Twelve feet above the first class cabin in the cockpit of Flight 66, James Holland put a hand over the mouthpiece of the satellite phone receiver and turned to his copilot.
“We’re apparently in the middle of a diplomatic firefight, Dick. Do you want to take over talking with the company?”
A look of momentary panic crossed Robb’s face like the shadow of a passing cloud, and just as soon it was gone. He shook his head.
“Just tell me what they want us to do,” he replied, acutely aware of how stupid that sounded. Of course Holland would relay any word from Dallas.
The satellite conversation resumed, then ended, and Holland replaced the receiver while shaking his head.
“Our people don’t have a clue, Dick. That was the director of Flight Ops confirming that the German government has demanded that we return, but the Germans are claiming they didn’t put the British up to denying us landing clearance. Our State Department is involved too, and they’re also clueless. They claim we misunderstood.”
“Who misunderstood?” Robb asked. “Misunderstood what?”
“That it was just a recommendation, rather than a British refusal to let us land.”
“The hell it was!”
Holland nodded and frowned deeply. “So I told them. Problem is, they aren’t providing us any reliable information.” He began ticking off a list on his fingers: “No one knows what arrangements they’re planning back in Frankfurt for us; no one knows anything about Mr. Helms down there; no one knows what kind of treatment they’re planning for anyone else who may have already been exposed to Helms; no one’s telling us how bad this strain of flu is; and the man who should be dealing with this—our Flight Operations vice president—is on his ranch near Texarkana with his phone turned off! The director of Flight Ops said he’ll call us back when they know anything.”
The flight attendant call chime rang, and Dick Robb reached to answer in nervous reaction.
There was a female voice in his ear, the worry apparent in her tone. “Is this the captain?”
“Sort of,” Robb replied. “This is the check captain.”
Robb could sense her confusion. He glanced at Holland, who was looking the other way and pretending not to hear. The distinction was silly, Robb decided. He adjusted the phone against his ear.
“This is the first officer. What’s up?”
“This is Dee in first class. Ah, we have a U.S. ambassador aboard, and his assistant is here with me asking some questions I can’t answer about what’s … ah … what’s happening with us. May I bring her up?”
“Sure. Door’s unlocked,” Robb replied, his left index finger finding the electronic unlock button on the center pedestal by feel. He was well aware that cockpit entry should be the captain’s decision. Since the captain’s interphone button was on, Holland had heard the exchange in his headset, and Robb glanced at him to see his reaction. There was none.
Holland had been deep in thought, but he stirred now and looked at Robb with a neutral expression.
They were back at thirty-three thousand feet headed east over the Channel, with the Netherlands just ahead. They were talking to Maastricht Control near Amsterdam, and had been recleared to Frankfurt. There was nothing else to do for the moment.
The silence was awkward, and Robb decided to fill it. “So where do we go?”
Holland hesitated, then pointed ahead without speaking, well aware that Robb was trying to fill a void. Frankfurt was the only reasonable solution, and they both knew it.
BONN
In fifteen minutes word had filtered up from the middle ministerial level that a major infectious disease emergency was taking place—and no one in the senior leadership of the German government had been informed. A man named Zeitner, deep within the Ministerium Gezunntheits, the German Health Ministry, had asked his minister to lean on the British to refuse landing permission for Flight 66 after he had illicitly involved the national police in a fruitless search for a man suspected of carrying a dreaded form of human influenza. The fact that the minister had done so without consulting anyone else, the Chancellor included, had created something of a political and diplomatic crisis. The thought of the potential embarrassment to the government if the press found out had propelled the Chancellor himself to assemble an emergency meeting and summon Zeitner along with his shell-shocked boss.
Zeitner straightened his striped blue tie and got to his feet as if he were facing an inquisition. Arrayed within the dark walls of the richly paneled conference room were the principal cabinet members of the Chancellor’s staff, along with the Chancellor himself. Zeitner could see the head of state glowering at him from his seat at the head of the table, chin in hand, eyes boring in on the man who’d created the latest crisis for a government that seemed in perpetual turmoil.
“Proceed, Herr Zeitner,” the Chancellor said, tight-lipped. Zeitner could hear the acid dripping from his words.
“An American professor, a Professor Helms, teaching at Heidelberg, was exposed two days ago in Bavaria to what we are told is an extremely bad strain of the flu. This professor came into contact with an employee of Hauptmann Research Laboratories who was suffering from the virus. It was Hauptmann’s Bavarian director who informed us of the exposure.” Horst Zeitner hesitated as he studied the stern faces before continuing. “We thought we could catch this professor and fully quarantine him before he reached an airport or populated area. We thought the problem was fully contained. But the effort failed, and an entire airliner full of people has been exposed as a result.”
“Is this professor already showing signs of illness?” the Chancellor asked.
“Extremely ill aboard the aircraft with symptoms we think come from this flu, and which must have brought on a heart attack.”
“The flu can cause a heart attack? You did call it an influenza?” The Chancellor’s eyes were boring into his, making him even more nervous, but Zeitner continued.
“With this type of flu, as I understand it, if a person were already prone to heart disease, the stress could trigger a heart attack. It puts a terrible strain on the body.”
“How was he exposed, this professor?”
“He … had contact with the blood of an exposed lab researcher. The researcher tried to break into Helms’s rental car and cut himself on the glass in the process. He broke through the window, you see. I don’t have all the details, but apparently the Hauptmann employee was delirious from fever. Hauptmann’s helicopter pilot got the professor’s license number as he left. We assume that Helms was directly exposed to this man’s blood, which would have been teeming with the virus.”
The Chancellor stirred in his chair and waved off an aide offering a cup of coffee.
“Is the lab worker still sick?”
Zeitner hesitated, recalling the conversation with the Hauptmann director in Bavaria.
“He … died, sir. Complications.”
The Chancellor frowned even more deeply, the furrows on his brow becoming deep chasms.
“Zeitner, let me understand this fully. Hauptmann is a pharmaceutical firm engaged in far-reaching biological research, as I recall.”
Zeitner nodded.
“This firm informs you that a citizen needs to be quarantined because he was exposed to an ill Hauptmann employee who later died, but that all we’re dealing with here is a bad strain of influenza?”
“That’s correct, Chancellor.”
“Doesn’t that sound suspicious to you, Zeitner? It sounds suspicious to me. How panicked were they?”
Horst Zeitner shook his head vigorously. “Not panicked at all, sir. They were simply concerned. I’m sure they’re giving us the whole story.”
The Chancellor tapped his fingers on the table and stared silently at Zeitner for an uncomfortable eternity before continuing.
“Has anyone else been exposed, Zeitner?”
“We … well, several, but we think we have them all. We’ve secured the people Helms stayed with at a nearby Gasthaus and those he
contacted at Frankfurt’s airport. But we don’t know if we found everyone he touched or talked to in the airport before boarding the flight. We think so, but there’s no guarantee.”
“Where do you have them?”
“In an Army biological containment facility near Bitberg. They’re safely out of the way, and so far, no one is ill.”
Two of the men were conferring urgently. One of them—an aide to the Interior Minister, Zeitner decided—spoke up. “Herr Zeitner, my God, most people don’t die from the flu. If this one is bad enough to kill, haven’t you already lost control? What happens if you don’t quarantine his contacts in time, or if you missed someone? This could explode!”
Horst Zeitner raised his hand. “I really, truly believe we’ve quarantined everyone who had any contact with Helms, but of course I can’t guarantee it. Professor Helms could have stopped somewhere we don’t know about.”
“You’ve retraced his route?” the Chancellor asked.
Zeitner nodded. “And we’re continuing to do it. The police, I mean. Every store, every Gasthaus, every restaurant along the routes he could have taken, using a picture received from Heidelberg University.”
“And if someone has slipped past you,” the Chancellor asked, “and then they are sick for several days and spreading it before we find out, what then?”
The question Zeitner dreaded the most was in his face. How could he tell them he didn’t really know?
He swallowed hard and forced himself to answer.
“Any influenza can spread like wildfire based on a number of variables. Unfortunately, we don’t know much of anything about this strain. I have asked for more information, but so far …”
The Interior Minister leaned forward with a panicked expression.
“You don’t really know what this is, do you?”
“Well, sir, I was told …”
“Have Hauptmann’s people given you exact details?”
Zeitner shook his head no with a sinking feeling.
“Then this could be anything. It might even be something far worse than a flu, and they don’t want to admit it.”
Horst Zeitner shook his head vigorously. “No, sir, I was assured—”
The Interior Minister cut him off.
“We have to do better than this! My God, Zeitner, what if this is that horrible virus from Africa?”
Zeitner shook his head. “This is a flu, sir. The African pathogen is called a filovirus, completely different from an influenza. Either a Marburg virus or an Ebola strain. Those are called hemorrhagic pathogens, and they’re horribly dangerous. The walls of the body’s organs slowly collapse and the victim bleeds to death internally and from every orifice. This is simply an influenza strain. A simple influenza, they assured me. The concern is that this strain is particularly dangerous because it has mutated to a form against which most of us have developed no immunity.”
The Chancellor sighed and leaned forward. “What he’s trying to get across to you, Zeitner, is that if this virus was something more terrible than a bad flu, we would already have lost control.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Zeitner, what are we facing here if the worst occurs and this spreads through the country?”
Horst Zeitner looked at the table, then back at the Chancellor. It was time to ad-lib again, Zeitner decided, hoping no one would question him more deeply. He had worried about not asking more questions of Hauptmann’s director. He had trusted him too readily, but they were a huge, trustworthy firm.
“From the description I received, this, at worst, is an influenza that could kill thousands of weaker and elderly people around the world if it got a foothold in an open population,” Zeitner said. “In terms of lost productivity alone, German industries could face staggering costs.”
He finished the description and surveyed the faces in front of him. The assembled members of the German government wore various expressions of shock.
“Germany can’t chance spreading this to other nations and other large populations,” Zeitner continued, “especially since it might be transmitted by airborne moisture. That’s why I acted immediately, and without waiting for proper authority, sir. There was no time to lose, and when I discovered, quite by accident, that Mr. Helms was on an earlier flight, I knew we couldn’t let them land in London without telling the British government. They made the decision—the British—to refuse landing permission.”
“But you suggested it.”
Zeitner hesitated too long and swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
The Chancellor glanced at several of his ministers, his eyebrows raised. His eyes locked on Zeitner again.
“You propose we impound nearly three hundred people, Herr Zeitner, based on the possibility that one single passenger has been exposed to the flu?”
“Sir, that passenger is ill with this flu, and the airplane he is on, a Boeing seven-forty-seven, recirculates its cabin air and can spread any virus throughout the aircraft in a matter of minutes. We have to assume that everyone on board has been exposed.”
“For how long do you need to quarantine?”
Zeitner calculated frantically. “We don’t know. Perhaps up to five days. Perhaps more. Anyone who doesn’t get ill is no threat.”
“And one last question, Herr Zeitner,” the Chancellor began, letting a long silence follow. “Since you were so determined to bring this plane full of dangerously exposed people back to German soil—and it appears you have succeeded—surely you must already have arranged quarantine facilities for nearly three hundred people, facilities that are at least as secure as those used in cases of biological warfare contamination. And surely you have already fielded a team to set up communications, command and control facilities, press, radio, and television liaison teams to deal with the worldwide firestorm of reaction and with the families of those quarantined, as well as notified all elements of our government that will have to deal with the diplomatic, legal, financial, logistic, military, and domestic consequences? You must have already done all these things, eh, Herr Zeitner?” He forced a false laugh and waved his right hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Otherwise, why would you bring them back here, ja? That would not be a rational act.”
The Chancellor cocked his head and stared at Horst Zeitner, who was dying inside.
“Well, Herr Zeitner? These precautions are ready?”
Zeitner tried to speak with some dignity, but his voice emerged as little more than a constrained croak.
“No, sir, not yet. There has not been time.”
The Chancellor nodded slowly like a professor who’s heard the same answer from the same unprepared students several thousand times. He took a deep breath and loudly let it out as he rose to his feet looking at the table, then raised his eyes and focused them on Zeitner in a look of monumental disapproval.
“I see,” he said. “Then it appears we have much work to do in the few minutes remaining before this winged version of Pandora’s box arrives back in our laps.” He turned to his Foreign Minister, pointing to the phone. “Karl, please accompany me back to my office. We must get the American ambassador on the speakerphone.”
The Chancellor looked down at the table and made a small show of gathering some briefing papers, purposefully letting the silence impress everyone in the room. It was a practiced gesture, and chillingly effective. Suddenly his head snapped back up, his eyes once again dismembering Zeitner as he finished speaking to the Foreign Minister.
“We’re going to owe the Americans a substantial apology.”
The Foreign Minister nodded as the Chancellor turned and left, and Zeitner realized he’d been holding his breath.
He exhaled at last, feeling dizzy and utterly over his head.
BAVARIA
In the windowless control room of the Hauptmann Research Laboratories, the facility’s director sat before a bank of flickering television monitors transmitting images of empty rooms. He didn’t need to look. In the adjacent isolation chambers two of his employees—his
colleagues—had died a frightening death, and he had lied about the cause.
The agonizing telephone conversation with the senior director in Berlin almost twenty-four hours ago wouldn’t stop replaying in his head. It was time to tell the government what they were facing, he had said.
Yet his company had decided to lie as well. Officially, it was to be a flu.
“A flu?” he had almost screamed. This virus caused accelerated heart rate, high temperature, incredible pain, nausea, then rapid onset of disorientation, hysteria, and panic, similar to paranoid delusions, possibly coupled with hallucinations. Rolf Bronchmann, the second researcher to become infected, had given them detailed reports. “This becomes psychoactive and affects the mind—changes the personality,” the director had told them. “No flu does that!”
But the word from Berlin was stern and certain. No one outside Hauptmann’s inner circle was to know as long as there was a chance it could still be contained.
The director placed his hand on the telephone one more time. He knew the number of the government’s man in Bonn, and he knew his career would end with such a call.
The dilemma was driving him mad.
FOUR
ABOARD FLIGHT 66—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22—6:20 P.M. (1720Z)
Brenda Hopkins adjusted the oxygen mask on Ernest Helms’s face and looked up at the Swiss physician, who was patting her arm. There was nothing else they could do now, he had told her several times. The heartbeat was as stable as possible.
“How long until we land, do you suppose?” the doctor asked.
“I … think within thirty minutes.” Brenda gestured with her head to Helms. “Can he hold out?”
The physician looked down the aisle into the distance before answering, his eyes not meeting hers.
“Perhaps,” he said, not wanting to discourage her.
At the same moment, Rachael Sherwood was following the flight attendant named Dee up a staircase and forward through the upper-deck section to a small door leading to the cockpit of the 747-400. Dee knocked twice, then pulled it open and introduced Rachael. James Holland motioned her to sit on the raised jump seat positioned right behind the center pedestal, which sat between the two pilots.
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