Chimera

by Sonny Whitelaw

  McCabe had arrived at Sydney on the same flight with Susan and the rest of the team. Although he met her politely, even tossing her one of his dry jokes, it was as if the years together had never happened. Worse. The very first day they had met, back in Quantico, he had walked inside her personal space and set up residence there. Now he treated her like nothing more than a passing acquaintance. But what really rankled Jordan was that, now she thought about it, his whole attitude had begun to shift the day that Susan Broadwater had reappeared in their lives.

  UNSCOM inspectors had learned to watch themselves, watch what they said and who they said it to, mistrusting everyone.

  For her and McCabe, the paranoia ran even deeper. They'd had to assume that every phone call, every computer file; was tapped because someone-perhaps one of their team members-was betraying their plans to the Iraqis, or just as bad, the Consortium. The deeper they had delved, the more evidence they had uncovered, the more intricate and complicated the situation had become. When it came right down to it, for six long years the only ones they had ever trusted were each other.

  Although Jordan had worked side by side with Susan Broadwater in a Level 4 lab for months, examining and experimented with the chimera, she had always had the feeling that the Major-Lieutenant Colonel now-was keeping something from her. It wasn't until after Jordan had been asked to resign that she began piecing the facts together.

  McCabe's father had died the same day as the Federal Murrah Building was bombed. The last person to see him alive, by her own admission, was Broadwater. Broadwater had been in Kuwait when Josh's uncle, Samuel McCabe, and Meg's husband had died in a motor vehicle accident, one involving a 'large, military style truck'. The truck had never been found. Then Broadwater had been 'reassigned to Europe' the same night that Edward McCabe and his family were burned to death. Broadwater had then reappeared in New York immediately after Scott Ritter had accused the UNSCOM team of spying for the CIA, and then resigned as a weapons' inspector. Suddenly, the Iraqis had been even better informed of the team's movements. Was it because, as McCabe had insisted, of the new protocols that Kofi Annan had agreed to, which required the weapons' inspectors to bend over backwards every time they wanted to visit a university or industrial plant? Or was it because Susan Broadwater was part of the Consortium? Okay, so Susan's name had never appeared in the list of names of known and suspected members, but Susan had been Robert McCabe's protégé, and one-time lover.

  When Susan had turned up in New York, her story had not been dissimilar to Jordan and McCabe's. The night McCabe's apartment had been bombed, Susan had been reassigned to purgatory in Europe, with a warning that any attempt at communication with either McCabe or Jordan would result in a permanent assignment to Dead Horse, Alaska. Notwithstanding, three years later, Susan had been promoted.

  After UNSCOM had been disbanded, Susan had again vanished from their lives-or at least that was what Jordan had thought. But within days of discovering Douglas' connection to the Consortium, Susan Broadwater staged a comeback. Now she was in charge of USAMRIID's new Biosafety Level 4 labs.

  What was wrong with this picture?

  During her last conversation with McCabe, before he'd become 'unavailable', Jordan had mentioned her suspicions. He'd replied that she was being overly paranoid. In fact, he'd kept in regular contact with Susan throughout the years. When Jordan had demanded to know why he hadn't bothered to inform her, McCabe had reminded her that his and Broadwater's families had known each other for several generations.

  His simple explanation had stunned Jordan. Of course. It was the 'family business'. Jordan was an outsider. She'd been nothing more than a tool for him as he relentlessly pursued his damned Quest.

  It had been her Quest, too.

  Past tense. The Quest was over. The FBI didn't want her anymore; he didn't want her anymore.

  Now, Colonel Susan Broadwater was heading up the team going into Fiji, to deal with the same chimera virus that had set Jordan on her six-year search in the first place. Broadwater's credentials said she was from the CDC, not USAMRIID. Sure, Jordan's own credentials said the same thing, as did Nate Sturgess'-who really was working for the CDC. Still, Jordan was deeply suspicious.

  On the flight to Fiji, she sat beside Nate, while the man she had come to think of as her partner, Josh McCabe, sat three rows in front of them, his head close to Broadwater's. They were conversing in low voices. When Chuck Long walked by Jordan, he did a double take, then looked back at McCabe, and said, "You two have a lover's quarrel?" Not waiting for a reply, Chuck kept moving aft.

  "Really?" said Nate, tossing her a look of surprise.

  "What?" Jordan slowly turned her gaze to his. The tone of her voice should have been fair warning, but, she mentally conceded, Nate was probably too preoccupied with his own demons to notice.

  "You and Josh," he said. "You've been giving him the cold shoulder since he arrived."

  "McCabe and I not and never will be lovers ."

  "Sure, Jordan." Nate rolled his eyes in disbelief. "You've just spent the last five, almost six years together in a platonic relationship. Hell, the body language between you two alone was enough to give it away."

  "Yes, I watch McCabe, and he watches me. It's a survival habit."

  "Survival?"

  "I told you before Nate, we learned to watch our own backs and each other's. Keeping tabs on your partner's location and reading their state of mind and signals is a tactical habit, in New York or Baghdad."

  "I was talking about the California back in '95, long before you two took romantic vacations to Iraqi military installations!" he declared, seemingly oblivious to the danger that lurked.

  Jordan took a few measured breaths before saying, "McCabe is driven by needs that preclude personal relationships. We both are."

  A look of regret crossed Nate's face. "Fine, you two were never intimate, but he and Susan Broadwater were. Maybe they're-"

  She almost gave herself whiplash turning around. "How the hell would you know that?"

  Okay, so she'd suspected as much. No, when it came right down to it, she knew. Why else would Broadwater have given her that sweet little 'hands off, Josh is broken goods' talk, on the flight to New Zealand all those years ago?

  "I'm…sorry," Nate blurted, confused and obviously embarrassed. "I assumed you knew. When I was in quarantine that Christmas, Josh and I talked about a lot of things, including the Zaire Ebola outbreak. It was Susan who encouraged him to pursue psychiatry-against his father's wishes."

  Jordan felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. McCabe had shared that piece of information with Nate within days of meeting him, but had failed to mention it to her after years of living in each other's pockets. She really had been just a tool.

  With what he no doubt thought was insight, Nate said, "Nothing you do will bring them back, Jordan." His expression softened. "McVeigh's dead. Isn't it time you got on with your life?"

  "The chimera's not dead, is it? Now if you will excuse me, I have work to do." She stood and, grabbing her laptop, went to sit in a vacant seat.

  -Chapter 44-

  Nadi, Fiji August 18, 2001

  Nate recognised the look on Dr Glenn Morris' face. It was the same combination of manic relief and sheer terror that had befallen him on Mathew Island when he'd seen that email from the FBI.

  The Australian, a tall, grey haired man with a youthful face and the ingrained suntan of an expatriate living in the tropics, immediately identified many of the team members. He held out his hand to shake Broadwater's, and called her Colonel.

  "Dr Morris," replied Susan with a tight smile. "We would prefer it if everyone here assumed we're all from the CDC."

  "Oh, c'mon, Colonel, this is not a natural virus! I don't care what you people say, this thing is some sort of weird combination of smallpox and Hanta or Marburg, Ebola maybe. And if it isn't, why are they here?" He waved an arm at Josh, Jordan and Chuck Long. "They are-they were -UNSCOM inspectors." Then he turned on Nate and demanded,
"Mathew Island back in '95. It wasn't a natural outbreak, was it?"

  Nate opened his mouth to reply, but Morris added, "I was hoping they'd send you."

  While Nate didn't know Morris well, he considered him a far more adept public health care professional that Gene Marshall had been in Vanuatu in 1995. And he understood Morris' desperation; he'd been trying for years to forget it. "Thanks, mate ."

  "I'm sorry." Morris shot him a rueful grin. "I mean, I'm certain this is the same pathogen you saw on Mathew Island. It has to be!" He led them around the aircraft to the luggage doors, summarizing what he'd been doing to combat the disease.

  It was a familiar eulogy: I've tried A, I've tried B, I've tried every combination imaginable, but nothing works . Nate was loath to tell Morris that nothing would.

  The soldiers lining the runway weren't exactly a welcoming sight. Still, they appeared considerably less trigger-happy than their African counterparts that Nate had had the displeasure of meeting over the past five years. The men now assigned to escort them also seemed uninterested in the new arrivals' conversation. They were more concerned with watching the large boxes of equipment being unloaded from the flight. Stephen Kato had given them strict orders not to allow anyone off the aircraft who wasn't a member of the designated CDC team. The orders also demanded a thorough search of the boxes for weapons.

  "Dr Morris," Susan said, "I would strongly suggest that, as far as you're concerned, everyone here is from the CDC. You must know what sort of panic will result, otherwise."

  "We might be in the middle of the South Pacific," Morris retorted, "but we all have television. We all saw what happened in Iraq."

  "When UNSCOM was disbanded," replied Susan, "we went to work for the CDC. Nothing abnormal in that."

  Morris shrugged. "Have it your way."

  *

  McCabe walked out of the heavily guarded medical ward, wishing he could throw up. They'd already set up decontamination showers as a staging area, so he'd be free to rip off the hood of his HAZMAT suit and puke his guts out. He was determined not to.

  "You okay, Josh?"

  Susan was beginning to sound like Spinner. "Sure, just getting a breath of fresh air."

  "You're still plugged into your air supply," Susan reminded him. "Josh, you might be medically trained but no one's expecting you to have to confront this."

  "Don't pander to me, Susan." But he added in gentler tones, "Nate has more demons to confront than I do."

  "Nate wasn't a teenager." She clasped his arm and stared up at him through the plastic hood.

  Another figure stepped out into the cool evening air and came to join them. Cocooned inside a Racal suit and a professional façade, Spinner said, "Tests confirm it's the same organism."

  "And as far as we know, no one has survived infection past day four," Susan said. "I want to see the Singh's house. I want to see where this thing began."

  They arrived in a convoy of military trucks at the cordoned-off village. From beyond the hastily erected barbed wire fence, dogs barked and children cried. Despite the late hour, lights blazed in almost every home. Since the coup, the Indian Fijians had lived in a state of terror. Irrespective of what they had been told, from what McCabe could make out, they were convinced that the Singhs had been butchered, and that any moment they would be next. Otherwise why were they penned like animals? The villagers, and the journalists who had to return to their hotels before the six o'clock curfew, were informed that they had been quarantined because of dengue. Surprisingly, no journalist pointed out the obvious. Barbed wire and guns were no match against an insect borne vector. Dengue was transmitted by mosquitoes-it did not spread directly from person to person.

  The HAZMAT-suited teams emerged from the trucks and walked with the soldiers to the Singh's house. A troupe of curious Indian-Fijians followed, until Susan said to a corporal, "Keep the villagers back. And tell your men that, if they want to stay free of the disease, they mustn't come anywhere near the house."

  Despite the gory mess, the house had been looted and vandalized. Some of the vandals would be dead by now or lying in bloodied pools in the hospital, helplessly waiting for the chimera to turn them into liquefied mush. McCabe pushed the thought aside. He was here to examine a crime scene. His personal nightmares had nothing to do with that.

  "Records verify that Miriam Singh was employed for more than twenty years by the cleaning company that services the airport. Fits," Susan observed while they walked through the modest weatherboard house. "Katie Wood recalled throwing her soiled clothes into the trashcan in the ladies' showers. Singh must have seen something she liked and squirreled it away."

  "And it goes through six years of wash and wear then suddenly infects her brother?" Spinner quipped. "That's not a stretch, it's preposterous."

  "Not necessarily." Nate carefully negotiated the fragments of smashed glass. "In the last few years I've learned not to disregard improbable circumstances. Maybe the chimera was shaken out of the blouse. All that the virus had to do was stay in a dark, relatively dry place. Smallpox is like that; it can survive for years in the right conditions. We still have no idea where Ebola normally resides in the ecology. And Tashi Singh's immune system was already badly compromised, one particle might have been enough."

  "How would you know all that, Nate?" Spinner demanded. "Information on the chimera is classified."

  McCabe looked across at her. He couldn't make out her expression in the darkness, but he could tell by the stiff way she was holding herself that something was wrong.

  "C'mon, Jordan, I was there, remember?" Nate replied.

  "And you were in Fiji recently, too, weren't you? We never did ascertain how the original chimera was distributed on Mathew Island, just that it struck the village down soon after you arrived. Then everyone caught it, by your own admission, after they came to the hospital."

  "What are you getting at, Jordan?" he said, clearly confused.

  "Think about it, Nate. Everyone but you, Wood, and Warner caught the virus. You had no way of knowing that Warner would call the helicopter that morning. Maybe you hadn't infected him and Katie Wood, but you knew it was possible that they could carry the chimera on their clothing. You kept stressing in your emails, over and over, that we had to find them and quarantine them and anyone they'd been in contact with. According to your notes, the virus then went on to infect everyone else . Everyone, that is, except you , when all you had was a surgical mask and rubber gloves?"

  "Spinner-" McCabe began.

  "Consider the evidence-isn't that your line, McCabe?" she said, pivoting around to face him. "When we picked up Nate in the launch, the first thing he did was toss his mask over the side, a mask that might have contained the original airborne chimera, not one that had passed through a couple of bodies. He said everyone else was dead and that there was no point checking. Then we find out that, an hour after dropping Katie Wood and Michael Warner in Vila, Gary Teocle lands a big contract in New Caledonia. He never made it. His helicopter went down somewhere in the Pacific. Was Gene Marshall the bastard that you painted him, Nate? Or did he deliberately send those samples to France instead of the CDC because you ordered him to?"

  She was evidently about to add more, but McCabe took her by the shoulder and forced her to look at him. "Jordan, you're overreacting." He knew why, but he was surprised by her vehemence.

  "Am I?" she cried. "You never suspected 'Uncle Albert' or my hu-"

  " Spinner !" He'd never used that tone of voice on her before, and she stepped back from him as if he'd slapped her.

  Bringing her to Fiji was a mistake. She'd resigned, and she should have been kept right out of it. And yet, played correctly, this argument could also work to the FBI's advantage.

  Between Bush's cutbacks, the current low morale in the FBI, and Spinner's leaving, any investigations into the Consortium appeared to have ground to a halt. Now, if he and Spinner were seen to be at each other's throats, those unnamed lower echelon members of the Consortium, people he wa
s certain were with them right here, right now, might be lulled into complacency.

  "You're some piece of work, Jordan," spat Nate. Turning on his heel, he marched out of the house and into the night.

  "I knew when you left you weren't cut out for this anymore," McCabe said, his tone deliberately condescending.

  Even in the darkness, he could Spinner's her eyes widen in disbelief. Around them, everyone had gone still.

  "Either pull yourself together," he snarled. "Or leave." He released her shoulder and walked into the bedroom. The sickness in his gut now had nothing to do with the gruesome, blood-filled room. He'd publicly humiliated the one person who least deserved it, the one person he could trust. But he had to protect her at all cost. Especially now that they were so close.

  The water trucks arrived, and the soldier set fire to the house and outdoor laundry with its broken washing machine and chimera particles. Just before dawn, the convoy packed up and left. The villagers would remain under quarantine for another week, but it seemed that this area at least was free of the virus.

  While Nate, McCabe, and Broadwater rode together in the first truck, Jordan sat in the second vehicle with Chuck Long and the other team members, feeling frightened and angry-and worse, isolated. Her accusations had risen more from an acutely sensitized paranoia rather than a genuine distrust of Nate. He was right about the way the chimera had appeared in Fiji; she'd seen it time and again in Northern Iraq. Strange illnesses wrought upon the Kurds that had slaughtered thousands. Every few years a pocket of infection would reappear for no good reason. Like Nadi, it might begin with just a single infection. Then funerary practices ensured it spread to the community at large. But in the Singh's house, as she'd stood amidst the brown crusts of viral filled blood and flyblown faeces, it seemed there had been too many coincidences in her life, and her arguments appeared chillingly logical.

  Years of hunting bioweapons had taught her that Mathew Island had to have been seeded by an aircraft specifically equipped for the job. That made her accusations against Nate even more ridiculous. She closed her eyes, angry with herself for lashing out at him. Was she capable of trusting anyone, ever again? Was that why McCabe had encouraged her to resign? Had he seen into her mind, picked it apart, and recognised that she was no longer capable? No matter how often, or how much they had disagreed with one another over the years, he had never gone out of his way to humiliate her.