Bat out of Hell

by Alan Gold

  Debra had been to the building many times during her six years as head of Virus Transmission Analysis at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Although she was answerable to the CDC’s chief operating officer, her real bosses, those to whom she was answerable for things way more important than budgets and targets, were housed in this building.

  When the newspaper headlines earlier in the day had trumpeted “Killer Bug Spells New Threat to Worldwide Security,” her boss had been called by his boss, whose boss wanted Debra to see her boss.

  She stepped out of the taxi and drew a deep breath, knowing that this would be the last day of her employment with the United States government, and entered the north portal of the building. Signed in, badged, metal detected, and escorted to the carpeted and silent top floor, Debra was asked to wait in an anteroom before being summoned by Doctor Jonathan Bailey, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services. Only two people stood between Doctor Bailey and the president—his boss, DeAnne Harper, former lieutenant governor of Idaho, who was the secretary of Health and Human Services, and the White House chief of staff. Then it was the president.

  In all her career of public service, Debra had never dealt with bureaucrats at this level, so her fall would be from a very great height—probably very public, and almost certainly very humiliating. But she’d anticipated some swift and nasty reaction from the bureaucratic hierarchy when she’d lied to her boss about the nature of her address to the conference she was attending. She just hoped that her boss, a really lovely and elderly gentleman scientist, wouldn’t become a casualty of the firestorm that would be coming her way as a result of her very public indiscretion. As she went down in a screaming heap, she’d save her boss by admitting she’d lied to him. Hopefully, they’d believe her.

  But she’d been infuriated by the gag notice that had been placed on her work, preventing her from exposing it to scientific scrutiny. So she’d determined that regardless of the cost to her career, the world had to know about this new and threatening bug. After her bisexual father had died from AIDS in San Francisco in the 1980s, a result of the conspiracy of silence for fear of causing panic that surrounded the HIV infection, Debra had determined never to keep scientific information from the community.

  The bureaucratic minions walked softly along the corridors as she pretended to read a magazine in the outer sitting room. Her heart was thumping against her chest. She rehearsed the speech she would give to Jonathan Bailey before he thumped his desk and shouted for her to get out. She would try to tell him about scientific integrity, about the need for transparency in public health, and about the dangers of cloak-and-dagger attitudes applied to public medicine when the health, welfare, and lives of thousands of people might be at risk.

  By the time the door to Doctor Bailey’s office opened, her face was flushed and she was ready for the fight of her life. Yes, she’d go down, but it would be in a glorious heap of self-righteousness.

  He was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit with a blisteringly white shirt and club tie. She didn’t recognize what university the tie represented, but from the tall, lean, suntanned, and prosperous look of the man, she’d bet it was Ivy League.

  He beamed a broad smile. “Debra? How good to meet you. I’ve read a lot about you, especially in this morning’s papers.”

  Jonathan Bailey walked over, hand extended. His hair was turning silver gray; he wore the confidence of a seasoned politician, even though his early career had been in public medicine. He escorted her into his office, which was lush, exquisitely furnished if a bit too old-world for her, and they sat together on the leather lounge. She was mystified. If he was going to fire her, this was certainly not the traditional method.

  “Coffee?” he asked, pouring her a cup from the tray that some invisible personal assistant had laid out on his coffee table prior to her entry.

  They sipped their coffees; she was too confused to say anything.

  “Let me come straight to the point, Debra. As head of the CDC’s Virus Transmission Department, we’ve decided that you’re the right person to be put in charge of leading a team to deal with the issue you raised at yesterday’s conference. I have to admit we were a bit surprised that you gave your paper without consulting us first, but what’s done is done, and now we have to ensure that this new virus and others of similar danger to our people, don’t get into the United States. We’re not going to be caught with our pants down again—like we were with the HIV virus—something about which you’re all too familiar.”

  She looked at him in amazement, both for his offer of a fantastic job instead of firing her and for his understanding of her very personal demand for transparency in memory of her father.

  “I want you to head up a task force to do two vital things; the first is to ensure national biohazard immunity to these new viruses, which are gaining ground in remote parts of the world, and the second is to determine ways of eliminating the source. And if that means eliminating entire animal populations, then so be it. Don’t be surprised. It’s not like the good ol’ US of A going after terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan. This is something we’ll do with the approval and cooperation of the UN and other world agencies.

  “Where we’re notified of an outbreak of a virulent disease, we’ll work with that nation’s government to track its source and eliminate the vectors and carriers. This will be a cooperative effort of the USA, European countries, and many in Asia. But it’ll be coordinated through the United Nations; so in effect, you’ll work with the World Health Organization under the auspices of the UN. You’ll build your team here, of course, but to all intent, you’ll be answerable to the secretary-general.

  “There’ll be no bureaucrats who’ll stand in the way of you and your team. This is separate from and outside of Homeland Security and FEMA. Naturally, your reports will go to them, but neither of them will have any oversight or budgetary control of your office. You’ll be heading up a first-class scientific effort, well funded, well resourced. You’ll have a very significant budget, the choice of any experts from any field in any university or private institution you want. You’ll work from this building and report to me or my designated assistant. Well?”

  She stared at him, still too stunned to speak. As though some external voice was talking, she heard herself saying, “I . . . I . . . er . . .?”

  Doctor Bailey continued, “This doesn’t come out of nowhere, Debra. This is something we’ve been working on for months. When you and your team first came back from Indonesia and began reporting to my department on this new killer virus, it was the final piece of the jigsaw that I’d been putting together for more than two years. These outbreaks of deadly and incurable diseases . . . Ebola, SARS, the Hendra virus, and others . . . have been growing in frequency and getting closer and closer to home. Our home. Sixteen months ago, I called a top-level meeting of our staff, and they’ve been secretly talking to top academics about these eruptions. We’ve come to the conclusion that we can’t be defensive but have to go on the offensive, and wherever and whenever they show up, we have to go in there with a hit squad of top scientists to search out, identify, and eliminate.

  “Through the office of the secretary-general, we’ve got the agreement of most African and Asian governments who’ll work with your team when an outbreak occurs on their territory. We’ll pay half of all the costs involved and Europe will pay the other half. We are doing this as the lead agency because of our scientific prowess, which is why we have the total support of the UN, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and other global agencies. We’ve been working hard these past many months to put this together,” he said, resisting a smile.

  “But why didn’t I know about it?” asked Debra. She felt insulted that she’d been deliberately omitted from the team discussing the virus outbreaks. “I’m head of Virus Transmission at the CDC, for God’s sake. This is precisely what I should have been involved in.”

  Doctor Bailey looked uncomfortable for a moment and sai
d softly, “Yes, we thought long and hard about involving you, Debra, but our feeling was that this was less an issue about viruses and outbreaks, than it was about public health, public safety, and national security. Once you look at it through that lens, then the people you have to involve, people who deal in national security and international policy issues, tend to screw things down as tight as a drum. As a scientist, it was thought that you didn’t need to be involved.”

  “But why wasn’t this made public—at least to the scientific community?” she asked. “Why all this security? This is a major concern for the health and well-being of the community. Surely, like the outbreak of AIDS, you should have broadcast it far and wide and got every scientific mind in the field focused on the issue.”

  “That’s precisely what the president was going to do at the World Health Conference in Rome next month. Unfortunately, Debra, you’ve kind of stolen his thunder. I was going to fly down to Atlanta and ask you, in rather less hurried terms, whether you’d consider heading up the new agency. But your speech yesterday . . . well, what can I say?”

  Doctor Bailey looked at the woman who sat opposite him. She still had the spark of beauty glowing inside her, but she was one of those women who had put career before family, job before love. He wondered how many lovers she’d had while she was climbing the career ladder, and how many men were still in her life as she approached the wrong side of middle age. He wondered what was going through her mind right now.

  STARBUCKS CAFÉ CORNER OF THIRTY-FIFTH AND FIFTH, MANHATTAN

  Tom Pollard, president of CHAT, Citizens for Humane Animal Treatment, was a man under siege. The appalling disaster of CHAT’s anti-fur demonstration in Orlando, Florida, the previous day had resulted in him having to front for his organization on shows he’d sworn he’d never grace with his presence. Fox News, right-wing cable TV shows with demagogues screaming at him, right-wing newspapers with holier-than-thou reporters talking to him about his responsibility for the lives of human beings, not just animals. It had been hideous, but fortunately, there was the reality of a twenty-four-hour news cycle, and the cameras were now turned in the direction of some other poor hapless individual.

  ***

  He’d just come from an emergency meeting of his board of governors who had carpeted him for not being there himself to prevent this tragedy. They weren’t interested in his rationale, nor that he’d been doing budgets all that day. He was the boss . . . it was his job to be everywhere. They hadn’t fired him, but they’d put him on notice that if this sort of thing ever happened again, he’d be the scapegoat.

  His chairperson, Donna McCabe, had been particularly scathing. She was new to the position, and Tom realized that his cozy relationship with her predecessor was not going to happen with Donna. She was a big time Washington law firm partner who flew down for the monthly board meetings. She had a mind like a steel trap and a frightening way of using a carefully chosen phrase to spike his hubris whenever he tried to bignote himself and his achievements. He felt she could see right inside him, so he’d promised her that not only would he put the Florida issue to bed, but he’d also ensure that no such demonstration ever happened again on his watch.

  He’d been waiting in Starbucks for his contact to arrive for over fifteen minutes. He didn’t even know her surname. She was a middle-aged woman who worked for a government department in Washington. She’d given him fantastic information in the past about voting patterns of congressional representatives and senators, about their constituencies and families and likes and dislikes. All great stuff but little more than a good researcher could have produced in a week of hitting the books in the congressional library. But his contact’s real value was in tipping him off about forthcoming bills pertaining to agricultural animals, domesticated and caged animals, pet shop regulations, import and export of animal skins and furs, and things like that. Thanks to her, a contact who’d come to him anonymously, he had become the darling of the animal rights movement. From a relatively obscure pen pusher to the nation’s most effective activist and spokesperson on the inhumane treatment of animals, he’d taken his organization from an underfunded gaggle of hopeless amateur liberationists to the nation’s best run, best funded, best publicized, and best-known advocate for the rights of animals in the country.

  His contact didn’t realize how important she was to him, and he maintained his relationship by dropping whatever he was doing when she rang him on the most private of his private mobile phones—one that he’d taken out in the name of a recently deceased person, the one that the FBI knew nothing about. When she was in New York and wanted to see him, he followed a charade, which was silly, but he did it to please her.

  First, he’d leave his office and take a taxi downtown, then a subway uptown, then a cab to the Lower West Side, and then walk the ten blocks to Thirty-Fifth Street, looking behind him all the time to ensure that he wasn’t followed. It was a ridiculous precaution because this Starbucks was so close to his office, but she’d insisted, and he just wanted to keep her happy. Confident that he wasn’t followed, he’d entered the coffee shop, sat at a table with his back to the wall, and faced the door to ensure that he could scrutinize whoever walked in. And he’d been sitting like this for half an hour, which was fifteen minutes after she’d asked to meet him.

  Suddenly the door opened and she walked into the shop. She was a faded Washington matriarch—big chested, dowdy, wearing clothes that had once been fashionable, carrying a handbag; nobody in New York carried a handbag.

  She sat. He knew from past experience that she didn’t like shows of emotion, and so he didn’t attempt to give her a friendly peck on the cheek. Instead, he shook her hand and asked how she was.

  “I’m in New York overnight. I have to be back in my office tomorrow morning for a meeting. I’m staying with my sister. She’s expecting me for dinner, so I can’t stay. And don’t offer me any of the disgusting coffee they serve here. Let me just tell you what I have to tell you, and then I’ll go.”

  Tom nodded. He knew better than to interrupt.

  “This afternoon, there was a high-level meeting at the Department of Health and Human Services. It took place between the deputy secretary of state and a youngish woman who works at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. You might have read the story written about her yesterday concerning some hideous new virus in Indonesia.”

  She looked at him closely, but it was obvious that he had no idea what she was talking about. “You really must keep up with the news if we’re to work together, Mr. Pollard.”

  Stung, he said, “I had rather a busy day yesterday, you know. Perhaps you read of that death in Orlando at one of our CHAT demonstrations. A tragic occurrence.”

  She waved her hand as though the death of an old Jew was of no significance. “What I’m here to tell you, Mr. Pollard, is about the death of entire species. Species. We’re no longer talking about the inhuman caging and death of cats and dogs in pet shops, or of the use of animal skins for the husbands of pampered women to purchase for them to wear and parade around in like tramps. This is the annihilation of entire species, animals that we were put on this earth by Almighty God to protect.

  “What the deputy secretary has cooked up with this heartless Doctor Hart woman is a plan to eliminate all species of animals that are thought to be carriers of the viruses. Bats, birds, horses, pigs, donkeys, mice, rats. She’s been empowered to eliminate whatever animal it is that might . . . might, mind you . . . be the carrier of these viruses. Can you imagine what that means, Mr. Pollard? This young woman has the right, under United States government decree, to decide which animal species may be causing some new virus to spread and then to eliminate it. It’s genocide of entire species, Mr. Pollard. It’s the greatest crime in the history of animal husbandry. In the Bible, God Almighty himself gave Noah responsibility for saving a male and a female of each kind of animal that existed before humankind fell from the grace of God’s eyes. God gave Noah that right because he was a good
man. Now the United States government is giving some girl the right to eliminate an entire species at her will. She’ll be like a god herself, Mr. Pollard. Like a god. You have to do something about this, or there’s never ever going to be a Second Coming. No redemption for humankind . . . confined to all eternity to . . .” Her words fell silent as she looked into the future.

  Tom Pollard stared at her in disbelief. He had to get the details. One minute, his career was in the toilet; the next minute he would be an international savior of animals. So what did it matter that she was probably talking about ticks and fleas and mosquitoes and rats and mice? He would be the savior of species, and that would get him noticed internationally.

  LANDSDALE STATION FIFTY MILES NORTHEAST OF TOOWOOMBA, QUEENSLAND

  No matter how often he gazed at the enormity of the sky in the north, south, east, and west of his property, Doug Mauden was overwhelmed by the grandeur of design in the mind of the deity who had created it all. The vastness of the land stretched out in all directions around him, the red earth covered with bounteous crops. His vast cattle station and horse stud were the pride and joy of his life, as were the stands of gum trees under whose canopies kangaroos slept during the heat of the day and emus and wild dingos roamed freely. All was just as it was when his grandfather had acquired the station from a drunken landowner in a game of poker.

  Doug’s father had built upon the good fortune of his father and nurtured the station with careful custodianship, acquiring nearby farms during severe droughts for rock-bottom prices, until the family were the wealthiest and most significant landowners in the district. All was peaceful. Even his father’s death had been peaceful. He’d died early one morning in the saddle while riding his favorite mare—the horse gently bringing her master home—feet still in the stirrups, hands gripping the reign, his face gently nuzzling the horse’s neck.