by Scott Britz
“I wouldn’t advise it. It wouldn’t do for you to be seen in public getting the Methuselah Vector. Politically speaking, I mean.”
Senator Libby looked crestfallen. “I could help you with the FDA. I’m a ranking member on the Senate Health Committee. I know Dr. Smead, the FDA commissioner, personally.”
“We could certainly use every bit of help.”
“I will help you. I’ll do everything I can, Mr. Niedermann.”
“Call me Jack.” Niedermann smiled.
“Can you help me, Jack?” she pleaded.
Niedermann let her dangle a second or two. “Of course, Harper. Will you be in New York on Friday?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Never mind about the Lottery. The FDA lets us make special exceptions for what is known as compassionate use. In fact, we’ve reserved a confidential stock of the Methuselah Vector specifically for these, uh, urgent cases that are bound to come up. On Friday, as soon as the Lottery ceremonies are over, it would be my pleasure to have one of our company doctors give you an injection—discreetly and privately—in my suite at the Waldorf Astoria.”
“Oh, you’re a lifesaver, Mr. Niedermann!” gushed Senator Libby.
“I need to point out that there are some very unusual expenses associated with the Methuselah Vector. It’s a gene-therapy agent, not a blood-pressure drug or antibiotic. It can’t be synthesized. It has to be harvested very carefully from a culture of living cells. There are all kinds of quality-control tests. So the costs—”
“Whatever it takes, Mr. Niedermann.”
“Whatever? Are you sure, Harper?”
“I’m a woman of the world. I understand completely. Name your price.”
Niedermann wrote something on a yellow Post-it pad, tore off the sheet, and held it out to Senator Libby, forcing her to lean across the desk to take it. “One million dollars, deposited prior to treatment into this numbered account at the Marex Bank and Trust Company on Grand Cayman Island.”
Senator Libby stared at the square scrap of paper. “Yes. I . . . I can do that.” Her voice had suddenly grown hoarse. “You need it by Friday?”
“Sooner, if possible. There are only a few extra doses available, and many requests. I hope you can appreciate my position. We can’t hold a dose—for anyone—until full payment has been received.”
“Of course. You’ll have the money by noon tomorrow.”
“Excellent.”
Of course, neither Gifford nor Phillip Eden knew anything about the Marex account. It was in Niedermann’s name alone. But he had a right to cash in. Just as Charles Gifford was the discoverer of the Methuselah Vector, so was he, Niedermann, the discoverer of Charles Gifford. That made the Methuselah Vector his, too.
Niedermann wasn’t greedy. To him money was just a kind of shorthand for everything that went into it—imagination, daring, perseverance, hard work. It advertised success. And success was a potent catalyst: it made people eager to entrust their fortunes and futures to him. That was critical. If his big plan was to work, he was going to have to hold the loyalty of quite a few people during the next few days. And it was going to cost him.
“Why don’t we celebrate by opening Mr. Beach’s gift?” Niedermann said. He got up and turned over two champagne glasses that were chilling upside down in the ice bucket. The oversize bottle must have weighed over a dozen pounds. Niedermann propped it under his arm as he prepared to pop the cork.
He was still untwisting the wire cage that secured the cork when he felt his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He wrested it out and looked at the incoming text message from General Goddard: Very important I speak privately with you. Can we meet tonight?
Niedermann smiled. Another fish on the hook. The champagne cork flew into the air with a bang.
It was going to be a long and profitable night.
Eleven
CRICKET WAS PANTING AS SHE HOBBLED down the slope past the big lab building named after her father.
In her mind, she could still see Gifford’s demonic self-assurance as he pointed the syringe at her. She could only wonder: Had the adulation of the crowd—the press, the famous movie stars—gone to his head?
Mass thinking scared her. In Africa, she had seen what came of human stampedes—machete-waving purges, burning villages, mass rapes. They all got started when some idea took hold of people’s minds and mutated into a certainty. During the Rwanda massacres, ordinary people—pastors, wise village elders, sweet young girls—turned into savage monsters, prompted by nothing more than airy words. Words as infectious as viruses.
Of course, Charles was a messiah of life and not of genocide, but that made no difference. The crowd was speaking, and he was listening. Voices on every side were telling him that he was a genius who stood above the rules. She shuddered to think what Gifford might have done if Hannibal hadn’t gotten in the way. To have injected her against her will would have been worse than rape—even if he was convinced it was the greatest gift in the world.
The sea fog came seeping through the alleyways between the labs. Everything had a ghostly, vaporous look. The lights of the parking lots were ringed with orange halos. Beyond the high-rise lab buildings loomed a pine grove. Cricket headed directly into it. Through the darkness, her bare feet sensed the familiar way—a path that led straight to Wabanaki Cove.
When she reached Hank’s town house, she rummaged through her purse for the key Hank had given her and quietly let herself in.
Hank was still up working. “How was dinner with the gods?” he called out from behind a monitor in his study. “I hear that chef of Charles’s is out of this world. He used to work at La Grenouille in New York.”
“Fuck him! Fuck Charles and his fucking chef!” She was in no mood for cheer. “Is Emmy upstairs?” she demanded.
“She’s at a square dance in Ellsworth.”
“For crying out loud! It’s late, Hank.”
Hank came out of the study and gave Cricket a curious once-over. “What’s the matter, hon? You look like hell.”
“I’ve been through hell.” She dropped onto the sofa and fell to picking pine needles out of her ruined stockings. The side of her left foot had been scraped bloody by a rock. “And, no—I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Your foot . . . Let me get you a pan of water and a—”
“I don’t want a pan of water.” She tore open the clasp of her purse and yanked out her cell phone, spilling her car keys and a stick of lip balm on the floor. “Has Emmy changed her cell number?”
Hank snatched the cell phone away from her. She reached to take it back but he was too quick. “What are you trying to do, Cricket?”
“I’m leaving. Leaving this very minute. And I’m taking her with me.”
“No. No, you’re not.”
The resoluteness of his tone enraged her. She leapt to her feet. “Who the hell are you to tell me no?” she shouted.
“Calm down. Look at yourself. Take a deep breath, will you?”
She glared at him, nostrils flaring.
“What are you going to do? Drag her to Atlanta by her hair? I can see you’re upset about something, but this isn’t the way to deal with it.”
Hank’s calmness made her feel foolish and mean. She slumped back onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed.
“Give it time. To Emmy, you’re practically a stranger. You need to open up and let her get to know you. Talk to her. Give her a reason to want to go with you. Not a fancy school or a house in the woods. You. You have to be the reason. Otherwise, she’ll fight. She’s a lot like you. She’ll fight.”
“I can’t help it.” She sniffled.
She looked up and saw Hank holding out a box of Kleenex. “Do you love her?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Do you want her to be happy
?”
“With all my heart.”
“Then start by telling her that.”
She blew her nose into a tissue. “I wish it were that simple. I’m not you, Hank. I have sins to answer for.”
The phone rang in the kitchen. Hank seemed annoyed and let it ring four or five times before he got up to answer it. “It’s for you,” he called out.
Puzzled, Cricket limped over and took the phone. “Hello?”
For a moment she heard only heavy breathing and the sound of a TV. Then came a woman’s voice, tinged ever so slightly with the lilt of the Caribbean, but breathy and slurred, as if drunk. “I owe you ’n apol’gy.”
“Yolanda?”
“I . . . shouldn’ve left you. Should . . . should . . . li’l girls’ room. Would’ve come back . . . Su-suppos’ to show you a good time—”
“Yolanda, are you all right?”
“Did you ’ave a good time . . . dear?”
“No, I did not.”
“Then it’s . . . all my fault. . . . Uh-oh!” Yolanda pitched her voice high, mischievously.
“Yolanda—”
“Did you tell . . . him . . . I stood you up? I know you ’n him met. Somewhere . . . after. I know ’im, you know. I know wha’e’s thinking. Don’t think I don’t.”
“Tell me what you want, Yolanda.”
“No, you tell me . . . what you want. . . . What’ve you got that I ha’nt got? Such a good girl, you are . . . and smart. . . . Is that it? That I’m too dumb for ’im? He is smart . . . smartes’ damngoddamned man . . . I ever met. Is that it? Tell me . . .”
There was more heavy breathing, then only the sound of the TV.
“Yolanda? Yolanda?”
No answer.
“What’s wrong?” whispered Hank.
Cricket covered the mouthpiece. “I don’t know. Either she’s very drunk or—” Over the phone she heard a thud, followed by an abortive cry. “I’m still here, Yolanda. Are you there? If you can’t speak, make some kind of noise.”
No answer. No noise. No heavy breathing. Cricket held the receiver to Hank’s ear.
Hank listened, then shouted into the mouthpiece, “Yolanda, this is Hank Wright. Are you okay?” He listened again and shrugged.
Cricket set the phone on the counter without hanging up. “I think I’d better go check on her. Do you know where she lives?”
Hank nodded. “I’ll drive.”
Five minutes later, Hank’s dented truck pulled up outside Yolanda’s house, a white bungalow on a cul-de-sac behind Weiszacker House. While Hank rang the bell and knocked, Cricket looked through the porch window. A light was on in the kitchen, but no one was there. A flickering blue light reflected off the white-painted hallway, no doubt from the same TV she had heard on the phone.
Hank tried the door. It was unlocked. “Shall we go in?”
Cricket went first. “Yolanda?” she called out from the small, tidy living room. A quick glance took in a flower vase on the coffee table beside a photo of a Nordic-looking man in Marine dress blue. Carefully grouped medals hung in a frame on the wall next to the little brick fireplace. Nothing seemed amiss. The kitchen, which opened directly into the living room, had spotless Formica counters and a refrigerator covered with snapshots of Bonnie and Chuck.
Cricket turned down the narrow hallway, toward the sound of the TV. She passed a pink-curtained bathroom and the open door of a bedroom where Yolanda’s two children were soundly sleeping, tucked into twin beds guarded by a green dinosaur night-light.
The last door on the end was half-open. “Hello. Yolanda?” Cricket called out as she peeked inside. The bedroom was lit only by the light of a TV newscast. Yolanda was not in sight. The bedspread was scrunched up in the middle of the queen-size bed. A cordless phone lay beside the pillow, its orange light indicating that the connection to Hank’s phone was still open.
Cricket crept into the room. An overturned glass lay in a puddle on the nightstand. No scent of liquor—it was just water. But from somewhere she smelled a faint, fruity odor like that of nail polish. She knew that a metabolic disorder called ketosis could cause a person’s breath to smell like that, most often in diabetics, but sometimes in very severe infections, too. But she saw no insulin vials or needles like the ones diabetics used for self-injection.
Then, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she noticed a dark red spot on the bedspread, glistening in a pool of mucus. Blood?
She reached for the nightstand lamp to get a better look. Before her fingers had found the switch, she heard Hank call out, “Yolanda?” He had gone around the foot of the bed and was staring at a two-foot-wide gap between the bed and the wall.
Cricket raced around the bed and looked for herself. Yolanda, still in her red evening gown, lay on the floor, wedged between the bed and the wall. Dead? Alive? In the semidarkness it was impossible to tell.
“Quick! The light, Hank!”
Cricket supported herself with one knee on the bed while she leaned over the gap. The nail-polish smell was much stronger. When she touched Yolanda’s bare shoulder, her hand recoiled in revulsion from skin as cold as the grave.
Steeling herself, she reached out once more and pulled Yolanda’s shoulder away from the wall. The seemingly dead body came to life with a moan and a loud, mucus-laden cough.
The light came on. Cricket froze in shock.
Yolanda’s face was covered with vomit—vomit flecked with dark grains, like slops of coffee grounds, which Cricket knew were made of blood curdled by the acid of the stomach. She was bleeding internally. And not only internally. Coarse purple splotches, called purpura, stained her throat and chest. She was bleeding into her skin as well.
Cricket let go of Yolanda and gripped the windowsill and the bedspread, fighting to keep from vomiting herself. She wanted to back away, to turn and run out of the house, but her legs felt too weak to carry her. Indeed, she was afraid that if she moved a single muscle, her body would collapse.
“What is it, hon?” called Hank. “What do you see?”
It was Étienne and the Congo all over again. Cricket could scarcely believe she wasn’t dreaming it. She held her breath, expecting a panic attack to hit at any moment. A minute went by, perhaps two. But the panic never came. The clearness of the danger focused her mind. She resumed breathing, slowly and deliberately. She reached out and touched Yolanda’s forehead. It was burning hot—a fever so intense that Yolanda’s body had shut off the blood to her arms and legs to keep the furnace roaring.
Fever. Purpura. Internal bleeding. Metabolic ketosis.
Few things could do this, and do it so fast. Ebola. Lassa fever. Marburg disease. All of them were lethal hemorrhagic viruses. All of them extremely contagious.
“Don’t touch her, Hank,” Cricket warned as Hank crowded over her shoulder. “Leave the room and close the door. Get those two children out of this house.”
“Jeez, Cricket! It looks like somebody beat the hell out of her.”
“She’s sick. Really sick. Call Charles—don’t touch Yolanda’s phone—use your own cell phone.” She almost choked at the mention of Charles’s name. But this was more important than her or Charles. “Tell him we have a problem. This house has to be sealed. I need a biohazard suit brought here, with an isolation transporter. We have to move her.”
“Move her? Where?”
It was too soon to tell which virus they were dealing with or how Yolanda had gotten it. But an infection like this could certainly spread by contact, perhaps even through the air. That meant that any unsealed doorjamb, windowsill, or even a chimney could spew the infection to the outside world. She needed a place that was airtight, where every approach was controlled. Someplace self-contained.
“To the BSL-4 lab,” she said.
TUESDAY
Three Days to Lottery Day
One
IN
BAY 1 OF THE LABORATORY for Experimental Virology, Cricket reached up and adjusted the hiss of the valve that fed air into her biosafety suit from a coiled ceiling drop line. Through the broad faceplate of her astronaut-like helmet, she saw worry on the face of Jean Litwack. Jean was one of two nurses on campus credentialed to work with the rigorous protocols of the BSL-4 lab, but she had never tended to a live patient under these conditions, nor ever seen a patient as sick as the one that lay before her now.
“I’m going to draw a blood sample,” said Cricket over the intercom inside her helmet. She had just finished inserting a central venous catheter, a thin tube that ran from the jugular vein in Yolanda’s lower neck all the way to her heart. She could use it to administer medications quickly, or, as now, to draw out blood for testing. Unzipping a vent flap in the plastic isolation tent, she reached through the tangle of electrical cables and IV lines with double-gloved hands and screwed a Vacutainer tube holder onto the connector at the end of the central line. Then she pushed a red-topped collection tube into the holder. As the perforator inside the holder pierced the rubber diaphragm in the cap, the tube automatically sucked out 4 cc of blood.
A click in her headset told Cricket that the intercom in the hallway had been switched on.
“Cricket, is she any better?” came a man’s anxious voice.
Gifford, wearing a white T-shirt, sweatpants, and a Windbreaker, stood at the window, plastering his hands and forehead against the glass. In the past two hours, he’d asked four or five times for an update. “I thought you were going to wait in the office,” Cricket said. “She’s stable, but critical. I would have called you if there were any changes.”
“You’ve put her on the ventilation machine.”
“Yes. It’s brought her blood oxygen sats up to the low nineties. I’m giving her dobutamine to get her blood pressure up, but it’s still running dangerously low. She was on the verge of shock when we brought her in.”
“Can she hear me? Can I talk to her, Cricket?”
“She’s unconscious.”
