by Alan Gold
“Not as frustrating as having to answer all the questions from the townspeople and farmers near to their flight paths. Still, half the job is PR, the other half is administration. That’s why I’ll be so glad to get back to some real science.”
He looked at her as she retreated into the bathroom to shower and dress for her office and her interview. The past year and a half had been the most glorious and satisfying in his life, a whirlwind of a professional assignment that turned into a friendship that became a love affair, the translocation of his and her place into theirs, and then an unspoken decision of them both to spend the rest of their lives together. Meetings with her family, with his family, and with his and her colleagues, and they were married in all but name. Even the White House, though not told officially, began to include him on invitations to her to attend dinners and receptions.
And he knew that she’d fallen deeply in love with him. They’d decided to get married a year ago, but the cloud on their horizon was where they’d live when her work came to an end with the UN’s Emergency Task Force.
Most of the scientists whom she’d co-opted into the program before the policy of mass relocation of the bats had returned to their universities and laboratories, and the office that once boasted a staff of over seventy, overseeing the investigation of the disease outbreaks and dashing like fireman to remote parts of the globe when there was the sudden discovery of an infestation, were no longer a part of the team. All that were left were Debra, Daniel Todd, and ten or so men and women who were monitoring the worldwide programs Debra had put in place.
Soon, maybe this year, maybe next, when things had returned to normal with the relocated bats, or the infected colonies had been wiped out, they would have to make a huge decision. If Debra returned to the Atlanta Center for Disease Control, probably to take over the entire organization from her elderly boss, then they’d move to Georgia. The problem was that Brett was a senior officer in the Secret Service, and there was little if anything for him to do down there. Sure, he could probably transfer to the FBI, but he wasn’t particularly interested in that work.
Maybe it was time for him to quit and find a post in a large organization as head of security, earning a fortune, driving a late-model company car, traveling first class, and working nine to five. He shuddered when he thought of it. How would he cope with the boredom?
***
Late in the afternoon, after the reporter from Vanity Fair had left her office, she and Daniel Todd left their office and drove the short distance to the underground parking garage of the White House, using their passes to take the elevator to the conference room on a lower floor of the building. It was convenient for them to be in the building so that there was communication between them and the administration so that they could keep the president and the secretary-general informed of developments.
They spent the next hour analyzing the blood results from the samples taken from the bats in New Mexico, Wyoming, and Ohio as well as monitoring the results that were flowing in from France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other parts of the world. There were still hideous and murderous outbreaks in central Africa, South America, and parts of Asia, but now that bats had been defined as the source of the infections, there was no need for a flying squad of scientists. Instead, they sent in United Nations specialists from the World Health Organization who were trained in locating the bats’ roost and in elimination using poison gas.
So the question that Debra and Daniel were deciding was whether they had sufficient information and substance to be able to candidly inform the president and the secretary-general that the bat offspring tested had far lower viral loads than their parents. Not only that, but the viral loads in the blood of translocated bats, not just bats born in the new stress-free landscape, had dropped significantly.
“If I was asked, Debra, I’d be happy to present these results to a conference of Chiroptera specialists as conclusive proof that moving the bats and de-stressing them, has worked. And that means that I’m prepared to present them to the president and tell him the same,” said Daniel.
She nodded. “I guess you’re right. We could wait another three months and put more weight behind our conclusions, but there’s no way these figures could rebound on us, is there? Surely.”
Both she and Daniel were startled by her cell phone ringing. She always carried two phones, one for calls that were personal or from media or her staff; the other she used exclusively for calls from the president and the office of the secretary-general of the United Nations. In the early days of the outbreaks, that phone had gone off a dozen times a day; recently, certainly for the past twelve months, it rarely rang.
“Hello,” she said.
“Debra, are you in the building?” asked the president’s PA.
She told her she was. “And is Daniel with you?”
“He is,” said Debra.
“The president would like to see you both. Could you come up?”
It was surprising but not out of the ordinary. They left their room, walked to the end of the corridor, and took the elevator up a flight to the ground floor. They walked through three security stations, showing their IDs at each point and going through two separate metal detectors.
In the West Wing’s inner sanctum, the hustle and bustle of the rest of the White House, where all the important work of the presidency was done, disappeared, absorbed by the thick carpets and the solid walls.
The president’s PA smiled as they approached and said, “Go right in.”
Daniel and Debra entered the Oval Office and greeted the president, who was sitting at his desk, involved in an animated phone conversation with some congressional representative. He motioned for them to sit on the couch, and when he’d finished, he came over and sat opposite. In his hand was a memo.
Debra was keen to tell him of the latest test results, but she’d been summoned, and so she waited for him to speak. His face was grave. There was no sign of his usual bonhomie nor the peck on the cheek whenever she walked into his office for a meeting.
“Daniel,” asked the president, “what’s the coldest temperature in which a bat colony can survive?”
“Well, sir, when they hibernate, their body temperature can drop to as low as . . .”
“No, not during hibernation. I’m talking about bats flying across land, looking for food.”
Daniel shrugged, realizing that the president didn’t want a scientific discourse but his conclusions verified, so he said, “well, not very cold. Why do you want to know, Mr. President?”
“Can they survive an Antarctic winter?”
“Not possibly,” he said. “You’re looking at temperatures thirty or forty degrees below freezing.”
The president nodded. Debra asked, “What’s this all about, sir?”
He handed over the memo he was holding. She and Daniel read it. It was clipped and to the point. She realized that the blood had drained from her face. Daniel was speechless and he was shaking his head.
“It’s not bats. It can’t be bats. Not there,” was all he could say.
The president nodded. “Fourteen days ago, all communications with Shackleton Base in Antarctica was lost. At first, the scientists in the research establishment in Hobart, Tasmania, thought there’d been a huge storm and had knocked out the communications. But the satellite pictures showed just normal winter weather. After two days of silence, a mission was put together and flown down there. They relayed what they’d discovered. The entire base of fifteen men and women scientists had died. Their bodies were hideously bloated, as though they’d been lying on the floor of a tropical rainforest. They communicated with Hobart and another team of scientists and medical personnel was flown out but this time with biohazard gear. What they found was ghastly. Not only did they find the fifteen scientists, but all the members of the first rescue team were dead as well.
“The scientists quarantined the entire area and took samples of everything . . . body tissues, air, food, everything
. It was tested under maximum secrecy and security in the University of Melbourne’s laboratories, and they came to the conclusion that the thing that killed everybody was the same virus that killed those people on the Indonesian island of Kasiruta. I remember, Debra, that you called it Ebola on steroids.”
The president sat back on his couch. He looked drawn and exhausted.
“Sir, it’s just not possible,” said Daniel.
“It can’t have happened. There’s been some mistake,” said Debra.
But Nat Thomas shook his head. “The tests have been repeated a dozen times. There’s no mistake. The thing that killed all those fine people in Antarctica is the same virus that killed the fifteen hundred villages in Minangkabau and the evil cousin of the viruses that have killed the other people during these past couple of years.”
Daniel was still shaking his head. “But no bat could live in those conditions. It’s too cold . . .”
“I know. Which leads me to the conclusion that bats aren’t the only agent that is spreading this damnable disease.”
“But if not bats, Mr. President, then what?” asked Debra.
Nat Thomas looked at her blankly and shrugged his shoulders. “I guess that’s something you’re going to have to work out,” he said softly.
Debra sighed and slumped back into the couch. Suddenly, she felt the weight of the entire world on her slender shoulders.