by A. G. Riddle
Desmond picked up the phone and dialed.
On the third ring, a woman answered, sounding groggy. “Shaw.”
“Hi. It’s… Desmond. Hughes.”
She sounded more alert when she spoke again. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He had no clue where to begin. “Are you… expecting my call?”
She sighed into the receiver. He heard her rustling, sitting up perhaps.
“What is this, Desmond?”
“Do we know each other?”
Her tone was sad now. “This isn’t funny, Des.”
“Look, I just, can you tell me who you are? Where you work? Please.”
A pause.
“Peyton Shaw.”
When he said nothing, she added, “I work at the CDC now. I’m an epidemiologist.”
A knock at the suite’s door rang out—three raps, firm—from the living room.
Desmond waited, thinking. The clock on the table read 7:34 a.m. Too early for maid service.
“Hello?” Peyton said.
Three more knocks, louder this time, followed by a man’s deep voice: “Polizei.”
“Listen to me, Peyton. I think you’re in danger.”
“What? What’re you talking about?”
Three more knocks, insistent, loud enough to wake anyone in the neighboring room. “Polizei! Herr Hughes, bitte öffnen Sie die Tür.”
“I’ll call you back.”
He hung up and sprinted to the door, ignoring the pain in his legs. Through the peephole he saw two uniformed police officers, along with a man in a dark suit—likely hotel security.
The hotel employee was moving a key card toward the door lock.
Chapter 3
In Atlanta, Dr. Peyton Shaw sat up in bed with the cordless phone to her ear. “Desmond?”
The line was dead.
She hung up and waited, expecting Desmond to call back.
It was 1:34 a.m. Saturday night, and she had been home alone, asleep for over three hours. She was wide awake now, though. And unnerved.
She felt the urge to take a look around the two-bedroom condo and make sure there wasn’t someone else inside. She had lived alone since moving to Atlanta in her twenties, and with a few exceptions, she had always felt safe.
She grabbed her cell phone, rose from the platform bed, and cautiously paced out of her bedroom. Every few seconds her bare feet squeaked against the cold hardwood floors. The front door was shut and the deadbolt locked. The door to the second bedroom, which she used as a home office, was also closed, hiding it from the open-concept living room and kitchen. She’d found that pictures of pandemics around the world were a real mood-killer for company and gentleman callers, so she always kept her office door shut.
At the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, she peered down at Peachtree Street, which was mostly deserted at this hour. She felt a chill through the glass; it was colder than usual outside for late November.
She waited, still hoping the home phone would ring. She had considered canceling the landline a dozen times, but a few people still had the number, and for reasons she couldn’t fathom, the cable and internet bill actually came out cheaper with the home phone.
She ran a hand through her shoulder-length brown hair. Her mother was half-Chinese, half-German, and they shared the same porcelain skin. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d gotten from her father, who was English, and had died when she was six.
She plopped down on the gray fabric couch and tucked her freezing feet under her bottom, trying to warm them. On her cell phone, she did something she hadn’t done in a long time—something she had sworn she would stop doing: she opened Google and searched for Desmond Hughes. Hearing Desmond’s voice had rattled her. His last words—You’re in danger—still lingered in her mind.
The first hit was the website for Icarus Capital, a venture capital firm. Desmond was listed first on the Our People page as the founder and managing partner. His smile was confident, maybe even bordering on arrogant.
She clicked the Investments page and read the introduction:
It is said that there’s no time like the present. At Icarus Capital, we disagree. We think there’s no time like the future. That’s what we invest in: the future. More specifically, we invest in people who are inventing the future. Here’s a sampling of those people and their companies. If you’re inventing the future, get in touch. We want to help.
Peyton scanned the companies listed: Rapture Therapeutics, Phaethon Genetics, Rendition Games, Cedar Creek Entertainment, Rook Quantum Sciences, Extinction Parks, Labyrinth Reality, CityForge, and Charter Antarctica.
She didn’t recognize any of them.
She clicked the next link in the web search results, which was a video of Desmond at a conference. An interviewer off-camera asked a question: “Icarus has invested in a really eclectic mix of startups, everything from pharma, biotech, virtual reality, grid computing, and even extreme vacationing in places like Antarctica. What’s the thread that ties it all together? For the entrepreneurs out there in the audience, can you tell them what you’re looking for in a startup?”
Sitting in a club chair on stage, Desmond held up the mic and spoke calmly, but with infectious enthusiasm. A slight grin curled at the edges of his mouth. His eyes were focused, unblinking.
“Well, as you say, it’s hard to categorize exactly what kind of company Icarus is looking for. What I can tell you is that each of our investments is part of a larger, coordinated experiment.”
The interviewer raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. What kind of experiment?”
“It’s a scientific experiment—one meant to answer a very important question.”
“Which is?”
“Why do we exist?”
The moderator feigned shock and turned to the crowd. “Is that all?”
The audience laughed, and Desmond joined in.
Desmond leaned forward in the club chair, glanced at the moderator, then focused on the camera. “Okay, I think it’s fair to say that many of you out there—in the audience and watching this video—would say the answer to that question is simple: we exist because the physical properties of this planet support the emergence of biological life, that we are biologically inevitable because of Earth’s environment. That’s true, but the real question is why? Why does the universe support biological life? To what end? What is humanity’s destiny? I believe there is an answer.”
“Wow. You almost sound like a person of faith.”
“I am. I have absolute faith. I believe there’s a great process at work all around us, a larger picture of which we have only seen a very small sliver.”
“And you think the technology Icarus is funding will deliver this ultimate truth?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
Peyton had just fallen asleep again when a noise from the bedside table woke her. She froze, listening, but it stopped suddenly.
It came again: something brushing up against the table.
A vibration.
A glow emanated from beyond the lamp, throwing light up at the ceiling.
She exhaled, grabbed her buzzing cell phone, and checked the time—3:35 a.m. She didn’t recognize the number, but she knew the country code. 41. Switzerland.
She answered immediately.
“Peyton, I’m sorry to wake you,” Dr. Jonas Becker said.
The German epidemiologist led a rapid outbreak response team for the World Health Organization. Peyton held a similar job at the Centers for Disease Control. The two epidemiologists had worked together a dozen times in hot zones around the world, and over that time, they had developed a special bond.
“It’s okay,” she said. “What’s happened?”
“I just emailed you.”
“Hang on.”
Peyton’s bare feet again slapped against the hardwood floor as she raced to the second bedroom. She sat at the cheap Ikea desk, woke her laptop, and activated her secure VPN software, opening a remote link to her terminal at th
e CDC.
She studied the pictures in the email, taking in every detail.
“I see it,” she said.
“The Kenyan Ministry of Health sent us this a few hours ago. A doctor at a regional hospital in Mandera took the photos.”
Peyton had never heard of Mandera. She opened Google Maps and studied the location, which was in the far northeast of Kenya, right at the borders with Somalia and Ethiopia. It was the worst possible place for an outbreak.
“It’s obviously some kind of hemorrhagic fever,” Jonas said. “Rift Valley is endemic to the region. So are Ebola and Marburg. After the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, everybody here is taking this very seriously. I’ve already had a call from the director-general’s office.”
“Are these the only known cases?”
“At the moment.”
“What do we know about them?” Peyton asked.
“Not much. All three men claim to be westerners visiting the country.”
That got Peyton’s attention.
“The two younger males are Americans. They’re recent college graduates from UNC-Chapel Hill. They went to Kenya as part of a startup of some kind. The other man is from London. He works for a British company installing radar systems.”
“What kind of radar systems?”
“For air traffic control. He was working at the Mandera airport when he became ill.”
“They have an airport?”
“Not much of one. It was a dirt airstrip until a few months ago. The government has been upgrading it: paved runway, better equipment. It opened last week.”
Peyton massaged her temple. A functioning airport in a hot zone was a nightmare scenario.
“We’re inquiring about the airport—traffic, who was at the opening ceremony, other foreigners who might have worked on the project. We’ve also contacted Public Health England, and they’re already working on it. It’s eight forty in the morning there, so they’ll be in touch with the British man’s family and co-workers soon. When we know how long he’s been in Kenya, we’ll make a call on quarantining them.”
Peyton scanned the email’s text, noting the names of the two younger men. “We’ll start tracing contacts for the Americans, see if we can build a timeline of where they’ve been, how long they’ve been in the country. What else can we do?”
“That’s about it for now. The Kenyans haven’t asked yet, but if things go the way they did in West Africa, it’s safe to assume they’re going to need a lot of help.”
Help meant money and supplies. During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the CDC had deployed hundreds of people and supplied equipment including PPE, thousands of body bags, and countless field test kits.
“I’ll talk to Elliott,” Peyton said. “We’ll loop in State and USAID.”
“There’s something else. We’ve just had our security briefing here. Mandera County is a very dangerous place. There’s a terrorist group in the region called al-Shabaab. They’re as brutal as ISIS, not fans of Americans, and when they hear you’re in the region, it could get even more dangerous. We’ll be in Nairobi late tonight, but I was thinking we would wait for your team. We can link up with a Kenyan military escort and head north together.”
“It’ll probably be Saturday before we get there.”
“That’s okay, we’ll wait. There’s a lot we can do in Nairobi.”
“Great. Thank you, Jonas.”
“Safe travels.”
Peyton placed the phone on the desk, stood, and studied the world map that covered the wall. Colored pushpins dotted every continent. Each pin corresponded to an outbreak, except for one. In eastern Uganda, along the border with Kenya, deep inside Mount Elgon National Park, hung a silver lapel pin. It featured a rod with a serpent wrapped around it—the traditional symbol of medicine known as the Rod of Asclepius, most frequently seen inside the six-pointed Star of Life on ambulances. The pin had belonged to Peyton’s brother, Andrew. It was Andrew who had inspired her to pursue a career in epidemiology, and she always took his pin with her when she went into the field. It was all she had left of him.
She took the silver keepsake off the map, placed it in her pocket, and pushed a red pin into the map where Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia met, marking it as an outbreak of a viral hemorrhagic fever.
She always kept two duffel bags packed: a first world bag and a third world bag. She grabbed the third world bag and added the appropriate AC adapters for Kenya.
As soon as things slowed down, she’d have to call her mother and sister to let them know she was deploying. Thanksgiving was in four days, and Peyton had a feeling she was going to miss it.
She hated to admit it, but in a way Peyton was relieved. Her sister, Madison, was Peyton’s only remaining sibling. The death of their brother had brought them closer, but recently every conversation with Madison had ended with her sister asking Peyton why she wasn’t dating and insisting that her chance for a family was rapidly slipping away. At thirty-eight, Peyton had to concede the point, but she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted a family. In fact, she wasn’t at all sure what she wanted from her life outside of work. Her work had become her life, and she believed what she was doing was important. She liked getting the calls in the middle of the night. The mystery every outbreak brought, knowing her hard work saved lives, that every second mattered.
And as of right now, the clock was ticking.
On the street below, a man sitting in a car watched Peyton pull out of the underground parking deck.
He spoke into the open comm line as he cranked the car. “Subject is on the move. No visitors. No text messages. Only one phone call—from her contact at the WHO.”
Chapter 4
Desmond stared through the peephole, watching the hotel security guard bring the key card toward the door lock. Two uniformed Berlin police officers stood beside him, hands on their hips.
Desmond flipped the privacy latch, preventing the door from opening. “Just a minute, please,” he said in English, trying his best to sound annoyed. “I’m not dressed.”
“Please hurry, Mr. Hughes,” the security guard said.
Desmond studied the dead man lying on the floor.
His mind rifled through options.
Option one: go out the window. He walked to the tall glass and examined it. He was at least ten stories up, and there was no fire escape or any other means to get to the ground in one, non-splattered piece. Besides, it looked like the window didn’t open.
Option two: make a run for it. He gave that zero chance of success. He was in no shape to push past three men, much less beat them in a foot race.
That left option three: hiding the body and seeing it through.
But where?
The living room was furnished with a desk and office chair, a couch, a side chair, and an entertainment center. A heating unit sat under the tall windows and floor-to-ceiling drapes. A wide opening with double pocket doors led to the bedroom, which held a king size bed with two nightstands, another window with a heating unit under it, and a closet. The narrow bathroom opened only from the bedroom.
Quickly, Desmond made his decision.
Lifting the dead man sent pain through his body. His ribs radiated sharp spikes that overwhelmed him, nearly gagging him at one point. The man was tall, about Desmond’s height at nearly six feet, but lean. He was likely only 150 pounds, but he felt more like 300. Rigor mortis had set in. Gunter Thorne had been dead for hours.
As he dragged the body, Desmond wondered how he knew how long it took rigor mortis to set in. But what concerned him the most was that he had never really considered just opening the door, letting the police in, and explaining his situation. It was as if somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he knew he was someone who needed to avoid the police—that he had something to hide. That if all the facts came to light, it wouldn’t be good for him. He needed his freedom right now. He needed to find out what had happened to him.
He was sweaty and panting when they knocked again. He dried hi
s face, raced to the door, and cracked it, peering out suspiciously.
“Yes?”
The security guard spoke. “May we come in, Mr. Hughes?”
Saying no would arouse suspicion, and Desmond couldn’t keep them out. Without a word, he swung the door wider.
The three men strode in, their eyes scanning the room, hands near their waists. One of the officers wandered into the bedroom, nearing the closet and the bathroom. The doors to both were closed.
“What’s this about?” Desmond asked.
“We had a call about a disturbance,” the police officer in the living room said, without making eye contact. He glanced behind the couch, then over at the entertainment center. He seemed to be in charge.
Through the opening to the bedroom, Desmond saw the other officer eyeing the closed closet doors. He reached out, opened them, then froze. His eyes moved from the floor to the ceiling. He turned to look at Desmond.
“No luggage?”
“I sent it down already,” he said quickly, trying to seem as if they were wasting his time. He needed to turn the tide, go on the offensive to get them out of the room. “What sort of disturbance? Are you sure you have the right room?”
The officer in the living room seemed to have finished his search. He turned his attention to Desmond.
“Are you in town for business or pleasure, Mr. Hughes?”
“Bit of both.”
“What sort of work do you do?”
“Technology,” he said dismissively. “Listen, am I in danger here? Should I call the American embassy?” He let his voice rise with each line, sounding more frantic. “Can you at least tell me what’s going on?”
The policeman pressed on. “How long are you in town for, Mr. Hughes?”
“A week. What does it matter?”
The police officer was unshaken. It wasn’t working.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other officer setting up just to the left of the bathroom door, one hand on his gun, the other reaching for the doorknob.
