The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller

by Larry Enright

  When we got back to the car, I checked my phone again. The Caddy was still in South Philly. They’d probably dumped it there and left town. It made sense, except for one thing — that was what Fink thought too, and Fink was an idiot.

  “Have I told you how nice South Philly is at night?” I said to Izzy.

  “No, but I’d love a tour, if we have the time.”

  “We do. Take 4th Street and keep going till I tell you.”

  The Caddy was parked outside an Italian Restaurant a block off Broad Street with a fresh set of New York plates. I ran the number. It came back retired. Big surprise. Most of the turned-in plates in New York City end up in the wrong hands. It makes the stolen cars less conspicuous.

  We parked behind the Caddy and went inside where we were met by a goon wearing a suit that hadn’t fit him right since high school. I told him we were looking for Carmine. He told me we were in the wrong place. I stuck my finger in his chest and said he’d better go get him or I’d be coming back with friends. He threw me into the wall like a sack of potatoes, and all of a sudden I wasn’t worried so much about dying from Ebola anymore. That’s when Izzy grabbed him by the hand and twisted until he was on the floor, screaming like a baby.

  “Nice wristlock,” I said.

  “Thank you. I scored very well in the class on subduing suspects without the use of deadly force.”

  Carmine came out of the back with his three buddies. He scowled at the big lug on the floor and told him to get out. I nodded to Izzy, and she let him go. He scurried off like a rat, nursing the paw that would be giving him a little trouble for the next few days.

  “Is that your car parked out front?” I asked.

  “It’s a loaner. Mine’s in the shop.”

  “I hope you went for the full insurance package. It looks like you’ve got some front-end damage.”

  Carmine looked over at the punk who had been driving and then back at me.

  “Nice place,” I said.

  “It’s my cousin’s,” said Carmine. “What do you want?”

  “I want what everyone wants. Justice.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “That’s right. You see, I know about Madeline. I know Gyro was the one supplying the smack to Vinnie. I also know he bought a bad batch of it from Gyro, and you weren’t too happy about it when he died leaving her a pregnant widow with a three-year-old son.”

  “Beat it, Mr. FBI, while you still can.”

  “I don’t think you’re getting the picture here, Carmine. Gyro was a scumbag, and the world’s a better place without him. I think we can agree on that, right?”

  “So what?”

  “So, come on, Carmine. We’re both businessmen here. You and I are after the same thing, just in different ways. You did me a favor. Now I want to do you one. I just want to know what it’s worth to you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a certain piece of evidence that ties you and your associates to the scene of the crime. It would be a real shame for it to fall into the wrong hands after you’ve done the city such a good deed.”

  “What evidence?”

  “The kind that could very easily get lost in the shuffle. The kind that no one has to know about, if the price is right.”

  Carmine sized up Izzy. “Who’s the broad?”

  “My muscle. So, can we talk or what?”

  “Not here. Be at Front and Christian tomorrow at midnight. Come alone. Wait on the corner. I’ll pick you up. We’ll talk then.”

  “Okay. You got it.”

  We left, got back in the car and drove off.

  “I don’t understand,” said Izzy. “Did you just agree to sell evidence to that man?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I didn’t think there was any.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “Then, what do you hope to gain?”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “Shouldn’t you report his connection to the Taney woman to your superiors?”

  “No point. We’ve got no evidence, remember?”

  When we got back to the Six, Travis was waiting in the situation room for us. He handed me the copies of the birth certificates.

  “They’re brother and sister, sir,” he said.

  “I figured. It seemed pretty personal for him.”

  “What’s our next step?”

  I looked at Izzy. I felt guilty that I was keeping him on the outside, but I couldn’t take another Billy, not ever. “No rush. I’m going to sit on it awhile.”

  The FEMA meeting started at nine. I recognized the locals. Jimmy was there. Fink. The Mayor. Tom Stalter. Cathy Eland introduced everyone including someone from Homeland Security, a two-star general, and a suit from the State Department. Eland started off with a recap.

  Hundreds were arrested in confrontations with police overnight. Most had been processed and released. The ones facing weapons, arson, and looting charges were transported to the Navy Yard in South Philly where they’d set up a detention center that was being manned by State Police. The Pennsylvania National Guard would begin staging there under the pretext of preparing to ship out for Africa. The first units were already en route from Harrisburg. They would be taking over for the state troopers when they arrived. SWAT and airport police were keeping Philadelphia International Airport open, at least for the time being. They were screening everyone who got on or off a plane. Abandoned cars were being towed and stored in one of the long-term parking lots, additional TSA officers had been flown in, and the number of incidents was back down to a manageable level. The city’s two main mass transit routes, the Broad Street Subway and the Market-Frankfort El, were running on time because managers were operating the trains. SEPTA regional rail lines were operating at reduced capacity to and from the suburbs because of the work stoppages. Buses still weren’t running, but people were making do. Fire companies had been beefed up with volunteers from the suburbs, the police were good for now, and the hospitals were fully staffed but out of room. As for the damage assessment, the numbers were still being added up, but several Catholic churches that closed in the recent consolidations by the Diocese had been offered up by the church to the Red Cross and were being used as shelters for those who had lost their homes to fire. The news outlets were still pushing hard on the story, and they’d found the cracks in the wall. Relatives of people under observation were spilling their guts for some face time on TV. Reports were leaking out from the U.N. delegates. It was just a matter of time before the dam broke.

  The guy from State took a turn at the mike. “The president has decided to postpone making any announcement about this matter for a few days. It is his opinion and the opinion of his advisors that, though we have sixteen confirmed cases in Philadelphia and three deaths …”

  Tom interrupted him, “Excuse me, sir, but we have revised figures that might affect your strategy.”

  “The decision has already been made, Doctor,” the guy said. “I’m only here to get your buy-in.”

  “You need to hear this.”

  “Very well. Go ahead.”

  I’d known Tom a long time. Maybe I hadn’t seen him in a while, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t recognize the look in his eyes. He wasn’t the only one mad as hell at the bureaucrats.

  “The death toll is now six in Philadelphia,” he said, “and one in New York. The number of confirmed cases is up to thirty-six in Philadelphia and ten in New York City. We’re working as fast as we can to identify them, but we can’t keep up with the number of samples coming in. We’re contacting labs in both areas to see who can help with the testing. So far, we’ve found two in the Philadelphia area and three in New York. We’re working with them now to get them up to speed.”

  He named the facilities. One of them was Research Voorhoede.

  “That’s Birot’s father’s place,” I said.

  “Yes, Mr. Birot called earlier today to offer his assistance. He has a PCR. I thought we had a co
mplete list of them, but apparently not. His company is under contract with one of the big pharmaceuticals to develop a more efficient mechanism to produce the antibodies required to treat specific viral diseases.”

  “Like Ebola?”

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “Any chance he’s got the virus there for testing?”

  “No. No way. He doesn’t have the authorization. Why?”

  “Just wondering if that’s how his son got it, that’s all.”

  “Not likely. His son brought it back from New York. In any case, this is not just a U.S. problem. Over fifty of the U.N. delegates that we know of have it. At least fifteen of them have died. All of the eleven other members of the CDC Response Group are reporting deaths in their countries now, and I’ve got a list two pages long of countries that simply won’t respond to our requests for information on this. And you want to know why? Last Thursday, Ebola took a plane to every country on Earth.”

  I usually sober up with coffee. Tom did it for them in a few sentences. He didn’t stop there.

  “And the situation is only getting worse. Hospitals in Philadelphia and New York are out of beds. They can’t isolate patients properly. They’re transferring the overflow as needed, but the system isn’t designed to handle an epidemic that requires isolation and specialized treatment of this many people. If it keeps going like this, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

  “And what makes you think it will keep going?” the man from State said. “We are of the opinion that the initial surge in cases is over and it will be contained now.”

  “Who is we?” I said. “Politicians and political advisors? The president’s yes men?”

  “Bam don’t, please,” said Tom. “Mr. Secretary, we’re worried here at the CDC that we’re not dealing with a typical Zaire strain, the one that’s spreading across Africa right now.”

  “Why not?” the guy from State asked.

  “For one thing, it’s not following the usual ten-day Zaire timeline. Agent Driscoll, who was quarantined from the point of exposure, developed symptoms in just two days and died less than two days later. Given that he was a healthy young man with no prior medical history and had the best medical care available, he should have been our classic survival case. And we’ve had others just like him. Another troubling fact is the number of cases and suspected cases in people whose chance of fluid contact with patient zero were slim to none. Random people on a train car, hospital employees, people on the street — that’s not the Zaire we know. And lastly, even under worst-case conditions, people survive Zaire. So far, not a single person has lived more than four days after onset of symptoms.”

  “Then, what is it?” the guy said.

  “We’ll have the virus isolated by tomorrow. We’ll know then.”

  The meeting went on for another couple hours, mostly talking about how they were going to keep it under wraps for another day. Then it seemed like everyone’s cell phones rang at the same time. Mine was a text from Tim. “Your secret meeting’s trending on YouTube and Twitter. Have a nice day.”

  Eland put down her phone and ended the meeting, telling everyone she’d get back to us as soon as possible, and the screen went blank. Travis logged one of our computers onto the Internet. The activist hacker group, Anonymous, had been busy. They’d hacked into our video stream and uploaded the Cliff’s Notes version to YouTube. There were already over a million views of the video that made us look like participants in the worst cover-up in history. The truth hurts. By the time the government could obtain a court order to have the video taken down, there would millions more views, and it would pop up on mirror sites around the world for the rest to see. There was no stopping it now. We were screwed, and the world was screwed with us.

  It took FEMA two hours to reestablish a secure link using hard lines before they could resume their meeting the old-fashioned way. The video and sound were so out of sync that it reminded me of a dubbed sci-fi B movie, but it was the only way to stay off the grid and keep away from prying eyes.

  That was about how long it took hackers to ruin the life of the guy from State. In their eyes, he was public enemy number one. They plastered his face on a hundred different dark-web bathroom walls along with his address, Social Security number, birth certificate, the names and vitals of everyone in his family, his on-and-offline habits, his bank account numbers, stock portfolio, credit cards, passwords and security questions, even a twenty year-old photo of him getting busted smoking pot at a college campus sit-in. They emptied every account of every penny he had, they emptied his life of every ounce of privacy, and when someone took a potshot at him in Arlington, the FBI emptied his house and took his family into protective custody. He was the head of the snake, and they had just cut him off.

  It took even less time for the disaster juggernaut to reach the mainstream media. Every TV station canceled late night programming and was scrambling reporters, sending trucks, and knocking on doors. Every radio station was carrying the story, every sound bite was from one of us, and there wasn’t a tabloid on the Internet that wasn’t regurgitating stories of the Ebola epidemic.

  The president sent us a new representative for the meeting, one of his chief advisors. He did all the talking while we all listened.

  “The press conference for tomorrow is on again,” he said. “The president will announce that there are multiple cases of the disease in Philadelphia and New York. He will admit that people have died. He will apologize for trying to hide it from the American people, but he will insist that he only had their best interests at heart. He will emphasize that our best strategy against this outbreak is to remain calm and keep things as normal as possible. Everything will be business as usual. America is open. America is secure. America will survive. Those are the key points. We have three Washington correspondents on board with pre-assigned questions drawn up by our staff. Those will be the only questions he takes. Your job, people, is to make this work.”

  I tuned out during the discussion of how exactly they were going to orchestrate calm, and began watching a muted TV in our situation room that was showing a clip from the YouTube video of Tom going over the numbers. The station had them in graph form for full impact. No names, just bars. To them, Billy’s death was just a number. I took the elevator up to one and went outside. Izzy found me sitting on the wall again, smoking a cigarette.

  “Aren’t you afraid the reporters will find you?” she asked.

  “They don’t want to talk to me. Besides, they’re all at their computers right now trolling the Internet for morning show tidbits.”

  “You don’t have much faith in the system, do you?”

  “I have faith in the system, just not in the people running it right now.”

  “How about I take you home?”

  “Sounds good.”

  The streets were quiet, and we made good time, but it was after 3:00 a.m. when Izzy pulled into my driveway. I invited her in for a drink. One thing led to another.

  Chapter 9

  The sun was shining when my cell woke me up the next morning. The smell of coffee filled the room. Shep was sitting in the doorway, and Baby had claimed the space between the top of my head and the headboard. It was Fink.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “Home. What time is it?”

  “It’s 11:10 a.m. Get in here. Now.”

  I said I was on my way, and hung up. When I got downstairs, Izzy was working on bacon and eggs. The house phone rang. It was my buddy from the local garage. The Gremlin was ready to be picked up. I told him I’d be over after breakfast. He told me to bring cash.

  “You don’t take credit cards anymore?” I said.

  “Christ, Bam. Turn on your damn TV.”

  I hung up and turned on the set to a news channel where a sorry-looking duo was sitting at a desk like they’d been there all night. One of them was talking, while the words “SEC suspends trading. President to speak at 11:30 a.m.” scrolled like a stock ticker across the bottom of
the screen. I turned up the volume and started the toast.

  Overnight, the Tokyo Stock Exchange was down five percent due to word of the worldwide Ebola epidemic being leaked on the Internet late last night. The London Exchange, which opened two hours later at 3:00 a.m. Eastern, was actually up two percent by the opening bell in New York. At the time, analysts attributed this to cautious investors moving their money from U.S. based stocks to overseas money markets. That’s when the bottom fell out. The Dow dropped 500 points in the first half hour of trading, triggering drops in London and Frankfurt, and by ten thirty when London, Frankfurt, and the SEC issued a joint statement suspending trading, averages were down across the board by over ten percent. That translates to five trillion dollars worldwide.

  The guy stopped to read something on his teleprompter. He nodded and kept going.

  We have just learned that markets around the world have followed suit, and as of now, the world is no longer open for business.

  I turned the TV off and sat down. The cat jumped up into my lap and began to purr.

  “Five trillion bucks. That’s a lot of cat food, Baby.”

  “They shouldn’t sensationalize the news like that,” Izzy said. “The world economy is much more than its stock markets.”

  “I know that and you know that, and I’ll bet most of the people out there do too, but do you think that will stop them from panicking now?”

  I fired up my laptop and got the traffic report. It was green across the map. I asked Izzy to take me to the bank after breakfast to get cash for the car, and then drop me at the garage. I told her I’d catch up with her at the Six later. She gave me the silent treatment during breakfast. After spending two nights together, you’d think I would have caught on, but I always made a point of skipping the FBI classes on sensitivity training.