Haldane picked up on her hesitancy. "What, Milly?" he asked.
Yuen looked up from the papers and caught Haldane's gaze. "It's not hard science or anything, but some of the RNA probes were weakly positive for influenza."
"So it's a strain of the flu?" Haldane asked.
"We can't say that," Yuen said and dropped her eyes to her notes again. "All we're testing for is viral DNA and RNA. The source patients might have all been exposed to an influenza outbreak ten years ago, and we're just seeing the remnants of the dead virus in their blood."
"No causality." Haldane nodded. "I understand, but what does your gut say, Milly? Is this the newest strain of the flut'
"No," Yuen said, but then her voice wavered. "I can't say for sure, but it's more like this microbe cross-reacts with the influenza on testing."
"Close but no cigar, huh?" Haldane said.
Yuen nodded enthusiastically. "That's my hypothesis. This isn't any known influenza A or B, but a closely related virus. Probably one we've never seen."
Haldane wasn't so sure. He leaned back in his chair and looked over at Nantal. "What do the Chinese expect from us?"
"Noah, they only want what every government that comes to us wants." Nantal held his arms wide open in front of him and smiled. "To find the cause and wipe out the disease."
"Right," McLeod said. "And do it yesterday. And let them take the bloody credit."
"They can keep the credit," Haldane said. "This bug sounds a bit too familiar. Short incubation. Related to influenza. Hemorrhagic pneumonia. Targeting the young and the healthy .. "He paused and caught the eye of each of his colleagues in turn. "As you know the Spanish Flu--a form of Swine Flu--disappeared in 1919 just as quickly as it came. They've only ever found remnants of the actual virus. Thus, only part of the virus's genome has ever been sequenced. We wouldn't recognize it for sure if it had resurfaced."
"Ah, Noah, it's early to make that leap," Nantal said.
"Yeah?" Haldane said. "But if it is the Spanish Flu, or some descendent of the same, it would be catastrophic to overlook the possibility."
"Understood." Nantal nodded. "But you know the rules, my friend. Until we isolate a pathogen, we only refer to it by the syndrome it produces."
"Which is?"
"'Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome."' Nantal pointed proudly to Yuen. "We have Milly to thank for the acronym. ARCS."
The term sounded to Haldane as innocuous as the other viral acronyms, like SARS and AIDS, which had surfaced in the past few decades. But hearing it spoken aloud sent a chill through him as if he had just stepped out into the cool Geneva air.
He wondered, grimly, if ARCS was going to make the world forget about all other viruses.
CHAPTER 5
GEORGETOWN WASHINGTON, D.C,
With Peter's possessions gone, their spacious three-bedroom condo felt empty to Gwen Savard. Not in a heartsick, if-only-we-had-one-more-chance way. Just barren. Peter had wanted to divide the furniture equally, but Gwen had insisted he take most of it. Now she regretted it. Guilt, she realized in retrospect, was not a helpful emotion when it came to dividing assets.
What did she have to feel guilty about? she wondered. She hadn't been unfaithful. She had never treated him with malice or cruelty. She had cooked her share of meals and had done more than her share of the laundry. She even attended most of his firm's insufferable socials, ever the lawyer's dutiful wife. Though Peter cited her consuming career as the cause, it was not the reason their relationship had derailed. Neither was the infertility issue. At painfully introspective moments like these, which only came after the breakup, Gwen realized her heart hadn't been in the marriage from the outset As hard as Peter tried, one person cannot carry a romance. After he finally threw his hands up and walked away from their pleasant but passionless relationship Gwen assumed the lion's share of the blame.
Unwelcome childhood memories stirred. Gwen could picture her mother's face. Not the current surgically pulled and heavily painted version, but the youthful stunning face of Gwen's childhood. How Savard remembered her mother's pained half smile that failed to conceal her disappointment when the A wasn't an A+ or when the silver piano prize wasn't gold or when the state scholarship wasn't a Rhodes scholarship. Gwen imagined her mother's youthful face, lips locked in that letdown grin, reassuring her how much better off she would be without Peter. Gwen's stomach tightened. Like every day since Peter had left, she decided it best to put off telling her mother for another day.
The unadorned walls amplified Savard's sense of emptiness until it became oppressive. She needed to escape the reminders of her failed marriage, which explained why the country's Bug Czar packed for a business trip that could have been handled over the phone.
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
Gwen arrived in the early evening feeling rested. A self-confessed '70s music addict, she had passed the six-hour drive--which accounted for the longest stress-free stretch in Gwen's recent memory--listening to her favorite CDs, including Elton John's
Captain Fantastic,
Fleetwood Mac's
Rumors,
and Supertramp's
Breakfast in America.
Driving through New Haven she was flooded with nostalgic memories of her postgraduate days at Yale, especially when she passed by her old apartment block. In sixteen years nothing had changed from the outside. Slowing to a halt at the front door, she could practically smell the exotic flavors that permeated her cramped studio apartment year round thanks to the thick hallway carpets, which absorbed her multi-ethnic neighbors' cooking, magnified the aromas, and then released them. Gwen wondered if her unit still had the same blue and pink pastel-colored walls, which she and her friends had impulsively slapped on one day and regretted thereafter.
Her career since graduation had been so demanding that in retrospect the four years spent completing a PhD at Yale while working two part-time jobs struck her as carefree by comparison. By college, Gwen had accepted her driving ambition as part of her makeup; neither good nor bad, but as much a part of her as her passion for travel or her tireless work ethic. Most of her fellow students kept the goal of their PhD as their primary focus. Not Gwen. She planned her life well beyond the degree. But she never envisioned a career within government. As a student, she assumed she would get her own lab and a national health research grant. To one day have a shot at a Nobel Prize like her mentor, Dr. Isaac Moskor.
Savard was surprised to realize that she hadn't seen Isaac in almost four years. He never left New Haven. And she rarely found time to make it back. They had kept in touch by e-mail and phone, but Isaac wasn't much of a phone-talker and even less of a social writer. Professionally, Gwen tried to keep abreast of Moskor's research because many considered him
the
leading researcher into antiviral antibiotics. Though fiercely secretive with his work, he trusted Gwen enough to share breakthroughs with her.
Driving by her favorite student haunts, Gwen meandered her way across New Haven. Eventually she reached the sleepy middle-class neighborhood at the edge of town where Moskor lived. She pulled up to the curb in front of his modest, fifty-year-old beige bungalow. Like her former student residence, the house had not changed in the past twenty years.
Isaac Moskor met her at the front door. At least six-four and 250 pounds, he had a square face, slanting forehead, and a protuberant jaw that one might associate with professional wrestling, not academia. In his late sixties, his posture was still bone-straight and age had not diminished his mass. Though Savard was taller than average at five-eight, Moskor still had to stoop down to hug her. He held her in a tentative, awkward embrace, as if afraid of crushing her in his massive arms. Acts of physical intimacy were the only times Gwen ever sensed uncertainty from her mentor.
Moskor stood back and sized her up from toes to hair. "Still too skinny, but otherwise you look okay, kid," he said with his deep Jersey accent.
Gwen smiled warmly, realizing how much she had missed the man. "Can you still be a kid at forty-two?"
"To a sixty-nine-year-old? Absolutely." He spun with surprising speed for a man of his age and size. "Don't stand there like a potted plant. Come. Come."
Gwen followed him through the small foyer and into the living room. With two worn gray corduroy sofas, a frayed throw rug, and a few charcoal abstract prints, the room was as utilitarian as the rest of his house. Gwen knew that to Moskor and his wife houses were for sleeping and eating. The lab was where one lived.
"Where's ClaraT' Gwen asked, sinking into one of the surprisingly comfortable sofas.
Moskor shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe at the lab. Maybe at our daughter's." His face crumpled into a half grin, the deeper creases of which displayed the first evidence of his having aged since their last meeting. "The secret to our forty-plus-year marriage is a deep and abiding indifference to one another's whereabouts."
Gwen laughed. "I don't know why Clara puts up with you. "
Moskor shrugged again. "My movie-star good looks, I suppose." He dropped into the sofa beside Gwen. "If you want anything after your trip--like a beer, soda, bite to eat, or whatever-you know where the kitchen is. Nothing's moved. I'm too old to wait on anybody."
Realizing how parched she was from the trip, she got up and walked into the same kitchen where she had spent so many evenings helping Clara prepare dinner. "Want anything?" she asked Moskor.
"Wouldn't say no to a beer."
Gwen returned in under a minute with two opened beer bottles, knowing better than to bother with glasses in this house.
"How's the lawyer?" Moskor asked as Gwen sat back down on the couch beside him.
"Peter moved out a couple of days ago," she said. "We're getting divorced."
Moskor nodded, showing as much surprise as if Gwen had told him that Peter was out parking the car.
"Best for both of us, Isaac. We tried, but it hasn't worked for a long time. We're night and day, really."
Moskor shrugged helplessly. "Look, kid, viruses I understand. People I don't."
Gwen smiled again. God, she had missed the man. And even though he showed no sign of interest in her domestic tribulations, it felt good to finally unload on someone. While Moskor slumped back in his seat, sipping his beer and once that was finished teetering on the brink of sleep, Gwen poured out her heart She filled in the details of the terminal months of her marriage, from her ambivalence about the failed fertility drugs to the travel schedule she deliberately calculated to increase time apart from her husband.
When she had finished, she wasn't sure if Moskor was still awake. Just as she leaned closer to peer into his half-mast eyes, he said, "Kid, I don't do personal advice. You know that. But I will say this again. Apart from being too skinny, you look okay."
Gwen felt a weight lift off her shoulder. In her role as a top-level government scientist, who at times reported directly to the President, few people held sway over her, but Moskor's acceptance provided the absolution she sought.
He stretched his long arms over his head. "Hope you didn't drive all the way up here just to announce you're single again," he said. "Because the only single guy in my lab is gay."
Gwen smiled. "I appreciate you listening, Isaac. It helps."
Moskor shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed.
"I came up here to hear about your latest research."
He sat up straighter in his seat. His face lit up, shedding years. "Gwen, it's showing some real promise."
Gwen leaned forward and cocked her head in curiosity. "How so?"
"A single-stranded RNA virus like influenza. Nothing to the bug, really. Can't even reproduce without invading a host cell. But, damned if it doesn't offer one of the most complex defenses known to nature!" Moskor was suddenly more animated, like a jock at a party where the topic of conversation had just shifted from ballet to football. "With our earlier drugs, A35321 through 348, we saw some promising early results with the chimps, but the bug mutated so quickly they were as good as useless in a couple of life cycles."
Moskor stood up and hurried out of the room. He jogged back in moments later, carrying a binder under his arm and wheezing slightly. He flopped back onto the sofa and opened the binder in front of him. The page showed a schematic drawing of an organic molecule with multiple limbs, some ending in circular chains. "Here's the original A35321. The beauty is that she doesn't target DNA transcription, like most antivirals. No. She blocks the ribosomal RNA translation of the genes. Shuts down the whole protein-producing factory. Influenza can't replicate without that Ergo, end of infection." He exhaled heavily. "But the whole A35 series was flawed. Within a few life cycles the microbe kept developing a resistance to it. We kept making minor adjustments, lopping off a chain here or throwing in another there." His finger flew over the complex structure, pointing to the rings and chains. "But at the end of the day, we were fighting a losing battle. We'd run out of fingers to plug all the leaks that kept springing, you understand?"