Pandemic

by Daniel Kalla

  Isaac Moskor met her at the front door. At least six-four and 250 pounds, he had a square face, slanting forehead, and a protuberant jaw that one might associate with professional wrestling, not academia. In his late sixties, his posture was still bone-straight and age had not diminished his mass. Though Savard was taller than average at five-eight, Moskor still had to stoop down to hug her. He held her in a tentative, awkward embrace, as if afraid of crushing her in his massive arms. Acts of physical intimacy were the only times Gwen ever sensed uncertainty from her mentor.

  Moskor stood back and sized her up from toes to hair. “Still too skinny, but otherwise you look okay, kid,” he said with his deep Jersey accent.

  Gwen smiled warmly, realizing how much she had missed the man. “Can you still be a kid at forty-two?”

  “To a sixty-nine-year-old? Absolutely.” He spun with surprising speed for a man of his age and size. “Don’t stand there like a potted plant. Come. Come.”

  Gwen followed him through the small foyer and into the living room. With two worn gray corduroy sofas, a frayed throw rug, and a few charcoal abstract prints, the room was as utilitarian as the rest of his house. Gwen knew that to Moskor and his wife houses were for sleeping and eating. The lab was where one lived.

  “Where’s ClaraT’ Gwen asked, sinking into one of the surprisingly comfortable sofas.

  Moskor shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe at the lab. Maybe at our daughter’s.” His face crumpled into a half grin, the deeper creases of which displayed the first evidence of his having aged since their last meeting. “The secret to our forty-plus-year marriage is a deep and abiding indifference to one another’s whereabouts.”

  Gwen laughed. “I don’t know why Clara puts up with you. ”

  Moskor shrugged again. “My movie-star good looks, I suppose.” He dropped into the sofa beside Gwen. “If you want anything after your trip—like a beer, soda, bite to eat, or whatever-you know where the kitchen is. Nothing’s moved. I’m too old to wait on anybody.”

  Realizing how parched she was from the trip, she got up and walked into the same kitchen where she had spent so many evenings helping Clara prepare dinner. “Want anything?” she asked Moskor.

  “Wouldn’t say no to a beer.”

  Gwen returned in under a minute with two opened beer bottles, knowing better than to bother with glasses in this house.

  “How’s the lawyer?” Moskor asked as Gwen sat back down on the couch beside him.

  “Peter moved out a couple of days ago,” she said. “We’re getting divorced.”

  Moskor nodded, showing as much surprise as if Gwen had told him that Peter was out parking the car.

  “Best for both of us, Isaac. We tried, but it hasn’t worked for a long time. We’re night and day, really.”

  Moskor shrugged helplessly. “Look, kid, viruses I understand. People I don’t.”

  Gwen smiled again. God, she had missed the man. And even though he showed no sign of interest in her domestic tribulations, it felt good to finally unload on someone. While Moskor slumped back in his seat, sipping his beer and once that was finished teetering on the brink of sleep, Gwen poured out her heart She filled in the details of the terminal months of her marriage, from her ambivalence about the failed fertility drugs to the travel schedule she deliberately calculated to increase time apart from her husband.

  When she had finished, she wasn’t sure if Moskor was still awake. Just as she leaned closer to peer into his half-mast eyes, he said, “Kid, I don’t do personal advice. You know that. But I will say this again. Apart from being too skinny, you look okay.”

  Gwen felt a weight lift off her shoulder. In her role as a top-level government scientist, who at times reported directly to the President, few people held sway over her, but Moskor’s acceptance provided the absolution she sought.

  He stretched his long arms over his head. “Hope you didn’t drive all the way up here just to announce you’re single again,” he said. “Because the only single guy in my lab is gay.”

  Gwen smiled. “I appreciate you listening, Isaac. It helps.”

  Moskor shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed.

  “I came up here to hear about your latest research.”

  He sat up straighter in his seat. His face lit up, shedding years. “Gwen, it’s showing some real promise.”

  Gwen leaned forward and cocked her head in curiosity. “How so?”

  “A single-stranded RNA virus like influenza. Nothing to the bug, really. Can’t even reproduce without invading a host cell. But, damned if it doesn’t offer one of the most complex defenses known to nature!” Moskor was suddenly more animated, like a jock at a party where the topic of conversation had just shifted from ballet to football. “With our earlier drugs, A35321 through 348, we saw some promising early results with the chimps, but the bug mutated so quickly they were as good as useless in a couple of life cycles.”

  Moskor stood up and hurried out of the room. He jogged back in moments later, carrying a binder under his arm and wheezing slightly. He flopped back onto the sofa and opened the binder in front of him. The page showed a schematic drawing of an organic molecule with multiple limbs, some ending in circular chains. “Here’s the original A35321. The beauty is that she doesn’t target DNA transcription, like most antivirals. No. She blocks the ribosomal RNA translation of the genes. Shuts down the whole protein-producing factory. Influenza can’t replicate without that Ergo, end of infection.” He exhaled heavily. “But the whole A35 series was flawed. Within a few life cycles the microbe kept developing a resistance to it. We kept making minor adjustments, lopping off a chain here or throwing in another there.” His finger flew over the complex structure, pointing to the rings and chains. “But at the end of the day, we were fighting a losing battle. We’d run out of fingers to plug all the leaks that kept springing, you understand?”

  His lips curved into a proud grin. “Forced us back to the drawing board. Truth be told, it was Clara’s idea. ‘Why not make it simpler?’ she said.” His hand cut across the sketch, pantomiming the act of cleaving the molecule in half. “Sometimes less is truly more!” His voice rose joyfully. When he flipped a page, the next diagram showed a much more compact molecule. “Meet A36112. Same mechanism of action—we’ve tested several strains of the bug in primates—but so far no resistance documented. As of yet the little devil doesn’t know what hit her.”

  “Is it a pill?” Gwen asked.

  Moskor nodded. “We’re using one hundred milligrams twice a day, but it’s likely that once a day would do the trick.”

  “Do the results depend on the stage of the infection?”

  Moskor grinned. “Ah, kid, I taught you well, didn’t I? The curse of most antivirals is that unless given early—the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours of infection—they don’t work worth a damn. Of course earlier is always better than later, but A36112 seems to work at any point of the infection.” His grin grew wider. “Eighty percent of our chimps lost their fever within twenty-four hours of treatment.”

  Swept up in Moskor’s enthusiasm, Gwen rose from her seat and hovered over the diagram as if it were a treasure map. “What about human trials?” she asked.

  Moskor nodded. “Took us a while to steer through Ethics and get FDA approval, but phase one trials have begun on volunteers.”

  Gwen nodded. She knew that phase one trials weren’t used to prove much more than the drug wasn’t more dangerous than the disease it was trying to treat “Preliminary resultst” she asked.

  “So far, so good.” Moskor shrugged. “Ten to twenty percent get diarrhea, just like our poor monkeys. But give sugar pills to people and ten to twenty percent will get explosive diarrhea, too.”

  “Where would we be without the old placebo effect? Makes snake oil so damn effective,” Gwen smiled. “You don’t have any industry sponsorship on this, right?”

  As soon as it left her lips, Gwen knew it was a dumb question; Moskor’s contempt for pharmaceutical companies bordered on hat
red.

  His brow furrowed until his hairline pulled forward. His eyes darkened. “The only parasites I work with are those of the microbiological variety.” He almost spat the words. “Those drug company sons of bitches don’t care one whit for the people the research might help. Look at what they’ve done in Africa. They’d rather encourage genocide than lower their profits on the HIV anti-retrovirals. Makes me sick to even talk about them.”

  Savard didn’t hold the same belief, but they had argued the point too many times for her to raise it again. She just nodded. “Isaac, I know how you feel, but with phase two and three trials looming, you need resources ...”

  “We’ve got NIH funding. We’ll get whatever resources we need.”

  Gwen leaned in closer to Moskor and rested a hand on his. “Isaac, I can help.”

  The anger dissipated from Moskor’s face. He let out a familiar, low-pitch chuckle. “The federal government is interested in finding a cure for the flu?”

  “Especially if I make it a matter of national security, Isaac.”

  CHAPTER 6

  HARGEYSA, NORTHERN SOMALIA

  Money. In a country without government or law, money is both, Hazzir Kabaal thought. And his had served him well.

  The gray tin-roofed complex, which consisted of a two-storey building with a single-storey annex, could have passed for a warehouse from the outside. It stood eight miles outside of the impoverished northern Somali town of Hargeysa, the capital of the disputed region of Somaliland. Warlords, clans, secessionists, and foreign powers like Ethiopia all fought unsuccessfully for control of the region. As a result, leadership and allegiances varied from street to street. This might have posed a problem for someone assembling a covert guerilla operation, but Kabaal’s deep pockets allowed order to prevail within the anarchy.

  The local militia secured access to all roads leading to and from the facility. Their machine guns and shoulder grenade launchers kept the curious and the nosy at bay. And they oversaw the safety of the steady stream of unmarked trucks, which transported in the lab equipment and medical supplies that made the precarious journey up from Mogadishu. Aware that all movement in Somalia was monitored from the sky by U.S. satellites, the drivers followed a similar route and schedule as the drug runners and other supply trucks in the area. Perimeter security of the complex fell to Kabaal’s men, who were a far better trained and equipped group of Egyptian fighters than the Somali militia. The Egyptians were faithful above all to The Brotherhood and the man who had handpicked them, Major Abdul Sabri.

  In a traditional robe but clean-shaven and wearing six-hundred-dollar desert boots, Kabaal met Dr. Anwar Aziz and Major Abdul Sabri at the entryway. Stepping inside, Kabaal was again reminded what a good choice he had made in his two lieutenants. The unlikely pair had managed to convert an old military hospital complex, abandoned for over ten years and likely not much to begin with, into an impressive camouflaged laboratory facility.

  Short and stout, Dr. Anwar Aziz had a round expressionless face with small bespectacled eyes and a closely cropped beard. From his brisk gait to his perfectly ironed white lab coat, everything about the fifty-year-old Jordanian microbiologist emanated scientific precision.

  Major Abdul Sabri stood silently beside Aziz. In contrast to the scientist, Sabri’s speech and movement were unhurried to the point of languid. Despite his simple galabiya, the traditional Egyptian workingman’s floor-length robe, Sabri was still an intimidating sight. Tall and muscular, his large head boasted a beardless face with jarringly delicate, almost feminine features accentuated by light blue eyes—rare for an Arab. Kabaal couldn’t separate Sabri’s daunting physical presence from the man’s history. As a member of the Egyptian Army’s Special Forces, Sabri had seen extensive action, fighting primarily on native soil against Islamic rebels. Despite the highly classified nature of these operations, Kabaal had heard of Sabri’s legendary reputation within the military for getting the job done at any cost. After leaving the army at forty, for reasons unexplained, Sabri had thrown his lot in with those who were once his bitter enemies.

  Though Kabaal knew that both Aziz and Sabri were devoutly religious, he had little illusion about their motives. Aziz was above all a scientist, and Sabri a soldier. The operation was an excuse for both of them to exercise their passions, but motives didn’t concern Kabaal; only loyalty and results mattered.

  After exchanging brief pleasantries, Aziz and Sabri toured Kabaal through the facility. They started in the main building on the second floor, which once was a large open hospital ward and had since been divided into a series of offices and storage rooms. When they reached a set of sealed metal doors leading to a locked area, Aziz jabbed a stubby finger at them and said, “Subject evaluation.” Kabaal did not require further explanation to know what went on behind the doors.

  Aziz led Kabaal and Sabri down a different set of stairs from which they had come up. They walked out of the stairwell, through a small corridor, and into a large open laboratory on the main floor of the annex. The room buzzed. Everyone was in motion. No one stopped to acknowledge the visitors. White-coated technicians busied themselves at computers and workstations. Others worked under vented lab hoods, their arms slipping through holes in the glass and into long, orange rubber gloves that allowed them to manipulate the test tubes and containers inside without risking self-contamination.

  Following Aziz around the makeshift virology lab, Kabaal tried to digest the stream of rapid-fire information, but much of the jargon-laden explanations sailed over his head. Still, he felt giddy, delighting in the technological trappings his money had assembled. Centrifuges, freezers, incubators, vented lab stations, and computers were everywhere. The sight filled Kabaal with a sense of purpose. Silently he thanked Allah for choosing him for the pivotal mission.

  After finishing the tour, Aziz, Sabri, and Kabaal met in Aziz’s office on the second floor. Aside from the wooden desk and chairs, two bookshelves stuffed with medical texts, and the prayer rug covering a small portion of the tile floor, the room was empty to the point of austere. Aziz insisted that Kabaal assume the seat behind the desk. The scientist took the chair across from him, but Sabri remained standing.

  Hazzir Kabaal made a circular waving gesture with a finger, indicating the complex. “Dr. Anwar, Major Abdul, I am most impressed by what you have accomplished here.”

  Sabri nodded distantly while Aziz kept his eyes fixed on the tabletop and shrugged, either embarrassed by or indifferent to Kabaal’s praise.

  “How are the experiments proceeding?” Kabaal asked.

  “So far very promising, Abu Lahab.” Aziz called Kabaal by his Arabic honorific that literally meant “father of the flame, a reference to his handsome features.

  “Promising?”

  “Our facilities have been more than adequate to preserve the virus,” Aziz said, his eyes never leaving the desktop. “The original Asian serum samples have not lost any of their infective potential.”

  Kabaal shrugged. “I am sorry, good doctor. ‘Serum’?”

  “Serum is what is left of the blood once you remove the cells and clotting factors, Abu Lahab,” Aziz explained. “So far, we have injected eight subjects with the serum of the original Chinese patient.”

  “Subjects,” Kabaal repeated, realizing that Aziz meant his own men. “And?”

  “Every one of them has acquired some degree of infection.”

  “How many are dead?”

  “Two.”

  Kabaal nodded solemnly. “And the others?” he asked, willing away the twinges of doubt.

  “Four have recovered fully. To be truthful, three showed only a slight increase in temperature but otherwise had little more than colds. And two others are still symptomatic but showing signs of recovery.”

  Kabaal leaned back in his chair, ignoring the tip of the screw that pressed into his back. “So, this virus kills twenty-five percent of those infected?”

  Aziz’s head shot up and his eyes fixed on Kabaal’s. “We don’
t have close to enough of a sample size to make that assertion. Besides, we have selection bias. We’ve only infected healthy men, ages seventeen to twenty-nine. We do not know what effect it would have on the rest of the population.”

  “Of course, Doctor.” Kabaal waved away the scientist’s quibble. “But it is safe to say that early figures suggest one in four young adults would die from this infection.”

  “That’s what the very preliminary results would suggest,” Aziz hedged.

  “You have had no problem passing the infection through blood,” Kabaal said. “But what about through the air. In the ...” He struggled for the words.

  “Respiratory droplets,” Aziz offered.

  “Yes,” Kabaal said.

  “This virus is not smallpox.” Aziz sighed, sounding almost disappointed. “I would classify it as only moderately contagious.”

  Kabaal leaned forward again. “Can you elaborate, Dr. Anwar?”

  Aziz chewed his lower lip, thinking. “We chose an index case who was at day two of symptomatic infection, when we estimated he was carrying the highest viral load—” When Kabaal shrugged, Aziz explained further. “When we assumed him to be most infective. We put this man who was actively coughing in a room roughly the size of a large elevator with ten other subjects for thirty minutes. Three days later, only two of the subjects showed signs of infection.”

  “Allah be praised.” Kabaal smiled.

  Aziz frowned. “But had this been a virus like smallpox all of them who were not immune would develop infection.”

  Kabaal’s smile broadened. “It is enough, good doctor.”

  Aziz nodded, but disappointment lingered in his small eyes. There was too much microbiological imperfection in the statistics.

  A knock interrupted them. A compact, muscular Malaysian man stood at the open door. He wore a loose white robe along with an ornate green and gold kopiah, the traditional Malaysian skullcap.