The Immortalist (16 page)

Niedermann covered the mouthpiece of the handset. “General Goddard, for your information, is the Army's chief of staff. I think that makes him the boss of USAMRIID.”

“Why are you insisting on this? For Yolanda? Or for something else?”

“Like what?”

“The Methuselah Vector.”

Niedermann harrumphed. “This has nothing whatever to do with the Methuselah Vector.”

“It couldn't, Cricket,” added Gifford. “The Vector isn't a hemorrhagic virus. In fact, it's not pathogenic in any way. We tested it hundreds of times over in animals and . . . in man. Never so much as a hiccup.”

Niedermann sneered, “You saw Subject Adam yourself, only hours ago. Did he look like he had ebola?”

“Still,” said Cricket, “a scandal right now would put quite a monkey wrench into your plans, wouldn't it?”

“Yes, it would,” said Niedermann. “There are always crackpots out there—bio-Luddites, conspiracy theorists, sensation-mongers—ready to seize on any unfortunate coincidence to shut down the wheels of progress. If a rumor got out, it would be disastrous. To the public, perception is reality.”

“Are you willing to jeopardize Yolanda's life over . . .
public relations
?”

Gifford shook his head vigorously. “That's unfair, Cricket. We're trying to do what's best for her.”

Niedermann gave Cricket a smug look. “To answer your question honestly—yes, it is worth jeopardizing one person's life. Her life, my life, your life. Anyone's. That's harsh, but as a scientist you should have the detachment to see it. The Methuselah Vector promises to save untold millions. The sacrifice of one person would be insignificant compared to that.”

The phone rang.

“Thank you for calling back, General,” said Niedermann as he switched to speakerphone. “We have a staff member here at Acadia Springs who's gotten sick, and we're all very concerned about her.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” said a voice desiccated by Scotch and cigars.

“Yes, well, a visiting CDC official seems to have jumped the gun and requested military transport of the patient to USAMRIID in Fort Detrick.”

“Fort Detrick? Jesus Christ!”

“Yes, it's a pretty horrific case—”

“What the hell are we dealing with?”

“We don't know. But I'd like to countermand that order. It's premature. I would still hope for logistical and laboratory support, as needed. But the patient transport needs to be canceled. Could you get in touch with the commanding colonel at the base?”

“It's Sackler. Colonel E. DeWitt Sackler. Sure, I can call him.”

“Thanks. I really appreciated our talk last night, and I look forward to seeing you Friday in New York.”

“I'll be there.”

“Okay. Bye for now.” Niedermann couldn't resist a triumphant flourish as he hung up the phone.

“You bastard,” said Cricket.

“Okay, call me names. But it's the best thing for Yolanda.” Niedermann gestured toward the door. “Now, get in there and do your medical magic.”

“No. I refuse.”

Gifford looked shocked. “You can't. Would you abandon a patient?”

“She's your patient now. You just took on the responsibility.”

“I don't have the experience to deal with this. I'm not an infectious-disease specialist, and I haven't practiced medicine in decades. You're the only one who's remotely qualified.”

“Then pick up the phone and tell General Goddard that the transport's back on.”

Niedermann rocked forward, rising an inch or two on the balls of his feet. “I won't do that.”

“Please, Cricket,” said Gifford. “Jack's right. We need your help. Help us. Help Yolanda.”

She saw through it all. The sons of bitches were willing to play with a young woman's life just to avoid a PR scandal. But wasn't she equally guilty? The transport would certainly have been dangerous. Wasn't she, too, being reckless, just to hand off responsibility for the case? Only a handful of people in the world knew how to treat an acute hemorrhagic virus infection, and she was one of them.

Gifford stared at her with a haggard, almost sickly look.

“All right, you win,” she grumbled. “But remember—I've warned you. If she dies, her blood is on your hands.”

“I don't expect her to die. I expect you to save her.”

Cricket stormed out, back toward the air locks, the showers, and the changing rooms. The bastards had won. It was their game now, and it was they, and not she, who would have to answer for it if she fell apart. But for as long as she could, she would fight for her patient. She would pursue every clue, every track of evidence—no matter where the search led. She would do what she was trained to do. She would do her job.

All right, gentlemen,
she thought,
still seething.
You've got your way. But you aren't going to like it.

Two

I'M TRYING TO
EXPLAIN TO YOU,
Dr. Waggoner,” said Cricket, shouting over the din of a tenor voice screeching to a shimmering electric-bass ostinato. “If you would turn down that noise, you just might understand that.”

“That's not noise. It's Radiohead.”

“It's about fifty decibels too loud.”

“It helps me to think.”

Cricket reached across the bench and switched off the CD player.

Wycliff Waggoner, known to everyone on campus as Wig, almost let his thick, round glasses slip off his nose as he gaped in exasperation. “Don't touch that. Don't touch anything in this lab. Everything has an exact place and setting.”

That was hard to believe. The three long benches of the lab were piled high with papers, upright glass columns, DNA sequencers, centrifuges, electroporators, pipettes, glass plates, and hundreds of half-empty bottles labeled in an illegible scrawl. The sinks were filled with unwashed glassware.

“I just want information,” said Cricket.

Waggoner's eyes looked like two small beads behind his glasses. “I don't have the kind of information you're after.”

“I need to know what viruses you're working with, Dr. Waggoner.”

“Why?”

“Because a woman is sick, and I need to know what she has and where she got it from.”

“Yolanda Carlson?”

“Yes.”

“She works for Jack Niedermann. Why don't you go ask Jack Niedermann what viruses
he's
working with?” Waggoner spoke in a monotone—not a trace of irony.

“I can get Dr. Gifford to order you to open up this lab.”

Waggoner's eyebrows arched against his high, pale forehead. “If you do, don't move anything. Don't touch or move anything.”

“I'll touch everything,” she said, provoking him out of sheer exasperation. “I'll turn every last piece of equipment in this room upside down.”

“That's insane.”

“Then answer a few simple questions.”

Waggoner pointed to a seven-foot-tall upright freezer in the corner. “Will you turn that freezer upside down?”
I don't have time for this
,
Cricket thought. But his face was strictly deadpan. “You said you'd turn everything upside down. Will you turn
that
upside down?”

“Sure. If I need to.”

Waggoner's eyebrows shot up. “I'm beginning to believe you.”

“Good. Then start cooperating.”

“There's that word again.”

“What word?”

“
Cooperation
. People always use it when they want something from you.”

Cooperation.
Cricket had gone into her hard-boiled, by-the-book mode. She did it by reflex, like a porcupine throwing up its quills, whenever she sensed opposition. It wasn't just Waggoner. Nearly everyone she had dealt with this morning had been on guard. Despite her illustrious name, she was an outsider in a clannish institution.

“Why are you giving me such a hard time, Dr. Waggoner? I've heard you're a pretty brilliant fellow. PhD from Stanford. Postdocs at the National Institutes of Health and the MRC Laboratory in Cambridge. And yet, here you are, pretending to be stupid.”

“I don't know you, that's all.”

“Let me clue you in, then. I'm a person who can shut this laboratory down with one phone call. I can have them put a padlock on the door. I can make you write up an inventory of every scrap of DNA you've worked with for the past ten years. When I get mad, the claws come out. Do you want to see my claws come out, Dr. Waggoner?”

Waggoner looked into her eyes for a full millisecond. “Claws? No,” he said with astonishment, as though she had meant exactly that.

“Look, I'm in a hurry. A woman is dying. I have eight more floors to go in this building alone.” Although she had kept in close telephone contact with Jean Litwack, she was anxious to get back to Yolanda's bedside. The survey had dragged on longer than she had planned.

“Okay. Human rhinovirus, serotype eighty-seven, strain F02-3607-Corn.”

“I see—you work with the common-cold virus. Is that all? Have you done any experiments with ebola, Lassa fever, Marburg virus, yellow fever?”

Waggoner shook his head. “Viruses aren't really my thing. I'm a molecular biologist. I also have bacteriophage M13, which I use as a vehicle for cloning and mutagenesis studies. But that only infects bacteria. Yolanda Carlson isn't a bacterium. She's a mammal. So I think we're okay there.”

“What are you making mutants of? Cold virus?”

“No. CD54 and sialic acid. I'm using them as decoy receptors to keep the virus from getting into host cells.”

“Thank you. Now was that so hard?”

Waggoner wiggled his nose to adjust his glasses. “Are we done?”

“Not quite. I need you to show me where the virus is stored. That includes viral RNA, DNA clones, and any cell cultures you may be using to grow it.”

He led her to the corner of the lab. “It's here in this freezer—the one you were going to turn upside down.” When he opened it, she saw a second tier of doors for six separate compartments, each of which was crammed to the hilt with white boxes, frozen media, square plastic trays, tubes of enzymes for cloning, stainless-steel X-ray cassettes, and a hundred or more small plastic racks filled with 1.5 cc plastic, flip-top tubes.

“How do you know where anything is in here?” asked Cricket.

“I just know. I can tell you exactly where every tube is. Pick one.”

“No thanks. I'll take your word for it.”

“The cell lines are over there, in liquid nitrogen.” He pointed nearby, to a flask-shaped metal container about three feet high. “If you turn that upside down, the liquid nitrogen will run out onto the floor and instantly turn your feet into ice.”

Cricket noted the sample locations on her clipboard. “Thanks for the warning. And thank you for your time, Dr. Waggoner.”

The shimmering electric bass resumed as Cricket closed the door behind her and headed out into the hall. On the other side of campus, Yolanda was fighting for her life. It was already 11:10 a.m.

Eight more floors to go.

Three

WHAT DO YOU
WANT MY GODDAMN
chair for?” asked Niedermann. The presence of the TV crew in Gifford's office was annoying enough—cables everywhere, men shouting across the room. Now they were trying to tell him where he could and couldn't sit.

“We need two chairs exactly alike,” said the stubble-bearded location director. “One for Dr. Gifford and one for Mr. Whitley, the network correspondent. Need 'em both in front of the fireplace, so we can set up the camera angle.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, now.”

Niedermann got out of his comfortably upholstered fauteuil and plopped himself down onto a spindly Windsor chair.

Gifford seemed not to mind, or even to notice, the half dozen men turning his office into Grand Central Station. Since he had come back from the BSL-4 lab, he had been preoccupied. He had skipped breakfast and was just now cutting up an apple because, he said, he was feeling a bit shaky.