by Frank Perry
she had more to fear even than the men who would simply be killed. The population of the country was seventy-percent Muslim and a small fraction, unemployed young men primarily, used the Islamic ideology as an excuse to murder and ravage in the lawless region. This had been one of the travel advisories she was given before coming back to West Africa. No western government people were allowed to travel in northern Sierra Leone. She could have declined the assignment on this basis, and at that moment she was wishing she had. It didn’t matter who these men were or their motives; they were shooting to kill.
Proof
They were at her apartment sitting together on the sofa reading the printed report, looking for answers. It was a long, tedious process and both wanted the explanation to come from some misplaced notation that might have been missed in Mary’s review. He shrugged. “I don’t know, Kelly. I’ve gone over all of it. I added the vials of everything produced since Lorne’s last entry and subtracted the ones used or shipped out over the weekend. None of it had anything to do with the four bins. Nothing was added or used or shipped to Guinea last weekend, yet you have different numbers than Mary, and hers didn’t match the official inventory records to begin with. And, the actual numbers are all lower than the records show. If errors were made, you’d think there would be both plusses and minuses. What’s the chance that every error would be negative?”
They both knew the answer but didn’t want to believe it. Someone had either recorded the actual quantities in error, or had been removing vials without recording it properly. She sat back in frustration. “John, we’ve got to determine what was in those vials.” She was serious, but also knew it didn’t need saying. Whatever it was, it wasn’t valuable to anyone but scientists working on a specific strain of virus. There was, however, another alternative that neither wanted to think about.
They were the only ones able to find the truth, which meant they had to keep searching. The only data in question came from an unofficial record kept by a dead scientist. There was no way to validate any of the official Institute records. If they wanted to be whistle blowers, they would need to prove that a crime was committed. In this case, the data was so esoteric and unexplainable that it was incomprehensible to anyone outside the Institute. They needed proof, something that lay people could understand. They could not quit the Institute. However awkward their relations were with management, with Jules, they had to eliminate possible explanations if they were ever going to continue making a difference, fighting the deadly disease. If there had never been reason to be suspicious, the Institute was the best job either of them could want.
They stayed together again that night as an early winter rainstorm pelted the bedroom window. Both were emotionally numb after all that had happened over two days. Kelly curled tightly next to John burying her face under his chin, feeling safe. He stroked her finely textured hair, smelling its sweet freshness and sensing a feminine side of her that was usually veiled behind a stoic scientist exterior. She was scared and vulnerable, and, for the first time, she seemed to really need him. It affected him. He embraced her without any emotional reserve – something he’d never done before with another person. That night, they made love passionately, over and over again. It was an outlet; but more than that, it was a completely open and honest elevation in their relationship, something special to both of them. Their fears were forgotten for a time that night.
The night’s bliss had nothing to do with rational behavior. If they had thought about it, they might conclude that a degree of fatalism was overtaking them and obscuring rational judgement. They were under attack for some unknown reason. Their work was so difficult to explain or monitor that it was impossible to prove anything was wrong to the police. Hell, they couldn’t prove it to themselves. There had been multiple audits by the government during the period of Lorne’s record keeping and everything was in order. They had no evidence that anything was wrong at the Institute, except for Lorne’s message and some errors in a spreadsheet. Even with their experience and training in the lab, they couldn’t pinpoint what it meant.
They reported to work normally the next morning. Kelly started in 4A with Fred, which she had been neglecting too long, and John went back to 4B. He hadn’t had much analysis to do since Lorne left, and neither Kelly nor Jules were generating anything new for him, so he began digging into the suspected data.
John’s first interest was reconstructing the bin data, including additions, reductions, and final balances from years before. The Institute’s control systems were foolproof, completely accurate. Everything added and subtracted properly. The computer records continued to show several hundred of the vials in question to be in the suspected bins, which were inside the isolation storage area. No human was allowed to enter behind the glass wall. Kelly had almost finished counting the last vials when Jules had stopped her. She finished counting three of them, but not the forth bin. It took an enormous amount of time to do accurately, lifting each vial from the bin using a robotic arm and then not losing count. It wasn’t possible to write anything with the heavily gloved hands. The three bins showed, again, that the quantities recorded in the system were larger than they physically contained. But the numbers were even lower in one of the bins than Lorne’s records showed. Two more vials were missing.
The random numbering and barcoding system didn’t disclose the actual content of the vials. The system could decode it, but none of the workstations inside the labs had this capability. Only the “C” level people had the ability to decode it, for security reasons. If the average people in the Institute didn’t know what was in the vials, no one would be tempted to steal. At least, that was John’s belief. The chief executives had never actually disclosed the reason for coding the labels.
The day passed normally. John and Kelly left the lab with no more encounters with Jules or anyone else. John had decided to throw another challenge to Mary, calling from the apartment. “Mary, I’d like to ask another favor.” She acknowledged. “I need you to look at the data for the items inside the four bins that are in error; see if you can figure out the code on the vials. I think they’ll all be the same in each bin.” She agreed to do it for him.
That night, a cold winter rain was raging and clouds blocked any hint of moonlight or starlight. It was well after midnight, just before dawn, when a darkened car pulled into the parking lot, near Kelly’s apartment. It stayed far enough away to avoid detection, but close enough to observe when the pair left.
Attack
“Jules, listen to me. We were attacked!” For a woman accustomed to tense situations in hostile areas, Abagael sounded unusually shaken.
He was having dinner alone. “Abagael! What do you mean? Are you all right? Tell me…”
She was shaking, having difficulty holding the small mobile phone as the others huddled around her. It was unlikely that they were followed on foot, but they were all still scared. “On the road to Kambia, some armed men tried to stop us. They shot at us; they shot our truck.” She paused for a moment to let her nerves settle. “None of us are hurt, but we might have a problem.”
“Tell me, what is it?”
“One of the shipping containers, the hermetically sealed pallets; you know, the expensive ones with their own refrigerators and pressure pumps. One of them, the one in back, got some bullet holes. It probably saved our lives, but there’s damage inside.”
He rubbed his throbbing temples. “Abagael, that could be a problem. Do you have any way to open it safely and check inside? I don’t think a few holes are a problem; the systems can handle it even if the lid is off for a while, but you don’t want any damage to the vials inside. You need to check and let me know if everything inside is all right.”
She agreed. “I was planning to do that. I just need to get them to some open space with adequate lighting. I don’t want anyone else nearby.”
“Okay, that sounds right. And, Abagael; be sure to wear
your HazMat suit.”
“Why, Jules, is it dangerous? We normally just handle it like any injectable drug.”
“Look, Abagael, when we make vaccines and antidotes, we use live virus. They’re not problems, but I don’t know what would happen if a bunch ended in a pool after a hot bullet ran through it all.” It was a really lame explanation, but he couldn’t think of any other reason to give her. He wanted her to be safe.
She looked at the others with her. They would need to lift the container out of the truck and find good lighting before opening it. They couldn’t be careful enough. The drugs were needed immediately, and she couldn’t quarantine the truck. Anyway, if there was a live virus problem, they had already been exposed while escaping.
Several minutes later, she found only one vial damaged with the fluid leaking down inside the packing material. She pressed the “redial” button. “Jules, we had some damage, one vial was punctured.”
He pulled a pen from his coat pocket. “Shoot. What’s the number on the