THE VIRON CONSPIRACY (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS #4)

by Lawrence de Maria

  “The Pandemic Intelligence Service has reported an outbreak in Thakkar, on the Bangladesh border.”

  “Two questions, Lars. What is the Pandemic Intelligence Service, and an outbreak of what?”

  “The P.I.S. is a new organization the Indians set up with the help of the C.D.C. in Atlanta to collate information the country’s thousand or so annual epidemics.”

  “About time,” Thorkelson muttered.

  “And they don’t have a clue about what the outbreak is.” Bohlander consulted some notes. “One of the epidemiologists on the scene, a Dr. Venkataraman, apparently a top man, says that, based on some of the symptoms, he initially suspected bovine spongiform encephalopathy.”

  “Good God, man,” Thorkelson said, “isn’t India about the last place one would suspect Mad Cow Disease? They don’t eat them.”

  “I agree,” Bohlander said, “and so does Venkataraman. He thinks it’s a new disease. Except he can’t identify the vector and no one has been able to isolate the organism. If it is an organism. He postulates that it might be a prion similar to the one that causes Mad Cow. Something we haven’t come across yet. The Americans are stumped, too.”

  “How deadly is it?”

  “Well, it’s no Ebola. It kills only about 30 percent of its victims, but many of the survivors are neurologically impaired, perhaps for life.”

  Thorkelson immediately saw the danger. A disease that didn’t kill enough victims to burn itself out but maimed many others would be disastrous economically. More so than the deadlier diseases that reaped all the media attention and scary headlines.

  “How far did it spread?”

  “It doesn’t seem to have moved out of the original village. That’s the problem.”

  “I don’t understand. I would think that’s good news.”

  “It might be, except for this.”

  Bohlander picked up a small remote. In a moment a large screen slid down from the ceiling. Everyone’s eyes turned to it. A map of the world was projected on the screen. There were circles, the majority of them red, around various locales in many countries.

  “That red circle in northern India is where Thakkar is,” Bohlander said. “Notice all the other circles, 20 of them, on every continent except Antartica. All had localized outbreaks of a disease similar to the one in India. We can find no connection between them. I mean, some countries are served by the same airline, but what does that prove? Choose any 20 places on earth and you will find an airline connection.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Approximately a year.”

  “And we’re just catching on now!”

  “It’s a miracle we noticed it at all,” Bohlander said defensively. “Isolated incidents, spread far apart. Some barely reported, often as an afterthought. The Americans and the World Health Organization missed it too. We had to tell them.”

  Thorkelson was somewhat mollified. At least the ECDC was first.

  “Can someone be traveling to these places and infecting people?”

  “You mean a modern Typhoid Mary? I’ll let Timon answer that.”

  All eyes turned to Dr. Timon Petrides, a Greek specialist in infectious diseases.

  “As you all know,” Petrides said in what was the best English spoken around the table except for the representative from England, “Mary Mallon, the cook known as Typhoid Mary, was typhoid’s most famous asymptomatic carrier. From 1900 to 1907 she shed huge amounts of the Salmonella typhi bacteria throughout New York City through food she served, particularly her famous peach ice cream. After she was confined by the authorities it was determined that the bacteria probably had colonized her gall bladder and eventually found its way to her stools and urine. She apparently never washed her hands. She never became ill, but she spread the bacteria everywhere she went. She refused to have her gall bladder removed and eventually was imprisoned until she died 23 years later, of something else.”

  “Your point, Tim,” Thorkelson prompted. When the Greek got going, there was no stopping him.

  “My point is that she was one in a million but was easily spotted by the authorities in an era that was still a medical Dark Ages. To think that there is someone flitting around the world today unnoticed in an era of security checks and computer traces is inconceivable. It would have to be a superman, or woman.” Petrides nodded at the Frenchwoman, Dr. Martine Babineau, who smiled. “Some of the outbreaks were virtually simultaneous, on opposite ends of the globe. And there is something else. See the blue circles? Not all the outbreaks affect humans. The blue circles designate some outbreaks that are limited to a specific animal.”

  “Why are we concerned with animals? Don’t we have enough to worry about with humans?’

  “Because,” Bohlander said, “from what we have been able to determine, the symptoms in the animals are eerily similar to those in the human victims. Their organs have the same lesions, whether they are camels, dolphins or cattle.”

  Thorkeslon stared at him. Camels?

  “Knut. You will notice that one of the blue circles is in my country.”

  Thorkelson turned to Clyde Fortunot, the English member of his team.

  “There has been a small outbreak in Gloucestershire of what was initially thought to be Mad Cow Disease,” Fortunot said. “But it has characteristics distinct from the typical spongiform. We think it’s a different disease, although probably prion-based. And no one knows how the herds were infected. All the so-called usual suspects have been eliminated. Some quite literally. My Government ordered the killing of thousands of badgers, who were the prime suspects. But none showed any sign of the disease. There has been quite a row over it, as you might imagine. Investigations in Parliament. Resignations. My countrymen are quite fond of badgers.”

  “What about the cows? How far has the infection spread?”

  “Thankfully, it’s been contained. The diseased animals were killed and burned, but they don’t seem to have infected any other cattle, even within their own herds, although the other animals were, of course, also killed, as a precaution.”

  “So, you see,” Dr. Babineau chimed in, “we have all these outbreaks, limited in scope, all over the world, with no obvious vectors.”

  “A coincidence?” Thorkelson asked.

  The Frenchwoman shook her head.

  “Maybe one or two, even three such events so close together might be a coincidence. But 20? Statistically impossible,”

  “The Americans agree,” Bohlander said. “But, like us, they don’t know what the hell is going on.”

  CHAPTER 19 - DOGGED PURSUIT

  A United States Postal Service truck pulled into the cul-de-sac and the woman driver began stopping at every house. All the homes in the upscale neighborhood had ornate mailboxes on posts at the end of their driveways. Some looked like little fire houses or windmills. One looked like a doghouse. The strangest one looked like a bird feeder, and Scarne wondered if some local sparrows didn’t get confused.

  The mailbox in front of Michael Burke’s house looked like a mailbox. It was the only box the postal truck bypassed. Scarne didn’t think that was a statement on its drabness. He’d been watching the house on and off for hours. The lack of a mail delivery was just another indication that either the home was vacant, or the Burke family was away.

  Scarne had already moved his car several times so as not to attract notice. Lexington, one of the better suburbs surrounding Columbus, SC, looked like the type of neighborhood where strangers would stand out. Now, he was parked just down the street from Burke’s house, a two-story, all-brick Colonial at the very end of the cul-de-sac.

  Women began leaving their homes in minivans. Scarne made sure to move his rental car again. Within the hour the minivans started returning to their nests, full of schoolchildren. Several of the vans had window stickers from nearby Fort Jackson, the sprawling military base where most Army troops get their initial basic training. Scarne wondered if that was where Michael Burke began his military career.
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br />   In all the time he watched, no one went in or out of Burke’s house. By 6 P.M., Scarne was hungry and bone tired. The almost 20-hour trip from Honolulu to Columbia had involved stops in Phoenix and Charlotte, and two weather delays. If anyone had been following me the past few days, he thought, they’ll probably die of exhaustion, if the airline food didn’t get them. He left the block and drove to a nearby Denny’s, where he used the bathroom and ordered coffee and a burger to take out. He thought the burger was delicious, but he knew his frame of reference had been degraded by the rotten meals he’d been eating.

  When he got back to the block, nothing had apparently changed. The Burke house still looked unoccupied. Scarne decided to break in while there was still enough daylight so he might not have to turn on a light or use a flashlight in the house.

  The house had an expansive rear yard that ran back to a wooded area leading down to a small stream. It was a simple enough matter for Scarne to drive out of the neighborhood and find a spot on a road near the woods where he could walk down to the stream. From there he followed the stream bank and cut through the woods to the Burke house, past a large work shed on the property. He was confident he was not visible from the other houses on the cul-de-sac as long as he stayed in the rear of the house.

  The house was alarmed, as Scarne expected the home of a professional assassin would be. He spotted the wires in the windows and doors almost immediately. The security system was probably run through an AC transformer that converted power to a 16-volt panel. He found the transformer behind the rear deck. If he unplugged it, the next step would be to find the alarm panel box, which is usually just inside the front door. He’d have to pull the wires that went to the backup battery. The unit would be disabled. But that might only give him 10 minutes, or less, before the police showed up after being notified by whatever private alarm company was monitoring the power.

  Scarne was about to take his chances when he saw the pet door in the back door of the home. The opening was much too small for a man to squeeze through, but the door was made of wood and it gave him an idea. He went to the work shed and emerged a few minutes later with a small jigsaw and an extension cord, which he plugged into an outdoor outlet. He started cutting around the dog door. He wasn’t worried about running into a Doberman inside the house. No canine worth its salt would remain silent while someone was carving out its dog door. Within ten minutes, Scarne had enlarged the perimeter around the dog door to man-size, careful not to cut to the bottom of the door where alarm wires might be rooted. When finished, he pulled the dog door out easily. Setting it aside, he crawled into the house, landing rather unceremoniously on the kitchen floor. He was pretty sure Fido’s entrance would have been more graceful.

  Scarne did a quick reconnoiter of the house. Dining room, living room, two-story great room downstairs. He went up a wrought-iron stairwell and went through all four bedrooms. There was nothing that told him where Burke was. Back in the kitchen he spotted a small pile of catalogs on the kitchen counter: Talbot’s, Land’s End, Chico’s, Brooks Brothers. All were addressed to “Lucy Burke.” There was a calendar on the refrigerator, surrounded by pictures and various notes and business cards held up by magnets. Most of the photos were of two toddlers, twins by the look of them. No wonder Burke knew how to take care of a baby, Scarne mused. There was also a picture of Burke, arms around an attractive brunette, outdoors at what appeared to be a barbecue. Unless he had a very understanding wife, that was Lucy. Looking at the family photos, Scarne got a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  The current week on the calendar had been marked off, Saturday to Saturday, and a feminine hand, presumably Lucy’s, had written “Savannah” in the Saturday and Sunday date boxes, “Charleston” in the next two days and “Isle of Palms” in the rest. Scarne smiled. That explained it; the Burke family was on nice little seaside vacation. They’d remembered to stop the mail.

  It was now Wednesday. That meant the Isle of Palms. But where? Using his iPhone, Scarne looked up the area code for Isle of Palms, which was 843. He then went back to the home phone and checked its past-call list. Sure enough, there were several calls with the same 843 extension. He dialed it and got a recorded woman’s voice: “Hello, you have reached Fogelson Realty, specialists in Isle of Palms sales and rentals. We are currently closed …” Scarne listened while the woman gave the office hours. Then he hung up.

  Scarne wiped down everything he touched in the house and then crawled back out through the dog door, praying that there wasn’t a cop waiting for him. Legal considerations aside, he’d never live it down. He replaced the dog door as best he could, though he knew the damage wouldn’t pass a close inspection. He wiped down and replaced the jigsaw and cord to the shed. Then he walked down to the stream. It was getting dark but he managed to find his way back to his car. He decided that he’d earned a good dinner. He went back to the motel he was staying at near the airport and showered. The desk clerk recommended a restaurant called The Motor Supply Company. Expecting a truck stop, Scarne’s wound up eating one of the best T-bone steaks he’d ever had in a trendy hot spot he almost didn’t get into because he lacked a reservation. The steak and a good bottle of Pinot Noir almost made him forget that two hours earlier he had imitated a German Shepherd.

  CHAPTER 20 - ISLE OF PALMS

  After drinking lukewarm coffee and eating cardboard masquerading as a bagel at a motel buffet, Scarne was on the road by 7 A.M. the next morning for the two-hour drive to Isle of Palms.

  The small barrier island is located just north of Charleston on the South Carolina coast. Just prior to crossing the Intercoastal Waterway that separated it and adjacent Sullivan’s Island from the mainland, Scarne stopped at a Walmart and bought a prepaid cell phone.

  The large homes and seaside businesses on Isle of Palms reminded Scarne of Long Beach Island in New Jersey — or at least the Long Beach Island he knew before Hurricane Sandy rearranged the topography. Fogelson Realty was located on Ocean Boulevard between a clothing boutique and a pizza parlor. Scarne had no intention of showing his face there if he could help it. He drove by the office and a block later pulled into a parking space outside a busy beach-front restaurant called the Windjammer.

  The restaurant had a rooftop deck for dining that could be accessed by an exterior wooden staircase. Scarne went up and sat at a bench table near the rail. It was almost 2 P.M. and he was hungry. A waitress came over to his table and he ordered fish and chips and an iced tea. He could hear shouting and cheers from the beach below. Looking over the rail he could see a spirited women’s volleyball match in the sand below. A ketchup-stained brochure in the salt-and-pepper caddy on his table explained that the Windjammer was “famous” for its summertime volleyball tournaments, which attracted both amateur and professional teams from all over the East Coast.

  Even though it was well after Labor Day, the current match had lured a decent crowd, mostly male, probably because it was still warm enough for the players to wear bikinis. The women weren’t there just for show, however. They were athletic and quick. Some of their violent spikes elicited appreciative roars from the onlookers.

  After lunch, Scarne called Fogelson Realty, using the prepaid phone. He told the woman who answered that he was interested in a vacation home, and was almost immediately asked to hold for “Mr. Fogelson.” This time of year, business was probably slow for local realty agents and any call was a bonus. The waitress came by and refilled his iced tea.

  “Dave Fogelson. How can I help you?”

  “Name’s Harper. Louis Harper. I’m over in Charleston on business but an old Army buddy of mine says I should take a look-see at this place. He says he loves it here.”

  “When are you planning to rent?”

  “Who said anything about renting? I’m retiring in three months. I’m looking to buy a vacation home. You do sales, don’t you?”

  “Of course. That’s the bulk of our business. We represent the finest properties on the island.”

  Scarn
e thought he could hear the man salivating.

  “My pal told me he likes doin’ business with you, Dave. Said I should mention his name. Burke. Michael Burke.”

  “The Burkes? Why, they’re here now.”

  “Get outa town! How about that! Haven’t seen the son of a bitch in a couple of years, since me and the missus moved from Atlanta. My Adelaide was thick as thieves with Lucy. Now all Mike and I do is Twitter and email.” Scarne listened for a moment. “Yes. Yes. Lucy sure is somethin’, ain’t she? Never know she had twins.” Scarne hoped he wasn’t laying it on too thick. He hoped the photo on the refrigerator in the Burke’s Columbia home was fairly recent and did Lucy Burke justice. For all he knew, she might look like the fridge now.

  “Yes,” the agent said, “she sure has kept her figure.”

  “Listen, Mr. Fogelson, I can’t pass this up. I just have to go over and surprise them. Is there a decent liquor store around? I want to buy some wine. Give me their address and me and Mike will stop by tomorrow to see you. I’ll feel better with him helping me out. If I’m going to get a place I want to pick his brains. I wasn’t planning to stay over, but no way I’m driving back to Charleston with a snootfull. They’ll give me a couch, or somethin’. In the meantime, could you put together some ideas for me. Nothin’ too outrageous. I wouldn’t want to go over a mil. That doable?” Scarne listened some more. “No kidding? Place must be hot. But how does all cash sound to you?” There was a pause. “Yeah. Thought it might. How about me and Mike come by your office around this time? O.K. See you then, Dave.”

  ***

  The Burke rental, a two-story stand-alone building, was a block in from the beach on Joe Long Boulevard across from a fire station and next to a small combination country store and cafe where several people sat at tables on a porch. Scarne pulled into a lot next to a bait-and-tackle store where he had a clear view of the house. The roof of the house had a railing and he could just barely see the tip of a large awning. The garage door was open. There were fishing rods stacked up against the wall in the two-car garage, which was otherwise empty. There was no activity; the place looked empty. He debated going inside and surprising Burke when he got back, but decided against it. He probably would be returning with his family and Scarne had no desire to confront him then. He would sit and await developments.