by Ted Dekker
A man of German or Swiss descent whom she’d never met before had pulled the bag off her head and unplugged her ears. He’d left her in this room without speaking.
Another laboratory. Blinding white. A small lab, maybe twenty by twenty, but crammed with the latest equipment. A Field Emission Electron Microscope, a Siemens, stood along one wall. The microscope could effectively examine wet samples as well as specimens treated with liquid nitrogen. State of the art. Next to it, a long table arrayed with test tubes and a Beckman Coulter Counter.
In the corner, a mattress, and in an adjoining room without a door, a toilet and a sink.
The room was constructed of cinder blocks, like the others. On second look, she was sure that whoever had built the other two labs she’d been in had also built this one. How many did they have? And each had been carefully supplied with everything a geneticist or a virologist would need.
She’d curled up on the mattress, dressed in the pale blue slacks and matching blouse they’d given her before the trip, and cried. She knew that she should be strong. That Svensson surely wouldn’t actually release the virus as he’d threatened to. That if he did, she might be the only one who could stop it. But the chance of the back door she’d engineered surviving the mutation was terribly small. They had to be bluffing.
Still, she’d cried.
A man in a white smock with red hair and bifocals had entered the room twenty minutes later carrying a brown snakeskin briefcase. “Are you okay?” He actually looked surprised at her condition. “Goodness, what have they done to you? You’re Monique de Raison, right? TheMonique de Raison.”
She stood and pushed her bangs from her eyes. A scientist. Her hope surged. Was he a friend?
“Yes,” she said.
Only a few days earlier she might have slapped this man for his gawking. Now she felt small. Too small.
A glint sparkled in the man’s eyes. “We have a wager. We have a wager.” He motioned to the door. “Who will find it first, you or us.” He leaned forward as if what he was about to say was to be kept secret. “I am the only one betting on you.”
He was slightly mad, she thought.
“None of us will find it,” she said. “Do you realize what’s happening?”
“Of course I do. The first to isolate the antivirus will be paid fifty million dollars, and the whole team will be paid ten million each. But there are eleven teams, so Petrov—”
She slapped him then. His glasses spun across the room. “He’s going to release the virus, you idiot!”
He stared at her. “He already has.”
Then he set the case on the floor, walked to his glasses, returned them to his face. “Everything you need is in the case,” he said. “You will see all of our work in real-time calculations, and we will see yours.”
He headed for the door.
“Please, I’m sorry!” She hurried after him. “You have to help me!”
But he closed the door and was gone.
That was over an hour ago. Now Monique stared at a dizzying string of numbers and tried desperately to focus.
He hasn’t released the virus, Monique. The chances of finding an antivirus in time are too low. It would be suicide!
But he’d kidnapped her, hadn’t he? He knew he would eventually be caught and would spend the balance of his life in prison. What did he have to lose?
And Thomas . . .
Her mind was swallowed by her two encounters with the American. His harebrained kidnapping of her. He had tied her to the air conditioner in the Paradise Hotel while he slept, while he took his dream-trip to retrieve information that he could not possibly know. The attack by Carlos. She’d seen Thomas shot, and yet he’d survived and come for her again. She’d kissed him. She’d done it to distract whoever was watching, but she’d also done it because he had risked his life for her, and she felt desperate for him to save her. He was her savior.
She didn’t know if her irresponsible feelings for him were motivated by his character or by her own despair. Her emotions were hardly trustworthy in a time like this.
Was he still alive?
You have to focus, Monique. They will come for you again. Father will have the whole world looking for you.
She took a deep breath and reapplied her concentration. A model of her own Raison Vaccine filled one corner of the screen. Below it, a model of the Raison Strain, a mutation that had survived after the vaccine had been subjected to intense heat for two hours, exactly as Thomas had predicted. She’d analyzed a simulation of the actual mutation a hundred times over the past hour and saw how it had worked. This was a freak of nature far more complex than anything a geneticist could have come up with on his own.
Ironically, her own genetic engineering, designed to keep the vaccine viable for long periods without contacting any host or moisture, had allowed the inert vaccine to mutate in such adverse conditions.
As far as she could see, there were only two ways in which an antivirus could be developed with any kind of speed—meaning weeks instead of months or years.
The first would be for her to identify the signature she had engineered into her vaccine to turn it off, as it were. She’d developed a simple way to introduce an airborne agent into the vicinity of the vaccine—a virus that would essentially neutralize the vaccine by inserting its own DNA into the mix and rendering the vaccine impotent. It was her personal signature as much as a deterrent to foul play or theft.
If she could find the specific gene she’d engineered, and if it had survived the mutation, then introducing the virus she’d already developed to neutralize the vaccine might also render the Raison Strain impotent. If, if, and might being the key words.
She knew the signature like she knew her best friend. The problem now was how to find it in this mangled mess called the Raison Strain.
The only other way to unravel an antivirus in such short order was to chance upon the right gene manipulations. But ten thousand lab technicians could coordinate their efforts for sixty days and not strike the right combination.
Svensson knew something, or he wouldn’t risk so much on a long shot. Surely he understood that her signature might not have survived, or that it might not work on the mutated vaccine.
Monique moved the cursor over the key below the diagram of the Strain and brought up a window of its DNA. She would search for her key first.
She slammed her fist on the black Formica desktop. Glass tubes rattled in a tray. She swore through gritted teeth. “This can’t be happening!”
“I’m afraid it is.”
Svensson! She spun in her chair. The old goat stood in the doorway, smiling patiently, leaning on a white cane.
He moved into the room, dragging his leg, eyes glimmering with self-satisfaction.
“Sorry to leave you alone so long, but I’ve been a bit preoccupied. The last couple days have been quite eventful.”
Monique stood and held the desk to hide a tremble in her hand. The man wore a black jacket, white shirt, no tie. His dark hair was parted in the middle and slicked back with cream. Blue veins stood out on his knuckles.
“What’s going on?” she asked, as evenly as possible.
“What isn’t?” He closed the door. “But that’s unfair. You have no idea how exciting the world has become in the last forty-eight hours, because you’ve been hard at work trying to save it.”
“How can I work if you move me every twelve hours?”
“We’re on an Indonesian island, in a mountain called Cyclops. Quite safe here. Don’t worry, it will be home for at least three days. Have you made any progress?”
“With what? You’ve given us an impossible task.”
The old man’s smile didn’t soften, but his eyes glazed. He studied her for an inordinate amount of time.
“You’re not as motivated as I’d hoped.” He walked toward her. “Please insert this disk,” he said, withdrawing a CD-ROM from his breast pocket. “And please don’t think of assaulting me. If you think I can’t sl
it your belly open with the flip of my wrist, you’re a fool.”
She took the disk and slid it into the computer’s DVD tray. It retracted.
“The rest of the world has had the benefit of what you’re going to see for three days now. I want to make sure you understand everything.”
A single virus shell popped onto the screen and she recognized it immediately. The Raison Strain. A clock showed real time at the bottom of the picture.
“Yes, a most efficient mercenary. But you haven’t seen what it can actually do.”
“This is a simulation,” she said. “Anyone can create a cartoon.”
“I assure you, not a single piece of hypothetical data has been used for this ‘cartoon,’ as you call it. I’ll leave it for you to analyze later.”
She watched as the virus entered a human lung and immediately went to work on the cells of the alveoli. She knew how it would work, penetrating the cells with its own DNA and ultimately rupturing the cells. Soon thousands of virus-infected cells were streaming through the body’s network of veins and arteries, searching out new organs. Even so, with this microscopic damage, no symptoms would be evident.
The clock at the bottom sped up and began ticking off hours, then days. It slowed at sixteen. The infected cells had reached a critical mass and were producing symptoms. Their assault on the body’s organs resulted in massive internal hemorrhaging and quick failure within two more days.
Like an acid, the virus had eaten the host from the inside out.
“Nasty little beast,” Svensson said. “There’s more.”
Monique had seen a thousand superbug simulations. She’d participated in autopsies of Ebola victims. She had seen and studied as many viruses as any other living person. But she’d never seen such a ravaging animal, not one that was so contagious, so systemic, and so innocuous before reaching maturity and consuming its host like so many piranha.
Monique cleared her throat.
The next frame showed a map of the world. Twelve red dots lit up. New York, Washington, Bangkok, and on, tiny fires popping to life.
“Forgive the melodrama, but there really is no other way to show what the naked eye cannot see.”
By the end of day one, the number of cities had reached twenty-four.
“Our initial deposit. Everything else is the virus’s own doing.”
Lines spread over the map, showing air-traffic routes. The lights spread. By the beginning of day three, half the map was solid red.
Now the simulation changed to show the spread of the virus from one host to another. Monique knew the facts well enough: One sneeze contained as many as ten million germs traveling at up to one hundred miles per hour. With this virus, the time between a person acquiring the germ and becoming contagious was a mere four hours. Even assuming each contagious agent infected only a hundred per day, the numbers grew exponentially. By day nine the number had reached six billion.
Svensson reached forward and pressed the space bar. The simulation froze.
“That brings us up to date.”
At first she didn’t understand. Up to date, meaning what?
“Give or take a few hours,” he said.
“You’re saying you’ve actually done it?”
“As promised. And I will admit that not all of the infected cities represent saturation. The red light means the virus is currently airborne, sweeping through that city. We calculate that it will take two weeks for global saturation.”
He pulled out a small vial of amber liquid. Uncorked the lid. Sniffed the opening. “Odorless.”
She knew the whole truth then. It was hard to grasp, even with his simulations. Computer models and theories and pictures were one thing, but to imagine that what she was seeing had actually happened . . .
He could be lying about all of it, forcing her to slave on an antivirus so that with it he could blackmail the world.
“You need more convincing, I can see.” He pressed the intercom button on the phone. “Bring him down.” He picked up a clean slide.
Maybe he really had done it.
“This is crazy. The United States would come unglued if—”
“The United States is coming unglued!” he shouted. “Every nation with anything resembling a military is coming unglued. The people don’t know yet, but the governments have been scrambling for two days already. The CDC has already verified the virus in over fifty of its cities.”
The door opened, and a bound man wearing a green shirt and a black bag over his head stumbled in. Carlos entered and shut the door.
Svensson withdrew a scalpel from his pocket and walked to the man. “We picked him up in a Paris nightclub. We have no idea who he is, although he looks like he might be a visitor from the Mediterranean. Perhaps Greek. His mouth is taped, so don’t bother asking him any questions. The chances of him being infected are pretty good, considering where he was spending his time, wouldn’t you agree?”
Without waiting for an answer, Svensson slashed the man across his chest. The man jerked back and moaned behind his gag. Svensson whipped the slide along the seeping line of blood that darkened the green shirt.
He walked toward the electron microscope, snapped it on, and slipped the slide into place.
“Look for yourself,” he said, stepping back.
The man had fallen to his knees, shirt now soaked red.
Monique’s head swam.
Svensson walked to the man, pulled out a pistol, and shot him in the head. His victim dropped to the floor.
The Swiss shoved the gun at the microscope. “Look!”
Ears ringing, pulse pounding, Monique walked to the monitor. She worked the familiar instrument without thinking what she was doing. It took too long to focus because she couldn’t control her hands. They were shaking and seemed to have forgotten just what to do.
But when she finally found a patch on the slide that cooperated with the intense magnification, she could hardly miss the foreign bodies swimming through the man’s blood.
She blinked and increased the magnification. Behind her the room was silent. Just her, breathing through her nostrils. This was it. This was the Raison Strain.
She straightened.
“No more games, Monique. There’s no way to stop the spread of the virus. Without an antivirus we will all die. It really is that simple. We know that you engineer a back door into your vaccines. We need you to identify this back door, verify that it hasn’t mutated with the vaccine, and then create the virus that will turn the Raison Strain off. I won’t lie to you; I’m not telling you everything—you’re clever enough to figure that out. But I am telling you what you need to know to play your part in helping humanity survive.”
She faced him, suddenly cold. “I don’t think you know what you’ve done.”
“Oh, we do. And I, like you, am only playing my part. Everyone must play his part or the game will indeed end badly. But don’t think any of this has escaped our calculation. We’ve anticipated everything.”
He glanced at Carlos. “There is the matter of the pesky American, of course. But we’re dealing with him. He may not die so easily, but we have other means. I doubt a soul alive understands the breadth of our power.”
Thomas was still alive.
She glanced at the crumpled body on the floor. He was dead, but Thomas was alive. A sliver of hope.
“We need the key,” Svensson said.
“I’ll do my best.”
“How long?”
“If it survived the mutation, three days. Maybe two.”
Svensson smiled. “Perfect. Now I have a plane to catch. They will take good care of you. You are very important to us, Monique. We’ll need brilliant minds when this is over. Please try to think positively.”
THIS IS an outrage!”
Three of the four men in the room looked at Armand Fortier with shock in their eyes.
“Is it, Jean?” Fortier stood and faced France’s leading men: the premier, Boisverte, who had just objected; President Gaeta
n, who was a weasel and would ultimately capitulate; Du Braeck, the minister of defense, who was the most valuable to Fortier; and the head of the secret police, the Sûreté, Chombarde, who was the only one without round eyes at the moment. Each had been intentionally selected; each was now faced with the decision to live for tomorrow or die tonight, though they didn’t understand it in those terms. Not yet.
“Be careful what you say,” Fortier said.
“You can’t do this!”
“I already have.”
As minister of foreign affairs, Fortier had convinced Henri Gaetan to call this emergency session to address Valborg Svensson’s recent ultimatum. Fortier had critical information relevant to the virus, he told Gaetan, and suggested that the leaders meet at the Château Triomphe in the Right Bank.
The private conference room beneath the ancient two-story retreat was the perfect setting for new beginnings. Lamps mounted on the stone walls cast an amber light across the plush furnishings. It was more like a private living room than a conference room: tall leather wing chairs budding with brass buttons, a large fireplace licked by greedy flames, a crystal chandelier over the brass coffee table, a fully stocked bar.
And most importantly, heavy walls. Very heavy walls.
Armand Fortier was a thick man. Thick eyebrows, thick wrists, thick lips. His mind, he would say, was sharp enough to cut any woman down to size in a matter of seconds. They never knew what to do with such an assertive statement, but it generally put them in a defensive mind-set so that when he did dominate them, they were not quite so submissive.
It was his only vice.
That and power.
He knew that he could have muscled his way into the presidency long ago, but he wasn’t interested in France—the scrutiny leveled at such an office would have worked against him. His appointment as the minister of foreign affairs, however, put him in the perfect position to achieve his true aspirations.
