The Nightmare Scenario (7 page)

“That said, there are people who like him. Admire him even. Like me. And it’s not just for his vast knowledge; it’s for his sense of mission. It’s not just that he lives for his job; it’s as if he seems to feel that it’s his destiny. He’s waiting for that big epidemic, like the Captain Ahab of epidemiology. It’s a contagious passion, but it also sets him apart from the rest of humanity. He has many acquaintances and relations, but I don’t think he has a single real friend.”

“Perfect! An autistic man on a mission,” joked Roger.

“Cut it out, Roger,” Rebecca responded coldly.

“Sorry, Twinkie. Can’t help myself sometimes. Let’s try another angle. I have a medical question for you. Aeolus was born in New York, the only child of Gregory
Hughes and Maria Söderstrom, the latter of Swedish descent. His mother died when he was only three years old, from strep throat.

“This is something I don’t get. Why would she die from that? I’ve had it several times, and I’m still around.”

“Yes, Roger. You’re basically right. Most people just get a mild infection. There are, however, cases where people die from what’s called ‘Invasive Group A Streptococcus,’ or GAS. Roughly two to three thousand people die every year in the United States. Usually the ones who die have some form of weakness in the immune system.”

“Maybe you can look at this and shed some further light on it for me?” said Roger, pulling a folder from his briefcase and handing it to Rebecca.

“Roger, these are his mother’s medical records and the pathology report. Where did you get this?”

“I’m a journalist. I like doing proper research,” said Roger with a wink.

“Yep,” said Rebecca, leafing through the pages, “she had diabetes, which makes sense, since that puts her in the risk group. She was also allergic to penicillin, which is bad, but not catastrophic. There are other antibiotics. She was treated with Clindamycin, but still didn’t make it. A tragic case, but not unheard of.”

“Okay. Not much juicy stuff there, I guess.”

“No, wait Roger. Oh my God...”

“What?”

“It was Aeolus who infected her.”

“Sorry, now I’m not following you.”

“Well, children’s playgrounds and daycare centers are like cesspools of infections, because kids don’t have our basic immunities yet. They then pass it on to their parents. That’s why parents of young live their lives with perpetual colds. Aeolus probably got a mild infection, and passed the infection that caused her death on to his mother. That must be a heavy burden for anyone to carry, especially a three-year-old.”

“Wow. Now we’re talking. That’s exactly the type of stuff I was looking for. A man on a mission, plagued by guilt from having killed his mother...”

Rebecca had to admit she was getting intrigued herself. She was curious to know more about Aeolus. Roger had that ability – the ability to draw you in. She could lose herself in an hour of conversation with him about something she had originally really had no interest in. He infused excitement into conversations the same way he built suspense in his articles. Talking to him was never boring.

“Let me ask you one question, Roger, since you’ve been digging into his past. Where does he get all his money? He seems to have astronomical wealth. Is it an inheritance?”

“Yes. His father, and this I know from interviewing one of his father’s friends, was born in a poor, working-class community, right next to an affluent neighborhood. He grew up determined to rise in society. He reckoned that class was about two things: money and a classical education. He was convinced that both could not be achieved in one generation, so he decided to focus on the money, and leave it to his offspring
to focus on the education required to fit in with the upper castes. He was tremendously driven, and also very successful. He worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and became the youngest managing director in the firm. After his wife died, he moved to the London office and went on to become the youngest partner ever elected. He cashed out when the firm went public in 1999. There’s no record of exactly how much money he made, but it must have been over a hundred million dollars. So he achieved his ambition of freeing his son from any financial constraints in his pursuit of social climbing. All this had a cost, though. He worked like a madman. I’ve been told he didn’t take his first Sunday off until he was forty-five. A couple of years later, he died of a heart attack in his office. He didn’t see much of his son.”

“That explains a couple of things. I mean, that must have been a pretty tough act to follow.”

“Yeah, but it gets worse. His father held John Stuart Mill as the pinnacle of upper class erudition, and subjected the young Aeolus to the same laborious, rigid, educational methods, as the young Mr. Mill himself. As soon as Aeolus could speak, he was tutored for ten hours a day in various subjects, and it
did
have its desired effect. He read and wrote by four. He started learning Swedish, which he spoke by five, because, and I quote: ‘He wanted to be able to speak to his mother in heaven.’ And from there it just went on. Swiss boarding schools and you know the rest. Always years ahead of his peers, when he made Director-General he was ten years younger than anyone in that role before him.”

“Yeah, that stuff is pretty well known. This still doesn’t sound like an article to me, Roger.” The bar was filling up and the music was now so loud that Rebecca had to lean across the table and raise her voice. “That’s all you have?”

“I’m still in the early stages, trying to get my head around it, so not really. I mean, there’s a gap in his résumé for three years in his late teens where I have on hearsay that he spent this time at the Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment, as a representative of US military intelligence, learning Russian and putting it to use spying on them. But that’s not solid enough to print.”

“The Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment?”

“It’s their version of the NSA. They fly planes close to the Russian border, picking up radio transmissions. I doubt I’ll be able to substantiate that though – if it came out it would cause a public outcry of a gargantuan magnitude in the land of the Vikings. They have this neutrality thing going.”

Roger continued questioning Rebecca, trying from various angles to get at the persona of Aeolus Hughes from different angles. After half an hour he changed the subject.

“Rebecca, it’s getting a bit noisy in here. Would you mind continuing this in the bar at the Marriott?”

“The Marriott? That’s where you’re staying, isn’t it?”

“Eh… coincidentally, yes.”

“Roger, you’re not going to get me
that
easily. It was nice seeing you again. We’ll pick this up another day.”

“Aw…come on. I’m leaving town tomorrow, and I need to get this article together. I work under the pressure of deadlines you know, not like your never- ending cycles of research.”

“No, honestly, Roger, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Please… just one drink…. I got you the stethoscope,” Roger wheedled, feigning a bashful smile.

Rebecca relented, knowing that there would, obviously, be more than one drink. But he would have to work for it. Inside she was as giddy as a teenage girl, but she still had some semblance of pride.

JULY 29
^TH
, 8 AM, 63 IZMAYLOVSKY PROSPEKT, MOSCOW

D
r. Yelena Ivanovna Petrova took one last look around to make sure all the lights were off before shutting the door to her apartment. It was a two-bedroom flat provided at a heavily subsidized rent as part of her position at the Academy. It bore all the hallmarks of a mid-seventies Soviet construction project, with crude functional design and concrete walls. As was the case with most such buildings in Moscow, the insulation was poor and the central heating constructed in such a way that it was always either too hot or too cold. Still, it was homey, and the location was fabulous. Also, the interior decor was all American, high-quality furniture that she had bought during her years in the States when her salary was many times what she earned now.

She skipped down the stairs and took a deep breath of fresh air as she exited the building. It was a beautiful day, warm with clear skies. She crossed the parking lot and entered the lush greenery of Izmaylovsky Park.

Every morning she walked the three kilometers through the park to the Academy – even during the winter. This was the time of day when she could let her thoughts wander in free association. The seeds of many of her best ideas had been hatched during these morning walks.

After a short walk, she reached the point of the path where the canopy of trees closed overhead. She met a couple, students from the look of them; walking toward her, arm in arm. The young man followed her with his eyes as she passed them, which was met with stern disapproval from his girlfriend. Yelena smiled. In her late forties she could still turn heads.

It was not surprising. She was tall, fit, cared about her appearance and dressed well, although she was not one for spending a premium on fancy brands. Today she was wearing tight black jeans, high-heeled black leather boots, a navy tank top and a burgundy leather jacket; all no-name. The sky-blue jacquard scarf around her neck could have passed for something expensive from the high streets of Paris, but it was in fact a relatively inexpensive, though well made, item from China. Her hair was dyed a deep auburn color with faint hints of gray protruding from the roots. Her make-up was subtle but effective in sharpening her features. She was the epitome of middle-age female beauty, carrying the benefits of mental maturity without the usual accompanying marks of physical decay.

After a brisk fifteen-minute walk she reached the pond at the western end of the park and could see the complex of buildings across the Okruzhnoy Proezd that
constituted the Department for Infectious Diseases at the Moscow Medical Academy.

As usual at this point of her morning journey, she felt a sting of doubt in her chest. She once again asked herself whether she’d made the right choice leaving her comfortable, well-paid and well-resourced position at Harvard Medical School to take up the chair in Virology at the Moscow Medical Academy, once an august institution, now nothing but a shadow of its former self. The government funding to education and research, once the pride of the former communist nation, had plummeted during the years of capitalist shock therapy. The salaries, close to the poverty levels of Western European countries, were not enough to get by on. The facilities at the academy were, generally, in a desperate state of disrepair and the departments’ entire operating budgets had to be funded by grants from abroad.

Still, she had made it her mission to save her department at the Academy from its otherwise inevitable decline and uphold its reputation as one of the top virology labs in the world.

Having reached the entrance, the fleeting feeling of doubt passed, as it did every day. It was replaced by a reassuring sense of comfort in knowing that she had made the right decision. That, and the pride in having done so.

The Moscow Medical Academy was still the seat of learning that had provided her with the free education that had made all her achievements possible. It was still the leading medical research establishment in Russia. It was her duty to repay the debt she owed
it, and to preserve the standing of the institution that would serve as an inspiration to the younger generation, just as it had done for her during her years as a
komsomolka
.

Regardless of the dwindling state of research quality in her country in general, and the sad state of the rest of the Moscow Medical Academy, her department – the Department for Infectious Diseases – still stood tall. She’d seen to that. With her fame in academia came, with relatively minute effort, a steady flow of grants for equipment and fellowship positions. In an era where all the best brains of Russia were leaving the country to crowd the math departments of the world’s leading universities, and when ballet dancers and opera singers emigrated to nations where their performances brought larger financial rewards, Yelena’s department still had an remarkable inflow of students from abroad. Hundreds of young researchers sought the opportunity to work with her each year, and she could have her pick. She got the brightest and most motivated. She was, after all, Dr. Yelena Petrova.

Opening the door to the lab she noted, not without contentment, that all her students were already there. Some of the American exchange students had a pliable relationship with time, and would initially show up and leave as they saw fit. Not for very long, though. In this lab, when the professor came, you’d better be on-site and, ideally, already have your first findings of the day. As she’d jokingly tell her new students, underscoring her familiarity with Western culture: “You want fame? Well, fame costs, and right here is where you start paying – in sweat!”

Because it was the middle of summer, the lab was sparsely staffed. The next batch of researchers would not be in until September. Right inside the door was her resident Chinese postdoc, writing a summary of a pile of academic papers. She always made sure to have at least one Chinese student in the team. These days so many important results were published only in their native language, with complete disregard for the global research community. Hence, staying on top of the Chinese papers was crucial to remaining at the forefront of human knowledge.

To his right was Sergei Egorov, her only slightly promising local PhD student, poring over a set of chromatogram printouts.

“Professor Petrova,” said Sergei, “I have something I think you need to take a look at.”

“What? Is it the chromatograms for the HIV Subtype K outbreak?”

“Yes, and have a look at this.”

Sergei pushed aside the pile of notebooks and textbooks by his computer and spread out two charts showing sharp curves rising and falling along the vertical axis. The curves of the two charts were shaped almost identically.

“It’s the same sample,” said Yelena.

“No,” answered Sergei, “they are two different samples.”

“In that case, you’ve made an error and mixed them up. Recheck the figures.”