Finally, basement level B4. He stopped for a second before opening the door. No need to sound any alarms yet. A few early risers were settling into their cubicles as he strode down the open hall. Pleasant nods and even a couple good mornings—just another day at the CDC. Shackleton knocked once on Travis’s office, hand already turning the doorknob.
“That was fast.” Travis looked up from his monitor and pushed away from the desk. “Grab that chair and have a look.”
“I may have exceeded the speed limit once or twice,” Bill said, sitting down beside his hotshot molecular virologist. “Just one of many sacrifices I make in the interest of national security.”
“Right. Well there may be plenty more opportunities for that kind of thing over the next few days.”
Shackleton pulled his reading glasses out of a front chest pocket. He wouldn’t start wearing those all the time until he really needed to, either. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“This is what first tipped me off,” Travis said, pointing to a box on the screen. Shackleton hadn’t done much work on the new sequencing machines himself, but he recognized the interface. “Those are the percentages of matching nucleotide sequences, comparing our samples with both the monkeypox and smallpox viruses.”
Shackleton turned to look at Travis. “This would be a great time to come clean.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, just tell me this is all some kind of drill. You know, test the system, keep the boss on his toes, that kind of thing?”
“I wish I could, sir.” Travis held his gaze easily, and Shackleton instantly knew he was telling the truth. “I really do.”
“Okay, so how does this happen?” Time to figure this thing out. “Some kind of contamination, maybe?”
“With variola virus?” Travis raised his eyebrows. “You of all people should know that’s supposed to be impossible around here.”
Shackleton was one of only three people in the world with access to the CDC’s deep-frozen stock of old smallpox scabs. And he knew the vaults hadn’t been touched in years.
“What about natural contamination?” the director asked. “Any chance there’s been a little pocket of transmission going on there in the Congo, posing as monkeypox all these years?”
“Faking out the scientific community for forty years?” Travis clicked through a couple of pages on the screen. “Don’t think so. And that’s not what we’re looking at, anyway.”
“What’s this?” Shackleton moved closer to the screen, trying to interpret a series of nucleotide sequences labeled with different percentages.
“The intact variola virus is not actually in our samples.”
“Then how do you explain the fact that the machine found 99.1% of its DNA?”
“I know it looks like that initially, but the number is misleading. You remember that the central genome of every orthopox virus is highly conserved across species.”
“Is that a question?” Shackleton didn’t like being talked down to but appreciated the reminder. “Of course I remember.”
“Which means the smallpox and monkeypox viruses already share a large percentage of their genes. The only real differences come at the more variable ends of the genome.”
“The areas that determine host range, transmissibility, and pathogenicity.” It was coming back to Shackleton now. Very small differences in some of these genes had big effects on which types of animals any given virus could infect, how easily it spread between them, and the severity of the disease it caused. The monkeypox virus had a wide host range and was capable of infecting all sorts of rodents and primates, including humans. But it wasn’t as contagious and didn’t kill very many of its victims. Smallpox, on the other hand, could only infect humans, and it was deadly. His role as a caretaker of this ancient scourge of humankind was not something Shackleton took lightly.
“Exactly,” Travis said. “So even though our samples contain 99.1% of the variola genome, we really only have a few extra genes tagged onto a regular monkeypox virus.”
“Tagged on. Meaning—”
“Spliced in. That’s what these sequences are.” Travis pointed at the screen. “Intact smallpox genes, very obviously transplanted right into a monkeypox virus.”
Shackleton stared at the long string of letters running across the screen.
Obviously, of course.
But he trusted Travis—he had to. T, A, G, and C. The letters would be meaningless to the vast majority of the population, infinite combinations of gibberish that in reality represented the building blocks of life: thymine, adenine, guanine, cytosine. Or death, as the case might be.
“The entire genome of this hybrid, or chimera, is just a little longer than either of its sources. Somehow, its designer figured out how to add in these genes without messing up the basic structure and function of the virus.”
“And would that be easy to do?” Shackleton wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead.
“No, but with enough time for plenty of trial and error, combined with the right equipment, it’s well within the capabilities of any halfway decent molecular biology lab.”
“Problem is, there are only supposed to be—”
“—two labs in the world with access to the smallpox virus.” Travis shook his head. “Trust me, I know.”
“Us here, and the Russians, at VECTOR.”
“You really think they could be behind this?”
“No, I don’t.” There was no way. The Russians had been showing plenty of bravado recently, this was true, but the intentional release of a genetically engineered superpox virus? That was a stretch.
“Then who?”
Shackleton stood up. He needed to go—start making calls. His hand was on the doorknob when it hit him. A terrible thought, starting small but immediately bursting out with violent clarity, quickly obscuring every other possibility.
“Travis.” This was going to be hard, but Shackleton knew it was his own fault. Why in the world had he authorized her, of all people, to fly across the world with this plague? “What do you know about Leila’s family?”
“Sir?” The younger scientist looked up at him, confusion written across the lines of his forehead.
“Her family, what has she told you?”
“They’re Persian, live in Tehran. She doesn’t say much more than that.”
“You know her dad is in government? Farrukh Torabi, head of their nuclear programs, of all things. And her brother, he’s a molecular biologist, like you.”
“No.” Travis started shaking his head.
“The brother trained at Harvard years ago, but totally off the grid ever since. Did Leila ever tell you how hard it was to get her clearance approved?”
“No way.” Travis moved his clenched hands under the desk. “Her mom is dying.”
“Maybe. Odd timing, though, isn’t it?”
“That wouldn’t make any sense, even if—”
“Did she say anything to you at the airport last night? Any indication that something wasn’t quite right?”
Travis’s eyes dropped. He couldn’t have been clearer.
A buzz in Shackleton’s pocket broke the tension.
“Bill here,” he said, phone to his ear.
“Bill, it’s Jen.” Jen Vincent, his boss and director of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology. “I just got a call from someone at the National Security Agency. How soon can you get in here?”
“I’m downstairs—give me three minutes,” Shackleton said, opening the door. “You’re not the only one with bad news this morning.”
Any luck?” Morgan Andrews walked into a dimly lit room full of glowing monitors. Her big break on the overnight shift had kept her running all over the NSA’s massive campus ever since.
“Yep, looks like her flight landed at Amsterdam Schiphol early this morning, right on time.” Rajiv Kumar had gone through initial orientation with her and was a magician when it came to following suspicious people around the world.
“And on to Tehran from there, right?” Morgan had called him up on a whim after receiving the CDC’s surprising message an hour earlier.
They really think this Epidemic Intelligence Service officer has gone rogue?
At this point, anything was possible. She’d been given free reign to start tracking down every possible lead that might help connect the dots and shed more light on the night’s intercepted conversation between Kinshasa and Tehran.
Rajiv pushed away from the desk and looked up at her. “Well hang on, don’t you want to see how she spent the layover in Amsterdam?”
“At the airport, you mean?”
“Yeah, I was just starting to track her from the arrival gate when you came in.”
“Track her,” Morgan said. “You’re serious?”
“You doubt me?” An exaggerated wounded expression appeared briefly on Rajiv’s face. “Let me show you.”
A high-definition image of a crowded airport scene appeared on one of the screens in front of them. Rajiv drew a quick circle with a finger on the trackpad in his hands, and a white circle appeared on the screen.
“That’s your girl, Leila Torabi, just getting off the flight from Atlanta.”
The image quality was good enough for Morgan to see that he was right. She’d already gone through the background check and clearance documents required for Dr. Torabi’s work at the CDC, and she recognized the woman’s regal face and short dark hair.
“Now watch.” Rajiv tapped the keyboard, and the image started moving. For some reason, Morgan hadn’t realized it was a video, but of course it would be. Security cameras were everywhere in a big international airport like this, and the Netherlands was a close ally of the U.S. in the global war on terror. She leaned a hand against the desk, watching as the doctor’s petite form moved across the screen, leaving the busy gate area and almost getting lost among the masses of fellow travelers heading down a wide hall.
“Pretty cool.” Morgan stood back up. “But can you find her again?”
“Ha, you have no idea. After I confirmed her identity using that first shot, our facial recognition system kicks into high gear.”
“Meaning…”
“We can follow her every step until she gets on that next plane.” Rajiv smiled up at her. She knew he’d nurtured a hopeless crush on her all through their orientation, but that was three years ago now.
Please tell me he’s not just doing this to impress me.
“It should be done patching all the clips together now, if you have a second.”
Morgan wasn’t sure that she did, and she also didn’t want to provide any encouragement in the romance department. She was scheduled to brief her section head in just twenty minutes, and all she really wanted to know was if the doctor actually got on the flight to Tehran.
“Sounds amazing, but I’ve got to run. She did make it on the next flight, right?”
“Definitely.” Rajiv sounded hurt again. “Already confirmed that from the airline’s passenger manifest.”
“Awesome,” Morgan said over her shoulder. She felt bad, but now it was time to focus on the essentials. This was her moment to shine.
An elevator was waiting for her down the hall. She hit the top floor and held down the
Door Close
button.
“Morgan!” A hand shot between the closing panels. Rajiv stood there panting, like he’d just sprinted down to catch her. She hoped he wasn’t really that desperate. “Was Leila Torabi supposed to meet anyone in Amsterdam?”
Phew
. Work—not play—that was a good thing. “Not that I know of.” She thought about it. “No, probably not.”
“Because I just watched her have a long conversation over coffee with someone at the airport.”
“Someone?”
“A man, looks to be of Middle Eastern descent.”
Morgan took a deep breath. This was probably worth few minutes, after all. She stepped out of the elevator. “Okay, show me what you’ve got.”
It was still her, there was no doubt in Morgan’s mind. The woman had been browsing the displays of a flower shop for several minutes when she suddenly picked up her bag and strode purposefully across the walkway. Outside a Starbucks, she greeted a man who indeed looked the part—dark face and beard, along with some sort of headdress that screamed
terrorist
. Morgan had finally come to accept the National Security Agency’s undisputed title as global champion of racial and religious profiling. No reason to make their job more difficult than it already was.
“So what do you think?” Rajiv didn’t seem to be holding it against her.
“You’re totally right,” she said softly. “More than a little concerning.”
“Look, they’re leaving Starbucks together.”
They watched as the pair of travelers moved through the airport. It was clear that they were still talking to each other as they walked, but now every pause and gesture seemed to carry a greater weight.
“Why does she keep looking behind her?” Morgan said.
“I was just thinking the same thing. It’s almost like she’s afraid of being followed.”
“And did you notice he doesn’t have a carry-on? Strange for an international traveler.”
Morgan looked at her watch. Five minutes until the meeting.
“Look at that,” Rajiv said, pausing the video.
The image showed the pair standing against a strange-looking wall, with the man pulling something out of his pocket.
What in the world?
Then it hit her.
“Storage lockers,” she said.
“Yep.”
He started the video again. The man pulled a suitcase out of the locker and bent over it. The CDC physician was next to him, messing with something in her briefcase.
“You can stop it there.” Morgan had seen enough. “We need to call this in right now.”
“Yes, sir.” Morgan hoped she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt. Her supervisor had passed her on to his own boss, who proceeded to put her through directly to General Charles Howard, national security advisor to the president. “This is Morgan Andrews, intelligence analyst with the NSA.”
“Ms. Andrews, I’ve just seen the footage. Quite impressive.”
“I can’t take credit for—”
“Don’t be modest. Are you one hundred percent sure that this woman is Dr. Leila Torabi from the CDC?”
”One hundred percent, sir.”
“Then we’re going to call the airport, hold her there in Amsterdam. Great catch on this.”
“Sir, we’re a few hours too late.”
“Too late?”
“That video wasn’t from a live feed.” He didn’t know? Morgan felt her heart race. “Our target landed in Tehran ten minutes ago.”