Snakehead (11 page)

In the front reception area they had to fill out forms and were in turn handed guest security passes by a silver-headed security man. A young uniformed woman with hair neatly plaited up the back led them along a wood-panelled corridor. Portraits of past USAMRIID commanders followed their progress to the Joel M. Dalrymple conference room, where a large oblong table had been set up with more than twenty seats around it. There were already a dozen other people standing about in groups talking, several of them in uniform. Li took the opportunity of whispering to Margaret, ‘What are we doing here?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said grimly. ‘But I have a real bad feeling about it.’

Steve brought over an older man in a dark suit to meet Margaret. Li drifted away.

‘Margaret, this is Dr. Jack Ward,’ Steve said. ‘Dr. Ward is
the
Armed Forces medical examiner.’

Dr. Ward shook Margaret’s hand solemnly. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Campbell. I’ve heard a very great deal about you.’

Margaret glanced at Steve then back to Dr. Ward. ‘Have you?’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘You have…’ he chose his words carefully, ‘…something of a reputation.’

‘Really?’ said Margaret. ‘Reputations can be good or bad. I hope it’s not the latter.’

‘I’m far too much of a gentleman to say,’ the doctor said, and allowed himself the most distant of smiles.

Margaret looked to Steve to see if he had shared in this obscure joke. But he was standing with a glazed look in his eyes, staring into the middle distance. He became aware of her looking at him and quickly refocused. ‘What?’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ He seemed flustered. ‘Sorry. Stuff on my mind.’

A commanding voice cut above the hubbub in the conference room. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, would everyone like to take a seat around the table?’ It took a few minutes for the assembled to settle and for the possessor of the voice, in full army uniform, to introduce himself as Colonel Robert Zeiss, Commander of the USAMRIID facility which was hosting this hastily arranged meeting. He, apparently, was going to chair it, and he began by introducing everyone at the table. There were a couple of doctors from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, several senior USAMRIID officers; two representatives of the FBI in addition to Fuller; three representatives of an organisation that Zeiss referred to as FEMA, but without explanation; a middle-aged man in a grey suit from the CIA; and a secretary seconded from the Commander’s office to take notes. Curious eyes fell on Li and Margaret as they were introduced. Hrycyk sat at the far end of the table with his arms folded, watching and listening, and not saying much.

‘We’re also expecting someone from the CDC very shortly,’ Zeiss said. He looked at Li. ‘For the uninitiated, that’s the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.’

Steve’s attempted smile at Margaret across the table lacked conviction, and the sense of impending doom that had been descending on her over the last couple of hours started to become acute. Why
were
they here? And why the need for all these high-ranking military medical people?

She had her back to the door and did not turn until Zeiss said, ‘Oh, and this is Felipe Mendez, emeritus professor of genetics, formerly of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.’

Margaret felt a sudden restriction across her chest. She turned to see Professor Mendez shuffle into the conference room with what he probably imagined was haste. He was just as dishevelled as she remembered him, his overcoat hanging open, buttons missing from his jacket, trousers two sizes too big, belted at the waist and gathered in folds around his loafers. His hair was whiter than when she had last seen him, thinner, but just as unruly. The only thing about him that reflected any measure of care and attention were his neatly trimmed white goatee beard and moustache.

His watery brown eyes smiled at the faces around the table. ‘Apologies,’ he muttered. ‘So sorry to be late.’ He found an empty seat opposite Margaret, put his battered old leather briefcase on the table and sat down. For a moment she thought he hadn’t seen her, until he looked up and smiled beatifically. ‘Hello, Margaret my dear,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

She had no opportunity to respond. Colonel Zeiss was anxious to get the meeting underway. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, just so that none of you are labouring under any illusions, the reason you are all here tonight is that in our view we are facing a full-scale national emergency.’ He had everyone’s attention now. ‘As some of you already know, blood and tissue samples taken from the bodies found in the truck at Huntsville have revealed that the victims appear to have been injected with the virus which caused the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.’ His announcement prompted a mixed reaction around the table.

‘Flu?’ Hrycyk said dismissively. ‘Is that all? I get a shot against the flu every year.’

Dr. Ward spoke for the first time. ‘The Spanish flu was the most pathogenic flu virus in history,’ he said. ‘It killed more people in three months than the Great Plague in three hundred years. And there is no shot that will protect you against it, Agent Hrycyk.’ He leaned forward. ‘Your own figures for illegal immigration should tell you that the ninety-eight Chinese we found in that truck are probably just the tip of the iceberg. They died by accident. We have no idea how many others successfully crossed into the United States bringing the virus with them.’

Margaret was puzzled. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How do you know it’s the Spanish flu virus? I don’t remember being off the day they did virology, and my understanding was that we didn’t even know about the existence of viruses in 1918. So you’ve nothing to compare it with.’

Dr. Ward responded coolly, ‘Perhaps, Dr. Campbell, you were too busy helping out the Chinese police to keep up with the news. A research team at AFIP managed to partially sequence the Spanish flu virus at the end of the last decade.’

Margaret felt her face colour. ‘Then perhaps you’d like to enlighten me, Doctor,’ she said, trying to retain as much dignity as possible.

‘There are others around the table besides yourself, Ms Campbell, who require enlightenment,’ Dr. Ward said. By now Margaret had the very firm impression that she didn’t like the good doctor very much. He took a moment to compose himself. ‘Back in the nineties,’ he said, ‘a team of researchers at AFIP HQ in Washington, led by Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger, discovered that tissue from seventy Spanish flu victims had been stored at AFIP’s National Tissue Repository. They were able to recover fragments of viral RNA from the lung tissue of a twenty-one-year-old private who died from the flu at Fort Jackson, Carolina, in 1918. Along with other samples, and soft tissue recovered from an Eskimo grave in Alaska, they were able to sequence enough of the recovered fragments to establish for the first time that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an H1N1 type virus, and that it was completely unlike any other human flu virus identified during the past seventy years.’ The doctor paused to let his words sink in. There were others around the table to whom this was also news.

He went on, ‘The closest match they could find was with a strain known as Swine Iowa 30, a pig flu isolated in 1930 and kept alive at various culture repositories ever since. It lent some credence to those who had always believed that the virus mutated from a strain found in birds, was passed on to pigs and then ultimately to humans — a unique sequence of mutations giving the virus its unparalleled pathogenic qualities.’ He sat back. ‘And of course, it was by a unique sequence of good, or bad, fortune that we actually identified the virus in these Chinese immigrants. The viral panel requested by Dr. Cardiff included a routine test for flu virus. But it was sheer chance that one of Dr. Taubenberger’s team got to cast an eye over the results. She immediately recognised part of the sequence, and initiated further, specific tests that proved positive.’ He leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers interlocked. This was his moment and he was making the most of it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are 99 percent certain that what we are dealing with here is the original Spanish flu virus. Last time around it killed anything up to forty million people. This time, it could be a whole helluva lot more.’

‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ Margaret said, cutting short Dr. Ward’s moment, ‘but I’m beginning to wonder now if I
was
off the day they did virology. I mean, if all of these people were injected with this virus, how come none of them showed any flu-like symptoms?’

‘Because they weren’t suffering from the flu, my dear.’ Mendez’s interjection took Margaret by surprise. She turned toward him, blinking.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They were only carrying it,’ he said. ‘In a noninfectious form. They weren’t affected by it at all.’ He now had the attention of everyone around the table. He ran nicotine-stained fingers through his pure white whiskers. ‘The virus with which they were injected was genetically manipulated so that the DNA in their genomes would be transformed to contain its code.’

Margaret was struggling to keep up with this. ‘I thought that RNA viruses couldn’t get into the human genome.’

Mendez smiled. ‘My dear, if you want to be technical about it, then you are absolutely right. But by using standard gene therapy methods, it’s not too difficult.’ He leaned forward and looked around the faces at the table, intoxicated by his own knowledge. ‘All you have to do is to take a retrovirus called Moloney leukemia virus and use it to nest the code for the RNA flu virus along with a few genes required to make the nested virus into an active transcript.’

‘Woah…Hey, hold on there!’ It was Hrycyk. ‘This is going wa-ay over my head.’

Mendez looked at him appraisingly. ‘I’ll try to make it simple, then.’ And Hrycyk shifted uncomfortably, as if in having to make it simple, Mendez was passing comment on the perceived level of Hrycyk’s intelligence. The professor said, ‘Viruses are made either of DNA or RNA. In this instance, our flu virus is made of RNA. Simply put, what you do is splice the code for the RNA flu virus into the Moloney leukemia virus, which is going to act as your vector, or carrier. Then you coat that virus to make it into a retrovirus that can convert its RNA into DNA and integrate into the DNA of its host.’

‘Hang on.’ Hrycyk cut in again, at the risk of looking even more ignorant. ‘Doc, you said you were going to make this simple.’

Mendez smiled patiently. He had always had a good way with his students, and for him this was just like any other class. There was always one obstinately ignorant student. ‘In the simplest terms, for the gentleman at the end of the table,’ he said, ‘these Chinese hopefuls had their DNA transformed to make them, effectively, into walking-talking flu viruses.’ He raised an eyebrow in Hrycyk’s direction inviting a further question. When it did not come, he added, ‘However, the flu would not have become active until their DNA got converted back into its infectious RNA form.’

‘And how would that happen?’ This from one of the AFIP doctors.

‘Good question.’ Mendez leaned back in his chair, still smiling. ‘I don’t know. At least, I know how the change would be triggered, but not what would trigger it.’ He placed his hands, palm down, on the table in front of him. ‘That’s what I’ve been brought out of retirement to find out.’ There was an odd tone to this, and he leaned forward and looked along the table toward Zeiss. ‘That’s the party line, isn’t it, Colonel?’

Zeiss looked uncomfortable. ‘The Department of Defence considers you to be the foremost expert in this field, Professor,’ he said.

Mendez nodded. ‘Yes, when it suits them.’

Hrycyk said, ‘Hey, I’m sorry to butt in on this mutual admiration society. I mean, call me stupid, but I still don’t quite get this.’

Margaret said, ‘Agent Hrycyk prefers his English in words of one syllable.’

‘What exactly is it you don’t understand, Agent Hrycyk?’ Mendez asked, still with his patient smile.

‘All this stuff about triggers and nests…’ He glared at Margaret. ‘I don’t know about words of one syllable, but just plain English would help.’

‘Okay,’ Mendez said. He thought for a moment. ‘The Moloney leukemia virus has been used to disguise our flu virus to get it into the genome. It has also been genetically manipulated — there is no point in me trying to explain the process to you, because you simply wouldn’t understand it. But it has been manipulated to contain certain genes required to make the disguised flu virus active by transcribing it back to its infectious RNA form.’ He put a hand up to stop Hrycyk’s protests. ‘Let me finish, Agent. These genes have been programmed to be activated by some kind of protein encountered in the environment — most likely some sort of taste or smell found in a particular food or drink.’

Hrycyk said, ‘What, you mean they eat a pork chop and suddenly they get the flu?’

‘Crudely put, but broadly accurate,’ Mendez said. ‘The trouble is that we don’t know what will trigger that response.’ He waved his hand toward the ceiling. ‘And finding it is going to be like searching for…’ he searched himself for an appropriate simile, ‘…a speck of dust in the Milky Way.’

A long silence settled on the table as everyone around it fully digested the substance of what they had just heard. Margaret, the tension in her chest making her feel almost physically sick, was the first to break it. She avoided looking at Steve and directed her question to Professor Mendez. ‘Professor, you’re telling us that these people have been injected with a form of Spanish flu that will only become active when they eat, or drink, or smell some specific thing.’ She paused. ‘Why? I mean, why would anybody do that?’

It was Zeiss who responded. ‘I think we have to take the view that what we are dealing with here is a bioterrorist attack on the United States. A very clever, very subtle, attack with a lethally effective potential.’

Margaret shook her head in disbelief. ‘But that’s insane! Something like the Spanish flu doesn’t recognise national boundaries. It’s not just Americans who’ll die. A virus like that will kill people all over the world.’

Zeiss said, ‘We are not necessarily dealing with a rational enemy, Dr. Campbell. We could be looking at fanatical extremists who just don’t care about the consequences. Anyone from Islamic fundamentalists to extreme right-wing militia groups intent on discrediting the Chinese.’