Ed, Kevin and Walt were already in his office. There was another man in the room who Aeolus recognized, though he wasn’t sure from where. Aeolus shot a questioning look at the tall redheaded man with freckles sprinkled across his face, dressed in a US Air Force uniform with single metal rectangle insignia on his shoulders indicating his rank was First Lieutenant. Walt explained that Richard Lane was a representative from the White House and that he was here to ensure alignment with the US.
“Fine,” said Aeolus without enthusiasm, “welcome aboard.”
Aeolus asked Ed if he now understood why the case in Hong Kong was no cause for worry. Ed’s answer was too equivocal and longwinded for Aeolus’s taste and he interrupted him. “Ed, it’s about timing! If this was a consequence of a new jump, we we’d have other cases in Indonesia, and if it was a consequence of the jump in Limbong there’d be other cases in Hong Kong by now. Too much time has passed. It’s as simple as that.
“This brings me to my second point. How are we on the diagnostic test?”
“Dr. Chen-Ung Loo has managed to create reliable and accurate reagents,” Walt answered.
“Immunofluorescence?”
“Yes. He’ll ramp up production and send them to other labs as they become available.”
“Atta boy, Loo. Atta boy. And a set is already on its way to Hong Kong, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“If anyone feels like calling the former WHO country head in Indonesia and reminding him that if he hadn’t disregarded the nun’s original message, we would’ve had these tests weeks ago, now would be a good time.”
“I have some good news, though, I think,” said Kevin, tapping a folder with a pen and turning around to show Aeolus its contents. “The teams hunting bats have progressed well. There are twenty bat species native to Indonesia, out of which they’ve captured fourteen specimens. So far, the only bat that has proven to carry influenza is the Northern Tube-Nosed Bat or…” Kevin flipped through the pages, “…Nyctimene cephalotes.”
“Geographic spread?” asked Aeolus, throwing his overcoat over his chair so hard the chair went spinning.
“That’s the good news. Its natural habitat is Eastern Indonesia, New Guinea and Torres Strait. Even though Torres Strait is technically part of Australia, it’s thirty miles north of the mainland and the population is only 6,800. It’s not present on the Australian mainland. As to its spread within Indonesia, the experts can’t say for certain, but think it’s probably within the current quarantine zone.”
“Finally, something is going our way.” Aeolus exclaimed, looking around for the cup of coffee that should have been on his desk. He found it in the hands of Mandy, standing in the doorway.
And then there was Ed. “But you have to keep in mind that first of all we haven’t found specimens of all the bat species yet and secondly we only know that it carries a strain of influenza, not that it’s the actual strain we’re looking for. Also, it’s apparently one hell of a bat year in Indonesia.”
“How come you can’t tell whether it carries the strain?” asked Richard.
Aeolus turned to Richard and studied him with slight suspicion. He hadn’t expected that the liaison would be of the habit of speaking in his presence. Anyway he humored him. “Because the way we determine that it’s influenza is by putting it under an electron microscope. We know what the virus looks on the outside, but we don’t have the resolution required to look inside the virus and determine its precise makeup. We have to do what’s called PCR sequencing to establish its type, and that can take weeks.”
“But, and excuse me if I’m asking stupid questions,” pursued Richard, “if researchers at IBM have a microscope that can look at individual atoms, how come you can’t see inside the virus? It must be much bigger than an atom?”
“That’s actually not a stupid question at all,” answered Aeolus, pausing briefly to reflect on the fact that his lack of interest in physics had apparently led him to not have this, obviously useful, and definitely available, piece of information at his fingertips. “I’ve never understood that either. I assume it has something to do with quantum mechanics, tennis balls passing through walls, dead cats in boxes, and all that.”
“Anything else?” he asked, casting a hungry glance at the stack of binders Mandy put on top of his desk; a consequence of a filtering process orchestrated by Tomomi that would have run during the night, involving many great minds across five continents.
“Yes, one more thing,” said Ed. “What about the children?”
“Yes, what about the children?” countered Aeolus.
“They have much less severe infections and the survival rate is markedly higher.”
“Yes, that’s like one last sick joke from the gods that have abandoned us.”
“I’m sorry,” said Richard, “surely this is a good thing.”
“No, it’s not, and if you don’t understand why yet, you will in due course.”
“But shouldn’t we investigate it further?” demanded Ed. “Maybe it can provide us with a clue as to how to increase the survival rates among the adults?”
“That would be utterly pointless,” came Aeolus’s harsh reply. “The reason the adults die to a greater extent is that they have antibodies to some previous strain, which the children do not. These antibodies go mad for some reason and kick off the self-reinforcing cycle of cytokine overproduction. This information is useless. We have known for fifty years that this is why dengue fever is lethal the second time you get it but not the first, and we have made absolutely no progress because of that knowledge. You should really know this stuff, Ed. But by all means, if you want to look into it in your abundant spare time, knock yourself out.
“Are we done now?”
When there was no answer, Aeolus hesitated, choosing between the briefs he wanted to read and the task he should be doing. Deciding on the latter, he left the room and headed for Stan’s office to resume his efforts to get countries to enforce stricter quarantines.
AUGUST 6TH, 8 PM, MAKESHIFT CAMP, MARE, MALUKU ISLANDS, EASTERN INDONESIA
Rebecca was midway through her evening walk. She needed time alone, away from the others. Their way of coping was to socialize, but she didn’t have any laughs left in her.
Their camp wasn’t large. The semi-circular area, enclosed by the hills and ocean, took about ten minutes to traverse. Walking along the edges in a slow pace, with occasional stops to inspect the fauna, made it fifteen. Going for two rounds made it thirty. Thirty minutes of solace, with only her own thoughts for company.
As she headed back to her tent, Roger, whom she hadn’t seen all day, came skipping up to her, ever the clown, his arms swinging in some sort of dance.
“Twinkie! You know what you need? You need a holiday.”
A smile spread across her face.
“Something tells me Aeolus wouldn’t take kindly to me abandoning my post.”
“Ah, forget that old fart. Let’s go tonight!”
“You’re insane,” she said in a dismissive but friendly tone.
“Who said it had to be a long vacation? Come with me!”
She frowned, not really sure what game he was playing, but followed him. Whatever prank this was, it was bound to make her laugh – you could always be certain of that with Roger Burton.
He ushered her to the base of the mountain, where he pushed the shrubbery aside, uncovering a small dirt trail running diagonally across the hill.
She shook her head.
“Don’t worry, Twinkie. It’s safe. Trust me. And it’s not far.”
Against her better judgment, she decided to follow him.
They hiked a few minutes before reaching a small beach, no bigger than a volleyball court.
Roger pointed at a small raft floating fifty yards out in the bay.
“You see that man, Twinkie? He and his two sons have taken shifts guarding this place for the last three days. No one has set foot on this beach. I can assure you of that.”
“Un
believable, Roger.”
“No, that’s not what’s unbelievable. This is,” he said, pointing at a large box wrapped in plastic, lying in the middle of the beach.
“Don’t worry. I’ve sprayed it with chlorine.”
He pulled out a small penknife and started slicing through the plastic.
“Now let’s see what we have here. Ah… Brioche and foie gras – straight from Paris. A Sauternes. That should go well with it… Gruyere with a bit of fig marmalade. Smoked duck breast… And yes, there it is, the white truffle. Always truffles, Twinkie. A meal without truffles is like a beautiful woman with just one eye. Perfect with the quail eggs, don’t you think?
And this, my darling,” continued Roger, presenting a red-brown stew vacuum-packed in plastic, “is the crown jewel – ratatouille,prepared by one of the best chefs in Paris. All I need to do is heat this up.” Out came a frying pan and a small gasoline stove.
“Of course, we also need dessert, and I’m pretty sure there are some macarones…”
“Roger,” Rebecca interrupted, putting a hand on his shoulder, unbuttoning her shirt with her other hand. “Let’s go for a swim.”
“Huh? I’d have thought you’d want to eat. Who knows how long it is before these marvelous delicacies spoil in this heat?”
“Roger. You said the beach was safe, right? The water looks so inviting. I’ve been dying to jump in since we got here. Let’s go for a swim.”
Roger shrugged his shoulders in resignation and started taking off his shirt.
AUGUST 7TH, 9 AM, DIRECTOR-GENERAL’S OFFICE, WHO HEADQUARTERS, GENEVA
As Aeolus entered his office’s anteroom, he saw that Mandy was already at her desk, although her shift didn’t start for an hour. Tomomi must have given her a heads-up after noticing the GPS signal from his phone move ever so slightly in his house as he went down for breakfast. The three of them had their ways of always being one step ahead – always being there when he needed them.
Gathered in front of Mandy’s desk were Walt, Kevin, Ed and Catherine, the Assistant Director-General for Maternal Health. She was a short, sturdily built Ghanaian native with short clipped hair and glasses that were way too large for the frame of her face. Catherine was all business, and the fact that she was there could only mean trouble.
“Catherine, this might not be the best time. We have a bit of a situation going on, as you know,” Aeolus began.
“Yes, Aeolus, I know, but I need you to do something for me urgently.” Catherine was the only one of the Assistant Directors-General who referred to Aeolus by his first name. Ed and Kevin exchanged surprised glances. To Walt, it was old news.
“The world doesn’t stop turning because we have an outbreak,” Catherine went on. “The rest of us have to continue work, you know. Besides, I’m sure someone with your skills, intellect and experience would have a good handle on things already.”
Aeolus sighed. “I wouldn’t bet the house on that, but, okay, what is it now, Catherine?”
“As you might know, we have recently launched a bold program to eradicate obstetric fistula in Ethiopia.”
“Actually I had no idea,” responded Aeolus. He paid very little attention to the work of ‘the Others’.
“You know what it is, I presume,” she said sternly nailing him with her eyes.
“Yes, it’s a condition of incontinence that is caused at childbirth under primitive conditions.” Aeolus was already glancing at the most recent reports signed Ed and Kevin lying on Mandy’s desk.
“And it is extremely stigmatizing for the women who suffer from it. Now, it can be fixed by a simple surgical procedure,” Catherine tapped Aeolus’s arm with a rolled-up magazine to regain his attention.
“Yes, I know, but I’m still not sure why you’re here?”
“Fixing the condition is easy enough, but the underlying root cause…”
“Female circumcision,” Aeolus cut her off, slightly embarrassed at his lack of attention. He did like the woman, after all. She had spunk.
“Not female circumcision,” she corrected him, “genital mutilation!”
Aeolus nodded in agreement.
“Now, I have the funds to mount a program to provide surgery for all the affected women in the country, but if we don’t also educate the people of the consequences of their treatment of pre-teen women, it will never go away.”
“Let me guess, Catherine. Some politician won’t allow it?”
“Exactly! The prime minister claims that genital mutilation is a cultural tradition and that it has no connection with the condition!” She slapped the magazine on Mandy’s desk for emphasis.
Aeolus was already sold. He trusted her blindly within her area, as he did all off ‘the Others’.
When Aeolus took leadership of the WHO, he had embarked on a fundamental transformation of the organization. The Director-Generalship had previously been largely a ceremonial and administrative role, overseeing a vast variety of departments but without any actual operational responsibility. The functions involved in pandemic response had been spread over different fiefdoms reporting to different Assistant Directors-General. Aeolus had stripped all these pieces from the different departments and folded them into one organization reporting directly to him.
All the other departments were moved out of the head office. Aeolus gave little attention to their activities. It was not that he didn’t care about the 600,000 birth-related deaths each year in the developing world, or that 2.4 billion people lived without basic sanitation. It was just that he was no good at solving it – and he knew it.
Initially it had caused uproar among the non-epidemiological staff, who thought they’d been relegated to second-class citizenry. That was until they realized the extent of the autonomy they’d been granted within their respective areas – no one looking over their shoulders, no need to explain their priorities to a non-expert. And most importantly, every time they asked Aeolus for support, he threw the full weight of his office behind them, no questions asked.
This was one of those times.
“Catherine, the prime minister of Ethiopia you said? This isn’t the same guy who said that HIV...?”
“The very same! His suspicion of modern science runs so deep it’s practically medieval!”
Now it was Aeolus who picked up and slammed the magazine on Mandy’s desk, with enough force to make Mandy jolt.
“I think we’ve had enough of this man by now, wouldn’t you say, Catherine?”
Catherine smiled discreetly, seasoned enough to know that the fury of God was about to be unleashed upon her long-time nemesis in Ethiopia.
“I think it’s about time we brought that country’s government into the twenty-first century, or at the very least the twentieth,” continued Aeolus.
“Catherine, I want you to write an op-ed on the topic, for publication in a major international newspaper, half a broadsheet page. Describe the science and write a passionate appeal to stop that abhorrent practice, which is female genital cutting. I will sign it myself.”
Catherine was now nodding attentively.
“Kevin, see if you can get hold of this Roger Burton fellow through Rebecca. Ask him whether he can help us place a heart-wrenching personal interest story on female genital mutilation in whatever publication is appropriate. Not sure he would be willing, but, if anyone, he is definitely the man to do it.
“Walt, have Stan leak that I’m considering pulling all our resources currently going into Ethiopia, and I mean everything, down to the last dose of penicillin. Mandy, schedule a meeting with this colporteur of witch-doctor medicine. Face-to-face. Next month. Topic: ‘Discussion of WHO Priorities in Sub-Saharan Africa and Consequences for Resource Allocation to Ethiopia.’”
Mandy was already typing the invitation.
Aeolus handed the magazine back to the Catherine. “I think that should do the trick, don’t you agree? If it doesn’t, let me know, and we’ll bring out the big guns… They do get ‘CBS 60 minutes in Ethiopia, don’t they?
“You should keep in mind, though, Catherine, that this is all contingent on the world still standing a couple of days from now,”
Catherine said nothing, just nodded, turned on her heel, and left the room. Aeolus knew she was too proud to thank him, but he also knew that she was smiling with contentment while walking away.
Ed and Kevin were both clapping their hands gently in applause of admiration.
“Cut it out, guys,” said Aeolus, waving his hand dismissively. “We have real work to do.”
Once he’d sunk into his chair and quickly leafed through the overnight reports, Aeolus turned to Ed with a wry smile. “So the Hong Kong case was a false alarm after all?”
“Yes,” answered Ed, embarrassed.
“I seem to recall that someone told you so. Pick it up, Ed. Mistakes like that are junior league. You’re a big boy now.”
“Apologies once more for what might be a stupid question,” said Richard, “but why does it take so long to test someone?”
Aeolus was beginning to find this man supremely annoying.
“You have to get a nasopharyngeal swab, send it to a lab, and test it for the presence of influenza virus antigens with specific influenza virus antibodies, a process which takes about six hours.”
“There’s no faster way to do it?”
“There might be, but we haven’t touched upon that question yet. It’s pointless to even start before you have reagents and a basic test. We have rapid tests for HIV that, although not a hundred percent accurate, gives an answer within sixty seconds. But we should, actually, start looking at this now. I have a call to make, I would appreciate some privacy for this one.”
Everyone left the room and Aeolus picked up the receiver. He paused for a moment to gather strength. Once again, he had no choice. Yelena was one of the most experienced people in the world when it came to quick point-of-care tests for viruses. She’d been instrumental in producing such tests for HIV, and he needed her skills now –hers, and those of someone else.
The Nightmare Scenario Page 17
