by Dana Haynes
When their cups were full, John told the epidemiologist what he knew about the apparently harmless transspecies influenza from the Philippines. John pulled out his notebook and a pen.
Theo James looked perplexed. “Why would anyone ambush the Secret Service for a harmless virus?” He sat forward, leaning over his generous slice of pie. John thought the man looked a little like Spencer Tracy in his fifties.
“See? That’s what I keep asking. That’s why the army story doesn’t scan … no offense.”
Theo waved him off. “I’m as skeptical of the military as the next man. This General Glenn said a unit of Filipino soldiers was exposed to the virus but nobody got sick?”
“Yeah. Do you know Glenn?”
“No, but I know the name. Stuffed shirt.” The major wolfed down his pie. “But the story might be true. Most flu viruses only affect one species. Heck, most viruses only affect one organ in one species. Thing is, flus are fickle. They change every season.”
John made the T-for-timeout symbol. “You’re going over my head, Doc.”
“Okay. Every year, flu sweeps through the world, right? You get it. You feel like you want to die. You get better. Winter ends. Flu season is always linked to winter.”
John said, “Influenza del freddo.”
The major waved his pie fork like a conductor’s baton. “There you go. Influenza del freddo. Early Italian physicians didn’t know what the malady was, but they knew it was influenced by the cold. Which’s where we get the word influenza. So, okay. Winter ends. Cherry blossoms, commencement speeches, big blockbuster superhero movies, skirts get shorter, the Red Sox disappoint me.”
John smiled over the rim of his cup.
“Winter rolls around and, what do you know? The flu comes back and some thirty-six thousand Americans die each winter from a standard, run-of-the-mill virus. You get it. Your sainted Aunt Petunia gets it. You’re both fine. But some stockbroker down the block gets it and dies. How come?” Theo James leaned in, across the table. “How come everyone didn’t develop an immunity the winter before?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Antigen drift. You sure you don’t want any pie?”
John nodded, jotting notes.
“The flu virus summers-over, if you will, in natural reservoirs. Usually avian. Also pigs and some primates. During its dormant phase, the RNA drifts apart and comes back together, but changed.”
“Changed how?”
“A virus is just a packet of information. A chain of nucleotides: sugar; phosphates; the four-letter code, A, C, G, and U.”
John looked up from his notebook. “A, C, G, and T?”
“That’s DNA. We’re talking RNA. They didn’t cover this in law school?”
John said, “I was out that day.”
Theo sat up straight. “I had perfect attendance in fifth grade. I got a gold star.”
“We’re CIA. Like we didn’t know that.”
Theo covered his lips while he laughed. “OK, Mister Secret Agent. When the virus is dormant, it can mutate. Slowly. That’s antigen drift. Typically, birds infect birds. Yeah? But every now and then, the virus RNA undergoes a huge change. A big, honkin’ whale of a change. That’s antigen shift, as opposed to antigen drift. You follow?”
John nodded.
“You get these massive antigen shifts in, say, a bird flu. All of a sudden, it’s not just bird-to-bird transmission. It’s bird-to- … I don’t know, pig, let’s say. And once in this new animal reservoir, then the virus can shift again. Now it’s not just bird-to-pig, it gets really interesting. It becomes pig-to-pig. You with me? That’s fine, but then it mutates again to pig-to-human. And our bodies have no immunization for this brand-new flu. Winter rolls around. Influenza del freddo. Yeah?”
John thought this guy’s talents were wasted outside the classroom.
“Okay, that’s bad. Especially if you work at a hog farm or sell unprocessed meat. But it could be worse. The virus—God forbid—becomes capable of human-to-human transmission. Now, it doesn’t matter if you work at a hog farm. If your cousin’s cousin works there, the new virus can reach you. You and everyone around you. This is your swine flu, your avian influenza, your 1918 Spanish flu.”
John wondered why he couldn’t have had this guy for Biology 101 at Columbia. He might have spent more time at parties and less time cramming. “Okay. But the virus from the Philippines: It was professionally mutated by a biologist?”
Theo shrugged. “Why not? The nucleotides of the Spanish flu are in the public domain. You can Google it for cryin’ out loud.”
“But the Tajik biologist failed.”
“Not surprising. I think I could craft a brand-new influenza virus at USAMRIID, using a couple billion dollars of your tax money. But in some hut in the jungle? I’d be lucky if I could grow penicillin. If recombinant RNA were easy, al-Qaida would’ve done it ages ago.”
“So why would someone in Colorado risk attacking a Secret Service convoy to steal a failed science experiment?”
Theo waited until the waitress had refilled their cups. “You’re the spy; you tell me.”
“Harvard Law, remember? I’m an analyst, not a spy.”
“Well, for whatever reason, they…” The major’s jovial voice drifted away. He stared at the bits of crumbling pastry on his pie plate as if they had just formed a crumb constellation.
“Major?”
“Hmm?” The guy blinked, coming out of where ever.
John repressed a smile. He remembered, a hundred times, his dad doing just that when some passage of the Torah had leaped off the synaptic back burner to snap into clarity.
“You were gone there for a minute.”
“I was?”
John nodded.
“Sorry. Did you just say the biologist was a Tajik?”
“Yeah.”
“You know his name?”
John started rifling through back pages of his notebook. “Sure. Hold on … I’ve got this … ah, right. Farrukh Tuychiev.”
Major James drew very still.
“What?”
James set down his coffee cup, reached over and unzipped a Fighting Irish backpack that rested on his side of the table. He withdrew a laptop, opened it. He waited for the computer to latch onto the diner’s Wi-Fi, then typed in a name and password, waited, typed in another password. Then a third.
“Major?”
“The USAMRIID mainframe,” he said. “Give me a second.”
He clacked keys. John waited, sensing it would be worth it.
Theo reached into his denim jacket for cheap, plastic cheaters and peered at the screen.
“Does the name János Tuychiev ring a bell?”
“Just the last name.”
“Yeah. We had a János Tuychiev in the archives. From Tajikistan, originally, but mostly from Moscow. Part of a Soviet-era project to weaponize viruses. Working with smallpox and hemorrhagic fevers. They didn’t get very far before Gorbachev shut them down. I wouldn’t have remembered, except I read the guy’s works while I was getting my master’s in public health.”
“When was this? The 1980s?”
The major nodded.
“Okay. So we have two guys working with RNA, about four decades apart. Both from Tajikistan, same last name. Both working with viruses. Both working to weaponize them.”
Theo said, “What are the odds?”
“Longish.”
Theo started typing again. John said, “What…?”
“I’m marking this moment in the USAMRIID archives.”
“Really? I ask ’cause we have this thing about archives and the Public Information Act and—”
“First steps in the discussion of any new virus,” the major said, and didn’t stop typing with two fingers. “We may have ourselves a threshold event.”
“Is that good?”
“When a new influenza is identified, one that crosses from species to species, it’s a threshold event. I’m on an international watch team for the
World Health Organization. I’m one of the guys who gets to designate such events. I’d say this qualifies.”
John said, “Yeah, but the virus failed.”
James shrugged. “Every failed virus can be a successful virus with some knowledgeable tweaking. And we get a little leeway about these things. If we’re sure someone knowledgeable is trying to create a new virus, that’s good enough to make the watch list.”
John started thinking of the cold reception his theory had received at Langley. “So once it’s on the watch list, you get to bring in some international assistance on this thing?”
“You catch on quick, Harvard. Has the CIA given this beastie a name yet?”
“The virus?”
James nodded.
“No.”
“Want to go down in history? John Broom, you get to name your first protovirus.”
John gave it all of two seconds of thought. “Pegasus-B.”
James winced. “A little Crichtonesque, maybe?”
“Humor me.”
“Okey-doke.” The biologist typed away, then slapped down the lid of his laptop. “Let’s go find out whatever happened to János Tuychiev.”
Paris, France
Owen Cain Thorson and his CIA team, now code-named Swing Band, landed their modified 757 amid the heavy airlift transports of Villacoublay Air Base outside Paris. Once they were wheels dry, it took them an additional forty-five minutes to get to the ruined factory outside the city. Swing Band was sixteen people deep and the French Army provided two vans with two drivers. The Americans were kept on a tight leash.
As they approached the factory, soldiers with M-16s waved them toward a staging area. One of Thorson’s team, a tightly knit, hyperkinetic, and tech-savvy Los Angelina named Maldonado, tapped him on the shoulder. She pointed out the window. “Jefe. Moon suits.”
Sure enough, soldiers close to the bombed-out factory wore full biohazard suits, complete with self-contained breathing apparatus.
The CIA team exchanged worried glances.
Soldiers kept the Americans clustered near the vans. A petite Eurasian woman marched over to them. She wore a baggy white suit with a large hood, shoved back and draped across her shoulders. The suit was tucked into white boots. The suit looked comically bulky on her petite frame, and was accentuated by a cinched police-style utility belt and full holster. Water dripped from her suit. Thorson could smell the water-chlorine solution.
“I’m Colonel Céline Trinh. I am ranking officer here.”
“Colonel. Owen Cain Thorson, CIA.” He stuck out a hand but the colonel was studying a handheld monitor and didn’t appear to notice.
Thorson said, “Is this the scene?”
The Eurasian officer looked up and nodded. She appeared wired, like someone on a coffee bender. Short-chopped gray hair adhered to her forehead with sweat. Her English was stilted. “We confronted an estimated ten to twelve combatants in that building, there. Your Daria Gibron was positively ID’d.”
“Status?”
Trinh shrugged but the gesture was almost entirely hidden within the bulky suit. “We are not fully inside the building yet.”
“Belhadj?”
Again, she shrugged.
Thorson caught a whiff of tear gas in the air. The whole block was loud with chatter and truck noises, and the military vehicles’ lights cast long, low shadows everywhere. “Can we talk inside your command vehicle, Colonel?”
Trinh said, “Your initial reports about Belhadj and Gibron didn’t say anything about the weapons chemical or the weapons, ah, biologique, Mr. Thorson. Is there anything the CIA is not sharing with us?”
“We followed all allied-agency protocols. The DCRI knows what we know.”
Trinh looked like she trusted the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur about as much as she trusted the Central Intelligence Agency. There had always been tension between France’s Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Defense, although Thorson didn’t know that.
One of Thorson’s senior agents, a wiry-haired Special Forces shooter named Collier, made a show of toeing the ground and clearing his throat. When Thorson looked over, Collier nodded toward a low-riding, six-wheeled Erector Set of a robot inching its way past the stacked ruins of a tank and an attack helo. Two soldiers in white protective suits controlled the robot with a large remote control unit.
Trinh noticed the interplay.
Collier, an Oklahoman and career soldier, said, “Pardon me, ma’am. Those’re sniffers?”
He’d noticed the robot’s articulated arms and their detectors for hazardous chemicals and radioactive material.
Trinh looked at the slow-rolling robot, then addressed Thorson. “We are seeing what looks like a weapons laboratory, Mr. Thorson. Do either the Syrienne or the Israélienne have experience with weapons of mass destruction?”
Maldonado said simply, “The G8. Holy crap.”
Thorson’s heart sank. He knew about the Group of Eight meeting set for Southern France. He also had a flash-image in his head of that arrogant know-it-all John Broom hopping straight up to tap a map of Colorado, like it was a half-court jump ball. Thorson experienced an entirely irrational irritation that Broom’s pressed shirt hadn’t come untucked when he did that. Thorson had no idea why that, alone, pissed him off.
He ground his teeth. “Can we move this to your command vehicle, Colonel? I’d like to report this to our operational command right away.”
Trinh was a gifted poker player. “My vehicle is otherwise engaged, Mr. Thorson. Tell me what you know.”
Reluctantly, he began telling the colonel about Broom’s so-called Pegasus-B theory.
* * *
Dr. Georges Rabadeau’s eyes fluttered.
“Doctor? Doctor Rabadeau?”
His vision cleared. A woman’s heart-shaped face came into focus. She was beautiful, if bedraggled. Almond eyes, deeply tanned, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Doctor?”
“You … didn’t leave me…”
The woman lifted a lidded plastic bottle to his lips and a tiny amount of water entered his mouth. He swallowed.
“Where … am I?”
Daria looked around. Almost two hours had passed since the battle for the factory in Paris. Belhadj had found a farm road off a minor highway, winding itself between scrubby hills and parallel to a national rail line. He’d found a small roadway bridge and a mostly unused road, and had parked the stolen command vehicle under the bridge’s cover. The moon was bright enough to cast lunar shadows.
Inside the truck, the doctor with the triaged tourniquet passed out yet again. Daria tapped his cheek softly.
“Doctor Rabadeau? Can you hear me?” She spoke French and gently shook his shoulder as his eyes fluttered. His breathing was shallow, his lips turning blue.
“My … leg…”
“Yes. I stopped the bleeding.” Daria saw no reason to tell the man he was still bleeding internally and that the wound was fatal.
Maybe he knew anyway. A tear trickled through his dust-encrusted cheek. “My God.”
“Sir? Asher Sahar. He hired you, yes? I need to know why.”
Belhadj had moved back and sat at one of the truck’s computer consoles, using a flash drive he had scrounged up to download data on the DCRI’s mission.
The doctor wet his lips. “He … confirmation.”
Daria fed him a little more water and he swallowed. “What did he hire you for? Confirmation of what?”
“He—” The Frenchman’s body shuddered, closing down.
Belhadj shook his head. “I’m amazed he lasted this long.”
Daria shook the frail man’s shoulder. “Doctor?”
“… flu.…”
“Sir?”
“He … he has a flu.”
Daria and Belhadj exchanged glances. Daria said, “Asher is sick? He has the flu?”
And, surprisingly, the dying man’s lips curled and he offered a dry husk of a laugh.
“He has …
flu … from Soviets. It…”
“Doctor?”
“Re … combinant.”
Daria fed him another thimbleful of water. “Flu … hemorrhagic but … airborne. Targeted. Now … bonding … HLA surfaces … targeted.”
Daria cupped his sweaty cheek with her open palm. “What? What does that mean? Doctor?”
Belhadj, in one of the bolted-down swivel chairs, logged on to the Internet. He had severed all of the DCRI protocols so the Google search became just one of a million such searches globewide.
“HLA,” Georges Rabadeau gasped. His eyes were dilated.
“What does that mean?”
“Recombinant … harmless but to … Ash … kenazi…”
Daria’s entire body tightened. “Doctor? Sir, what does that mean? Doctor?”
“The author … so beautiful.” Tears glistened in the Frenchman’s eyes. “Craftsmanship. The … Tajik. Tuychiev. Recognized … signature…”
The man choked and gurgled. And died.
“Doctor? Doctor!” She shook him.
Belhadj said, “He’s dead.”
Daria turned to him, an insult curling her lip.
“Forget about him.” Belhadj stared at his computer console. “I looked up HLA while he was babbling. Human lymphocyte antigens. It’s the thing they test for if you donate blood. Or an organ. It’s what separates us humans biologically.”
Daria swiped grimy hair away from her face. She began burning with an anger that far surpassed her fatigue.
Belhadj peered at his screen. “What did he mean, ash can?”
“No,” she seethed. “He said, Ashkenazi. The Western Jews. The Jews of Europe.”
Belhadj sat up straight. He swiveled his chair, slowly, until they made eye contact. “I’m … what? I don’t understand. I am not schooled. What are you saying?”
Daria knelt by the dead man, her mind a spinning blender set on white-hot hate. Her vision fractured through tears.
“What? What did he mean?”
“Asher. He has a flu that…”
“Gibron?”
“He has a designer flu. A superflu. One designed to … it targets Jewish people.”
“Is…” Belhadj scrambled for a response. “I’m sorry. Is that even possible?”
