by A. G. Riddle
The trip log was a dream for an epidemiologist. Peyton wondered if one of the videos would show the origin of the outbreak. She might even be able to track its spread.
The key to stopping an outbreak was containment. The first step in containment was to isolate anyone who was infected, and the second step was to interview all the infected patients and develop a list of every person they had come into contact with—a process called contact tracing. From those contacts, Peyton and her team would begin a repeating process. They would search for contacts. If the contact was sick, they would isolate them and trace anyone they had come into contact with; if the contact was asymptomatic, they would test them for the disease and typically quarantine them until Peyton and her team could be sure the person was infection-free. For Ebola, that quarantine period was twenty-one days. Eventually, when they had no new contacts to trace, they would end up with two groups: infected and quarantined.
But contact lists grew quickly. With each passing hour, a pathogen would reach more and more people. Time was of the essence; in most cases, the first few days of an outbreak determined everything after.
On a pad, Peyton had written the names of the two Americans, Steven Cobb and Lucas Turner, as well as the British patient, Andrew Blair. Between them, she had drawn a large X. The X was the variable, the unknown—what she needed to find. At some point, the British man had interacted with one or both of the Americans. Either that, or all three had a common contact—someone still out there, continuing to spread the disease. It was imperative that she find out where each of them had been and whom they had interacted with. The travel log could be the key to doing that.
If Peyton and her team did their job correctly, they’d end up with a contact tree that eventually had a root contact: the first person to contract the disease, often called patient zero or the index case.
That was the on-the-ground detective work: tracing the pathogen to its origin, containing every person it had touched, and either treating the patients or simply waiting for the outbreak to burn itself out.
But even with the video travel log, Peyton and her team were going to need a lot of help in Kenya.
She picked up her office phone and called Joseph Ruto, head of the CDC’s office in Kenya. Ruto was just finishing a late lunch in Nairobi, which was eight hours ahead of Atlanta.
She briefed him on their plans, with the caveat that they might change after the morning conference. The man struck her as competent and focused, and she counted that as a very good sign.
It was just before six a.m. when she hung up. She had been waiting to make the next call; she wanted her people to get as much rest as possible. Sleep might be hard to come by in the coming days.
She dialed the EOC’s head of watch and requested they contact all of the Epidemiology Intelligence Service agents.
“All of them?” the watch officer asked.
“Everyone assigned to CDC HQ. Instruct them to be in the building by seven a.m. for a pre-conference briefing. They need to come packed and prepared to leave in a few hours. If they’re deployed, they’ll be working either in Nairobi or in the field in rural Kenya. Instruct them to plan accordingly.”
“Understood, Dr. Shaw.”
The EIS program was a two-year fellowship established at the CDC in 1951. It had begun as a Cold War initiative focused on bioterror. Today it was one of the most prestigious and sought-after fellowships in applied epidemiology, known for producing the world’s best disease detectives. Candidates applying to the program needed to be either a physician with at least a year of clinical experience, a veterinarian, a PhD-level scientist with a background in public health, or a health care professional with at least a masters degree in public health. There were currently 160 EIS officers, seventy percent of whom were women.
During their fellowship, EIS officers often worked in the field, on the front lines of outbreaks. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, every one of the 158 EIS officers deployed. They served in seventeen countries, eight states, Washington, DC, and the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center. During that time, they collectively contributed 6,903 days of service—almost nineteen years combined. Peyton hoped for everyone’s sake that the current outbreak would be concluded much more quickly.
Peyton was the CDC’s leading field epidemiologist, and she was also an EIS instructor. She took both jobs very seriously. The EIS officers she was training could well be making the calls during the next major outbreak or leading the first response at the state level or overseas. Alumni from the program included the current CDC director, past and current acting surgeon generals, branch and division leaders across the CDC, and state and local epidemiologists across the country.
She hadn’t had a chance to work with every fellow in the current class, and this might be a good opportunity. She began browsing through the personnel files, assembling her team.
At seven a.m., Peyton stood at the podium in Auditorium A of Building 19 on the CDC campus. A fourth of the EIS officers were deployed at local and state health offices; they had dialed in to the presentation. The officers who worked at CDC HQ were assembled in the room. One hundred and twenty faces stared down at Peyton.
“Good morning. I’m about to brief you on an outbreak of what we believe is a viral hemorrhagic fever in a small town in Kenya. Pay close attention. Some of you will be deployed today; we’ll fly to Kenya this afternoon. Others will support our field operations from CDC HQ, for now. Depending on how things go, some of you may end up deployed to the field at a later date. Take notes, ask questions, and learn all you can. Your lives may depend on it. And so could someone else’s.
“Okay. Here’s what we know so far…”
Chapter 8
At eight a.m., the EOC’s conference room was overflowing. Employees from several CDC divisions as well as representatives from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were on hand.
Peyton sat at the table next to Elliott Shapiro. The EIS agents she’d selected for the deployment were in Auditorium A, watching the conference on a projection screen.
After introductions, Elliott led a briefing on the current situation. The State Department representative, Derek Richards, spoke next.
“From our perspective, this is an outbreak in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. Let’s start with some background.”
Richards clicked his mouse, and an image of a badly burned building appeared.
“August, 1998. Truck bombs exploded outside the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In Nairobi, 213 people died. Four thousand were injured. The attack was linked to al-Qaeda. In fact, it’s what caused the FBI to put bin Laden on the ten-most-wanted list for the first time. Less than two weeks later, the Clinton administration launched cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan in Operation Infinite Reach. The hit on bin Laden failed. In response, the Taliban renewed their commitment to harbor him, and the rest is history.
“State decided not to rebuild the embassy that was bombed in Nairobi. We built a new embassy directly across the street from the UN for security purposes.
“In the years since the Nairobi bombing, the security situation in Kenya has gotten worse. Crime is high everywhere in the country. It’s particularly bad in the larger cities: Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and the coastal resorts. In Nairobi alone, there are ten carjackings every day. In May 2014, the US, UK, France, and Australia began issuing travel warnings to their citizens in Kenya. The US went further, reducing our staff at the Nairobi embassy. The UK closed their consulate in Mombasa. The effects of the travel advisories were devastating to the Kenyan tourism industry. European travel to the country ground to a halt.
“Our main concern, however, is al-Shabaab. They’re an Islamic terror group based in Somalia, with cells and operatives throughout Kenya. They want to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state. They’re essentially ISIS in East Africa. They’re brutal, organized, and relentless. The African Union has deployed twe
nty-two thousand troops to Somalia to try to contain them. They’re losing.”
Richards clicked the mouse again, and a map of Somalia and Kenya appeared. Areas with terrorist activity were highlighted.
“In March of 2016, we received intel that al-Shabaab was planning a large-scale attack on US and African Union forces in the region. The Air Force launched a strike in which manned aircraft and unmanned MQ-9 reaper drones hit an al-Shabaab training camp in northern Somalia. We killed about 150 of their fighters, including their number two. You can have no doubt that al-Shabaab is looking for any opportunity to retaliate. American personnel, of any kind, operating in Kenya will be pursued. For that reason, US embassy personnel must get express permission when traveling outside Nairobi, and in some neighborhoods in the city.
“Your status as non-combatants is likely to have no effect on al-Shabaab. In April 2015 they attacked students at Garissa University. They singled out Christians and shot them. They killed 147 people in the attack.
“Finally, I would like to present the recent decisions of medical and humanitarian organizations I know you respect.”
Richards flipped through his papers; he apparently hadn’t memorized this part of his presentation.
“In May of 2015, Doctors Without Borders evacuated personnel from the Dadaab refugee camp because of security concerns. In total, they evacuated forty-two staff members to Nairobi and closed two of their four health posts.
“In July of 2014, the Peace Corps suspended all activities in Kenya and evacuated all of its personnel because of the security situation.”
Richards looked up from the papers and focused on Elliott. His tone was firm, bordering on aggressive.
“At State, we realize this is a serious outbreak with the potential to spread. Our official recommendation is that American personnel remain in Nairobi, offering support and coordination from there. The Kenyans and WHO personnel will be at far less risk in the field, and, in fact, the presence of American personnel may endanger them.
“If you decide to venture outside Nairobi, we recommend only doing so with Kenyan military forces that include units with combat experience and heavy artillery at their disposal. We would also advise you to wait until the NRO can position a satellite in geosynchronous orbit with the area you’ll be operating in. And we strongly recommend you wait until the Navy can position a vessel with a rapid deployment force within striking distance of your theater of operations.”
Peyton chewed her lip. She knew the recommendations were prudent but also that they would take time—especially the request to the National Reconnaissance Office, where bureaucratic red tape was a fact of life.
“How long would all that take?” Elliott asked.
“Unknown. DOD would have to advise on the RDF and vessel alignment; we’re not privy to their fleet positioning, but it’s safe to assume there are suitable vessels in the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. NRO would have to feed in on the sat requisition.”
“Can you guess?”
“Maybe seventy-two hours,” Richards said, “but I would again urge you not to go to Mandera at all, and if you do, to wait. Somalia is a failed state. We haven’t had an embassy there since ’91. It closed two years before the Battle of Mogadishu—that’s when the Black Hawk Down incidents took place. Frankly, that’s what you’ll be looking at if al-Shabaab militants find you and engage the Kenyan army. We’ve got a couple hundred US troops at the Mogadishu airport, but I can’t comment on whether they’d be able to assist in an emergency. I know CIA has special operators in Somalia. Also status unknown.”
Elliott looked over at Peyton. They had worked together so long, knew each other so well, that she could sense what he was thinking. She confirmed it with a short nod that silently said, We both know what we have to do.
“All right,” Elliott said, “we’d like to put in the requests to the NRO and DOD and expedite them as much as possible. I’ll have the director make calls.”
“You’re going to wait?” Richards asked.
“No. We’re going to deploy to Mandera with all possible haste.”
Richards shook his head in disbelief.
Elliott held up his hands. “Look, if we don’t stop this outbreak in Mandera, we’ll be fighting it in Nairobi and Mombasa and then in Cairo and Johannesburg and Casablanca. If we can’t stop it in Africa, we’ll be dealing with it here at home, in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Seventy-two hours could mean the difference between a local outbreak and a global pandemic, between a dozen deaths and millions. Right now, infected individuals could be boarding buses, trains, and airplanes. We don’t know who they are or where they’re going. They may well be on their way to infect cities anywhere in the world—cities that aren’t on alert, that have no idea that a deadly pathogen has just touched down within its borders. Our only chance of stopping this outbreak is containing it. That has to happen now, not three days from now. Our people are among the best trained in the world. They need to be there—right now. We’re the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We can’t control this disease over the phone.”
When the conference broke, Peyton spoke privately to the EIS officers she’d selected for deployment.
“You heard the security situation. If any of you feel uncomfortable, I need to know now. I’m not going to put anything in your file. I’ll select an alternate and never say a word about it.”
At one p.m., Peyton made her way downstairs and walked nervously through the lobby, unsure how many of the officers she’d find waiting for her.
Outside, it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the sun.
When the scene came into focus, she saw every one of the EIS officers she had selected standing in front of the vans, their duffel bags beside them. She nodded at them, and they loaded up and drove to Dobbins Air Reserve Base.
Less than an hour later, they were on their way to Nairobi.
From a chain link fence that ringed Dobbins ARB, the man who had been following Peyton watched the Air Force transport lift off. When it was out of sight, he typed a message to his superiors:
Subject is en route to target zone.
Chapter 9
In the small flat in Berlin’s Wedding neighborhood, Desmond carefully cut the stitches that held the patch inside the suit jacket. The Savile Row label fell away, revealing the contents of the secret pocket: two prepaid Visa credit cards.
The cards were timely—Desmond was almost out of cash—but he had hoped for more. In particular, he had hoped for some clue about who he was, why he was in Berlin, and most of all, what had happened to him before he’d woken up that morning in the Concord hotel with no memories.
Something about the cards struck him as odd: each had a small vertical scratch after the tenth number. To the common eye, it might look random, but the fact that both cards had the mark raised his suspicion. Beside the mark on the first card were four smaller scratches. The second card had two small scratches to the right of the vertical line, just above the card numbers.
Was it another code? If so, it likely followed the pattern on the dry cleaning coupon—a simple substitution cipher. Add four to each of the first ten digits on the first card and two to the first ten digits on the second card. Ten numbers formed an American phone number.
Desmond drew out the prepaid smartphone and dialed, doing the math for each digit in his head. He listened anxiously as the first droning beep sounded. Another. A third. Then voicemail picked up. To his surprise, he heard his own voice.
“If you’ve reached this number, you know what to do. If you don’t, you’d better figure it out fast.”
When the beep sounded, Desmond paused, his mind racing. Was the voicemail box a sort of digital dead drop for messages to someone else? Or was he supposed to try to access the voicemail? He decided to do both.
“It’s Desmond. I need help.” He almost said his phone number, but stopped. The voicemail could have been hacked by whoever had sent Gunter Thorne to his hotel ro
om, or the police could have found it by now. Revealing his new number might paint a target on his back; the police could trace the number to the nearest cell tower and triangulate his approximate location. He needed a digital dead drop of his own—something public and easy to access.
Thinking quickly, he said, “Leave a message on the Berlin Craigslist under Help Wanted—an ad for a tour guide. Use the words ‘highway man’ in your ad. Hurry.”
The call had left him with more questions than answers. Hoping for those answers, he dialed the phone number from the second credit card, and again heard his own voice.
“You’ve reached Labyrinth Reality. If you know us, you know we think talking is the least interesting thing to do with your phone. I mean, come on, you’re holding a location-aware computer in your hand. Do something cool with it.”
At the beep, Desmond ignored his own words, leaving the same message he’d left on the first number.
Labyrinth Reality. He did an internet search for the name and found a website for a startup. The contact page listed an address in San Francisco and a number that was different from the one he had just called. He clicked the Team page, but he didn’t recognize any of the dozen faces. They were all in their twenties or early thirties, several wearing Warby Parker glasses, a few with tattoos. All the pictures were candids: taken during a Ping-Pong game, at their desks, partially covering their faces in the hall. The titles were quirky, and so were the bios.
Desmond clicked the Investors page and read the firms listed: Seven Bridges Investments, Icarus Capital, Pax-Humana Fund, Invisible Sun Securities, and Singularity Consortium. The names seemed familiar, but no concrete memories emerged.
Labyrinth Reality’s product was a mobile app that was location-aware and could be used for augmented reality. Users held their phones up at certain locations, and the app would reveal a digital layer with pictures and virtual items not visible to the naked eye. The app would also supplement the experience with videos and text related to the location. It was used for corporate scavenger hunts and games as well as geocaching. City tour groups were using it in Chicago and San Francisco. The app was positioned as a platform, enabling game developers, corporations, conference organizers, and individuals to create Labyrinth Realities to enhance whatever they were doing.
