The Barrier

by Shankari Chandran

  ‘I’ll meet you at the lab. Please begin your search for the genesis.’

  As soon as Khan was in the water, Noah headed for his car. The green sedan started its engine. They should have waited for him to leave.

  ‘Vijay, let’s get to the lab.’ He had his work clothes in a bag on the back seat. He pulled out his phone.

  ‘Garner? Are you awake?’

  ‘I’ve been awake for two hours, sir. Watching your location right now.’

  ‘Of course you are, sorry. Can you access Dr Khan’s wife’s full medical records? Her COD wasn’t in our files. He said she was sick . . .’

  ‘Sure, we can get to level 4 in the Eastern Alliance mainframe. If we try the three levels above that, we’ll set off a massive alarm. Crawford thinks he can work out how to enter quietly. He always overreaches.’

  ‘It’s a fine quality in some professions.’

  ‘But not all.’

  ‘Okay. Until you’re absolutely sure, leave those levels alone.’

  ‘Yes, sir, we know.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Garner and Crawford were the only people he ever apologised to. And his wife.

  ‘We’re in. Haema Scans for Aisha Khan are being sent to your handheld.’

  ‘Thanks. Give me the headlines.’ Noah changed his clothes as he spoke.

  ‘Aisha Khan died on 12 August 2025 – cause of death . . . says viral infection. Let me pull up her medical records. Just checking. No – nothing. At the time of her death she was in good health.’

  ‘What does the postmortem say?’

  ‘There wasn’t one. That’s unusual. No details on internment of body. Organ donation . . . none that I can see from the records.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like Khan. He’s lying.’

  ‘I’ll keep looking. Sending you what I have now, the usual encryption. What’s he lying about – the wife’s sickness or her death?’

  ‘Both, I think – I don’t know,’ Noah replied slowly.

  Garner hesitated but spoke her mind. ‘That’s not like you, sir. I’ll keep looking,’ she repeated.

  ‘Thank you. Good work, Garner – you too, Crawford, I assume you’re on the line.’

  ‘Always, Chief,’ Crawford replied.

  Noah put the phone down and picked up his handheld.

  *

  From her car, Sahara watched the men on the beach. She was twelve cars away from the president’s surveillance team. In the morning haze, Khan and Noah looked like father and son, one teaching the other an ancient sequence of movements that saluted the sun god. She watched them, remembering the movements her grandmother had taught her a lifetime ago, when she had felt reverence for divinity; reverence for life.

  Reverence, hope, faith – she wasn’t sure what she had left. She could only list the lives she’d ruined.

  Penance. She still had that.

  Khan returned to the water’s edge and waded in smoothly, not shuddering as the cold waves enveloped him.

  Noah returned to his car. She wanted him to smile. He was handsome although from the surveillance photos he rarely smiled. He turned towards her, unseeing. She felt her body tingle. An old hunger. She ignored the muscle memory.

  He got into his car. The surveillance vehicle pulled out too early. Amateurs.

  The sun hit the ocean’s surface like a thousand stars, carried by the waves towards the shore. She checked that she was a safe distance from the surveillance team on Khan. She was always a safe distance. She stripped off her dress to her swimmers underneath and headed out to the break.

  Redemption – perhaps she still had that too.

  *

  The main lab was empty. It was only 6.15 am. Noah had more than half an hour before Khan arrived. He entered the doctor’s personal lab and went straight to the computer that interfaced with Devi. He activated his lenses for Garner.

  ‘Place the handheld on Khan’s biometric ID panel. That’s it – fingerprint copy complete.’ Garner guided him through his earpiece. ‘Now place it next to the computer, sir. Closer – just leave it there and it will copy the files. It won’t work with Devi, but anything else is fine.’

  Later, he would back up his handheld to Garner’s hard drive and process the stolen information.

  ‘Good morning, Devi,’ he said, ‘How are you today?’

  ‘I am well, thank you for asking, sir. How are you?’ the voice replied in a synthetically smooth tone, imitating his polite inflection. There was no way he could access the information she contained without her realising it.

  ‘I am well. Dr Khan said I could make an early start today. I hope you don’t mind me being here without him.’ Noah had already noted the surveillance cameras.

  ‘Not at all, sir. Dr Khan has asked me to show you the time-lapsed film of the children. He looked after the babies himself when they quarantined the maternity ward.’

  ‘Which child does he want me to watch?’ Noah’s throat suddenly felt tight.

  ‘Baby Karthik – the first one. Please take a seat, sir.’

  Devi pulled a chair closer but he didn’t sit. The lights dimmed and the recording started on the large screen. Her hand breezed past him to pluck the image out, giving him the 3D replay.

  Baby Karthik lay in a clear crib. It was sealed, but tubes curled through its vents like shiny red veins. The child’s small chest was covered in adhesive pads that connected wires to the machine next to him. Its low hum reminded Noah of the chorus of geckoes he heard at night outside his hotel. Geckoes were bad luck in Sri Lanka. Or was it good luck? He could never remember. Bad luck at weddings and good luck on other days, like today.

  The vitals monitor showed an irregular line, the peaks and troughs of tachycardia.

  Noah touched the screen to expand the monitor.

  ‘All good, sir, I can see the numbers,’ Garner replied in his ear. ‘The oxygenation level and blood pressure is too low, the heart rate and temperature is too high.’

  ‘Was,’ he whispered to himself. Was too high.

  He made himself look at the baby – Karthik Raghavan. He recognised the blue roses under the translucent skin, blood seeping from a myriad of internal wounds. If he turned the child over, his back would be a deep purple from the blood that gravity had pooled underneath.

  He heard the cries and screams quickly fade to whimpers as the child’s lungs withered, and his vocal cords corroded. He saw seizure after horrific seizure and he wished the child would die.

  Khan entered regularly, dressed in full protective gear. He checked vitals and wiped the blood from the baby’s eyes, nose, mouth and ears. He intubated Baby Karthik, masterfully inserting a narrow tube into an even finer, collapsing trachea.

  He changed the baby’s nappy when bloodstained faeces spurted out. He tried one antiviral after another. He administered it through the child’s IV, the veins, his rectum – any way he could. He spread ointments on the sores that flowered all over the small body, the ulcerated skin and muscle that fell away from the barely living carcass.

  And he drew blood sample after blood sample – and studied it. He moved quickly between the baby, Devi, the three computers in the room and its equipment.

  ‘Replay that please, Devi,’ Noah commanded.

  ‘Certainly, sir.’ Noah leaned towards the image. Khan was checking the samples repeatedly. He was looking for something.

  ‘Again please,’ Noah asked. ‘Enlarge, slow down and replay.’

  He watched Khan. ‘What is he doing?’ he whispered to himself.

  Devi answered him. ‘He’s studying the Ebola virus, sir – and the antibodies produced by the patient when his body tried to fight it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To engineer more antibodies – with help from my database of over four million samples.’

  ‘You make it sound so easy, Devi.’

  ‘Chief, I’m recording this but I’m not sure I can extrapolate his process from it. Is this the vaccine we’re looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Hassan Al
i’s vaccine was a decoy. It didn’t create immunity against Ebola. Khan’s had made him immune to Ebola 48.6, the variant used in the hospital outbreak.

  ‘Maybe . . .’ he whispered. But where did Khan store the vaccine and the research Neeson wanted?

  A door opened behind him. ‘Good morning, Noah.’ It was Khan. ‘Thank you for watching that – I wanted you to understand why our work together is important.’

  ‘You kept trying to save him – even when you knew it was hopeless . . .’

  ‘You would have done the same. It is human nature to hope.’

  Noah couldn’t meet Khan’s gaze. He was afraid Khan would see through to the core of him; see that the child was dead because of him. They all were. He turned back to the image. Khan soothed and sang to the baby, who stopped mewling when he heard the doctor’s voice. Sometimes, Noah thought he heard the old man cry.

  Noah was good at controlling his emotions. Too good, Maggie told him when she left. He closed his eyes and shuddered.

  ‘Noah, let’s begin. Time is short for all of us.’

  ‘Shorter for some more than others.’

  ‘Yes – I know what you mean.’ There was a rueful resignation in Khan’s voice. And something else Noah couldn’t place. But he was sure Khan wasn’t talking about Baby Karthik.

  Chapter 14

  Noah turned the car into the driveway and stopped at the heavy steel gates of the Presidential Palace. He stepped out into the light at the guardhouse. The soldiers searched him and the vehicle but found nothing.

  A soldier waved him on. ‘Follow the driveway, sir. The president isn’t expecting anyone else tonight.’

  The man signalled to the guardhouse to open the gates. All of the soldiers stood alert, their weapons poised, until Noah had driven through and the gate had closed behind him.

  The driveway snaked across a manicured estate that contrasted starkly with the tired urban decay he had passed outside.

  At the northern corner a floodlight traced a lazy pattern over the lawn. Noah noted the silhouettes of two soldiers in the tower, one to manoeuvre the barrel of the light and the other to pick off intruders.

  He parked his car as directed. A servant greeted him, smiling but silent. The man led him through the gilded front door and into a sparkling, empty dining room.

  Noah looked up at the crystal chandeliers that dripped from the ceiling and the massive oil canvasses that decked the walls. His eyes searched the room for surveillance equipment. An old habit.

  He turned at the sound of the opening door.

  ‘Noah – good evening. Thank you for joining me.’ President Rajasuriya clasped both of his large hands around Noah’s, shaking it warmly and pulling him close. Noah recognised the faint smell of ammonia. Rajasuriya was eighty-two years old but his hair was a deep black that leeched onto his hairline.

  A coterie of servants silently entered the room with refreshments.

  The president’s face darkened. ‘No, no! I said we would take dinner in my private library.’ He sighed and clapped his hands at the servants, ushering them out. ‘I thought we could talk more freely. Your father loved books, yes?’

  Before Noah could reply, the president led him out of the reception room and up an ornate spiral staircase. At first Noah thought it had mirrors embedded in it, reflecting the colours of the room, but he soon realised it was a rainbow of gemstones.

  ‘Yes, the staircase is something, isn’t it? I had the jewels brought from the temple at Kadiragama when we destroyed it. According to the legend, the god Murugan presented these beauties to the maiden Valli. As if you would need persuasion to marry a god. Perhaps women are different – perhaps they prefer jewels to power?’

  The servants had gone ahead; the staircase was empty but it was a risky conversation.

  ‘Aah, Noah, you should see your face. You must learn to relax. I’ve read your file – yes, we have files on you too. You’re always so intense. It’s not good for your health. Don’t worry about the servants. Heightened confidentiality is part of their contractual arrangement.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you, Mr President.’

  ‘How refreshing – something you don’t know. To join my service, the servants agree to forgo their powers of speech.’ He smiled widely, revealing black gums.

  ‘How exactly does one do that?’

  The president opened the door to a large library. Shelves of books swept grandly from the floor to the ceiling.

  ‘Quite easily. They are administered with a combination of the old vaccines, the toxic ones, EBL-22 and EBL-23 – are you familiar with them?’ He motioned to a pair of leather armchairs. There was a small table in between them with their drinks waiting.

  ‘Yes, I am.’ Noah remembered Hassan Ali’s children.

  ‘Of course you are, your people tested it on our soldiers during the war. A convenient lapse in your commitment to the Geneva Conventions. Our slums are full of your experiments – men and women whose minds you broke and voices you stole with all the vaccines that failed before you developed EBL-47.’ Rajasuriya didn’t wait for him to respond.

  ‘We experimented on our prisoners too. If you get the toxicity level of the old vaccines right, you can achieve muteness and inhibit the limbic system.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Noah said. ‘The limbic system is primal – nothing short of a stroke, a crushing head injury or a lobotomy can inhibit the brain’s fight-or-flight mechanism.’

  ‘You should know by now, anything is possible with the right science.’ The president corrected himself. ‘Almost anything.

  ‘In time, people come to enjoy working for me. They prefer the vaccine to the ongoing use of other interrogation techniques. They come to love me as I love all my citizens, even those who have sinned against me.’ The president smiled hungrily at a young woman who brought in a tray of food. She couldn’t hide her prettiness behind the plain white uniform and demure bun.

  ‘Of course, I love some more than others.’ He touched the woman’s exposed forearm gently. Noah saw the tendons in her arm tense. He heard her exhale slightly as she raised her eyes to the president, expressionless. She nodded and set the tray down on the table.

  Some of her limbic system was still working. Noah pulled his eyes away from her face. He studied the food on the table, momentarily unable to look at the president.

  ‘Fish patties? These are a local favourite.’ The president slid the plate closer to himself and took a patty, watching the woman shut the door behind her.

  ‘She’s pretty, isn’t she? If you wish, you can have her.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’m fine,’ Noah replied.

  ‘I understand your wife left you almost six months ago and you have not taken a woman, man or child since. That’s unhealthy and unnatural. Let me help you.’

  ‘Really, thank you, Mr President. I’m here for work –’

  ‘Yes, work. Tell me why you’re here?’ The president asked amicably, picking up another piece.

  ‘You know why I’m here. We’re investigating the Ebola outbreak that killed eight Sri Lankans and potentially jeopardised the health of your country.’

  ‘No, Noah, that is why the WHO is here.’

  The president paused to dip his fish patty into the mint chutney. ‘But you and your small Bio team are here for something else and I want to know what it is.’

  Noah didn’t falter. ‘Bio takes an Ebola outbreak seriously. We always shadow the WHO team when an outbreak occurs. Sri Lanka is very important to Bio – and Hackman. You haven’t had a reported case since WWR. We want to make sure your containment protocols are working – and find out where it started.’ Noah reached for the food.

  ‘The origin of the outbreak was in the neo-natal ICU,’ the president replied. ‘We’ve reviewed the surveillance footage, the meta-scanner and Haema Scanner records at all of the entrances and exits to the hospital. The only thing out of order was that Dr Fonseka, a long-standing doctor on the ward, was sick on the night of the outbreak.�
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  Three servants walked in bearing steaming hot dishes: goat curry, crab curry and fried okra.

  ‘Have you questioned her?’ Noah asked. He cursed himself silently – he should have thought about her, even if Hackman hadn’t.

  ‘Extensively. She claims she doesn’t know anything. Her postmortem revealed that she did indeed have gastroenteritis.’ The president waved his hand, shooing an unseen mosquito.

  Noah felt his chest tighten. The collateral kills had started to matter. His list of names was growing.

  The president continued to eat. ‘Perhaps we lack your interrogation finesse?’

  Noah wanted to put his dinner knife into the president’s carotid artery. No, a single sharp blow to his throat, and then a quick turn of his neck. He would hide the body behind the re-upholstered colonial divan, ask to use the bathroom, and run across the lawn, avoiding the floodlight. He had memorised the pattern of its sweep. Three minutes to get to the gate, nine seconds to take out the soldiers before they’d even stood up from their card game.

  ‘Won’t her family notice she’s gone missing? It would raise suspicion and create –’

  ‘People disappear in Sri Lanka,’ the president shrugged his shoulders, putting more food onto his plate. ‘It is as much a part of our life cycle as the monsoon and the harvest. Perhaps her family could stage another march? You know I punished those women with the EBL-22 and 23 too although they still insist on marching.’ The president laughed. ‘I let that incident go, Noah – I put it down to your recent tragedy. But I urge you not to involve yourself in my business again.’

  Noah stared at the curries congealing on his plate.

  ‘You should eat while it’s hot,’ the president prompted. ‘Tell me this, why are you so keen to get close to Khan? Do you think he did it?’

  ‘Did what?’ Noah tried to eat some of his dinner.

  ‘Infected those babies with Ebola, of course.’

  Noah shook his head. He moved the food around on his plate. ‘I’m sure Khan is clean. He’s a natural healer; a seeker of remedies through science.’