The Devil on Chardonnay (12 page)

“This morning. Put it through our new Roche 454 sequencing platform.  We compared the island isolates to the Lulua River isolates, and then both of them to the samples you brought back from the Kikwit outbreak in 1996.  The Lulua River isolates show some random variance from Kikwit, about what you’d expect in a simple RNA virus in nearly 20 years.  The samples from the island show all those same mutations, so that confirms they came from the Lulua River, but they’ve evolved just in the time they were on the island, about six months.”

 “Hmm,” Joe wrinkled his brow.  “Evolved or altered?”

“The changes look random, no long sequences different.  It’s like there was acceleration in the natural mutation process. We think Jacques heated it up too hot when he freeze dried it and that caused a lot of random changes.  We just wanted to make sure you guys didn’t mess with it.”

Joe began to sweat.  He well knew there were some deep-seated and rarely discussed suspicions held by some researchers at the CDC about the Army and their research efforts at USAMRIID.  Armies of the world have tinkered with biologic warfare since the Plague of Justinian swept out of Central Asia and crippled the army of the Eastern Roman Empire in AD 541, leading to the collapse of the Byzantine civilization.  Researchers today are unable to tell whether it was an early strain of Yersinia pestis, the same bubonic plague germ that swept through Europe in the 14
^th
century, or something else.  Whatever it was, it came out of the Arabian Desert.

“Did I send you the equipment list from the island?”  Joe reached into his briefcase for a folder.  “They had some pretty basic stuff.  They were equipped to do some simple splicing.”

“I got the list.  I agree.  Jacques couldn’t have done that, not knowingly.”

“We certainly didn’t.  We’ve never had that capability.”  Joe’s sweat began to be more noticeable, and he was embarrassed by it.  This was a sensitive issue, not because the Army was trying to hide something, but because their actual capabilities had eroded so much over the past decade that they really couldn’t do much of anything.  They had been able to replicate the virus, but that was about the limit of what they could do.  The CDC is where the expertise is.  Don’t tell that to Congress, though.  The magnitude of USAMRIID’s appropriations indicates Congress thinks they’re funding two state-of-the-art facilities.

“Tell me again, Joe.  Where did the two samples come from?”  Don was still in inquisitor mode. 

“The one marked R42A was from one of the monkeys already dead before the fire.  It probably died two weeks before we got there.  The R42B sample was from Jacques, the guy from the Pasteur Institute.  We have other samples, from several more monkeys and from Franz.”

“We want to have a look at every one.  We may be able to pinpoint at which point the mutations occurred.  It will take a year to work through what those changes might have done to Ebola, if anything.  But, that’s not the big news.  Read again that segment from Jacques’ note.”

Joe retrieved a copy of the note Jacques had written before he died.  He read the whole thing, ending with: “I saw it defeat the macaque’s immune system in two passes, become dormant to await a fresh group of monkeys, and then jump from macaques to humans before the illness was recognized.  Mosby spent $2 million to secretly acquire viable virus, purified RNA, and a vaccine.  He knows exactly what he has.”

Casperson said, “First, it looks like Jacques did make an effective vaccine. Ironic in view of his careless technical style and his complete misunderstanding of what happened on that island.” 

He stood and went to the window. 

“Jacques must have been sick when he wrote that note.  It doesn’t make sense: ‘defeating immune systems in two passes, laying dormant, jumping to people from Macaques.’  That’s just odd.  But that’s a perfect scenario for something much worse – a vector.”

“Oh, that’s right.”  Joe Smith’s heart leaped to his throat; he should have seen that.

“It could have been fleas.  They could have fed on the monkeys that were sick but got well because the vaccine gave them a head start on Ebola.  Then the fleas, bellies full of Ebola virus, jumped across the building to the new monkeys, and they got sick before they could be vaccinated.”

“I don’t know of any hemorrhagic fever that uses fleas as a vector.”

“There’s always a first.”

“What flea?”

“We’ll have to get some vet guys in here and start looking at fleas.  Surely monkeys have fleas. Most warm blooded animals do.”

“I don’t know of any virus that uses a flea as a vector,” Joe said, mind reeling with the consequences of the world’s most lethal virus suddenly becoming able to move from animal to animal with the help of a vector.  Fleas may seem slow and plodding, but they’re very effective vectors. Typhus and bubonic plague are transmitted by fleas.  Troubling as all this was about vectors, Joe felt something else.  Something they’d missed.

“Oh, shit.”

“What?”  Casperson turned from the window.

“You didn’t see all the pictures we brought back.  Boyd Chailland took a bunch of pictures just walking around.  There’s water on that island, a marsh.”

“Ooh. Mosquitos.” 

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Badges

Cooper Jordan breezed into his office just after 8 on Monday morning, stopping suddenly when he encountered Pamela Prescott and Boyd Chailland standing by his secretary’s desk.

“Why, Ms. Prescott and Mr. Chailland, I thought you were on your way back to Oklahoma.  I hope there isn’t a problem.” 

“We have some new business.”  Pam said, smiling.

“Oh?”  He looked toward his secretary, as if to question what the schedule looked like.  He knew he had an appointment in 10 minutes and was weary of these Oklahoma people.

“Yes.”

“Well, perhaps, uh,” he looked down at his secretary’s desk at his schedule.  A twinge of anxiety emerged, but Cooper wanted these two out of his office.

“Now,” she said, smile frozen on her face.

“Yes,” he said, allowing impatience to replace his usual Southern gentility.  He entered his office and stood in the center of the room, hoping he could handle this quickly and not willing to sit and exchange small talk.  There wasn’t any.

“FBI,” Pam said, showing her badge. 

“Secret Service,” Boyd said, showing his. 

“What?”  Cooper’s heart was suddenly in his throat. 

“Have a seat,” she said, and remained standing when he sat.

“Donn Wilde was bait.  Last night, you engaged in a conspiracy to commit securities fraud – insider trading.  I’m pretty sure we can audit your accounts and find that you own securities in BioVet Tech that aren’t registered with the SEC. That’s a felony.  You were offering Donn an opportunity to buy stocks on insider information, hoping the price would spike and you could get out of the hole you’re in.  Mr. Chailland is investigating the electronic transfer of funds overseas for illegal purposes – money laundering, also a felony.”

“But you’ve entrapped me!”  His mind began churning, trying to remember his lawyer’s name to drop.  Maybe stop this assault.

“Yes, we have,” Pam said, softening her tone.  “We want your cooperation.  We want to know everything you know about BioVet Tech.”

Cooper Jordan’s mind reeled. Curiously, he was reminded of a television show where he’d seen two police officers play “good cop/bad cop” with a suspect to get him to reveal information.  If Pam was playing good cop, he didn’t want to even think about Boyd Chailland as the bad cop.

“… and we want to know it now, this morning.  This is a matter of national security, and you’re going to sit in that chair and not make any telephone calls until we find out what we came here to find,” she continued.

**********

Weeds poked up through the asphalt parking lot, and a stray dog that had been loitering around the dumpsters in back hurried into the woods as Boyd’s car rolled to a stop that afternoon.  The BioVet Tech sign, built into a berm in front of the building, still looked new.  The grass needed mowing.  The last of the half-dozen cars parked there during the afternoon left just before 6, and Boyd, dressed in running shorts and a faded T-shirt, pulled in a few minutes later.

Going through his routine stretch beside the car, he watched for any sign of security.  There was none.  Jogging slowly, he looped behind the building, getting a quick look at the trash area before getting to the county road just off the highway between Goose Creek and Monck’s Corner, a few miles north of Charleston.  Forty minutes later, he returned, sweating like any jogger.  He paused behind the building and tested the doors, looked into the dumpsters and jotted down the serial numbers of several pieces of equipment set out for the trash company to haul off. 

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

A Taco Truck

“A taco truck?”  Gen. Ferguson exploded. 

“Yes, sir,” Boyd responded.  “A complete bust. The money wired to Paris to pay off Jacques came from Island Enterprises LLC, an offshore company headquartered in the Cayman Islands with an account in Charleston.  As I said, their only asset visible to Planters National Bank is a taco truck leased to a Salvadoran family that operates it on the Battery in the summer.  It’s closed now that the tourist season is over.”

“Any connection to that vaccine company you’re watching?”

“None,” Boyd said, cringing at the rage he was feeling over the telephone.  They’d burned up a pile of cash making like big-shot bankers and now they had zilch.  To make it worse, they’d brought in teams from the CDC, FEMA and Homeland Security.  Federal agents occupied an entire floor of the Omni, with more on the way.  He was calling Ferguson on the secure line they’d had installed since expanding their investigation.  They’d been having daily meetings with the U.S. Attorney, presenting him with what they thought was sufficient information to get a warrant to search BioVet Tech.  He was unconvinced.  The CDC was insisting on some kind of immediate takedown in the name of national security, and FEMA and Homeland Security were in agreement.  The Justice Department was insisting that the CDC and South Carolina had authority to inspect BioVet Tech any time they wanted under existing statute.  It was a standoff.

“Wrap it up.  Leave it to the bureaucrats.  File a final report.”

“Yes, sir.”

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Chardonnay

 The white of her sails was visible from Cooper Jordan’s office two hours before the sleek cruising yacht Chardonnay furled them in front of the Battery and motored smoothly up the Ashley River to the Charleston Yacht Club.  Locals and tourists alike stared at the tall masts and rakish profile of this graceful ship.  Unlike anything built in the past century, Chardonnay’s open deck and long bowsprit epitomized elegance and adventure, rare in this day when sailing vessels bulge with enlarged cabins to accommodate comfort at the expense of speed and simplicity.

A woman stood on the foredeck, barefoot, clad only in the briefest of shorts and a longbrimmed baseball cap.  She scanned Charleston through binoculars as Charleston scanned her ship.  Between Fort Sumter and the Battery, when the flotilla of gawking tourists discovered that the tall slender individual in the cap was female and began taking pictures, she went below.  Boyd watched
Chardonnay
approach through a long tripod-mounted telescope in the office of the president of Planters National Bank.

“She made the crossing in only 10 days!” Jordan had exclaimed when the yacht club called the night before with the news that Chardonnay had radioed from a hundred miles out of the mouth of Charleston Harbor.  “Even the big motor yachts don’t do it any faster than that.”

 No work had gotten done in the office of the president since the sail first appeared on the horizon at 9 a.m.  Boyd, Pamela, Donn, Cooper, his secretary and various other bank employees checking in every few minutes watched the approach of the yacht.  At first, Boyd didn’t understand what the big deal was. It was just a boat.  Then the size and uniqueness of the ship became evident.

“Chardonnay is 118 feet long, her mast is 129 feet tall, she is all wood, constructed in 1909,” Cooper recited proudly, as if speaking of a granddaughter. 

“Impressive,” Donn said, taking his turn at the telescope.  Boyd thought he might be talking about the woman and not the boat. 

With Cooper Jordan’s cooperation, they had maintained their banker identities for a few more days as the federal agencies continued their wrangling over at the Omni.  The stakeouts of BioVet Tech had produced nothing. 

“The provenance is even more interesting,” Cooper Jordan broke in to take yet another gaze at the spectacle sailing into Charleston Harbor.  “Chardonnay is owned by the grandson of the founder of Meilland Freres, one of the oldest and most prestigious of the European merchant banks, and the lady you see there is his granddaughter. They are the aristocrats of the banking industry.”

“Aristocrats or predators?”  Pam said darkly.

“Hah!  A student of banking history. Yes, Meilland Freres has been at the center of European political turmoil for 150 years.  In Europe, the merchant banks have been the only source of capital.  They bring new stock offerings to the public, underwrite bonds, both corporate and government.  It was the merchant bankers who enabled expansion, financed wars, massive projects like the Suez Canal, and even propped up governments during times of panic and crisis.  As the providers of capital, they’ve been at the center of whatever happens in government, science and industry,” Cooper responded, stepping back from the telescope. 

“And, they’ve fed upon the losers,” Pamela said, taking his spot to look at Chardonnay.

“Yes, fortunes are made and lost, and the merchant bankers handle the transition.”

“It was more than that,” Pam said, stepping back and letting Cooper’s secretary have a look.  “When the French Revolution began the process of making commoners of royalty, and they had to sell off their estates to pay the taxes, it was the Rothschilds, and the Warburgs, the Lazards, and the Meillands who handled the financing.  Then, as wars coalesced the small duchies and kingdoms of the Middle Ages into modern Germany, France, Austria and Italy, the losers cashed out with the merchant bankers.”