Plague

by H W Buzz Bernard

  “That’s what we’re working on. Unfortunately, there may have been others. An Alan McCarthy. Did you have an Alan McCarthy admitted there?”

  “I’ll check, hold on.”

  Barashi drummed his fingers idly on his desk. So Gullison was dead. Good news. The virus hadn’t lost any of its virulence in the test attack, a clever effort if he did say so himself. Knowing that Gullison and McCarthy would be the first golfers on their course last Thursday as they always were, Barashi had tethered a balloon filled with the viral pathogen to a bush near the third tee, driven off a short distance in a golf cart, then burst the balloon with a pellet gun as the two golfers approached.

  The airborne virus had worked to lethal perfection. “Allahu Akbar,” Barashi said softly. Allah is Most Great.

  Wells came back on the line. “No McCarthy here,” he said, “but you knew about Gullison’s wife?”

  “His wife?”

  “She’s been admitted with HF symptoms. Looks like she might have been infected by her husband.”

  A wave of euphoria washed over Barashi. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “What’s her status?”

  “Terminal, I’m afraid. Oh, and I understand there may have been a gentleman admitted to St. Joseph’s with HF symptoms. Maybe that’s your McCarthy guy.”

  “Yes, could be. I’ll check. Thanks.”

  Barashi hung up. “Allahu Akbar,” he repeated. In only a matter of days, 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers would be rivaled by a new terrorist attack.

  “My,” Anneliese said, “did you and Mrs. Scarelli get into a little tiff ?” A bemused look graced her face as she stood close to Richard and brushed the scratches on his face with her fingers. Her touch seemed more suggestive than healing.

  “I didn’t find Mrs. Scarelli,” he said. He peeled off his suit jacket and strode into his office. He sat heavily in the chair behind his desk. Anneliese disappeared briefly, then entered the office and walked around behind him.

  “Here,” she said, “this will make you feel better.” She tilted his head back and, using a moist washcloth, rubbed the red marks on his face in soft, easy motions.

  She eased the back of his head into her cleavage, resting it between the firmness of her breasts. Her perfume, sweet and narcotic, beckoned him with a primitive call, a siren song of Lorelei. He sensed in her rhythmic breathing something urgent yet suppressed. Something waiting to be discovered, ignited. A combustible secret. It excited him, but at the same time concerned him, though he couldn’t articulate the reason. He merely knew it was there.

  Anneliese leaned forward, drawing his head deeper into the alluring valley of her body. “You need someone to take care of you,” she whispered.

  Her warm breath caressed the side of his face, and he sensed in her voice the resonance of something ancient and foreign, the echo, perhaps, of a long-lost culture. Who are you?

  She stepped back, yet continued to stroke his face with the wash cloth. “What happened?” she asked. “You went to Mrs. Scarelli’s house, and she wasn’t there?”

  He gently removed her hand and washcloth from his face. “Thank you, Anneliese,” he said. “You’re a good nurse. But before I answer your questions, I need to sort out a few things. Give me some time. We can talk later.”

  Anneliese looked puzzled, perhaps a little hurt, but accepted her dismissal. “I’ll be at my desk,” she said.

  He nodded. After she left, he did a Google search on his computer: Veronica von Stade. Several entries popped up, the most recent being a year-old newspaper article from Die Welt. He struggled to translate the piece—his college German was rusty—but managed to get the gist of it. In Europe, von Stade was part legend, part myth, but no one knew how much of each. She was wanted by Interpol for questioning in a number of murders and assassinations, but had managed to elude authorities for over a decade. A female Jackal.

  It was surmised that on several occasions she had used sex to lure her victims and may actually have killed at least one while having intercourse with him. Coming and going at the same time. Richard’s chest tightened. He continued reading.

  She basically was apolitical, a killer for hire. But her handiwork hadn’t surfaced recently, and there was speculation she might have “retired” or been killed. Do I have news for you. Not much was known about her background, but investigators were fairly certain her parents had been members of the Bader-Meinhof Gang, the German terrorist organization that rose to prominence during the early 1970s.

  The only photograph of her was grainy and slightly out of focus, apparently shot through a telephoto lens. It didn’t look much like the blonde with spiky hair who had assaulted him, but it was hard to judge. It was an old picture. Besides, it didn’t make any difference—he knew what she looked like now.

  Richard clicked off the computer and drew a deep breath. Nothing made sense. A plane load of executives, dead. An off-the-books corporate project no one seems to know anything about. A frightened lady who schedules a meeting and disappears. A German hit woman who threatens my manhood, my life. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  A soft tap on his door. Anneliese peeked in. “Did you get the phone number I texted you?”

  “I haven’t checked my messages lately.”

  “I found a telephone number in one of Mr. Arguello’s files.”

  “Arguello, the CEO... former CEO?”

  She nodded. “It’s a number for a Colonel Landry. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the project you’re interested in, but... well, I’ll let you decide.”

  He pulled up the message. The number carried a 678 area code, a local exchange. He thanked Anneliese and, after she left, considered his options. They were, quite simply, back off or press on. If he went for the latter, he knew he would be getting into dirty business. Who am I kidding? Dangerous business. The image of von Stade and her pet knife floated through his head, like detritus on the waters of an oily harbor.

  And then there was Anneliese. Was she somehow part of all this, too? Or was her subtle sexual aggression genuine? He doubted it was genuine. He’d wandered into a looking-glass world shrouded in darkness, and she was somehow part of it. He didn’t believe in coincidences, that this woman had become infatuated with him the minute he’d set foot in BioDawn. So, what to do? Play the smitten male, he decided; he just might find an illuminated crack in the labyrinth.

  The bottom line was this: He had built a career on attacking his challenges, not letting them assault him. The stakes, to be sure, were higher now, higher than just losing his job. But with Karen gone...

  He punched the number. The phone rang a dozen times before it was answered. “Yousamrid. Colonel Landry,” a voice said.

  “I’m sorry. Yousamrid?”

  “USAMRIID. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institutes of Infectious Diseases. This is a branch office at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Atlanta. Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” Richard said, and explained the situation.

  When he had finished, Landry said, “Yes. I heard about the plane crash. Tragic. I’m very sorry, Mr. Wainwright. And yes, BioDawn is doing work under contract to USAMRIID. But the effort is top secret. I understand that as acting CEO you’d like to have a handle on what’s going on, but if you don’t have a security clearance—”

  “You can talk around the classified stuff. I know how it works. Look, I don’t want to be a hard ass about this, Colonel, but I’m not a hands-off CEO. I want to know what’s going on under my command. As a senior military officer, you can understand that. And if you can’t help me, I’d consider making some phone calls to senators or representatives and voicing my concerns. But that’s not the route I want to go.”

  Landry sighed. “No, that’s not the route you want to go. I’m a busy man, Mr. Wainwright, but I’d be glad to meet with you briefly tomorrow and at least try to give yo
u a feel for the project. Talk around the classified details, as you say. How about 1300?”

  “One o’clock? Sounds fine. Where are you located?”

  “It’s probably easier if I come to BioDawn, Mr. Wainwright. Less of a hassle, really. By the time you got through security at the main gate here, then wandered around looking for my office, we probably could have completed our meeting. So, to save time, I’ll grab a sandwich and eat in my car on the way there. Okay?”

  “1300 tomorrow then, Colonel. Thank you.”

  DRUID HILLS, ATLANTA

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 20

  In the team room at the CDC, Doctors Butler and Zambit reviewed recent events.

  “Anything from the field team yet?” Zambit asked. Rumpled and bleary-eyed, he brushed at a dab of dried mustard—residue, perhaps, from a quick lunchtime hot dog—that clung to the corner of his mouth.

  “Nothing,” Dwight said. “No clues. No leads. No ideas. But we do have more bad news from North Georgia Regional.”

  “What?” Zambit said, his voice husky, tired.

  “Two of the nurses who attended Gullison are displaying HF symptoms. And another individual, a Mr. Jamie Deland from Gullison’s subdivision, was admitted around noon today with something that sounds frighteningly similar.”

  Zambit rolled his eyes. “Any connection to Gullison or McCarthy?”

  Dwight tapped his finger on a sheet of paper resting on the table in front of him. “Yeah. This is interesting. The only link between Deland and Gullison and McCarthy is that Deland was in the twosome immediately behind Gullison and McCarthy last Thursday on the golf course. Gullison and McCarthy were the first ones out that morning.”

  Zambit jerked upright. “Jesus, you know what that suggests.”

  “That our Ebola visitor might not have got here by accident. It’s sure as shit not indigenous to the U.S. So if these guys picked it up on a golf course, somebody had to have planted it.”

  Zambit stood. “I think you just rang the bell for full FBI involvement.”

  “Maybe. But as you like to remind me, all we have so far are suspicions and coincidences. No hard evidence.”

  “The field team combed the golf course?”

  “It did. But even if something had been planted or released there, there wouldn’t be any trace of it now. Rain, wind and sunlight would have seen to that. Washed it away, dispersed it, destroyed it.”

  “But if it’s airborne—”

  Dwight waved his hand dismissively. “Wouldn’t matter. It still would have had only a short lifespan. Exposure to oxygen alone would have doomed it fairly quickly.”

  Zambit began pacing. “Did the team find anything that raised the hair on the back of their necks?”

  “Nothing. Just the usual golf course litter. Beer and soft drink cans, Styrofoam food containers, cardboard golf ball boxes. All empty.”

  “No exploding golf balls?”

  “Clever. No, we would have heard about that.”

  “Any reports of suspicious activity, people? Anything out of place?”

  “These guys aren’t crime investigators, Zamby.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s the FBI’s job. Let’s get them going.” He reached for a nearby phone, then withdrew his hand. “What do we tell people in the meantime? I mean, do we tell Atlanta to stop playing golf?”

  Dwight smiled weakly, sardonically. “To stop playing tennis, going to malls, public swimming pools, baseball games?”

  “Stop going outdoors?” Zambit said, in effect, answering his own question.

  Dwight pursed his lips and stared into the distance. A dark, amorphous image—a scenario, really—plodded through his mind. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, didn’t want to articulate it, but it already had grabbed him by the shoulders and was shaking him violently.

  Zambit read it. “Say it,” he said.

  “What if,” Dwight said, his voice strained, “this was a deliberate act—.”

  “A terrorist act?”

  “Yes. A terrorist act, but only a test. A sort of Spanish Civil War. Like the Nazis in the ’30s prior to World War II, trying out their new weapons and tactics in support of General Franco’s insurgents?”

  “And then comes the hammer,” Zambit said, picking up the thread of Dwight’s analogy, “the Blitzkrieg. The invasion of Poland. Of the Low Countries. Of France.” He punched in the number of the FBI.

  Dwight closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, trying to steady himself, trying not to think of what might be coming. “Please let me be wrong,” he whispered to no one in particular. Yet he sensed the presence of something apocalyptic.

  Chapter Nine

  NORTH METRO ATLANTA

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 20

  Alnour Barashi checked the hose fittings on the jury-rigged mechanism he’d designed and built, then tested an electronically activated pump that was an integral part of the device. A mist of spray erupted from a nozzle fitted to the end of a slender pipe. The cone formed by the spray appeared a bit too broad. He adjusted the setting of the nozzle to narrow the cone and at the same time give it greater range. When the spray contained Ebola—today it was only water—he wanted it to shoot as far away from him as possible. He knew he was playing Russian roulette with his planned attack, that he might not survive it himself, but it was a risk he was willing to accept. This was his calling, his purpose in life, and he wished to make certain of its efficacy. He sought maximum stealth, maximum dispersal, maximum terror.

  Russian roulette, he reflected. An ironic term, for that’s where all this had begun so many years ago. Russia...

  NEAR THE SOUTHWESTERN SIBERIAN CITY OF NOVOSIBIRSK

  LATE DECEMBER 1991, THE END OF THE SOVIET ERA

  Paralyzing cold. Thirty degrees below zero, maybe forty or fifty. It didn’t matter. Despite wearing thermal underwear, three flannel shirts, a sweater, two pairs of wool pants and a heavy arctic parka, Sami Alnour Barashi shivered uncontrollably as he walked toward the main building in a complex of over two dozen drab structures: The Koltsovo Institute of Molecular Biology. A factory of death.

  Nine o’clock in the morning, and the sun still hugged the southeastern horizon. Ridiculous. Barashi’s breath, in the dead calm of the tardy dawn, trailed out behind him in a crystalline contrail. He’d expected more snow, but the bleak taiga landscape was blanketed by only a few inches. How could people live here? An electrified fence surrounded the sprawling facility. Tracked vehicles of an elite Russian guard patrolled its perimeter.

  He’d stopped shaking by the time he was seated in the office of Uri Sherbokov, his designated escort, minder, keeper—he wasn’t quite sure of the proper title. Sherbokov, a lean man with thinning hair, a pockmarked face and nicotine-stained fingers, looked up from his desk where he’d been studying an official-looking dossier. “You speak English?” he asked.

  “I studied at Emory University in America.” As if you didn’t know.

  “So. We have a common language then. I am Uri Sherbokov. Welcome to Vector.”

  “Vector?” Barashi asked. He leaned across the desk and shook hands with Sherbokov.

  “The Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology. We call it Vector.” Sherbokov studied the paperwork in front of him. “You have been vetted by the army?”

  “Thoroughly. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Yes, of course. So. Vector. It was founded by Biopreparat in the early 1970s.” He stopped. “You know Biopreparat?”

  Barashi nodded. He knew it well. It had been created in 1973 to provide civilian cover for advanced military research into biological weapons. It currently was under the titular control of the Minister of Medical and Microbiological Industries, but the majority of its personnel came from the army, keeping it effectively under military authority. In a phrase, Biopreparat was
the Soviet equivalent of America’s World War II Manhattan Project. There was one huge difference, however: Biopreparat was dedicated to developing biological “bombs,” not nuclear ones.

  But as the Soviet Union had begun to crumble, so had financial support for the massive Biopreparat war machine. At its peak, it had employed tens of thousands of people at forty sites dispersed throughout Russia and Kazakhstan. Now, Barashi knew, the Russians were desperate for money, desperate to keep at least a portion of Biopreparat alive. Especially the apparatus known as Vector.

  For that, they had been able to set aside their inherent xenophobia and allow him into Koltsovo. It was a win-win-win situation. He could contribute to their effort, they could add to his learning, and most importantly, his presence would allow large sums of cash to flow into Koltsovo. The money, Barashi was well aware, came from several Middle Eastern radical Islamic organizations.

  “Vector,” Sherbokov continued, “was founded to concentrate on one of the most difficult challenges of bioweaponeering: making viruses into weapons. Here we work with smallpox, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Russian spring-summer encephalitis, and hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola and Marburg. We are also developing techniques to make smallpox and Marburg into bioweapons.” He paused and stared at Barashi. “You are appalled?”

  “Hardly.” Barashi looked at the window behind Sherbokov. He couldn’t see out. A thick layer of frost on its exterior had rendered it translucent. The only thing appalling here was the weather. He shifted his gaze to Sherbokov. “I see what you’re involved with as being important. Very important. Certainly it presents daunting intellectual and technological challenges. But it also promises fruit for the oppressed and the weak. I think now there is only one preeminent military power left in the world: America. And I’m convinced this is not good for any of us, Russians, Arabs or Muslims. There may come a day when we—you, me—will need to defend ourselves against its imperialism: Its export of capitalism, religion, liberal democracy; its support of Israel; its hunger for oil.”