White Plague

by James Abel

  Karen said, after a few moments of eating in silence, “You know, my boyfriend, when he was a kid, went to an ethical culture school . . .”

  I thought, Right! The boyfriend. Good. I can stop thinking about her.

  Then I thought, I can’t believe I’m thinking about this now anyway.

  “Ethical culture school?” asked Eddie.

  “It was a private school for atheists,” she said, leaning back, exposing the long neck vein, the dark small freckles there, a constellation of three, swell of breasts tight on the moose logo sweater. The shiny silver hair was up, pinned. “His parents didn’t believe in religion but still wanted their kids to learn values. My boyfriend—Carl—said they were given a problem in fifth grade. A museum is on fire. You can save one thing. Do you choose an old woman or the hundred-and-fifty-year-old Renoir masterpiece painting?”

  Eddie snorted. “I’ll be sure to send my kids to this school when we get back. See what happens when you eliminate God? You kill the people and save the BMWs.”

  “Well, we’re at a table at a seafood restaurant. He’s telling me about being in class, arguing. I’d save the old lady! She’s someone’s grandmother! No! I’d save the painting! The old lady is probably sick anyway!”

  DeBlieu’s voice suddenly crackled onto the ship intercom. He was addressing the healthy crew, the people outside the hangar, in the mess, on the bridge, in the cabins, people probably staring up at intercom boxes, hearts beating loud in their chests. “This is the captain. You need to know that the survivors of the Montana may be infected with a highly contagious illness. Anyone feeling ill is to report immediately to sick bay. We’re on alert, just like drills. More hand washing. More disinfecting. Double shifts at meals. I want fewer people at each table. Regular disinfection of bathrooms. No more than three people in any cabin at one time. All lounges are closed. This is serious. Please know that our medical personnel are working very hard to . . .”

  Eddie watched the intercom. “That’ll go over big.”

  Karen’s eyes had gone large, were fixed on mine. Perhaps I imagined it, but it seemed that a new note had entered her voice since the boyfriend came up. It wasn’t affection, or missing the guy. It seemed to be more like distance. She said, “You know, you always hear that saying, there are two kinds of people in the world! People who shut off televisions when they enter a room and people who turn them on! People who follow rules and who don’t! Well, I have one. People who want to save the contagious, and those who want to destroy them. That’s what’s going on, isn’t it, in Washington? That’s why they cut us off? They’re getting ready to do something bad here.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said.

  “That’s why they don’t want us calling out.”

  I said, not really believing it, “They just want to manage the news. Damage control.”

  “Uh-huh. You don’t believe that any more than I do. Did they give you any time frame? A deadline to get results? Any idea what they plan exactly, or is that classified, Joe? You’re not supposed to tell us?”

  She kept using my name, “Joe,” like a weapon. I flashed back to a hot plain in Afghanistan. I saw the truck coming. I felt the grips of the machine gun on my hands. I heard myself counting down seconds, praying that the oncoming truck would stop. “Nine. Eight.” I remembered thinking that if I fired, if I killed everyone in that truck, I’d save the people on the base. It was math. It was triage. I couldn’t believe it was a choice I’d ever put myself in a position to have to make.

  “No deadline that I know of,” I said.

  How will they do it? Sink us? Gas? If they use gas, they could keep the ship for later.

  “But it’s a whole ship,” she said, as if monitoring my thinking. “It’s over two hundred people. It’s me,” she said, and laughed suddenly, loudly, completely self-aware.

  “Maybe it won’t come to that,” Eddie said.

  Hours passed.

  Karen dozed after a while. Then Eddie.

  I jolted awake.

  I’d been asleep too long.

  “Triage,” Karen said, back at work. “Notice how, whenever people want to do something horrible, they invent a sanitized word for it? Like ‘surgical strikes’ for drone attacks?”

  Eddie finished up more cookies, which kept coming. He started on a ham and cheddar sandwich. He reached for a can of Dr Pepper. “Ah, we’d probably do the same thing.”

  “No!” A fierce look, anger and challenge, animated her features. Her eyes bored into mine. She snapped out, “We were them! We had the choice back there, and we’re not doing the same thing. We took everyone aboard!”

  I thought, stunned, in wonder, She said “we.” She wants to be part of that decision.

  Eddie burped and sighed. “Hey, forget the cosmic questions, Karen. Let’s get down to the real stuff. What did old boyfriend Carl save in the museum? The old lady? Or the painting?”

  Perhaps it was the fluorescent light, or exhaustion, but it seemed for a moment that her expression flickered through her time on Earth: Karen the kid, face unlined; Karen the tough engineer; Karen with the weight of choice on her, like gravity tugging down the corners of her mouth.

  “He chose the painting,” she said softly.

  “You would have chosen the old lady?” said Eddie.

  Instead of answering, quite violently she sneezed.

  There was a moment of silence, then she held out her hand, and in her small palm, lay a quivering mass of yellowish bile. Her hand began slightly trembling.

  “Anyone could sneeze,” I said.

  Eddie said, “Hey, I sneeze all the time.”

  It was not the best moment for Major Pettit to show up again, a stocky presence in the doorway, blunt, V-shaped, blocking light. “Colonel, a moment?”

  “Bad time, Major.”

  He stepped inside anyway, damn him, looking like some Arctic bag man bundled into his parka, beneath the apron, gauze mask, and plastic gloves. “I think you ought to see this, sir,” he said as Karen Vleska used a napkin to wipe away the bile on her hand, but I knew those tiny particles were drifting in the air around us, expanding and contracting as in a lava lamp, like on the slide.

  “Colonel, you really want to see this,” Pettit said.

  Eddie would check her throat, ears, nasal passages. How many more will I kill? I thought as Pettit led me down the narrow passageway between labs, and into one filled with electronics, and banks of at least twenty monitor screens.

  “Major, just say it,” I snapped.

  “Sir,” he said, taking a swivel chair at a console and activating a monitor, “they use this room normally for checking sea bottom images. These screens on the right? They show sonar pictures of sediments. I guess State will use this to apply for undersea territory, Mr. Sachs said.”

  “I’m running out of patience, Major.”

  “But the right-hand screens are cameras. You can call up images from anywhere on the ship.”

  Instantly I grew more interested.

  Pettit plumped down into a swivel chair and adjusted a dial. I was seeing the hangar below, from an elevated angle. The cots. The sick. Lieutenant Cullen inserting one of those aerosol containers into the nose of a woman. I saw Marietta Cristobel wiping a man’s forehead. Sachs spoke with Del Grazo and they broke apart. Pettit said, “Watch the difference between Sachs and Del Grazo.”

  There was only one reason Pettit would have called me in here, and it was that he thought he’d ID’d the spy. I felt my heart speed up. The black-and-white picture came in clear as the cable TV back home in Anchorage. Sachs went cot to cot, down a row, stopping by each cot, clearly asking each patient, Need anything? Are you okay?

  If a guy shook his head, said no, Sachs moved to the next person. If a guy responded, Sachs stayed.

  Pettit said, “Like all the volunteers. Bed to bed. Now,” he said, adjusting
the picture. “Watch Del Grazo.”

  I saw the lieutenant sit for a while with one patient, talking, nodding, taking his time, listening to what the man said. He turned his back to the camera. I saw his arms moving. What was he doing? Then he put something in his pocket and rose. But instead of going to the next cot over, where a man looked up at him, clearly expecting him to stop, Del Grazo scanned the rows, then went off in a different direction.

  “Huh!” I said.

  He passed by two dozen patients, including one waving for him to stop. He seemed to ask another patient—a sub crewman—for directions, then the patient pointed left and Del Grazo went that way.

  Del Grazo arrived at a cot on the far end of the hangar. He bent over that man, and began talking, wiping the guy’s head, looking attentive again.

  Pettit said, “He never goes cot to cot.”

  I wished I could see what Del Grazo was doing when he again turned his back to the camera. There was something familiar about those arm movements. “Maybe he carried a message from one guy to a friend.”

  “I asked DeBlieu if they have tapes of the hangar. Del Grazo never talks to two people side by side. And he always turns his back, like he knows the camera is there. I wondered, why? Why those specific guys? So I called Apparecio up here and we watched together. And the last four guys he attended to?”

  “Yes?” I was watching Del Grazo’s back, the way his right hand seemed to extend straight out, toward the patient, and stay there. The left hand went out where I couldn’t see it, but I could tell it was moving in small circles. Both hands went into his parka pockets.

  Pettit turned his face to me fully. “Those guys he talks to all work with the prototype torpedo, Colonel. He passed up everyone else. He just talks to torpedo crew.”

  Softly I said, “Does he?”

  “And before that, on the tapes, it was guys who work the reactor. Never a cook. Never the guy who runs the ship store. Never a third mate . . .”

  “Pretty risky of him,” I said.

  “It’s mayhem down there. Everyone running around. No one pays attention. And if it’s risky, whatever the hell he’s doing, sir, with his hands, maybe that’s his mission.”

  Pettit and I stood up at the same time. I felt a dull throb of rage begin in my temples.

  “The communications officer,” I said.

  “Yeah. Fixes everyone’s computers. Maintains the sat equipment, radios, access to the ship,” he said.

  “Seems a talk is in order,” I said.

  And Pettit suddenly said, “Oh shit!”

  On screen, Del Grazo had stopped walking, and was gazing up, directly into a camera. Del Grazo frowning, thinking, then looking around quickly. Del Grazo’s gaze moving again, up and left, toward another camera.

  “He’s checking the cameras.”

  Del Grazo looking left now, then right, scanning the hangar. Looking for . . . what? Pettit? The guards? Del Grazo lowering his head, moving now, slow but steady, looking neither left nor right, but heading past patients toward the hangar door, hands in his pockets, taking an Arctic stroll. A plodding walk. A walk outside.

  “This is happening right now?” I said, turning to go.

  “This was ten minutes ago.”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  We ran for the hangar.

  But Del Grazo was gone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  DeBlieu swore softly. “So the only way to go look for him is to infect the whole ship,” he said. “Send Marines forward, expose just about everyone aboard.”

  “Do you know a better way?”

  “I know that you never should have brought them all on,” he said bitterly as we watched Pettit and his men head forward, a search party every bit as serious as if they approached a potentially hostile village in Afghanistan.

  We were outside the bridge, above the prow and looking down, but views below were compartmentalized, blocked by superstructure, awnings, decks, antennas. DeBlieu had ordered nonessential personnel—anyone not searching for Del Grazo—to the mess, the only room big enough to hold them, while two-man Coast Guard teams—armed from the weapons locker—had been dispatched as guards to the engine room, central power plant, auxiliary control areas, and at strategically located hatches.

  DeBlieu had also ordered Del Grazo to report to the bridge, over the intercom. A command unanswered. Big surprise.

  Light was fading. To port, I saw that we’d pushed our way out of even the thinner ice, and had arrived at a generally open area of ocean, which probably would have been frozen solid fifty years ago this time of year. But other than a few pathetic ice rafts bobbing, we were free of the white prison, and idling in place, in case Del Grazo had gotten off.

  A voice on the radio said, “Weapons locker secure, Captain. He didn’t get in here.”

  Below, on deck, crew went from evacuation station to station, checking the life rafts to see if they were still there. To lower the motorized Zodiacs, brake releases could be operated by hand. The boat would then lower by gravity to the sea. There, anyone inside could disconnect the hook, start the motor with a button, and drive off.

  I don’t see any Zodiacs moving away on the water, so where is he?

  “My officer,” said DeBlieu savagely. His face was twisted in pain, the combined surges of guilt, rage, and humiliation that come with betrayal. “My communications man,” he said as we flashed over the enormous damage such a man—having access to every computer on the ship—could do.

  DeBlieu muttered, “He could have piggybacked Chinese listeners onto every sat talk, hacked into every laptop, inserted software to monitor every study we’ve done for the State Department over the last two years.”

  Is the damage over? Is Del Grazo putting some new plan into effect? Or is he just terrified, running like a kid, seeking a hiding place before the inevitable apprehension?

  “If he’s smart, he had an escape plan,” I said. “Or he’s stashed a weapon. You say you’ve had him here for two years?”

  DeBlieu’s jaw seemed to be grinding, his breath puffed out in bullet bursts. “Two goddamn years. But why not just take a Zodiac? He had a lead on us.”

  I shook my head. “And go where? He knew we were onto him. He figured he didn’t have time to push off and get out of range. The Marines could plug him at three hundred yards.”

  Eddie had taken over in the monitor lab, and was going camera to camera, like the exec on the bridge, searching for a glimpse of the running man, a flash of movement, a face staring back; in a passageway, in the laundry, the gym, the cargo hold.

  A couple of big, burly, armed chiefs sent to search Del Grazo’s cabin had found, of course, nothing.

  The sun was starting to sink in the heavens. We were far enough south so that, at exactly the worst time possible, natural light would disappear. The last rays sparkled and formed gray areas of shadow on the tiny passing ice floes. Reports flowed in from frustrated search parties. He was not in the aft cargo area. Not in the quarantined area. Not hiding in the copter control shack.

  DeBlieu grunted as we heard that all Zodiac boats remained securely on board. “Lieutenant Peter Del Grazo to the bridge, please,” came a normal-sounding announcement, as if the guy was simply late for a shift.

  DeBlieu said, “He was always helpful. Always volunteered to do extra.”

  He’d ordered his searchers over his radio, “If you find him, we want to talk to him. But if you have to defend yourself, shoot.”

  I kept thinking, What was Del Grazo doing with those patients when his back was turned from the camera? What the hell was he up to?

  In all, at least forty people were scattered through the ship, looking for the fugitive. The Coasties were armed with M16s, but they were not warriors. They had not joined up to fight.

  “At least he didn’t get a weapon.” DeBlieu sighed.

  “That doesn�
�t mean he’s not armed. Do you search your crew each time they come on board when you’re in port?”

  “No.”

  “Do you sweep lockers, looking for drugs, weapons, contraband?”

  “There’s no need . . .” he started to say, and stopped.

  “Then he could have brought on a weapon at any time, or could have taken one from the Montana.”

  DeBlieu headed into the bridge to join his officers, and I pulled out my Beretta sidearm and stepped inside and clomped down a stairwell. Now I was searching, too, for our human infection. Our saboteur. Our Chinese spy.

  But the ship was a miniature city, and Del Grazo had a thousand places to hide, or to have stashed weapons. The Wilmington had multiple levels. It was stuffed with gear lockers and fan rooms, workshops, machine shops, store and supply rooms, prop shaft area, bow thruster room, twenty thousand cubic feet of cargo storage space alone. The ship’s planners had maximized the use of space. There were no spare inches.

  I went cabin to cabin. I opened a door slowly; no one was supposed to be in the junior officer stateroom. I scanned empty bunks, a desk, a poster of the singer Adele, as a soundtrack left on played Kelly Clarkson doing “Stronger.” In the next cabin were books, Farewell to Arms, Old Man and the Sea, someone here taking the college lit class on board, taught by a professor from a university in Indiana.

  A wallet lay on a deck. People here trusted each other.

  No one under the bunk. Or in the shared bathroom separating two single-officer cabins.

  In a male crew bunk room, twelve well-made steel berths were stacked in two-man tiers. It was quiet, except for the hissing of air whooshing from vents above the corners, and a muted scrape of an odd ice bit hitting the hull. For some reason, I smelled bananas.

  I climbed through a hatch leading down—through a narrow hole, to a cargo hold. I stood amid a tumble of wooden crates and a thousand shadows.

  Nobody!

  “Level 04 clear, Captain, looks like!” my radio said.