Pandora's Clock

by Nance, John J. ;

  Wilson nodded and smiled. “Okay, I’m going, I’m going, but won’t you just tell the ole preacher where he’s being taken against his will?”

  Holland took a deep breath and glanced at Robb, who returned the glance with a raised eyebrow. He turned to Wilson again. “Reverend, all I can tell you is we’re not going to New York. I’ll explain everything over the PA in a few minutes. Now, please, sir, I must ask you to leave the cockpit.”

  Wilson stood in thought for a few seconds and decided not to protest. His smile reminded Holland of a crocodile as he cocked his head toward the door. “I’ll get out of your hair, James. No offense, but just for the record, whenever and wherever we land, I’m getting off this aircraft.”

  The Reverend Wilson waved goodbye and closed the cockpit door carefully, making sure no one but his secretary heard the obscene string of epithets he was muttering as he stalked angrily through the upper cabin back to the head of the stairway.

  Holland stabilized the 747 at flight level three-five-zero and double-checked the flight computer. The course wound its way through a series of points in midair, each defined by a latitude and longitude, the path ending in Gander, Newfoundland—but both of them knew that wasn’t the true destination. The satellite call ten minutes before from Dallas Operations had brought a long-awaited solution, and some of the rising tension had drained from both Holland and Robb.

  “Okay, Sixty-six,” the Operations vice president had said, “we’re going to send you up to Keflavík, Iceland, to the Air Force base there, but we can’t advertise it. File a flight plan for Gander. Somewhere south of Iceland, you’ll be intercepted by Air Force fighters and escorted in.”

  “We tried that at Mildenhall,” Holland reminded him. “And we’re still airborne.”

  “I know. I know. They blew it, and I don’t have the details, but that won’t happen here, they assure me.”

  “Sir, who is ‘they’ in all of this?”

  “We’re literally talking now to the White House Situation Room,” the Operations vice president told him, “and they, in turn, are coordinating a bunch of agencies including the Air Force, the State Department, the FAA, and the CIA.”

  CIA? Holland thought. Why CIA? The question of Icelandic consent loomed before him. He’d had enough glib assurances.

  “Sir, Iceland has its own government. Are they in agreement with our coming in?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Captain,” the vice president said, “and I don’t think we should care. I can tell you this. Iceland doesn’t have a military force to block the runway, and our Air Force is already preparing for you. They’ll get you refueled and serviced, and you can refile for whatever U.S. destination we decide on back here. I think, in other words, we’ve about got it solved.”

  “But are we supposed to be quarantined back in the U.S.? And if so, how long? What should I tell the people? Christmas Eve is two days away.”

  There was a small chuckle on the other end that sounded suspiciously forced. “We may bring you on to Edwards Air Force Base in California, or maybe Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. The Air Force and Red Cross and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta are all figuring out where to set up safe facilities for everyone. They’ll need two days of observation, and anyone not ill by then can go home. Tell them we’ll be paying the bill and flying them to final destinations first class. I know that means many of them will have a late Christmas, but we’ll do the best we can.”

  “Anyone who doesn’t get sick will be released? What if someone does get sick? What if several do? They won’t release us until the disease has completely run its course. This so-called two-day quarantine could end up being two weeks, or longer, and I’m supposed to tell these people it’ll be over in two days?”

  “What else can we do, Captain? It might be no more than that.”

  There was a silence on the line for a few seconds while Holland thought through the implications.

  “So they really think we’re exposed.”

  “Captain, this could be a false alarm. Even if your passenger died from this virus, it might not spread.”

  “What?” Holland almost snarled the word. “What do you mean, sir, if our passenger died from this virus?”

  “It’s a far-out possibility, okay? You said he was sick when he came on board. We’re told the heart attack could have been a symptom, but that’s the worst case.”

  Holland shook his head and tried to restrain his own growing anger. His flight attendants had worked with the victim, given mouth-to-mouth CPR, moved him to the back! If he was that contagious, they were sure now to get sick!

  “James, we’re gonna get you home, and take care of anyone, including your crew, who might fall ill.”

  “Sir? I’ve got to have some substantive information, okay? Exactly how bad is this stuff?”

  “We’ve been asking that constantly of Washington. Here’s exactly what they told me from the Situation Room. They said, quote, that ‘the refusals to land in Europe were purely precautionary reactions to the fact that the Germans hadn’t clearly described the nature of this infectious disease.’ They said the Germans have officially called this a new mutation of influenza virus. That’s all they’re telling us.”

  “That’s not good enough. I need to know the symptoms. I need to know what to expect. For that matter, I need to know how long I have to get this plane parked safely somewhere in case I come down with it.”

  “That’s all I can tell you, James, but we’ll try to get more as quickly as possible.”

  Holland ended the call and replaced the handset, then glanced at Dick Robb, who was looking a little less grim.

  “We’ll make it, Dick,” he said. Robb rolled his eyes and nodded.

  The weather ahead in Iceland had been reported gray and stormy, with fifteen-knot winds from the west and blowing snow, the temperature in the twenties. It was the visibility, however, that determined whether they could land, and the visibility was holding steady at more than three miles. Holland calculated the fuel state. They could hold for more than an hour after arriving at Keflavík, but one way or another, they would have to land there.

  “You going to tell them?” Robb asked suddenly.

  “Sorry?”

  “The passengers. About the plan, and everything? Are you going to do another PA?”

  Holland sighed and nodded. “Unless you’d like to take over that duty, Dick.”

  Dick Robb looked at him with a bemused expression. “Hey, it’s your line check. I’m just a dumb copilot.”

  Holland was surprised to find himself laughing easily. “Right! With a sharp eye, a biting tongue, and a red pen.”

  Holland expected Robb to smile. Instead, Robb turned away and stared out the window as Holland punched the PA button and tried to organize his thoughts.

  He’ll come around and revert to his normal, obnoxious self, Holland thought. Especially now that the worst is over.

  TEN

  CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22—6 P.M. (2300Z)

  The nearest conference room to Jonathan Roth’s office had become a working command post by 4 P.M. Washington time, with papers strewn everywhere and members of the analysis team coming and going. With the White House Situation Room now essentially managing the crisis, the CIA was being looked to more and more for guidance—and it was all Deputy Director Jonathan Roth’s show. With the polished ease of a master bureaucrat he had pushed and pulled and bullied his people in the background at Langley while presenting a calm, unruffled face to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—along with a constant flow of analysis and interpretations. By 6 P.M. the central remaining question being asked in the Situation Room was the same one Rusty Sanders had to answer: How dangerous is the bug aboard Quantum 66?

  “Look, we’re not sure there is a bug aboard Sixty-six!” Sanders had cautioned Roth earlier, sensing a stampede. “We need an autopsy of this man Helms first to be sure.”

  Roth had ripped off his half-frame glasses, ris
en to his feet, and angrily motioned Sanders into the corridor, speaking through clenched teeth.

  “The question, Doctor, is not whether it’s there, but how do we deal with it if it is? I make the decision on whether to consider it there, do you understand that? That’s my decision, based on my analysis.”

  “Sir,” Sanders had begun, “I’m sorry to upset you, but I just wanted to make sure you understand that so far we have nothing to go on to make that decision.”

  “We have a dead man on an airplane nobody wants around, Sanders. A dead man known to have been exposed to this bug. We have the German government admitting this virus, whatever it is, has killed two people, not counting the professor. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  Sanders could see Roth getting even angrier.

  “I just want us to be sure, Director. It could have been an ordinary heart attack. We don’t know that it killed him.”

  “Again, Sanders, I make that decision. We can’t take chances here. Now, find out for me, dammit, how bad this is and how we should respond based on the assumption that there is a bug running rampant on Flight Sixty-six. And do it now!”

  Twenty minutes had passed and Sanders was back, ashen-faced, with an answer. Roth closed the door, and the others found chairs.

  “Okay. I’ve got new information, and as we suspected, the Germans haven’t been getting—or giving—all the facts. Basically we’re in deep trouble,” Sanders began, pacing down one side of the room along the wall, his tie now hanging even lower than before. He described the visit of Andrew Hauptmann and relayed the conversation he’d just completed with Zeitner in Bonn, and his own call to the Russian doctor in the Ukraine.

  “Fortunately, I speak reasonably passable Russian,” Sanders continued, “so I didn’t use a translator, and I’m pretty sure I understand it. Russian, you know, can lead some translators to—”

  “Sanders! Get to the point!” Roth snarled.

  “Sorry, sir.” He moved around to the far end of the table, opposite Roth’s seat at the head. “Here’s the bottom line. Assuming, as Director Roth says I must, that Helms was not only exposed but suffering from an actual case of this pathogen on departure from Frankfurt, and applying known standards from the Russian scientist’s findings to the worst of the agents mistakenly shipped to Bavaria, we have to assume an almost ninety percent certainty that every person on that aircraft has now been exposed to an active—for want of a better word—particle of the same virus. And, it’s not a flu!”

  “Everyone?” Roth asked.

  Sanders nodded. “Yes, sir. That exposure would have occurred within two hours of departure. Now, since we really don’t know much about this particular virus, other than what it did to the two men in the Bavarian lab, I’m extrapolating based on what the Russian researcher told me about omega-class pathogens. One of their basic qualifications for declaring a pathogen an omega, it seems, was extreme communicability. In other words, if you were exposed, you contracted it. The methods of exposure differed, but omega-class viruses, he said, had to hold the very real threat of being essentially unstoppable in a civilian population. That would usually mean airborne transmission through exhaled breath, and the ability of the virus to live on and penetrate unlacerated human skin, which meant that if you simply touched a drop of infected bodily fluid from someone who’d fallen ill, you would be exposed. In addition, the mortality rate had to exceed eighty-five percent, and the last requirement was a rapid incubation period—and this Bavarian pathogen apparently incubates in as little as forty-eight hours, which is incredible.”

  Roth shifted in his chair. “How did they know this, Sanders?”

  “The Russian told me they arrived at such conclusions by primate testing, but he’s just guessing at precisely which bug we have. There were … tests on humans as well. Political prisoners, he said. Especially back in the fifties. Our Bavarian bug has to have at least those characteristics. And, one of their more contemporary fears was that even if it was a lesser human threat than an omega class, by the seventies any pathogen taking hold anywhere in the world could be spread anywhere around the world within forty-eight hours by the modern jet airliner! It starts today in Frankfurt, and before we know it’s there, we’ve got carriers getting sick and spreading it in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Tokyo, and in two more days each infected person is spreading it in dozens of other locales. It’s like a pyramid plan for Armageddon. The Russian scientist said—and I’ve long agreed with this—that the world’s airline system has become the potential instrument of a viral holocaust, which is what I tried to tell the FAA for years with these cabin recirculation—”

  Roth held his hand up to stop. “Stick to the point, Doctor! I’m aware of your crusade back at the FAA.”

  Rusty Sanders fell silent for a few seconds as he studied Jon Roth’s face and decided not to push. He cleared his throat and gestured at the papers in his hand.

  “At any rate, sir, we’ve got a winged messenger of death if this omega-class pathogen from Bavaria is actually aboard that seven-forty-seven.”

  Several of the research team exhaled loudly, and Mark Hastings sat forward. “What … kind of death are we talking about here? Quick, or something more … ah …”

  “You mean are we talking gruesome?” Sanders asked.

  “Yeah. Gruesome. I mean, we’ve got two hundred forty-four people on that jet, plus a crew of twelve!”

  Sanders looked down the table at Roth before continuing. Roth’s chin was resting in the palm of his hand, his eyes following Sanders, and there was no reaction.

  “Well,” Sanders began again, “death can take numerous forms, depending on exactly which pathogen this is, but we’ve got the two victims in the Bavarian lab. I’m told autopsies are in progress by a highly trained German team, and I’ve been promised the results instantly on completion. That should help with comparisons when we get an autopsy on the professor. By the way, respiratory collapse, internal bleeding, coronary involvement imitating a heart attack, and thermal collapse are all possible, but the only two known victims demonstrated different symptoms, including dementia and bizarre psychological episodes. Now, since the period from onset to death could take several hours, there could be substantial suffering involved, especially if everyone on that aircraft—including the flight crew—goes crazy at once.”

  Jon Roth did not move, but Mark Hastings sat forward with a wide-eyed expression.

  “Jesus, the flight crew! I hadn’t considered them!”

  Sanders motioned for calm. “Their exposure began just a few hours ago, Mark. If we get them on the ground somewhere within, say, forty hours, there’s probably zero chance of the flight crew being affected in the meantime.”

  “Yeah, but we’d need to take the keys to the airplane from them after that, so to speak. Disable the airplane.”

  Sanders shook his head and took a deep breath as he examined his feet and then locked eyes with Roth. “I’d … hate like hell to see those people facing the end still locked up in that jumbo. I’d hate to see them go through that without some human assistance, even if the care is futile and provided by people in protective moon suits.”

  Sanders hadn’t realized he’d begun pacing again as he talked. He saw he was now on the opposite end of the room, beside the deputy director’s chair. Roth had followed his movements by swiveling the chair, but Sanders stopped and surveyed the room, noting that everyone was in shock.

  He wondered at his own detachment. Here he was talking in routine tones about a horrible scourge that might be ready to kill nearly three hundred people on a jumbo jet in an agonizing and bizarre sequence of human misery. He was detached, he realized, because he didn’t believe it. Not yet, at least. There was still nothing to confirm the presence of the malady aboard Flight 66, even if he accepted the idea that the American professor had indeed been exposed.

  “Okay, as to the external dangers.” Sanders walked over to an easel with blank paper and picked up a felt marker, drawing as he talked.

/>   “Again, I’m extrapolating and basically guessing from what the Russian researcher told me about omega-class pathogens in general. But, we’d better err on the conservative side and worry that the Bavarian strain might be able to stay active in above-freezing airborne environments for up to, say, an hour, depending on humidity. That’s enough time to circulate around the inside of a seven-forty-seven and infect everyone, if the particles are small enough to slip through the rather ineffective biofilters in those airborne air-conditioning systems. The warmer and wetter the conditions, the longer an airborne-transmittable virus can live and be deadly. Viruses like this ride tiny aerosols—airborne droplets of moisture. In temperate climates they can even linger for several hours. Think of how easy it is to transmit a common cold by sneezing or touching. That’s the level of communicability we have to assume, with a virus that doesn’t just give people a runny nose and fever but kills them within three to four days.” Sanders replaced the marker and crossed his arms.

  “So, Doctor,” Roth began, “your assessment of the danger to any exposed population is …?”

  “Danger to population centers. Okay. Considering the fact that I’m told it comes from a class whose mortality rate is at or above eighty-five percent fatal, I’d have to say that we could hardly find anything biologically more dangerous to human life on a broad scale—other than some other Biosafety Level Four horror like the Ebola Zaire filovirus. The horror of Ebola is that you basically disintegrate, die, and putrify from the inside out, but the Bavarian strain may provide a less gruesome death while being even more dangerous to human life. In other words, this is absolutely nothing to take chances with. Quarantine in the strictest sense is vital.”

  Roth cleared his throat. “Doctor, the plan was to refuel them in Iceland and then bring them back home, as you know. Is that still a reasonable plan? Finding a place to quarantine them in the Southwest?”

  Rusty Sanders looked at the floor for a second to organize his response. He knew Roth would use the same words in talking with the White House. They needed to be right.