by Bobby Akart
Her mom cautioned Mac against expecting great results. “I don’t know if it will work, but the streptomycin and other commonly administered antibiotics are not. Colistin is effective against most known multidrug-resistant pathogens except one.”
“Which one?” asked Mac.
“Oh, don’t concern yourself with it. NDM-1 is very rare.”
“I’ve heard of it. It’s an enzyme that makes certain bacteria resistant to a broad range of antibiotics. Is it resistant to colistin as well?”
“Not at first, but like so many things in our field, they evolve. NDM-1 has found ways to avoid the attacks of antibiotics that we’ve bombarded upon them.”
Mac decided to move onto the next subject. “Listen, I don’t want a repeat of Sierra Leone, so I wanna stay on top of this outbreak.”
During the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in the West Africa nation of Sierra Leone, a San Francisco company was hired to monitor the spread of the deadly disease. It was later learned that not only did they underestimate the size of the epidemic, they contributed to botched lab results, undermined governmental authority, and placed people at risk in the region. The private contractors took shortcuts in their investigation, which resulted in lost samples of the Ebola virus.
The use of private contractors in a sizable outbreak like Ebola in West Africa was not unheard of. There simply were not enough field personnel to assign to all of the outbreaks. But after the revelations hit the media, everyone, including Congress, was looking for a scalp. Andrew Morse quickly provided them one—Major General Barbara Hagan.
This was the first event that brought Mac’s mother into the public eye. Later events allowed her to become the perfect shield for an administration that showed no loyalty to the career public servants that gave their lives to making the world a safer place to live.
“Dear, I get it. You’ve got quite the quandary. We haven’t talked about the WHO and GPHIN yet. I subscribe to the GPHIN service, and I haven’t seen any updates on Guatemala, much less Trinidad or Greece. I take it Baggett isn’t ready to notify the rest of the world at this juncture.”
“There’s politics involved, Mom. I figured that out today. Morse was hostile toward me for more than our relationship. He wanted to downplay all of it.”
Mac’s mom laughed. “Listen, you’re way ahead of the learning curve than I ever was. I was horrible at reading the political tea leaves. It wasn’t until I was out of the service that I realized how much politics played a role in anything involving a government agency.”
“You know what I’ve figured out, Mom. It’s all about money and votes. But in the end, it’s really money that drives their decision making. In this case, they don’t want to alarm the public. Morse said that to me before I was dismissed this morning. Why? People will stop shopping and spending money. They won’t travel on vacation.”
Her mom interrupted. “The foreign visitors will cancel their plans to attend the President’s precious Olympics in your fair city. He talks about those Games at every campaign stop like it’s the solution to our twenty-trillion-dollar debt.”
“So what do I do?”
“Cover your backside with Baggett. If he won’t take the steps to put the word out, come back to me. I still have friends, you know.”
Chapter 46
Day Seventeen
Park Place on Peachtree
Buckhead
Mac fumbled for the phone, cursing the person who woke her up at 5:00 a.m. She knocked her cell phone off the nightstand and sprawled across the bed, trying to reach it on the floor. It continued ringing, adding to the frustration of retrieving the rude and insubordinate device. She finally found it and gave it a squeeze for acting out of line.
“Hello, this is Dr. Hagan.”
“Good morning, sunshine,” greeted an overly chipper male voice through a static-filled connection. “Have you had your coffee yet?”
“No. Who is this?” she barked.
“Oh, how soon we forget. This is Nate Hunter. Remember the guy you used to hate, but now moderately tolerate because he wined and dined you in an exotic locale? That guy.”
Mac subconsciously pulled the covers over her chest as if Hunter might be able to see her naked, in the dark, through the phone. She frowned slightly and then pulled them up higher. He probably could!
She cleared her throat and managed to speak. “Well, Mr. Hunter. It’s nice to hear from you. Now, please call back during normal business hours. Goodbye.” And she hung up.
Mac placed the phone back on the nightstand and easily closed her eyes, trying to grab those last winks that she was just deprived of.
The phone rang again.
He’s a dead man.
“What? Don’t you have any concept of time, Hunter?”
“How did you know it was me again?”
“Talk or I’ll hang up,” Mac snarled through the phone.
“Okay, okay. It’s 11:00 a.m. here and I figured you’d be up by seven. I’m sorry I woke you.”
Mac closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked over at the clock on the table to confirm the time. “It’s only 5:00 a.m.”
“What? Really?” His voice trailed off as he apparently pulled the phone away.
“Yes, it’s only 5:00 and I’m going back to sleep.”
“Wait! No. I have to tell you something. I got you a present.”
Mac perked up and took the phone with her as she went to the bathroom, holding the display against her arm to muffle the sound and block his view if he was spying on her somehow.
“What is it?” she asked as she flushed the toilet and made her way back to bed.
“What was that noise?” asked Hunter.
“I took you to the bathroom. I just flushed.”
Hunter laughed. “Wow, Dr. Hagan, you move fast. I don’t even have a drawer in the dresser yet.”
“Nor will you. Now, tell me about this present.” Mac was fully awake, but remained under the covers. She didn’t fully trust this member of the male species yet.
“I’m in Johannesburg, South Africa, outside the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.”
“Okay, what are you doing there?” Hunter was really full of himself this morning. This better be good.
“You said you wanted the plague, so I got it for you.”
Mac wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t know Hunter well enough to determine if he was joking or serious. “You mean…”
“Yeah, I had to run around Africa a little bit, but I made my way to the Johannesburg facility. It’s the only BSL-4 left on the continent now that Gabon is out of commission. By the way, that explosion was no accident, but more on that in a minute.”
Mac flipped on the light next to her bed and looked around on the floor for her oversized Braves T-shirt. She couldn’t find it and scanned the room. It was tossed on a chair near her mirrored dresser. The inner debate took hold again. Can he see me or not? She didn’t want to take the chance.
“Hold on a sec,” she said as she shoved the cell phone under her pillow. She darted to grab her shirt and then took up an Indian-style, cross-legged position on the bed. “Did they have the Madagascar strain there?” She had forgotten that she’d mentioned it to him until now.
“Yes, ma’am. I had to flirt with a perky little blonde doctor to get it for you, but that’s okay, right?”
“Whatever,” she said, smiling at his flirtatious nature. “Wow, Hunter, thank you. This could be the piece of the puzzle that connects Gabon with the patient who died in Greece.”
“And, may I add, after what I learned in Franceville, there might be a connection to the other cases.”
Mac retrieved her planner from her briefcase and turned the pages to check her schedule. “When will it arrive in Atlanta? It has to be handled a certain way.”
“I know, they explained that to me inside the facility. It’ll be in your hands tomorrow afternoon. They’ve made all the arrangements.”
“Hunter, I can’t thank you enoug
h. This will confirm some of our theories that we discussed at dinner the other night.”
“Yeah, about that. I really enjoyed every minute of our time together. I wanted to call, but I was all over the place. I’ve seen a lot of Africa the last couple of days.”
Mac was thrilled that he’d thought about calling her. This guy continued to impress her. “I totally understand. Are you headed back now?”
“I spoke to AFRIKOM a little while ago while I was waiting for you to wake up. I’m gonna hitch a ride on a military transport out of Tambo International this afternoon. It’ll get me back to Virginia tomorrow night.”
“Will you call me when you get a chance? There’s so much to discuss.”
“You bet. Listen, I talked to one of my colleagues who said he met you at the White House. Your presentation was very impressive, he said, among other things.”
“Yeah, thanks. Wait, what other things?”
“Boy talk, that’s all. Listen, I’ll call you tomorrow night, I promise. I’ve gotta catch this flight. Bye!”
Mac disconnected the call and bounced back against the stack of pillows. She couldn’t decide what excited her more, the phone call from Hunter or the Madagascar plague that was en route to her.
Chapter 47
Day Eighteen
CDC-Guatemala City
Charisse Jones, the deputy chief of mission, a career diplomat for the State Department in Latin America, had seen many ambassadors come and go. Typically, these ambassadors were political insiders, donors, or friends of donors, who contribute in heavy doses to a presidential campaign in exchange for an ambassadorship that they could flaunt at cocktail parties for the rest of their lives.
Jones was first assigned to Central America in 2003 when the CDC-Central American Regional Office was established. Two years later, she was asked to join the State Department as the deputy chief of mission, where she had remained a constant for nearly two decades.
A foreign embassy had many purposes. They issued visas to promote international visits to the United States. Ambassadors played a vital role in negotiating trade agreements between the U.S. and the host nation. On a personal level, they provided information and assistance to American citizens every day—replacing lost passports, assisting injured or ill travelers, and coordinating business relationships between American business interests and foreign governments.
All activities were coordinated through the chief of mission personnel, like Jones. The ambassadors shook hands, attend diplomatic functions, and then went home to the States upon the installation of a new administration. Jones, as was the case with others like her around the world, continued in their service.
Depending on the stability of a given host country, the embassy might enjoy lavish dinners and favorable surroundings, or the consular officers might fear for their lives on a daily basis. Jones had never feared for her life in her decades of service, until now.
This was the first time that the embassy in Guatemala City had closed. Jones issued a short message on the embassy’s Facebook page, which read:
U.S. EMBASSY TEMPORARILY CLOSED DUE TO THREAT
The United States Embassy in Guatemala City will close until further notice. We take seriously the security of embassy personnel and the people who regularly visit the embassy on business. Further statements will be posted on the embassy’s website and on this Facebook page.
Despite being followed by nearly two hundred thousand Facebook users, only a dozen or so commented or liked the post.
Jones also prepared the following security message for U.S. citizens to be posted on the embassy’s website, which was part of usembassy.gov.
SECURITY MESSAGE: U.S. EMBASSY TEMPORARILY CLOSED DUE TO THREAT
Due to recent gang-related violence and use of aggressive tactics in communities across the country, all embassy employees have been instructed that all travel anywhere outside of the embassy compound requires notification and coordination with the embassy’s Regional Security Office.
Further, the embassy recommends that private U.S. citizens take precautions when traveling outside their hotel or residence at all times.
The security message prepared by Jones contained an additional paragraph, which read:
The nation of Guatemala is experiencing a widespread influenza-like disease that can result in death. Although the outbreak was first discovered in the northern region of Guatemala, it has now spread as far south as Guatemala City. If travelers experience high fever, headache, shortness of breath, cough and weakness, please visit a health care provider immediately.
The ambassador requested that this paragraph be stricken from the security message. His liaison at the State Department advised him that such an alert would unduly frighten American citizens from entering the country and could, in fact, generate a mass panic out of Guatemala.
Despite a heated argument in which Jones pointed out the news reports from Nuestro Diario, the most widely circulated paper in Guatemala, of the unusual number of deaths from the flu, the ambassador struck the paragraph from the official text of the message.
But he was willing to grant her a compromise in deference to her years of service. She generated another, watered-down, travel alert. If there was something to this flu outbreak, the ambassador didn’t want their sickness on his hands, he’d said. Then he added that he anticipated the President being re-elected and planned on enjoying his ambassadorship for four more years, which implied that he didn’t want to go against the grain.
Jones thought the ambassador to be a spineless coward, but in the end, she wanted to keep her job too and was glad to publish the travel advisory, which read:
TRAVEL ALERT—Potential Implications for Travel Because of Influenza Outbreak
The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens to possible increased screening procedures, travel restrictions, and reduced transportation options as a result of a recent influenza outbreak in the northern Guatemalan departments of Peten, Alta Verapaz, Quiche, and Izabal. Visitors are cautioned to use proper hygiene methods when visiting these areas and see a health care professional if experiencing flu-like symptoms.
After the release, a reporter from Nuestro Diario contacted the embassy for comment, but didn’t receive one. No other news outlets picked up the story, and it certainly wasn’t reported in the United States.
Jones did one other thing on that day. She put in a request to the State Department for additional security and requisitioned ninety days of food rations and supplies for embassy personnel. Jones didn’t care what the ambassador thought, she was going to take care of the people within her charge.
Chapter 48
Day Eighteen
Izmir, Turkey
Yusuf had been a soldier in the Turkish Army for only seven months when refugees from Syria began to pour into Turkey in droves. Like his comrades, he was sick and tired of dealing with them. The refugees were dirty, they carried diseases, and above all, they refused to follow his orders.
After Turkey closed its border with Syria in 2015, ending their much-vaunted open-door policy for Iraqi and Syrian refugees, there were frequent claims that the refugees were being targeted by the Turkish border guards.
On a particular day in January, a group of refugees were killed trying to sneak through the rolls of razor-wire fencing installed by Turkish soldiers. According to the military, the dead were armed terrorists, although none of them showed up on any watch lists.
A few weeks later, in one stretch of border, guards shot dead eight Syrian refugees in one weekend, including three children and four women. At that point, international human rights organizations got involved, including the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—SOHR.
Through the use of confidential informants, Yusuf’s unit was identified as being the most egregious in their treatment of the refugees. As a result, Yusuf and his fellow soldiers were reassigned to other duties, including the Department of Foreigners, Borders and Asylum, a division of the General Directorate.
Yusuf didn’t mind when he was assigned to Izmir, although processing the Syrians and Iraqis still disgusted him. Izmir was a metropolitan city on the Aegean Sea and directly across from Athens. The city was far more progressive than Istanbul and Ankara. Besides, if he had to deal with the refugees, at least let it be when they were getting kicked out of his country.
With President Erdogan’s new orders to close the work camps and show the refugees the exit, his work days had picked up considerably. He barely looked at their travel papers as they crossed his desk, much less make eye contact with them. Conversation was kept to a minimum because he was sick and tired of being coughed or sneezed on. In fact, Yusuf was sure it was one of these vermin that gave him this cold.
But that didn’t stop him from partying. He was snappily dressed and splashed on a little kolonya to mask the sweaty smell from his illness. Yusuf was really feeling it tonight, and he even spruced up his flat in hopes of bringing home an overnight guest.
The taxi delivered him to the BIOS bar, which was packed well beyond its five-hundred-person capacity. Sweat was pouring out of his body as he found one girl after another willing to dance with him. Yusuf downed a couple of tequila shots, liquid courage to engage even the most beautiful women on the dance floor.
The band would be playing soon and Yusuf began to scope out the booths that lined the dance floor in search of a companion or two. That was when his wildest dreams came true.
Laughing and giggling in a booth to themselves sat two of the most heavenly bodies Allah could bestow upon a young man like himself. With a purchased bottle of authentic Mexican tequila, Yusuf introduced himself and offered to keep the ladies’ drinks full all night.
They were blonde, shapely, soft, and lively—and Yusuf would’ve been in Heaven if he could just rid himself of this throbbing headache. Tequila and the hopes of a sexual encounter would cure his ills, he surmised.