The Judas Strain sf-4

by James Rollins

  A butler in full tails and regalia met Monk at the entrance. He tried to take the tray from Monk, but playing up the pirate act, Monk tried a fierce Malay equivalent of aaargh, and shouldered the man roughly aside. The butler tumbled back, arms wheeling, which earned a chuckled grunt from the door guard.

  Monk entered the main salon of the suite. A puff of smoke from a deck chair on the outside balcony alerted him to his target.

  Ryder Blunt lounged in a ship’s robe and flowered swim trunks, ankles crossed, his hair an unkempt blond mop. He was smoking a thick stogie, watching the steep islands slowly pass. Escape was so close, yet so far away. To match the ominous mood, a stack of dark clouds climbed the horizon.

  As Monk joined him, the billionaire didn’t even bother to glance his way. It was the habit of the rich, ever a blind eye to their wait staff. Or maybe it was merely disdain toward the pirate serving his lunch. Ryder’s butler had already set up a side table.

  Silver and crystal and ironed napkins.

  It must be good to be king.

  Monk lowered the tray to the table and whispered in the man’s ear as he bent down. “Don’t react,” Monk said in English. “I’m Monk Kokkalis with the American envoy.”

  The only reaction from the billionaire was a more fierce exhalation of smoke. “Dr. Cummings’s partner,” he sighed back. “We thought you were dead. The pirates sent after you—”

  Monk didn’t have time to explain. “Yeah, about them…they caught a bad case of the crabs.”

  The butler came to the doorway of the balcony.

  Ryder waved him off, speaking loudly. “That’ll be all, Peter. Thank you.”

  Monk unloaded the tray. He lifted one of the silver covers over the hot plate and revealed two small radios beneath it. “An extra serving for you and Lisa.” He covered it back up and revealed what was under the second plate. “And of course, a bit of dessert.”

  Two small-caliber handguns.

  One for Ryder and one for Lisa.

  The billionaire’s eyes widened. Monk read the understanding.

  “When…?” Ryder asked.

  “We’ll coordinate with the radios. Channel eight. The pirates aren’t using it.” Monk and Jessie had been using that bandwidth all day, with no one the wiser. “Can you get a radio and gun to Lisa?”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said, but followed it with a determined nod.

  Monk straightened. He dared not tarry any longer or the guards would get suspicious. “Oh, and there’s rice pudding under the last tray.”

  Monk headed back to the main salon. He heard Ryder’s mumbled comment: “Bloody disgusting stuff…whoever thought to put rice in pudding?”

  Monk sighed. The rich were never happier than when they had something to complain about. He reached the double doors and headed out. One of the guards asked him something in Malay.

  As answer, Monk dug a finger in his nose, looking very busy and determined, grumbled nonsensically, and continued down to the elevator.

  Luckily, the cage was still there and the doors opened immediately. He ducked inside just in time to hear the next ABBA melody begin.

  He groaned.

  The radio at his side chirped. Monk freed it and brought it to his lips. “What is it?” he said.

  “Meet me in the room,” Jessie said. “I’m heading down there now.”

  The two of them had found an empty cabin to share and made it their base of operations.

  “What’s up?”

  “I just heard. The ship’s captain expects to reach some port today. They’re spiking the engines to reach it before nightfall. Word from the weather band is that a storm cell, moving through the Indonesian islands, is escalating toward typhoon status. So they have to go to port.”

  “Meet you down at the room,” Monk said, signing off.

  Hooking the radio to his belt, Monk closed his eyes. Maybe this was their first bit of luck. He calculated in his head, while reflexively mouthing the words to “Take a Chance on Me” by ABBA.

  It was a pretty good song.

  1:02 P.M.

  Lisa stared down at her patient. The woman was dressed in a blue hospital gown, wired and tubed to all manner of monitoring equipment. A pair of orderlies waited in the other room.

  Lisa had asked for a moment of privacy.

  She stood beside the bed, fighting a thread of guilt.

  Lisa knew the patient’s statistics by heart: Caucasian female, five-foot-four, 110 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes, an appendectomy scar on her left side. Radiographs had revealed an old healed break to her left forearm. The Guild’s biographical background check even revealed the cause of the break: from a youthful accident between a skateboard and a broken curb.

  Lisa had memorized the woman’s blood-test results: liver enzymes, BUN, creatinine, bile acids, cell blood counts. She knew her latest urinalysis and fecal culture results.

  To one side stood an instrument tray neatly arranged with examination tools: otoscope, ophthalmoscope, stethoscope, endoscope. She had used them all this morning. On a neighboring nightstand, the previous night’s EKG and EEG printouts lay accordion-folded. She had examined every inch of strip. Over the past day, she had read through all the medical history of the patient and much of the findings by the Guild’s virologists and bacteriologists.

  The patient was not in a coma. The more accurate status of the patient was catatonic stupor. She displayed marked cerea flexibilitis, or waxy flexibility. Move a limb and it would stay in that position, like a mannequin. Even painful positions…as Lisa had tested these herself.

  By this time Lisa knew everything about the woman’s body.

  Exhausted, she took a moment to better examine the patient.

  Not with tools, not with tests, but with empathy.

  To see the woman behind the test results.

  Dr. Susan Tunis had been a well-regarded researcher, on her way to a successful career. She had even found the man of her dreams. And except for being married for five years, the woman’s life paralleled Lisa’s. Her fate now was a reminder of the fragility of our lives, our expectations, our hopes and dreams.

  Lisa reached out with gloved fingers and squeezed the woman’s hand as it lay atop the thin bedsheet.

  No reaction.

  Out in the other room, the orderlies stirred as the suite’s cabin door opened. Lisa heard Dr. Devesh Patanjali’s voice. The head of the Guild’s science team pushed into the room.

  Lisa released Susan’s hand.

  She turned as Devesh entered the room. His ever-present shadow, Surina, slipped to a chair in the outer room and sat, hands neatly folded on her lap. The perfect companion…perfectly deadly.

  Devesh leaned his cane beside the door and joined her. “I see you’ve been getting well acquainted with our Patient Zero this morning.”

  Lisa simply folded her arms. This was the first time Devesh had spoken to her in any significant regard, leaving her to her study. He had been spending more time with Henri in the toxicology lab and Miller in the infectious-disease lab. Lisa had even been taking her meals alone in her room or here in the suite.

  “Now that you’ve gained a complete picture of my prize patient, what can you tell me about her?”

  Though the man smiled, Lisa sensed the threat behind his words.

  She remembered Lindholm’s cold murder. All to teach a lesson: be useful. Devesh expected results from her, insights that had escaped all the other researchers. She also sensed that the time left alone with the patient was intended to isolate her from any preconceived bias.

  Devesh wanted her unique take on the situation.

  Still, she remembered his early words about the virus, what it was doing inside the woman. It’s incubating.

  Lisa crossed to the patient and exposed the length of her forearm. From the medical reports, boils and bloody rashes had once coated her limbs. But presently, her skin was clear of any blemish. It seemed the virus was more than incubating inside her.

  “The Judas Strain
is healing her,” Lisa said, knowing it was a test. “Or more precisely, the virus suddenly decided to reverse what it had started doing to her bacteria. For some unknown reason, it has begun reverting the deadly bacteria in her body back to their original benign state.”

  He nodded. “It’s flushing out the very plasmids it had once put into the bacteria. But why?”

  Lisa shook her head. She didn’t know. Not for sure.

  Devesh smiled, a strangely warm and companionable expression. “It’s stumped us, too.”

  “But I have a hypothesis,” Lisa said.

  “Truly?” His voice rang with a note of surprise.

  Lisa faced him. “She’s healing bodily, but it made me wonder why she remains in a catatonic state. Such stupor only arises from head trauma, cerebrovascular disease, metabolic disease, drug reactions, or encephalitis.”

  She stressed the last cause.

  Encephalitis.

  Inflammation of the brain.

  “I noted one test conspicuously absent from all the reports,” she said. “A spinal tap along with a test of cerebrospinal fluid. It was missing. I’m assuming it was performed, to examine the fluids around her brain.”

  Davesh nodded. “Bahut sahi. Very good. It was tested.”

  “And you found the Judas Strain in the fluid.”

  Another nod.

  “You said the virus only infects bacteria, turning each into a new nasty bug, and that the virus cannot invade human cells directly. But that doesn’t mean the virus can’t float around in the brain’s fluid. That’s what you meant by incubation. The virus is inside her head.”

  He sighed his agreement. “That does seem to be where it wants to get.”

  “So it’s not just this one patient.”

  “No, eventually it’s all of the victims…at least those that survive the initial bacterial attack.”

  He waved her to a corner of the room, where a computer station had been set up. He began clicking through various computer screens.

  Lisa continued while he worked, pacing at the foot of the bed. “No organism is evil for the sake of being evil. Not even a virus. There has to be a purpose to its toxification of bacteria. Considering the broad spectrum of bacteria it converts, it can’t be random chance. So I wondered: What does it gain by doing so?”

  Devesh nodded, urging her to continue. But plainly her conclusions were not anything new. He was continuing to test her.

  Lisa stared at the patient. “What does it gain? It gains access to forbidden territory: the human brain. Dr. Barnhardt mentioned how ninety percent of the cells that make up our body are nonhuman. Mostly bacterial cells. One of the few places that remain off-limits to viral or bacterial infections is our skulls. Our brains are protected against infection, kept sterile. Our bodies have developed an almost impenetrable blood-brain barrier. A filter that lets blood’s oxygen and nutrients reach the brain, but little else.”

  “So if something wanted to get inside our skulls…?” Devesh prompted.

  “It would take a major assault to bridge the blood-brain barrier. Like turning our own bacteria against us, to weaken the body enough that the virus could slip through the barrier and into the brain’s fluid. That’s the biologic advantage gained by the virus when it turns bacteria toxic.”

  “You do amaze,” Devesh said. “I knew there was a reason to keep you alive.”

  Despite the compliment buried in there, Lisa drew little comfort at the implied threat.

  “So the ultimate question is why,” Devesh continued. “Why does the virus want to get inside our heads?”

  “Liver fluke,” Lisa said.

  The non sequitur was strange enough to finally regain Devesh’s full attention. “Come again?”

  “Liver flukes are an example of nature’s determination. Most flukes have a life cycle that involve three hosts. The human liver fluke produces eggs that pass out of the body in feces, which are then washed into sewers or waterways and consumed by snails. The eggs then hatch into little worms that drill out of the snail and seek out their next host: some passing fish. The fish is then caught, consumed by humans, where the worm travels to the liver, and grows into an adult fluke, where it lives happily ever after.”

  “Your point being?”

  “The Judas Strain may be doing something along this line. Especially if you consider the Lancet liver fluke. Dicrocoelium dendriticum. It also uses three hosts: cattle, snail, and ant. But what it does in the ant stage is what I find most intriguing.”

  “And that is?”

  “Inside the ant, the fluke controls the insect’s nerve centers, changes its behavior. Specifically, whenever the sun sets, the fluke compels the ant to climb a blade of grass, lock its mandible, and wait to be eaten by a grazing cow. If not eaten, the ant returns to its nest at sunrise — only to repeat the same thing again the next night. The fluke literally drives the ant like its own little car.”

  “And you think the virus is doing that?” Devesh said.

  “Possibly in some manner. But I mostly bring this up to remind you how insidious nature can be in finding territory to exploit. And the brain, sterile and off-limits, is certainly virgin territory. Nature will try to exploit it, like the fluke with the ant.”

  “Brilliant. Definitely an angle to pursue. But there may be a fly in that particular ointment.” Devesh returned to the computer. He had been uploading a Quicktime video. “I mentioned that the virus has been penetrating into the cerebrospinal fluid of all the patients that survived the initial bacterial assault. Here is what happens when it does.”

  He clicked the play button.

  A silent video began to run. Two white-smocked men struggled to strap down a writhing naked man, his head shaved, wires running from electrodes attached to skull and chest. He fought, snarling and frothing. Though he was plainly debilitated, with sores and blackened boils, one arm ripped free of the tied cuffs. A clawed hand raked one of the restrainers. The patient then reared up and bit deep into the same man’s forearm.

  The video ended.

  Devesh switched off the monitor. “We’re already getting reports of similar manic responses from some of the patients, those earliest exposed.”

  “It could be another form of catatonia. Catatonic stupor is just one form.” Lisa nodded to the patient in the bed. “But there is also an opposite reaction, its mirror image: catatonic excitement. Characterized by extreme hyperactivity, severe facial grimaces, animal-like shrieks, and psychotic violence.”

  Devesh stood and turned back to the hospital bed. “Two sides of the same coin,” he mumbled, and studied the prone woman.

  “The man in the video,” Lisa asked. She had noted the background in the video. The film had not been taken aboard the cruise ship. “Who was he?”

  Devesh nodded sadly toward the bed. “Her husband.”

  Lisa tensed at the revelation. She stared at the woman sprawled on the bed. Her husband…

  “The pair were exposed at the same time,” Devesh said. “Found on a yacht that had become grounded on a reef near Christmas Island. Your John Doe below, with the flesh-eating disease, must have swum to shore. We recovered these two, still aboard the yacht. Too weak, near to death.”

  So that was how the Guild first learned about all this.

  Devesh nodded to the woman. “Which of course begs the question, Why did her husband have a complete schizoid breakdown, while our patient here is on the way to healing her external wounds and remains happily complacent and catatonic? We believe a possible cure for everyone lies in that answer.”

  Lisa did not argue. She was no fool. Despite what Devesh claimed, Lisa knew the Guild’s operation was not motivated by altruistic reasons. Their search for a cure was not to save the world. They had plans for this virus, but before they could utilize it, they needed to fully understand it. To develop an antidote or cure. And in this regard, Lisa was not at cross-purposes with the Guild. A cure needed to be discovered. The only question: How to find it without the Guild’s knowl
edge?

  Devesh turned on a heel and headed toward the door. “You’ve made excellent progress, Dr. Cummings. I commend you. But tomorrow is another day. And we’ll need more progress.” He glanced back at her, one eyebrow raised. “Is that understood?”

  She nodded.

  “Most excellent.” He paused again. “Oh, and our cruise ship’s esteemed owner, Sir Ryder Blunt, has invited everyone for afternoon cocktails in his suite. A small celebration.”

  “Celebration for what?”

  “A welcome as we come into port,” Devesh explained, gathering up his cane. “We’re almost home.”

  Lisa was in no mood to toast such an event. “I have much work here.”

  “Nonsense. You’ll come. It won’t take long, and it will help recharge your batteries. Yes, the matter is settled. I’ll have Rakao escort you. Please wear something appropriate.”

  He left, Surina trailing in his wake.

  Lisa shook her head as they departed.

  She glanced back to the bed.

  To Dr. Susan Tunis.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

  For the woman’s husband and for what was to come.

  Lisa remembered her earlier comparisons to the patient, how their two lives had followed similar paths. She pictured Susan’s husband, wild-eyed and feral. Reminded of her own love, she hugged her arms around herself and wished for the thousandth time that she was back home with Painter.

  She had spoken to him again this morning. At another of their assigned debriefings. She knew better than to attempt any subterfuge this time, reporting all was well. Still, she had been in tears by the time she was yanked from the radio room.

  She wanted his arms around her.

  But there was only one way to make that happen.

  To be useful.

  She crossed to the tray of examination tools and picked up the ophthalmoscope. Before she proceeded to the cocktail party, she wanted to follow up with an aberration, something she had kept from Devesh.

  Something that was surely impossible.

  2:02 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  One step behind.

  Painter descended the stairs two at a time toward the lobby of the Phoenix Park Hotel, too impatient even to wait for the elevator. A Sigma forensic team was still a floor above, sweeping room 334. He had left a pair of FBI field agents arguing with the local authorities.