by Fritz Galt
“Crap.”
Here he was, the CIA station chief, caught shaking hands with a Marxist mercenary and the business tycoon who funded the fall of Comoros.
“Look,” he said lamely. “If you can fly us out of here, I won’t raise a fuss.”
Camille looked encouragingly at Multan.
He smiled back. “Certainly. It would be an honor.”
The small jet approached, her twin engines screaming like a table saw on sheet metal.
Alec separated from the terrorists and waved at the Americans to board the small jet.
They were reluctant to leave the safety of the van.
“It’s okay,” he called over the noise. “They won’t harm us.”
“Is this an American plane?” Ahmed shouted, still glued to his seat.
Alec shook his head.
At last the pilot shut his engines down.
“Where’s it going?” the young woman asked.
He was stuck for an answer. He didn’t know, and he hoped it wasn’t toward Afghanistan or the Sudan, but he couldn’t exactly question Multan’s offer, nor turn it down.
If he lost a handful of American citizens to a military coup in the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoro Islands, it would reflect poorly on the CIA and thereby tarnish the eulogy at his funeral service.
At last he said, “Does it really matter?”
Camille strutted up to the jet and entered, followed by Multan, not a stitch of his fine suit spotted with dust or blood.
Encouraged by the affluent-looking passengers, the Americans poured out of the van. If Americans trusted anything, it was money.
At the last moment, Alec climbed on board and pulled the cord that shut the door. His last impression of the Coup-Coup Islands was the lovely perfumed scent that still hung in the air.
The door slammed shut with a decisive click, and he pivoted the lock in place.
What the hell should he do now? He turned to the expectant passengers.
Considering the fact that Camille and Multan sat facing him, he thought better of commandeering the cockpit.
He peered at the Afghans still surrounding the plane.
A sudden thought froze the blood in his veins. If the two terrorists onboard didn’t need gunmen on the plane, then they wouldn’t need security when they landed. Where in the world were they headed?
The jet eased forward like the beginning of a roller coaster. He slipped into the last empty seat.
Taxiing into position for takeoff, they passed the commercial jetliner.
Yemeni Airlines suddenly seemed the better choice.
“Relax,” came Camille from the seat behind him. Her arms slid around his neck and over his shoulders. “You are rescuing your fellow countrymen.”
He braced for takeoff. “Where are you taking us?”
The only response was a playful twist of his ear lobes. The jet engines went to full power and they began to accelerate. Whatever their destination, it could be no worse than that crazy place.
Or could it?
Evening descended quickly on the Equator.
Mick latched his travel bag shut and spotted the lights of a water taxi floating just off shore.
He steeled himself for his return to India. He had pledged to “poke around” the religious cult that had kidnapped the congressman’s daughter and that was recently joined by the malaria researcher Rajiv Khan. Her belief that Keri Butler was actually abducted by an “Islamic terrorist” only deepened the mystery and compounded the danger. While Natalie searched for Rajiv in the U.S., Mick would travel solo to look for him in India.
He turned to Simon and examined his face. The sagging flesh worried him, but the alert brown eyes assuaged his concern. The doctor would take good care of Mariah.
Mick bent to kiss his daughter on both cheeks. Her skin felt as soft as the day she was born, but she felt terribly cold. Even if she recoiled from his kiss, he would be happy. He would give anything to see something register on her face.
He stepped onto the sandy path with Simon. The doctor’s clothes smelled of iodine, which he used to stain samples for the microscope.
“I’ve never asked you what you’re researching so busily under that Banyan tree,” he said.
Simon took a deep breath, “I’m working on half of a cure. Call it a purely academic exercise.”
Mick raised an eyebrow. “Only half a cure?”
“I only have half the pieces to the puzzle.”
Then he lowered his voice to a whisper, as if he didn’t want Mariah to hear him from inside the hut.
“You see, I’m in a unique position to study the organism at work in a human host. Most victims who reach this stage die immediately. Fortunately, your daughter, by virtue of a life-support system, has managed to preserve for me, actually for victims all over India, the various stages of metamorphosis in the parasite’s life. As you know, in the past few weeks, I have gathered samples from her liver and bloodstream at various stages in the parasite’s development and reproductive cycle.”
“But what good is that? Can’t we kill it in all its stages?”
“A typical inoculation, or vaccine, prevents disease. If such a vaccine existed, the body’s immune system triggered by the vaccine would kill the malaria just after the mosquito challenges the victim, and that person would never catch the disease. Once someone is infected, however, what he needs is something more complex, another type of therapy that’s like a silver bullet. You can’t rely on the body’s immune system any longer. The bullet has to seek out the organism wherever it exists in the body and in whatever form it exists.”
Mick nodded. “I understand. You’re developing a more complex type of cure that would help Mariah.”
“And the hundreds of millions out there who are currently in the early stages of infection.”
“What is this silver bullet exactly? Is it a drug?” Mick asked, starting to stroll toward the boat. It wasn’t every day that he had a walking medical dictionary for a companion.
“Such a treatment works like this. You inject a human with an antigen, which is a killed or weakened form of the disease. The antigen elicits a specific antibody, which is a protein created within lymphocyte cells in the blood. The human body can manufacture millions of different types of antibodies. The antibody attaches itself to the parasite. Are you with me?”
“Yeah. You are trying to stimulate the right antibodies,” Mick said. He tried to remain patient. Something in Simon’s explanation might be of future use to him.
“Okay. In order to find an antibody that will adhere to the parasite’s surface, you need to know the chemical composition of the proteins that make up the parasite’s surface. I test the cell walls from Mariah’s samples by creating monoclonal antibodies. Since the malaria parasite, which is a protozoon, changes the protein content of its cell walls at each stage of its life cycle, I must find antigens that stimulate antibodies to attach to the malaria at each stage of its life.”
“And the antibody kills the disease.”
“No, it only marks the cells to kill.”
“Then how do you kill it?”
They had reached the sea. Simon put both fists on the mounds of flesh that defined his hips and looked off into the darkness. “That’s the other half of the equation. It can only be found in India, where the new species was born. I need to know from what species the damned thing mutated. To date, we have built up vast and detailed databases on the malaria genomes, but there are hundreds of types of malaria and malaria strains. Only by applying the correct genetic information, can I create or choose the toxins that will neutralize the marked parasite cells. Without my knowing its parents, it would take me decades and far better laboratory equipment than I have here to learn the genetic blueprint of this new type of malaria.”
“I thought the antibodies would kill it.”
“It’s not that simple. Antibodies can do one or more of three things. They can directly inactivate a disease, enable blood cells to de
vour the disease, or weaken the disease cell’s surface to open it up for other blood proteins, called compliments, to destroy it.”
“So what kind of action are you trying to create?”
“I have no hope of creating anything. I can only stimulate antibodies that will mark the parasite.”
Mick’s frustration must have been apparent, so Simon attempted an analogy.
“To put this problem in your frame of reference, think about laser-guided missiles. Someone has to aim a laser beam at the target. That’s my job. I mark the disease by eliciting the antibodies that find and adhere to the malaria parasite. Then someone must drop the bomb that aims for the target. Only I don’t know what kind of bomb to drop, one that will inactivate it or kill it. These parasites are variable and strong, so we need a tricky bomb. I’m in favor of a compliment myself.”
“Nice suit you’re wearing.”
“Thank you. To design a compliment protein, I need the genetic information of the malaria parasite, and I don’t have that information.”
“Well, buddy,” Mick said, slapping Simon on a rounded shoulder, “I’m going to India right now. And I’m going to locate a certain malaria doctor who seems to have disappeared there earlier this summer. And if I find him, I will tell him about your laser-guided missiles.”
“What’s his name?”
“Dr. Rajiv Khan.”
“CDC?” Simon asked.
“You know him?” Mick asked, surprised. “Small guy. Dark hair. Glasses.”
“Only his work. Solid science. Seems to have changed tacks in the past couple of years. He dropped drug therapy research and got into vaccines.”
“Well, if I meet the parasite’s parents, I’ll certainly let you know.”
“Good luck,” Simon said, extending a hand. “I hope you do.”
Mick smiled as best he could. “I’ll be in touch.”
He took Simon’s hand, but was reluctant to release it.
“You’ll watch Mariah closely?” he asked.
Simon’s rippling jowls froze rigid for a moment. “Of course, I will.”
Mick hesitated. He wanted Simon to continue the studies he so enthusiastically began, but at the same time he wanted Simon to keep an eye on his daughter. At last he relaxed his grip. He had to trust the man. It was difficult for one caregiver to pass the torch to another.
Mick turned away, picked up his sandals and waded into the warm sea without looking back. A boat boy took his bag and offered him a hand. He accepted it and allowed the boy to pull him gracefully onto the bobbing water taxi.
He felt the engine kick in, and soon they were heading between dangerous, hidden reefs into the inky stillness.
He remained standing on a pontoon, watching the pilot cautiously navigate out into open water. Lights from the resort dominated the lagoon. The front light on his small hut was a tiny pinprick against the vast night.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. It was time to call in reinforcements.
He punched in the Mauritius telephone number of his half-brother Alec.
A strange hum buzzed on the line.
After half a minute, a recorded voice said, “All lines to Mauritius are currently out. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.”
Chapter 18
President Charles Damon entered the White House Situation Room just as his Director of the CIA Hugh Gutman was passing out copies of a briefing paper. All members of the National Security Council rose to their feet.
“Morning, gentlemen,” the president said. He took his seat at the end of the conference table, and the others took their seats.
As the members studied the paper they were given, the president stole a glance at the still-sleepy eyes of his foreign policy advisors.
His political opponents and the press had often accused him, a former Marine colonel with combat experience in Vietnam, of having too many active and former generals on his staff. Perhaps he relied too heavily on military opinion, but he had been elected as a leader who was strong on national defense. In America, generals were a positive asset to administrations. They engendered a sense of security among the American public, he believed, whereas in other lands, generals sitting so close to the highest seats of power tended to spark fear and distrust.
One face that was absent from the conference table was the friendly countenance of Lucius Ford, his good friend and ambassador to the UN. Neither the Department of State nor the Central Intelligence Agency had news on Lucius’ whereabouts in Afghanistan. They weren’t even certain what demands the Taliban had made. It was only one of the many issues that plagued him that morning.
To his right sat two contrasting figures.
Summoned from his home one hour earlier sat a bleary-eyed Vic Padesco, the president’s national security advisor. His streetwise, non-com bearing stemmed from his former life as a soldier’s soldier, later turned four-star general and National Drug Czar. Vic wore no uniform that morning as head of the National Security Council.
Next to him sat Adam Trimble, a career diplomat who had recently become Secretary of State. The president treated him for what he was, a man who saw two sides to every issue and never took a stand. The taciturn man from Foggy Bottom served a useful, if peculiar, purpose. Adam Trimble was proof to the electorate that the president had not packed his Cabinet with “yes men.”
Hugh Gutman filled the chair at the opposite end of the table from the president. A veteran of several administrations and a former senator, he was a fixture at the CIA. No president had ever had the political clout to dislodge him. Nor would he have had the brute strength, as Hugh was the smoking, overindulging antithesis of the fighting trim and urbane gentlemen around him.
Across the table from Adam, an active general stretched his legs, snapped his wrists, lifted his bushy gray eyebrows and reviewed the briefing paper. General Wolf Kessler was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A by-the-book soldier, he had quickly climbed to the military’s highest rung by nearly always being right. Part of being right was his obsequious deference to his commander-in-chief, which often bordered on burlesque. Nevertheless, the general gave him a rare glimpse of the raw power he had at his disposal as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America.
Beside General Kessler, and on the president’s immediate left, sat another former senator, Park Bunker, now secretary of defense. The United States had appointed a good number of wackos to the Sec Defense job over the years. Above all else, the president had sought someone who wouldn’t become overwhelmed by the largest budget of any government department in the world, or break under the stain of the world’s problems and jump out his window at the Pentagon. What he got in appointing Park was a Vietnam War hero who had become a resourceful and respected young statesman on Capitol Hill. That was rare enough, and good enough for Charles Damon.
He gave a satisfied grunt and turned to the briefing paper in his hands. As was his custom, he read it aloud. “Coups d’etat underway in the Comoro Islands, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Reunion Island.” He glared at the roomful of faces. “Where the hell were we when all this began?”
“Asleep, sir,” Hugh said. “It happened late yesterday evening and during the night.”
“Some of us never sleep,” the president said. He was all business at that early hour. “What intelligence do we have on each takeover?”
Hugh described the bloody battles on the four island countries as best the CIA could construct from sketchy details that they had received from the field. The military takeovers were similar in execution and timed to coincide with one another. “We have first-hand reports from the field on two of the four countries.”
“And on the other two?”
“The bastard covering them was on vacation. We’ve had to rely on state radio transmissions.”
The president scowled. “I don’t want to learn about wars from CNN.”
He turned to Park Bunker and asked for the Defense Department’s information and assessment.<
br />
The room learned from the handsome, youthful secretary of defense that the American military already had a large build-up of seaborne troops in the region. The Pentagon had also inserted special operations and hostage rescue teams at naval bases nearby to deal with the hostage situation involving the UN ambassador and eight Western relief workers in Kabul.
Park finished by saying, “In short, we do have sufficient troops in advanced deployment to counter the military takeovers. However, the regime changes do seem to be a fait accomplis. In terms of military intelligence on the assaults, we, too, were taken by surprise.” He traded an uncomfortable look with Hugh.
From Adam Trimble, the room learned that the State Department had yet to respond publicly or diplomatically, although they were drafting some remarks for the UN Security Council.
“Remarks?” the president said incredulously.
“Of course, we have not yet recognized the new regimes,” Adam continued undisturbed by the outburst. “As you know, three of the countries are independent republics: Comoros, Mauritius and the Seychelles. The other one, Reunion Island, is a French department.”
“How have the French reacted?” the president asked.
“No word yet from any of our channels.”
“Now for the great unspoken question,” the president said. “Is al-Qaeda behind all this?” He glared at his secretary of state.
“No unified body has claimed responsibility,” Adam responded smoothly. “However, Bronson Nichols, our Coordinator of the Office for Counterterrorism at Main State suspects that it may be the work of Muslim extremists.”
“Did we receive any threats or advance warnings?” the president asked.
“No more than the usual threats to normal targets in the region. These countries and dependencies weren’t even on our terrorism threat list.”
The president shook his head trying to clear away the confusion. “Is this the beginning of the domino effect? Starting with small nations and building its way up to larger nations?”
“They don’t have the resources to take larger countries,” General Kessler asserted.