Pandemic

by Daniel Kalla

  Eleish ignored her, and focused his eyes on the shorter woman. “If you know anything, tell me now.” He tapped a finger on the photo. “She is in trouble. I might be able to help.”

  “What kind of trouble is Sharifa in?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  The tall woman reached out and laid a hand on her friend’s shoulder as if to lead her away from Eleish, but he raised a palm to stop her. “You do know Sharifa then?” he said. “Listen, we are concerned that she might have been abducted.”

  This caught the attention of even the tall woman. She let go of her friend’s shoulder.

  “There have been some attacks by a man not too far from the mosque.” Eleish shook his head gravely. “The monster is targeting pious women. Women who wear the hijab. And Sharifa ...” He snapped his fingers as if searching his memory for the surname.

  “Sha’rawi,” the short woman supplied it for him.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “We have one body. Excuse me, ladies, for my frank description, but it is in such a condition that we cannot identify it. We have no reason to believe that Sharifa Sha’rawi is this woman, but we know that she has been missing since before we found the body ...” He let the implication hang in the hot air.

  The third woman who hadn’t spoken a single word in Eleish’s presence uttered a gasp and swayed on her feet. The tall woman shot out a hand to steady her.

  Eleish heard the sound of shouts. He looked over the women’s heads to see two robed men advancing quickly toward them and yelling to him.

  “You have been most helpful.” Eleish swiveled and began to walk away. “I will be in touch soon with hopefully good news of Sharifa’s safe discovery.”

  He strode quickly for his car, resisting the urge to run. He hopped into the driver’s seat and started the ignition before glancing in the rearview mirror. The two men had stopped to question the women, but he could see their irate faces fixed on him as he pulled out and drove away.

  Driving back into Cairo’s smoggy congestion, Eleish was sweating; more than just from heat. Now that he had traced the terrorist in Vancouver back to Kabaal’s own mosque, he was convinced beyond a doubt that he had linked the man to the bioterrorist conspiracy. He felt deeply satisfied to finally validate years of suspicion, but by doing so, he realized he had just endangered his life along with those of his wife and daughters.

  CHAPTER 25

  VANCOUVER, CANADA

  Gwen Savard sat at the desk in her spacious “executive suite” on the thirty-second-floor of the Harbourview Hotel, gloomily staring out the window at world-famous Stanley Park, Coal Harbour, and the snow-dusted North Shore Mountains beyond. Gwen was as close as she was going to get—for the next four days, at least—to the glorious December sunshine outside.

  Jake Maguchi’s coughing fit sentenced Gwen and Noah to a minimum of five days in quarantine. Noah had had to fight to convince the authorities that while symptom-free Gwen and he presented no risk to the general public and required only isolation. When the staff at the American Consulate finally came around, they insisted on quarantining the two doctors in style at the five-star Vancouver hotel.

  The staff set up a functional office for Gwen, including fax, two phone lines, high-speed Internet, and computer with video-conferencing capability. Though fully connected to the outside world, she couldn’t shake her sense of solitude.

  Haldane had made light of the situation, comparing his predicament to a bomb squad technician who had stepped on a land mine he was supposed to diffuse. Gwen suspected that behind his relaxed exterior, he shared her fear of the unknown, but his professionalism never wavered. From the moment Maguchi collapsed, Haldane—in spite of potential exposure to the deadly virus—stuck by the pathologist’s side, refusing to relinquish his care until convinced Jake was in safe hands. A scientist, not a physician, Gwen had little to do but stand back and admire Noah’s cool competence and gentle bedside manner.

  Noah’s selfless efforts seemed to have been in vain. Gwen had spoken earlier to one of the doctors at the ICU who told her: “Dr. Maguchi is fighting an uphill battle.” When pressed, the weary doctor added, “It will require a miracle of biblical proportions for him to survive another twenty-four hours.”

  Though Savard had only known Maguchi for minutes, she had warmed to him right away. Not only did his dismal prognosis sadden her, it heightened her own sense of vulnerable captivity.

  Gwen’s reflex response to a challenge had always been to step beyond her comfort zone and into the eye of adversity, but now adversity had entrapped her. She had no choice but to wait and see if the virus, from which she was supposed to protect her country, infected her. The specter of failure loomed all around. She tried to quell the memories of being the little girl who always managed to disappoint her mother, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the child had grown up to fail her entire nation.

  Despondent, she reached for the remote and turned the TV on to CNN. Ominously, the network had gone to twenty-four-hour coverage of the story. A subtitle in red ran along the bottom of the screen, screaming the alternating headlines: “Department of Homeland Security upgrades terrorist threat advisory from code orange to code red” and “22 dead, at least 100 infected in Illinois.” Gwen already knew about the spiraling human toll, but the TV clips of hearses pulling away from hospitals and interviews with distraught families brought the bioterrorist attack on her country home in a visceral way that the sterile government statistics hadn’t. Gwen was further dismayed by the coverage of the rest of the country’s reaction. Though no cases had been reported outside of Illinois, in cities as remote as Houston and Los Angeles people had begun to stockpile gas masks and nonperishable supplies.

  A musical tone from her computer indicated someone was requesting a videoconference. She muted the TV with the remote and then clicked on the computer’s messenger icon. A video window popped open framing Alex Clayton inside. He was dressed as suavely as ever in a dark-on-dark shirt and jacket ensemble, but his hair was uncharacteristically out of place and deep bags had formed under his eyes. Suddenly he looked all forty of his years to Gwen.

  “Gwen!” Clayton held out his hand to the camera. “How are you?”

  She smiled halfheartedly. “Stuck indoors on a beautiful day, but otherwise okay.”

  “We cannot afford for you to get sick, do you hear?” he said, stone-faced.

  “Your concern is touching, Alex, but I have no intention of getting sick.”

  His expression softened. “What are the chances?”

  “Hard to know, but Noah figures they’re slim. Probably less than ten percent.”

  Clayton squinted. “Noah?”

  “Dr. Noah Haldane, the WHO expert on emerging pathogens. He might be the world authority on the Gansu Flu.” She sighed. “And he’s quarantined one room over from me.”

  Clayton’s face broke into its first flicker of a smile. “For what it’s worth, my mom always forces cod liver oil and vitamin C down my throat at the first sign of cold or flu.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” She laughed. “Your mom got any homespun remedies for level-four lethal viruses?”

  The levity vanished from his expression. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “All hell is breaking loose in Washington, Gwen. This could be worse than 9/11. The President wants answers.”

  Gwen nodded calmly. “What do you know so far?” She knew their secure socket Internet connection meant they could talk freely.

  “Not enough,” Clayton sighed. “We’ve got our bureaus in the Middle East working twenty-four/seven to identify the woman but so far nada. And the RCMP haven’t figured out how she got into Canada.” He shrugged. “One small break. We think we know how the terrorists got their hands on the virus in the first place.”

  “How?”

  “Carnivore picked up an e-mail a couple of weeks ago sent by a deputy director of a hospital in Gansu to his supervisor. In it, he confesses to helping two Malaysians steal blood from an infec
ted patient. We checked it out with the Chinese. Apparently, the guy killed himself after he sent the e-mail, and his supervisor hid the message out of fear of reprisal.” Clayton interlocked his fingers in front of him and cracked the knuckles aggressively. “That weasel is going to learn the meaning of fear, but in the meantime the trail has gone stone cold.”

  “What about the Malaysians?”

  “Could be from the militant group, Jemaah Islamiah. The same ones who masterminded the Bali bombing.” He paused. “But our analysis tells us this is too sophisticated for them. And when you throw in the dead Arab woman in Vancouver and the other in London ...” He shook his head. “It’s likely the Malaysian role was limited to getting the virus out of China.”

  Gwen studied her desktop, assimilating the details. “And from China to Africa?”

  “It looks that way,” Clayton said. “Especially when you add the executed terrorist to those missing African lab supplies.”

  “Al Qaeda?” Gwen asked.

  “Always possible.”

  “What’s next, Alex?”

  He shook his head and his shoulders slumped. Even in the small video box, Savard saw the change in Clayton. He had lost much of his cavalier edge. She decided Clayton embodied the mood of his country: once cocky and invincible, the attack on Chicago had exposed vulnerability and shaken his confidence to the core.

  “We’ve doubled the staff at Carnivore,” Clayton said. “Our satellites are trained on all global hotspots. We’re working with the RCMP to track the Vancouver terrorist’s trail and find her accomplices. We’re sending scores of agents and special ops people to the Middle East and East Africa.”

  “Are those governments cooperating?” Gwen asked.

  He held up his palms and shrugged. “They always swear that we have their full and utter cooperation, but you know how it works. Half the time they’re secretly funding the bastards.”

  Gwen’s mind raced. She nodded at Clayton. “Okay, Alex. We need to organize a crisis conference call for the Bioterrorism Preparedness Council. Today,” she said. “We better brace for a possible massive invasion of the Gansu Flu in the next few days. Worst-case scenario, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of potential victims. So we need to initiate the emergency response plan ASAP. Agreed?”

  Clayton nodded. “Let’s say 3:00 P.M., Washington time.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  Gwen watched as Clayton patted around his desk before finding a pair of chopsticks to hold up to the camera. A glimmer of his old self resurfaced. “All things considered, I think you should have gone with me for sushi instead of flying off to play hero.”

  Savard laughed. “Have to admit, I would’ve even preferred that over quarantine.”

  “Stay well,” Clayton said and then the video frame went black.

  Gwen picked up her secure phone line and dialed the number from memory. The executive assistant to the Secretary of Homeland Security patched her call straight through. “Mr. Secretary?” Gwen asked.

  “Hello, Gwen,” the Secretary, Theodore “Ted” Hart, said in his gravelly, New England drawl. “You are still healthy, I trust?”

  “Fine, Ted.”

  “Gwen, our office has been fielding a lot of questions,” Hart said. “The press is looking for you.”

  “Of course,” Gwen sighed. “They want answers from the ‘Bug Czar.’ What are you telling them?”

  “The usual runaround. We can stall them for a few days.” He paused a moment. “But when you’re out of quarantine ...”

  “I’ll face the music, Ted. I promise.”

  “Fine. Are you up-to-date on the situation?” Hart asked.

  “I just spoke to Alex Clayton.”

  “The CIA dropped the ball on this one,” Hart said in response to the name. “We should have had more—hell, some—warning about this virus!” Savard wondered if the comment was for her benefit, or if Hart, ever the political animal, was already lining up scapegoats. “Listen, Gwen, it’s up to us to minimize the impact of this attack. The President expects it. As do the American people.”

  Gwen was tempted to remind him that he was speaking to her, not the cameras, but she held her tongue. “Ted, we’re not totally unprepared,” she said. “But we have to enact our ERPBA for every urban center.”

  “The what?” he asked.

  “The Emergency Response Plan to Biological Attack. It puts the emergency health-care command structure in place for responding to this kind of attack. We’ve already run at least one mock disaster in most cities with a simulated smallpox outbreak.”

  “How did we do in the dry run?” Hart asked.

  “So-so,” Gwen admitted. “But our big advantage with the Gansu Flu is that it is nowhere near as contagious as smallpox.” She paused, before adding, “Of course, it is just as lethal if not more so than smallpox.”

  “Hmmm,” Hart snorted, sounding unimpressed. “All right, consider the plan green-lighted. What else?”

  “We need to coordinate with CDC and Department of Health to implement wide-scale screening facilities,” she said.

  “Fine,” he said. “Next.”

  “We should issue a nation-wide alert,” Gwen said. “People across the country should be instructed to go to a screening clinic at the first sign of fever or cough. And, Ted, I think it should come from the President himself.”

  Hart unleashed a wet smoker’s cough into the receiver. Gwen imagined that her boss, a pack-a-day smoker at the best of times, would have doubled his consumption during this crisis. “Gwen, the American public is jittery enough as is. Did you see the papers this morning? Some poor Pakistani boy was beaten to within an inch of his life at a convenience store in Missouri because he was coughing. With the cold and flu season upon us, is it a good idea to send people into a panic at the first sniffle?”

  “It has to be done, Ted,” Gwen said firmly.

  Gwen could hear Hart wheeze slightly as he mulled it over. Finally he said, “I will speak to the President. Anything else?”

  She hesitated, vacillating on whether to mention her mentor’s work.

  “What is it, Gwen?” he demanded.

  “My old professor, Dr. Isaac Moskor, has been developing a new treatment for influenza. The early results are encouraging.”

  “For the Gansu Flu?” Hart breathed excitedly.

  “No, for the common flu, but the Gansu strain is related,” Savard said. “I’ve set him up in a secure level-four lab at the CDC to run tests on infected monkeys.”

  “Good,” Hart said. “You make sure whatever he needs is top priority there. Am I clear?”

  “Will do. Believe me, Isaac will do everything possible to make this work.” Savard couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice. She cleared her throat. “One last thing,” she said, bracing for Hart’s response, “we should consider the borders.”

  Another heavy cough. “What about the borders?”

  “I think it would be wise to suspend travel into and out of the U.S. for everyone except those with special clearance.”

  “Christ, Gwen!” Hart growled. “We’ve already gone to the highest level of alert. We’ve canceled half the international flights and delayed the others for hours. The airport, harbor, and border screening couldn’t be more rigorous.”

  “Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, that is not enough.”

  “Do you realize the implications of this?” Hart asked quietly.

  “So far, only one U.S. city is affected,” Gwen said evenly. “Until we know where it’s coming from, this ‘Killer Flu’ could spread to a new city with every flight or ship we allow into the country.”

  Gwen thought she heard a cigarette lighter clicking in the background. “I have heard that this virus is relatively easy to incubate,” Hart said. “How do you know they aren’t already established somewhere inside our borders, infecting more suicide carriers to dispatch throughout the country?”

  “I don’t,” Gwen conceded. “But odds are that their infrastructure
is still based abroad.”

  There was a long moment of silence, broken by a hacking cough. Then Hart said, “No. No. No. Listen, Gwen, as it stands our economy is paralyzed. The Dow has already dropped twenty percent in two days.” She could picture her tall boss with his graying temples and distinguished features, his face creased into that disappointed father-knows-best look he had mastered. “We cannot fence America off from the rest of the world,” he said.

  “Why not?” Gwen asked.

  “Because it would be tantamount to admitting that the sons of bitches have won!”

  “Mr. Secretary, let’s be honest. Right now they are winning the battle,” she said authoritatively. “If we don’t act decisively, they might win the war.”

  “Then goddamn it, let’s act decisively!” Hart said. “We will protect our citizens. And we will hunt down the monsters behind this and wipe them off the face of the earth. But in the meantime, we will not cower behind barricades.”

  Gwen knew Ted Hart well enough to realize there was no point in arguing further. “Okay, Ted, but you ought to keep it in mind.”

  “We’ll see,” he said. “I’m off to meet the National Security Council. And then to see the President. I’ll call you after.”

  She dropped the receiver into the cradle and slumped back into the chair at her desk. There were so many people to coordinate, but she couldn’t escape the growing sense of futility. Until they got to the source of the deliberate spread, they were just a bunch of rats running on wheels.

  Her phone rang. She picked it up and said, “Gwen Savard.”

  “I got a bit of a hole in my social calendar,” Haldane said. “Okay if I drop by?”

  She let out a tired laugh. “I might be able to squeeze you in.”

  Gwen had barely secured her mask when she heard the rap at her door. Haldane stood on the other side in a T-shirt and jeans. Aside from his face mask, he looked as if he were on his way out for a coffee and a newspaper on a lazy Sunday morning.