The Asset

by Saul Herzog

  There was a bench under the window and they sat next to each other.

  The patients presented as if suffering from severe pneumonia. High fevers, coughing, vomiting. But pneumonia didn’t strike like this. The people kept coming, and they kept dying. They were dying within minutes of exposure. That wasn’t pneumonia.

  Sofia knew what it was. But she didn’t dare say it.

  The casualties would keep coming, they’d continue for days, the death toll would be horrible, but it would be the other side of it that got really ugly.

  The politics.

  The cover-up.

  It had happened before.

  And even as the bodies continued to pile up, that was the battle Sofia was steeling herself to fight.

  And the bodies were piling faster and faster. They lay in gurneys in the corridors where they’d been left by orderlies. They lay in the waiting room, scattered among the living. She’d seen one body in an elevator doorway, the doors opening and shutting on it over and over.

  A nurse entered.

  “Doctor Abramova,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.”

  Olga and Sofia turned to look out the window. The parking lot was chaos, ambulances and cars everywhere. Some abandoned, their doors open and hazard lights flashing. One had crashed into a concrete pillar of the receiving bay. There was blood on the windshield.

  But what the nurse wanted to show them was in the sky.

  “It’s the army,” Sofia said.

  At least four helicopters swarmed above them.

  “They don’t look friendly,” Olga said.

  “No they don’t.”

  Then they saw the soldiers, marching down the street from a fleet of troop transports.

  “They’re locking us down,” Sofia said.

  Olga nodded.

  Both women had worked in infectious diseases. They knew the protocols. Even for the most virulent outbreak, this was a very fast response on the part of the military.

  The soldiers were forming a cordon around the hospital. They were letting traffic in but Sofia doubted they’d let it back out so easily. They were setting up a quarantine.

  The sight of the soldiers alone would spread panic. They were in white hazmat suits with gas masks that made them look like something out of a horror movie. Sofia knew they’d be authorized to shoot to kill. Their Kalashnikovs were armed with live ammunition.

  “How many have died?” Sofia said.

  Olga shook her head.

  “Olga,” Sofia said. “I need to call the institute. How many casualties?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Two hundred? Four?”

  “Four,” Olga said.

  “And no signs of transmission.”

  “No.”

  “No hospital staff are sick?”

  “None, so far as I know.”

  There was a clunky old phone on the wall next to the notice board and Sofia picked it up and dialed Vasily’s number back at the institute.

  “Sofia,” he said when he picked up, his voice frantic. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours. What’s going on?”

  “I was going to ask you that,” she said.

  “Yevchenko was here. They’ve locked us down,” he said. “No one’s allowed to leave.”

  “There’s been an exposure,” Sofia said.

  “What have you seen?”

  “Hundreds have come in, Vasily. It’s armageddon.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “They’ve been coming from the textile factory.”

  “What?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Empress Catherine?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s right in the middle of the southern industrial district.”

  “I know.”

  “The production facility.”

  “I know, Vasily.”

  “But the facility, it’s not operational. It’s just a bunch of empty tanks and vats.”

  “They must have started production without telling us.”

  “How could they?”

  “I don’t know,” Sofia said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand how they could be so reckless.”

  “They started from the sample we gave them?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “That’s madness.”

  “I know.”

  “What are they using for containment?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s criminal. Those military technicians, they don’t know the first thing they’re doing. They don’t have a clue what they’re dealing with.”

  “I know, Vasily.”

  “They’re asking for disaster.”

  “I’ve got to speak to Yevchenko,” Sofia said.

  “He was here,” Vasily said.

  She heard him put the phone down, followed by arguing. He was in the main office. She could picture it. The staff all there, soldiers guarding the doors making sure no one left.

  Vasily came back on the line. “He’s not here, Sofia. He’s left.”

  “Where is he?”

  “The governor’s office. You’ll have to try there.”

  Sofia dialed the governor’s office and a middle-aged woman’s voice answered. Sofia said, “I need to speak to Major General Yevchenko.”

  “That’s not this desk,” the woman said. “You need to call Chkalovsky desk.”

  “No,” Sofia said. “My name is Sofia Ivanovna. Head of the Permafrost Pathogen Institute in Sverdlovsk Military Compound Number 19. I need to speak to Major General Yevchenko immediately. It’s an emergency.”

  “It’s impossible,” the woman said.

  “Listen to me,” Sofia said. “I’ve got bodies piling up. Children. Women from the factory. Unless I speak to Yevchenko immediately, it’s going to get worse.”

  There was a pause. Sofia knew there were two ways this could go. The woman on the other end of the line had decades of training. Today, Sofia was asking her to make an exception. To bend a rule.

  “Sofia Ivanovna,” Sofia said into the phone. She kept her voice as calm as possible. “I’m at the Infectious Disease Center. Soldiers are here. It’s very important. I have authorization.”

  There was a click, a long pause, and then Yevchenko’s voice.

  “You son of a bitch,” Sofia said.

  “Sofia, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You son of a bitch, Yevchenko. You motherfucking son of a bitch.”

  “I’m going to hang up this phone.”

  “Hazmat suits? Kalashnikovs? That’s just the beginning, isn’t it?”

  “I’m following procedure.”

  “This thing isn’t contagious. It’s a leak from your facility.”

  “I’m following orders, Sofia.”

  “You created this.”

  “Do I need to remind you who you’re speaking to?”

  “Fuck you, Yevchenko. This is on you. This blood is on your hands. You never should have started production.”

  “Who told you we started production?”

  “Please.”

  “You better be careful what you say next,” Yevchenko said, but Sofia was past caring.

  “Locking down the hospital? That’s going to end in bloodshed too.”

  “Sofia, this is an open line.”

  “I could give a fuck.”

  “Someone’s listening, Sofia.”

  “Let them listen. Let them hear this. You fuckers did this and these deaths are just the beginning. We’re going to see the whole nine yards. The cleaning trucks with the chlorine. The livestock culls. The pyres of corpses burning. This is all on you.”

  Yevchenko let out a laugh. “Listen to yourself,” he said. “Tying your own noose.”

  “Someone ought to hang you,” Sofia said.

  “You’re the one who created this,” Yevchenko said. “This came from your lab, Sofia. The most deadly substance ever produced.”

  “You gave me no
choice.”

  “But you outdid yourself, didn’t you? One picogram, Sofia? One picogram? You know how small that is?”

  “That’s why I begged you not to start production.”

  “It’s a trillionth of a gram, Sofia.”

  “You shut up, Yevchenko. You shut up.”

  “Seven times more toxic than Polonium, my dear. No one told you to do all that.”

  “You told me to harvest the pathogen and that’s what I did.”

  “This thing will silence entire cities,” Yevchenko said, sounding almost giddy at the prospect. “It was inevitable it would lead to an accident.”

  “And what are you doing to contain it?”

  “Whatever I have to, my dear.”

  “I’m going to kill you, Yevchenko.”

  “You did this, Sofia. You did this. And if this virus you created is anywhere near as deadly as this.”

  “You better fucking destroy that virus, Yevchenko.”

  “Or what, Sofia? Or what?”

  17

  Laurel and Lance went to the EconoLodge by taxi. They didn’t say much until Laurel broke the silence.

  “How’s this going to turn out?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know why we’re here.”

  He shrugged. “You haven’t told me much.”

  “But it’s obvious there’s a reason. Roth’s got something in mind.”

  “There’s a mission,” Lance said. “There’s always a mission. Some new crisis in the making.”

  “And are you going to say yes?”

  He looked at her. She knew he saw the other woman now. Clarice. A woman he’d loved.

  There was power in that.

  Maybe she’d write a psychiatry paper on it one day.

  “It depends what he says.”

  “But you know how it will go. You said it yourself. A new crisis. Life or death. He wouldn’t have come all this way if he didn’t need your help.”

  Lance looked at her. He said, “I doubt there’s anything he could say that would make me come back.”

  She sighed. They were almost at the hotel. She knew how it would go. A photo of an envelope wasn’t going to change his mind. Whatever happened in the past, it wasn’t about to be undone by a piece of mail.

  Unless Roth had something very big up his sleeve, the only way they were going to get him back was if she did something.

  They got to the hotel and Roth was waiting in the room. He’d set up some signal blocking measures, standard things, nothing out of the ordinary.

  “I see you’re ready to talk business,” Lance said as Roth shut the curtains.

  Laurel turned on the bedside lamps for extra light. They gave the room a sense of intimacy.

  “Coffee?” Roth said.

  They shook their heads.

  “Right down to business then,” Roth said.

  No one objected and he began looking in his briefcase.

  “Before we start,” Lance said, “I think you should know, Levi, that nothing’s changed for me.”

  “In what sense?” Roth said.

  “Since I left.”

  Roth nodded. “All right, Lance. I hear you. I didn’t expect you to forget what went down.”

  “And I haven’t.”

  “But time heals all wounds,” Roth said.

  “Not this wound.”

  Roth nodded again, like he was hearing Lance’s objection, but continued rooting in the briefcase all the same. When he found the file he pulled it out and held it on his lap.

  “What I’m saying,” Lance said, “is I don’t see that we have a whole lot to talk about. What you did, there’s no forgiving that. And there’s no forgetting.”

  “Why don’t you hear me out,” Roth said.

  “Why bother? I can see how thin that file is. We both know there’s nothing in it that will change anything.”

  Roth was agitated. He knew that was true. Laurel could see he had no ace up his sleeve. Just the envelope.

  “Will you at least hear us out?” he said.

  “As long as you don’t tell me anything classified,” Lance said. “If you’ve got any state secrets in there, things that will create complications if I’m told about them, I’d rather not know.”

  “When have you ever been to a meeting like this and not exchanged sensitive information?”

  “Come on, Levi. We both know this is a charade. You’re not going to change my mind, and even if you did, you know as well as I do you don’t want me back.”

  “Lance,” Roth said. “Can’t we just talk?”

  Laurel could see it play out. Any minute, Roth would lose his patience and blow it. He and Lance had too much history. She was going to lose Lance before they’d even told him why they were there, and she was damned if she’d waited two years for that to happen.

  She got up and took the file from Roth and pulled out the photo.

  “Laurel,” Roth said.

  “I didn’t come here to watch you two measure dicks,” she said.

  He threw up his hands. “Fine. You tell him.”

  She handed the photo to Lance.

  “That envelope was handed in to the consulate in Istanbul,” she said. “As you can see, it’s addressed to you.”

  “All right,” Lance said, taking the photo from her.

  “Any idea who would want to speak to you?” Roth said.

  Lance shrugged.

  Laurel showed him the next photo. The typed note.

  “I will only speak to Lance Spector.”

  “Please tell me there’s more than this?” Lance said.

  “No idea who it’s from?” Roth said.

  Lance looked at the envelope. “Do you?”

  “Someone who knew you were in Delta Force,” Laurel said.

  “I can see you didn’t hire her only for the looks.”

  Laurel threw her hands up.

  “Come on, Lance,” Roth said.

  “I was kidding.”

  “There’s no need for that.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Lance said. “Man, who knew you two were so sensitive?”

  “We need to make progress on this,” Roth said.

  Laurel nodded. She couldn’t take another two years of being sidelined.

  “What about the titanium case?” Laurel said, looking at Roth.

  Roth nodded.

  “There was a small titanium case in the envelope,” she said.

  She had no idea what it contained but she assumed Roth had sent it to a lab. That had to be the reason they were there. The analysis had found something.

  She turned to Roth. “Did we get a lab report?”

  “Yes we did.”

  Laurel and Lance waited.

  “If I talk about this,” Roth said, “we’re veering into sensitive territory.”

  “Fuck it then,” Lance said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I do,” Laurel said.

  Roth shook his head. “Laurel, this is a waste of time.”

  She flicked through the file and found the report. “The case contained a vial,” she said. “The vial contained a virus. Completely unknown. C-V-2 they’ve called it.”

  There were some stats and she went through them.

  “Virulence is off the chart,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “That’s lethality,” Roth said to Lance.

  “I know what virulence is.”

  “It’s not exactly the same as lethality,” Laurel said, “but drug resistance is off the chart too,” Laurel said, going down the list of antibiotics it had been tested against. “My God. It’s unstoppable.”

  “Every single med they tested,” Roth said.

  “What’s the estimated lethality?” Lance said.

  “Without treatment?” Roth said. “Very high.”

  “How high?”

  “There’s no way of knowing.”

  “And with treatment?”

  “Weren’t you list
ening? There is no treatment.”

  “This can’t be right.”

  “It’s right.”

  “What about virality?” Lance said.

  Laurel flipped through the report. “The R0,” she said.

  “R0 is the number of people one infected person can spread the virus to,” Roth said to Lance.

  “Will you stop explaining each thing to me.”

  “This thing is armageddon,” Laurel said.

  “The R0 is 25,” Roth said.

  “Where did this come from?” Laurel said.

  Roth shrugged. “We don’t know yet.”

  Lance cleared his throat. “Russia.”

  “He speaks,” Roth said.

  “You know as well as I do this thing is Russian.”

  Roth nodded. “I’d like to get some confirmation. Trace it to a specific lab. To a specific scientist. Find out what we’re really dealing with.”

  “You think that would lead us to an antidote?” Laurel said. “Or a vaccine?”

  “If one exists.”

  “One better exist,” she said, “because if these numbers are correct, this thing is a ticking time bomb. It’s unstoppable. It will wipe out everything it touches.”

  “So that’s what this is about?” Lance said. “A new Russian bioweapon.”

  “You’re saying that like it’s nothing serious,” Laurel said.

  “Oh, it’s serious,” Lance said. “I get that. You’re the doctor, Laurel, but those numbers suggest whatever lab came up with it has finally figured out what Russian microbiologists have been trying to figure out for the best part of a century.”

  “Which is?”

  “They’ve finally found their biological super weapon. Something that will stop NATO in its tracks. Get us to back the fuck off and let them rule their sphere without interference, once and for all.”

  “This is far more than a deterrent,” Roth said. “This is a holocaust. A holocaust in a bottle. I’ve been told a single person carrying this virus steps off a plane, and we have five hundred cases in twenty-four hours.”

  “Good luck containing an outbreak like that,” Lance said.

  “Excuse me?” Laurel said.

  “Look, sweetie, it’s been real nice meeting you. And Roth, you’ve really outdone yourself with this one. She looks so much like the real thing I’d be hard pressed to tell them apart. But I don’t work for you anymore. And I haven’t forgotten what you did.”

  “Maybe I’m not making myself clear,” Roth said.