Hassan stared at him blankly. Noah motioned for water and a soldier quickly brought him a cold bottle. He cracked the seal and poured the water over Hassan’s head. The man cried out and then opened his mouth, his head darting.
‘Feel better?’ Noah asked without concern. ‘Now, again: who and why and which population sets?’ He leaned forward and snapped the man’s middle finger back in its socket. Hassan screamed and jerked in the chair, almost knocking himself over. Noah held the chair down.
‘You have nine more of those. And as I mentioned before – one wife and three children.’
‘I swear, I’m telling the truth. There was no one else. It told us what to do – me, Sumith and Assif. The voice – it told us your vaccine was hurting us and that we had to find a way to stop it.’
Noah reached for another finger.
‘Sumith and I tried to develop a decoy for months but we couldn’t get it right.’
‘And what was Assif doing while you were cooking up a storm in your lab?’ Noah asked.
‘He approached us one day. He sensed “It” too. He said he knew someone who could create a decoy vaccine.’
‘We’ve spoken to Assif and he showed us the chatroom where he found a like-minded traitor. However, his contact has disappeared without a trace. This casts suspicion on the whole story –’ Noah paused for a moment. ‘Except that I believe you – you don’t have the virology expertise to create the markers.’ Noah knew enough about virology to identify who knew more.
Hassan exhaled deeply, his head sinking onto his chest.
Noah lifted the man’s chin and shook it hard.
‘You were willing to compromise herd immunity against Ebola. You have compromised the lives of your children. I just don’t understand why.’
Nothing on Earth could have made Noah risk his children. His child. He didn’t believe any psychosis was powerful enough to override a parent’s instinct to protect. And he certainly didn’t believe any voice – any ‘It’ – was persuasive enough. No matter how beautiful.
‘Why?’ Hassan repeated, confused.
‘Yes, why did you do it?’ Noah asked. Hassan hadn’t intended to invite Ebola back into the world, but he had risked it – why?
‘But I already told you – It wanted me to. It told me this was the right thing to do. It wants to be loved again. It wants to come back to us here.’
Noah reached out and snapped another finger. Hassan screamed, this time his back arching as much as the restraints would allow. He closed his eyes, teeth biting into his torn lip. And then, very clearly, through his tears, he began to pray.
Except he shouldn’t have known how.
Chapter 3
The plane door exhaled open. Noah walked down the narrow aisle of the private jet and stood in the doorway. He pulled the collar of his jacket tightly around his neck. He had missed the bitter winds of London; they penetrated every part of him, like a quick bolt of electricity.
London was his base, although he no longer called anywhere home. He had been raised among the brownstones and maple trees of the Upper West Side. Then recruited and trained by Bio in an off-grid facility in Rochester, New York State. On graduation he was sent to London, ostensibly to finish his PhD in virology – in reality to help expand the Department’s European operations.
He had met and married Maggie here too. Maybe that was why he always came back.
He hoisted his sports bag over his shoulder. The steward reluctantly passed him the small cooler box he had stored in the plane’s refrigerator.
‘Thanks,’ Noah said.
‘No problem. It smells divine.’
‘Doesn’t it.’ He laughed and stepped out into the cold, crossing the short distance to the preliminary meta-scanner. He always felt like he was walking through a crystal tunnel. It detected the guns on his ankle holster and in his bag, although it wasn’t looking for them. He exited the meta-scanner into the Sanitising Room.
Unlike him, most travellers had come from within the Western Alliance and therefore didn’t need the Sanitising Room. Noah was part of a select group – Bio agents, senior politicians, WHO officials and soldiers – who were approved by Bio to travel to the Eastern Alliance. On their return, they were required to sanitise.
He entered the steel cubicle and stripped. The high-pressure spray covered him in chlorobicide. His skin felt hot but the antiviral chemicals no longer irritated him. The spray was followed by a stream of coarse defoliator and another spray of the sanitiser.
He kept his eyes and mouth shut tightly, using the sterile brush to scrub his body and nails. Three cameras watched him. When it was done, he dressed and waited for the cubicle door to open. He followed the directions to the immigration line, noting the surveillance along the way.
He passed large WHO signs advising travellers in different languages how to maintain hygiene and recognise the symptoms of disease.
The enlarged words were consistent in every country he had been to: Ebola still exists. Vaccination and boosters every three years are our only line of defence.
The signs were accompanied by images of people washing hands, drinking bottled water and wearing face masks. He didn’t look at the posters showing the stages of disease progression. He had seen that before. Every fifty metres there were units attached to the walls, dispensing chlorobicide, disposable gloves and pocket face masks. Ebola wasn’t airborne but most people were extra careful in high-density areas.
The air around him smelled faintly of gardenias, an added perfume to camouflage the biting smell of the chlorine compound that was pushed through the airport’s vents.
He approached the immigration section. The thirty or so lines of the general population snaked for hundreds of metres. People stood, masked and quiet. Occasionally someone coughed and people turned. Parents urgently quelled crying children. Soldiers stood at regular posts, taser batons on their belts, guns across their chests, safety clips unhooked.
Noah approached one of the lines reserved for government officials.
‘Dr Williams?’
He turned to see a young soldier holding a small device. The man looked from the screen to Noah’s face again, confirming his facial identity.
‘Yes?’
‘Come with me, sir. You’ll still need to clear quarantine but it’s much faster – this way please.’ The soldier directed him down a narrow corridor to a metal door with a panel for biometric identification. Noah submitted his eye and palm for scanning.
The door opened to a sparse room. He nodded at the soldier standing at the table.
‘Good to see you, sir, we’ve been expecting you.’ The soldier motioned to the chair.
‘I’ll stand, thank you. It was a long flight.’
‘The meta-scan indicates that you’re not carrying any biohazardous material in or on your person. Your historic Haema Scanner records show that your Ebola antibody levels are sufficient. All markers required for entry into the United Kingdom are present. You don’t need an EBL-47 booster.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’ Noah smiled.
‘No, but we still have to check your blood. Sorry, sir.’
‘I understand.’ Noah took off his coat and pulled up his shirt sleeve.
The soldier held the portable scanner above Noah’s wrist without touching his skin.
‘I hope you clean that after.’
‘Only if I make contact, sir, it’s non-invasive,’ the soldier replied.
‘Clean it anyway. It’s good practice.’
‘Of course, sir, sorry.’ A few moments later the scanner beeped. The soldier studied the screen. ‘You are clean for all known biological threats. The meta-scan indicates that you have a few things to declare. May I please check your bags?’
‘Sure. Two firearms, one skull and one other item. I have papers for everything.’ He handed over his documents. The soldier reviewed them carefully and then opened the bag. He looked at the skull, wrapped in Noah’s Columbia University basketball jersey, but didn�
�t take it out.
‘I’ve heard about Louis,’ he said, trying not to smile.
‘Louis is famous.’
‘So are you, sir.’ The soldier reached for the small box.
Soldiers on his side of the alliance might not admire him so much if they knew exactly what he did and how he did it. Not everyone had the stomach for his work.
‘Careful with that. You’ll see that I’ve had its skin and fluids tested back at base in Mumbai. It’s as clear as me.’
The soldier opened the box slowly, revealing a mango. Its skin was a perfect sunset of pink, yellow and orange. A small section had been cut and biopsied. Noah had covered this with thin plastic bandages, holding the cut together.
‘May I?’ the soldier asked.
‘Go for it.’
The soldier leaned forward and inhaled. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘It smells divine.’
Noah laughed and reclaimed the fruit and his luggage. He nodded goodbye and walked out the exit and into the cold London air. A driverless black SUV was waiting for him.
*
The Department for Biological Integrity was headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Before World War Righteous, it was called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The catastrophes of WWR required a more interventionist approach to disease control. Bio combined military tactics with the tools of scientific innovation and the objectives of public health and security.
Bio’s London office was its largest base outside the continental US. The office had a sixty-storey administrative building above ground and twenty-three floors of laboratories underground.
It had been built out of the remains of Waterloo Station. In the chaos that followed the Great Pandemic and WWR, people were so used to the recasting of public buildings into quarantined hospitals, refugee camps, morgues and crematoriums, that no one cared when one of London’s largest, most important train stations was transformed into something entirely different.
Noah walked through the preliminary meta-scanner and antechamber that protected the building with reinforced concrete and projectile-proof glass. Two layers of sliding doors opened, allowing him to the lift.
‘In the Western Alliance, my voice identifies me as Agent Noah Williams.’ The programme assessed his voice for signs of duress.
At the twelfth floor, Patrice was waiting for him.
‘Hello Patrice, you look beautiful as always.’ He kissed her on both cheeks. He wasn’t lying. She was always groomed impeccably. She’d been with Hackman from the very start of his career but no one knew how old she was, except, of course, Hackman.
‘You look terrible. The pilot says you didn’t sleep. And you need a haircut.’
‘You sound like my wife.’ He smiled.
She patted his unshaven face. ‘Ex-wife. You should listen to her. She still loves you.’
He passed the box to her. She looked up in disbelief when she opened it, and then brought the fruit to her nose.
‘I think I love you!’ She laughed and kissed him again. ‘How did you know?’
‘You mentioned it once.’
‘Do you miss anything?’
‘Salmon,’ he answered. ‘Real, just-pulled-out-of-a-clean-river salmon. If I try hard, I can almost remember the taste – creamy yet meaty. Sweet, but a little salty.’
‘Stop. You’re making me hungry. He’s expecting you. Go straight through. I’ll pull him out of his meeting.’
‘No hurry, I’ve got time.’
‘I saw the communications. I don’t think so. I’ll get him.’ She put the mango in its box and hurried back to her desk.
Noah entered the office. It was clinically organised and devoid of anything that might give a sense of the man, except for a photograph of Hackman shaking the president’s hand on the day of his appointment. Behind them the star-spangled banner framed the pair in patriotic fervour.
The walls were covered with military cartography and charts tracking the implementation of the Five Virus Eradication Policy. The viruses were priority-coded by colour. The Ebola virus, coloured red, was number one.
There was a Sixth Virus but its map wasn’t pinned to the director’s white walls. The information in front of Noah was low-level security clearance only – it could be mined from the internet by a lesser security agency or the growing subculture of hackers who kept trying to penetrate the Information Shield’s firewall from both sides.
Noah picked up the photograph on the desk.
‘Patrice insisted on that one.’ A voice spoke from behind him. ‘She bought me that tie for a Kris Kringle. Apparently turquoise warms the blue of my eyes.’
Noah turned around. ‘She’s right. Remarkably, your face looks warmer.’
‘If Patrice was your assistant, you’d do as you were told too.’ Hackman snatched the photograph from him.
‘New brooch from Patrice too?’ His eyes focused on Hackman’s lapel. A small silver tree was fixed next to the American flag.
‘This is a pin, not a brooch. It’s from an old friend – the tree of liberty.’ Hackman touched the pin.
‘The one that must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants?’ Noah raised his eyebrows.
‘The very same. My friend is partial to Jefferson. I’m an Abe Lincoln man myself – ideology over practicality. How was the flight?’
‘Fine. Thanks for sending your charter. You didn’t need to but I enjoyed the in-flight bar and turn-down service.’
‘No problem. I wanted you back fast and it was either that or make you ride caddy with one of the stealth jets. The pilot said you didn’t sleep. You were supposed to rest.’
‘The pilot should have kept his eyes on the radar. I was fine. I closed my eyes for a while and the single malt helped some.’
‘Okay, so let’s talk.’
Noah exhaled deeply and sat at the large table. ‘I assume you’ve seen the recordings?’
‘Yes, all three interrogations. And I’ve read the transcripts. It’s the last one I’m most interested in – Hassan Ali.’
‘Thirty-five years old,’ Noah recited the profile. ‘WHO-employed vaccinator, respected bacteriologist with no suspicious financial activity over the last ten years.’
‘A zealot then?’ Hackman sat back in his leather chair and flicked through the file.
‘Yes, of indeterminate ideology.’
‘Well, not entirely indeterminate,’ Hackman replied. ‘What did he say to you – the audio didn’t catch that part.’
‘Nothing – rubbish. It wasn’t worth putting in the report.’
‘I’ll decide that,’ Hackman said, without recrimination. ‘He talked about an energy, didn’t he?’
Noah looked up sharply. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because it isn’t the first time I’ve heard it. What were his exact words?’
‘He said . . . It was a force, an energy inside him and all around him – guiding him. He said it wants to come back . . .’
Hackman didn’t look surprised. ‘It sounds like the Sixth Virus, don’t you think?’
Chapter 4
Noah was surprised by Hackman’s words. The Sixth Virus had been eradicated from the Eastern Alliance at the end of the war. ‘Hassan’s ramblings are nonsense.’ Noah replied. ‘Someone has put him up to it – probably the contact who provided the decoy vaccine. If we can find him, then we can find out if this is an isolated incident.’
‘No sign of the chatroom contact yet though.’
‘He’s a ghost. If he’s smart enough to develop this vaccine, then he’s smart enough to cover his tracks and only come out when he wants to. Cyber Surveillance is building a false profile of a rebel vaccinator. They’ll plant him in chatrooms and start to make a little noise – disillusionment with the Global Vaccination Programme, fear of big pharma etc. And then we wait for the ghost to find us. We only get one chance at this – if he senses a trap we’ll lose him for good.’
‘Good idea – yours?’
‘It’s a team ef
fort.’
Hackman shook his head. ‘You’ll never get the top job with that attitude.’
‘I don’t want the top job.’
‘How could you not want all this?’ Hackman fanned his face with his tie.
Noah laughed. ‘I’m putting Garner in charge of CS.’
‘Is she ready for active duty yet?’ Hackman asked, interested but not concerned.
‘Almost. We’ll see. We need to assume that the ghost is either an accomplished virologist himself, or he’s using one. But substituting a defective – or ineffective – vaccine might not be the only way he’ll try to undermine herd immunity.’
‘You’re assuming that the purpose of the attack is to breach the Immunity Shield?’ Hackman challenged.
‘No – the purpose of these breaches is unclear to me.’
‘Okay then,’ Hackman replied. ‘While your false profile is waiting in various vaxxer and anti-vaxxer chatrooms, what will you do?’
Noah sighed. He was so tired but sleep eluded him. He doubted it would help anyway. ‘I think I should probe Hassan further.’
‘I thought you might say that,’ Hackman replied. He put the file down and connected his fingers like the arc of a cathedral roof across his chest. ‘Would you really have used the EBL-23 on his children – after everything that’s happened . . .’
‘You know the answer. That’s why you sent me.’
Hackman spoke, almost sadly. ‘He won’t tell you more, regardless of whether you fuck with the minds of his children, or not. If anything, he will recant and say whatever you want, in order to protect them.’
Noah felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. He clenched his teeth, almost biting the inside of his lip. He forced himself to relax.
‘What do you want me to do with him, then? And the others from the lab?’
‘The usual. I want it clean.’
Noah nodded.
‘I’m going to tell you something now – it’s classified. Your clearance has been upgraded.’
‘I’d really rather not hear it.’ Noah tried to sound flippant.
The Barrier Page 3