Pandemic

by Daniel Kalla

  Hart cleared his throat with a harsh cough. “It goes without saying that the alert level is still on ‘code red.’ Our borders are closed to all commercial travel. We have extra law enforcement and emergency services standing by in every region of the nation.”

  “Mr. President,” the nondescript, bespectacled Director of the FBI chimed in. “We have every available field agent on the street working with the local law authorities.”

  Ted Hart nodded. He looked over in Gwen’s direction with a raised eyebrow. “Dr. Savard, can you update the status of the new drug treatment?”

  “Potential treatment,” Gwen emphasized. “The manufacturing plant is up and running. We’ll continue at it twenty-four/seven, but we’re at least six days away from production.”

  Aaron Whitaker spoke up. “No question. Our military did us proud over in Africa.” He saluted General Fischer with a tap over his bushy eyebrow. “Although we got Kabaal, we haven’t confirmed we nailed Abdul Sabri. So I think we had better operate under the assumption that we have not eliminated this particular terrorist threat. And even accept the possibility that their army of terrorists is already on our soil.”

  Though Gwen did not like the belligerent Secretary of Defense, she nodded fervently in agreement with his point.

  “Mr. Secretary, that is exactly what we are assuming,” Ted Hart said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Katherine Thomason raised a hand.

  “Yes, Madam Secretary?” Home said.

  “I understand. And I agree with the others.” Thomason closed her eyes and nodded solemnly. “But we may never know exactly who among the terrorists died in that Somali lab.”

  “Your point, Madam Secretary?” Home asked.

  “Say, by the grace of God, days pass ... weeks pass ... and we see no signs of the virus. Just how long do you propose that we run the country as a fortress?”

  The President leaned forward and tapped his touching fingers against his chin, which he often did right before intervening in a conversation. “Katherine, America will be a fortress until the moment we believe it safe to be otherwise.” His eyes narrowed. “And not one second sooner.”

  CHAPTER 37

  GLEN ECHO HEIGHTS, BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  When Noah awoke in his guest bedroom, he realized he had slept past The Brotherhood’s midnight deadline for troop withdrawal and right through until late Tuesday morning. Though he knew the ultimatum was moot after the raid on the Somali base, like most other Americans, he still anxiously anticipated the deadline’s passing.

  When he saw that it was already 10:21 A.M., he reached for the portable phone and dialed Gwen’s cell number.

  “You just waking up?” Gwen asked in amazement.

  He recognized from her light tone that nothing ominous had happened during his sleep. “Weird, huh?” he said. “I find a one-day round-trip to an African war takes a toll on my body. Maybe I’m low on melatonin.” He chuckled. “No word?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “But no news is definitely good news in this case. How are you?”

  “Fine,” he said, standing from the bed and walking to the mirror over the dresser. “More to the point, how are you?”

  “A little sore, but it’s mainly my ankle. Otherwise, okay.”

  Haldane paused. Up until this moment their days had been so preprogrammed through this crisis. “So, um, what’s next?” he asked, studying his face’s dense stubble in the mirror and noting how much more hollow his cheeks had become since the appearance of the Gansu Flu.

  “We prepare for the worst. And we hope to hell it doesn’t happen.” She paused. “I don’t know, Noah, but something feels incomplete, you know?”

  It wasn’t until she spoke the words that he realized they encapsulated his feelings, too. “Exactly,” he said.

  “Let’s meet in my office in a this afternoon to review where we stand, okay?”

  “Done.”

  Haldane hung up the phone and headed for the shower.

  Stepping out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, Noah met Anna in the hallway. “Morning.” She offered him a cup of tea along with a coy smile.

  “Hi.” Noah accepted the cup, feeling an unexpected level of discomfort at what had once been a morning ritual for them. “Chloe at preschool?”

  “Yeah.” Anna smiled. “It was all I could do to stop her from waking you this morning.”

  “Thanks.” He forced a smile, but his unease didn’t let up.

  She pointed at the deep abrasion that ran along the inside of his left thigh and down to his ankle. “I thought you said nothing happened to you on your African trip.”

  Haldane shrugged.

  She folded her arms across her chest and frowned slightly. “Chloe is going to need her dad for a lot longer, you know?” she said with a trace of bitterness.

  “I didn’t choose any of this,” Haldane snapped.

  Anna shrugged and then said in a smaller voice, “You didn’t choose a nine-to-five stay-at-home job either.”

  Haldane held up his palms. “But if I had, everything would be perfect between us, right?”

  “I ... I didn’t mean that,” she stammered. Her face flushed with anger. “I just want things to be right again for Chloe. For us! And you don’t seem to want to help me much with that.”

  She turned to leave, but Noah stopped her by gently catching her wrist. “Anna, I know how hard you’re trying to do what’s right,” he said. “But I don’t believe you even know what you want.”

  She started to say something, but Noah cut her off. “And, Anna, truth is I don’t know what I want anymore either,” he said softly.

  After spending much of the day in a teleconference with Jean Nantal at the WHO, Haldane and McLeod arrived at Gwen’s office in the midaftemoon. Noah couldn’t deny his disappointment to see that Alex Clayton already sat in the chair across from her, looking very much at home with his Armani sports jacket unbuttoned and hands folded behind his head.

  In jeans and a sweater, Gwen sat behind her desk, her face creased with a look of concern. “Hi,” she greeted them distractedly.

  After they took their seats around the small conference table, McLeod nodded to her. “Gwen, what’s the matter? You look like you’re still carrying part of a building on your back.” But Haldane noticed the genuine concern behind the Scotsman’s quip.

  “A couple of developments,” Gwen said gloomily. “Alex, why don’t you start?”

  He pulled his hands off his head and shrugged. “We just got the preliminary report from the army pathologist who did the autopsy on Hazzir Kabaal.”

  “Let me guess,” McLeod said. “He’s not dead, after all?”

  Clayton shook his head. “Oh, he’s very dead. In fact, the pathologist thinks he was killed twice.”

  Haldane leaned forward in his chair. “What are you talking about?”

  “The guy was riddled with bullets. All the same 5.56-mm caliber.” Clayton shrugged. “But because of something about the lack of capillary leakage or whatever...” Clayton threw up his hands. “The pathologist could tell that several of the wounds happened posthumously.”

  “So what? Kabaal was lying out front in a firefight,” Haldane argued. “Surely, he could have been shot in the crossfire after he had already died.”

  Clayton shook his head. “The pathologist says no. He thinks there were at least a couple hours between the two sets of wounds.”

  Noah leaned forward in his chair. “Is he sure?” he asked.

  “No,” Clayton said. “Not positive.”

  “But if he is right ...

  “Maybe one of his own people took care of Hazzir Kabaal,” Clayton said.

  “Ach,” McLeod harrumphed. “Then why would they leave him out front of the complex?”

  “To make us think he died in the firefight,” Clayton said.

  “Listen to me.” McLeod tapped the table in front of him. “Why would it matter where he died?”

  “What if someone w
as covering their tracks?” Haldane hypothesized aloud. “They dump Kabaal’s body outside and then take off. Then later, after whoever is left inside detonates the complex, we have no way of doing a body count.”

  Clayton nodded slowly, picking up on Haldane’s thought. “But we assume they’re all in there because their leader is there!”

  At the suggestion, the room lapsed into grim silence.

  “There’s something else,” Gwen said, stone-faced. “I just heard from the CDC a half an hour ago.”

  Haldane felt the blood drain from him. His heart pounded in his ears. He rose from his chair. “Gwen, please don’t tell me...”

  She shook her head. “No. There are no new cases of the virus.”

  Haldane exhaled heavily. The pounding lessened. “But?”

  “The monkey you dragged out of the lab,” she said.

  “What about him?” Haldane asked, still hovering above his seat.

  “CDC ran tests on his serum.” She brought her fingers to her temples, and began to rub.

  “And?”

  “He wasn’t suffering from the same strain of Gansu Flu as the others.”

  “What fucking others?” McLeod jumped in.

  Gwen stopped rubbing. She leaned forward in her chair. “The victims from Chicago, London, Vancouver, or China.”

  Haldane shook his head in confusion. “So it’s not the Gansu Flu?”

  “No, it is,” Gwen said. “But it is a mutation. It’s not H2N2. It’s H3N2.”

  Clayton held up a hand. “Okay, stop the hocus-pocus. Tell me in plain English what the hell you are talking about!”

  “The Gansu Flu virus is a mutation of influenza, right?” Gwen hurried to explain. “All flus, including the Gansu Flu, are sub-typed by two proteins on its shell—H for hemagglutinin and N for neuraminidase. Until now, we have only seen the Gansu Flu H2N2. But the new virus found in the monkey is a Gansu Flu H3N2.”

  “I get it.” Clayton nodded. “But what does it mean?”

  “It means,” Haldane said slowly, “that the terrorists have created a new virus.”

  “But how could it be any worse than what they’ve already thrown at us?” Clayton asked.

  “Well, Mr. Bond,” McLeod said. “The bug could be worse if it was more lethal—but it’s hard to imagine a flu virus much more deadly than Gansu H2N2—or if it were more contagious. And sadly, there is a lot of room for improvement on that front with H2N2.”

  Haldane felt a chill as if he had just stepped into the Washington air. He intuitively knew McLeod was right. “Son of a bitch!” he said. “They’ve come up with a more contagious form of the bug.”

  “Shite, can you imagine?” McLeod said, shaking his head and sighing.

  “No,” Clayton said. “I don’t have a PhD or MD so explain exactly to me what that would mean.”

  “It’s an exponential thing, Alex,” Gwen said quietly, her slim fingers still resting on her temples. “If you make a virus twice as contagious, then twice as many people are likely to become infected. And now double the number of people are infected to pass it on to twice as many people. So by the second ‘generation’ alone there are four times as many people infected. And so on...”

  McLeod pointed to Clayton. “You can see how it wouldn’t take long to cause a wee problem.”

  “I understand that, but”—he held up two fingers—“A, we don’t know that this new virus is any more contagious than the last, and more importantly, B, we still don’t know that an army of terrorists is left alive to spread it.”

  Gwen nodded. “The first part is easy. CDC can give us an answer in days as to how contagious it is. The second part...” She shrugged. “Especially after those autopsy findings on Kabaal.”

  “Besides, you wouldn’t need an army to spread it,” Haldane said wearily, as much to himself as the other members of the group.

  “How come?” Clayton asked.

  Haldane sighed. “With the previous strain, four terrorists caused vicious, but subsequently controlled, outbreaks in four cities. But with a superbug that was much more contagious...”

  Clayton squinted hard, struggling to put it together.

  McLeod threw up his hands. “Once this cat gets out of the bag, there’s no stuffing her back in.”

  Clayton’s mouth opened in realization. “So you’re saying that if the bug is infectious enough, only a few terrorists would be needed to start a pandemic?”

  Haldane nodded slowly. “Or maybe only one.”

  CHAPTER 38

  ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Since he ran away from his Jericho home at age thirteen, Dabir Fahim had spent most of the past ten years on cruise ships. A tireless worker, the young Palestinian had struggled his way up the ladder from cabin boy to waiter and from small ship to transoceanic liner. Dabir, who went by David, had worked aboard the Atlantic Princess II since her maiden voyage two years earlier. He took a proprietary sense of pride in the vessel that he’d never felt for his war-ravaged homeland.

  Aside from his outgoing personality and gift for languages, Dabir excelled at his job because he understood people. He never forgot a name or a face. And he had a gift for predicting what people wanted sometimes before they even knew themselves. But the tall muscular man Dabir served on the sixth and final night of their journey perplexed the young waiter with his distinct but unreadable face. In spite of the man’s piercing blue eyes, smooth face, and designer French clothes, Dabir had no doubt that he was a fellow Arab. He also suspected they shared the same sexual orientation, but Dabir was far too professional to ever flirt with a client, no matter how attractive.

  Dabir had seen him only one other time in the seven-day passage. He wondered if he traveled with the silent, little bearded Arab man Dabir had once served lunch to, but they seemed a very unlikely and mismatched couple.

  Bringing the enigmatic man an espresso after dinner, Dabir decided to satisfy his curiosity. “A good meal, yes?” Dabir asked in Arabic.

  Though the man neither moved the cup from his lips nor changed a muscle in his face, his eyes burned into Dabir, sending a chill up the young waiter’s spine. “Excuse me,” the man said in English, “I do not understand what you have said.”

  “Oh, excuse me...” Dabir stuttered. “I thought you might speak Arabic, er, like me.”

  The man put his cup down slowly. “My father did,” he said coolly. “But he left my mother and me when I was only two. After that, there was never much reason to learn Arabic in Marseille.”

  “Oh, I see,” Dabir said, knowing there was nothing French about the man’s accented English.

  The man smiled slightly, which only intimidated the young waiter more. Dabir stood frozen on the spot until the man directed his pale eyes to the tables to his left. “I believe other guests need your service,” he said.

  Relieved, Dabir hurried away from the table.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Only eight days had passed since the raid in Somalia, but Haldane felt as if months had gone by since Gwen and he escaped the crumbling wreckage.

  The city—the entire country—had changed in the past week, as if the nation were holding its collective breath and bracing for the worst. Work shut down to essential services level. Most people avoided going out. And no one seemed to pay any attention to the fact that Christmas was only six days away.

  But for all the collective angst, so far nothing had happened.

  As he drove downtown, Haldane was struck by how few cars drove on the Beltway, which usually was clogged with traffic at all times of day, especially during the morning rush.

  Like every day since their return from Somalia, Haldane, McLeod, and Clayton met at Savard’s DHS office. As soon as Gwen’s secretary dropped off the coffees and closed the door behind her, Gwen leaned back in her chair and ran a hand through her pulled-back blond hair. “We have the results from the CDC tests on the Gansu H3N2 strain found in the dead monkey.”

  “It’s not good news, is it?” Haldane asked.

&nb
sp; She shook her head. “No.”

  “Just how bloody bad?” McLeod asked, scratching at the beard that had grown even scragglier over the past week.

  “One of the terrorists must have had significant microbiological expertise,” Gwen said with a mix of awe and revulsion. “He or she managed to introduce sections of the Beijing Flu’s genetic code into the Gansu Flu. The end result is the much more contagious H3N2 strain of Gansu Flu.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Gwen!” McLeod said. “How much more contagious?”

  “The results are preliminary ...” She looked down and shook her head. “But so far, it’s measuring out to be about as contagious as the common cold.”

  Haldane felt as if he had been punched. He looked over to McLeod, whose face had blanched. Even Clayton’s eyes were wide with worry.

  McLeod turned to Haldane. “It’s the return of the Spanish Flu,” he said hoarsely.

  “How bad was the Spanish Flu?” Clayton asked.

  “It killed twenty million people in less than four months, at a time when the world had a third of its current population and had no air travel,” McLeod said. “Overall, you might say it was fairly bad.”

  Clayton’s brow furrowed. “And this terrorist virus could be the new Spanish Flu?”

  “We’re overdue.” Haldane shrugged. “We always knew the next pandemic would come. It’s just that no one suspected that anyone would deliberately initiate it.”

  Gwen leaned forward in her chair and placed both hands flat on her desktop. “No one has initiated anything, yet!” she said fiercely. “And I’m not about to sit back and let them.”

  The others, even McLeod, nodded.

  Haldane looked over and noticed the way Clayton eyed Gwen. Noah recognized the admiration in his eyes. But somehow, the CIA man’s feelings were less threatening to Noah now. It was as if their shared sentiment bonded them in common interest, like two people who shared a passion for the same music.

  Haldane asked Clayton, “No word on Sabri or anyone else from the terrorist base?”