Sector C (27 page)

The sound of a shotgun blast ricocheted from one of the hunting ranges. A distant
whoop
of excitement followed.  

 Walt smiled.
“Couldn’t have asked for better timing.
I think that will reassure you we are carrying out the recommendations of the CDC ahead of being asked, yet on a timescale that provides us the most profitability. I’m not sure what more you want here.”

And suddenly Mike knew what it was about the CEO’s too-pat spiel that didn’t follow logically. “You’re hunting down all your game, you say?”

“We’ve made the decision to dispose of
all our
inventory in light of the current crisis, yes.”

“And you have 20 hunters here to accomplish that?”

“We have more scheduled to arrive once the ban on air travel lifts. Assuming the airport opens again soon, the Triple E staff should all be out of a job within the next ten days.”

“But how did you know?”

“Excuse me?”

“How did you know you’d be disposing of
all your
inventory, as you put it? Even privileged clients need lead time to arrange their schedules. Twenty people were already here when the president made his speech. What was it that prompted you to arrange all this beforehand?”

“I assure you, Mr. Shafer, you are looking for motive where none exists. We are simply offering our current — rather wealthy — clients the opportunity to get a little more for their money while they’re already here. There is nothing prophetic about the redirect we’ve made in the last couple of days.”

“That’s a lie, Mr. Thurman.”

Light from the open door framed Sylvia Decker as she snapped a picture of Walt and his guests with her contraband camera. Unable to get any scoop from her fellow hunters and unable to gain access to any of the animals, her anticipated expose, up until now, had been in imminent trouble. Not to mention she’d been finding the incessant conversations about hunting — from past experiences to the merits of the different brands of tools of the trade — a bit tedious. Following Walt and his guests had given her a small thrill — and being able to call Walt out in a lie was about to give her failing expose the resuscitation it needed.

“You’re with the government, aren’t you?” she asked Mike. “That’s what I overheard.”

“The CDC.
Why?”

“Because Triple E Enterprises sent out invitations for a special hunting event that they billed ‘The Last Shot’ more than a month ago.
They must have known that far back they needed to get rid of their inventory.”

Walt spread his hands.
“Coincidence, nothing more.”

“Pretty lucky for you, wouldn’t you say?” Mike asked.

“The business world runs as much on luck as on skill. It’s simply a matter of seizing opportunity and capitalizing on coincidence. We were doing a runup to taking the company public, that’s why all the hype.”

“So a tiger escapes, livestock become infected and you schedule a special hunt to what, garner publicity? I don’t see the media sharks swarming. Surely you sent a press release.”

“We postponed going public.”

“Another coincidence?”

“A matter of business strategy, which I am not discussing.”

“How about Sector C?” Sylvia asked. “Are you discussing that?”

Walt shrugged.
“A group of specialty animals.
They have no bearing on why the CDC is here. They’re concerned about a common tiger.”

“We’re concerned about the spread of the disease, whether your tiger was Patient Zero or not,” Mike reminded him before turning to Sylvia. “What kind of specialty animals?’

“That’s the thing. It’s so secret, even I don’t know and I’m supposed to be hunting there tomorrow. Some kind of elephant they think is worth 1.1 million dollars — and that’s the discount price.”

“Our fees are all-inclusive,” Walt pointed out, “and cover taxidermy costs, storage and shipping.”

“And if I elect to ship my elephant off to a zoo somewhere instead, do your fees cover that?”

“I’m afraid taking a live animal off this compound isn’t possible.”

“Well, of course not now. But I think you had to know at least five or six weeks ago that they’re diseased and that’s why you slashed the cost on them. Who’s going to pay top dollar for sick animals?”

“My God.”
Donna’s voice trembled. “You’re going to stuff these animals and then ship them out? What if the disease doesn’t stop with the death of its host? You can’t kill a prion — how do you intend to denature it?”

“I was under the impression you have to ingest it for it to infect you,” Walt said.

“But if there’s dried saliva or blood or even urine on the skin, you could pick up the proteins just moving the trophy or touching it. Then, your dog licks your hand or you feed your baby —”

“That’s speculation on your part. And a lot of coincidence needed to set up just the right scenario. We can take this too far, you know. What if a mouse cleans up grain that spills out of a cow’s mouth then somehow winds up in a shipping crate bound for Korea, gets eaten by a dog, then some family eats the dog? Due diligence has to be practiced, of course, but to mitigate every possible contingency would bring travel, commerce and eventually the whole global economy to a screeching halt. That’s just not practical. We’ll take prudent care, but to ban us from shipping mounted animals on the basis they
might
be able to transmit disease in an improbable series of events is just plain ridiculous.”

“About those specialty animals in Sector C… ” Mike reminded him.

“They are bioengineered specimens Triple E is looking to patent and are outside the scope of your investigation. The tiger you found came out of Sector B — our Endangered group.”

“And there’s no integration of animals, ever? The animals in Sector C have different surrogates than those in your B Sector?”

“No, they have the same surrogates. And they stay together in the nursery till they are separated as adolescents. You’ll note your tiger is an adult, though. Two or three years old, I believe I was told.”

“But if VTSE
did
originate here and you’re playing with biogenetics, what’s to say that it didn’t appear as a genetic mutation first and spread from there?”

“Are you inferring we may have
created
this disease? We deal with mammalian genotypes, not individual strands of proteins. When I say we’ve bioengineered some animals, I’m referring to producing stable, healthy zygotes that carry favorable, normal characteristics. I’m not talking gene manipulation that produces anomalies like pigs with wings.”

“My elephant, then” Sylvia said. “What makes it worth twice as much as, say, an endangered Asian elephant?”

“I would have to know which particular animal was matched with you, Ms. Decker
— ”

“No, you wouldn’t, Mr. Thurman. I’m sure you can tell me in general what makes the animals in Sector C so special if they are only produced with normal and favorable characteristics. I’m going to find out tomorrow anyway.”

“Yes, Ms. Decker, you’ve paid for that privilege. And I’ll remind you that you signed a confidentiality statement to treat the contents of Sector C as private information, not to be shared with any sources.”

“If the CDC wants to know, I’ll tell them. Just as I intend to tell my ASTEAM colleagues. If you don’t like it, sue me. But I’ll remind
you
that my husband is a corporate lawyer — and quite a successful one, I might add. Besides, if you’re planning on getting rid of all your stock now anyway, what difference does it make?”

“As your husband would understand, Ms. Decker, companies work to multiyear plans. Just because a patent may not pay off for us this year doesn’t mean it won’t be successful two or three years down the road. Perhaps
it’s
best I cancel your hunt tomorrow as you don’t seem inclined to shoot anyway.”

Sylvia was stunned into silence.

The more Walt hid behind corporate strategy and confidentiality, the more Mike was determined to find out what he was hiding. The tiger had been their foot in the door — evidence of an early connection between the outbreak and Triple E’s animals. But he still had one ace up his sleeve.
Something that had surfaced nearly two months ago when his shadows had helped him trace some random blips on the medical radar.

“While Donna and I came here specifically to identify Patient Zero,” Mike said, “I’ll also point out that I ran across some interesting statistics awhile back regarding Triple E workers. Seems a handful of your staff were some of the first admitted to hospitals with VTSE symptoms. We even found a death certificate for one worker a year-and-a-half ago
that points
to symptoms suspiciously similar to those of VTSE as the cause of death. That’s some pretty damn strong evidence that, one, Triple E is at Ground Zero, and two, the disease may be spread by more than simply eating infected meat or drinking contaminated milk.

“That means anyone working or —” he threw Sylvia an apologetic glance — “visiting here is likely exposed. If your clients are as elite as you say, the first one in your current batch who gets sick and finds out you knew about the disease
before
you sent out invitations to a hunt, is gonna sue your ass off. If more than one gets sick, they’ll bleed your company dry and it won’t matter how many patents you’ve got stacked up.”

Sylvia found her voice at that. “I’ve been exposed? I mean,
really
exposed? Not just ‘it’s possible that I ate something contaminated’ exposed? I didn’t think just being here meant I could get this VTSE thing. Oh my God. Tell me you’re kidding.
Or at least exaggerating.”

“We don’t know exactly how it’s transmitted.” Donna’s jaw twitched, but her tone conveyed the proper mix of candidness tempered with compassion learned from her years of delivering hard news to owners of dying animals. “All we can say is the closer to the animals and their living quarters you are the higher the danger.”

Sylvia drew in on herself, trying to not be a part of the barn where particles of hay hung in the sunlight slotting through the high windows. Almost unconsciously, she shallowed her breathing, trying not to inhale any microscopic protein bits that could be swirling around with the hay dust kicked up by the shuffling of elephant feet or the snort of rhino snouts.

“You should never have come here,” Walt told her. “Those invitations went out only to clients who have hunted here before. To people most likely already exposed or sick or carriers.”

Retribution, Sylvia thought.
The world getting back at her for trying to show up her about-to-be-ex husband.
All she wanted was to make him pay for what he’d put her through. To show him that there were consequences even for successful, big-time lawyers when they treated others like dirt. That there was justice in life when you took the responsibility to see it carried through.
But no.
This was life’s lesson instead.
That sinners
with enough money could continue to sin freely and that their victims would always be victims, crushed beneath the indifferent world’s calloused heel.

Mike ignored Sylvia, leaving her to face her inner demons alone. There were more important matters to deal with now. Like Donna, he’d caught the admission Walt had intentionally thrown, not doubting for a second the man knew precisely what he was doing. Now Mike had to figure out to what purpose he was doing it. “Then you did know.”

“Our geneticists have been working on a cure for weeks.”

“So our tiger
is
Patient Zero,” Donna said.

Walt laughed.
“The tiger?
You’ve been living out in the middle of nowhere for way too long if you believe the rest of the world operates on such simple terms. Simple clues lead to simple results, right? You think we’re keeping our research secret just so we can make a fast buck before we’re found out. Sure we want to make a living, be guaranteed a future before this hand plays itself out. But the truth isn’t clean, it isn’t simple and it isn’t anywhere near what you think it to be.”

“Enlighten us.”

A slow, almost sad, smile slid across Walt’s face as he fingered the security alarm on the phone in his pocket. One tap for yellow:
Be prepared, find and shadow the CXOs, lock down traffic in and out.
He hoped these three would stay calm and accept the consequences of sticking their rube noses into matters far beyond their limited comprehension. He didn’t want to escalate to red.