The Devil’s Noose

by Michael Angel

  “You think I should bring in Edward Preble?” Now it was Blaine’s turn to frown. “I don’t know. The man’s got…well, he’s got problems.”

  “You need a toxicologist,” Austen said firmly. “Not a marathoner.”

  “Well, if you insist, I’ll bring him in. But only if I can count on your expertise as an EIS officer to head things up. The CDC’s going to need that assurance if we’re going to succeed.”

  She came close to letting out a groan.

  “That moved awfully quick from the ‘I’ and into the ‘we’. I’m not some wet-behind-the ears intern. This case you’re dangling out here has more red flags on it than a bullfighter’s convention.”

  That got a snort of a laugh from Blaine’s companion. She took another look at the larger man. Her initial impression – that he looked like ten miles of badly paved road stuffed into a sports coat – was confirmed on a second glance.

  Blaine quickly scrambled to make introductions with a gesture between the two.

  “Sorry, my manners are lacking today. This is Nicholas Navarro, of Motte and Bailey. Nick, remember that you’re talking to our top EIS candidate on the East Coast.”

  “Doctor Austen,” Navarro said politely. He nodded his head while motioning with one hand, as if tipping the brim of a hat.

  “Motte and Bailey?” Austen asked, in a skeptical tone. “That sounds either like a law firm, or a place that makes Emmental cheese rounds for the holidays.”

  “Ah, no. We’re not a law firm, and we’re not in the business of making Swiss cheese. Though I suppose that we do put holes in things on occasion.”

  “Navarro’s the senior security consultant for the expedition,” Blaine informed her. “That’s what Motte and Bailey does. Security.”

  “Senior ‘security consultant’,” Austen repeated. “I’m still not understanding. What exactly does that mean?”

  Navarro gave her a look. His eyes were hazel, and as hard as freshly struck flint.

  “It means that I’m someone that has to make tough choices. Choices like the one you just made.” He motioned towards the lab’s interior. The technicians were still spraying the insides down with bleach. “That brings me to something that I’m itching to know: Why did you refuse to cut off Doctor Widerman’s hand?”

  Chapter Five

  Navarro’s question hung in the air.

  Why did you refuse to cut off Doctor Widerman’s hand?

  “Do you want to know the clinical reason?” Austen asked. “Or the personal one?”

  “Both,” came the reply. “If you’re willing to share.”

  “Crucero is distantly related to the varicella zoster virus, which causes both chicken pox and shingles. Research suggests that people vaccinated against chicken pox and entered into immediate supportive care could have a sixty, maybe seventy percent chance of survival. Widerman has both of those factors working in his favor. As far as I’m concerned, those are odds worth wagering on without lopping off a limb.”

  Navarro paused, processing the information and the odds before speaking once more.

  “What was the personal reason, then?”

  “Before he went into medicine, Joseph was a concert pianist. He promised me a personal recital after his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Removing one of his hands would have been like smashing a stained glass window.” Austen let out a tired sigh. “I don’t know if I made the right call. All I know is that a decision had to be made, and quickly. What happens next…I’ll have to learn to live with it. As I once read, ‘Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.’”

  Navarro nodded to himself, as if impressed.

  “Then it’s like I heard, ‘Life’s a matter of playing the poor hand you were dealt as well as you can,’” he said. “Still, from what you’re telling me about that disease, I’d say that you played the odds right.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that she’d make a top-notch EIS?” Blaine said proudly, as if Austen was his protégé.

  “Yes, I’m sure you did,” she noted wryly, as she addressed Navarro again. “What you saw in that lab happened with a pathogen cleared for Biosafety Level 3. We might end up dealing with something even worse, something that requires Level 4 protocols. Do you have any idea what you could be getting into?”

  “I reckon that I’ll leave the bug hunting up to you,” Navarro said.

  “Let’s hope so. But I think you’ve been under-sold on just how catastrophically bad this could all turn out. As Ted Preble might say, it could go ‘pear-shaped’ in a hurry.”

  “How do you figure it’ll all go down, then?”

  Austen walked over to stand next to the observation windows. The technical crew had finished spraying down the laboratory. Now they were sealing the labs in preparation to vent in poisonous gas to sterilize even the tiniest crack.

  “Typically, once an EIS team is called in, you’ve got four, maybe five days to contain an outbreak of a Class 3 or 4 pathogen. Beyond that, you’ve only got a few possible outcomes. They’re all bad.”

  The big man crossed his arms. “Let’s hear ‘em.”

  Austen counted off each on her fingers.

  “One: the pathogen’s virulent, but not immediately deadly. It ends up sputtering through the human population for decades, even centuries, like a burning underground coal seam. It remains circulating out among the human population, forever killing at a low and slow rate, like HIV. Two: the pathogen’s virulent and lethal. We end up with a global pandemic on our hands. Three: the pathogen’s virulent, lethal, and lucky. That means it bypasses all our safety procedures. We end up with a global pandemic on our hands, but we won’t be as stressed about it. Because we’ll all be dead.”

  Navarro’s jaw worked back and forth for a moment. “No, I can’t say it was ever explained to me quite that way.”

  “That’s because your people won’t be searching for the pathogen,” Blaine said quickly. “Your men’s duties should remain in the anti-terrorism, expedient extraction role.”

  “How many men are we talking about here?” Austen asked sharply.

  “Fifteen, including myself,” Navarro answered. “And yes, they will be armed.”

  She rounded on Blaine. “Why exactly do I need more than a dozen armed soldiers tagging along on a WHO medical mission?”

  “Because the Kazakh army is fighting an ongoing separatist movement in the province of Ozrabek, where we’re heading. Worse, that province happens to share borders with Mongolia, Russia, and China. So there’s a possibility – a very small one, I should add – that some bullets could be fired in our direction. That’s why I contacted M&B, and it’s why they sent their resident expert on keeping us out of harm’s way.”

  Austen’s emotions cycled between anger and shock. Blaine had known her since her time in Africa, when horrors had sunk their talons into her and refused to release, even after all this time. A fear that blossomed inside her like a shivery black orchid every time she gowned up.

  She shook her head as if trying to ward off an oncoming migraine.

  “You son of a…” She drew in a breath, voice rising sharply as she continued. “You could have mentioned this before trying to peddle this expedition of yours! Only a ‘very small’ chance of being shot at? Have you ever tried to stop an emergent pathogen in a war zone before? Do you have any idea what can happen in an environment like that?”

  “Doctor Austen,” Navarro said firmly. “I’ve brought people both into and out of ‘hot’ conflict areas. I’ll be doing everything I can to keep you safe. And to get you out if it looks like the heat’s about to catch the kitchen on fire.”

  His words did help steady her to a small degree. Still, she shook her head sadly.

  “I appreciate the thought, but…I don’t think you know what you’re asking me to do.”

  Blaine left the folder out, but he closed his attaché case with a snap. “Well, what I’m asking you to do is take the lead in stopping what could become the worst global health crisis
in a century, full stop. If the deaths of those villagers aren’t proof enough, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Ian–”

  “Besides,” he added, a trifle too eagerly, “I thought this might help you to get back on the horse. You know, up and at ‘em, don’t let the bad guys get you down. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be able to show your face around the CDC again without someone slamming a door in it.”

  Her face reddened.

  “Get bent, Blaine,” she gritted. “I can’t show my face around the CDC, sure. Oh, and just whose fault is that? But I don’t know how you can either. Not after what you did to get that fancy three-thousand-dollar suit of yours.”

  Blaine stuck his chin out obstinately, running a hand through his perfectly feathered blond hair as he spoke.

  “Actually, it’s a nine-thousand-dollar suit.”

  A hot silence smoldered between the two for a moment. Austen broke it.

  “I’m sorry. You’ll have to find another EIS officer. I’m out.”

  “Is that so? Is it because you’re too scared, Leigh? Or too soft to handle the tough jobs anymore?”

  She glared at him.

  “Yes, I guess I’m too soft for the tough jobs now. All I have to do right now is explain to Elaine Widerman why I’ve just sentenced her husband to a month of agony. Oh, and then there is the one-in-three chance of him being incinerated and then buried in a vacuum-sealed biosafety box.”

  Navarro’s jaw clenched at that. Blaine finally broke the silence, tapping the WHO-emblazoned folder laying on the desk with one finger.

  “Fine. On the off chance that I’m wrong, I’m leaving you the case file. My contact information’s inside. Navarro and I are flying out in the next twenty-four hours. If the Leigh Austen I used to know is still buried inside there somewhere, she’ll be calling me.”

  “You’ve wasted your time,” Austen said, with an air of finality. “Now get the hell out of here. Both of you.”

  Chapter Six

  Reston, Virginia

  Old Dominion Inlet Estates

  That night, Leigh Austen dreamed a chloroquine dream.

  A daily dose of chloroquine was all she’d needed to keep malaria at bay during a past medical expedition to Central America. The drug had been proven safe and effective since the 1940’s. But the side effects were strange.

  Like many others, Austen had suffered restless nights in a hot jungle tent. Nights with dreams stuffed to bursting with nightmarish images of sex, violence, and death. More than a decade had passed since she’d last popped one of the bitter-tasting pills.

  Yet tonight she visited chloroquine purgatory all over again.

  Flickers of memory shot through her unconscious, making her thrash off her bed covers. The flickers merged into slashes of hot sunlight. African sunlight, cast through the steaming leaves of dense rainforest.

  She struggled to free herself from vines that clung to her clothing. The smells of jungle rot, the tingle of gunpowder. The distant sound of machine-gun fire. She pulled free and ended up running into a clearing.

  A tattered white flag adorned with a red cross flapped listlessly from a flagpole. One-story buildings, little more than fabric-lined tents, loomed up on every side. From each building wafted the sickly stench of rotting meat. She tried to run, but a door swung open before her with a mournful creak.

  Bodies lay stacked inside, piled one upon another in shapeless hummocks. Sightless eyes pinned her in place even as she spotted a familiar face amidst the corpses. A man, dressed in a stained white jacket and oozing fluid from his mouth, nose, and both eye sockets.

  Austen sat up with a gasp. Her trembling hand found the nightstand’s lamp switch, but she didn’t need to turn it on. Bright moonlight shone through the cracks in the window blinds, turning the room a milky blue-white.

  She padded across her hardwood floor into the living room, clad in a loose nightgown and wool socks. She went over to the sliding glass door and stared out into the moonlit night. Cold mist hung in the air, beading on the deck and partially clouding her view overlooking the lake. The neighboring houses were all dark, save for the blue flicker of a television screen from a distant dwelling on the opposite shore.

  The deck itself was littered with dead leaves. The decaying remains of a carved jack-o-lantern slumped sadly in one corner. She shook her head as she gazed around. Lately, she’d been coming home too tired to rake or clean up.

  Back in the kitchen she used the microwave to nuke a cup of water until it steamed. One cup of orange pekoe tea later, she opened her laptop at the dining room table and went over the contents of the WHO folder again.

  There still wasn’t much to go on, save for the estimated kill rate of the unknown organism. A kill rate that was higher than cholera, higher than dengue, higher than plague. She wondered if it could be up there with the hemorrhagic fever viruses. Lassa, Junin, and Ebola Zaire came to mind.

  She leaned back, sipping at her tea once more. Austen felt drained by the day’s events. The accident in Level 3. Blaine’s sales pitch, with or without Navarro’s reassurances. And she couldn’t get Elaine Widerman’s wailing screams out of her head either.

  Is this really what it’s all about? She shook her head. Being the one who always gets to deliver the bad news? Or worse, flying off to unknown lands to become part of that awful headline? What do I do right now?

  The answer fell into her lap as if it had been a ripe fruit plucked effortlessly from a tree.

  She had to go.

  It wasn’t from some heroic impulse, not quite. No, it was easier than that. If she didn’t go, then she faced chloroquine dreams for who-knew-how-long.

  Today, her fears had fallen by the wayside when action had been called for. Action had taken the place of anxiety, simply crowding it out. Perhaps that strategy would work again if followed to its logical conclusion.

  Part of her sometimes wished she had parents or siblings to talk to at times like this. But her father had vanished before she’d been born. Her mother, ever the free spirit, was living ‘off the grid’ on the California coast in a haze of patchouli-scented smoke.

  But she wasn’t going to fly blind on this. She needed advice. She needed words of wisdom, no matter how spooky.

  That meant she had to talk to DiCaprio.

  Austen went into her study to log on to her desktop computer. This particular piece of equipment had been set up with a private server and safeguarded by an encryption device that cost more than she made in year. It had been both the strangest and most useful gift she’d ever gotten in her life.

  A couple of clicks, and she faced a blank screen of shimmery, unearthly gray-black. Her words appeared as simple white letters as she typed.

  Ian Blaine’s back again. He says the CDC and WHO needs someone with my skills. I’m scared, but my instincts tell me that this is the real deal. What is your advice? I promise that I’ll listen to you this time.

  The click of the ‘return’ key, and her message sailed into cyberspace. She stared at the screen as if she could will it to respond. Sometimes – it was rare, but it happened – DiCaprio would answer her directly out of the electronic ether. Other times, it could take hours.

  She got up and zapped another cup of tea. Between pacing and sipping, sipping and pacing, Austen kept checking for a reply that didn’t come.

  Finally, once she’d gotten through half of her second cup, she felt that her patience had run out. She set the cup down and stared at the loose bits of tea swirling within. A pang passed through her as she wished that she could use them to read the future.

  She snatched up Blaine’s business card from the WHO folder in one hand and her house phone in the other. A quick jabbing in of the numbers, and she waited as the ringing started. Finally, just before she thought the voicemail would pick up, she heard a click.

  “Blaine here,” came the man’s sleepy voice. “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Leigh,” she said crisply. “You still need an EIS officer?”
>
  “Huh? Oh, yeah. That is, yes, we do.” He chuckled, as if pleased with his salesmanship abilities. “I’m glad you finally saw the light.”

  She ignored that. “Where do I have to be?”

  “You need to be at Dulles International by seven this morning. I should still be able to get us two seats for a flight to Germany.”

  “Only two? What about Mister Muscles?”

  “Navarro, you mean? He’s already on a flight a few hours ahead of us. We’ll be linking up with him and the rest of his team.”

  Austen nodded at that. She found a pen and wrote down the gate and flight numbers Blaine gave her. Then she set her jaw before speaking again.

  “Ian, I need to hear you say something. Tell me that whatever we find, you’re not going to try to market the damned thing this time. We just find the pathogen, contain it, and exterminate it if it’s somewhere it shouldn’t be.”

  “Yes, that’s all,” he agreed. “I’m not in private industry anymore, okay? This is all above the board, public health stuff. CDC and WHO all the way.”

  “That reassures me a little. Not much, but a little.”

  “Ouch. You’re a tough one to please.”

  She paused, wavering over asking one final question.

  “I was wondering…do the folks at the CDC in Atlanta still call me that name? Do they still call me one of the ‘Seven Angels’?”

  “Leigh,” he said, in the voice of a personal growth coach, “it doesn’t matter what anyone says about you. What matters is what you think about yourself. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if they celebrate your return if this mission is successful. They might well decide to honor–”

  She hung up with a curse.

  A ping came from her study. Trembling, she went back to sit before the screen. DiCaprio had spoken. His words were as cryptic as ever.

  Believe Ian Blaine only to the 49th degree and a tenth of a tenth. Any longer and you should 86 him before he pleads the 5th.

  You’re only safe with the man whom you trust without question.