?
Whatever caught his attention was gone now, but he contacted the operations coordinator. "I detected possible movement in the second story. Have you thoroughly searched that area?"
"We evacuated the building."
Without a room-to-room search? "Send an armed team in."
"We don't have enough suits for a full team."
"Then start by covering the stairwells and exits."
"We'll request permission from headquarters."
The damn French. "Do it. Now."
He'd do it himself if it wasn't more important he view the location of the Tivaz TB release as soon as possible. He followed the line of yellow tape down the hallway and into the nursery school rooms.
"Mr. Ruskin, we've not isolated any TB droplets from our air samples," the techno wizard he'd sent earlier said.
He was not surprised. Claire's experiments proved that, unlike normal TB, the Tivaz strain died shortly after exposure to the atmosphere. Still, he was reassured. "You know not to alter any molecules you do isolate?"
"Right," the solemn young man replied. "We're following Dr. Ashe's protocol, but we haven't found anything out of the ordinary as yet, sir."
"Keep looking."
David took stock of the classroom. Indeed, nothing appeared out of the ordinary, excepting the lack of children. Along one wall an open toy box painted with pink and blue poodles beckoned and the floor in front of him was littered with stuffed animals, assorted spongy balls, and wooden puzzles with easy-to-fit pieces. Would any child touch these playthings again? In another corner, soft blankets were piled in a chest awaiting a naptime that would never come. An igloo built of sturdy plastic for kids to crawl around inside, and a bank of small stools where they might sit to recite letters and numbers . . . or suck their thumbs, occupied the middle of the room.
David froze. "Have you swabbed the surfaces?"
"That's scheduled for later," the technician informed him.
"Do it immediately."
"But standard protocol –"
Protocol be damned, he could see it as clear as day. Only children had been infected, not adults. Why? A child played with toys and put his hands in his mouth, but the women who supervised them were proper French ladies.
"Are you authorizing us to alter the collection sequence, sir?"
"Right. I take full responsibility." And the heat from the French if I must.
He surveyed the use of scientific technology far more sophisticated than the computers that put men in space. How unfortunate that man's ingenuity had to be employed to stop terrorists these days, rather than reach for the stars.
He turned his mind back to the playthings in the room. On the phone earlier today Claire repeated how lethal the Tivaz TB strain would be to young children with immature immune responses, but why had the attack been directed at these particular youngsters? This particular school in Paris? Why not London or New York or anywhere else?
"Mr. Ruskin. Here we go. Found some mighty unusual molecules."
At last, something to go on! He'd guessed right about the surfaces the children came in contact with. But eager as he was to reach the lab magician waving his high-tech wand over the toy box, he checked himself lest he trip and disturb the evidence. "Unusual? Show me."
The technician glided over with his laptop, and David envied the man's effortless movement in the cumbersome suit. "See?"
This was their foe? These rotating orange globes that might have been built from the tinker-toys of his childhood? And yet, he understood he peered into the invisible world where modern warfare was being waged. How much simpler to battle a man hand-to-hand with conventional arms. "Please, enlighten me."
"They look to be constructed of gigantic Bucky-balls."
"Bucky-balls?"
"They're round, hollow molecules built out of carbon atoms. Named after Bucky Fuller, the man who invented the geodesic dome."
"And you say they're constructed?" he asked his youthful tour guide to molecular firearms.
"Right, you build them using nanotechnology, a technique where you manipulate matter at the atomic level. Nanotechnology lets you string atoms together to create your own molecules."
"Then these weren't carried in on some child's nappy?"
The techie chuckled. "I very much doubt it, sir. The man who invented Bucky-balls got the Nobel Prize a few years back."
"I want these sent to Dr. Ashe's lab in London."
"I need to clear it with our French liaison."
"I shall obtain clearance."
He hurried, if such a word could be used to describe his deliberate progress, back to the perimeter where the controller told him they'd searched the second story and found no one. Then they patched Anton Brun through.
"Brun, we've found some molecules of interest in the nursery. I've instructed they be sent to London."
"Non. The attack occurred on French soil."
David grit his teeth. "Understood. But our London team's been working on the Tivaz strain all along. They're in the best position to analyze what's been found."
"You may not have access to all of the material. French laboratories will control its distribution."
"Look Brun, as we discussed, this is an international problem. London or New York could be hit next."
"I have reason to believe this is a French affair. Hakim, the school janitor. The address we have for him is false, and his work papers were forged."
"How long has this fellow been employed by the school?"
"More than five years. He is considered reliable for . . . an Algerian."
And an immigrant Algerian would be exactly the type of person Varat would use.
"Our foreign minister has a child who boards at the secondary school associated with Lycée Rue Barthel," Brun continued. "We are investigating this lead."
Interesting. "Monsieur Brun, I'd like to review the records of the students who've attended this school, especially the boarders."
"We are already doing so. We have obtained the names of every student currently enrolled."
He glanced at the walls of the old school, cut granite smoothly finished. A fine French veneer, much like the one Varat wore. "I'm interested in looking at students from an earlier period, in the range of fifteen to twenty-five years ago."
"I regret that is not possible."
Of course not, the French were insufferable when it came to privacy and regulations. "It is not necessary for you to expend your resources on the task, Brun. Provide me with the authorization, and I'll handle it."
"I cannot help. There is a large gap in the records."
"Sorry?"
"Most school records were destroyed when a pipe burst in the admissions office. Some years ago. Before the computers, you see."
"How long ago?" he asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.
"More than a dozen years ago."
Precisely the time Varat entered the arms dealing game.
He'd been told these suits were air-conditioned, programmed to adjust to body temperature. Then why was his visor steaming? He punched his fist to the sky, only to watch it rise in slow motion toward the window where the ghost of Varat the boy stood earlier, taunting him. His nemesis had closed every loop yet again, erased all trace of himself. But he wouldn't let Varat beat him, not now, not ever again. He'd pursue him to the ends of the earth and back if required.
But where to begin?
By ridding himself of this blasted space suit and telling Claire what he'd found.
***
Claire' stomach took another churn. Agreeing to do this was a mistake, but also her duty. While children died she stood every hour with the hospital's chief of staff and PR director in the parents' chamber, as the PR person called it, to answer questions. Undoubtedly her answers were translated truthfully, as they must be to mitigate the inevitable lawsuits, but just as surely the words the translator chose cast the best possible light on the catastrophe unfolding on the TV monitors.
After this hour's ordeal, she shut herself back inside the ID unit barred to the parents and practiced yoga breaths to center herself. Another hour until the next briefing . . . unless a child died sooner and her trio had to deliver bad news to a different set of parents. Her own mother and father were killed when they were the age of most of these parents, and she always thought being an orphan was the worst fate imaginable. But viewed from today's vantage point, being an orphan made more sense than losing a child. Parents didn't expect to outlive their children. It was unnatural.
She snatched the latest batch of labs from Francine and found refuge in the numbers, losing herself in column upon column of lab values whose patterns were easy to discern. A rise in blood toxins prefigured death for 18 month-old Zoe. A rise in antibody titer meant three-year-old Alain might survive. But what about Michelle, Pierre, Adele, Emiline, Serge, Nadine, Yves, Vivie, and all the little scrunched up faces screaming for their mamas and papas? Was it better to drug them so the last image their parents saw was peaceful? Fortunately, the decision belonged to the pediatric Infectious Disease specialist who believed it better to keep their small bodies free of confounding factors to give the vaccines their best shot. Thank God he agreed to keep them covered. Parents didn't need to watch lesions erupt on the tiny velvet-soft chests of their children.
Zoe expired at 12:25. Fewer tear-stained eyes would gape at the impersonal monitors now. But Alain appeared to be holding his own, might even have turned the corner. His frightened family could still hope, but it was too soon to know for certain. Yet she and Francine were optimistic when two hours later Alain and several others continued to fight off Tivaz TB, their antibody titers rising to the challenge. The dosage randomization schedule they'd set up might be working. Using what they'd learned from Sandra's response, they'd established a dose range – low, medium, and high – within which they believed the combination of their two vaccines might succeed. Absent sufficient material to administer an effective dose to all children, they used Francine's stratification charts to separate the toddlers into two groups: the slightly older and healthy ones, and those who were younger or had some sort of health issue. And then they did what any good clinical researcher would, generated a random set of numbers to determine which children would receive the low, medium, or high vaccine doses . . . and which would be given a harmless saline injection.
