Calypso Directive

by Brian Andrews

  “I know, but if you were this patient, wouldn’t you hope that a brilliant guy at Wien Bioscience named Bart Bennett was willing to do the right thing to save your life?” she asked.

  “Okay fine. But I want you to know, your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me.”

  “Is that so?” she said, smiling as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of his chair. “You will take me to Jabba now.”

  • • •

  “WHAT DID YOU find?” Julie asked.

  Bart and his Austrian lab technician Jon Henning were standing together talking when Julie approached them.

  Barely able to contain his excitement, Jon spoke first. “I don’t know where you found this sample, but it’s either from a laboratory primate or a special forces soldier who’s been inoculated against biological warfare.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “This blood is packed with antibodies. Exotic bugs, too. I ran a broad serological workup and found smallpox, anthrax, even Yersinia pestis antibodies. Check out this list I compiled,” Jon said. “But that’s not even the most exciting thing we found.”

  She took the printed page from Jon, and scanned the list. It took all her willpower not to gasp at the report. She looked at Bart who seemed uncharacteristically melancholy, especially when contrasted to Jon’s bravado. Bart would not look at her and instead was staring off at some imaginary point in space. “What’s the exciting part?” she said.

  “I have several scanning electron microscope images to show you. I false colored the image so you can tell the different cells apart. The flattened donut-shaped cells are of course red bloods, and these little cream-colored blobs are platelets. This green cell is a monocyte. All normal,” he said and advanced the screen to a new image. “In this image, over here you can see two more lymphocytes, again normal. But this cell, colored blue, I don’t know what it is. It appears to be a lymphocyte, but it is too big. Lymphocytes are seven to eight micrometers, this cell appears to be twelve or thirteen.”

  Julie bent over and rested her palms on the desk, bringing her face closer to the monitor for a better look. “Is it neutrophil?”

  “No. It’s not a neutrophil, basophil, or eosinophil. Granulocytes have multi-lobed nuclei; this cell is mononuclear.”

  “Maybe it’s a monocyte then?”

  Jon advanced to another image with higher magnification. “I don’t believe so. Because if you look closely at the microvilli on the surface of the cell they resemble those of a lymphocyte. Monocyte microvilli are longer, more densely packed, and . . .” He gestured with his hand in the air in a motion like a car traveling over a hilly stretch of road. “What’s the word in English?”

  “Wavy?”

  “Yes, wavy,” he said.

  “Are you sure about the size?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Jon said. “Since your are the cancer expert here, I was hoping you could tell me if you think it could be a cancerous lymphocyte?”

  “It’s hard to identify cancer cells when viewed in isolation, but the shape of this cell is uniform. From outward appearance, I’d say it looks like a healthy cell.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Jon said, with schoolboy excitement. “So I decided to run more tests, and I found something else.”

  Julie nodded.

  “There are five major categories of antibodies: IgA, IgG, IgM, IgE, and IgD. The IgG anti-bodies are the most common type, found in all bodily fluids and tissues, and comprise about seventy-five percent of the antibodies in circulation at a given time. IgA antibodies make up about ten percent and are found predominantly in the entry and exit orifices of the body—nose, ears, eyes, etcetera. IgM antibodies are . . .”

  “I’m up to speed on my antibodies, Jon. You can skip to the something else part,” she interrupted.

  “Ya, okay. I ran a quantitative immunoglobulin screening, and I found an immunoglobulin that doesn’t fit into any of the existing classes or subclasses. I don’t know what it is or what it does.” He minimized the SEM images and pulled up a data table.

  Julie looked at the screening results. “If you had to guess, what do think it is?”

  “Maybe it’s new subclass of IgG, but I have no way to test this right now. So, I was thinking about running an IgY test just for the hell of it?” Jon replied.

  “IgY? Isn’t that an avian antibody?”

  “Yes, bird and reptile. I don’t think this is IgY, but I have the EIA to test for it. It could be a starting point. After that, I was thinking about performing a TCR diversity assessment on the lymphocytes in the blood sample.”

  “What’s a TCR diversity assessment?’

  “TCR stands for T cell Receptor. Analyzing the receptors on a lymphocyte is one way to identify what kind of lymphocyte it is. T cells and B cells are so morphologically similar that scanning electron microscope images don’t provide a reliable means of distinguishing them. So, I need to analyze them chemically. Maybe the mystery lymphocyte in the SEM image is responsible for generating this new antibody . . . we could be looking at a breakthrough discovery.”

  “Bart, what do you make of all this?” Julie asked.

  “It’s definitely an anomaly, but at this point it’s nothing to get too excited about. Where did you say you got this sample from?”

  “From a clinical subject in the STAT protein study I’m working on. Why?”

  “Oh, just curious.”

  This was not the response she had expected from Bart. He was usually excitable and talkative, especially when it came to questions in his specialty. The more she thought about it, the more Bart’s behavior made her nervous. First, she would have expected him to be downright euphoric over the discovery of this strange new lymphocyte. Second, she had expected him to panic about her violating BSL safety protocols given the antibodies found in the sample. The one response she had not expected from him was indifference.

  “Jon, can you print copies of the SEM images and the other test results for me?” she asked.

  “Not a problem,” Jon said. “Hey, maybe we can get this subject in for some tests. Is this a local subject pool, or are these samples being shipped in from somewhere else?”

  Julie hesitated and then replied, “The samples are from our UK office, but I’ll call over there this morning, report what we’ve found, and lobby for this subject to fly here for tests.”

  “Great! I’ll go grab the pages off the printer for you.”

  “Julie?” Bart put his hand on her shoulder. “I’d like you to turn over the rest of the blood samples you have from this patient to me this morning. With the antibodies we found in the blood, this subject’s blood needs to be controlled with Biosafety Level Three protocols.”

  “If I recall, you said this was nothing to get too excited about.”

  “I did, and it’s not. But safety is paramount, and with the type of antibodies present in this sample it would be prudent to treat it as an infectious agent.”

  Julie paused, trying to formulate her response. “The vial I gave you this morning was all I have left from this week’s delivery, after running all my usual tests. I’ll contact the UK branch this morning, however, and instruct them that biosafety hazard protocols need to be implemented regarding this subject.”

  Bart looked if he was about to speak when Jon returned from the printer holding the pages she had requested.

  “Here you go, Julie. If you’re not busy, you are welcome to help us. Bart and I have plenty of other tests we can run this morning. This is very, very exciting.”

  “I need to discuss this with the folks in my department and call the UK office, but I’ll pop back in later. This could be huge if we’ve discovered a new lymphocyte,” she said. She folded the printed pages in half, tucked them inside her purse, and headed for the door. On her way out, she called back over her shoulder, “Thanks, guys. I really appreciate you jumping on this for me.”

  Bart stood in silence and watched her leave with a scowl. Then he turned to hi
s assistant. “I’m going need the rest of that sample, to run some more tests. Oh and Jon, until we know what we’re dealing with here, I think it would be best if you not discuss this with anyone. Okay?”

  “Ya, okay,” Jon replied with a raised eyebrow. “You’re the boss.”

  • • •

  JULIE WALKED AS swiftly as she could, without running, through the corridors toward the west exit. Something was wrong; her intuition was burning like a five-alarm fire. This was not the first time Bart had seen antibodies like the ones in Will’s blood. He was hiding something from her . . . and she was certain that something had to do with Will.

  Chapter Twenty

  Prague, Czech Republic

  ALBANE TWIRLED AN ink pen around her forefinger like a tiny propeller with rhythmic flicks of her right thumb. With her left, she pressed icons on a touch screen tablet computer that she had propped on a small table in the hotel suite in Prague. For the third time, she cued up the recording of the brief with Meredith Morley from the Founder’s Forum. The software even allowed her to insert “chapters” like a DVD movie, for ease of navigation and playback.

  The first time through, she just listened.

  During the second playback, she edited out all other speakers except for Meredith and made time-annotated notes.

  She was the team’s RS:Social—deciphering human behavior was her specialty—and she wanted as many data points as possible. So, for the third playback, she fetched AJ and asked him to listen. She wanted to watch his expressions, compare his untrained visceral reactions to her own conclusions, without having his judgments influenced by hers.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She pressed “play” and watched AJ in silence. She had not told him why she wanted him to wear headphones, and he had not asked. As he listened, she took notes on a clean sheet of paper. If he twitched, nodded, sighed, changed his facial expression, or even blinked, she would jot down the time from the playback counter. When the recording finished, she retrieved the notes from her previous listening session and laid them next to the notes she had just taken. She scanned the time stamps for matches. She had made nineteen entries on her sheet, and seven on his. Between the two sheets, she identified two times that matched to the second.

  “Interesting,” he commented as he watched her work.

  She nodded and cued up the first matching time.

  “Shall we listen to the two matching sections together?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, here is the first one we both reacted to.”

  “For the past ten years, Vyrogen and its subsidiaries have been working on developing vaccines and treatments for the diseases that can be used as biological weapons. We are also searching for treatments for other global killers such as malaria, AIDS, ALS, etcetera. You name it; we want to find a way to treat it.”

  “When you were listening to this, you scratched your neck repeatedly with your index finger below your right ear,” she said, looking at her notes. “What bothered you about this segment?”

  “I’m not really sure. Why does it matter that I scratched my neck?”

  “Neck scratching is a common reaction by a listener indicating anxiety or disagreement to what a speaker is saying.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She lifted her notes for him to see. “When I listened to this segment, the following thought came to mind.”

  TREATMENT ≠ CURE

  “Interesting,” he mumbled.

  “I thought so, too. Why would Meredith say ‘you name it, we want to find a way to treat it’ and not ‘you name it, we want to find a way to cure it’?”

  He nodded. “If we take her words literally, then she doesn’t want to find cures. She wants to find treatments.”

  She smiled. “Exactly. Now replace the word ‘find’ with the word ‘supply’. She doesn’t want to supply cures; she wants to supply treatments. It seems like nuance, but it’s actually paradigmatic.”

  “Go on.”

  “We should ask ourselves the following question: Is Big Pharma, like Vyrogen, in the business of selling cures or selling treatments? Consider this: if you cure a patient of disease, you make a sale, but ultimately you lose your customer. But when you treat a patient, you have an ongoing revenue stream. Keeping their customers for life, that’s the strategic business model that benefits Vyrogen most. Why do you think drug companies like to label every ailment a disease or syndrome? Is acid reflux really a disease? What about obesity? Drug companies want us to think so. That way they can sell us a little purple pill that we have to take every day for the rest of our lives.”

  “That’s cynical.”

  She sighed. “That’s reality.”

  “What about BioShield? How does that fit into this equation?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but the web is growing more and more tangled, isn’t it?”

  “I’d say so. I guess it’s our job to untangle it.”

  “We wouldn’t be paid like sultans if it were otherwise,” she replied. “Let’s move on to the next match.”

  She entered the time of the second match and pressed PLAY to hear the clip.

  “To our surprise, Foster became ill during the trial period. Testing revealed that he was infected with a mutated strain of H1N1—but a different strain from the one we were targeting with the vaccine. This warranted placing him in quarantine and contacting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

  “What did she say here that’s suspicious?” AJ asked.

  “It’s not what she said, but what she did when she was saying it. Let me play the clip back again on mute.”

  AJ watched intently as Albane played the video. “I don’t notice anything unusual.”

  “Watch again in two times fast forward.”

  “Oh! It looks like she’s swatting at her nose. She did it twice, in rapid succession.”

  “You didn’t notice it before at normal time lapse because our mind is accustomed to screening out familiar gestures as mundane. Changing the speed of the video opens the mind to a new perception.”

  “What does it mean? The gesture, that is?”

  “Nose touching is one of the most informative tells for lying.”

  “Maybe she just has a cold or allergies. I have allergies and my nose and eyes bother me all the time,” AJ said. “I’m always rubbing my eyes and wiping my nose.”

  “It’s a question of context, of course. The cornerstone of reading body language is first understanding the context in which the subject is interacting. In this case, Meredith is speaking publicly, and she is the center of attention. I can say with confidence that the tell is legitimate, not allergy related.”

  “Why is nose touching a tell for lying?”

  “It’s a well-documented and -studied phenomenon. Research has found that when a person is lying, a chemical called catecholamine is released in the body, causing tissue inside the nose to swell. The increased blood pressure inflates the nose. This in turn causes the nerve endings in the end of nose to tingle, resulting in an unmistakable itch. Without professional training to suppress the behavior, a liar will invariably rub his or her nose to alleviate the sensation.”

  “You’re kidding. Sounds like Pinocchio.”

  “It’s actually referred to as the Pinocchio Effect.”

  “What is she lying about?”

  “The tell isn’t that specific. It only tells me Meredith is lying, but not what piece of information she’s lying about.”

  “We know for certain that Foster was infected with a mutated version H1N1, or they wouldn’t have put him in quarantine,” AJ said.

  “Not necessarily. You are failing into the trap of assuming that everything the client tells us is true. In my experience, we should question all assumptions. Nothing is fact until we corroborate the information ourselves.”

  “How can we ever move forward if we have to fact-check every aspect of the case?”

  “Som
etimes it’s better to jog in place, than to sprint down the wrong path and be forced to double back.”

  AJ hesitated. “Chiarek Norse? We’re not seriously going to . . .”

  “What you are alluding to is something we refer to in the Tank as sampling the client,” she said.

  AJ nodded, no further explanation was necessary. “Isn’t that a bit, uh,—”

  “Risky.”

  “I was going to say illegal, but yeah, I guess risky sums it up.”

  “Sampling the client is sometimes a necessary part of our job. Once you’re in this business long enough, you come to realize that our clients are not always entirely forthcoming with us,” she explained. “Sometimes we need to take a peek inside the purse of the lady of the house, while she’s in the other room. The decision to sample the client is not a decision that you or I have the authority to make.”

  “Nicolora?”

  “Yes. It’s Nicolora’s call, and his alone.”

  AJ was about to ask the obvious question when they heard the door lock disengage, signaling that Kalen was back from his reconnaissance outing. Albane sent AJ to fetch VanCleave and Veronika, who were working in the adjoining suite.

  “So?” Albane said once the team was gathered.

  “The facility is located inside the city. Housed in a four-story stone building, built around the turn of the twentieth century. Access is through a main lobby and controlled by an attendant at a security desk and an armed uniformed guard. Elevator banks have RFID security tag readers. Standard external and internal ceiling mounted security camera system. A fire escape stairwell exit is located on the west side—blocked by a hollow steel door, wired, with no external handle or lock. The facility is a research hospital and laboratory owned and operated by a Czech company called Chiarek Norse, which according to our research is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vyrogen Pharmaceuticals,” Kalen explained, crossing his legs casually.

  “What is your accessibility rating of the facility?” Albane asked.

  “On a scale of one to ten, where the Pentagon is a ten and and your grandma’s house is a one, I’d rank it a solid six. How serious are we?”