Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

45

An antibody titer
test was the most accurate way to determine the level of antibodies in blood from a host that had been infected with a virus. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, or ELISA, used the antibodies and a simple color-change technique to determine the presence of a particular antigen.

As Samantha performed the tests, she could only hear the soft hum of the sterile air pumping into her blue spacesuit. The equipment in the laboratory was identical to what was present at the CDC
, just newer and more updated. If she’d had one assistant, she would not have been at a disadvantage here.

She placed antigens from an A
gent X sample on the surface of a growth dish. Then she applied an antibody derived from the blood they’d gathered from Tristan, allowing the antibodies to attach to the antigens. Finally, she bound a protein enzyme and a substrate of the enzyme, causing it to activate.

Then she waited
, unable to leave or even take her eyes away. The minutes ticked off as she stared down, and the color began to change.

To her shock, she found
that Tristan’s blood contained Agent X.

She had been infected, but the virus had been fought to dormancy by her antibodies
as though she had been vaccinated.

She ran the blood of the other person and found the same thing
. Both samples were infected with Agent X.

A high-powered digital microscope sat on the counter near where
she worked. She took the dish and placed it inside the microscope. A monitor above the microscope lit up with the antigen and antibodies. She had seen Agent X under the microscope dozens of times. It was nearly identical to the original strain of smallpox, an oval with an hourglass shape in the middle made up of genetic material. This wasn’t identical to smallpox, not really. The genetic material was too wide and the oval shape more circular. It was certainly a strain of
Variola
, but not
Variola major
. This was something new, and a part of it looked familiar, as if it had been crossed with another virus she couldn’t identify.

She sat down in a chair and stared at the image on the microscope. She had seen that strain before, in her research somewhere
.

Camels.

She rose and looked at the image more closely. Camel pox was the closest strain of pox to
Variola major
in nature. The strain that infected camels was even more closely linked to the human strain of pox than the one in monkeys. It had never even crossed her mind that a possible vaccine could be derived from it.

Jason had fallen asleep on a cot outside the laboratory. Sam quickly
stripped off her spacesuit and went through the decontamination showers. She rushed over and woke him up.

“What?” he said, immediately
sitting up. “What is it?”

“I have it,” she said, breathless. “I have a vaccine.”

Samantha paced the corridor outside the lab and explained the process to him. Infection with camel pox acted as a vaccine that triggered the body’s own antibodies. Tristan had injected herself with camel pox, and it hadn’t killed her. It wasn’t similar enough genetically to create the cytokinetic storm of
Variola major
that would shut down a person’s immune system. But it was powerful enough to create antibodies that fought Agent X.

“That’s why they had camels
in the middle of the jungle,” she said. “I didn’t recognize the pustules on the camels because I wasn’t looking for them.” She folded her arms, staring at the floor as she paced. “We’ll have to do human trials with camel pox. I won’t ask anyone else to do it; I’ll do it myself. But we need some of the camel pox first. There’s a species of camel pox in the fridge at the CDC. I just need to get back there.”

Jason
chuckled and shook his head. “I can’t believe that’s all it was. I was so mesmerized by how Tristan did it. She wouldn’t tell me. Even though we’d been married once, she wouldn’t tell me.”

Sam stopped pacing and looked at him. “You were
the husband?”

He nodded. “Before she left the program, yeah, we were married.” He
chuckled again and pulled out his phone. “He’s not going to believe how simple this was.”

Sam’s stomach dropped. “Who are you calling?”

“Sit down, Dr. Bower. I think we’re going to have a long night.”

46

Samantha sat in a chair across the room from Jason, who was now the one pacing. He stopped and planted himself in front of the chain-link fence leading into the lab. He folded his arms and didn’t speak. His entire manner had changed, his presence
, the way Sam felt around him.

“Jason, what’s going on?”

“Probably better you speak to him.”

“Who?”

He glanced at her. “Hank.”

Within a short time, she heard a car roll to a stop in front of the building. The door upstairs opened
, and she heard people, though she couldn’t tell how many. The door by the pantry opened as well, and now she clearly heard two sets of footsteps coming down to the lab.

A young man came down
, followed by an older man in a suit. The older man smiled when he saw her, his hands in his pockets as he stood in front of her. He took one hand out and lifted her chin.

“So nice t
o meet you, Dr. Bower. I didn’t think I would be coming out here so quickly. We expected a couple of weeks of research at least.”

She brushed his hand away. “You’re Hank Kraski?”

“Ilari Kuzma. But I like Hank. So American, don’t you think?” He sat down across from her in a chair.

“Who are you?”

“I was born in St. Petersburg and emigrated to the United States when I was twenty-three.” He rubbed the side of his nose a moment. “It’s amazing, the questioning the intelligence services in the US had at the time. The Cold War was in full swing, and they were worried about KGB operatives infiltrating their ranks. That was the holy grail of intelligence, to infiltrate an enemy country’s intelligence service. When I was hired, after they already knew I was KGB, I remember the CIA’s polygrapher asking more questions about American culture than anything else. That’s what got everybody else caught. If they weren’t
American
enough, they’d be cut from the program. But I loved American culture. I was actually born in Miami. My favorite show was this one called
Greatest American Hero
. Did you ever see it?”

“No.”

“Fantastic show, that, and the
Incredible Hulk
and
The
A-Team
. No one has ever topped the US for entertainment.”

She glanced
at Jason, who was standing behind Hank like a bodyguard. The other young man, out of nowhere, shoved him and bellowed, “My arm is infected.”

Now Samantha recognized him. He was one of the men
who’d attacked her in the garage, one of the men that Jason supposedly had stopped.

“Part of the game, brother,” Jason said. “I had to make it look
real.”

“What game?” Sam said.

Hank grinned. “The game we put on for you, Dr. Bower. We figured you had the best chance of developing a vaccine, and we were not wrong. But force can only get you so far. That’s what every tyrant in history has misunderstood. They think with force, you can get a person to do anything you want them to. But that’s not true. You cannot force their mind to work. They’ll go through the motions, but the true breakthroughs won’t be there. For the mind to work properly, there has to be internal incentive. And your mind worked perfectly.” He looked at Jason. “He told me about camel pox. Isn’t that amazing? A vaccine, a natural vaccine, has been right in front of us the entire time, and no one except Tristan could figure it out. I’m sorry about her, Jason. I know she was special to you.”

“Not anymore,” Jason said.

Sam shook her head, going from one man to the other. “Why would you do this?”

Hank took in a deep breath. “Everyone was under the impression that the Soviet Union fell. Do you really think that a wall tumbling down ended one of the largest empires the world has ever seen? Do you know the one thing people can’t sacrifice? They can sacrifice almost anything
—people they love, possessions, their own lives—but they can’t sacrifice power. Abraham Lincoln said anyone can overcome adversity, but if you truly want to test a man’s character, give him a little bit of power. He was right. The KGB was the most advanced and powerful intelligence service in the world. We did not care that a wall came tumbling down.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I began as a KGB operative, the only one ever to infiltrate as high as I did in American intelligence. We knew our moment would come one day. It’s a shatterpoint. That’s what nations are like. Diamonds have a specific spot, a shatterpoint, where if you apply even a little bit of pressure, it will crack the entire diamond. I knew America’s shatterpoint would come, and I was right.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “The WHO tried to abolish smallpox. It was the first time in the history of the world that one species tried to eradicate another. Think how odd that is, how unnatural.”

Sam looked at Jason again. The other young man
was standing to the side of him, tending to the wounds on his arm. His arm appeared swollen and leaking puss. The wounds were infected, badly from the looks of it.

“I don’t understand what you want,” she said.

His face briefly contorted in anger. “I wanted the United States to choke on its own arrogance. I wanted my empire back.” A smile parted his lips, the anger dissipating as quickly as it had come. “But there are always unintended consequences, aren’t there?” He paused. “The violent aspects were something we bred. Did you catch on?”

Sam hesitated and said, “Bovine spongiform encephalopathy. I recognized it under the microscope.”

He grinned. “Just simple mad cow disease. The beef industry actually named it. It sounds almost cute, doesn’t it? In humans, it causes violent insanity. It wasn’t difficult to cross with
Variola
.”

Sam swallowed. “
Mad cow with a shorter incubation period.”

“Yes
, though the bred virus didn’t trigger in a lot of people, like you and Jessica. I don’t know why. Just one of those mysteries of nature, I suppose.”

When he said the name
Jessica
, Sam’s stomach tightened. If he knew about her, he also knew where she was.

“
The virus became too virulent,” Hank said. “We tried to destroy its entire species and, for lack of a better word, it fought harder. The mutations you’ve seen were not engineered, they were spontaneous. Somehow this damned thing knew it was fighting for its existence.” He leaned forward, interlacing his fingers. “And now it’s come home to roost. Come back to my home country and her allies. It’s… unstoppable. We needed a vaccine, and this, I thought, was the best way to get one. You’re quite a brilliant pathologist, Dr. Bower. If only you had worked for us… the things we could’ve achieved.”

Hank checked his watch.

“We should celebrate,” he said.

“Celebrate what?”

He smiled. “The drones will detonate soon.”

Samantha’s heart dropped. She must’ve had a physical reaction to the words
, because Hank laughed.

“The drones weren’t filled with smallpox, not all of them. One was shot down that was, and that one, I thought, might be tested for the virus. But the rest aren’t,” he said. “They’re filled with anthrax
, not transferable from one human to the next. I had no intention of a widespread release of Agent X on the world again without having a vaccine for my people. The anthrax will kill a few hundred people, but that’s it.” He held up his finger. “But now, we’re ready to release Agent X in a way no one could’ve imagined, forty tons of it. We’re going to reshape the world, Dr. Bower. If you join us, I’m happy to allow you to live in it.”

“The anthrax is a spore. If the drones detonate
, you won’t kill hundreds, you’ll kill thousands, maybe tens of thousands.”

“And why should I care?”

“Stop the detonation… and I’ll work for you.”

“You’ll work for us?”

“I’m dead anyway, right?” Sam said. “I’ll work for you.”

Sam tried to keep her face as steady and calm as possible.

He nodded. “If you betray me, I’ll kill you and everyone you’ve ever known. Play me right, and I’ll even allow your sister and her family to live. Maybe even that brother of yours who’s a beach bum.”

Sam swallowed. “You’ll stop the detonations?”

He took out a cell phone from his pocket and sent a text message. His phone beeped a moment later. “They’re stopped.”

Slowly, she rose. “Let me gather a few things.”