by Matt Miksa
Dr. Zhou knew that the virus would use the river to spread to all corners of China if they didn’t stop it. She’d actually named the unknown disease after the Tuotuo—a twisted homage of sorts—but she preferred the local translation. The villagers called the tributary something much darker: the Blood River.
“We’re referring to it as the Blood River virus,” Dr. Zhou said.
“What’s that number after the name?” President Li asked, pointing to the screen.
“Blood River virus’s genetic composition is unlike anything I’ve studied before. All viruses evolve over time. Some take millennia, picking up bits of new genetic code here and there, but this virus begins to mutate almost as soon as it binds with its victim’s DNA. We’re seeing significant genetic anomalies with every fifteen to twenty transmissions, resulting in an extensive family of substrains, each one slightly different than the one preceding it. At first, we assumed we’d need to develop a different vaccine for each substrain mutation; maybe there would be four or five max, so we started numbering them. For example, the original virus, the one that infected Chang, was Blood River virus one, or BRV1. We began labeling the subsequent mutations BRV2, BRV3, and so on.”
“What are we up to now?” Li asked.
“We stopped counting at BRV45. Number forty-five is the worst, by far, but the mutations have continued. Essentially, Blood River virus isn’t one virus. It’s hundreds of slightly different viruses, variants with a shared ancestry.” The statement struck like a thunderbolt. Dr. Zhou didn’t wait for a follow-up question. “If I can identify the origin, the source of the first strain—an animal or a plant, maybe—then we can isolate a sample of the primary contaminant, and I’ll be able to determine—”
“Doctor,” President Li interrupted, his deep voice vibrating authoritatively. “Just tell us, how fast is the problem spreading?”
The problem? They still don’t get it, Dr. Zhou thought. This is a cataclysm.
“Fast. Real fast,” Dr. Zhou answered. “Chang Yingjie collapsed inside a teahouse seven days ago. He died within minutes, and the disease scattered in all directions like marbles on a concrete floor. Within seventy-two hours, the first handful of cases appeared more than three hundred miles away, in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Within ninety-six hours, my colleagues working in the Ministry of Health’s Lhasa division reported two hundred fifty infected. Local hospitals are completely overwhelmed, and the number of patients grows every hour.”
“What exactly are we looking at here?” President Li asked. “How bad could this get?”
The word apocalypse came to mind. “Lhasa has a population of half a million people and an airport with direct flights to Beijing and Chengdu,” Dr. Zhou explained. “The military closed Lhasa Gonggar Airport two days ago and set up checkpoints to restrict all overland access to the Tibetan Autonomous Region by bus or train. These were standard quarantine procedures, but they may have been implemented too late.”
“What do you mean?” Li asked.
“Mr. President,” Dr. Zhou continued, “at six o’clock this morning, Beijing University International Hospital admitted a patient with flu-like symptoms. Physicians in the infectious disease department confirmed the diagnosis an hour ago—just minutes before we began this briefing, in fact.” The doctor spoke intently, punctuating every word for emphasis. “Blood River virus is already in the capital.”
CHAPTER
5
Vienna, Austria
RIVULETS ROLLED DOWN Olen’s back and curls of steam swirled through his nostrils, loosening the piano-wire tension behind his eyes. The Venetian rain shower—one of the Hotel Imperial’s finer delights—rinsed away thoughts of sniper fire and exploding skulls.
Olen had arrived at the iconic hotel sweaty and disheveled. He’d introduced himself as Jeffrey Cunningham to the concierge stationed in the lobby. The wiry Swiss fellow had squeezed out a thin smile and handed him a white envelope with misshapen creases—the way an envelope got when overstuffed with euros. Indeed, not five minutes before, the concierge had swapped a thick stack of bills with a single plastic room key. Following Allyson’s instructions, Olen took the key and proceeded directly to the fifth floor.
Suite 504 was palatial but not gaudy. Its furnishings were snow white, in keeping with posh European monochrome. Olen tossed his new suit from Steffl’s onto the sofa. The scarlet garment bag looked like a giant tongue licking a scoop of vanilla-bean ice cream. Allyson would be late, Olen knew, so he headed to the bathroom to clean up, leaving behind a trail of plus-sized clothes and a pair of gently used snakeskin boots.
Dewy from the shower, Olen toweled off with a monogramed bath sheet. He smelled like lemongrass. The portly Texan from the Viennese café had vanished, and in his place stood a fit man with a sculpted torso. At thirty-nine, a distinctive ruggedness had displaced the buttery smoothness of youth, but spy work kept his body lean.
Olen enjoyed being naked. It felt honest, liberating. Most of the world knew him as a greasy arms dealer or a dumpy bureaucrat—invented personas designed to conceal and deceive. To pull it off, Olen typically shrouded his hard-packed physique under a closet full of ill-fitting clothes. The habit had strategic value; no one ever felt threatened by a man in a frumpy suit. Olen played the roles well and committed fully, so he sometimes had difficulty shaking the borrowed identities. Stripping off the disguises helped. Sex did too. He still hadn’t figured out how to do that in character.
Olen kept his sandy hair—not quite brown, not quite blond—cropped short on the sides and a little shaggy on top, to accommodate subtle style modifications on the fly. Not everything about his appearance was so malleable, though. He felt the ridge of a long mark cutting across his upper thigh, beginning a few inches above the knee and ending at his groin. A wicked battle scar.
Olen dropped the towel and headed to the living room to retrieve his clothes. He found Allyson sitting on the sofa, lips pursed with irritation.
“Feeling fresh?” she asked.
Hands on hips, Olen made no attempt to cover up. Director Cameron was his boss now, but at one time she’d been his partner in the field. They’d tackled tough assignments together and shared a sacred bond. Most importantly, they didn’t hide things from each other—at least they hadn’t back then. Sadr City, Mosul—out there, she’d had his back. Management had changed her. Power often had that effect, Olen guessed. Still, Allyson’s transformation was disappointing. Who was this cold-blooded creature of Washington?
A good boss didn’t assassinate your coffee date, midconversation, without warning. It was rude. Ergo, Olen didn’t give a flying bugfuck if his lemongrass balls made Allyson a little squeamish. Maybe next time she’d have the courtesy to knock.
“Seems I’ve lost track of my clothes,” Olen said through a boyish smirk.
“Along with your goddamn mind.” Allyson huffed and launched the red Steffl bag at her subordinate. “Get dressed, Officer Grave. We’ve got a lot more to cover than your wrinkled dingus.”
The points of Allyson’s cheekbones sharpened when her temper rose, though they were softened by waves of strawberry-blond hair cascading to her shoulders. She compulsively tucked the renegade locks behind her ears, revealing freckled temples. Olen liked to imagine that her emerald eyes had once glinted with hopeful brightness—maybe back in college, when the world still seemed salvageable—but years hunting terrorists and war criminals had burned that out. Allyson was certainly attractive in the classical sense, but she made little investment in her physical appearance, instead relying on her instincts and the power of persuasion to bend the universe to her whims. The woman could coax a wild turkey into an oven at Thanksgiving.
That was how Allyson had convinced Olen to quit the CIA and join her at VECTOR—the Pentagon’s newest intelligence agency. In the official record, VECTOR was a division of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID—a strictly scientific outfit focused on protecting America’s fighting force from biolog
ical threats. Olen had readily agreed to come on board, figuring the position was simply a cover for another Agency gig. He still thought that, actually. It wasn’t unusual to nest an ultrasecret CIA operation deep within Washington’s bureaucratic leviathan (and outside the reach of nettling congressional oversight committees).
At first, Olen hadn’t understood why a bunch of DoD science nerds needed to hire Langley spooks. Allyson had explained that in the age of Islamic terrorists hell-bent on weaponizing biological agents, the Pentagon required a more aggressive posture. USAMRIID was a wellspring of technical knowledge, but the military brass wanted it to be more proactive. They had modified the lab’s mission and ordered a handful of clandestine intel collectors to join USAMRIID’s microbiologists, virologist, chemists, and statisticians—the science nerds. As the appointed chief, Allyson had plucked her team of spies from the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency, and VECTOR was born.
Overnight, the Army’s premier medical research lab had sprouted arms and legs, liberated from its airtight laboratory at Fort Detrick. VECTOR agents were scattered around the world, hunting bioterrorists, intercepting the illicit sale of dangerous pathogens, and collecting biological samples for processing back in Maryland.
VECTOR had garnered instant respect within the U.S. intelligence community, thanks to its highly esteemed director. But Allyson Cameron was no doe-eyed administrator. She’d cut her teeth in the field and had earned a reputation as a badass spy. Iraq was proof enough.
Fresh off the Farm, a lifetime ago, Olen had shadowed Allyson on a Baghdad tour. Together they’d scoured the desert for Saddam’s infamous mobile bioweapons labs, posing as United Nations inspectors. The Republican Guard gave them hell, but Allyson still ran circles around them. “This is no Camp Peary cotillion,” she warned. “Get caught out here, they’ll rip out your toenails.” Olen believed her. That fall, he learned how to survive on the street from the tradecraft grand master.
The cat-and-mouse game between Saddam and the UN grew tiring, so Olen and Allyson bailed and looked for another opening. Weeks later, two jet propulsion engineers—a man with a boyish grin and a woman with world-weary emerald eyes—took advantage of a thinly staffed Turkish border crossing and slipped back into Iraq. With impeccable Russian accents, they sweet-talked their way into Saddam’s inner circle with help from a stack of classified schematics of the fabled Sukhoi PAK FA stealth fighter jet. With much better access the second time around, Allyson recruited a high-level source within the presidential palace. The informant insisted that the Iraqi regime had abandoned its bioweapons program after the first Gulf War. The rumored mobile labs were a sham—high-stakes bluffs meant to bolster Saddam’s negotiating position. The dictator wanted the United Nations to lift economic sanctions. The fake biolabs gave him leverage.
The U.S. intelligence community balked at the revelation. Allyson’s report contradicted the ironclad Washington Beltway consensus, but at great risk to her career, she pushed the intel up the chain, personally vouching for the veracity of her source.
Then–CIA director James Barlow never forgot Allyson’s tenacity, especially after he moved into the White House four years later. As president, Barlow asked Allyson to lead VECTOR, then a promising new intel upstart, and she graciously accepted. Now the intrepid spy was chained to a desk in a basement in Maryland, and Olen knew it was killing her. She’d flown to Vienna to brief him in person to get back into the field. Just like old times.
Sitting straight-backed and stony-faced on the Hotel Imperial’s immaculate sofa, Allyson didn’t look interested in reminiscing about the good ole days. She launched into her briefing.
“State released a cable this morning via our Beijing embassy reporting an outbreak in China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region, the TAR. The disease spreads fast and kills faster. Officially, the Chinese government isn’t providing details, but our sources in the PRC’s Ministry of Health are feeding us bits here and there. Lhasa already has hundreds of fatalities.”
“Damn.” Olen’s smirk disappeared. He stepped into his new slacks and zipped the fly. “Can we corroborate the reports?”
“Unfortunately, we cannot. The Chinese government restricted access to the TAR after the uprisings back in oh-eight. Since then, Tibetan dissident groups have only grown more assertive. Some of the more extreme voices have threatened to separate from China, and the government has no tolerance for sedition. Beijing is convinced foreign powers—America, basically—want to foment revolt in Tibet. Another flare-up of protests in Lhasa last summer was the final straw, and the government cracked down hard. The army hasn’t let foreigners in for months. Not even humanitarian aid workers.”
“We must have some kind of network in place, right?” Olen asked, referring to sources on the ground.
“Right now, the TAR’s borders are tighter than North Korea’s and suspicions are sky-high. It hasn’t been easy for us to recruit there. The fact is, we don’t know a goddamn thing about what’s going on. We’re learning details about the outbreak mostly from Chinese state media reports, which are probably downplaying the severity. Nothing is confirmed, but if what we’ve heard is right, it’s worse than SARS.” Allyson fingered the buttons of her blouse—an anxious tic that sometimes manifested when she felt stressed and couldn’t smoke.
“Have we ID’d the bug?”
“No. We don’t have samples of infected blood, so there’s nothing to analyze. We thought President Li was more reformist than his predecessor, but he’s just as reticent to engage the global scientific community. It’s remarkable, really. The Chinese would let thousands of their citizens die rather than accept a helping hand from the Big Bad West.”
“It’s a power play. Li doesn’t want to look weak,” Olen said.
“And it’s only hurting him. President Li has blocked the CDC from entering the hot zone or assisting the investigation. From the reported symptoms, it sounds like a flavor of hemorrhagic fever, but if it’s Ebola or Marburg, the Chinese aren’t talking.”
“Balls,” Olen said, rubbing the back of his head.
“Yeah,” the director scoffed.
“What about Marc? Isn’t he still VECTOR’s guy in China? How good is his intel?”
Even as he asked, the thought of relying on Marc Chen made Olen cringe. Marc had been his bunkmate during CIA training. From day one, Olen sized him up as a privileged, Ivy League asshole. The Agency’s Directorate of Operations was teeming with them. Marc didn’t disappoint.
Part math whiz, part man-beast, Marc could break insane codes and then obliterate the Farm’s punishing obstacle course, all before breakfast. He was smarter, faster, stronger (and a tad handsomer, to be perfectly honest), and it pissed Olen off. On paper the two recruits had a lot in common, and they might have hit it off, but Marc wasn’t interested in friendship with anyone. He only wanted to prove he had the biggest cock on the block. Olen wasn’t the type to back down from a competition, but when head-to-head with Marc Chen, he almost always fell an inch short.
The week of graduation, Olen finally turned the tables and beat the snot out of his roommate in a bare-knuckle sparring match. At the field officer’s commissioning ceremony, Marc shook the CIA director’s hand sporting an ugly black eye. Olen beamed.
The freshly minted spies abandoned their childish rivalry in the forests of Virginia and focused their attention on more pressing matters, like surviving in denied enemy territory. Olen shipped off to the desert, and Marc volunteered for a deep-cover assignment in China. Good thing too, because it had to be Marc. Olen—a corn-fed, blue-eyed Iowan—sure as shit couldn’t pass for a Han migrant from Tianjin. However, Marc—the son of a Chinese American neurosurgeon—had a fighting chance. The dude was still a privileged Ivy League asshole, but he’d turned out to be a stellar case officer too. Right now, no matter Olen’s feelings about the guy, VECTOR needed Marc Chen.
“In his report last week, Chen complained of a severe headache. Then he missed his next check-in. That was three days ago,” A
llyson said. “He was right there, Olen, in the epicenter of the outbreak.”
“You think he’s been infected?” Olen asked.
“For Chen’s sake, I hope he took some Advil and slept it off. In the meantime, a pandemic is brewing in the TAR and my only field officer within two thousand miles has gone dark.
“After SARS, everyone said it would be different with the Chinese, but it’s the same story. Did you know that in the first days of that outbreak, Beijing told everyone SARS was chlamydia? Chlamydia, for God’s sake! Thousands died because the Chinese government botched the response and then covered it up.”
“Beijing knows they can’t afford another SARS. Why the silent treatment?” Olen asked.
“Simple. The TAR isn’t Guangdong Province. Tibetans already mistrust the government. Politically speaking, the region is a powder keg. Until Beijing feels they have the situation under control, the WHO and the CDC won’t get within a hundred miles. The stakes are even higher now. Another public health scandal isn’t an option for Zhongnanhai. People would lose confidence in the government’s ability to protect them.”
“They can’t expect to keep everyone in the dark. Plenty of people know how to get around the Great Firewall. Even if they can’t get on Facebook over there, you know they’re looking at porn.”
Allyson frowned. “You’re right. China’s Communist Party can’t maintain a complete information lock-down. So, President Li’s administration has agreed to admit one American journalist into the TAR. The reporter will have unprecedented access, embedded within the Ministry of Health’s epidemiological team.”