The Dolos Conspiracy

by Frank Perry

such moments, not enough. He was always rushing away to the labs or to Washington, never giving her the attention she deserved. There had always been “next year.” They’d never even had a honeymoon when he was in medical school. They’d been married over forty years when the sickness overtook her. He could never replay their life and be the husband she deserved, that chance could not happen. He would never sleep soundly again in their house.

  The following morning, he was in the office early, making final preparations for the TV crew. It wasn’t really necessary. When they arrived, technicians began carrying boxes of lighting and sound equipment into the conference room, rearranging things. It quickly looked like a black and yellow spaghetti explosion all over the floor. Jules handled all of the dialogue with the producer and the reporter. He didn’t know when, or even if, Charlie would arrive. He assumed he was in his office or in one of the labs and didn’t want to disturb him. Charlie hated this kind of thing. Jules thrived in it.

  Within twenty minutes of arrival, one cameraman was being escorted around the Institute by Marie for “color” video, and four fixed cameras were positioned in the conference room: two on the interviewer and two on Jules from different angles. A girl politely asked to apply some light power to his face to mute reflections and glare. A sound technician placed a small hidden microphone under his lapel and set the volume levels, using a portable recorder control board. All in all, it was amazingly efficient with the interview beginning less than half an hour after the crew had arrived.

  After positioning everything and adjusting the lighting, the reporter began a series of questions that she had reviewed with Jules before the cameras were recording. “Dr. Redinger, you are the Chief Technology Officer for the Global Hemorrhagic Institute, is that right?”

  “Yes, Kathy, I share executive responsibilities at GHI with two partners.”

  “Dr. Redinger, I understand that one of your partners recently died in Africa while working with the World Health Organization to prevent the next Ebola outbreak.”

  “That’s right. Dr. Lorne Bridger, is, was, my friend, my colleague, and a brilliant doctor. We founded GHI about twenty-five years ago; he, Dr. Charles Ritter and myself; we all came together as a team. Not only GHI, but the whole world lost an amazing humanitarian when Lorne died; someone who saved thousands of lives.”

  “Do you know what happened to him in Africa?”

  “We suspect some sort of Hemorrhagic pathogen, but that has not yet been confirmed.”

  “Does that mean there could be another Ebola outbreak occurring?”

  “It might. We just don’t know yet.”

  She glanced quickly at her list of questions. “Okay, tell me about your Institute. Why are you so much at the leading edge of fighting this virus?”

  He smiled, savoring the answer that would be seen on world news later tonight. “Three of us, all scientists, Lorne, Charlie and myself began together, working for the Army, developing vaccines and cures against biologic weapons, things like Anthrax. It was shortly after starting there, almost thirty-five years ago, that we began working with VHF, viral hemorrhagic fevers. Back then, nobody felt it was a weapon threat, but that’s been changing over the years. Today, Ebola and similar pathogens are the most deadly known to mankind.”

  “So, tell me about GHI. How did it start?”

  “After eight or nine years with the Government, my partners and I began thinking that the work we were doing should be expanded and accelerated for the general world population, rather than our more limited objective with the military.” He paused momentarily to collect his thoughts. “Our plan didn’t take long to put together. We were all well-paid civil servants, so we just pooled some money and started buying used lab equipment. It was amazingly cheap, probably ten cents on the dollar to buy used versus new, yet most of it look brand new. This stuff doesn’t wear out. It gets outmoded, but doesn’t wear much. Anyway, we got a small rented space and set up a lab.”

  She smiled. “It seems so simple, yet there’s nothing simple about working with killer viruses, is there?”

  “You’re quite right. If our early landlord knew what we were doing, he would never have let us set up shop. We had to fib a little back then; otherwise, GHI might not have happened.”

  “You have an impressive facility now, and it hasn’t taken long to get here by business standards. Now, I’d like to ask you the question everyone wants to know. How is it that GHI had the cure ready before the last outbreak in Liberia? I mean, it usually takes months to develop the right drugs to cure the sick and prevent it from spreading, doesn’t it?”

  He smiled easily, growing more comfortable with her approach. “That’s one of the reasons we wanted to start GHI. The VHFs have evolved from fairly simple or similar strains. It seemed, based on our experience with the Army, that these particular viruses mutated according to somewhat predictable outside influences. Things like a drought one year, or excessive rain fall, or climactic shifts, and many other factors can cause a mutation from a current strain in a predictable way. I can’t go into sufficient detail, but we wanted to see if we could develop predictive models based on observed environmental phenomena that would somehow act as roadmaps to the next form of the virus. We did not believe that mutation was a random event.”

  “So, you proved it!”

  Smiling broadly at her naiveté, he said, “Not at first. It took years to develop models that actually worked. It’s kind of like weather modelling; no two mutations are exactly the same. We had a lot of trial and error. It took years. We build incredibly complex simulations looking backward at circumstances from prior outbreaks that occurred, trying to replicate known changes in the viruses. In a way, you could say we were lucky when they, ultimately, seemed to be working. We could have spent a lifetime trying to predict the next bug and never gotten it right. But about ten years ago, we started seeing promising results. These tests, back then, were what got us the money to continue working on our theories. We employ over twenty research scientists and far more math modelers and support staff. It’s expensive, and we nearly went broke several times. None of us owners made a dime for almost ten years. Then the models finally started working; we nailed it.”

  She followed his lead, “So, you used your method to predict the next outbreak and had the medicines ready?”

  He smiled again, “No, it’s not that simple. Actually, we needed to plan ahead more than a year; sometimes it’s beyond the next outbreak. It takes time and facilities to prepare the antidotes and vaccines. That’s when the real creditability tests began. We needed money to expand into production for futuristic drugs that would be needed long before any FDA approvals would be granted, all based on proprietary processes that no one could validate. You can imagine what a battle it was. In fact, our first test was virtually self-funded using precious R&D dollars to produce enough inventories to use as an actual field proof test. You see, we actually started curing more than three cycles back, before the last two that got so much publicity. There was a small outbreak in Liberia that killed a few hundred villagers and didn’t make the news here in the states. We had predicted it correctly and went there when it happened and saved several dozen people. It was enough to get WHO attention, which led to the funding we needed to grow. Since then, the WHO has been our biggest advocate.”

  “So, you’re able to predict the outbreak and be ready when it happens?”

  “Not quite. Sometimes the outbreaks we predict don’t happen, and we have to start over for the next cycle. It’s expensive to waste the drugs, but we’ve made a commitment to be ready when needed. Sometimes that need never materializes.”

  “But, you’ve been ready for the two largest outbreaks since 2012?”

  “That’s right! We saved thousands when no other treatments were available.”

  “Wow, how do you continue to be owned by only three people? You three control a very valuable enterprise.”

 
; “It’s getting harder by the minute, as you can imagine. Everyone wants a piece of GHI now.”

  She concluded. “Well, I guess that’s a good problem to have.”

  Kathy Dittami signed off, and the recording stopped. There was some light follow-on discussion, but she and her crew needed to rush back to the studio for the night’s broadcast.

  Night Cruise

  Gort didn’t say much when John showed up at the boat with his luggage. He knew he was letting the big man down and possibly his hopes for the future of Swensen’s along with it. John had only been there a few days, but the business ran well with two bodies, and it was a mystery how Gort ever got things done alone. He needed help. The answer, John knew, was that the boatmen all helped in the morning and off-loading when they returned. The biggest challenge for Gort was winching the big crates from the boat and spending whole nights cruising to Portland every three or four days. That was heavy dangerous work and he was alone. How did he do it all himself?

  John wasn’t altogether sure that Gort didn’t plan to throw him