Echo of War

by Grant Blackwood

  “At that time, scientists didn’t even have the equipment to see something as small as a virus, but using procedures he and Ivanovski had honed, Nikitin determined the cause of the illness was a virus—a particle so small that two hundred million of them can fit on the head of a pin.

  “There was a bigger mystery, though. As Nikitin conducted his autopsies, he found multiple causes of death. Some had died from smallpox, others from influenza, a few from pulmonary edema, and even a few from cancer, which wasn’t normally an acute disease.

  “Even at his level, Nikitin realized he was out of his depth. He didn’t understand the mechanism behind the virus. Somehow it either coopted the host’s immune system or it bolstered whatever underlying disease already existed. It turned minor colds into fatal infections; it allowed cholera or cancer or tuberculosis to go unchecked in the body; if the patient had a fever, the brain virtually boiled; a minor case of ringworm swarmed the body and ate it away. Whatever the pathology—bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasite—the virus turned it voracious. What a normal immune system could easily fight off became fatal.

  “Nikitin named the virus Kestrel. In the Ural Mountains, where he was from, a kestrel is not just a bird of prey, but according to Komi myth, it was also a shape-shifter. Nikitin thought the name fit.

  “When Simon came across the bunker, Nikitin and his team had been working for eighteen months to incubate Kestrel. According to their notes, they’d succeeded. In fact, they were getting ready to return to Germany with six petri canisters filled with the virus.

  “Simon and his squad leaders made a decision. Clearly they couldn’t let Kestrel fall into German hands, but the question they found themselves facing was, should anyone have it? Though pretty certain they had the only samples of Kestrel, Simon couldn’t be sure. What if the Germans already had some and decided to use it? Would these samples be the only hope for a vaccine? These were intelligent men, but they were lost. How Kestrel worked, what exactly it was, whether it could be stopped or destroyed—all questions they couldn’t answer.

  “They made a pact: The four of them would take Kestrel, hide it away, and keep it safe. The concepts of friend, enemy, ally—all of them were irrelevant compared to what Kestrel could do if it got loose. They’d seen atrocities on both sides. Words like honor and mercy had little meaning in modern war. Whom could they trust with Kestrel? Could they be sure the allies would destroy it and not try to keep it? All it would take was a single, shortsighted general or politician to decide a sample should be kept for study.

  “There were two things they had to decide before they could leave the bunker: first, what to do with the infected patients and the doctors. The patients were beyond help; half of the thirty had died over the previous two days. Simon wanted to put the rest out of their misery, but he didn’t dare go into the sterile rooms. He made a decision—the toughest one of his life.

  “He rounded up Nikitin and his doctors, ordered them into the sterile ward with twenty-three lethal doses of potassium cyanide, then locked the door behind them.

  “My grandfather, Pappas, Villejohn, and Frenec watched the end of it. Strangely, the doctors never once pleaded for their lives. They seemed resigned—as if they were glad it was over. Once they’d euthanized the surviving patients, they injected themselves, then sat down together and died.

  “That left one final task: to make sure they themselves hadn’t become infected. According to the doctor’s logs, the longest incubation period they’d seen was six days. Simon and the others had been inside the complex for three days.

  “So they stayed there, with the dead, watching and waiting for one of them to get sick.

  “Frenec, the Hungarian, had a bleak sense of humor. I remember my grandfather telling the story—the four of them sitting around waiting for the barest hint of a sniffle or a cough, knowing it probably meant they were all dead. Frenec said, ‘We’re standing quite the dark watch, aren’t we?’ The name stuck; from then on they referred to themselves as the Dark Watch.

  “They waited until three more days had gone by, then another three just to be safe. None of them showed any signs of illness.

  “A week after they’d entered the bunker, they gathered the six canisters of Kestrel, sealed the bunker entrance with explosives, and walked out.

  “That was 1918,” Root finished. “My father was born three years later, in 1921; when he was twenty-five Simon passed Kestrel on to him. I was born two years later: In 1978, when I was thirty, my father passed it on to me.” Root looked up and studied each man in turn. His face was drawn and gray, as though he’d aged a decade telling the story. “That’s it. That’s what Kestrel is, and that’s what Svetic wants.”

  Tanner and the others stared at Root with expressions ranging from shock to skepticism. Finally Tanner leaned back in his chair and exhaled heavily. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got so many questions I don’t know where to start,” he murmured. “First off, how does Svetic even know about Kestrel? Who is he?”

  “You remember my grandfather’s scout I told you about?”

  Tanner nodded. “The Herzegovinian boy.”

  “That was Anton Svetic—Risto Svetic’s grandfather.”

  33

  “Hold on,” Tanner replied. “You said the only ones who went down to the hospital level were Simon and his squad leaders.”

  “You have to understand,” Root said “Anton adored my grandfather. The boy had lost his entire family to the war—his mother, father, and sisters. Until Simon came along, Anton had been wandering, only half-alive. My grandfather fed him, gave him some clothes and some kindness. From then on he followed Simon everywhere.

  “When Simon first realized what they’d found, he called up the ladder and told the rest of the men it was a TB hospital and that they should stay topside until he and the others were sure they hadn’t been infected. That was good enough for the men, but not Anton.

  “On the third night, Anton climbed down the ladder and started looking for Simon. Of course, when my grandfather found him, he knew he couldn’t send him back up. Anton was terrified; he didn’t understand what was happening. All he knew was that something invisible was killing everyone down there—including him and Simon and all the men he’d come to call his family. To reassure him, Simon explained everything.”

  “Why didn’t they just burn the samples?” Cahil asked.

  “Part of it was fear and part of it was uncertainty,” Root replied. “This was 1918. Look at it from their perspective: the idea of something so small that not even the most modern microscopes can see it? Something so tiny that it’s dwarfed by the very same ‘invisible bugs’ Pasteur said were the cause of all disease? Imagine the average bacteria is the size of a football; in comparison, a virus would be a grain of sand. That’s what they were dealing with. It was completely alien.

  “Not only didn’t they understand Kestrel, but they didn’t feel like they could trust anyone with it. They chose what they thought was the best course: Take Kestrel with them, hide it, and guard it with their lives until something could be done about it.”

  “Something can be done about it,” said Oliver. “Why haven’t you told anyone about this? You were the DCI, for god’s sake. Couldn’t you have turned it over to the right people and made sure it was destroyed?”

  “You really think the world has changed that much? We’ve dropped atomic bombs, used nerve gas and anthrax, tested hallucinogens on our soldiers. Short of doing it myself—which was impossible—how could I have been certain Kestrel had been destroyed? Besides, the truth is, we’ve kept Kestrel safe for almost a century. That might sound arrogant to you, but for me it’s pragmatism.”

  McBride said, “I think we’re missing the big question here. Your grandfather took those samples out of that bunker over eighty years ago. Wouldn’t the virus be long dead by now?”

  “When my father passed responsibility for Kestrel on to me, I was fascinated and horrified. I wan
ted to learn everything I could about it. I read every biology and medical textbook I could get my hands on. At the University of Kansas I got my degree in virology with a minor in biochemistry.”

  Cahil whistled softly. “How many people know that?”

  Root smiled. “It’s not a secret, but it is a private passion. I wanted to understand what I was guarding; I wanted to understand what had taken over my grandfather’s life, and then my father’s. I knew I couldn’t study Kestrel in a scientific setting. Something that lethal needs a level four biohazard facility; you don’t just walk into one of those, say ‘look at what I found’ and go about your business. Word would have spread.” Root paused, then turned to McBride. “Sorry, I’m rambling. What was your question?”

  “It’s been over eighty years. Wouldn’t Kestrel be dead by now?”

  “Don’t count on it. By all scientific standards a virus isn’t even alive. Essentially it’s nothing more than a speck of genetic material inside a protein shell. Viruses can’t grow or divide on their own. They reproduce by hijacking another cell and rewriting its DNA to reproduce more virus. When a host infected by a virus dies, the decomposition process kills the virus as well. Without that, viruses go into a state of dormancy; in essence, they put themselves into suspended animation until some signal—so far, no one knows what that is—tells them to come to life again and start working.

  “Another thing: Don’t forget how small a virus is, and how fast they reproduce. Two hundred million can fit on the head of a pin. In the space of eight hours, a single virus can hijack and reprogram enough cells to create ten thousand copies of itself. Multiply that by two hundred million and you’ve got trillions of viruses born in the space of an average workday.”

  “Which most healthy human immune systems can deal with,” said Tanner.

  “Sure. They do it every day, in fact. That’s what’s so damned scary about Kestrel. Instead of fighting off the invasion, an infected system just sits by and lets it happen.”

  “Isn’t that what HTV does?” Oliver said.

  Root shook his head. “HIV is an immune deficiency disease. With HIV—or any autoimmune disease for that matter—the body’s ability to defend itself is compromised, but it’s still there. With Kestrel, there is no defense. It’s as if the immune system doesn’t even know it’s under attack.”

  “I’m lost,” Oliver said. “Are you saying Kestrel disables the immune system?”

  “Without being able to test it myself, I can’t be sure, but I have a theory, something I’ve toyed with for the past ten years. Anytime there’s an infection in the human body, the first defender on the scene is what’s called a microphage—essentially a mutated white blood cell designed to hunt down invaders and eat them. Microphages distinguish between what’s foreign and what’s ‘us’ by looking at its shell—its protein coat. If it belongs in the body, the proteins display the right chemical signature. Wrong signature, it gets attacked and eaten.

  “I think,” Root continued, “the first thing Kestrel does on entering the body is hijack a host cell, decipher the signature of its protein coat, then change its own coat to match.”

  “A disguise,” Tanner said.

  “A perfect disguise. The protein signature is all the immune system cares about. Now invisible to the host system, Kestrel latches onto a microphage and rides it until it comes across an infection.”

  Cahil said, “A viral ambulance chaser.”

  “An apt description. While the microphage is busy eating the foreign antigen—say for example, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease—Kestrel hijacks one of them, rewrites its DNA, and tells it to start reproducing. Here’s the key: I don’t think Kestrel tells the cell to reproduce more of Kestrel, but more of itself—along with the protein disguise Kestrel adopted when it entered the body.”

  Tanner said, “And so the next crop of baby Legionnaires are all wearing a coat that tells the immune system, ‘Don’t attack us’.”

  Root pointed a finger at him. “Exactly! And so on and so on until the disease overwhelms the body. Whatever the disease, Kestrel allows it to go unchecked; as far as the immune system knows, it’s not even under attack.”

  “You get a cold, the cold kills you,” Cahil said.

  “Yes and no,” Root replied. “As the immune system gets overwhelmed, opportunistic diseases pop up—foreign bodies that were already present, but had been suppressed by the immune system.”

  “And Kestrel does all this regardless of the disease?” McBride asked.

  “It’s not picky. If it’s foreign, Kestrel will use it. I have a hunch it capitalizes on major infections since that’s where a lot of microphages congregate. To use Ian’s metaphor, the more ambulances at a scene, the better.”

  Tanner suddenly felt very tired. In the space of twenty minutes they’d gone from a German freelance terrorist and a kidnapping to this … nightmare. He said, “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Root, your story scares the hell out of me.”

  “Good. It should.”

  “I want to discount it, but I can’t. You have to know: Whatever it takes, we have to keep this thing away from Svetic—and anyone else for that matter.”

  “I know. She’s my wife. I have to try.”

  Tanner nodded. “Then we better come up with one hell of a plan.”

  But of the two outcomes, which counts more? Tanner thought. There was nothing to think about, he knew. One life in trade for millions? Or more? By any measure, it was a fair trade.

  34

  Langley

  Tanner’s call went first to Dutcher and Oaken, who immediately drove to CIA headquarters. When they walked into Sylvia Albrecht’s office, Len Barber and George Coates were already waiting.

  “What’s he got, Leland?” Sylvia asked.

  “He didn’t say; but judging from his tone, it’s big,” Dutcher said, glancing at his watch. “It should be any time now—”

  As if on cue, Sylvia’s intercom buzzed. She pressed the button. “Yes.”

  “Call for you on secure five.”

  Sylvia disconnected and pressed another button. “Albrecht.”

  “It’s me,” Tanner said. “I’m secure on my end.”

  “Here, too. You’re on conference; everyone’s here. Where do we stand?”

  “Neck deep in a swamp,” Tanner replied. “The Barak is here and so is Litzman. We made contact with Susanna.” He passed along her information about Svetic, then said, “We decided it was time to push Mr. Root for some answers. He broke down and gave us the whole story. To be honest, part of me wishes he hadn’t.”

  Having rehearsed and distilled the story in his mind, Tanner highlighted Root’s tale, from his grandfather’s discovery of the bunker, to how Root believed Kestrel worked. “The kidnapping of his wife was never about money,” Briggs concluded. “It was about Root himself and Kestrel.”

  Len Barber said, “This can’t be real. It’s just too … fantastic.”

  “I believe him,” Tanner said. “I sat two feet from him while he was telling the story. Trust me, it’s real. Besides, can we afford to not believe him?”

  “Good god,” Sylvia murmured.

  Coates said, “He’s right. We have to assume it’s all true. Briggs, I’m not understanding something: Why the hell didn’t Root destroy Kestrel a long time ago? It sounds like he understands the thing fairly well, and given his power he could’ve done it twenty years ago.”

  “Hard to say,” Tanner replied. “Part of it’s fear; part of it’s probably dedication. This legacy has been passed down through his family for eight decades. There also may be some complacency on Root’s part. He said it himself: Whether we agree with their methods, they’ve kept Kestrel safe for a long time. Until now, it’s worked.”

  “My god,” said Len Barber. “The arrogance to think—”

  Sylvia cut him off. “Briggs, where are the Kestrel samples right now? Trieste?”

  “Innsbruck, Austr
ia. The Bank of Tirol.”

  “Are you telling me this thing has been sitting in a vault for the past eighty years?”

  “Safe-deposit box.”

  Given the unusual nature of both his unit and his mission, Tanner explained, Root’s commanders had given him tremendous discretion in where they operated. Taking advantage of that, after leaving the bunker Root led his team east out of Bosnia, dodging Serbian guerrilla units until they reached the Dalmatian coast, which was by then controlled by the Allies. Leaving the men behind in Split, Root, Villejohn, Frenec, and Pappas boarded a freighter bound for Kerkyra, Greece, where Pappas’s family had been living for 150 years. Root and the others buried the canisters of Kestrel in the wine cellar of the Pappas house, then returned to Split, collected the rest of the team, then linked up with their division, in Brindisi, Italy.

  Ten months later, on Thanksgiving Day 1918, as the last of the defeated German troops were pulling out of Alsace-Lorraine, Root, Frenec, Villejohn, and Pappas returned to Kerkyra, collected the Kestrel canisters, and traveled to Innsbruck, Austria, where they placed them in a safe-deposit box in the Bank of Tirol.

  As Tanner finished, Sylvia said, “Unbelievable. To think Kestrel sat in that bank as the Nazis marched through Austria … It gives me a chill just thinking about it. Why in god’s name didn’t Root’s father move it?”

  “According to Root, like most of the world, his father didn’t take Hitler seriously until it was too late. By the time he realized Germany was going to invade, there was nothing he could do but sit back and watch and pray the Nazis didn’t plunder the bank.

  “Three months after World War Two ended, Root’s father and the other descendants of the Dark Watch met in Innsbruck to make sure Kestrel was safe—which it was—then parted ways again.”

  “How many are left?” George Coates asked. “Of the original Dark Watch members, I mean. How many sons and daughters?”