Snakehead (12 page)

Hrycyk cut in from the end of the table. ‘Or maybe the Chinese themselves, trying to bring America to its knees.’ He glared at Li. Li returned the look with an implacable sense of what Fuller would probably have called inscrutability.

Margaret was scathing. ‘By killing their own people?’ she asked.

‘The Japs used kamikaze pilots, didn’t they?’ Hrycyk said, with what he clearly imagined was reason on his side.

‘Jesus…’ Margaret’s exasperation escaped in an oath. She pushed her chair back. ‘I’m not sitting here to listen to this.’

‘Sit down, Dr. Campbell!’ Zeiss’ voice cut sharply across the table. And then he quickly turned his focus on Hrycyk. ‘And shut up, Agent Hrycyk. We’re not hear to listen to your anti-Chinese ramblings.’ Hrycyk’s face reddened, more from anger than embarrassment. He turned his glare from Li to Margaret.

Zeiss continued, ‘The whole purpose of this meeting tonight is to put together the basis of a task force to deal with this emergency in its initial stages. We require to hunt down these people smugglers and take their organisation apart. We need to know who injected the illegal aliens and why. And we need to know how many of them are walking around out there carrying the virus into the population, and how it is going to be triggered.’ He nodded toward the professor. ‘Which is why Professor Mendez has been brought on board.’

‘Without any guarantee of success, I would hasten to add,’ Mendez said. ‘Even if I can identify the trigger, we may still be too late. It may be that the genie is already out of the bottle, and we just don’t know it yet.’

‘Until we have information to the contrary,’ Zeiss said firmly, ‘we must proceed on the basis that we are still in the preventive stage of this operation.’ He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘Unfortunately we are still waiting for Dr. Anatoly Markin from the CDC. Dr. Markin is an expert on viral bioterrorism. He was among the top echelon of scientists who ran the Soviet biowarfare programme, Biopreparat, right up until the mid-nineties. Now he works for us.’ He stood up. ‘I suggest we take a break until he gets here. Then he can brief us on exactly what kind of pandemonium we can expect if this virus gets activated.’

There was a shocked sense of anticlimax as the meeting broke up, albeit temporarily. The implications of the information that had been disseminated around the table were terrifying, and hard to take on board. Li stood up slowly. It had been a difficult meeting for him. No matter how good his English, he had struggled to keep up with the technical jargon. But its meaning, in the end, had become all too painfully clear to him. Illegal immigrants from his country were being injected with a lethal flu virus which they were unwittingly carrying into the United States. The ease with which such a situation could blow up into full-scale confrontation between the US and China was clear to him. Hrycyk’s attitude was likely to be shared by many millions of Americans. The decision to involve Li in the investigation, even if only at ground level, was almost certainly a political one, designed to maintain some kind of equilibrium between the two countries. If, and when, it ever became public, however, there was no telling how popular reaction might shape political responses. Li felt as if he were being asked to perform a balancing act on the razor-sharp blade of a knife. If he didn’t fall to one side or the other, he was in danger of being cut in two. It was not something, he realised, that he could afford to think about. All he could do was keep his head down and focus as narrowly as possible on the investigation. He would ignore everything else and do what he was good at. He turned to see where Margaret was, but only in time to catch sight of her hurrying out into the corridor.

Steve was halfway along it before Margaret caught up with him. ‘Steve…?’ He stopped, and she thought she saw death in those eyes that only twenty-four hours earlier had been sparkling and so alive. ‘Have they tested your blood samples for the virus?’ He nodded. She could barely bring herself to ask. ‘And?’

He said bleakly, ‘I don’t know yet. I haven’t had the results.’

‘Oh, Steve…’ Margaret took his hand. ‘Until you know otherwise, you’ve got to believe you’re okay.’

‘I can’t,’ he said simply. ‘Margaret, I’m frightened to eat or drink anything. If I have got the virus, who knows what might trigger it?’

Margaret said, ‘Then you’ve got to eat Chinese.’

He looked at her with incredulity. ‘Even I don’t think that’s funny, Margaret.’

‘I’m not being funny,’ she insisted. ‘Think about it. If Chinese food triggered the virus it would have happened by now. It has to be something else.’

‘Steve?’ Dr. Ward walked briskly up to them. He looked grim. ‘They tell me the results have come through. We’d better go along and find out the worst.’ He cast a sideways glance at Margaret that made her feel like an intruder on someone else’s private grief.

Steve nodded, oblivious. ‘See you later,’ he told Margaret. And she watched him walk stiffly along the corridor with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, and she could not imagine what kind of hell he must be going through right now. An arm slipped through hers and she found herself being steered toward the door. Professor Mendez smiled at her affectionately.

‘So much catching up to do, my dear, and so little time to do it,’ he said. And her heart sank, for the catching up could only mean a confrontation with a past she would rather forget.

Li watched from the door of the conference room as Margaret disappeared with Professor Mendez. His sense of loneliness and alienation was immense. Hrycyk pushed past him. ‘Where are you going?’ Li called after him, feeling that he knew what the answer would be.

Hrycyk turned his now familiar glare on Li. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘If you are going for a smoke, I will join you.’

Hrycyk frowned. ‘I thought you didn’t.’

Li confessed, ‘I have been trying to stop. But I could do with one right now.’

Hrycyk snorted his derision. ‘And I suppose you’ll be wanting to bum one of mine?’

‘Good of you to offer.’

Hrycyk glared again. ‘That’s the second time today you’ve got me with that,’ he growled. He paused, then, ‘I figure I can spare one,’ he said, ‘but we’ll have to go outside.’

The camaraderie of the smoker, even between two men who disliked each other so intensely, was irresistible — and increased by the sense of exclusion created by the need to stand out in the cold and wet to share their habit.

* * *

The break room was quiet. Margaret recognised a handful of faces from around the table in the conference room. There were one or two others, mostly women wearing camouflage fatigues, on a break from the night shift. She hit several buttons on the drinks dispenser and got her coffee black and sweet. ‘How do you take yours?’ she asked Mendez.

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Never have. Got an allergy to the damn stuff. Plain water’ll do me.’

She got him a cup of cold water and they wandered over to a free table. There was a bleak desolation about the place. The smell of stale carry-out food hung in the air, the harsh glare of fluorescent light reflecting back off hard melamine surfaces.

‘This place has one of the few level four laboratories in the world,’ Mendez said. ‘They can deal with the most virulent and nasty bacteria and viruses known to man. In fact, they nurture and feed them in little glass petri dishes. Have you been here before?’ Margaret shook her head. ‘I have,’ he said. ‘Several times. And I always spend the next day and a half washing. Not that washing is going to stop the Ebola virus from turning my organs to mush, or anthrax from filling my lungs with fluid. But I always feel…’ he chose his word carefully, ‘…contaminated.’ He smiled. ‘The windows that look into the level four labs are very small, and the glass is several inches thick. They have a notice on the windows that says No Photographs. Not because you could photograph anything particularly secret or incriminating. They’re just scared the flash on your camera might startle the guy in the space suit working inside, and he might just drop one of those little glass dishes. Then the shit would really hit the fan.’

‘How in God’s name
do
they keep that stuff contained?’ Margaret asked.

Mendez shrugged. ‘You want to see the huge decontamination showers they have just for the monkey cages. Poor little things get pumped full of every disease they figure Bin Laden is preparing to use against us. And then all the water and waste from levels three and four go into a separate sewage outlet for decontamination before rejoining the main sewage supply. The air is taken in through a high-efficiency particulate air filter and passed out through another two. In fact, when you go out you’ll see a row of chimneys at the back. That’s effectively the exhaust system for the labs.’ He chuckled. ‘But you know, no matter what they say, I wouldn’t like to live in Frederick. If anything ever goes wrong here, that nice little German town with its antique shops and church spires is going to be the first to know about it.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘And, you know, they say this place is used for defence only. But the government lies to us about so much else…’ He sat back and let Margaret draw her own conclusions. He shrugged again. ‘Who really knows?’ he said, and sipped at his water. Then without warning he changed the subject. ‘I read about your appointment in the Houston papers. Kept meaning to look you up.’

Margaret said, ‘I had no idea you were at Baylor. Last time I heard you were still in Chicago.’

‘Oh, it’s quite a few years since I moved, my dear. But, then, you’d have known that if we’d kept in touch.’ There was the faintest hint of an accusation in this. ‘How
is
Michael?’

‘Dead.’ She hadn’t meant to be quite so brutal. But that faintest hint of an accusation had stung her. Mendez had been her late husband’s mentor at the University of Chicago before Michael had graduated and taken, against Mendez’s advice, an unfashionable post lecturing in genetics at the Roosevelt. Margaret never knew exactly what had happened between them — Michael had never confided — but there had been some kind of falling out.

The colour drained from Mendez’s face, and he appeared to be genuinely distressed. ‘Poor Michael,’ he said. ‘I had no idea. You hear nothing in Texas about what’s going on in the rest of the union. I have often thought they still believe themselves to be a separate country down there.’ He paused. ‘What happened?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘Honestly, Felipe, I’d rather not talk about it. At least, not now. Some other time, maybe.’

He put a hand over hers. It was warm and comforting. ‘I am sorry, my dear. I have no wish to resurrect painful memories. I am just so…shocked. Such a brilliant mind, such a bright future.’

Yes, Margaret thought bitterly, and a libido he could not control. She said, ‘You took early retirement?’

A little colour returned to his face, and an edge to his voice. ‘I’m afraid my retirement was forced rather than voluntary. I had a good few years left in me, I think.’

Margaret was taken aback. ‘What on earth happened?’

For a long time he seemed lost in his own thoughts, before becoming aware of her watching him. He must quickly have replayed her question, because a sad smile crept over his face. ‘I was based at the Michael E. DeBakey Center for Biomedical Education and Research at the Texas Medical Center. It was a wonderful position. We were working at the cutting edge of gene therapy, on the verge of some extraordinary breakthroughs.’ He paused to draw a deep breath and steady himself for his revelation. ‘And then a couple of my patients died during the course of clinical trials.’

Margaret put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered.

Resentment now crept into the voice of the old genetics professor. ‘I, or at least my department, had failed to obtain adequate informed consent. There was a major scandal. A lawsuit. It was suggested to me, as a remedy, that I take early retirement. The alternative was the humiliation of dismissal. Not being particularly drawn to the prospect of humiliation, I opted for the former.’ He sat back, forcing himself to smile. ‘A premature end to a promising career.’ Then he leaned forward again, in confidential mode. ‘Of course, the government conveniently chooses to forget all that every time it wants my help.’

Margaret knew how hard it must have been for a brilliant mind just to switch itself off, for a man like Mendez to find suddenly that his talents were no longer required. He had never been the easiest of men to like, but she felt genuinely sorry for him now. ‘That must have been a nightmare, Felipe,’ she said.

But he recognised the look in her eyes. ‘Good God, my dear, I don’t want your pity. I’d rather have your company. A little of that acerbic wordplay we used to indulge in when you so disapproved of Michael being a disciple.’

‘I didn’t disapprove of
you
,’ Margaret countered quickly. ‘I just thought Michael was too easily led. He needed to develop a mind of his own.’

‘Are you telling me it was his idea and not yours to go to the Roosevelt?’

‘It was a joint decision.’

‘Ah. And that was Michael developing a mind of his own, was it?’

Margaret took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, Felipe. That was all way in the past. And I’d rather it stayed there.’

Mendez appeared to relax, and his smile became beatific once again. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to drag up old, painful memories. Believe me, they are just as painful for me.’ He took both of her hands, now, in his. ‘But I would like to hear, someday, when you feel up to it, what happened to Michael. I understand you have a place up at Huntsville.’

She felt uncomfortable, her hands trapped in his. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

‘And I have a place just thirty miles down the road at Conroe. An old ranch house on the lake. I can get pretty lonely rattling about in that old place all on my own sometimes.’ He squeezed her hands. ‘I’d appreciate a visit. I really would.’

She said, ‘I’ll stop by sometime.’ But knew that she wouldn’t.

* * *

Li shivered in the cold wind that blew, almost uninterrupted, across the wide-open spaces of the two-hundred-acre Fort Detrick. In the moonlight, you could see the rows of new, young trees that lined the sprawling parking lots and hear the wind in their leaves. Lights still twinkled in low, huddled, buildings, and white water towers on stilts stalked the perimeter. The first cigarette had felt rough in his throat, and not as pleasurable as he had anticipated. The second, with which Hrycyk had parted very grudgingly, was altogether more satisfying.