by Doug Raber
During her run, Sarah thought about the prior day’s strange events. She had some work to do before she talked to Charles. Several publicly accessible databases might prepare her to ask the right questions when she talked to Charles. Without even noticing, she had switched from being Jillian’s friend who was asking Charles for help to being a reporter who was using Charles as a source.
Thinking about databases, she remembered a lecture she had attended while she was a graduate student. The speaker had been from CDC, and he had seemed old, maybe already retired at the time. He was an epidemiologist, and his lecture was on the importance of maintaining accurate and up-to-date statistics on diseases. She knew she could find his name on the Web. After a quick shower, some cereal, and a cup of coffee, she turned on the desktop computer on the kitchen table that doubled as her home office.
A quick Google search did the trick. Michael B. Gregg* had been a pioneer in providing information on disease outbreaks, and there was the stuff she wanted near the top of the column:
Under his editorship from 1967 to 1988, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report not only was a scientifically reliable compendium of disease outbreaks and death statistics, but it also put the sometimes-dense data into perspective with the addition of a then-innovative editorial note.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report was exactly what Sarah was looking for. MMWR was a treasure trove of official information regarding disease outbreaks, but she didn’t see anything about chickenpox. On the other hand, some of the other entries used Latin names, so she quickly double-checked and confirmed her memory that the name of the virus responsible for chickenpox was varicella. But there were no entries for that term either. Dead end.
Next she began searching the whole CDC site for “chickenpox.” One page said that before vaccines were available, more than 10,000 people were hospitalized and about 150 died from chickenpox every year. Another page said that the death rate had gone down by 80 percent since the early 1990s, again because children were being vaccinated. There was a heading labeled “Diseases Under Surveillance” on that Web page. Sarah was surprised to find that there was no entry for a New Mexico outbreak. I guess they haven’t had time to update it yet.
Before logging off, Sarah signed into her home e-mail account and composed a quick message. “Jake, where the hell are you? I need to ask you a question. –S.” She sent the message and shut down the computer.
After another cup of coffee, Sarah dressed and headed to work. She reached her desk at about 9:30. Thanksgiving was always a slow day. She answered a few e-mails and organized some files for a story she was working on. At 10:05, she called Charles at his office. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hi Charles. It’s Sarah. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Good morning, Sarah. I’ve got some information, but I’m not sure it will be of much help. I asked a couple of colleagues about quarantines. They said that a few people had been quarantined in 2007 after being infected with a particularly bad strain of tuberculosis, but nobody remembered any examples where a whole town was quarantined in the past 50 years. On the other hand, they reminded me that quarantines have been discussed as part of an emergency response since September 11, 2001.”
“It’s possible my friend was just overreacting, but that’s not like her. Maybe the people she thought were military were just from the Public Health Department, and they were only asking people to stay home if they were sick. Maybe my friend just misunderstood. I’ll call her later and ask about it.”
“I also checked into the mortality rates.”
Sarah interrupted. “Yeah, me, too. I should have done that before I called you the first time. It looks like about 40 or so people die from chickenpox every year in the U.S.”
“That agrees with what I’ve seen.”
“So you don’t think it’s likely that there’s some really bad strain of chickenpox in Farmington?”
“Probably not. And besides, almost all children are being vaccinated in the U.S. these days, so even if kids in an isolated area aren’t all vaccinated, there should still be enough resistance in the population that the outbreak will settle down pretty quickly. Adults shouldn’t be much of a problem, because almost all of them had chickenpox or were vaccinated when they were children. So they would have relatively good immunity. Overall, I think you should be able to tell your friend that things will be okay.”
“That’s what I thought, Charles. Get this, though. When I was looking online, I tried to see what I could find out about chickenpox outbreaks. I found some stuff on the CDC website, but it was pretty old and wasn’t very helpful. I went to the—let me check my notebook here—the MMWR, and there was nothing about a New Mexico outbreak. And I also checked ‘Diseases Under Surveillance,’ and there was nothing. Isn’t it strange that they don’t have the data posted by now?”
He laughed. “That’s a good one. We always tease Jake and his crew over at CDC about how slow they are getting useful data up on their site. It isn’t really that funny, though. If we had a serious outbreak of something, speed would be really important. But here’s another site to check out. Have you got a pen?”
“Always.”
“Look at the website called HealthMap—all one word—and it’s probably ‘dot org’ or ‘dot com.’ You could always Google it to get there. This was set up about five years ago by a guy I know at Harvard. They use Web-crawling technology to search the media around the world for all sorts of disease reports. I bet you can find something there about your New Mexico cases. But don’t expect anything too exciting. Like I said, chickenpox isn’t really a big deal.”
“Okay, Charles. Thanks for helping me out. I was starting to think this was going to be some big story, but I’d rather have things turn out well.”
“It should be okay. But there is one other thing before we hang up. I was a little puzzled by what you said yesterday, so I tried calling Jake on his cell. I got that same ‘not available’ message that you told me about. I also sent him an e-mail, and I haven’t heard back.”
“Well, he didn’t answer my e-mail either, but at least with me, he always has preferred phone to e-mail. I guess he must be someplace where he has bad reception, or maybe his battery died.”
“No, that’s not it, Sarah. This is a different kind of message—almost like he’s been disconnected by the phone company. Maybe he forgot to pay his bill. But what’s really got me curious though is the person who answered his office phone. Probably the same person you talked to. She just gave me that same answer, that he ‘was unavailable.’ And she wouldn’t give me any other information about where he was or when he’d be back.”
“Did she say ‘BPR’ when you called? Did Jake move to the Division of Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response?”
“Nothing to worry about there, Sarah. Jake has always worked in that part of CDC. They just haven’t emphasized the terrorism stuff. My guess is that they’re doing some sort of hush-hush training exercise. Jake’s getting a pretty good reputation at CDC, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they tagged him as an instructor. He doesn’t talk to me about things that are classified, but I know he’s up to date on the worst diseases that people are worried about for biological warfare—tularemia, anthrax, even plague.”
“Maybe you’re right, Charles. I’ll try to stop worrying about it. Anyway, you’ve been a big help on the chickenpox stuff. At least now I can tell my friend Jillian not to worry. If Jake ever answers his phone, I hope I’ll be down for a visit sometime soon. Atlanta is nice this time of year, and it would be good to see you again.”
“Sounds good, Sarah. I’ll look forward to it.”
“Okay, Charles. Thanks again. Take care of yourself. Happy Thanksgiving!”
* * *
Day 23: No More Phone Calls
Sarah had several hours before she would hear from Jillian, so she turned again to her regular reporting assignments. She was working on a feature about the Food an
d Drug Administration. Underfunded and understaffed, the agency had a hard time meeting all of its regulatory and oversight responsibilities. Even the President’s promises to safeguard the nation’s food supply hadn’t stopped the various warnings and recalls: E. coli in lettuce, salmonella in peanuts, tainted dog food from China, and drug recalls. Sarah had heard rumors of illegal activities in the drug-approval process.
A potential whistleblower gave Sarah a huge electronic file and told her to look at the numbers. To be on the safe side, she kept the files on her home computer. At the newspaper, she limited her efforts to background research.
Unable to get her mind off Jillian, Sarah decided to check the HealthMap site that Charles had told her about. A few seconds later, she found it.
HealthMap | Global Health, Local Knowledge
www.healthmap.org/
Tracking map of the latest alerts around the world and in the U.S.
She was looking at a world map with several menus on the page. She quickly discovered that she could select a variety of source feeds as well as a variety of different diseases. Once she figured out how to use the map, she activated all the possible feeds, including published information compiled by Google News and official sources such as the World Health Organization. She clicked on “chickenpox,” and the screen refreshed to show several “thumbtacks” on the map. Two were in Mexico and one was in South America. And there was the one she was looking for! A single marker in the southwest United States. Clicking her mouse on the marker, she saw a pop-up menu with a result from Google News Español: “20 Nov. Brote de varicela en Farmington.”
She felt a surge of adrenalin. That sure as hell looks like what I’m after. The active link brought up a new page with the same title and a dateline of “Farmington, NM—20 de novembro.” This was followed by two brief paragraphs of text.
Sarah’s Spanish was limited, but it was clear that this was what she wanted. It was in Farmington, and it was about varicella. A Spanish online dictionary confirmed that “brote” meant “outbreak”, and the second paragraph seemed to be talking about a small number of cases, mostly children. It all fit with the situation that she and Charles had discussed—a mild outbreak that really wasn’t much of a problem.
She copied both the file and the URL into an e-mail message to herself using her Gmail account, a habit she had developed for saving personal or confidential information. The account also used an alias, a diversion that she assumed would give her extra protection when she was working on sensitive issues.
At 1 p.m., Sarah decided to get some lunch. She left the Post building and walked the street. One of the real advantages of having an office right in the heart of downtown was that some really good restaurants were only a block or two away. Nothing seemed to be open, but then she remembered something. Hotels don’t shut down for a holiday. A few minutes later, sitting by the front window of a hotel dining room, she ordered a soup-and-sandwich special and read the newspaper.
Shortly after 3 p.m., she was back at the office, walking toward the conference room. It was early for Jillian’s call, but the phone was already ringing. Sarah picked up the phone. “Washington Post, this is Sa—”
“No names!”
Sarah recognized the voice instantly.
“Look, we may not finish this conversation. We just heard that all the phone lines are being cut. Do you still have that gizmo that your father gave you a few years ago?”
After a moment of confusion, Sarah realized that Jillian was talking about the shortwave set that her dad had given her during her senior year in college. She’d had it in her dorm room, and it became something of a curiosity. Everyone else used cell phones, fax machines, and e-mail, but Sarah still had an occasional conversation with her dad over the radio. He was an old-school techie, and his technologies preceded the digital age. The radio was different enough to be fun, and people from up and down the hall would sometimes stop in and listen for a couple of minutes. “Yeah, I still have it.”
“Good, you ought to fire it up this evening. My friend Elmer will call … nine-thirty.” Then the line went dead.
* * *
Day 23: A Blast from the Past
Sarah was alarmed by Jillian’s call. She still couldn’t reach Jake by phone or by e-mail, and now she’d been told that phone contact to Farmington was about to be cut off. Just for a case of chickenpox that’s no big deal?
She wanted to talk to Jillian immediately, but the instructions had been clear. The radio contact had to wait until evening, when Jillian would contact her. Jillian knew how to use the radio, and it sounded like she had a friend named Elmer.
With more time to kill, she put in another call to Charles. He answered more gruffly than the last time. “Evans.”
“Hi Charles, this is—”
“I can’t talk now. Things are really busy here. Maybe I can call you at home later.” Then the line went dead.
Wow, paranoia must be contagious.
Sarah got home around 4 p.m. and spent some time poking around in the FDA files on her external hard drive. She was working on a story about insider trading by a scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, but she found that she couldn’t concentrate.
She was startled when the phone rang. “Hello?”
“No names!” It was Charles. “It’s been suggested that I stop discussing my research on the phone. It seems to me that this would be a good time for you to just take the weekend off and go visit your erstwhile boyfriend. He’s got a nice condo, and I understand his roommate is agreeable to providing you with the space you need.” And with that, he hung up.
This is crazy! Somebody told Charles not to talk to me. Because I’m a reporter? Or because the topic was chickenpox?
Sarah turned to her computer and went to the HealthMap site. This time, she let the program search for all the diseases that might be related to food and sanitation. One by one, she added “cholera,” the broad category of “foodborne illness,” “E. coli,” “hepatitis,” “diarrhea,” “gastroenteritis,” “dysentery,” “norovirus,” “botulism,” and “salmonella.” Continuously scanning the map, she found a many locations around the globe for these diseases, and a fair number in the United States. But none was anywhere near New Mexico.
She cleared all those diseases from her search and looked at the category of “Not Yet Classified,” thinking that maybe the Four Corners outbreak was still preliminary. Once again, there was nothing in the Southwest. The final category was “Undiagnosed,” but when she tried that category, there still was nothing in the Southwest—or for that matter, anywhere in the entire United States.
Finally, just to see if there had been any changes since earlier in the day, she cleared all the other diseases and selected “chickenpox.” There were three entries for chickenpox worldwide, but none of them was in the American Southwest! What the hell is going on here? How come the entry I found earlier today has disappeared? If anything, there should be more entries now, if the situation is as bad as Jillian says it is.
In a near panic, she looked through the list of diseases on HealthMap. Is it possible that there’s some other, similar disease that is causing serious problems and they’re trying to prevent a panic by keeping it quiet? She found a listing for “Monkeypox,” but the report was from Africa. Another entry for “Sheep/Goat pox” reported cases in China.
Sarah was sure that something important was happening. Maybe just a training exercise, like Charles said. Maybe something for Homeland Security. But if they’re manipulating the news feeds—it could be a big story.
The only concrete step she could take, at least until she’d heard more from Jillian, would be following up on Charles’s cryptic suggestion to visit. The reference to the condo and the “agreeable roommate” meant that Charles, not Jake, wanted to meet with her. Whatever information he had, it was something he wouldn’t share by phone. And there was nothing in any of her e-mail in-boxes. He really didn’t want their communication to be traced.
But he just made a phone call to my number. That certainly seems risky, if he’s so concerned. Sarah reached for her telephone and pushed the button for “new calls.” The caller ID displayed the Atlanta area code, 404. She was about to look up Charles’s number to compare it to this one, when she stopped short. Jake’s number. Charles was worried that someone might be monitoring his telephone. But the one person they wouldn’t be worried about was Jake Overman, who was traveling somewhere on government business—maybe for the same people who might want to find out what Charles was up to. What they didn’t realize was that Charles could just walk across to the other side of the condo and use Jake’s personal line. In fact, chances were they didn’t even know that Jake and Charles shared the same address.
In a strange way, this was starting to make sense. Charles had something to tell her, but it had to be untraceable. Face-to-face, apparently, and he wanted her to come to Atlanta. Now.
Turning back to her computer, she stopped, dumbstruck. Oh shit! Jillian was talking in code too. Jillian’s friend “Elmer” wasn’t the name of an actual person. It was a well-known term for someone in the amateur radio community, a ham radio operator who mentored a newcomer. Jillian was going to contact her with the help of a seasoned operator.
When Jillian said “nine-thirty,” Sarah had taken the numbers to mean a time that evening. But now Sarah realized that Jillian was only being careful. It wasn’t a time at all—it was the frequency that she’d use—9,030 kilohertz—“nine-thirty.” When Sarah’s dad had called via shortwave back in her college days, he’d use the same frequency every time. For her dad, it was the high end of the 15-meter band, at 19,020 kHz. We always called it “nineteen-twenty,” and Jillian knew that.
Sarah’s set was an Emerson, a really good one, or at least it had been at one time. It wasn’t actually the same one that she’d had in college, but there was neither time nor cause to tell Jillian. Her dad had since bought a newer digital system, and he gave Sarah his old set. When he first got it back in 1985, it was the best and most powerful ham radio on the market. Even now, it was still something special. As she turned her dial to 9,030 kHz, she heard a lot of interference and some static. And then, a voice. “This is AFG411 calling N4MEX. Do you read me? Repeat, do you read me?”