“Why?”
“They don’t have the manpower or training to deal with things like this. The central government has some resources they could use, but so far they’re not doing much since they think both of them are dead.”
“Dead?” A pain shot through Luke’s head.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Why do they think they’re dead?”
“The newspaper account describes an armed militia group that called a TV station in the U.S., claiming they’d kidnapped Joe and your friend. The police believe that story, and they think that the men I described for them, the men that Paco saw, are leftovers from the civil war. During that period, there were several resistance groups in this area, so it’s not much of a stretch for the police to believe that one of those militia groups has resurrected itself. Since the kidnappers haven’t made any further statements or demands, the thinking is that they may well have killed their hostages.”
“Megan, Father Joe, where were they abducted?”
“It’s not there anymore. The village where they were kidnapped was destroyed when a dam broke. None of the villagers survived and—”
“What was the name of that village?”
“Mayakital.”
Luke reached into his pack and pulled out the picture from Kate’s e-mail. He handed it to the priest. “Does that look familiar?”
Father Tom looked at the picture and nodded. “That’s Mayakital. Where did you get this?”
“From a friend. It’s a long story.”
The priest flicked the picture with his finger. “Well, this is where Joe and your friend were kidnapped. That, I’m sure of. According to Paco, it happened right after the flood.” Father Tom handed back the picture. “But like I said, the police seem to think they’re already dead.”
“So everyone’s going to sit on their hands?”
“Remember, you’re not in the U.S. anymore. I’m working on it, but things move slowly here.”
“I need you to take me to this man Paco.”
“I don’t think he’ll talk to you.”
Frankie suddenly came back to life and said, “He talk to me. I get him to talk.”
Both men turned.
Frankie made an air pocket in his cheek and showed them a bland expression.
41
“Let me see if I understand this.” Detective O’Reilly tapped his notepad with a pencil. “Last week, this Guatemalan boy dies in your E.R. Then yesterday, you get back the results of a test showing that he had little pieces of a virus—alphavirus—in his blood.”
Ben studied O’Reilly as the man read from his notes. The detective’s eyes were close set, as though they enjoyed each other’s company. Ben didn’t trust him.
O’Reilly took a sip from his mug while eyeing Elmer, then continued, “And this particular alphavirus has been modified to use as a vaccine. You can put a special protein into it—”
“It’s called an antigen,” Ben clarified while looking across Kolter’s dining room and making a pouring gesture with his hand, signaling Antonio for more coffee. The Italian nodded at Ben through the glass facing of a chest-high pastry case into which he was placing a large sheet of cinnamon rolls.
“Okay,” O’Reilly said, “so you put an antigen inside this virus and then inject it into people to protect them against infections like flu and malaria. In that sense, it works like any other vaccine, right?”
“Right,” Ben said impatiently. He was becoming annoyed with the detective’s habit of repeating everything they told him.
“And according to you,” O’Reilly said to Elmer, “those little pieces of alphavirus in that boy’s blood are the same as the alphavirus Zenavax uses in their vaccines. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“They’re an exact match to the Zenavax alphavirus,” Elmer said. “And there’s only one way those fragments of alphavirus could have gotten into the boy’s blood. That boy was given the Zenavax malaria vaccine.”
“How’re you so sure it was a malaria vaccine?”
“Process of elimination,” Elmer said. “Zenavax has just one commercial product—their flu vaccine. It’s been on the market for over three years. If there was a problem with it, the world would’ve known about it long ago. The only new product in their research pipeline that I’ve heard about is their malaria vaccine. I made some calls. The rumor is that they’re testing it in Guatemala right now.”
Antonio walked up to their booth with a carafe of coffee and filled Elmer’s cup, then Ben’s. “Sir, can I make-a a question to you?” He was staring at O’Reilly.
The detective nodded.
Antonio’s head began to tremble. “The police—I no understand how you be so stupid. What you are tinking?” He turned to Elmer without waiting for a response. “Why they do this to your son. They make-a a big mistake. That’s what Antonio tinks.”
The Italian turned abruptly and walked away, mumbling to himself. Across the room, the deli’s only other breakfast customer glanced at their table over the rim of his glasses.
O’Reilly looked into his empty coffee mug, then at Elmer. “You’re also working on a malaria vaccine, isn’t that correct?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Ben asked.
The detective ignored his question. “Dr. McKenna, tell me about your project.”
“We’re further along than Zenavax. In a few months we’ll be in full production and my vaccine will be available in three countries. And our approach is completely different. I’m not using an alphavirus. We’ve developed a genetically altered mosquito that, instead of infecting you with malaria, injects a vaccine when it feeds on your blood.”
O’Reilly’s face curled into a knot. “How does that work?”
“We’ve modified the mosquito’s saliva glands so they produce two extra proteins. The first protein makes it difficult for the malaria parasite to survive in the mosquito’s gut, which is where it grows. The second protein looks a lot like one that’s found in the malaria parasite. In simple terms, that second protein is our vaccine.”
Elmer appeared to wait for the detective to finish writing some notes, then continued, “When a female mosquito feeds on your blood, it injects some of its saliva into your bloodstream. When my mosquito bites you, you’ll also get a dose of my malaria vaccine. Your body will think it’s being invaded by malaria and will activate the immune system to produce antibodies and something called T-cells. The antibodies and T-cells are what protect you against the infection.”
“So you’re creating squadrons of flying syringes?”
“That’s the basic idea,” Ben said.
“And the main difference between your malaria vaccine and Zenavax’s is that you use mosquitoes,” O’Reilly said. “Is that right?”
“There’s another key difference between my vaccine and Zenavax’s,” Elmer said. “From what I’ve heard, theirs only protects against one type of malaria—falciparum. Mine protects against both of the two most common types of malaria—falciparum and vivax.”
Antonio walked toward their booth with a carafe.
The detective held out his mug.
The Italian passed by without stopping.
O’Reilly followed Antonio with his eyes while saying, “A moment ago, you said, ‘we’ve developed.’ Who’s the we?”
“I’m working with our Genetics and Immunology departments,” Elmer said. “Actually, the original idea came out of our Genetics department. A doctor name Petri Kacz—”
“Detective, it seems your horse is wandering off the trail here,” Ben said.
“Maybe so.” O’Reilly flipped back a few pages in his notes. “Let’s go back to that other blood test you told me about—the one for cystic fibrosis. What’s the significance of that, in your mind?”
“The test was conclusive. That boy had cystic fibrosis,” Ben said. “Whatever killed the boy attacked the same organs that are targeted by CF. But his organs weren’t just damaged—the tissues literally dissolved. That�
�s not how Mother Nature works. This wasn’t a natural biological process. And the girl at the morgue—the one I told you about earlier—I think the same thing killed her.”
“Doc, what’re you trying to say?”
“We think the Zenavax vaccine caused a toxic immune reaction and cystic fibrosis probably played a role,” Ben said. “For some reason that I haven’t figured out yet, children with CF seem to be especially vulnerable to this toxic reaction.”
O’Reilly’s gaze shifted between the two of them before settling on Ben again. “And what would you like me to do about that?”
Ben glanced at Elmer. The two of them exchanged bemused expressions.
“Do your job, Detective,” Ben said finally. “Look into Zenavax.”
O’Reilly looked at each man in turn. “Your entire theory rests on a blood sample that’s been in the possession of the murder suspect’s father. Who, other than a moron, would believe that you didn’t alter the blood, or substitute someone else’s?”
“No, no, please.” Elmer said. “I didn’t change anything.”
Ben thought back to his visit from the mysterious black man and the directive he had passed along from Luke: Drop the inquiries into the two dead children. Now, more than ever, Ben knew he couldn’t do that—not if the police had stopped looking for other suspects.
“What kind of dimwit detective are you?” Ben banged his mug on the table, then shook the spilled liquid from his hand.
“Want me to keep going?” O’Reilly inspected his shirt and fingered a fresh spot of coffee. “What about the tissues you say disappeared from your lab, the ones from the coroner’s case? A cynical person might wonder why you waited almost three days to tell me about that.”
Ben stared at the detective for what seemed like a full minute, then said, “You don’t believe a thing we’ve just told you, do you?”
O’Reilly tossed his notepad on the table. “Doc, you’re either the dumbest cluck I ever met—or the cleverest—and I have no idea which.”
• • •
Luke’s climbing partners, Frankie and Paco, were slowing noticeably as the threesome neared the top of the heavily forested peak. Paco was in front, leading the group, but there was a reticence in the Indian’s gait that seemed to derive from something other than the steep incline.
On the other side of the summit they would find the remains of Mayakital, he’d been told.
Father Tom had deposited them at the mountain’s base after driving three hours through overgrown jungle trails that almost swallowed his small Nissan sedan several times. He would return at sunset to retrieve Paco and the boy. Luke had other plans.
It had taken another two hours to climb the slope, and Paco hadn’t said a word to Luke during that whole time. Even making eye contact seemed a struggle for the diffident man.
But not so with Frankie. Paco and the boy had an almost immediate rapport, cultivated in no small part by the little urchin’s formidable storytelling skills. The night before, when the priest had delivered them to Paco’s home, Frankie cooked up a fictional tale in which he cast himself as an orphan whose only hope for eventual adoption lay with Luke finding Megan, marrying her, and, soon thereafter, the happy couple adopting him.
Throughout the telling of his fable, Frankie’s face had been a bundle of innocence. Luke unwittingly reaffirmed the yarn, nodding like a simpleton every time the boy glanced in his direction, blissfully ignorant of what the urchin was saying. It wasn’t until later that he pieced it together from some comments by the priest.
Frankie’s efforts had had the desired effect, though. Paco opened up like a faucet. He described Megan’s assailants. They had worn black fatigue uniforms, which, to Paco, meant that they were military. Two were Caucasian, three Hispanic, and all five wore headsets. Luke wasn’t dealing with a ragtag group of thugs.
Paco had described how the black-clad men hog-tied Megan before throwing her and the priest into the back of a medium-size transport truck. He remembered the truck because he had seen if before while traveling to some of the more distant villages with Father Joe. It was tan in color and had a pair of red snakes painted on its doors.
The Indian had twice seen the truck parked at what he thought was a military facility in a remote corner of the jungle. He described the fenced facility, which sat in a clearing and was guarded by troops with maroon berets.
The priest had explained the significance of the berets. They were part of the distinctive uniforms worn by Guatemalan Special Forces.
Paco wasn’t willing to take Luke to the guarded facility—the man seemed terrified when asked—but he reluctantly agreed to accompany him as far as Mayakital. More specifically, he agreed to take Luke to a summit high above the flooded village where los soldados—the soldiers—would not be able to spot them.
From there, Luke was on his own.
Frankie had worked himself into the plan as a translator for Luke, and it didn’t seem worth arguing about because, in fact, he needed a translator and would send Frankie back to the parroquia with Paco as soon as they reached the summit.
A dull throb was taking hold in Luke’s left shoulder when they reached the mountaintop and he got his first view of the devastation that was once Mayakital. He gazed down at a half-mile-wide lake of reddish-brown mud a thousand feet below them.
Looking to the north, he found the cause of the flood. An earthen reservoir had fractured. It was a limestone pouch formed by the confluence of three peaks—mountains joined at the hip, the geological equivalent of Siamese triplets. He looked through a gaping V-shaped scar into the reservoir’s interior. Sheets of water from mountain streams cascaded down its darkened limestone walls.
Luke told Paco and Frankie to stay put while he searched the area. A dark presence accompanied him as he worked his way down the steep incline and around the perimeter of the muddy moonscape. By the time he reached the northern end of the valley, he was carrying a thick layer of red clay on his jeans.
Staring up at the jagged fissure on the earthen dam, he tried to imagine how it had ruptured. His eyes followed the reservoir’s contours up and down, then across the top.
It was then that he knew what had happened.
It was subtle, but it was there.
Several hundred feet above him, along the reservoir’s upper rim, a spatter pattern of brownish-red sediment covered the jungle’s canopy for a hundred yards to either side of the fissure. He had missed it when peering down from the summit, but saw it now.
The earthen wall had been blasted open from the inside, sending an explosive cloud of pulverized limestone and clay into the sky. It dispersed and rained back down, covering the jungle’s canopy with a film of sediment.
He knew about explosives and blast patterns. It was what SEALs did best.
Whoever had done this was proficient at disguising their lethal handiwork. In another few days, rain would have washed away the last traces of evidence.
A few minutes later Luke reached the spot that Paco had pointed out from the summit. The rains hadn’t completely washed away the shoe prints on the shoreline. At least three different boot treads mingled with the outline of a much smaller set of shoe prints.
He stooped and ran his finger along the rim of one of the small shoe treads, thinking of Megan and the terror that must have seized her.
A raging fury choked off his vision. His chest heaved.
He let out a deafening scream that echoed across the valley.
• • •
On the other side of the valley, Mr. Kong lowered his field glasses and reached for his satellite phone.
“He’s here.”
42
Megan awoke to another of Kaczynski’s delirious outbursts. She uncurled her body and threw off a collection of rags and towels she’d used to fashion a sleeping nest in one corner of the room.
Father Joe was propped in a chair next to the geneticist’s bed, breathing heavily in sleep.
The guard—this one didn’t speak English�
��was sitting next to the door. He slapped his arm, then flicked something off his skin.
It was the middle of the day, but she was taking catnaps whenever she could because the geneticist’s waxing and waning condition left her little time to sleep.
A flutter of birds sounded outside. Megan stood and walked over to the screened window while rubbing the stiffness from her neck. Ten yards away, the compound’s perimeter wall with its garland of concertina wire stared back at her. Tree branches as thick as telephone poles dipped over the walls, as if the jungle were trying to reclaim the land for itself.
The geneticist’s utterances had initially seemed like nothing more than random salvos, but as time passed she noticed recurring words and phrases: malaria, T-cells, germ cells, ovaries, and another word she didn’t recognize—Chegan.
She let his words percolate through her mind, looking for clues about the purpose of the forest compound. Her captors didn’t seem to care about Kaczynski’s chatter, which only underscored what she already knew. Whether her patient lived or died, they were going to kill her as soon as his fate became clear.
It was obvious that Kaczynski was important to them. They wanted him to live and had obtained everything she asked for: a stethoscope; tubing, needles, and fluids for a second IV line; two oxygen tanks and a mask; and an assortment of medications including Lasix, which she would use if the geneticist’s kidneys started to fail, and penicillin.
While considered an exotic disease, leptospirosis responded to penicillin, the most common of antibiotics. What she didn’t know, and wouldn’t know for several more hours, was if the infectious spirochete had destroyed her patient’s brain. He had signs of encephalitis—inflammation of the brain—but it was too early to know whether any damage had occurred.
“How are you doing?” It was Father Joe’s voice.
She continued staring out the window. “Fine.”
His chair creaked. “What can I do to help?”
She spun around to face him. “Can you help me understand why I’m working so hard to save this man’s life, all the while hoping he dies?”
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