Stinger

by Nancy Kress

  “No. He’s out with an important informant from Pax River.”

  “Good. He’s doing an excellent job with the naval station. Tell him I said his last report was outstanding. So I guess this one’s yours.”

  “Yes,” Cavanaugh said.

  “I’ll give you Dr. Farlow’s number. He and his team are set up at a motel on Route 5, the Weather Vane. Near Hughesville. Apparently they’ve been there almost a week already, doing whatever they do. They’ll meet with you there.”

  “Okay. Good.” Something to do. Something real. Maybe.

  Dunbar said, “Nothing they told me sounds concrete or substantial, Robert. The whole thing sounded bogus.”

  “You never know,” Cavanaugh said. “Anyway, I’ll check it out.”

  “Do that. And, Robert—even when it’s nothing, anything like this is sensitive. Anything racial. It has to stay quiet.”

  “I understand,” Cavanaugh said. Which was the perfect excuse not to tell that moron Seton. At least, not yet. Not while he, Cavanaugh, at least had something to do.

  Judy Kozinski was pretty good on the Internet, for someone who didn’t understand it at all and didn’t particularly want to. She drove the Net the way she drove her Toyota: for purposes of getting to her destination, and without looking under the hood.

  She finished with the FTP and Gopher files on her paleontology article. Looking good, looking good. She closed the paleontology files and accessed the medical sites.

  Many of these were test files: articles and updates on every medical condition imaginable. Judy read about strokes for an hour, until she was sure she understood enough to know what questions to ask. Everything that she thought Robert might also want to read, she sent to the printer.

  Next, she accessed her medical lists. These were closed communications, limited to verified members, most of whom were doctors or medical researchers. Judy had used years of scientific contacts, both her own and those of her late husband, to get on the lists. They provided her with both valuable background and a forum to ask questions. In return, it was understood that she would write about nothing she read on the lists without express permission from the poster. Much of the discussion concerned research-in-progress, which should not break prematurely to the public.

  Today she posted a short note:

  J.K. HERE. ONCE MORE I NEED TO PICK ALL THIS COLLECTIVE BRAINPOWER. CAN ANYBODY PUT ME ON TRACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT BRAIN-CHEMISTRY DIFFERENCES, POSSIBLY GENETIC, SHARED BY ASIAN INDIANS AND BLACKS BUT NOT WHITES? I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR YET—NEUROTRANSMITTERS, FETAL WIRING, SUBMOLECULAR STRUCTURES—SO ANYTHING MIGHT HELP. IT SHOULD BE CONNECTED TO ISCHEMIC CEREBRAL STROKES. THANKS. OF COURSE, NO ATTRIBUTION WITHOUT YOUR WRITTEN PERMISSION.

  OH, ONE THING MORE—THE VENUE IS SOUTHERN MARYLAND, SO I SUPPOSE ENVIRONMENTAL TRIGGERS FOR GENETIC DIFFERENCES COULD BE A FACTOR, TOO. THANKS AGAIN.

  Hours later, she checked back. Three list members had replied:

  JUDY—YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW THIS, AND IT’S PROBABLY OFF TARGET ANYWAY, BUT YOU DID ASK. ASIAN INDIANS, ALONG WITH SOME MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLES, SOME GREEKS, AND MAN AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DESCENDANTS, CAN CARRY SICKLE-CELL ANEMIA. THAT CAN CAUSE STROKES IN ACUTE CRISES.—MSJ

  TO: J.K.

  RE: REQUEST FOR RACIALLY DIFFERENTIATED STROKE INFORMATION.

  NEW RESEARCH HAS EMERGED IN THIS AREA RE MALARIA, SPECIFICALLY THE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF VARIOUS GENOMES TO P. VIVAX, P. FALCIPARUM, AND P. MALARIAE, ESPECIALLY WITH REGARD TO CHLOROQUINE AND CYCLOSPORINE RESISTANCE. SEE MY ARTICLE IN LAST ISSUE OF MALARIA AND TROPICAL DISEASE WEEKLY. RICHARD KAPPEL, M.D., NIH

  TO JK—YOU MENTIONED SOUTHERN MARYLAND. IS THIS CONNECTED TO THE RUMORS I HEARD ABOUT RACIALLY CONNECTED STROKE RATES AT DELLRIDGE HOSPITAL IN LA PLATA? SUPPOSEDLY, THE CDC IS THERE INVESTIGATING. HAS ANYBODY ELSE HEARD RUMORS? WOULD APPRECIATE FURTHER INFORMATION.

  —K. MAHONEY, RICHMOND, VA

  Judy frowned. The article in Malaria and Tropical Disease Weekly was probably too technical for her to follow; she wasn’t an M.D. Still, she could probably get the gist of Kappel’s research, and anyway Robert could take the article itself to the NIH for help if it turned out to be really useful. The Bureau used the National Institutes of Health, conveniently nearby in Bethesda, for most medical questions.

  And what was most important was that she be of help to Robert: to show him how necessary she was to him, how needed, how desirable to have around. Someone, in short, that he’d be a fool not to marry. She cooks, she makes a wonderful home, she’s great in bed, she has a flourishing career of her own, and she’s helpful to his career! What more could anybody want in a wife?

  God, she hated herself when she got like this. It was degrading to feel she was constantly auditioning for the part of “wife.”

  On the other hand, she made herself admit, she was.

  Judy accessed the Kappel article and began to read carefully.

  The Weather Vane Motel was not the sort of place where Cavanaugh would have expected CDC hotshots to stay. Separate bungalows, all with slightly peeling paint, clustered around a pitted parking lot. On one side stood a 7-Eleven, on the other a gas station. But there was no doubt that the CDC was indeed there; behind the motel stood parked a huge trailer, windowless and padlocked, as secure as if it held the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted. The trailer was unmarked, but Cavanaugh figured it didn’t belong to the vending-machine retailer.

  Inside Dr. Farlow’s bungalow, however, Cavanaugh could see the Weather Vane’s advantages. Evidently the CDC team liked to make itself at home. Pots and dishes littered the kitchen, along with shopping bags from the 7-Eleven. Computers and binders covered every surface. Two of the minuscule “dining tables” from different bungalows had been shoved together to make a meeting area. Coffee and beer were continuously available.

  Cavanaugh approved. The setup was an efficient use of taxpayer money. It was also oddly cozy, except for a vague medicinal smell that hung over everything, including the team members.

  There were five of them, two women and three men. Only one was black, the younger (and prettier, he couldn’t help noticing) woman. Farlow made the introductions. Melanie Anderson smiled at him; the other three did not. So there was an internal split about Bureau presence. Cavanaugh was interested in learning why.

  “Let’s sit down while we wait for the others,” Farlow said. “Coffee, Agent Cavanaugh?”

  All the others had some. “Yes, please.”

  “The Health Service section of this team asked for somebody from the FBI to join us because we wanted to touch all the bases,” Farlow said, reminding Cavanaugh of Jerry Dunbar, “even though we’re not sure ourselves what’s going on yet.”

  “Some of us are surer than others,” Melanie Anderson said, sipping her coffee. Farlow didn’t look annoyed. His staff must be used to airing their opinions without reserve. Cavanaugh revised his opinion. Farlow was not another Jerry Dunbar after all.

  Farlow continued. “We also asked you here a half hour before the Health Service and USAMRIID—that’s the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, as you probably know—so we could bring you up to speed. The other groups already have all our data. We’ve been briefing them right along. Now, Agent Cavanaugh—”

  “Robert,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Fine. Robert, nearly a week ago the CDC received blood and tissue samples from the New York City hospital that treated the late Senator Malcolm Peter Reading. You probably read in the papers about how the senator collapsed with a stroke during a precampaign speech and died.”

  Senator Reading? New York City? This wasn’t what Cavanaugh had expected to hear. Something tingled at the back of his neck.

  “The tissue samples showed that the senator had contracted malaria. It also showed that he was positive for sickle-cell trait. Do you know what that is?”

  Cavanaugh did, sort of. He nodded. Better to let Farlow talk and then ask questions later. The tingling grew stronger. It said to him, This
matters. He sipped his coffee.

  “The odd thing is that the malaria parasites were inside the blood cells with defective hemoglobin. Usually, those cells can’t host P. falciparum. But Gary here—he’s our lab man; that portable monstrosity outside is his—established the facts without a doubt. This mutant strain of malaria colonizes only sickle cells with any real success. It causes them to clot fast and hard near the brain, causing severe stroke. And sickling is a genetic trait, carried mostly by African Americans. That’s why we called the FBI in. We thought—”

  “Some of us thought,” Susan Muscato said, not looking at anyone. Farlow plowed on.

  “—that since the FBI has jurisdiction over civil rights and discrimination issues, the racial aspect could—”

  Cavanaugh asked, “Can Indians from India get this thing, too?”

  “Some can. There are segments of the Indian population who carry sickle-cell trait.”

  Bingo. Cavanaugh’s mind raced. The strokes at Dellridge, at Memorial across the river in Virginia … but malaria? Nobody at the hospitals had mentioned malaria.

  He said, “There’s been an increased stroke rate right here in Maryland. At Dellridge Community Hospital—”

  “Yes, we know,” Susan Muscato said. Cavanaugh caught her disdain. “We’ve spent a week mapping the epidemiology curve. That’s what we do, Agent Cavanaugh.”

  Farlow said, “Joe, bring it out.”

  The youngest CDC guy, Joe Krovetz, opened the door to the bedroom. Immediately the medicinal smell became sickening. Nobody else seemed to notice. Krovetz returned with a rolled up sheet of paper and an ice cube tray. Each of the tray’s compartments, which were lined with some sort of paper, held a single dead mosquito.

  “See,” Krovetz said, unrolling the paper, “the official death count is now forty-six. The epidemiological curves show a recurrent peak, completely consistent with the breeding patterns of Anopheles …”

  “Let me, Joe,” Farlow said. “This has to look a little bewildering to someone without our passion for P. falciparum. Robert, why don’t I start by explaining the life cycle of the mosquito that carries malaria in the eastern United States: Anopheles quadrimaculatus.”

  Cavanaugh blurted, “I thought malaria had been wiped out in the United States.”

  Susan Muscato said, more forcibly than necessary, “Diseases are reintroduced to geographical areas all the time. And they’re virulent because the population has lost all resistance.”

  Melanie Anderson said, “Or they’re virulent because somebody made them that way.” The two women glared at each other.

  “Made them that way.” As in … what? Genetic engineering. Suddenly Cavanaugh realized why he had been called. A biological weapon, targeted toward blacks—mostly, anyway—although so far they’d shown him no hard evidence of that.

  If this new malaria really was being used as a terrorist weapon, the case would be transferred to Counterintelligence.

  No, it would not. At least, not until it had to. Until Cavanaugh was sure. From the way Drs. Muscato and Anderson were glaring at each other, not even the CDC team could agree that this malaria was some sort of terrorist bioweapon. Until they did, the case was Cavanaugh’s. He shoved away his coffee and picked up his pen.

  “Let’s start where you suggested, Dr. Farlow. With the mosquito, Anna Follies.”

  “Anopheles,” Susan Muscato corrected, lips tightened.

  Farlow said, “Okay. All the anopheline mosquitoes have a rather improbable life cycle. Half of their life is sexual and that occurs inside the mosquito. The other half, the asexual half, occurs inside a vertebrate host, typically a bird or mammal. So starting with a mosquito …”

  Cavanaugh began sketching.

  Ten minutes later, all five members of the CDC team were looking at him doubtfully. Evidently some of his questions had been ridiculous. But it didn’t matter. Cavanaugh had a drawing of malaria’s life cycle:

  Cavanaugh said, “And you think all this is going on in southern Maryland …?”

  “See this graph?” Krovetz said, unrolling another paper. “It plots the stroke rate in the infected three-county area for the last six months. The red line is African Americans, the blue line is whites. You can see that the increase in strokes among blacks starts the second week in May. Now look at this map. From the geographical pattern of the spread, the epidemic seems to have originated here and spread out in rough circles. That’s consistent with an abrupt introduction of the disease into the area.”

  Cavanaugh stared at here. It was a small circle drawn around nothing in Charles County, a mile or so from the town of Newburg, not too far from the Potomac River.

  He said, “You found that out by talking to people … to the relatives of the stroke victims … But what about Senator Reading? He died in Manhattan, and he was the senator from New Jersey.”

  “Pennsylvania,” Farlow said. “But he had attended a family wedding in the town of Bel Alton just two weeks before his death. The timing is exactly right for Plasmodium reading infection. And it was an outdoor wedding, in somebody’s garden.”

  “Plasmodium reading.” They had already named the disease, while Cavanaugh still struggled to understand the basics. “So you went to this place near Newburg—”

  “The epicenter,” Muscato said impatiently.

  “—and collected the mosquitoes in that ice cube tray—”

  “Among others,” Farlow said. “Gary has done nothing but dissect, examine, and run tests on mosquitoes for five days and nights. They’re the vector, all right.”

  Cavanaugh studied his drawing. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The others looked at him doubtfully, except for Dr. Muscato, who gazed with open disdain.

  “Wait,” Cavanaugh said. “Wait …”

  They waited. As the seconds dragged by, Cavanaugh realized that if he couldn’t formulate his question, he was going to look like an ass. A bigger ass. Carefully he followed the steps in his drawing: from mosquito to person, who was killed, to … He had it.

  “If the person dies before the … the parasite things can get sucked up into another mosquito, how does the disease spread around in your concentric circles?”

  Farlow said, “We asked that question, too. And the answer is: carriers with immunity. We took blood samples from guests at the Reading wedding who do not have sickle-cell trait. Both white and black people. Twenty-one percent were carriers, which is more than enough to reinfect A. quadrimaculatus and keep the epidemic going.”

  Cavanaugh thought of the mosquitoes on his back deck, arrogantly ignoring Judy’s bug zapper. He said, “So anybody—like, say, me—could walk around being a carrier for malaria reading without even knowing it.”

  “Yes,” said Gary Pershing. “But you’re in no personal danger, you know. We found no case of anyone with normal hemoglobin who reported anything more than a very minor flulike illness.”

  Cavanaugh digested this. “So you know where the epidemic started, and when. And you know how it keeps going, even though it kills its real victims. But you don’t know where it came from in the first place.”

  “It mutated,” Susan Muscato said.

  “It was introduced by accident via a carrier with natural immunity himself, probably an immigrant or overseas traveler, that we haven’t traced yet,” Gary Pershing said.

  “It was genetically engineered,” Melanie Anderson said, glaring at the other two. “The mutations are too extensive and too coincidental to have happened by chance. And if it had been introduced accidentally from somewhere else in the world, the CDC would have heard of it being somewhere else in the world. Which we haven’t.”

  “Yet,” Muscato said.

  Melanie Anderson exploded. “You just don’t want to admit that this thing is a genocide in the making! You told me to be patient, Jim, and I have been. But now we have a week’s worth of clear data, and the numbers point to at least a dozen breeding pairs of infected mosquitoes. Not just one mutated female�
�a dozen breeding pairs at once. That doesn’t happen by coincidence!”

  Farlow said sternly, “The data isn’t that unambiguous, Melanie, and you know it. If you up the larval mortality rate by only—”

  “There’s no reason to up it by anything! Jim, the numbers are there. Why won’t you see them? It’s the same way all the so-called ‘good Germans’ wouldn’t admit that Auschwitz was going on!”

  “I resent that!” Gary Pershing said.

  “And I more than resent it,” Susan Muscato said. Her face had gone rigid. “My maiden name was Horowitz.”

  “That’s enough,” Farlow said.

  There was a painful silence.

  “All right, I’m sorry,” Melanie Anderson said. “I overspoke. But it is a deliberate biological weapon targeting African Americans. The sooner we admit that, the sooner we can warn people and save lives.”

  Farlow said reprovingly, “We’re all in agreement about that. Even without knowing where this thing originated, we can still create an action plan. That’s why the Health Service and USAMRIID will be here in five minutes. And if there is criminal intent, the FBI will track it down.”

  They all looked at Cavanaugh, who now knew why he’d been summoned. Somebody somewhere—Health Service or CDC or the U.S. Army—wanted their ass covered just in case this disease was a bioweapon aimed at blacks. The political implications of that were terrifying. Whoever had called in the Bureau wanted to be able to say they’d turned the problem over to the proper law-enforcement authorities early on in the epidemic.

  It didn’t seem the right moment to say that Jerry Dunbar had a low opinion of “a bunch of paranoid bug hunters.” Besides, Cavanaugh agreed with the fiery Melanie Anderson. There was something here. He could smell it.