The Nightmare Scenario

by Gunnar Duvstig

  “But the representatives might not even be in New York.”

  “We’ll take what we get. This might be the last chance we have to contain it. If we don’t, or if it’s already out there, we are moving from casualties on a scale of millions to a scale of hundreds of millions.”

  “Okay, boss, I’ll get it done. Somehow.”

  Aeolus grabbed his coat and went out to his car while raising Tomomi on the phone.

  “Yes, Mr. Hughes.”

  “Tomomi, I need a flight from Geneva to New York immediately.”

  “Okay, it’ll have to be private, but there are available jets in Geneva.”

  “I also want you to leave Hong Kong and go to your family in Japan.”

  “May I ask, why, Mr. Hughes?”

  “Because if I’m correct, Hong Kong is going to be a dangerous place in a couple of days. In fact, it might already be. I want you to leave straight away.”

  “Mr. Hughes, I will leave when my shift is over.”

  “Really, Tomomi, that’s not necessary. Mandy will be here any minute. I can take care of myself in the meanwhile.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hughes, but we both know that’s simply not true. Anyway, my shift ends in five hours. I’ll be on the next plane and be set up and ready in Osaka before Jitsuko clocks out.”

  “Fine. Then get me Hank Wiley.”

  “Ryokai!”

  It took about ten minutes to locate and wake up Hank. Aeolus was already walking up the stairs in his mansion as he came on.

  “Aeolus, for God’s sake, it’s two o’clock in the morning. What on earth is going on?”

  “Hank, listen. We have a confirmed outbreak in Jakarta. Several infected, not an isolated incident. Someone got out before the quarantine line was set up. We need to shut down the airport immediately. I’m going to address the UN and I’m convinced I can get the backing required retroactively, but we need it shut down now. If you can keep it out of operation for eight hours, I can take it from there.”

  “I’m sorry, Aeolus, but I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. Not just like that. This would be a serious international incident. We need to go through the proper channels.”

  “Hank, you damned lemming, we need this now! We can’t wait for every government agency to weigh in. Just trust me on this – for once!”

  “I simply can’t get it done. It’s not within my power. And even if I could, I’m not sure I would. I still don’t agree with your assessment of the severity of the situation. Just because those aboriginals can’t handle it does mean we can’t.”

  Aeolus sighed and hung up without bothering to say goodbye. He was cornered. There was only one card left to play, one last rabbit left inside the hat. It wasn’t guaranteed to work, but it was all he had. He picked up his cell phone and pressed an icon labeled “Wonderful Words.” The screen went black and a call was connected.

  “The Atlantis Hotel, good evening, how can I help you?”

  “Good evening, my name is Dr. Hughes, could you connect me to Mr. Finegold, who I believe is staying with you tonight.”

  “Dr. Hughes, are you aware that it is the middle of the night?”

  “Yes, it’s sort of an emergency.”

  “Okay, let me see… No. Apologies, sir, but there is no guest with that name staying with us.”

  “I see, I’m sorry, I must have got my dates mixed up. Thank you anyway.”

  Aeolus went to his study and found an IPS-encrypted cell phone in the top drawer of his mahogany desk. After ten minutes, the phone rang.

  “Authenticate Black Flamingo,” came the voice on the other side of the line.

  “Alpha-November-Delta-Romeo-Zero-Mike-Echo-Delta-Alpha,” Aeolus responded.

  “Authentication complete. Good morning, Captain Hughes. You are go for Colonel Finegold.”

  The line clicked as the call was connected.

  After securing the shutdown of the airport, Aeolus had Mandy launch a sequence of calls, starting with Dr. Chen-Ung Loo.

  “Loo, here’s the situation. We’ll have the Jakarta airport shut down within the hour. In about twelve hours, I believe we’ll have a quarantine in effect, supported by the UN. Until then, my immediate concern is boats crossing the Malacca Strait into Malaysia.”

  “Yes, obviously.”

  “You know there’s something I cannot ask of you, even if I wanted to?”

  “Yes. I see… Are you confident about the resolution? How much time do you need?”

  “Well, let’s say that if it doesn’t come through, it’s game over anyway. If I have it, it’ll be within eight hours.”

  “Yes, I understand. Just make sure you get that resolution.”

  As soon as he hung up, Yelena, who had been on hold for a while, came on.

  “Yelena, it’s Aeolus. We have a new outbreak in Jakarta. I suggest you go to Jakarta instead of the Maluku Islands.”

  “But there are 2000 infected in the Maluku Islands and how many in Jakarta?”

  “Five so far, but in a matter of days there’ll be thousands. You’ll have more than enough to work with. The laboratory facilities are better.”

  “Well, I guess your wish is my command.” Yelena responded in resignation.

  “There’s a catch, though.”

  “I know.”

  “Jakarta is going to collapse. It’s not without danger. You can’t be in gear all the time. At some point you’ll have to eat and sleep and given how contagious this is, I’m not sure we can guarantee your safety.”

  “And this you want me to do for you? March into hell to do something that probably won’t work or matter, anyway?”

  “Not for me Yelena, za rodinu – for the motherland.” The one emotion Aeolus knew he could rely on was Yelena’s unyielding patriotism.

  “You mean as in za rodinu – za Stalina?”

  “Njet, Yelena, ne za Stalina, toljko za rodinu. As soon as it hits the Asian continent there will be no way to stop it. You know that. And there’s no chance you can quarantine Russia. Your border spans nine time zones. It will sweep through Russia and tens of millions will die.”

  “We could quarantine the major cities.”

  “St. Petersburg, maybe, but Moscow? For how long? You’ll need supplies. Feeding ten million people isn’t child’s play. I doubt you could maintain a strict quarantine for more than two weeks. And even if you protect your major cities, you still have eighty million people in the countryside who’ll face the infection. With the casualty rates we’re talking about that would mean twenty million Russian deaths. I know it’s a long shot, I know it might not work. But it’s all we have. I don’t need to tell you this. Anyway, it’s your decision to make.”

  “Whatever happened to ‘berezhenovo bog berezhet’? Isn’t that your motto?”

  “Yes, I do believe it’s better to be safe than sorry, but in times of crisis we also live by a more ruthless and cynical creed, which is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

  Yelena was silent for a long while. Aeolus said nothing, waiting for the words to have their effect, trusting that her sense of duty would do the rest.

  Yelena sighed. “Za rodinu…”

  “Da, Yelena, za rodinu.”

  “I can’t order people to go,” she warned him. “It will have to be voluntary. Let me see what team I can get together. If it’s strong enough, we’ll go. And I don’t want any of the WHO or CDC people. This is my lab and I can’t have any amateurs running around like headless chickens.”

  “Call me when you get down there,” Aeolus said. “And Yelena, anything you need, and I mean anything, we’re only a call away. You have the full resources of the WHO at your disposal.”

  “I regret the day I met you, Aeolus.”

  “I don’t Yelena. I really don’t,” he said with a trace of genuine affection.

  AUGUST 8TH, 5 PM, GENERAL ASSEMBLY PLENARY HALL, UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK

  As Aeolus scanned the assembly hall, he had to acknowledge that Stan had done
an amazing job. There were, as expected, empty seats in the auditorium, but he’d gathered a respectable share of the UN ambassadors in record time.

  Aeolus squared his papers on the rostrum. He had brought them not because he needed them, but because for some reason people found a speaker who read a written statement to be more credible than one who’d learned his speech by heart. Or at least, so Stan had said.

  He looked around, trying to make eye contact with as many of the ambassadors as he could. They whispered to each other over the pew-like rows of benches stretching out, like spokes, in six lines from the podium, separated by a worn green carpet. If he did his job properly, within a minute there would be no more whispering. Lastly, he looked up toward the two rows of black-tinted windows on the sides of the auditorium, behind which the interpreters sat. He wanted everyone’s attention. He closed his eyes, bowed his head for a second, focusing, looked back up, and launched into his speech.

  “Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, Distinguished Representatives, Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Dr. Aeolus Pentecost Hughes and I am the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Many of you have met me or heard me speak before.

  “I extend my apologies for the short notice, especially so to the nations that have, because of this, not been able to attend.

  “I come before you today to speak of a matter of the gravest importance and urgency. I come before you to give you a comprehensive view of the threat that humanity faces in this moment – and this threat is great indeed. I come before you to speak in support of the motion put forward by the Distinguished Representative from Singapore.

  “The motion has two parts. The first calls for an immediate isolation of Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo, the closing of all airports in the area, international as well as domestic, and a naval blockade to prevent people from leaving by boat.

  “The second part of the motion calls for a quarantine of Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar and the Philippines. This quarantine would entail a shutdown of international air traffic from and the border crossing of these nations. It does not, however, include a maritime blockade.”

  This second part of the resolution was something Stan had pieced together during the flight in response to news from headquarters. There had been two new confirmed cases of infection outside Indonesia.

  The first was in Vietnam and had been, whether by luck or skill, handled flawlessly. A passenger on a plane from Jakarta – the last one out before the DIA-instigated US intervention to shut down the airport – had started to cough up blood. The authorities had been notified while the plane was still airborne. Upon landing, all the passengers and crew had been met and quarantined by medical professionals in full protective gear. Forcing them together in quarantine posed a risk to passengers not infected on the plane, even though the index patient was separated, but when tests came back, infection was confirmed. Everyone was put in isolation in a dedicated ward at the Bach Mai Hospital.

  If the handling of the case in Vietnam had been successful, the outcome of the situation in Malaysia was quite the opposite. A man who’d arrived from Jakarta two days earlier had turned up at a hospital with severe symptoms. Six hours later, the virus was confirmed as the Maluku Flu. The man insisted he’d spent most of the time in his relatives’ house, but admitted he’d gone out for a meal once or twice. Only with a considerable measure of luck would this mean that the infection had been contained.

  These were the reasons for the extended quarantine measure proposed in the second part of the motion.

  “You have all read about the new strain of influenza from the Maluku Islands in the papers and in our weekly reports. Up to now, my organization has classified the situation as an epidemic, not a pandemic. The difference between an epidemic and a pandemic is that the effects of the former, no matter how devastating, are localized. A pandemic is a threat that has global consequences and which requires a global response, a response that in this case needs to be a forceful one.

  “This morning, new cases of infection were discovered in Vietnam and Malaysia, and the WHO upgraded our classification of the situation to Phase Five, which is the last stage before a full-blown pandemic.”

  Aeolus put special emphasis on this last part, and it had its intended effect. The mention of a “full-blown pandemic” had caught their attention. No one was whispering any longer. All eyes were on him. He continued.

  “During the last century we have had several pandemics which we’ve handled with varying degrees of success. None of these pandemics, however, has had the potential for such costs in human life as this one.

  “In short, there are six factors, the confluence of which makes this situation unique.

  “Firstly, virulence is off the charts. It spreads more rapidly than it should. The normal barriers to influenza transmission, such as weather, climate and humidity, don’t stop it.

  “Secondly, this virus is 250 times more lethal than a regular influenza. Our present observations indicate that the mortality rate is about twenty-five percent of symptomatic cases.

  “Thirdly, given how different it is from strains we’ve seen before, it’s unlikely that we’ll have a working vaccine for at least six months. By then, this influenza will have circled the world and brought about the death of one and a half billion people.

  There was an audible gasp from the audience at the mention of the potential death toll. Aeolus could see some ambassadors consulting with their aides. Some were on their Blackberry devices while flipping quickly through the briefing material. One man rose and hurried toward the exit as he pressed a button on his cell phone.

  “Fourthly, the best test we have for infection needs to be processed in a lab and requires six hours before rendering a conclusive result. Obviously, this makes it impractical for use at border crossings or airports. We are working on a faster test, but chances that it will be ready any time soon are slim at best. I remind you, it took twenty years before a reliable rapid test for HIV was developed.

  “Fifthly, we know the incubation period can be as long as six days. This means that a carrier can travel the world for up to six days before realizing he’s sick. He’ll be contagious two days before he shows symptoms. This poses a significant problem in screening out patients by mere inspection.

  “Lastly, although we do not yet have solid statistical data to support it, we estimate that thirty percent of infected patients are asymptomatic. This means they carry the disease and infect others, but never develop symptoms themselves, possibly for about two weeks. This is the biggest problem of all.

  “To illustrate the gravity, I’d like to give you an example of the type of scenario we fear.

  “Take a city like Mumbai. It has twenty million inhabitants. If the infection spreads at the rate of one person infecting five others a day, which, although unusually high for an influenza, is in line with what we have observed in the Maluku Islands, the entire population of Mumbai would be infected in twelve days. Within three weeks, five million people will have died. And that’s not counting those who will die, not from the infection, but from the breakdown of society and the chaos that will follow it.

  “That is how quickly this virus strikes, and this is why our response must be equally swift. And in this response you should not put your trust in medical advancements. The only thing that will really work is the age-old method of epidemiology: containment, quarantine and isolation.

  By now, the auditorium was filled with a low constant murmuring. Several of the ambassadors and aides gesticulated wildly at each other. Others were on their phones, not even bothering to leave their seats.

  Aeolus stopped and raised his hands motioning for silence. Gradually, the voices subsided.

  “Now, I know many of you have concerns about what could be seen as a human rights violation implicit in the motion. I share those concerns. It’s reasonable to ask by what right we lock healthy people within the borders of quarantine, condemning them to an almost certain exposure
to this new plague and the risk of losing their life that comes with it. This is the principal argument that the distinguished representatives from Indonesia and Malaysia will raise against the motion under debate, and I share their sentiment.

  “I do urge you, though, to weigh the consequences of action against the consequences of inaction. If we don’t act, I can guarantee you that the infection will spread, rapidly, and the Mumbai scenario I just described, will be a reality within two weeks in many cities around the world.

  “You face a most difficult choice: whether to sacrifice the lives of millions to protect the lives of hundreds of millions. The principal argument against this is clear and easily articulated, but I can assure you that if you don’t make this decision now, to use a pagan metaphor, the heavens will fall, and the social fabric of society will disintegrate.

  “Also, if we don’t enforce a quarantine, the people you are trying to save by letting them out will be infected later anyway as the influenza catches up with them during its race around the world. There is simply no course of action by which they are saved. The best outcome for Indonesia is for the rest of world to stay healthy and keep functioning so that we can provide the help they require.”

  He paused to let that sink in.

  “I want to share one last observation before I leave you to your deliberations. A common mistake among laymen of epidemiology is the inability to take into account the lag of information. As I stated earlier, it’s fully possible that someone won’t show symptoms until six days after infection. This means that once we observe an infected patient, he’s already passed it on to others. At the point in time the observation is made, it is already too late to do anything about it.

  “This is why we need to quarantine an area beyond where infections have been detected. We know now that the infection has been present in Jakarta, albeit in a small population, for the last five days. We have no way of knowing where else it might have traveled during this time. For all we know, someone in this room could be infected and is spreading the virus in this hall as we speak.