Mirrors (26 page)

Brubeck: “Our starting point is the number of lines of text within
Theogony
. Anyone have that number?”

With midnight less than six hours away, I found Brubeck’s professorial style irritating because the running clock allowed time for answers, not questions.

Flagstaff, not to be out done, blurted: “
Theogony
has one thousand twenty-six lines! That’s what it says in the email you sent me before this call.”

“Correct,” I said, hoping to accelerate the pace.

“Okay, so let’s turn to Ebola,” Brubeck responded. “It has 18,959 nucleotides. Let’s assume these two numbers—1,026 lines and 18,959 nucleotides—are intricately connected somehow.”

“Why?” Flagstaff asked.

“Just trust me,” Brubeck said. “Divide 18,959 by 1,026. What do you get?”

“18.48,” I responded, cutting Flagstaff short.

“Right, which rounds to 18.5. So, for every line in
Theogony
, there are 18.5 nucleotides in Ebola’s RNA. Before we exploit this relationship, I want you to make some changes to the Filovirus genome diagram. Begin by crossing out the title
Filovirus
and write in its place
Ebola
.”

A pause before Brubeck continued: “Okay, now I’m going to give you some numbers that refer to the nucleotide start and stop points for each Ebola gene. Label the top of the bar ‘Stop points’ and the bottom ‘Start points.’ ”

“Slow down,” Flagstaff grumbled. Moments elapsed before he said, “Okay, ready.”

Brubeck read a series of numbers I recorded quickly …

In the silence, I added double lines between each gene and at the beginning and end of the genome to represent “silent” segments of RNA that didn’t belong to genes.

“Let’s turn now to the missives, line numbers, and cryptic codes,” Brubeck said. “Get that list in front of you.”

“This is getting complicated,” Flagstaff groused.

“Bear with me,” Brubeck replied.

I readied the list …

… your father’s cruelty. Line 169. Start VP35—3,129

… of the lovely cheeks, Line 242. Start VP40—4,479

But she, surrendering to … Line 326. Start GP—6,039

But she, surrendering to … Line 326. Start GP—6,039

… Power and Strength, Line 385. Stop GP—7,133

… who lives under the earth, Line 460. Start VP30—8,509

… not that rich chimaera.

“Jason, read the first cryptic code,” Brubeck said.

“
Start VP35—3,129
,” I replied.

“Yes, which accompanies Line 169. The question is: How are line numbers and cryptic codes related? If we turn to the Ebola genome, we see the gene
VP35
begins at nucleotide number 3,129.”

“Right,” I agreed, checking the diagram with start and stop points .

“Hang on, let me verify that,” Flagstaff sputtered. Then: “Okay, I agree.”

“So divide 3,129—the start point for
VP35
—by 18.5, the average number of nucleotides in Ebola per line in
Theogony
.”

I punched the numbers. “My
Lord
, it’s 169!”

“Right, so go to line 169 in
Theogony
and see what it says.”

My eyes raced to the site. I read the line aloud …

Redress for your father’s cruelty. After all, he began it by

“The first missive!” Brubeck proclaimed. “What they’ve done is select a missive from the line number resulting from the division of the nucleotide start point for
VP35
by 18.5.”

“How the
hell
did you figure that out?” Flagstaff asked.

“I like to play with numbers.”

“Does the pattern hold?” I asked.

“Let’s find out, but let me assure you that the algebra for Marburg’s
VP35
gene does not bring us to a missive. That appears to sideline Marburg.”

I glanced at my watch. “Let’s keep moving!”

“Okay, Randy, read the next missive,” Brubeck said.

“
… of the lovely cheeks,”

“And, Jason, the accompanying code?”

I checked my sheet. “
Start
VP40
—
4,479
.” I consulted the diagram of Ebola’s genome. “4,479 is the start point for the gene
VP40
.”

I divided 4,479 by 18.5. “The division brings us to line 242,” which I read aloud …

Ceto of the lovely cheeks, and Eurybia, who had a spirit

“Damn, Brubeck, you’re a genius,” Flagstaff effused.

Brubeck, all business, responded: “Which brings us to the third missive, the only one to repeat itself. What we’ll work with here is:
Line 326. Start GP—6,039
.”

I glanced at the diagram. “6,039 is the start point for the
GP
gene.”

“Yes, and dividing 6,039 by 18.5 yields line 326, which reads …”

Bellerphon with Pegasus. But she, surrendering to

“But why the repeating missive?” I asked.

“Because, we’re dealing with a fascinating gene here,” Brubeck replied. “Ebola’s
GP
gene encodes two different proteins, and while the code for each protein begins at the same start point, the stop points are different.”

After whistling softly, Flagstaff muttered, “Holy cow!”

“You see, Ebola’s
GP
gene has a built-in editor,” Brubeck explained. “On the one hand, it allows the entire gene to express itself to produce a protein 676 amino acids in length called ‘glycoprotein’ or ‘GP.’ Alternatively, it can express only the beginning segment of the gene to generate a smaller protein 364 amino acids long called ‘secreted glycoprotein’ or ‘sGP.’ The two proteins share a sequence of roughly 280 amino acids yet differ in remaining sequences. This editing ability of
GP
is a feature that clearly distinguishes Ebola from Marburg. Marburg’s
GP
gene produces only glycoprotein, not secreted glycoprotein. So, the repeating missive stems from the ability of the
GP
gene in Ebola to produce two different proteins, and it’s compelling evidence that we’re dealing with Ebola, not Marburg.”

“What do the proteins do?” Flagstaff asked.

“sGP, the shorter one, inactivates white blood cells whereas GP helps Ebola invade host cells. It may also attack the lining of blood vessels, contributing to bleeding.”

“Give me a moment to sketch something,” I said, determined to derive the next missive. I penned a square to represent the
GP
gene and labeled the left-hand border
6,039
, the start point. “What’s the stop point for sGP?”

“7,133,” Brubeck replied.

“And for the larger protein, GP, the stop point is 8,068, right?” I lifted that number from the stop point for
GP
that Brubeck had given us earlier.

“Correct.”

I completed the drawing …

“Okay,” I continued, “so if we divide 7,133 by 18.5, we get line 385.” Once again, I read from the text …

Power and Strength, outstanding children, who will not…

“That’s the next missive,” Brubeck observed.

“Which leaves just one more to derive from
Theogony
,” Flagstaff said.

From the code,
Start VP30—8,509
, I did the algebra, producing line 460 which read …

Mighty Hades who lives under the earth,

“Done,” Brubeck asserted.

“Done with what?” Flagstaff asked. “None of this tells us how Ebola played a role in the XK59 poisonings.”

“I agree,” I said.

“You’re right, we still need to figure that out, but I doubt the perpetrator of the poisonings would have gone through these machinations if Ebola wasn’t involved somehow.”

“What we need to do is see if the outbreak strain of
Aeromonas
carries Ebola’s
GP
gene,” I said. “If it does, perhaps that could explain some of the bleeding the victims experienced.”

“We’re doing that as we speak,” Brubeck replied. “We’re sequencing the entire genome of
Aeromonas
.”

“When will you have the results?”

Brubeck replied, but the words didn’t register because an arm pulled me from the driver’s seat of the SUV. A muscular man in a dark suit and sunglasses began dragging me toward a black sedan with tinted windows where a driver waited behind the wheel.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, clutching the cell phone in my hand.

“Shut up and get in!” my captor ordered.

“Jason, Jason, are you there?” I heard Brubeck call through the phone.

7:04 p.m.

What wrestling skills I possess I owe to the farm on which I grew up. At one end of the barn, there was a soupy pit that collected runoff from the stalls where we kept our cows and pigs. It was a collecting pond of the sort one sees in suburban housing divisions, only ours had no cattails or surrounding fence. It held gravy-thick sludge consisting of organic waste—cow excrement, moldy grain, and chicken droppings—that coalesced after storms. My brother built a platform on stilts over the slurry and connected it to dry land with logs. On weekends in summer, we invited friends to the barn for wrestling matches. We played king-of-the-mountain on the platform, a game that honed our balance, agility, and speed. A nearby hose restored our dignity when we fell into the putrid pool.

After my apprehension in Annapolis, I drew on that training to fend off the arms that pushed me toward an open door of the sedan. Spinning, I dug a heel into my assailant’s knee, sending him to the ground. With his partner still behind the wheel, I bolted for the SUV knowing that if I reached it, my odds of escape increased for I knew how to drive under duress.

I became intimate with vehicles at the age of eight. Each morning on our farm, I took the wheel of a tractor to haul hay from the silo to the barn. As time passed, I pushed the John Deere to its limits, driving it more like a stock car than a tractor. I set up obstacles around the farm that took me through gullies, over compost heaps, and around sheds. After flipping once, I wore a helmet at my mother’s behest, an addition I viewed as a license to drive faster.

I ventured to roadways at the age of fourteen courtesy of a pickup truck my brother bought. Sneaking out at night, I probed its speed and maneuverability. My favorite destination was the high school where I fish-tailed lampposts and dumpsters. Cones borrowed from the football team allowed me to create a course on which I timed myself. At sixteen, of-age finally, I drove in demolition derbies as a hired-hand, using a bait-and-strike strategy to lure opponents before spinning around to demolish them.

I pressed the accelerator now of my car in Annapolis, leaving a cloud of smoke from burning tires. After running a red to enter a thoroughfare, I watched the sedan take pursuit. I wove through cars to distance myself from my adversaries, screeching abruptly at one point into an alley so narrow I barely cleared the fences along each side. Midway through the stretch, I saw the sedan turn after me. Side-swiping a row of garbage cans, I left them littering the pavement. Moments later, as I re-entered city traffic, I looked over my shoulder to see the sedan slamming cans.

The road I joined had four lanes with Victorian homes on each side. Between the lanes, a jogging path coursed along a grassy median which soon widened to host a grove of oak trees. With traffic thickening, I slowed to a crawl. To no avail, I flashed my lights and honked while, behind me, the sedan closed ranks.