Wyatt's Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘And if we can’t?’

  I had no answer to that, either.

  I had not expected to go back to New Providence for some time. Jack Fletcher was an experienced manager and did not need his hand held, which is why I had put him into the Sea Gardens. But when he telephoned four days after I had left him in charge he was in a rare panic. ‘We’ve got big trouble, Tom,’ he said without preamble. ‘Our guests are keeling over in all directions—dropping like flies. Tony Bosworth has his hands full.’

  ‘What is it? Does he know?’

  ‘He’s closed down the big air-conditioner.’

  ‘He thinks it’s Legionnaires’ disease?’ I thought quickly. ‘But it doesn’t work that way—it didn’t at the Parkway. Let me talk to him.’

  ‘You can’t. He’s in a conference with officials from the Department of Public Health.’

  ‘I’ll be right over,’ I said. ‘Have a car waiting for me at the airport.’

  During the flight I was fuming so much that I expect steam was blowing out of my ears. After all the trouble I had taken to ensure the hotels were clean, this had to happen. Surely Tony must be wrong; the symptoms seemed quite different to me. This would be enough to give Jack Cunningham another heart attack.

  Fletcher met me at Nassau Airport himself. As we drove to the Sea Gardens I said, ‘How many people ill?’

  His answer appalled me. ‘A hundred and four—and I’m not feeling too good myself.’ He coughed.

  ‘My God!’ I glanced at him. ‘Are you really not feeling well, Jack? Or was that just a figure of speech?’

  ‘I’m feeling lousy. I’m running a temperature and I have a hell of a headache.’

  He was not the only one. I said, ‘You’re going to bed when we get back. I’ll have Tony look you over. How many of that figure you gave me are staff?’

  ‘As of this morning we had three on the sick list—four with me now.’ He coughed again convulsively.

  ‘Stop the car,’ I said. ‘I’ll drive.’ I found it puzzling that the number of staff casualties should be so low. As I drove off again I said, ‘How many registrations have you got?’

  ‘Something over three hundred; I’ll let you know when we get to my office.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Philips. You go to bed.’ What he had told me meant that about one-third of the clientèle had gone down sick. ‘Any deaths?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said ominously.

  We got to the Sea Gardens and I packed Fletcher off to his staff flat and then went to look for Philips. I found him helping out at the cashier’s desk where there was a long line of tourists anxious to leave as quickly as they could—like money bats. The buzz of conversation in the queue was low and venomous as though coming from a disturbed hive of bees. I was in no mood to placate the rats leaving the sinking ship, to mix the metaphor even further, and I hauled him out of there. ‘Someone else can do that. Jack Fletcher’s gone down sick, so you’re in charge. Where’s Bosworth?’

  Philips jerked his thumb towards the ceiling. ‘Doing his rounds.’

  ‘Has he any help?’

  ‘A load of doctors from Nassau and some nursing staff from the hospital.’

  ‘Track him down; I want to see him in Fletcher’s office five minutes ago.’

  When I saw Tony Bosworth he looked tired and drawn, his eyes were reddened as though he had not slept, and he swayed a little on his feet. I said, ‘Sit down before you fall down, and tell me what the hell we’ve got.’

  He sighed as he sat down. ‘The tests aren’t through yet, but I’m fairly certain it’s legionellosis.’

  ‘Damn!’ I mopped the sweat from my brow and loosened my tie. It was hot and humid and I realized why. The airconditioning in the public rooms was not working. ‘It’s hitting faster this time, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s the Pontiac fever form, I think. It hits sooner and harder, in the sense that more people exposed to it contract the symptoms—ninety-five per cent is the usual rate.’

  ‘My God!’ I said. ‘Then we still have a long way to go. Did you see what was happening in the lobby as you came through?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m not sure it’s wise to allow those people to leave. They could go away and still come down with the bug.’

  ‘I don’t see how we can stop them. You can’t expect people to stay in what they think is a pest house. What’s the position of the Public Health Department?’

  ‘They’re still making up their minds.’ Tony’s eyes met mine. ‘I think they’ll close you down.’

  I winced. ‘How could this happen?’ I demanded. ‘You know the precautions we took.’

  ‘Tom, I don’t know.’ He, too, took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow, then ran it around the edge of his collar. ‘What’s puzzling me is the spotty spread. We’re not getting an incidence of ninety-five per cent—it’s more like thirty per cent.’

  ‘Then perhaps it’s not Pontiac fever.’

  ‘All the symptoms check.’ Tony scratched his head. ‘But all the Italians have gone down, seventy-five per cent of the Americans, but only twenty-five per cent of the British.’

  I blinked at that. ‘You mean it’s attacking by nationality selectively? That’s crazy!’ I had a thought. ‘It’s tending to give Bahamians a miss, too. Only four of the staff have gone down.’

  ‘Four? Who’s the fourth?’

  ‘Jack Fletcher—I’ve just packed him off to bed. I’d like you to look at him when you have time. Who are the other three?’ He named them, and I said slowly, ‘They all live here in the hotel.’ Most of the staff had homes of their own, but a select few of the senior staff, like Fletcher, had staff flats.

  It was as though I had goosed Bosworth. He jerked visibly and sat up straight from his slumped position, and I could see the Big Idea bursting from him. Someone has christened it the Eureka Syndrome. He leaned forward and grabbed the telephone. A minute later he was saying, ‘Nurse, I want you to go to every patient and ask a question—Do you habitually take tub baths or a shower? Make a tabulated list and bring it to the manager’s office. Yes, nurse, I’m serious. Get someone to help you; I want it fast.’

  He put down the telephone, and I said dryly, ‘I’m not surprised the nurse asked if you were serious. What is this?’

  ‘National habits,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Russians don’t have plugs in their wash hand basins? They don’t like washing their hands in dirty water so they let the taps run.’

  For a moment I thought Tony had gone completely round the bend. ‘What the hell have the bloody Russians to do with this?’ I said explosively.

  He held up both his hands to quieten me. ‘I once talked with an Italian doctor. He told me the Italians consider the English to be a dirty race because they bathe in their own filth. He said most Italians take showers. Now, every Italian in the hotel has gone down with this bug—every last one of them.’

  ‘And seventy-five per cent of the Americans, but only twenty-five per cent of the English.’

  ‘Whereas, if the infection had been coming from the airconditioner as at the Parkway, it should have been ninetyfive per cent overall. You know what this means, Tom; it’s in the water supply, not the air-conditioner.’

  ‘That’s bad.’ I sat and thought about it. If the water supply was contaminated the hotel was sure to be shut down. I said, ‘It won’t work, Tony. Everybody has been drinking the damn water, and they sure as hell don’t drink their shower water.’

  ‘But that’s the point. You can drink a gallon of water loaded down with this bug and it’ll do no harm in the gut. To be infective it must be inhaled into the lungs. At the Parkway the air in the lobby and on the pavement outside was filled with drift from the air-conditioner—an aerosol loaded with L. pneumophila which was inhaled. Exactly the same thing happens when you take a shower; the water is broken up intovery fine droplets and you inhale some of it.’

  ‘Jack Fletcher takes showers,’ I said. ‘I was in his apartment once and his wife said he wa
s in the shower. I could hear him; he has a fine bathroom baritone.’ I blew out my cheeks. ‘So what do I tell those people out there? That everything is okay as long as they don’t take a shower? I really don’t think that would work.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tony. ‘But I really think you’ll have to close if my theory turns out to be right. I’ll lay in some sodium hypochlorite to flush out the system.’

  Three-quarters of an hour later we had the answer; all the patients, without exception, had taken showers. Tony had sent some of the older people to the Princess Margaret Hospital and they were interrogated, too. Same answer. ‘That does it,’ he said. ‘It’s in the water supply.’

  I said, ‘We have to retrieve something out of this mess, so we’ll turn it into a public relations exercise. I’ll notify the Department of Public Health that we’re closing before they tell me I must.’ I grinned at Tony and quoted,’ “His cause is just who gets his blow in fust.” Then there are the customers. We’ll get them into other hotels, preferably our own, and stand the expense.’ It would break Jack Cunningham’s heart, but would be good business in the long run.

  ‘What about all the people still here and sick?’

  ‘They can stay if you and the other medicos can look after them. My worry is how many of them are going to die here.’

  ‘None,’ said Tony. ‘No one has been known to die of Pontiac fever yet. They’ll be up and about in a few days—a week at most.’

  ‘Thank God for that!’ I said fervently. ‘Now for the big question. I know we can get this bacterium out of the water system. What I want to know is how it got in.’

  ‘I’ll check into that,’ said Tony. ‘I’ll need your maintenance engineer, and I think we should have one of the Public Health people along.’

  ‘And you’ll have me,’ I said. ‘I want to know exactly what I happened so I can make sure it never happens again.’

  We began the investigation that night. All afternoon I had been helping Philips and the rest of the managerial staff to organize the future wellbeing of our departing guests. It took a lot of telephoning around but it got done, and although my competitors were pleased enough to take the business they did not really like it. We all knew it would be bad for trade in the future.

  Then I had to quell a minor revolt on the part of the staff. Word had somehow got around that there was something wrong with the hotel water and I was in danger of losing some of my best people. It took some straight talking on the part of Tony Bosworth, including a demonstration in which he drank a full glass of water straight from the tap—and so did I. I was glad he believed his own theories but I was not so sure, and it took some effort to drink that water without gagging.

  Four of us gathered together at eight that evening—myself, Tony Bosworth, Bethel, the hotel maintenance engineer, and Mackay from Public Health. Tony had a dozen sterilized sample bottles. ‘Where do you want to start?’ asked Bethel. ‘Bottom up or top down?’

  ‘We’re nearer to the bottom,’ said Tony. ‘Might as well begin there.’

  So we went down into the basement where the boilers were. A hotel needs a lot of hot water and we had three calorifiers, each of a capacity of three million British Thermal Units. The huge drums of the calorifiers were connected by a tangle of pipes coloured red, blue and green, with arrows neatly stencilled to indicate the direction of flow. Tony asked questions and I looked about. The place was spotless and dry.

  Bethel was explaining something technical to Tony when I broke in. ‘This place is as dry as a bone, Tony; there have been no leaks recently.’ I turned to Bethel. ‘When did you last strip down any of this?’

  He frowned. ‘Must have been eight months ago, Mr Mangan. A normal maintenance check. This equipment is efficient; hardly ever goes wrong.’

  ‘Where does the water come from?’

  ‘Out of the mains supply.‘ He nodded towards Mackay. ‘Mr Mackay can tell you more about that.’

  ‘Then why should we be the only building hit?’ I asked Tony.

  ‘That’s not exactly true,’ said Mackay. ‘Isn’t the mains water piped into tanks somewhere at the top of the building?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Bethel. ‘Right at the top to give it a good head.’

  ‘So it could have been contaminated in the tanks after it left the mains,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it could have happened down here. Everything is as tight as a drum.’

  ‘Let’s go to the top,’ proposed Tony, so we went up in the service elevator.

  The water tanks were on the roof and they were big. ‘Twenty-five thousand gallons,’ said Bethel. ‘Five thousand in each tank.’ He pointed out the mains piping rising up the side of the hotel. ‘The water comes up there and is distributed by this manifold into the tanks. Each tank has a ball valve to control the water level.’ He shrugged. ‘The whole system is just the same as the one you’ll have in your own home; it’s just that this is bigger.’

  ‘I’ve never seen mine,’ I said.

  Bethel grinned. ‘I don’t come up here too often myself. The system is automatic.’ He pointed. ‘You can see that the tanks are all interconnected by that manifold at the bottom.’

  That meant that water would flow freely between the tanks. ‘Why five?’ I asked. ‘Why not one big tank?’

  ‘Well, if something happens—a tank springs a leak, say—we can isolate it and go on using the other four.’ Bethel was very good at answering stupid questions from a layman.

  ‘And the tanks are sealed?’

  ‘Sure. There’s a manhole on the top of each so we can get at a sticky valve if we have to, but the lids are bolted down on a mastic seal.’

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ said Tony, and began to climb the steel ladder on the side of the nearest tank.

  We all followed him. On top of the tank Bethel squatted on his haunches. ‘Here’s the manhole. I had the tanks repainted about three months ago and we just painted over the manhole covers, bolts and all. You can see this hasn’t been opened since then—the paint seal isn’t cracked.’

  I looked at Mackay. ‘Then how did the bug get into the system? It must be in the mains water.’ Something bright on the roof shot a sun reflection into my eye and I turned slightly to get rid of it.

  ‘Impossible!‘ said Mackay positively. ‘Not if this is the only building affected. Look.’ He unrolled the chart he was carrying which proved to be a water distribution map. ‘All those houses take the same water. Even the airport is on the same water main.’

  ‘People normally don’t shower in airports,’ said Tony.

  ‘They do in houses,’ retorted Mackay. ‘It can’t be in the mains water. Of that I’m certain.’

  Bethel had wandered away and was standing on the next tank. ‘Hey!’ he called, and again the reflection stabbed my eye as I turned. ’This one’s been opened.’ We crossed to the tank and stood around the manhole cover. ‘The paint has cracked around the bolts.’

  ‘Opened some time in the last three months,’ said Tony.

  ‘Later than that,’ said Bethel confidently. He pointed to where bright metal showed where paint had flaked away. ‘It hasn’t started to rust. I’d say some time in the last week.’

  ‘That adds up,’ said Tony.

  ‘Who would have opened it?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Bethel. ‘Harry Crossman might have, but if he did he didn’t tell me.’

  Crossman was Bethel’s assistant. ‘It will be on his work sheets,’ I said. ‘I want to see them. I want to see them now.’

  Bethel stood up. ‘They’re in my office.’

  ‘Bring back a wrench,’ said Tony. ‘I want to take samples from here.’

  There was no point in me watching Tony take samples so I went with Bethel. We climbed down on to the roof and walked towards the elevator motor housing, and I kicked something which rolled away and came to a stop with a clink at the edge of a water tank. I stooped and picked it up and found the object that had been sending reflections into my eye. />
  But it was more than that—much more. It was a cylindrical glass tube broken at one end. The other end was pointed as though it had been sealed in a flame, and I had seen others like it in Jack Kayles’s first-aid box on My Fair Lady. Suddenly ideas came slamming into my head so hard and so fast that they hurt. Whole areas of mystification suddenly became clear and made sense; a weird and unnatural sense, it is true, but conforming to logic.

  I turned and yelled, ‘Tony, come down here.’

  He clambered down the ladder. ‘What’s the matter?’

  I held out the glass tube. ‘Could you take a swab from the inside of there and test it for your damned bug?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Sure, but…’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘Not long. After the last scare they set up a testing facility in the hospital here. Say, four days.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long, but take care of it and do your test.’ I turned and ran for the staircase.

  Five minutes later I was talking to Walker at the Royal Palm on Grand Bahama. He said, ‘Where are you, Mr Mangan? I’m supposed to be bodyguarding you.’

  ‘I had to leave in a hurry, but never mind that. I want you to send a man on to the roof. No one is to get near the water tanks up there.’

  ‘The water tanks!’ he echoed. ‘What the…’

  ‘Never mind arguing, just do it,’ I said sharply. ‘And put another man near the air-conditioning cooling tower. Nobody is to get near that, either. Nobody at all.’

  ‘Not your maintenance crew?’

  ‘Nobody,‘ I said flatly. I did not know if Carrasco had local assistance or not, but I was taking no chances. ‘Where’s Carrasco?’

  ‘He spent the day sightseeing in West End,‘ said Walker a shade wearily. ‘Right now he’s having dinner at the Buccaneer Club out at Deadman Reef. I have two men with him—Rodriguez and Palmer.’

  ‘You’ll probably have police to help you at the hotel as soon as I’ve talked to Perigord. And after that I’m flying back.’