Germ

by Robert Liparulo

Gregor nodded. “That was to the service that gave us the lead on Parker.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Soon enough, we’ll be able to buy Anderson’s entire firm.” He scanned the dilapidated corridor. “And get this place fixed up.”

  The biologist exited the break room, greeted Litt and Gregor, and headed toward the labs. The two men went in. Gregor poured them each a cup of coffee, and they sat at the table. Gregor stared into the liquid’s shiny black surface.

  “Something else?” Litt asked.

  Gregor shrugged, sipped from the cup. “It’s just …”

  “What?”

  “So close to fulfilling the dream, Karl. I’m just thinking—” He looked into the black orbs of Litt’s glasses, saw himself reflected in each lens. “Look, I don’t have a problem with killing kids, as a means to an end.”

  “You don’t believe it’s necessary?”

  He shrugged. “Strategically, I think it’s a mistake.”

  “Our experts disagree. The plan was maximum impact. The public has to feel it, Gregor. It has to hurt.”

  “I just think there will be a backlash where children are involved.”

  “We want a backlash—against Kendrick, against his deceit, against his government’s complicity.”

  “But is the list about getting attention or …” He tried to find the word.

  Litt beat him to it. “Vengeance?”

  “Your family … Who wouldn’t want revenge? I’m just wondering if putting so many children on the list … I know it will wrench people out of their complacency, but might they not want your head instead of listening to the reasons you are striking back at them?”

  “At first, maybe. Then they will say, ‘Who has brought this on us? Who has awakened this monster?’ And they will find Kendrick and their own government. They will bring down their own house from their grief and anger.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Litt pushed back from the table, his chair screeching against the tile. He stood. “Either way, Gregor,” he said, “it’s too late now.” He picked up his cup and left.

  Gregor didn’t move for a long time. He had studied war. He understood the power of demoralizing an enemy’s citizens, of crushing their spirit and their will to fight. But he also knew that the tactic could backfire and result in a more determined enemy. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. He was sure Karl would respond in kind. Ten thousand this time. How many the next? One million was not out of the question. Karl didn’t care. He had stopped caring decades ago.

  Take my family, he imagined Karl thinking, and I will slaughter your children.

  thirty-six

  The Appalachian Cafe occupied a rustic brick building on a cheery block of downtown Knoxville, complete with wide sidewalks and a line of alternating old-fashioned streetlamps and mature trees. Modeled after the favored eateries of Europe, the cafe boasted a large front patio where wood-framed umbrellas shaded white metal tables. Now lunchtime on an outside kind of day, every table buzzed with business types. Microbrewed beer disappeared by the vat, along with whole crops of the latest trend in spinach salads. The image made Julia yearn for the day before yesterday, when she and Donnelley might have lunched in such a place and razzed each other over some investigative faux pas.

  As she came up to the wrought-iron rail that separated the patio from the sidewalk, she scanned the diners for Parker. Everyone appeared to be laughing or smiling, which made her conscious of her own pouting mouth. Then she saw him, sitting across the table from a huge man who’d blocked him from view seconds earlier. They didn’t look like brothers. He spotted her and nodded in greeting. She liked that: no conspicuous waves or shouts. Whether that meant he knew how to keep a low profile, she’d find out soon enough.

  She had to enter the restaurant to get to the patio. The place exuded a smell like roasted almonds that made her mouth water despite her upset stomach. Only then did she realize that she’d last eaten more than twenty-four hours ago. Perhaps it was hunger and not only grief causing her stomach pains.

  The hostess escorted her to Parker’s table. Both men stood. They were positioned across from each other, leaving two chairs between them at the round table: one facing the street, the other facing the restaurant. She’d have preferred a seat where she could watch both of them at once. She settled for the one facing the street, putting Parker on her left, his brother on her right. She slipped the new gym bag off her shoulder and set it on the ground.

  “I’m glad you came,” Parker said, sitting again, scooting his chair close to the table.

  She smiled politely and noted that he was wearing brand-new clothes, complete with factory-fold creases. Her new blouse had hanger marks on the shoulders, which her blazer hid. She took in the other man, his brother. He had to be one of the biggest people she’d ever seen. The hairiest too. But he possessed kind eyes and a ready smile. Where Allen was undeniably charming, perhaps a little too slick, this man was utterly and instantly likable. She hoped she wasn’t simply needing a kind face and imagining it where it wasn’t.

  “We couldn’t think of anything else to do,” Allen said. “We had our reservations. I’d just as soon trust the waiter as a cop right now.”

  “I know how you feel,” she said.

  He gave her an inquisitive look, but she turned away.

  “You’re Dr. Parker’s brother?”

  “Stephen.” They shook hands. In his, hers was small and pathetic looking.

  “And call me Allen, please.”

  “You don’t look like brothers.”

  “I got the looks,” Allen said. “He got the … hair.”

  Stephen winked at her.

  “Are you a physician?”

  “He almost was,” Allen said, a little harshly, Julia thought. “He dropped out two months short of graduation. He—”

  “Allen, let’s not go there.” Stephen turned to Julia, his face softening. “I’m a pastor, and I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

  “Weren’t you with Allen last night when he got attacked?”

  “Yeah. I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  She got it. What normal person would guess he’d be attacked by assassins and have to run for his life? “Me too. Allen, you too?”

  “I know that everything was fine until your partner wound up on my operating table.”

  He was glaring at her, seeming to expect an answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

  “What are you saying?” she said.

  He shifted in his chair. “I don’t like being chased from my home. I don’t like being shot at. I don’t like my life being disrupted.”

  “You’re acting like I had something to do with that.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No. I don’t like it either. I’ve got a mother at home with multiple sclerosis, and I can’t get to her, can’t help her. The man you watched die on your table was my partner, yes, but he was also my best friend. He recognized one of the men who killed him. He thought he was a federal agent. So until I find out what’s going on, I can’t go back to my own agency, and I can’t call in the troops. I’m out in the cold, and you’re making it colder.”

  The confrontational expression remained hard on his face, then it softened and he said, “You hungry?”

  “Famished, I think.”

  Allen gestured to the waiter, and all three ordered.

  Julia unrolled flatware out of a cloth napkin, shook it out, and dropped it into her lap. As she did, she asked, “What kind of food do you like, Allen?”

  He paused to look at her. “Steak, mostly. Seafood. Italian. Anything prepared well.”

  “I’m partial to Cajun. Blackened catfish, jambalaya, mmm. Where were you born—around here?”

  “Chattanooga. Our father’s a GP there, as was his father.”

  “Family business.”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes on Stephen.

  Cool’s the word, she thought. Allen didn’t fidget. He looked her straight in
the eyes. In her experience, the cooler the customer, the easier it was for him to lie. That was her reason for asking unimportant questions—she wanted to witness his behavioral baseline when he wasn’t lying. Later, if his behavior changed, she would have cause for suspicion.

  “So,” she said, “what happened yesterday?”

  He shook his head, then nodded, glanced at his brother, opened his mouth, shut it again. Clearly he wasn’t sure where to start.

  “Let me tell you my end,” she offered. She told them about the call to pick up Vero, the hit attempt and escape that separated her from Goody, the loss of the SATD signal, Goody’s call, the hospital. She explained how she went to the bar to examine the crime scene, but excluded mention of the memory chip. She didn’t want to reveal her entire hand until she knew these men better, knew what part they would play in this situation’s resolution, if any. She described her encounter with the assassin and the end he met.

  Allen said, “You said the cops killed him. You think he’s the same one who attacked me at home?”

  She nodded. “Big guy, glasses, laser-sighted handgun.”

  Allen began his story with Goody’s presentation in the ER. He described the wounds and the razor disk he found lodged in Goody’s sternum.

  As hard as she tried to stay objective and removed, Allen’s words sliced her heart, just as those disks had sliced Goody. She was certain the memory always would. To get her mind off the details of his death, she said, “The only common denominator between us is Goody. So you think the attack against you has to do with him?”

  “Absolutely. Just before I was attacked, a police lieutenant called. He said several other people who’d been with Donnelley between when he was shot and when he died in the trauma room were attacked and killed.”

  Julia’s face expressed the shock she felt. “The killer must have been looking for something. Or else trying to keep people quiet about what they think Goody might have said. Did he say anything to you?”

  “Oh yeah. For one, he said filoviruses are man-made.”

  “Man-made? You mean … like in a lab?”

  Allen nodded. “And we’re talking some nasty stuff. Marburg. Ebola. Severe hemorrhagic fever. Internal organs start to decay as though you’re already dead, but you aren’t. Your blood loses its ability to clot; then your endothelial cells, which form the lining of the blood vessels, fail to function, so blood leaks through. Soon it oozes from every orifice—the obvious ones and even from your eyes, pores, and under your fingernails. Then you die.”

  Julia wasn’t hungry anymore.

  “Most people think of the outbreaks in Africa,” Allen continued. “But Ebola has struck in the Philippines, Italy, England. The strain known as Reston takes its name from the town in Virginia where it was first discovered. In 1996, a case of Ebola was reported in Texas. Marburg was first recognized in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and Belgrade, Yugoslavia.”

  “But man-made? What does that mean?”

  “Just that, I guess. Somebody created it. It was genetically engineered. Whenever a terrible new virus is discovered, everyone just assumes it was some kind of natural mutation or that it’s been lying around dormant for tens of thousands of years until something— man’s encroachment into its territory, presumably—reactivated it or exposed humans to something that was always there.”

  “Of course we’d think that,” Stephen interjected. “After all, who’d want to make something that terrible?”

  “But maybe somebody has,” said Allen.

  “Is that even possible?” Julia asked.

  “With what’s going on in genetics these days, anything’s possible,” Allen said. “When Marburg first surfaced, doctors thought they were dealing with a strain of Rhabdoviridae—rabies. Maybe somebody genetically altered a rhabdovirus, I don’t know, but on closer inspection they realized what they had on their hands was an entirely new family of virus. Filoviruses … Ebola is completely unlike any other known human pathogen. Its physical appearance is long and thin, like a snake—appropriate, considering its stealthy and deadly disposition. And it secretes an unusually high concentration of glycoprotein that shields it from the immune system. That means there are no vaccines and no cures.”

  “If you get it, you die?”

  “Not necessarily. Some victims survive. No one knows why.”

  “But that’s changing,” said Stephen. “Allen looked into it last night. Ebola is getting worse, more virulent, as if someone is improving its effectiveness.”

  Julia stared at Stephen, then turned to Allen for confirmation.

  “It’s true,” he said. “The first Marburg outbreak had a 28 percent mortality rate. Ten years later, the Ebola-Zaire’s mortality was up to 75 percent. In 2001, it hit 90 percent. It’s now one of the most lethal viruses ever known.”

  “As if that weren’t enough,” added Stephen, “transmission of the disease is getting more volatile. Earlier strains showed no signs of spreading through the air. Direct transmission was by contact with blood and other secretions containing high titers of virus. Then, about ten years ago, the Army reported that healthy monkeys caged across the room from monkeys with Ebola got infected. The Ebola had become airborne. Was this a natural evolution of the virus?” His bushy eyebrows shot up. “Or the fruition of someone’s efforts to make the disease more deadly?”

  Julia shook her head. “But why? I mean, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” said Allen. “Think about it. A disease with no known cure. No way to vaccinate against it. The person who controls such a thing could hold the world hostage. Symptoms of Ebola exhibit quickly, often just a few hours after infection. And it kills quickly, usually within a couple weeks. The short incubation means a tight quarantine can keep it from spreading out of control. But if someone were to systematically infect pockets of the population, he could wipe out whole societies without losing much control over its spread.”

  The table fell silent for a full minute. Julia stared down at her half-eaten sandwich, watching the tuna salad ooze from the croissant. She couldn’t grasp the full implications of Allen’s words; her mind would not project itself past the popular horror stories of Ebola’s effects on the human body. But she did know that if people had created this disease, they would kill to keep it secret.

  In fact, she thought, such people would be highly proficient at killing.

  thirty-seven

  He was almost there. Ten minutes, according to the rental car’s GPS. Seven minutes, the way he was driving. He anticipated finding three targets. He’d try to take one alive, use him or her to retrieve his employer’s property. He had never failed an assignment, and he didn’t want to start now. Truth was, however, he didn’t care too much about the property … or his employer. He did care about the targets.

  He cared a lot about them.

  Tension in his face. In the muscles of his forearms and hands. Bad for battle.

  He focused on the sound of the radio coming through the car’s cheap speakers: a country melody … heavy metal … some loudmouth ranting about a local politician’s drive to … classical music—Vivaldi, the driver decided. The Red Priest. And what had that politician been up to? He wanted to raise the cost of parking meters—yeah, that was it. The radio jumped to the next station on the dial. A commercial for “champagne homes on a beer budget …”

  He felt calmer.

  Champagne homes on a beer budget. Who thought up these things? His foot edged down on the accelerator, and he shot through a light just as it turned red.

  GPS said eight minutes. He said five.

  thirty-eight

  “There’s one more thing that lends credibility to what

  your partner told me,” Allen said, poking at the fries on his plate. “No one has been able to find where Ebola resides when it is not in monkeys or humans. It disappears for years at a time, but no reservoir has been found, despite testing thousands of animals and insects.” He gave her a sideways glance, as if t
o say,

  Are you following?

  “You’re suggesting it can’t be found in nature because it’s not there.”

  “Pretty and smart,” he said with a wink at Stephen. “The reservoir is actually a test tube in some mad scientist’s lab. He keeps it there until it’s time for another field test. Then back into nature it goes so he can watch what happens.”

  “Wait a minute,” Julia said. “Isn’t it possible that a virus can mutate itself in the ways you’ve described, for no other reason than its own survival?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And scientists still might find a nonhuman reservoir in nature and figure out natural reasons for those other odd things about Ebola, right?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I mean, you are viewing the evidence through the lens of suspicion.”

  “And in the context of a murderous cover-up,” he agreed.

  “Why wouldn’t somebody have blown the top off this years ago?”

  “Julia, I can only guess.” Allen snatched a fry off her plate, bit it in two, and flicked the remainder at Stephen. “Maybe these guys are good at hiding. If they have been introducing Ebola into the population every time they needed to test it, they’ve been smart about it; probably giving it to monkeys first, or even infecting humans through monkeys, to throw investigators off the trail. In Africa they found the perfect red herring: poor countries where shoddy communication, transportation, and medical expertise combine with rough terrain and a staggering number of possible insect and animal vectors to hinder ecological investigations and throw a cloud of mystique over the whole puzzle. It is the Dark Continent.”

  “You’re forgetting the more probable reason,” said Stephen. “Look at the situation we’re in. We may or may not know something, yet somebody is going all out to silence us. How do we know that other people, people before us, haven’t tried to blow the top off, only to be stopped? By all indications, we’re messing with powerful people.”

  They sat quietly for a while, looking at their partially eaten lunches, at each other, but not really at anything. The shadow under their umbrella seemed to have darkened.

  “Okay,” Julia said, pushing away her plate. “Let’s say someone is making Ebola. Unless they’re doing something more, I can’t see—”