He sighed. ‘That’s where luck comes in. That’s where we’re going to need it.’
No objections. A room full of quiet.
‘If we’re lucky,’ he repeated, ‘this means all outbreaks have come to our knowledge. But what if we’re not?’
He looked out at his audience. And for a brief moment, he felt stupid. These were people who knew considerably more than he did, biologists and doctors and medical researchers, and here he stood, relaying their own information back to them. Assembled and combined, true, organised so that everyone could gain insight into areas beyond their own field, but still he couldn’t shake the feeling that the collective knowledge in the room was larger than his own. And in that instant he was a child again, for the first time in decades he found himself in an English town that smelled of coal and he was small and everyone else was higher up on the ladder and who the hell did he think he was?
The memory washed over him and vanished as quickly as it came. But it knocked him off balance, made him pause a fraction longer than he’d planned, and he had to force himself back to the present, try to remind himself who he was now and tell himself that in this room, the only one questioning his authority was himself.
He turned to look at the screens behind him, numbers and columns of data appearing as he spoke.
‘As we know, there isn’t much research on the virus. Primarily because it hasn’t existed for very long. And as with previous generations of the virus, this one should have stayed here under laboratory conditions and died with its carriers as soon as we established it didn’t work. This time we didn’t manage to do that.’
Did. Not. Manage.
Three simple words. Everyone knew what they meant. They had failed, all their routines and protocols hadn’t been enough, and now the situation was out of control and they couldn’t do anything about it.
And the computer spat out new tables of numbers, and Connors pointed and explained, his voice neutral and matter-of-fact and somehow that made it even worse.
In their two chairs at the rear of the room sat William and Janine. Silent like everyone else in the rows in front of them. Watching the map, listening to Connors, hearing terms they recognised, figures they didn’t understand but that scared them all the same, reproduction index and incidence and pathogenicity, and everywhere the numbers were high and made people who understood them shake their heads.
‘We call this virus Generation Seven,’ he said. ‘It spreads through droplets in the exhaled air, which means that it doesn’t travel very far from its carrier. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there have been no documented cases of people being exposed without developing the symptoms and dying.’
New tables of numbers on the screens.
‘The time from infection to the first signs of illness vary from one to four days. Perhaps it differs from person to person. Perhaps there are other parameters – again, we don’t know. But what we do know is that when the process has started, things move fast. I don’t think I need tell anyone in here what it looks like.’
Nobody interjected. Everybody knew. All too well.
And Connors turned back towards the screen. He had reached the core of his report, the thing that worried him most of all.
With a sweeping gesture over his computer, the tables vanished from the screen, replaced again by the map of Europe. In the centre was Amsterdam and Berlin, framed by the Mediterranean in the south and the polar circle in the north.
‘If we’re lucky, the outbreak is over. But…’
His finger on the computer, a movement across the touchpad.
A dot that appeared over Amsterdam.
One small dot, contrasting in a sharp purple against the rest of the map.
‘If there’s just one single person we don’t know about? One person who was present at the crash on the highway, or who met someone at the hospital and walked out of there, or who met Captain Adam Riebeeck at the airport?’
A pause. And then, the words he didn’t want to say.
‘And if that person infects ten others before he dies? Who, in turn, infect ten more?’
The map. The purple dots. Connors’ hand, brushing over the computer, once, twice, three times, making the dots grow and multiply, shining in brighter shades of purple and further and further from Amsterdam. The dots grew into circles, appearing in entirely new places as the computer simulated people travelling and fleeing from the cities, panicking and searching for safety and infecting new people rather than making anything better.
Nothing anyone hadn’t contemplated already, and yet it was painful to watch.
What terrified them most of all was how few of Connors’ finger sweeps it took. How few steps were needed, how soon the map had to zoom out to accommodate all the circles, how the entire world turned purple within a couple of weeks and how what started as a single dot in Europe spread to encompass the globe.
And still, there was surprise when circles began to shrink.
When the map regained its natural colours, when the purple receded and the circles turned back into dots and the world’s countries gradually returned to normal.
For a moment, hope filled the room.
But slowly, slowly, reality caught up.
The circles didn’t shrink because the epidemic had stopped spreading, or because somehow its intensity had magically weakened.
The opposite was true.
There wasn’t anyone left to spread it.
And eventually, the computer beeped to tell them the simulation had come to an end. There were no more steps, no matter how many times Connors brushed the touchpad.
On the screen in front of them the world shone in luminous detail, countries and cities and places where someone knew someone, where there was a spectacular view or a nice little café.
But in the world that the computer simulated, there weren’t any people left. Not at the nice cafés and not by the spectacular views. Everywhere across the globe, life had ceased to be.
And it was no further away than a dozen swipes on a computer.
The meeting finished, but nobody got up.
Papers lay untouched on the tables, bottles of mineral water were left unopened, there was a world to save but nowhere to begin and the feeling of hopelessness hung over them like a dark, heavy blanket.
‘If we’re lucky,’ someone said. Connors words again.
It was the thought on everyone’s mind, but the words came from one man and the whole room turned towards him.
‘How big is the chance that we are?’
Connors looked back at him. Shook his head.
‘In three days we’ll know the answer. Until then I want you to give Sandberg and Haynes all the material we’ve got.’
34
The man who was about to die in the alley had a name, but he hadn’t heard it for a very long time. It had faded and been forgotten and lost its meaning through so many years of solitude, that when he heard the military men around him say it he didn’t feel as if they were talking to him.
Stefan Kraus had lived on the streets for as long as he could remember. Slept in lifts and tunnels and sometimes not at all, often remaining in constant motion to survive another night in an ice-cold, wintry Berlin. Based on his date of birth, he was just over thirty. But anyone who saw him would guess at fifty, and he floated around in an ageless existence between life and death, and there were days he wasn’t sure which was which.
They had come to him in the police station holding cell.
It had been a good morning, he’d slept in a warm room for the first time in ages, he’d eaten food that hadn’t been thrown away, and that came to him in sealed packaging and meant he didn’t have to worry about being poisoned. And even if he knew it was only a temporary respite, a short break from the reality that was slowly but persistently destroying him, he’d been doing his best to avoid thinking of that and simply enjoy the moment.
He had felt grateful.
Grateful he’d survived another ni
ght.
And that was probably one of the reasons he said yes.
They told him he’d be part of a research project. In return he’d get food and accommodation. He’d have the chance of a real life, he’d get exercise and education, at night he’d have his own room where he could read or watch TV and when summer came there was a terrace with a view he’d never grow tired of.
That was what they told him.
But nobody told him what he would witness.
He would see people become sick for no reason. People who were taken to closed-off wards, cared for by staff in hazard suits, and who pined away and never returned. And he wasn’t an idiot, he might be homeless but he was not an idiot, he knew his time would come and with every day that passed that time drew closer.
He was going to die, and if he had a choice he would rather freeze to death in freedom, fall asleep to the sound of the subway and never wake up again, rather than become one of the bleeding bodies he’d caught a glimpse of as they brought him downstairs to exercise and breathe in machines and prepare for becoming their next subject.
But he didn’t get to choose.
He’d said yes, and now he was doomed.
So when the woman whose name was Helena Watkins had come to him and asked for help, it was as if he’d been given a second chance.
She was a prisoner too, but a prisoner with privileges. She knew things and had a key card, and whatever she’d found out, she was scared and needed him.
She would help him escape. In return, he had to deliver a letter, a thick envelope that was immensely important. Not that he gave a damn what it contained, so long as it got him out of there. She supplied him with names and instructions, and two days later she told him the time had come.
She collected him from his room in the middle of the night. Showed him through corridors that wouldn’t end, opened doors and airlocks and guided him to an alcove where he could hide, waiting for the delivery trucks that would arrive at dawn.
That’s where she gave him the heavy envelope.
And then she’d hesitated, weighing the pros and cons, trying to decide whether to confide in him or not. And Kraus had waited.
‘There’s one more thing,’ she said, finally.
He remembered her words, remembered how she seemed to be struggling with a decision, as if the envelope was paramount, but that there was something else that she couldn’t let go of. Something human and special and personal. And then she made up her mind.
She asked him to deliver a message.
Not for her own sake, but for someone else’s, just a couple of words. And she told it to him, made the message up then and there, brief and concise, and yet he understood exactly what it was, it was touching and of course he couldn’t say no. And Helena Watkins had thanked him and wished him good luck, and then she’d left him alone.
And Stefan Kraus had hunched in the darkness. Shaking with the fear of being discovered. But the morning had come and with it the deliveries, and where the truck rolled in he made his escape and the air and the chill hit him straight in his face. And for one tiny moment he was happy.
Stefan Kraus was free.
He wandered on foot for hours. The dark of the morning kept him invisible, made him feel safe and calm even though there was nobody to stay invisible from. Behind him, the road led back to the base of the mountain, terminating at the gigantic steel door he’d exited through, and the only vehicle that passed him during his walk was the truck that had brought the deliveries, food or mail or medical supplies or whatever, he didn’t care because he was out of there. It passed him on its way back from the castle, just as dawn got under way, and only a couple of metres away but without noticing him by the side of the road.
Gradually, he left the mountains behind him.
He walked along winding, single-track roads, passing a village of Alpine houses that climbed the hills like an illustration on a beer festival poster, only this was the real thing. And after hours of walking, the roads grew larger with separate lanes and traffic that whizzed by in both directions.
And there, at a service station, he stole a truck. Drove it to Innsbruck where he hitched a ride in a red Toyota RAV4. It got him as far as Berlin.
And then everything went wrong.
The man he was looking for was called Watkins, the same as her.
His apartment was directly opposite a triangular park in Friedrichshein, one of the parks that had been Stefan Kraus’ home for several short periods, and perhaps that was the reason he immediately saw what was right and what wasn’t. Along the pavement, two dark cars were parked. Behind the wheel, two men were reading newspapers with feigned nonchalance.
Watkins was under surveillance.
Perhaps they knew that Kraus would come to him; by now they had no doubt discovered that he was missing, perhaps they had made her tell them where he was going, now they were waiting for him here.
And yet it wasn’t the cars that made him hesitate. It was the feeling that was growing inside him.
The feeling he’d tried to ignore, the one that had started in the car on the way from Innsbruck, the one he had told himself was just the beginnings of a cold, though he knew deep down that wasn’t the case.
So he stayed at a distance. Watched the men that watched the building.
In his hand he held the envelope that would save the world.
That’s what she’d called it.
And he was homeless, not an idiot. He knew perfectly well he wouldn’t be able to save the world if he infected it at the same time.
It was morning, but the hour had ceased to matter.
Their TV was on, simply because neither of them could bring themselves to turn it off, it regurgitated the same footage of the hospital and the plane crash and of government officials who wouldn’t comment, chewed them over and over like a cow chewing the cud and with less and less substance each time it returned.
They had slept, but only for short moments, sitting in their armchairs as if lying down would be disrespectful. As if by staying awake they could make a difference, as if everything that had happened could be fixed when the right moment presented itself, and they didn’t dare to sleep in case they missed it.
Albert had been waiting in their car when Leo came down from the roof.
Christina was beyond saving. The building had been sealed off and they weren’t allowed to get close, but they saw the rescue teams digging and the dogs searching, and she had fallen from a roof and been buried under tons of stone. There wasn’t a hope in hell.
And the police had started to ask what they were doing there and Albert had become nervous and finally they’d had to leave.
They’d set off on the A10 and turned east, their only goal being to get out of Amsterdam. And when their eyes started to flicker from exhaustion, the paralysing exhaustion that took over as the adrenalin ran out, when neither of them dared to take the wheel, they’d stopped at a motel and the morning had come and there they sat, exactly as they’d sat down when they came in.
Neither of them had said a word for hours.
And the silence had been replaced by showers starting in the adjacent rooms, feet in the corridors on their way to breakfast, luggage rolling past as people checked out on their journey to new motels on different highways.
Leo was the first to speak. ‘I see the Alps.’
Albert looked at him. Knew what he was referring to, said nothing.
Janine’s letter. He’d been going over it in his mind, too. The Alps and all the names and find me. And how the hell were they supposed to do that?
‘So the one thing we know,’ said Leo, ‘is that we need to go south.’
‘You don’t need to do this,’ said Albert.
He watched Leo from the side. He was the same young man as yesterday, same hat, same blazer, wrinkled and slightly dated and if you were kind you could say it was a statement, but to be honest it was hideous. But Leo’s face had changed. He’d grown. They hadn’t known each other for a
full day, yet it was as if events had forced him to mature into someone slightly older, slightly more grown-up, slightly more sad.
Either that or he was tired. Which was also a possibility.
‘What else would I do?’
Leo’s words. Not a complete sentence even now. But it conveyed all that needed to be conveyed, and Albert looked at him, at the weariness in his eyes, his unwashed hair, the curls that might have been styled yesterday but looked as though someone had tossed a toupee on his head and left.
Somehow, it seemed touching in the midst of everything else.
‘Did you know her well?’ Albert asked.
It was a question Leo hadn’t considered. He’d seen her die, he’d been washed out by the shock and all the emotions, and from that moment he’d accepted his role without thinking. No, perhaps he didn’t know her. But if he didn’t try to finish what she had started, then who would?
No. It was the wrong way to put it. If he didn’t do it, then who was he?
This was his journey. He was the one who’d found the wire story on Janine, who’d found Albert who in turn was the entire reason they’d travelled to Amsterdam. In a way, that meant that he was the reason that she was dead.
He owed it to her to carry on. To himself and to her. And that had nothing to do with how well he’d known her.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not knew, not like that, no.’
Albert’s turn to talk.
‘Let me explain this to you. I’ve screwed up. I’ve caused a person’s death. The police are after me, they’ve searched my office, the police and people that I don’t know who they are, but who’ – and he hesitated for a moment – ‘who I think have to do with Janine’s disappearance. And if I’m brutally honest, I don’t even know what I’m doing.’
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