The Judas Virus

by Don Donaldson

  “That’d be the usual procedure, but there’s never been a full report of the study published. I guess you didn’t find anything.”

  “No.”

  “If they had samples, why wasn’t it published?”

  “Who wrote the report?”

  “Guy named Bill Lansden. He still works at the CDC, or at least he did until recently. When I called over there to talk to him, I found out he’s had a stroke.”

  “How bad?”

  “Don’t know. But he’s still in the hospital.”

  “Suppose he did bring viral samples back to the CDC. How did the organism get into my father and everybody else? We need to talk to Lansden.”

  “I had the same thought. Are you available now to meet me at Emory Hospital? That’s where he is.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “If I don’t get involved in some traffic snafu, it’ll take me about thirty minutes to get there. I’ll meet you at the hospital’s front entrance.”

  With plenty of time to spare, Chris then called Monteagle.

  “Dr. Ash, please.”

  While waiting for the call to be transferred, she had to listen to a recorded message touting Monteagle as one of the world’s leading medical institutions. The recording did not mention the two patients who had died from what now appeared to be a rogue Kazak virus.

  “Ash.”

  “Eric, this is Chris. Can you test my father’s pre-transplant blood samples for antibodies to hantavirus?”

  “I’m not sure I have the reagents on hand, but I can get them. Why?”

  She related what she’d learned from Fairborn. “Lansden is still hospitalized, but we’re going to meet there in a few minutes in hopes he’s well enough to answer some questions.”

  “Ask him one for me. If we really are dealing with two viruses, why does this Kazak organism flow along the same infectivity pathway as the transplant virus?”

  “I doubt he’ll be able to answer that one.”

  “Ask Fairborn then.”

  “Sounds like you don’t believe his theory.”

  “Just because the virus in Kazakhstan produced the same symptoms as those we’ve seen in the people who died here, it doesn’t have to mean that the Kazak virus is here. Whatever mutation made our virus lethal could have also occurred independently in the one from Kazakhstan.”

  “I seem to remember you telling Scott in our big meeting when the infections first occurred that such a thing was unlikely.”

  “Unlikely, but possible.”

  “Sorry, but I think Fairborn is on to something.”

  “Maybe . . . maybe not. Get us a sample of the Kazak virus or antibodies against it, and we’ll have something to work with to figure this out.”

  “We’ll ask Lansden what he has.”

  “Where’d you say he was hospitalized?”

  “Emory.”

  “And you’re going over there right now?”

  “I’m supposed to be at the front entrance in thirty minutes.”

  “Let me know what you learn. Meanwhile, I’ll get right to work on those hanta tests.”

  Chapter 24

  WHILE CHRIS AND Sam Fairborn waited at the stroke unit’s nursing station for Dr. McKee, Bill Lansden’s neurologist, Fairborn picked at a white thread on his tweed jacket.

  “What’s that on your ear?” Chris asked.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “That brown smudge.”

  “I painted my potting bench today before I picked up those reports from the CDC. Guess I scratched my ear while I had paint on my fingers. How’s it look?”

  “Very distinguished.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a fair-skinned woman wearing a white lab coat. She came directly toward them and stood in front of Fairborn. “Dr. Fairborn?”

  “Yes.”

  She offered her hand. “I’m Evelyn McKee.”

  Fairborn shook her hand and introduced Chris. Then they got down to business.

  “As I told you on the phone,” McKee said, “this isn’t going to be easy. Dr. Lansden’s stroke has damaged his speech centers so that he can’t express a coherent thought. His sentences are rhythmic and complex, but the important words are usually inappropriate.”

  With her neurology rotation in medical school long behind her, Chris couldn’t remember the details of the kinds of strokes that affect language, so she simply asked the question that occurred to her. “Can he write coherently?”

  “His right arm is paralyzed, but even if he was left-handed, he doesn’t know what to do with a pen. Typically, a patient with these deficits can’t understand what’s said to them. But he seems to have some comprehension.”

  “Can you boil all this down into a set of guidelines for talking to him?” Fairborn asked.

  “Do you mind if I tape this session? I’d like a record of how he responds to new people. There’s a TV camera in his room and a tape machine in the room behind me.”

  Fairborn looked at Chris, who shrugged.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Then let’s start by seeing how he responds to questions that require more complicated answers than yes or no. If he has trouble with a question, rephrase it. If he still has trouble, shift to yes or no questions. Now, here’s an additional complication. Sometimes he says no when he means yes. So we’ve been having him answer yes by blinking his eyes once, twice for no. This works because the centers that control his blinking movements aren’t damaged and therefore won’t betray his intent. We tried asking him to just nod or shake his head, but his meds are keeping him on the edge of vertigo so that head movements make him nauseous. He hasn’t been an easy patient to manage.”

  IN THE SUPPLY closet of the stroke unit taping room, TR could hear everything that was being said. He was well aware of the terrible risk he was taking by being here, but what choice did he have? When he’d learned what Chris and that old peacock from the CDC were up to, he absolutely had to know what they were going to get from Lansden. Before ducking into the closet, he’d turned on the intercom that allowed conversations in Lansden’s room to be heard in the taping room.

  “LET ME TURN on the recorder, and we’ll begin,” McKee said.

  She went into the taping room, put a fresh VHS-C tape in the machine, and pressed the record button.

  In the supply closet, TR tried not to breathe so loud.

  When McKee came back into the hall, Chris said, “What’s his prognosis?”

  “Hard to say. Ordinarily, with time, there’s some recovery of function. I’m hoping to see evidence of that today. The clots that did the damage came from a heart condition that causes episodic atrial fibrillation. We’re trying now to find the right drug and the right dose to control that without side effects, but as I indicated earlier, so far we haven’t had great success. He seems to have a low tolerance for the best drugs.”

  When they entered, Lansden was sitting up in bed watching cartoons on TV with the sound off.

  “Bill, you have some visitors,” McKee said. “This is Dr. Collins.” She gestured to Chris. “And Dr. Fairborn.”

  Sam had told Chris that he knew Lansden from his years at the CDC, but Lansden showed no sign that he remembered.

  “They’d like to ask you some questions,” McKee said. She stepped back so Chris and Fairborn could move in closer.

  IN THE CLOSET next door, TR could hear every word.

  “DR. LANSDEN, I’VE read your very interesting report on the disease you investigated in Kazakhstan years ago,” Fairborn said. “And I . . . we’ve been wondering why a full account of that outbreak was never published?”

  Lansden sat silently for a few seconds during which Chris believed his damaged brain was probably trying to make some sense out o
f the question. Then he spoke. “I couldn’t gender anything because all the frame and tissue horses were misbegotten.” His face twisted into a mask of irritation.

  Fairborn looked at McKee for a translation, but the neurologist just said, “Try again.”

  “I don’t understand,” Fairborn said to Lansden.

  “I couldn’t gender anything because all the frame and tissue horses were misbegotten.” It was obvious from his tortured expression that Lansden knew he wasn’t making any sense.

  Seeing that Lansden was just going to keep making the same mistakes, Fairborn decided to try a different question.

  “What happened to all the blood and tissue samples you brought back with you?”

  “I didn’t smoke any here.”

  “I’m sorry . . .”

  “I didn’t smoke any here.”

  Fairborn looked at McKee. “I think we’re going to have to use just yes and no questions,” McKee said. “Bill, answer these next questions by blinking in the usual way.”

  IN THE CLOSET, TR realized he was now going to have to reconstruct Lansden’s answers from Fairborn’s responses.

  “ARE THE SAMPLES you brought back from Kazakhstan stored at the CDC?” Fairborn asked.

  Knowing they had to be there, Fairborn was so surprised when Lansden blinked NO that he forgot the questioning format. “Then where are they? I’m sorry . . . Are you saying they were lost?”

  YES.

  “After they arrived in this country?”

  NO.

  “They were lost en route?”

  YES.

  “Before they left Kazakhstan?”

  YES.

  “Dr. Lansden,” Chris said, “were you alone in Kazakhstan?”

  TR LISTENED HARDER now, as though he could hear Lansden blink.

  NO.

  “Someone was with you in an official capacity?”

  YES.

  “Someone from the CDC?”

  YES.

  “A man?”

  YES.

  “Can you tell us his name?”

  TR’S HANDS HAD turned so cold they felt as if they belonged on a corpse.

  “EMBER,” LANSDEN SAID.

  “His name was Ember?” Chris asked.

  NO.

  “Try again.”

  “Ember.”

  Lansden’s eyelids began blinking erratically.

  “What’s wrong, Doctor?” Chris asked McKee. “Why is he suddenly blinking so much?”

  “He does that from time to time, and I haven’t yet figured out why.”

  “Course mode,” Lansden said.

  “I don’t understand,” Chris said.

  Lansden slapped his sheet with his left hand. “Course mode.”

  No one in the room could figure out what was going on, but in the closet, TR thought he did, and it made his scrotum shrivel.

  If the Kazak viral samples really were lost before arriving in the US, Chris was unable to see how they could be at the heart of the deaths in Atlanta. But considering Lansden’s condition, it seemed possible that he might have misunderstood Fairborn’s questions. It therefore appeared that if they were to ever get the straight story on where those samples were, they’d have to talk to the other person who was with Lansden in Kazakhstan. So they had to get his name.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Chris said. “Let’s just go through the alphabet and get the name one letter at a time with the yes and no technique.”

  “That should work,” Fairborn said.

  THERE WAS NO doubt now in TR’s mind that in about two minutes, his life would be over. Back when he’d first heard about Lansden’s stroke, he’d gone to the university hospital to check on him, hoping to learn that he might die. But he had found him irritatingly healthy. Sure, he couldn’t communicate, but brains can recover.

  Still concerned that Lansden might one day link him to the murders of the two Frenchmen, TR had considered killing Lansden. But with each room in the stroke unit flanked by these recording and viewing rooms with their one-way mirrors, you could never be sure you weren’t being watched. So he hadn’t felt comfortable enough to do anything. Nor was there any real need to take the risk.

  But now . . . Damn it. He should have fixed this problem when he’d had the chance.

  FAIRBORN TURNED TO Lansden to resume questioning him, but Lansden suddenly looked very pale, and his breathing was labored. He threw the covers off with his good arm and started to get up on the other side of the bed. Then he vomited.

  “It’s his meds,” McKee said as she went around to the other side of the bed. Watching where she stepped, she went to Lansden and helped him to his feet. As she guided him to the bathroom, she glanced over her shoulder. “Would one of you please press that call button for some help?”

  Fairborn pressed the button, then looked at Chris. “I think we should leave him alone for now.”

  IN THE CLOSET, TR was elated. He’d been yanked from the lip of the abyss. But he now had a lot to do. First, he had to get his hands on the tape that had recorded the session with Lansden. He’d heard Fairborn say they were leaving, so he’d wait about two minutes to allow them to get off the floor, then he’d grab the tape and try to get out of there without being seen.

  But before he could even start his mental countdown, he saw, through the louvers of the closet door, Fairborn come into the recording room, turn off the tape machine, and remove the tape. To TR’s horror, Fairborn put the tape in the plastic box it came in and slipped it into his pocket.

  “ARE WE LEAVING?” Chris asked, hurrying to keep up with Fairborn as he moved quickly toward the elevators.

  “I want to see that part again just before he became ill.”

  “But you stole the tape.”

  “No, I borrowed it.”

  “Why didn’t you ask for a copy?”

  “Didn’t want to wait around.”

  “Is this how you behaved when you worked at the CDC?”

  “Pretty much. They called me unconventional and some other things you’re probably thinking of right now. They never understood that the investigation always takes first priority.”

  “We shouldn’t need more than a few minutes tomorrow to get that name from Lansden using the alphabet approach. Why bother with the tape?”

  “You never know what might happen between now and then. In some countries I’ve worked in, the government could change twice between dinner and breakfast. So I always observe the Fairborn uncertainty principle. If a situation can harm you by deteriorating, it will, usually so quickly nothing can be salvaged.”

  “What a pessimist.”

  “It’s the safest way to view the world.”

  Outside the hospital, Chris said, “I’m going to let you study that tape alone.”

  “I’ll call you if I find anything.”

  Chapter 25

  WHEN CHRIS GOT home from Emory Hospital, she thought about Wayne and how he believed he was responsible for the five deaths that had occurred. She looked at the phone.

  Should she call and tell him about the Kazak virus? Then she remembered his TV interview. “Mistakes were made . . .”

  She shuddered at the inept way he’d handled himself. Suppose he did that again and told a reporter about the second virus? It was too soon for it to become public.

  Better that she leave him uninformed.

  THE FAIRBORNS HAD been invited to dinner at the home of Myra and Bob Quinn. Ann had met Myra when they’d both served on a committee to raise money for the local volunteer fire department. Sam thought Myra was okay, but Bob, a retired soybean farmer, was a bore. Obviously intimidated by Sam’s education and accomplishments, Bob would always monopolize the conversation talking about his coin collection, describing in ex
cruciating detail how each one was acquired. The first time Sam heard those stories they were interesting. Now he faced an evening at the Quinns with all the enthusiasm of someone about to step into a p4 lab without a space suit. But he went nevertheless, for Ann’s sake.

  They arrived home from the Quinns a little after ten.

  “Well, I thought that was nice,” Ann said, taking off the light jacket she’d worn.

  Sam muttered something that he hoped sounded like he agreed, then said, “I’ve got some work to do.”

  Ever solicitous when it came to Sam, Ann said, “I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”

  When he had slipped into the recording room after their session with Lansden at the hospital, Sam had been happy to see that he recognized all the equipment. He didn’t keep up much with all the new electronic gadgetry, but was pretty sure there were more modern ways to record things. So McKee was probably someone who believed that as long as a system is still able to do what you want, why mess with it. That attitude was going to make things much easier for Sam than it might otherwise have been.

  Sam headed for his study and turned on the TV. Somewhere in the house there was an adapter that would allow VHS-C tapes to be played on a VCR. But even if he could find it, his VCR couldn’t play a tape without making the image flutter. No matter. When legends find one path blocked, they use another. He went to the shelf under the bookcases and got the old camcorder he’d bought years ago to film the grandkids when they came to visit. Carrying the camera back to the TV, he connected the two by the camera’s video and audio output cables. Then he reached into the pocket of his sport coat for the tape he’d taken from the hospital.

  NO WONDER I couldn’t find it, TR thought, watching Fairborn through a window on the right side of the cottage. It wasn’t in the house. He could strike now and take the tape, but then he’d have to kill both of them. Better to wait and get it while they slept. But that would only work if Fairborn didn’t figure it out first.