She sat up and scooted back to lean against the wall, the nearly disintegrated foam pillow propped behind her lower back. She pulled her knees up and hugged her legs. Her heart felt wedged in her throat.
Okay … Goody called a little after six. Despesorio Vero showed up at CDC. What kind of name is that? What was that accent? Mexican? Did he travel to the States, or did he live here? Why did he want to see Mark Sweeney? National Center for Infectious Diseases … National Center for Infectious Diseases.
Pressure behind her eyes. She wanted to cry … and she didn’t want to.
What are the five stages of grief? Or are there six? Denial … anger … depression … No, bargaining, then depression …
Ahhhh! Goody went into the Excelsior. The SATD was working. His wire was working. Some white noise, maybe the hotel’s AC. He ordered orange juice, then Vero came in, asked if he was Sweeney.
Her top teeth found a ridge on her bottom lip, the scab from having bitten into it earlier. She bit down, feeling the pain, letting it move her away from her grief. She tasted blood.
He said Vero didn’t look well. Then …
She remembered the gunfire, how loud it was through the earpiece. Goody had yelled. People were screaming in the background.
She closed her eyes, pinching out a tear. She bit harder on her lip, swallowed against the lump in her throat, fought the flood at her eyes.
If Julia had distracted herself by stepping outside and
looking north, she would have seen in the distance the shape of Missionary Ridge. It was discernable at that time of evening by the lights radiating from the large homes perched on it. If it had been pointed out to her, she could have seen, near the very peak of the mountain, a light glowing in the study of the recipient of Goody’s last mortal words.
Dr. Allen Parker sat at his desk, a fire roaring in a nearby hearth, Mozart’s Requiem streaming through ceiling-mounted speakers. He was torn between two piles of books and papers. One pile contained everything he needed to finish an article he was writing for the Journal of the American Medical Association on the benefits of partial liquid ventilation for patients with severe respiratory failure. It was already three days overdue.
The other pile interested him more. He pulled a book off the top of the stack—Field Virology.
“Okay, Mr. Donnelley,” he said out loud. “You got me. Now let’s see if you knew what you were talking about.”
He turned to the table of contents, ran his finger down the chapter titles, then turned to chapter 39. A single word in large type at the top of the page read Filoviridae. As he began to read, words and phrases seared into his mind—hetnorrhagic fever, outbreak, abrupt onset of illness, death, no known vaccine. A headache brewed behind his eyes, but he continued reading. Epidemic. Biosafety level 4. Human pathogen. Mortality.
Occasionally he’d look up from an article or book to Google a phrase on the iMac on his desk. One online search would lead to another, and twenty minutes would pass before he’d return to the hard copy he’d been reading.
More than a few times he’d light a cigarette and promptly forget about it. He’d find a butt attached to a delicate cylinder of ashes in the ashtray and have to light another one. In his study, he puffed away as if it were the best thing he could do. Erlanger had become smoke-free, forcing him to smoke outside with the other diehards. It made him feel ostracized and dirty. More times than not, when people saw him in the hall heading for the door with cig and lighter in hand, they’d say, “Doctors smoke?” like Cops commit crimes? He’d answer, “This one does.”
He liked to think he didn’t care what people thought, but he did. At thirty-six he was already one of the leading thoracic surgeons in the country, thanks to a nearly flawless record in the operating room. That, and a procedure he had invented that happened to save a senator’s life. He had been featured in Time magazine as a “Top Ten Doc”; other articles followed in news, medical, and financial publications. Even his house got coverage in Architectural Digest and Southern Living. Before long, movie and television producers began offering ungodly sums for his opinion of their shows’ medical veracity. He was one of the few practicing surgeons with a Hollywood agent; a tidbit he carefully dropped into as many conversations as possible.
Parker pushed back his chair and stood. The tambour clock on the mantel told him it was a little after nine; he’d been in research mode for over two hours. The rest of the house was dark, except for the light over the stove, which spilled into the hall and glowed faintly outside his study doors. It reminded him that he had thrown a Hungry Man turkey dinner in the microwave and forgotten about it. He snatched the nearly empty pack of Camels off the desk, shook one out, and lit it with habitual fluidity. He held the smoke in his lungs for a reassuring moment, then sent it billowing over his head. Then he sat down again, pulled the iMac monitor closer, and tapped into a medical database.
It was going to be a long night.
nineteen
Finally, some good news. Litt had just heard from one of his “control subjects”—people on his First Wave list whom he had paid to keep him informed. A school janitor in Chicago had called to let him know that a New York Times reporter had contacted him. The reporter wanted to know why the janitor’s name was on a list he had received.
Litt knew it was too early for the reporter to develop definitive conclusions about the list. But either the reporter would make follow-up calls and realize everybody on the list was getting sick, seriously sick, or he would become aware of news reports around the country of people getting sick and eventually make the connection. It wouldn’t be long before one of the reporters who received the list realized that someone knew who would get sick before they’d gotten sick.
And that’s when Litt would make his entrance onto the world stage.
All he could do now was wait. But he was anxious, and for years his only source of relaxation had been lab work. So he left his room and headed for his laboratory. He would find something to do.
Litt walked stiffly, feeling the lack of fluid in his joints, feeling bone rub against bone. It didn’t help that his skin itched all over as well—more than usual. Talking to Kendrick had taken its toll. It had dredged up painful memories, which took away from his ability to handle the here and now.
Kendrick Reynolds. He wished he’d never met the man, even if it meant dying on the docks with his father. He took that back. He had not met Rebecca then, and that was an experience that made everything else bearable. She was morphine in an otherwise painful existence.
He smiled, felt his bottom lip crack. Doubtful you’d find that line in a love song. But it was true. And it was true that she was gone, leaving only the pain.
His father had expected better for him. Then the Reich had fallen, and so had his father. Que sera, he thought bitterly.
A fluorescent tube overhead sputtered and hummed. He shuffled a little farther to a bench and sat. Today, he was tired. A good day to stay in bed. If only he had that luxury. He closed his eyes.
And remembered.
1945
Ten-year-old Karl Litt yearned for sleep. His muscles and
tendons throbbed with fatigue; his eyes were burning embers pressed into his head. Still, he willed his body to stand tall. He resisted the temptation to gaze at the peacefully sparkling stars and tendrils of fog wafting over the harbor’s black water. Doing so would surely lull him to sleep. He could not afford that.
He fixed his gaze on the underseeboot moored at the battered wharf. Scars from vicious battles creased and pocked her metal skin. Unimaginable clashes had beaten and blasted away huge chunks of gray paint. She appeared ready for scuttling, not for sailing the most crucial mission of the war.
The U-boat rose on a swell from a deep ocean current. Shadows shifted on her hull, and her entire length seemed to flex into bands of impenetrable flesh, unbeatable muscle. In fact, she was only one in ten U-boats to make it this far. She had cast hundreds of Allied ships to the sea floor. On this
voyage, however, she was fangless; the captain had jettisoned the torpedoes to accommodate more precious cargo: gold, scientific equipment, Aryan blood.
Cartoonish insignias had replaced U-boat identification numbers when the war started, an attempt to mystify the fuhrer’s U-bootwaffe. The one on this submarine—a grinning devil—glared with vivid white eyes from its position on the partially crushed conning tower. Karl glared back, daring the seafaring imp to blink first.
The shadow of a workman splashed against the conning tower, obscuring the devil face. Karl watched the man shuffle up the gangplank, hugging what appeared to be an extraordinarily heavy crate. Red-faced, he waddled to the open deck hatch, set it down with a thud, and slid it into the arms of another, who would stow it in the belly of the metal beast.
Karl watched the man lumber away from the hatch, chapped hands kneading his lower back. When the man reached the gangplank, Karl shifted his vision to the conning tower again. He had stopped tracking the workmen’s pendulum-like movements from wharf to U-boat and back again; the glare of the naked bulbs near the crates shot daggers into his eyes.
He surveyed the dock. The few fathers who had arrived here stood away from one another, watching the workmen with dazed expressions. Karl had the great privilege of witnessing this historic event to its end. It was a privilege commensurate with the daunting responsibility he bore for their survival—for the survival of the Reich. Like the creaking war vessel before him, his adolescent shoulders did not appear up to the task. But only the sons and daughters of the Reich’s top scientists could possibly carry on the battle now; they had been trained, they were ready.
Absently, he ran a hand over his filthy jacket.
Standing at rigid attention next to him, the boy’s father tugged on the front of his own jacket for what must have been the hundredth time. He was trying to flatten wrinkles that were stiffened by too much sweat and blood and grime ever to lay smooth again. With blown-out knees, unraveled stitching, and rumpled hat, the uniform was at odds with the man’s proud posture. Only the Ritterkreuz—the cherished Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross that hung around his neck—gleamed in the lamplight.
Josef Litt was a man of exquisite refinement. If not for the triumph of knowing his life’s work would continue through his son, he would find the humility of his current situation unbearable. He wore the uniform and title of an SS-Oberstgruppenfiihrer, a lofty military rank reflective of his authority, but certainly not of his duties. Although he had killed, he was no soldier. In the lab he had shown how men in white coats could turn men of muscle into pathetic drones. His experiments had earned him the attention of the Supreme Commander. Before long, he was head of a top secret research laboratory, with an SS regiment—and title—at his disposal.
Karl was proud of his intimate knowledge of his father, an otherwise guarded man. He turned to appraise the familiar, crisp profile of the man who was now entrusting the Aryan dream to him.
Approaching footfalls drew his attention to the wharf. One SS soldier had broken away from the other four. Three diamonds on his left collar marked him as an officer. His gray uniform looked disheveled and grubby, but it was a model of German aristocracy compared to Karl’s clothes.
The soldier moved to within a handsbreadth of Josef Litt. He angled his head away from the boy and bent closer and whispered in his father’s ear.
Josef nodded tersely, without hesitation.
The soldier glanced back at the workmen. Finished, they were talking quietly and waiting for their pay so they could go home and at long last fill their families’ bellies. He pulled a Schmeisser submachine gun from a strap over his shoulder. He positioned the weapon so only the boy and his father could see him yank back its bolt, chambering the first round. He flicked his eyes toward Karl. The look surprised the boy; the man’s face reflected doubt, even sorrow. Then
the soldier turned away, leaving Karl to wonder. With the gun hidden behind him, the soldier marched toward the workers.
Karl felt his father’s hand on the back of his head. The elder Litt’s voice was cold as an executioner’s blade.
“Sei fleisig, mein Sohn.” Learn well, my son.
The hard lessons had started six days before, when his
father had awakened him after midnight. “It’s time, Karl,” he had said breathlessly.
“I’m ready, Father.”
In the anemic light of the foyer, there was a teary farewell with Karl’s mother. Hair in curlers, she wore a thin beige nightgown that smelled vaguely of sweat. She alternately embraced him crushingly, kissed his face, and babbled about how much she loved him. He stood stoically unresponsive; her antics shamed him. She had known for more than half a year this day would come. Karl broke free of her arms and strode out the door without looking back.
Several trips along the rubble-strewn streets of Berlin filled the car with three other children—two boys, one of whom wept incessantly, and a cheery little girl who informed them that she was five. Travel was slow as they moved against a pounding tide of refugees heading into Berlin.
Two hours later, they lost their car to three German army officers determined to escape the wrath of both the Allied war machine and an increasingly unstable fuhrer. What followed was a blur of trudging through fields and swamps and dense forests.
The thought of missing the U-boat made his father nearly insane with panic. They caught an hour’s sleep here, a couple more there. They rummaged through heaps of trash and the clothes of decaying corpses, looking for scraps of food. Josef feared all pedestrians, and vehicles even more so. He instructed the others to hit the ground and stay flat at his signal.
Once, Josef told the children to wait, and he loped off toward a farmhouse. Karl thought he looked like a wounded beast, bounding toward shelter under the glare of a hateful moon. He returned thirty minutes later with two loaves of bread and a small bag of carrots and potatoes. The bread was splattered with a dark, coppery-smelling liquid, impossible to identify in the night. The group ate it without question.
Sometime after that a fat man in tatters sprang out from behind a stone wall. He grabbed at the children, demanding food. Josef rushed to him and knocked him into the mud. In an instant, he was sitting on the man’s fat belly. A huge knife appeared. Josef pressed the blade against the man’s bulging neck. Karl saw muscles strain in his father’s jaw and forearms and caught a flash of gritted teeth: the wounded beast cornered.
“Don’t try me,” his father said. “You won’t survive to tell the tale.”
They did not move for a long moment, then his father pushed off the man and started walking again. Always walking.
The downed man gasped for breath. Blood flowed from what looked to Karl like a small, smiling mouth etched into his neck. But the man pulled himself up, held a dirty handkerchief to his wound, and stumbled off in the other direction.
They staggered into Rostock on the Baltic Sea late the next afternoon. After three years of Royal Air Force bombings, the town was a crumbling mess. Tiny billows of dust danced like ghosts in the empty streets. Shutters clung to darkened windows. If the Brits had failed to completely destroy the place, they had succeeded in beating the spirit out of its people.
They rounded a ravaged brick building and faced the harbor—but no U-boat. The opaque water was smooth and undisturbed. The scorched pilings of shattered docks jutted from the water like rotten teeth. Only the nearest dock had barely survived, the huge sliding doors of its warehouse intact and drawn tight.
Karl turned to his father, who did not look devastated as Karl had expected, only worried. Josef held his hand up to Karl—Don’t panic, it said—and walked on, his hand still raised, forgotten.
As they drew closer, one of the warehouse doors screeched open and SS soldiers stepped out. The SS commander explained that the U-boat was waiting thirty miles offshore. Josef’s mood lifted; he laughed. “Call it in,” he said.
Karl lumbered into the gutted warehouse. A ragtag bunch of children—most of them n
owhere near puberty—sprawled in boredom and fatigue over mountains of crates. He discovered later that they numbered thirty-five, including himself. Among them were a half dozen men, unshaven, unbathed, and looking utterly miserable. The scientists and chaperones his father had told him about. Water from an early-afternoon rain shower dripped off exposed rafters, producing a light melody on the crates and concrete floor.
He located a boy about his size, sitting on a short stack of pallets, and hobbled over to him. Karl had lost a shoe in a treacherous ravine several days before and now wore only a bulky rag on that foot.
“What’s your name?” Karl demanded.
“Gregor.” His voice was weak, as though he had no energy for the task. His face was scratched and dirty. Karl knew his was the same.
“Your shoes—give them to me.”
Gregor looked him up and down. “No.”
Karl moved in quickly. One hand clenched Gregor’s neck, the other caught the arm that had come up in defense. He touched his lips to the boy’s ear. “Don’t try me,” he whispered harshly. “You won’t survive to tell the tale.”
He took a step back and smiled wickedly at Gregor’s stunned expression. Then Gregor lowered his head and untied the shoes.
Six hours later, he watched as the SS officer with the submachine gun hidden behind him used subtle hand signals to organize his soldiers into a crescent around the dockworkers. The military men eyed the officer for a signal, as an orchestra would watch its conductor. Just as one of the workers tossed a cigarette aside and turned his head in suspicion, the officer nodded. He swung the gun around and started firing.
When the other soldiers joined in, the sound was like the sky ripping open from one end to the other.
Within seconds it was over. Smoke billowed like souls into the night, disappearing as it caught the wind and escaped the light. After a moment, the boy felt his father’s hand pressure him to walk forward toward the U-boat. At the gangplank, they turned to each other. All the things he could say and do ran through the boy’s head, but finally he simply held out his hand to give his father a handshake. Instead of grabbing Karl’s hand in return, his father thrust his arm forward, head-high, and said quietly, “Heil, Hitler!”
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