The Death Row Complex (5 page)

The memory of his earlier graduate work fell away from Josh when a needle on the computer screen jerked upward and then back down to draw a defined peak.

Katrina, too, visibly snapped back from wherever her mind had wandered to. “Is this a new group of molecules?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just getting started with it though, and our hundred-year-old HPLC”—he patted the side of the machine he was operating—“had a senior moment yesterday which took me all day to correct. Sorry. So I don’t know if there are any good molecules in the new group yet.”

“Any good news on the previous group? I could use some.”

“Actually, there may be. I’ve done an initial screen and found some pretty strong lethal factor inhibitors. It’s a little early to give you numbers, but later in the week I should be able to.”

“Awesome. Well, keep me posted. If the data hold up it would be great to include in the grant resubmission.” She smiled softly. “Maybe the NIH would take us more seriously if they knew what kind of anthrax inhibition we’re getting here in our cheesy little lab.”

1:36 P.M.
EDT

Guofu Wong sat down at the conference table and lowered his briefcase to the floor. “Very recently,” he said, “I was on an NIH grant review committee that received a very elegant proposal from a promising young anthrax researcher. The researcher’s name was Katrina Stone.

“Dr. Stone proposed studies designed to continue and expand upon work in her lab aimed at identifying inhibitors of the lethal factor toxin. Her approach employs a robotic technology more sophisticated than any other on the market. This enables her studies to proceed at an exceptionally rapid pace. Unfortunately, it is also very expensive.

“Dr. Stone’s preliminary results are stellar. Even in the absence of adequate funding”—he looked directly at an elderly man to his left while making the point—“she has already isolated and characterized
several
potent inhibitors of anthrax lethal factor.

“The application was rejected for a number of reasons, against my recommendation. But in light of the San Quentin outbreak, my team has taken the liberty of using our molecular modeling software to simulate interactions between Stone’s inhibitors and the Death Row anthrax proteins. The compounds interact almost perfectly.”

Wong turned to face Gilman. “To put all of that in lay terms, Agent Gilman, there is a scientist who may already be very much on the right track to a molecule that can block anthrax. And not just any anthrax, but
this specific
, genetically engineered strain. Therefore, it is my strong opinion that the grant rejection should be reversed at once and that the NIH should immediately fund this grant. I think this woman’s preliminary data is
key
to inhibiting the Death Row complex.”

The elderly man to the left of Guofu Wong, toward whom Wong had pointedly glanced when mentioning the rejection of Katrina Stone’s grant, had been calmly observing throughout the meeting. He had not spoken.

Now, he stood. “I’m Dr. James Johnson,” he said. At mention of the name, several people registered recognition and even awe. “I, too, was on the committee that rejected the grant of Katrina Stone”—he rolled his eyes—“
against
the recommendation of my friend and colleague Dr. Wong. And I’ll tell you why we rejected it.

“This scientist is only five years out of graduate school. I know that in many professions, five years of experience is a lot. However, scientist years are like reverse dog years. Until you’ve been in the field at
least
ten years, you’re still a pup piddlin’ on the carpet. Nobody gets a federal grant of this magnitude five years out of grad school, because they have no track record to prove that they will use the resources wisely. We’re not talking small potatoes here, folks. An NIH grant is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Needless to say, of the
very
few that manage to obtain this kind of funding so early in their careers, most are stars in their field. They are doing research that is beyond anything the world has seen—”

Guofu Wong interrupted. “Jim, at the risk of getting into the same debate again, Stone
is
a star. She
is
doing research beyond anything the world has seen.”

“Based on the information I had at the time we reviewed her grant,” Johnson said, “I did not consider her a star. Her research was innovative, yes. But she was also competing with large, well-oiled labs that could carry out similar studies in one tenth the time it would have taken her to do it.”

“You mean, like yours… ”

A collective discomfort began rippling through the room as the task force members shuffled awkwardly in their chairs.

James Johnson glared at Guofu Wong and drew a breath. “OK, look Guofu,” he said. “First of all, if I was so greedy as to bulldoze some pissant girl for funding, I’d be running a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company right now, not working for the government. I’m not quite that desperate.”

He laughed softly, and several others laughed with him. The two women at the table—not laughing—exchanged a glance.

“You and I both know,” Johnson continued, “that I’m a pioneer in infectious disease research. I’ve been doing this since
you
were a child, and I’m most certainly
not
in competition with young Katrina Stone.”

He turned to the rest of the task force. “Now, the fact is: the decision not to fund this woman’s grant was made before the emergence of the so-called Death Row strain of anthrax. I would like to review the data that Dr. Wong and his team have put together. If I agree with his conclusions, then I will
absolutely
agree with Dr. Wong. If Stone’s inhibitors are as potent as he claims they are, then she is definitely the most promising researcher to combat this biological weapon. However, I have a much bigger concern.”

He turned to once again address the other scientist exclusively. “How do you know she didn’t engineer it?”

5:36 P.M.
PDT

Katrina Stone left the grant review on her desk and walked through the lab toward the robot room. As she passed the pH meter setup by the door, she noticed that, as usual, the two most commonly used bottles were uncapped. Even repeated safety violations and tongue-lashings from Katrina had not broken her students of the habit. Sighing, she donned a pair of latex gloves from a box on the table and capped both bottles before throwing the gloves away.

Katrina passed through the open door that led out of the main lab and into the robot room. Nobody was inside. The massive liquid-handling robot, affectionately nicknamed “Octopus,” was active as usual.

Katrina walked past Octopus toward the adjacent room just as the machine’s Robotic Manipulator Arm—ROMA—was reaching an opening slit in a tall octagonal incubator. The laser at the tip of the ROMA scanned the barcode on a reaction plate. The claw squeezed the sides of the plate and pulled it out of the incubator, placed it precisely over its designated location on the workbench, and then slowly lowered it down into its slot.

As the ROMA retraced its path, a second arm swung into position. The pipetting arm moved over a large, liquid-filled reservoir and aspirated a precise volume into its tips, then carried the liquid to the reaction plate that had just been placed. The pre-programmed procedure scrolled along the computer screen.

Taking care to steer clear of Octopus’ moving arms, Katrina passed by the robot through yet another door into the cell culture room. She was greeted by a conspicuous, bright red “BSL-2: Biosafety Level 2” sign, on which were listed the “moderate risk” biological agents permitted inside the room.

Li Fung, Todd Ruddock, and Oxana Kosova looked up, extended distracted hellos to Katrina, and turned back to their work. Todd and Oxana were each sitting in front of a laminar flow hood with their arms inside, using automatic pipettors to dispense pink liquid media into flasks of cells. They each wore blue latex gloves. Neither wore goggles or a lab coat.

Li, dressed in jeans and sneakers with a fully buttoned, calf-length white lab coat, was peering through the microscope at a dish. She pulled a black marker out of the chest pocket of the lab coat and made a notation on the top of the dish.

“Has anyone seen Jason?” Katrina asked.

“He had to go take care of some divorce thing with his lawyer,” Oxana replied.

Katrina frowned. “Has he been over to the BSL-3 facility today?”

Oxana shrugged.

“I don’t know,” offered Li. “Is everything OK?”

“No,” Katrina said. “Everything’s not OK. If I can’t procure some funding soon, our lab is going to be shut down.”

At that moment, postdoctoral fellow Jason Fischer had two things on his mind: getting his work done and getting to his band’s gig. But right now, he could do neither. Traffic northbound on I-15 was at a bumper-to-bumper standstill.

Jason wriggled to a partial standing position in the driver’s seat of his ancient Honda to yank his cell phone from the front pocket of his baggy pants. As he sat back down, a thick lock of his long black hair snagged on the metal hinge to his rearview mirror and was ripped out.
“Mother fucker!”
Jason shouted.

After glancing at the clock on the screen of his phone—the clock on the dashboard had been broken for years—Jason clicked into the touchscreen to make a call.

“What’s up, ass lick?” his singer Zack answered.

“Hey, Zacklies, what time do we go on stage tonight?” Jason asked.

“The show starts at eight, but we don’t go on till ten.”

“That means at least ten thirty.”

“Maybe,” said Zack. “Why, you’re not going to be late, are you?”

“Nah, I think I should be there by about nine thirty. But right now I’m sitting in a parking lot on the 15 aimed the wrong direction. I have to go to Sorrento Valley and whack some infected mice before the show.”

8:49 P.M.
EDT

In his D.C. hotel room, epidemiologist Guofu Wong was eating dinner when an e-mail popped up on his laptop. The subject was “Operation Death Row.” Wong scanned the body of the e-mail and then placed a call to an FBI agent in San Francisco.