by James Abel
Izabel Santo stood in the doorway, her AK smoking. She was panting, and the rage on her face was firelit, red. The gasoline can had sailed past me to smash into the wall and splash fuel, and now fire whooshed up on three sides.
“Joe? Is that you?”
I knew that voice. I couldn’t believe it. Eddie was gaping at me in astonishment from one of the beds at the back of the room. He was handcuffed there, and had been hidden behind the doctor. I counted three men in all here, survivors, alive. One man burst into tears. The other screamed for help. They all looked sick and terrified.
It was hard to breathe. Eddie had lost weight and his face was pale. His croaked voice, his actual voice, filled me with so much emotion that for an instant there was no pain or fire or dead doctor. Eddie smiled with a kind of pain-wracked disbelief, as if he doubted what he saw, or suffered hallucinations.
“Where did you come from, Uno?”
“The key! Where’s the key to the handcuffs, Eddie?”
Izabel moved up, gaping. “That’s him? Your friend?”
“We have to tell Ray what went on here,” Eddie said, as fire bloomed and beakers shattered and windows blew out and Izabel moved toward the other survivors to try to release them.
“Screw the key, One. Shoot the cuffs off,” Eddie advised. He’d always been a fast thinker, Eddie.
TWELVE
White House Deputy Assistant National Security Advisor Kyle Utley’s job sometimes was to sit in for his boss at meetings, take notes, and report back. He was in the White House’s Roosevelt Room doing just that, eyeing the Rough Rider painting over the fireplace when his cell phone vibrated for the fourth time in ten minutes. The return number was his wife’s. This meant the news would be bad.
“The seventy-two-hour deadline has passed, without attacks by terrorists. This false alarm was handled professionally. You all deserve congratulations,” Homeland Security’s Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis told the gathering of second- and third-tier reps from security agencies. Now that the initial alert had been downgraded, lesser officials dealt with the aftermath. Their bosses had gone on to other things.
“Our quiet response to the threat showed superb synergy. We avoided panic and kept the public safe.”
Kyle raised an index finger to mean he was breaking, moved into the carpeted hallway, and punched in his wife’s number. Angie was a lawyer for a big lobbying firm downtown, on K Street. She picked up during the first ring.
“I just got a disturbing phone call, Kyle.”
Angela Utley was not a complainer, and if she was upset, there was good reason, Kyle knew. He was a protective husband, furious with anyone who would bother his wife. His first thought was that the incident related to the pissed-off plumber who had argued with Angie over a bill last week. “Who called, honey?”
“Well, that’s just it! He never said his name! My secretary came in and handed me her cellular. The guy on the other end said you knew him from the New Post Pub.”
Kyle felt the good mood from the meeting disappear and a hard ball of tension replace it. He fell into the hallway armchair, across from an oil painting borrowed from the Smithsonian, depicting Japanese planes attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. American ships were in flames in the water. Smoke roiled. Sailors were burning alive.
Trying to keep his voice level, Kyle asked, “What did the caller say, Angie?”
“He told me to write everything down so I wouldn’t forget it. He said that the deadline has passed, the first attack has started, and it’s your fault. He said you still have a chance to limit more damage and you know how. Your fault? What did he mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Kyle felt sweat break out in his armpits. The attack has started? There was nothing in the news about any attack. No bombings. No planes down. No mobilization he’d heard of, anywhere, that could have masked a government response to an attack, here or overseas.
No, absolutely nothing coming in.
Angie’s voice grew tighter. “The man said he hoped that you and I have the right medicines. He knew we have no children, and hoped that our parents would be all right. He said the usual pills should work, whatever that means. Kyle? Medicines? How did he know we don’t have kids?”
Kyle thought fast. “He probably read that Post’s Style section piece, Angie. D.C. couples on the way up? Last month?”
Yes, the caller was a nut, Kyle told himself. The caller, as the Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis had suggested a few minutes ago, was delusional. Maybe the caller merely imagined that there had been an attack. Yeah, that’s it.
But if that was it, how come, Kyle thought with dread, I have a gut feeling that bad news is about to come? He tried to pin down the source of his premonition. It was the look on the stranger’s face outside the New Post Pub. The man had seemed rational. And the approach now, reaching him through his wife’s secretary, skirting possible monitoring, was diabolically shrewd.
“Kyle, who was that man?” Angie asked.
“I don’t know. Was that his whole message?”
“No. He said that groups all over the United States are in place to begin more attacks.”
Kyle felt dizzy.
“He said that the only way to prevent that is to give them what they want. He said to tell you to remember Tol-e-Khomri. What is Tol-e-Khomri?”
She was waiting for the explanation. But she knew that the explanation might not come. That was the deal they’d made at home, about both their jobs. It’s okay to ask a question about secret business, but only once. If there’s no answer, drop it.
“It is a . . . village. Angie, did he say . . . This will sound odd, but did he tell you what the first attack, uh, is?”
She sounded astounded. “You don’t know?”
“Just tell me if he gave specifics.”
All air seemed to have drained from the White House. It was obvious how the stranger had reached Angie. Any Google search would produce her Facebook page or Twitter account, and the name of the K Street firm where she worked. After that, any scan of the online corporate directory would produce the names of employees. Easy to access a Facebook page or phone number. Next thing you know, you’ve reached Kyle through a back door.
“Angie, keep your secretary’s phone. We’ll want it.”
She knew not to push things. He’d met her in a foreign affairs class at Princeton, where they’d both aspired to Washington careers. They understood the nature of secrets and how to try to keep them from interfering with marriage. That meant she needed to shut up now and answer questions. Which was easier said than done. At first the privilege of knowing secrets makes you sexy and important to your spouse, Kyle thought. After a while, it gets aggravating. Then maddening. Then suddenly one day you’re strangers. The secrets seem more real than family.
“Kyle, he said if you doubted anything, turn on any local New York broadcast. He said New York will be covering the first attack by now. I’ve got New York up on my screen here. I see . . . oh God . . . I see lots of ambulances.”
Kyle hung up fast and got the Deputy Under Secretary out of the Roosevelt Room, where he was sharing bagels with an FBI rep, Ray Havlicek, and where they were congratulating each other for not panicking over the initial threat. Together they accessed the inset wall monitors. Up swam CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. Kyle fumbled with the channel changer. Chris Mathews disappeared, and local New York One popped up.
Kyle held his breath at the sight of ambulances pulling up before a large gray hospital on Manhattan’s York Avenue. The rolling banner read, Victims brought to Cornell Medical Center. Kyle waited with bile in his throat to hear the word bomb. But instead the reporter in front of the hospital was talking about malaria.
“Malaria?” said Havlicek, puzzled. “Turn up the sound.”
The newswoman said, “Health department officials a
re baffled at the scope of the outbreak. Nineteen people have fallen ill so far, and seven have died. The city was sprayed against mosquitoes in June, but summer is peak times for insects. I did some research, and malaria has not been present in New York to any substantial degree since the 1800s. Back then up to fifteen hundred people here died annually from the disease. Last year New York had only two hundred cases, and virtually all had visited tropical countries.”
“This can’t be it,” Havlicek said. But he sounded like he was making a wish, not stating a fact.
The reporter said, “The strange and terrifying thing is, none of today’s victims have left the U.S. recently, I’ve learned. They are coming in from different parts of the city. This strain is unusually virulent. It’s a deadly mystery, playing out at area hospitals. Officials fear widespread panic if the disease spreads.”
Kyle muted the sound as the reporter started taking “man on the street” responses. The hot dog vendor being interviewed looked scared. In the Roosevelt Room, the lox on the side table by the bagels was starting to smell rancid.
“Kyle? Malaria?” the Deputy Under Secretary said.
“Maybe the caller heard about this and he’s just taking credit. You know. Coincidence.”
Maybe he’s in New York. If we move fast, we can get him.
Shaking his head, the Deputy Under Secretary said, “But how could you spread malaria intentionally? I thought you had to be bitten by a mosquito to get it. Right?”
“We better call Gaines at CDC.”
Kyle turned to the window. The curtain was open, and he saw quick bursts of movement from insects in the Rose Garden. A dragonfly. A butterfly. Kyle realized there was a mosquito on the glass, outside. He watched it take a step on its spindly legs, fascinated. The insect buzzed back into the air. Now there were two mosquitoes there. It was impossible to tell one from the other. If one was infected, you’d not know from appearance which one it was, he saw with horror.
The little thermometer outside the window read ninety-one degrees, Kyle saw. An especially hot summer in Washington.
Kyle said, under his breath, “Bombs, but not bombs.”
• • •
Five hours later there were eighty-seven known victims in New York, nineteen dead from blackwater fever and rapid-onset cerebral malaria. Then the first victim showed up at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey. That’s two cities. The threat was three, Kyle thought.
Seven hours later the death toll topped thirty. The first case that came into a hospital in Philadelphia was a homeless veteran who’d been sleeping in a park by the Schuylkill River. By then, the national networks had the story, the White House was in a panic, and the beast down the hall, the press corps, needed blood, just like the mosquitoes.
By dusk, with malaria the lead story on all global networks, and eighty-one more ill, Kyle was in the middle of a raging argument over whether to reveal the phone threats to the news media, or keep them secret until after the national party convention next week.
Kyle argued that the news should be released, in case a member of the public might aid the investigation.
“And tell them what?” the Chief of Staff snapped. “That maybe we’re under biological attack? Maybe there are cells all over the country? That we have no fucking idea who they are or where they come from? You want to explain what that would accomplish, Kyle, except to cause panic?”
“There will be panic anyway.”
“For all we know your caller saw this on TV and claimed credit. There’s no proof it’s connected. Look, we’ve got the Detroit mass shooting to deal with. The China thing. The gun control. You want to announce? Then give me something positive! A hero! A clue! Something the President can announce as progress! The security agencies can do their jobs just as well if we keep this in-house for a bit. We’ll send out health warnings. Try to keep calm.”
“You mean keep quiet until after the convention.”
A hard stare. “I mean that you calm down right now. I mean that politics is like a good marriage. You love and respect each other, but you don’t tell each other every thing every minute of the day.”
The only thing all present agreed on was that as the sun went down, temperatures were still eighty-eight degrees along much of the East Coast. Excellent weather for mosquitoes.
Kyle was told in no uncertain terms not to ask more about a small Syrian village with the name of Tol-e-Khomri.
He decided to try to learn more about it anyway.
Quietly, so his boss would not find out.
THIRTEEN
Rain drummed on the tent in which the Brazilian Federal Police imprisoned us on the island. The SWAT team had arrived four days ago by helicopter, after Izabel called Brasília for help. Eddie and I slept on cots, as two stern-looking uniformed guards stood outside, armed with combat shotguns. Eddie saw a doctor daily, and we were fed well, beans, fresh fish, rice, and greens, while a forensics team went over the charred house and blackened lab, the bodies of the dead, and tissue/blood samples from three other survivors that Izabel and I had rescued before the clinic roof collapsed.
The survivors—sick miners—had been medevaced to Porto Velho. Major Victorino Acosta—a bearish man with an oddly high-pitched voice—told us that they remained alive, barely, and in deteriorating shape.
“We could have questioned the doctor you killed, the guards you killed,” Acosta snapped at me.
“That doctor was burning his patients alive.”
“You are responsible for the death of Sublieutenant Salazar. You should have waited for us. You people up north, you do not own the world,” he sneered.
But Eddie was alive, and I would make sure he stayed that way. Major Acosta let me use my medicines to help treat my best friend: Vermox pills against the worms that swelled in Eddie’s stomach and crawled whitely in his feces. Flagyl to kill the jungle amoebas that lived in his gut. His malaria was on the wane, though. The fever bouts—shaking and burning—had stopped before I got there. Eddie told me that he’d been shackled in the lab because the doctor I’d killed was fascinated by his fight against the disease.
“You survived,” I said, “because you’re tough.”
“He came from India, One. He said his name was Sabbir Umar. There’s another doctor he’d talk to over Skype, but I never saw the guy.”
Eddie also told me during periods of consciousness that all prisoners on the island had been victims of malaria. “The worst forms, Joe. That sadist harvested our blood four times a day. Sabbir Umar squatted down in the middle of the biggest natural malaria field on earth and culled out the deadliest bugs. Nature produced the killers. He harvested ’em like crops. It was a weapons program.”
“But why malaria, Eddie? There are so many other diseases to work with, easier ones than malaria.”
“They figured no one would link malaria to terrorists.”
At first I refused to believe the next part of Eddie’s story. I figured that he was remembering hallucinations, not anything real. But he persisted, reminded me of the photos I’d seen in the clinic, before they burned up. The shots from Nazi Germany.
“That doctor liked to brag while he worked, Joe. He said his work continued research that was conducted on prisoners at Dachau, the German concentration camp, in World War Two.”
“What does World War Two have to do with this?”
“You never did pay attention in biohistory class. We know that the SS at Dachau experimented on Jews, infected them with typhus and malaria. We know they were looking for illness to spread among Allied troops. We know it didn’t work because malaria isn’t contagious. But Umar bragged that he’d had a breakthrough.”
“Which was what?”
Eddie’s face fell. “He didn’t say.”
The Brazilian cops refused to let me call Washington. As Eddie slept I kept his forehead cool. I walked him to the latrine when he neede
d to go. But after two days he waved off help. Izabel was gone, chewed out by Acosta for attacking the island without waiting for help. She had not argued. I think that she blamed herself for Nelson’s death.
“Eddie, what else do you remember about Sabbir Umar?”
“Like I said, sometimes he talked to people on Skype. He had a laptop in the lab. They spoke Arabic, so I didn’t understand what they said. I never saw the other doctor, but one time I saw another guy, different voice—a white guy, dark hair. He spoke Arabic with an American accent. He was talking about U.S. cities. I think he might have been in the U.S. I think it was about an attack.”
“Which cities?” I asked, chilled.
“New York was one.”
“Which others?”
“Maybe Trenton. I’m sorry. Maybe he just said trains. My head wasn’t working right. But after one call Dr. Umar got really furious. He told me that three of their people had died. He said the FBI had gotten lucky in Miami. But he said it wasn’t over. They had a plan to make us pay.”
My mouth felt dry. “Could you help an artist sketch the guy you saw on-screen?”
“The shape of the face, yes. But that’s about it.
“What else do you remember?”
“Umar had a terrarium filled with mosquitoes. He fed them our blood, like a dog owner feeds pets. It was crazy. They pumped prayers over the loudspeakers five times a day. They stripped the miners of crosses, bibles, anything religious. Hard-core fanatics, Joe.”
“So he feeds the mosquitoes infected blood, making them carriers.”
“Yep.”
There was something else important in what Eddie had told me. I could not put my finger on it, even though I went over his words again and again. It nagged me. But when nothing jumped out at me I thought that maybe I’d been wrong, or tired. Maybe there was no clue that I had missed.