In Misaki two men – one aged twenty-two, the other thirty – whose hair had turned inexplicably white, both of whose skin had begun to wither and one of whom had begun to go blind, were admitted to hospital by baffled primary care doctors. So were four members of their individual families, including a father and grandmother who died within twenty-four hours. The two men had been seamen on the recently successful Japanese fishing fleet, the factory ship captain of which, deep again in Antarctic waters, was confined to his cabin with what seemed to be influenza that he’d already passed on to three other crewmen. He’d become ill within hours of treating himself to the raw whale’s tongue delicacy of his previous voyage. The Misaki families had also eaten whale meat.
Ten
There had initially been a lot to hear – as well as to see – although there had been very little conversation within the starkly functional State Department conference room at Foggy Bottom. Virtually nothing more, in fact, beyond what Paul Spencer needed to identify the remarkably similar satellite and aerial footage of the fire-destroyed stations in Antarctica, Alaska and Siberia, the configuration of what had been the outbuildings at Noatak and Iultin forming an ironically appropriately shaped black question mark on the snow bleached Arctic landscape.
There were equally large question marks, for an even larger number of uncertainties, in the minds of everyone present, none of which was outwardly obvious because this was a serious gathering of politicians and diplomats for whom expressing either sincere emotion or binding opinion was unthinkable.
Central to each, after the Russian disclosure, was that it was absurd to believe they could for much longer prevent this ever-escalating situation becoming public. From that acceptance stemmed the individual attitudes, which despite very slight variations came down to personal survival at the expense of everyone else. Completing the cynicism was the fact that everyone knew, or thought they knew, what everyone else intended and were prepared for the figurative arm-wrestling that was to come.
Having surveyed those assembled around him, Peter Reynell, who never suffered self-doubt, was quite confident he was strong enough. American Secretary of State, Robin Turner wasn’t, recognizing what the president wanted him to achieve to be too blatant.
‘Has there been any discussion with Moscow?’ opened Reynell, carefully skirting the awkwardness of how the Russian outbreak had been discovered, intent on getting as much protection as possible with the benefit of having British ambassador Sir Alistair Dowding – and the records of the limited and strictly vetted secretariat – as a witness against London back-stabbing.
‘We thought there should be this meeting first, to get everyone’s input,’ said Robin Turner.
The Secretary of State’s personal decision or something agreed between him and Henry Partington? wondered Amanda O’Connell.
To give the impression in Moscow that it had been British or French eavesdropping, not American, Reynell instantly recognized. ‘America had the advantage of the information before today: of having had time to consider it. How do you think it should be handled?’
Turner shifted uncomfortably and Amanda decided that behind the stripe-suited, club-tied languid elegance of the Englishman was a professional strongarm not to be underestimated, a mistake Turner was coming ever closer to making.
Gerard Buchemin entered the contest before Turner could reply. The French science minister said: ‘There’s obviously little sense in working independently.’
‘That goes a long way towards our thinking about the Shangri-La Strain,’ seized Turner, spared a direct reply.
‘The what!’ exclaimed Reynell, disbelievingly.
‘The President’s choice,’ said Amanda quickly.
Reynell kept any further reaction from his face, turning briefly to the record clerks and their apparatus. Determined against letting the Secretary of State escape he said: ‘So you have already decided to talk to Moscow?’
‘After allowing you both the opportunity to consult with your respective governments,’ Turner tried again.
Betraying – and admitting – his Achilles elbow far too easily, judged Reynell. ‘I don’t consider it’s at all necessary for me to talk to London. We’re quite willing for you to deal with Moscow.’
‘So is France,’ quickly came in Buchemin, alert to Reynell’s manoeuvre. ‘You are, after all, hosting the investigation: giving us the benefit of what you’ve already learned and done.’
Barely bothering with spy-gathering ambiguity, Reynell lifted and let drop the Russian translation and what had been enhanced from it before saying: ‘What else do you expect to get from sources like this or from how you obtained the photographs of the Iultin station?’
‘Very little,’ conceded Turner. He acknowledged how badly he’d done with an impossible remit and wanted to end the encounter as quickly as possible.
‘There was no trace of the three who apparently fled the station?’ asked Buchemin.
‘None that we were able to detect.’
‘Do your photo-analysts think you would have done, if they’d still been out in the open?’ persisted Reynell.
‘They think so,’ said Turner, looking openly towards Amanda for help.
‘So it’s fair to assume they were picked up: rescued?’
‘I think so.’
‘It’s possible, of course, that the Russians will know of this disease,’ lured Reynell, refusing to use the preposterous presidential title. ‘Have a treatment or a cure.’
‘It doesn’t sound like it, from the transcript,’ said Amanda, responding to her superior’s plea.
‘If they haven’t, are you going to invite the Russians here, as well as their scientists?’ asked the saturnine, sleek-featured Buchemin, beginning another arm-wrestling bout.
Turner said: That would depend upon Moscow’s reaction.’
There had been Oval Office discussion between the Secretary of State and Partington, Amanda decided. So, she was the chosen one to fall, in the event of failure or disaster. But she’d already accepted that, so she had no reason to feel surprised or disappointed. Just to be tip-toe careful. But she’d already accepted the need for that, too.
The Frenchman tapped his copy of the Russian material and said: ‘It might make easier your conversation with Moscow if they knew Paris has been brought in to share the problem: that we’re aware of it.’
Why not, thought Reynell. ‘And London, too.’
‘They were slow responding to an emergency,’ Amanda pointed out, wanting them to know she understood the inference of their gesture.
‘Remarkably so,’ smiled Reynell. He hadn’t expected a woman to be part of the team: certainly not a full busted, long-legged thirtysomething blonde whose fittingly glacial, distant-eyed aloofness it might be diverting to thaw. He wondered if she’d be more difficult to manipulate than her Secretary of State. Still smiling at her he said: ‘How do you see us operating?’
Amanda chose not to regard the question as a double entendre. Succinctly, announcing them as arrangements already in place rather than suggestions for them to agree, she outlined their working use of the presidential guest quarters at Blair House, provision for a matching scientific group at Fort Detrick and Paul Spencer’s role as liaison between the two.
‘At what stage – and how – do you envisage our going public?’ Reynell asked the Secretary of State.
Christ, this man was an operator! thought Amanda, in reluctant admiration. Turner – America – was likely to be damned by whatever answer the man gave. On the basis of this discussion she doubted if Turner would risk another appearance. It began as a cynical reflection but hardened into a positive thought: if Turner was frightened off she’d have to be included in – or at least be told of – the inner thinking from the Oval Office.
‘We’d welcome your thoughts on that,’ invited Turner, following another presidential instruction. Ineptly he added: ‘I assume there was some discussion before your leaving London?’
‘Not at Cabinet l
evel,’ avoided Reynell easily and for once honestly. ‘At this stage my being here hasn’t gone beyond it being a fact-finding mission, any more than that of my chief scientific advisor assigned to Fort Detrick.’ Had Buxton’s insistence that he leave London at once on Concorde, leaving Geraldine Rothman to follow later, been another move against him? Probably.
‘Which fairly accurately sums up my position,’ said Buchemin, content yet again to follow the Englishman’s lead.
‘Premature disclosure could result in unnecessary public alarm,’ recited Turner.
‘Yes?’ coaxed Reynell, questioningly.
‘Which should therefore be avoided,’ continued the American.
‘Until when?’ asked the Frenchman.
‘Until a cure or treatment is found,’ said Turner.
Amanda wasn’t sure if she’d prevented the wince. She hoped she had.
‘What if one isn’t found?’ demanded Reynell, slamming the American’s arm once more flat against the imaginary table. ‘There hasn’t been, for AIDS … not even for the common cold. There’s surely got to be proper contingency planning?’
Turner smiled at last. ‘Which is precisely the reason you have been invited here, to work with Amanda. You’re our contingency planners.’
Good try but not good enough, dismissed Reynell. ‘I was looking beyond, to the time and place when the President and our respective premiers have to make such a declaration …’ The pause was to metronome timing.‘… Any announcement of this magnitude will surely have to be a joint one, at their level of authority?’ For once – briefly – he felt a blip of uncertainty, willing the man towards the right response.
‘I would expect so. Of course,’ conceded the flustered Secretary of State.
The euphoria exploded through Reynell. This was better than any back-door campaign of whispered, nudged innuendo. He had, on record – in front of the witnessing British ambassador-established that Simon Buxton couldn’t avoid being one of the harbingers of doom disclosing a worse-than-modern equivalent of the Black Death. While he, Peter Reynell, could emerge as a man who’d so tirelessly battled behind the scenes to defeat it. It needed finessing but he could make it work.
It had all been too quick, too confusing, for Geraldine Rothman to encompass properly. There had been a bewildering, near offensive insistence that she re-sign the Official Secrets Act she’d already sworn and an even more bewildering drive to London airport with an anonymous Cabinet Office mandarin who’d smelled of tobacco and talked with arm waving, frustrating vagueness of epidemics. So, on the flight to Washington she’d only been able to think of the running-away escape so suddenly thrust upon her from the mismanaged wreckage of her personal life over the last two years. After the third gin, none of which she should have drunk with the medication she was still taking after the operation which like everything else had gone wrong, she’d mumbled aloud ‘Goodbye, Michael’ uncaring at the curious look from the man sitting beside her. She hadn’t expected to be met by another anonymous figure – this time an urgent, polished-faced embassy official – at Dulles, but expected at least some guidance during the drive to Fort Detrick. But again the man had said he didn’t know, as quickly as he’d denied any knowledge of Fort Detrick’s function. She wished she hadn’t had the wine and brandy with the meal, after the gins. But most of all that Peter Reynell hadn’t been such a pompous asshole and gone ahead, leaving her virtually without the slightest idea why she’d been despatched in the panic that she had.
Geraldine had been to the British microbiological research establishment at Porton Down, in Wiltshire, and recognized the similarity between the largely single-storeyed, segregated blocks of Fort Detrick. As she walked towards a fenced-off area to the right of the gatehouse, where a earphone-alerted Jack Stoddart had been waiting to get her through the security checks, Geraldine said: ‘We got some disaster from an experiment that’s gone badly wrong?’
Stoddart said: ‘A disaster, but not from here.’
Eleven
Jack Stoddart thought the awkward introductions and exchange of justifying academic qualifications was like seeing who could piss the highest up a lavatory wall, even though Geraldine Rothman, who won with a degree in forensic pathology in addition to those in genetics and epidemiology, was a woman, which might have made it physically difficult although not totally impossible. The French scientific advisor, Guy Dupuy, virtually tied in comparable masters and doctorates with Walter Pelham. An already prepared Stoddart acknowledged he was so lacking in any medical discipline that it was hardly worthwhile unzipping his fly.
Geraldine wished she hadn’t drunk so much and hadn’t forgotten about jetlag or tried to sleep while she’d waited for Dupuy to arrive, because she hadn’t properly – only dozed – and had awakened with an aching head full of cotton wool. She hoped the coffee she was eagerly consuming would help although, unaware of Stoddart’s comparison, she knew if she kept on drinking it she’d be up peeing all night or day or whenever it would be when she properly went to bed.
Stoddart actually felt a flicker of unease at consciously withholding the Iultin news from Pelham until now, to establish himself as the man in charge. Geraldine Rothman and Guy Dupuy still had so much to catch up with that the significance initially scarcely seemed to register.
Pelham, in whose office they were gathered, spread his hands in exasperation at the news and said: ‘So what now!’
‘Now we go straight on with what we’ve got to do; try to do,’ said Stoddart, prepared for that question, too. ‘Russia is, at the moment, a political consideration.’
Pelham let the decision settle. ‘But our knowing it’s affecting Russia hugely adds to the …’ The director stumbled to a halt, groping for a large enough word. Unable to do so, he said, in disbelieving awareness: ‘It’s becoming a pandemic, isn’t it? Growing, spreading, worldwide …?’
‘Unless we find a way to stop it … treat it,’ said Stoddart.
‘We haven’t, not yet,’ said Pelham, flatly.
‘What have you got?’ demanded Dupuy. ‘Give us a starting point.’
For a moment Pelham hesitated, staring down at the preliminary autopsy reports and the pathology test results that made up the research dossier already given to each of them during the introductions. Coming up to them he said: ‘If you want a name, it’s classic Progeria afflicting adults. Which wasn’t, until now, believed to be medically possible. It had not, however, visibly affected the foetus in Jane Horrocks’s womb. In children, Progeria restricts body growth and stature—’ he shuffled the papers in front of him, seeking something. ‘We obviously had the full and very complete medical and physical records of everyone who died in Antarctica and those in the rescue party who contracted it. In each case there was the minimum of a two-inch height loss and every body measurement – chest, waist, biceps – diminished by almost an inch in circumference.’ He made another pause. ‘And from the time scale, which we also have, it occurred over a period of about twenty days.’
Geraldine said: ‘I don’t think we should restrict ourselves by labelling it Progeria. There are other conditions: Werner’s Syndrome and a genetic mutation, Dyskeratosis Congenita. And physical shrinkage is normal in old age, through osteoporosis.’
Pelham nodded. ‘Their size loss actually worsened the skin affect – in the end their body casings were literally too big for what they contained – but there was additionally substantial reduction of skin elasticity. Everyone, without exception, lost hair colouring and in most cases hair itself, sometimes resulting in extensive baldness …’ He hesitated, to make a point. ‘… When those age conditions afflict they prevent the growth of facial or pubic hair. Each adult victim so far has lost all body and pubic hair.’
‘What arterial and vessel degeneration was there?’ asked Dupuy. He was a fat, dishevelled man with over-long, ringletted hair, whose suit, clearly buttoned throughout the entire Atlantic flight, was concertinaed around him.
Pelham nodded again, acknowledging the symp
tom awareness. ‘Atherosclerosis in three of the Antarctic victims and in two of those from the Noatak station. In the fourth Antarctic victim, George Bedall, it had developed into full blown arteriosclerosis, with heavy cholesterol in both atheromas and lipomas.’
‘What about the women?’ demanded Geraldine. Her head was clearing and the pain was going. She still needed to feel a lot better before going through the American findings in detail but this discussion was a useful beginning.
Pelham smiled, noting her symptom recognition as well and glad of the early indications of both their professional abilities. ‘The body of the woman in Antartica, Jane Horrocks, was solidly frozen. It’s possible she froze to death rather than ultimately died from old age, which would have halted the degeneration sufficiently to mislead us—’ he hesitated, looking at Stoddart. ‘That wasn’t the case with Patricia Jefferies, one of the rescuers who fell victim and died here. We were able to keep her under the most intense observation for five days. Knowing the anti-ageing effect of progesterone it was one of the earliest treatments we attempted. Her final degeneration, like that of the other woman, was less pronounced than in any of the male victims.’
‘So there is some slowing effect by administering the hormone?’ persisted Geraldine.
Stoddart came forward in his chair, no longer embarrassed at withholding the Russian outbreak from the installation director, who hadn’t told him this. ‘Could that be a treatment? Something as simple as the female sex hormone?’
‘It’s a possible research path to follow,’ allowed Pelham, doubtfully.
‘Dependent upon the amount that’s needed to be administered,’ warned Geraldine, at once. ‘A comparatively modest dosage can – and has – produced female characteristics in males. The development of breasts being the most obvious. A man could face the choice between dying or becoming hermaphrodite.’
It wasn’t in any way intended to be amusing. No one smiled.
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