McKean 01 The Jihad Virus

by Thomas Hopp

  ” - the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you.” I got up and pulled back the curtain that had been drawn around my bed. Shaking off a wave of dizziness, I could see Jameela in the corridor outside the room, facing the window wall. A man stood outside, addressing her through the intercom speaker and holding up a wallet with a detective’s badge for her to inspect through the wired window glass. His dark blue suit, emerald eyes, and buzz-cut bristling black hair were familiar.

  “Vince Nagumo,” I muttered. I went out to stand beside Jameela and decided I didn’t care too much for the Special Agent. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  Jameela turned to me. “Oh, Fin,” she said with a desperate appeal in her eyes and voice. “He’s arresting me!”

  A ripple of anger ran through me. “On what charge?”

  “No charges, at the moment,” Nagumo replied. “In fact, she’s not under arrest. She’ll be held as a material witness.”

  “Is that any better?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he smiled at me palliatively. “You must be Phineus Morton.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. And I know who you are. Special Agent Vincent Nagumo, FBI Counterterrorism Unit, Seattle.”

  “Very good,” said Nagumo.

  “I’ve got one question for you,” I grumbled. “You’re Joe Fuad’s boss. So where’s Joe Fuad right now?”

  Nagumo made a blank face. “Gone missing.”

  “Missing? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He raised a hand. “Hold it. Hold it. I’m the one asking the questions here.”

  “No, you’re not.” I stepped closer to the window. “I think Fuad’s in with these terrorists.”

  Nagumo nodded. “So I heard again from Dr. McKean while you were sleeping. But Fuad might be under deep cover at the moment. He might have hit upon something important and can’t communicate right now. We’ll watch the situation carefully, I assure you.”

  I opened my mouth to say more but Nagumo cut me off. “I’ve already passed along everything Dr. McKean told me about the ranch. Don’t think we aren’t working on this case. That’s what brings me to this window. I want to know what Miss Noori knows. And she’s going to tell me, aren’t you ma’am?”

  “Of course,” said Jameela. “Anything I know, you will know.”

  “That’s good,” said Nagumo.

  “But why read her her rights?” I asked. “If she’s not under arrest?”

  “Let’s call it protective custody,” he said, insincerely. “She stays here as long as she’s under quarantine. But after that, she comes with us.”

  “Listen!” I said. “I’m sure she’s not involved in this. I’ll vouch for her.”

  “We’ll figure out who’s involved in what, as we go along,” said Nagumo. “Until then, we’ll make sure nobody tries to escape.” He pointed at a uniformed police officer, a woman seated in a chair near the elevator and reading a pocketbook, with a pistol at her hip.

  “Right now we’ve only got a few leads to follow. And your girlfriend’s one of them.”

  Girlfriend. Jameela and I exchanged surprised glances.

  Nagumo turned and walked toward the elevator. He called back to us, “I’ve got plenty to pass on to D.C. for now. But I’ll be back.”

  I wasn’t paying attention to him. I was studying Jameela’s eyes. An emotion worked behind her expression, something hard to define. A mixture of hope and fear perhaps, or attraction and reluctance. Or all of those things.

  “I did not expect you to defend me,” she said. “Thank you for being so kind.”

  “Of course.” I said. “You risked your life for Peyton and me. Why wouldn’t I speak up for you?”

  “Because I am of the Middle East,” she said with her eyes downcast. “And Middle Easterners did this to you.” She pointed at my bandage.

  “Don’t underestimate me,” I replied. “I can see the difference between you and the Sheik’s kind.” She smiled. I put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a reassuring hug. I let the embrace last a moment longer than I should have, smelling the sweet fragrance of jasmine that had followed her into this grim place. She pulled away.

  “In Egypt,” she said, looking at the floor, “among my family’s circles, unmarried women and men don’t get so close, especially dressed like this.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No,” she waved a hand. “Don’t be sorry. This is America. Men and women are free here to - ” She paused.

  “To - ?” I prompted.

  “To comfort one another.” She suddenly turned to me and threw her arms around my chest and hugged me tightly. I wrapped my arms around her and she rested her cheek against my chest.

  “You’re trembling,” I said.

  She said nothing, but wept softly against my shoulder for a time. Perhaps not until that moment did I realize how deeply affected she was by all that had happened. Of course. Who wouldn’t be?

  I held her tightly and caressed the hair at the back of her head. She sobbed quietly.

  The replacement of her riding outfit with hospital pajamas and bathrobe made her seem more frail. Although she had shown plenty of spunk against Sheik Abdul-Ghazi and Massoud, she now brought out an instinct in me to protect that which is dear. I hugged her for a long moment, until she seemed to have had enough. She pushed away from me and wiped tears from her cheeks, wearing a faint smile. She turned her back to me and cinched up the belt of her robe. As the blue garment tightened around her thin waist, my eyes were drawn to the flair of her hips, with inevitable consequences. Jameela’s beautiful curves sent a jolt of excitement through me.

  My thoughts muddled up. I wanted to protect her, and ravage her at the same time. Unable to decide how to act, I stood rigid as a marble statue.

  She turned after a moment and looked into my face. Those glorious, pharaonic dark eyes seeming to read something there that she understood. A crooked smile played across her lips and she arched an eyebrow.

  “What are you thinking, Phineus Morton?”

  I was in awe of her feminine power. “Uh - ” I faltered, confused by a welter of thoughts.

  She smiled more.

  I glanced away to collect my thoughts. But my eyes landed upon something that shattered my concentration - the stainless steel door labeled “Autopsy Room.”

  Ice water flooded into my veins again. I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.” I was one confused pup.

  A rap at the window diverted us.

  Kay Erwin was outside the glass wall, in her office clothes. She looked upset. McKean came out of the room and joined us at the two-way speaker.

  “More bad news?” he asked.

  “Mr. Fenton’s physician, Dr. Adams, has come down with smallpox. The CDC team admitted him to the new quarantine ward they’ve set up at the high school.”

  “What’s the condition of Fenton’s family?” McKean asked.

  “Very serious. All three cases - the wife, the son, and the daughter - have high fevers and pocks starting to appear. That’s understandable in the kids. They’ve never been immunized against smallpox. But the wife was immunized as a child and is gravely ill anyway - the same lack of resistance as her husband. And three of Fenton’s neighbors have developed fevers. They’ve been admitted to the school clinic as well. And there are a couple dozen other suspicious fevers in Sumas.”

  “The virus is highly contagious,” said McKean.

  “Yes,” Erwin agreed. “We’ve declared a state-wide public health emergency. We’re still trying to keep the virus confined to Sumas, but meanwhile the conventional vaccine is being distributed throughout the state. We will have immunized everyone in Sumas in the next day or so, but everything takes time. Precious time.”

  McKean rubbed his vaccinated shoulder. “And it all may be a worthless gesture.”

  Erwin sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that. We’ve got enough cases among formerly vaccinated people to know we’ve got a significa
ntly altered organism. I sure wish we had your new B7R vaccine in hand.”

  McKean nodded. “And tested for efficacy. There’s no guarantee it will work, either.”

  “Don’t say that, Peyton. If it isn’t any better than the old vaccine, then we’re very quickly out of options.”

  McKean drummed his thin fingertips against the glass. “This barrier is now the worst obstacle to my participation in finding a cure.”

  Erwin shook her head. “It’s a shame, Peyton. We need your help right now.”

  Kay went back to her office, and Peyton wandered to the duty station to make a phone call to his wife. I felt a need for exercise, so I began pacing up and down the long ward hallway. Jameela tagged along. We inspected the row of patient rooms, making few comments. Walking the other direction, I looked over the ward’s emergency resuscitation equipment with new eyes. At the autopsy room’s small window, I glanced in, thinking how cold its stainless steel table looked. Rib-cutters hung on a wall like a pair of gargoylish brush loppers. On a counter were foot-long stainless steel needles attached to clear plastic hoses for sucking fluids from body cavities.

  Jameela grasped me by an elbow. “Come away from here, Fin. You won’t be in there, ever, God willing.”

  She led me back to the far end of the corridor like a therapist coaxing a man recovering from a stroke. There was a window at the end of the hall where we could watch city traffic passing below us.

  “How did Abdul-Ghazi become so diabolical?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “He is blessed with great wealth, but he misuses it.”

  “They say money is the root of all evil.”

  “And he has too much of it,” she said. “His family comes from a line descended from Mohammed, so they say. The old Sultan of Kharifa, his father, controls gold mines and oil pipelines from the Gulf States to the Indian Ocean. He charges a small tax on every barrel of oil, and so they have become fantastically wealthy. In a land of desert mountains and few people, this wealth is without use. It is what tainted the Sheik. The Sultan divided his money among dozens of sons and gave half the amount to his many daughters, according to Qur’anic custom. Even though the wealth was divided, it still made Abdul-Ghazi rich beyond most men’s dreams. But he had a reputation as a playboy, an aimless young man and a child of idle wealth. His only interest was raising Arabian horses. He lived in Hollywood for awhile but left to make the hadj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. When he returned, he was no longer clean-shaven; he no longer dressed in western clothes. He brought with him men like Massoud - angry young men, Muslims enraged against America. Men committed to jihad.”

  “Attracted by his money,” I said. “Just like it was with bin Laden.”

  “Yes,” said Jameela. “My father says oil breeds wealth, wealth breeds piety, piety breeds intolerance, intolerance breeds war. Allah sometimes bestows wealth in order to test a man’s soul. To see if he will work righteousness or wrong.”

  “I guess Abdul-Ghazi has made his choice.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed. “He imagines himself the Mahdi.”

  “Mahdi - ?”

  “In Islamic tradition, the Mahdi is a holy man who will come and right the wrongs of the world. A messiah, a savior of Muslim people, and - some say - a great warrior.”

  “Abdul-Ghazi thinks he’s this man?”

  “I have heard Massoud call him Mahdi.”

  We strolled back to the ward’s central on-duty station. McKean had taken a seat and was talking at a small video camera mounted on top of one of the computers. On the screen was a live video image of Janet Emerson. “You would tell me if you were in real danger, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he lied smoothly. “We’re getting the best care we could possibly get. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay.” Her voice sounded thinner than just the effect of the computer microphone. “If you’re sure.”

  “Absolutely. But I’ll be under observation here for some time.”

  Janet was at her lab desk, one elbow on a pile of computer printouts. Her shoulders sagged. Her eyes were underscored with dark circles. But a faint smile colored her pretty face as she looked at Peyton McKean on her own screen. I leaned down until I was within range of the video camera. “You look tired,” I said to her.

  “I worked most of the night,” she replied. “I’ve got the B7R gene spliced into the carrier DNA. I’m ready to put it into the E. coli cells. In a few days I should be able to grow up a small culture with a little of the product.”

  “Not enough for immunizations,” McKean murmured. “I want you to turn the subunit vaccine project over to Robert and Beryl.”

  “What - ?” Janet exclaimed, looking surprised.

  “They can keep it moving along,” McKean explained, “but I’ve got a new plan for you. I want you to make a synthetic vaccine.”

  She looked at him strangely. “Chemical synthesis, you mean?”

  “Answer: yes.”

  “But synthetic vaccines don’t work.”

  “They don’t work too well,” he agreed. “They’re just tiny fragments of the virus. Too small to stimulate much immunity.”

  “So, why - ?”

  “Because they’re fast. You can have a large batch ready in two days. And a little immunity quickly, is better than a strong reaction that comes too late.”

  She looked horrified. “I thought you said you weren’t in danger.”

  He laughed, perhaps to disarm her. “Don’t worry about me. It’s those folks up in Sumas I’m thinking of. The clock is ticking. Now, have you got the B7R sequence handy?”

  “Right here.” She held up the computer printout I had seen in McKean’s office.

  “Hold it close to the video camera,” he said.

  She did, and the screen filled with DNA sequence. McKean took a pad of yellow lined paper and a pen and wrote down the crucial segment:

  DIEDIEDIE

  “We’ll focus on the genetically-altered sequence of amino acids. It’s got to be a key target of immunity or Taleed wouldn’t have bothered changing it. These amino acids will form the center of a slightly larger epitope.”

  “Epi - what?” I said.

  “Epitope” McKean repeated. “Greek for ‘on-the-surface’. This segment of amino acids is probably located on the surface of the B7R protein and therefore a prime target for binding by antibodies. To make certain we’ve given the immune system a sufficiently large target, I’m going to include three more amino acids on either side. That will make the chain long enough to be grasped by several different antibodies at the same time - always a good idea with a vaccine. The more antibodies the merrier.”

  “Nothing is merry about this situation,” I said.

  McKean looked at the printout and added more amino acids at the ends of his hand-written sequence:

  VPKDIEDIEDIEAYT

  “But I’m still not finished,” he said. “We need to add something that will encourage the immune system to sense this small molecule as something much larger and more threatening. If this peptide were injected into a patient as it is, it would dissipate from the injection site and be cleared from the bloodstream in minutes. Being small, it would be filtered out of the blood by the kidneys. To make it stay where we inject it, and also to make it appear threatening to white blood cells, I’ll need to make it bigger. I’ll attach a molecular anchor.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “Let me elaborate,” McKean said with slow, professorial diction as he scribbled more letters on the left:

  dpKGVPKDIEDIEDIEAYT

  “The dpKG stands for dipalmitoyl-lysyl-glycine,” he said.

  “Are you dreaming this up as you go?” I asked.

  “Essentially,” said McKean. “Anyway, dpKG is a rather bulky, oil-soluble substance, like a fat molecule. With it attached, the peptide vaccine is no longer water-soluble. Instead, one vaccine molecule aggregates with the next to build up globs of vaccine peptides all stuck together. White blood cells react to these large
globs as if they were whole viruses. The body’s natural process of inflammation is triggered and a proper immune response results.”

  “Ingenious” I said. “But will it work?”

  “Theoretically,” said McKean. “Though I’ve never tried anything exactly like this before.”

  “Then how can you be sure?” I asked.

  “We’ll test it on experimental animals,” he said. “Us.”

  He held up the yellow pad so Janet could copy the sequence.

  She had grown more flustered and red as he casually discussed what she had now figured out was a life-or-death test.

  “If this works,” said McKean, “it’ll be the fastest vaccine synthesis ever.”

  “If it works,” Janet repeated.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I’m sure it will. As long as it’s synthesized correctly.”

  “As long as - !” Janet went purple. I guessed she had just figured out how on-the-spot she was.

  “Now,” McKean continued calmly. “Regarding vaccine doses, you have the chemicals on hand to synthesize about a gram of this material. A gram is just a fraction of an ounce, but it will be enough to vaccinate several thousand people if necessary.” He got a starry-eyed look. “Imagine! A whole new vaccine created in just two days, given nothing more to start with than a printout of the virus’s DNA sequence. How’s that strike you, Fin?”

  “Great, if it works,” I said.

  McKean went on without acknowledging my doubts. “Janet can scale up her synthesis to make enough vaccine to immunize ten-thousand people, just a few days later.”

  “Great, if it works,” I repeated.

  “If it works,” McKean finally acknowledged, deflating a little.

  “And if not?” Janet asked. A quaver had developed in her voice.

  McKean shrugged. For a moment he had nothing to say. Then he looked her in the face. “I wish there were someone in the lab who could spell you for a while. But chemical peptide synthesis is a rather specialized technique. There is no one else I would care to rely on at ImCo. If I weren’t, er, busy here, I would be spelling you myself.”