Albert had taken it out as soon as they’d ordered, told them everything about the contents, the names and the words and the fear hidden inside the letter. And he’d shown them the postmark with the name of the city, and Leo had taken a photo with Christina’s phone and sent it to the newsroom in Stockholm hoping the franking machine’s identity code might be traceable.
And Christina had called Palmgren, but he hadn’t answered.
‘Now what do we do?’ Albert asked.
‘We wait,’ Christina said. ‘It’s all we can do.’
And so the evening passed.
And on the flat screen behind them the jet-crash headlines were replaced by new ones, in a typeface even larger than before. But by then, everybody had stopped watching.
Connors led them along stone corridors and on through metal doors to the newer parts of the complex. They followed a series of sterile neon-lit hallways with cold featureless walls until eventually he came to a halt at the end of a passageway.
A small staircase of ribbed steel led up to the door that marked the corridor’s end, and apart from that the only way out was the way they had just come.
It was identical to all the other underground passages they’d passed through. Except for one, crucial difference.
This door was covered in warning signs.
Huge black letters on a yellow background proclaimed the peril beyond, with symbols depicting death and danger and biological hazard.
Authorised personnel only. Risk of infection.
The virus.
William and Janine remained silent, waiting for Connors to explain why they were there, waiting for him to say that he’d been listening in on their conversation, that he knew what they knew and that it wasn’t acceptable that they did. Maybe he was going to open that door, push them through and shut it behind them, let them stay in there until no pressure hose on the planet could help them.
But he didn’t. Instead his voice softened: ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘But I think you’ve already understood it anyway.’
Janine glanced at William. Saw him nod at Connors.
‘I think so,’ William said. ‘It’s the solution itself that’s our problem. Am I right?’
‘Then you have understood,’ said Connors.
Janine looked between them. Whatever William had understood, she wasn’t there yet.
‘What solution?’ she said. ‘To what problem?’
William turned to her. Said two words: ‘Viral vectors.’
He waited for Connors to confirm. But the man stood silent.
‘Explain,’ said Janine.
William hesitated. Decided that since he had already started, he might as well go on.
‘Here’s how I think it is,’ said William, his eyes locked on Connors, to monitor if he was on the right track. ‘The virus is our antidote.’
‘Against…?’ Janine asked.
‘Against ourselves.’
Janine frowned. Ourselves?
‘Against the predictions. Against the plague. Against our own DNA.’
Janine couldn’t decide whether he was talking in riddles or if what he was saying didn’t make sense. Either way, it was starting to annoy her.
‘What are you saying? That we’re the ones killing us?’ Her voice was heavy with sarcasm and she knew that it wasn’t the most constructive approach. But she was tired and couldn’t hold herself back. ‘So it was our own DNA that put Helena Watkins in that glass box? It was our own DNA they were washing us clear of in those damned plastic tubes up there? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
It wasn’t called for, she knew that. But she was fed up with information being served piecemeal. She wanted to know.
‘No,’ said William. ‘That was the virus.’
‘In that case I don’t think it sounds like a very good antidote to anything. Do you?’
‘No, it doesn’t. And that’s why we’re here now.’ He looked to Connors for confirmation.
‘Sandberg’s right,’ he said. A hint of apology in his tone, as if somehow it was his fault that William had understood before her.
‘Imagine,’ Connors continued. ‘Imagine that one day you found a document. And in that document, it set out everything that was going to happen to you for the rest of your life. What would you do?’
‘If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have dismissed it and thrown it away.’
‘But what if it turned out that the document was right? What if it turned out that it had been written long before you were born, and that it had been right about absolutely everything that had happened, right up until the present day? And then, what if it said you’d soon be involved in an accident. What would you do?’
She didn’t know what to say. Instead, she waited for him to go on.
‘You would try to change it,’ Connors said. ‘Wouldn’t you? You’d open the document, and you’d delete the part about the accident, and you’d replace it with something better.’
Janine began to sense where the conversation was going. If she was right, she didn’t want to come along.
‘In the mid-sixties,’ Connors said, ‘we discovered that the human DNA was full of predictions. And as we did that? As we slowly started to find out what would happen to us down the road…?’
He looked at her as if that explained everything. But she waited him out, forced him to continue.
‘We had to do something. We called out into space, hoping that someone would answer, but nothing happened. We tried to find answers in the writings of ancient civilisations, we turned to every faith and religion on the planet, we did everything we could to make contact, to get to know how those codes had ended up inside our bodies, and why they were there, what we were supposed to do to get them out. But wherever we looked, there weren’t any answers. Ultimately, only one thing remained. To change the document.’ He paused. And then, to clarify: ‘We had to put new predictions into our existing DNA.’
‘How?’ was all she said.
‘A virus,’ said William. His voice was low, his gaze distant, almost as if he was talking to himself.
Connors nodded. ‘But how could we change the information in the human DNA?’ he said. ‘Or rather: if this was our shared future, embedded in everyone’s genes – every person’s on the entire planet – how could we access and alter that future? How do you get into every single copy of that document throughout the entire world? How do you make sure that the negative predictions are taken out and replaced?’
He paused before he answered himself:
‘Viruses have the ability to enter human cells. A virus can insert copies of its own DNA into the cell, then force the body to manufacture cell with the new code instead of the old. Imagine, then, if you had a virus carrying a genetic code you had designed? A virus that could deliver your code directly into the cells, force them to create new cells that looked the way we wanted them to, with the new genes instead of the old ones?’
He looked from Janine to William. ‘Sandberg’s right: viral vectors. Modern gene therapy – this is where it was born. But the history books will never get to know that.’
He turned his attention back to Janine.
‘Once we’d made the method work, there was only one thing left to do. To make the virus as contagious as possible. As soon as it was, all we had to do was to let it out of the lab and sit back, wait for it to spread across the globe and replace the undesired predictions in the human DNA with – how should I put it? With a more enjoyable alternative.’
‘That’s what the new verses were for.’ Janine held out her hands, struggling to adjust to what she’d just heard. ‘The ones you wanted me to translate into Sumerian.’
Connors didn’t answer. And that was confirmation enough.
‘That’s what we’re doing here. We’re trying to replace humanity’s future with one we’ve made up ourselves!’
‘I wouldn’t say made up.’
‘Then what would you say?’
A pause.
�
��Developed.’
The room was quiet.
‘And now the problem is the virus won’t work?’ said Janine.
‘Something’s wrong with it,’ admitted Connors. ‘Perhaps it’s because of the language, the way we’ve translated the new verses into Sumerian. Or perhaps it’s how we’ve coded it, perhaps the cipher keys we’ve been using have created sequences that make the virus malign instead of helping us. Perhaps it’s both.’
He paused again. Steeling himself for the next step.
‘What we do know is we haven’t yet found a working virus. Every attempt we’ve made so far…’
For the first time he looked up at the metal door behind them. The yellow warning signs. The flashing electronic lock.
He pulled out his key card. Held it against the sensor.
‘It’s going to be a bit cold. But other than that, we’ll be safe.’ He said it over his shoulder, waited for the door to open.
He led the way into the observation room, the same room where he and Franquin had been standing day after day, standing in hope, only to receive the same soul-destroying news. Behind him, he heard them gasp. He didn’t turn round, didn’t want to look into their faces. He already knew what their reaction would be and that was something he didn’t need to see.
The thick pane of space-shuttle glass in front of them. A sea of hospital beds inside.
And they stood there. In silence. Watched the rows of sheet-covered patients, some of them motionless, others with chests moving slowly up and down with laboured breaths, everywhere patches of blood in shades from thickened black to vibrant red.
When Connors finally turned to face them, there was a new look in his eyes. Sorrow. Perhaps something more. Perhaps regret.
‘All the viruses we’ve been able to create so far have caused the infected cells to collapse.’
‘Cancer?’
‘There’s no name for what these people have.’
‘And who are they?’ Janine asked.
Connors shook his head. It wasn’t relevant. Or at least not something he wanted to talk about.
‘How did they get here?’ she asked again. ‘Did they know what their fate would be? Is this where we’ll end up, William and me, when we stop producing results?’
The silence around them was complete.
The only thing they could hear were the sounds that should have been there, the hisses and beeps from machines that breathed and monitored pulses, the coughs and the wheezings of bodies that cramped underneath their sheets, all the sounds they should have heard but that stayed on the other side of the glass and left them in a sterile silence. A silence so overpowering that Janine finally had to speak, just to make sure what she heard was noiselessness and not a deafening roar.
‘I can’t be part of this,’ she said, without moving, without taking her eyes off of the room in front of her. ‘I can’t be part of letting these people die. My god, how many are there? How many have there been? How many people have died in there, all because… well, all because what? Because we’re trying to improve our future?’
‘I think you misunderstand,’ Connors told her.
‘How?’
‘This isn’t about improving our future. This is about —’
He stopped himself. For the second time, he’d reached a point where he was about to say something he shouldn’t. Or, at least, didn’t want to.
‘About what?’ she said.
‘It’s about doing something before it’s too late.’
‘What is too late? What?’
Connors didn’t answer. Just looked at his watch.
When he looked up again, it was clear the decision had been made.
‘Right now the council is meeting. You needed to see this first.’
29
Lars-Erik Palmgren drove across the narrow bridge with Neglingeviken’s thin ice to his right and Pålnässviken rocking in the darkness to his left.
It represented his own feelings better than he wanted to admit. On the one hand. And on the other.
He tried to think of something else, changed gear to speed up, well aware that the roads were like glass and that he was risking his own life, almost as if trying tell himself that risking your life was unavoidable, and that trying to stay safe was the coward’s way.
Christina had asked him for help. And he had said no.
It had been torturing him ever since, and he left the café knowing it was the wrong thing to do – but what choice did he have? The call had made him nervous, the anonymous voice telling him about Sara and then hanging up; he’d known then that whatever was happening was unpleasant and unfathomable and big. And he was insignificant and small.
He glanced at his phone. It lay in the passenger seat, rocking restlessly back and forth as he steered along the road. Restless as his own mind, his own embarrassment over letting fear trump what was right.
Loyalty. Courage. Friendship.
And now she was in Amsterdam.
He’d seen her on his computer, not live when it happened but on a clickable video under thick black headlines. She had been reporting on the plane crash, but what was she doing in Amsterdam in the first place? What could have taken her there, other than the search for William?
On one hand he owed her nothing. He really didn’t.
He was retired, a widower, he’d left the military behind and all he did was a bit of consulting here and there and that was all. How could he help her, even if he wanted to? What would he be able to do?
On the other hand, how could he not?
If he didn’t, who would he be? What would he be? He already knew the answer.
On the seat beside him the phone lay silent, and he knew that behind the black display at least four calls were hiding. Four missed calls from Christina Sandberg.
In a few hundred metres he’d be home. And then he would call her back.
And no matter what she asked him, he would do it for her.
More than an hour had passed since Leo sent the photo of the envelope to the Stockholm news desk, when at last Christina’s phone vibrated on the table in front of them.
‘That took a while,’ she said when she answered. ‘Did you make anything out of it?’
The two men opposite watched her as she spoke. Saw her expression change. First in doubt, then deeply serious. And quiet. For much too long.
‘We are…’ she began, answering a question from the other end of the line before realising she didn’t know. Looked up at Albert: ‘Where are we?’
‘Haarlem,’ he said. ‘West of Amsterdam.’
‘Did they find —’
Leo broke off as Christina raised her hand, shook her head and splayed her fingers to keep him quiet. This wasn’t about the envelope.
‘Haarlem,’ she relayed into the phone. She was sitting straight in her chair now, turned away from them to avoid any further questions.
Listened. Nodded. Listened.
‘When was this?’ she asked. And then, without waiting for the answer: ‘Can we turn that up, please?’
The last part she directed at the barman, getting to her feet, raising her voice as she repeated: ‘Can we turn it up? The television – now.’
The urgency in her voice made the man behind the bar glance up at the screen behind him. The moment he did, he was jolted wide awake.
He found the remote control beneath a pile of keys and receipts by the till, pointed it at the TV, fumbled for the right button. Turned up the volume, his eyes glued to the screen.
Seconds later, every conversation in the room came to an end.
William and Janine were escorted into the parliament in silence. They stayed at a distance, taking their places behind the huge, round table and the circle of dark-blue chairs, facing the massive LED display.
Around them various sets of eyes were directed at Connors, and he inclined his head as a silent response: Yes, they’re here, and they’re here with me.
Nobody spoke, but there was concern in the air, and the
uniformed men kept their eyes on him for a few more moments, their gazes lingering until they returned to look at the displays on the wall.
It was against all regulations. Civilians shouldn’t be in there. Not now.
But if this was the beginning of what everyone thought it was, it really didn’t make any difference.
There was nothing left to protect, nothing to keep secret. It no longer mattered whether William Sandberg and Janine Charlotta Haynes witnessed events as they happened or learned about them in retrospect.
‘Do they understand that we have to do this?’ Franquin said.
He was standing to one side of the auditorium with Connors, the two of them speaking in low voices while trying to keep their body language as relaxed as the situation allowed. They couldn’t afford to show anything but unity, couldn’t allow anyone to suspect they had conflicting opinions, not now.
‘Nobody can understand,’ Connors answered.
And Franquin could only bow his head in agreement.
On the screens in front of them a multitude of TV channels and news websites jostled for attention, side by side. All of them broadcasting the same story:
Mega-Hospital in Quarantine. Slotervaart Hospital Sealed Off.
Suspected Outbreak Closes Hospital.
This was the moment they’d known would come. The scenario already existed on paper, even if the hospital didn’t have a name and the city been called Medium-sized European City. They’d discussed and debated and made decisions that had been hard to make even when the situation remained hypothetical.
‘You know we have to do this,’ Franquin said. ‘What’s the point of resisting?’
Connors wasn’t sure that he did know. How could they say that their analysis was correct, that there remained no trace of doubt? Wasn’t that why Haynes and Sandberg had been brought there, to help them interpret it one more time, to take one more shot at finding an alternative solution?
Franquin knew what he was thinking. ‘We’ve always known,’ he said.
Connors said nothing.
Chain of Events Page 24