Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  It had been a jarring revelation. Palardy never thought of himself as a criminal, couldn’t have felt more different from Quiros. And to realize they had that in common, realize they would go to equal lengths to protect themselves…

  Jarring as hell.

  Palardy was aware he was the only link between Enrique Quiros and Roger Gordian. Eliminate him, and the trail would be cut. This had come to him right there in the cruise ship terminal parking lot. Before parting ways with Quiros, he’d raised his fears indirectly and asked how he was supposed to know that exposure to the contents of the ampule wouldn’t have some terrible effect on him. And Quiros had spent several minutes explaining that the liquid was harmless in itself, the final ingredient of a biological recipe unique to the individual being dosed. Without every one of the other precise ingredients in your makeup, there was nothing to fear. You could consume a gallon of the stuff, and it wouldn’t have any effect.

  Palardy had no trouble grasping the general concept. He’d followed developments in genetic research in the news, read plenty of magazine articles. Moreover, UpLink International had owned one of the major gene-tech firms until its downsizing maybe a year ago, still retaining a stake in the company, and Palardy had been chummy with some of the people who worked there. So he was knowledgeable enough about their research to understand that Quiros’s reassurances had been worthless. Because the recipe was only as unique as the person brewing it up chose for it to be. Imagine he wanted to get rid of everybody with brown hair, or some other feature shared by an untold number of people. What would that do to the mortality rate of those exposed to his “final ingredient”? Wouldn’t that make it more of a final solution?

  And there was another part of Quiros’s explanation that Palardy had sensed was intentionally misleading. If he wanted to talk about the agent being tailored to a person’s inherited traits, fine. But how was Palardy to be sure Quiros hadn’t had somebody get hold of his genetic diagram for that very purpose? Pluck a few hairs from his comb, some dead skin from his shower floor?

  Sneak into his apartment and contaminate his orange juice, bottled water, or cold cuts with a few millimeters of a trigger formulated especially for the genetic cake mix called Don Palardy? How was he to be sure?

  Palardy sank back against the sofa cushions and listened to the sound of his own labored breathing. This morning, when he’d phoned in sick to work, his intention had been to call the doctor next. But the thoughts swirling around his brain had made him decide against it. Made him petrified of doing it, in fact. If he’d caught an ordinary bug, it would eventually run its course. Yet if his symptoms were being caused by a virus or bacteria invented in a laboratory, some microbe the doctors couldn’t identify, his sole hope of staying alive would be to reveal what he knew about it. And even assuming he could figure out some way to withhold how he knew what he did, when his disease was found to be the same one Roger Gordian had contracted, it would inevitably lead to questions he’d be unable to slip. Then he’d be implicated in a murder, the first of its kind, his name up there somewhere in infamy with Lee Harvey Oswald. And he’d be as dead as Oswald, too.

  His face pale and sweaty, his body aching, Palardy closed his eyes. There had to be something he could arrange. Something he could do to get back at Quiros in case he’d been duped. Used and discarded. Maybe he was getting carried away with himself, and everything would turn out okay. But just in case, just in case, there had to be something…

  And then, suddenly, it crossed his mind that there was.

  SIXTEEN

  VARIOUS LOCALES NOVEMBER 15, 2001

  When Roger Gordian’s personal physician, Dr. Elliot Lieberman, reviewed his case report Tuesday morning, he was left puzzled and dismayed.

  Gordian was undoubtedly a sick man, but the cause of his illness was a mystery. The flulike symptoms that hospitalized him Sunday afternoon had shown an appreciable improvement soon after his admission, continued along that positive trend throughout Monday, and then had taken a sharp, unexpected downturn over the past several hours. At around midnight he’d called the duty nurse to his room because of renewed difficulty breathing, chills, and a stabbing headache severe enough to have awakened him from sleep. His temperature had spiked to 103°, its highest since his arrival in the ER, and at last reading hadn’t dropped from that elevated mark. And although his respiratory distress was relieved by oxygen given through a face mask, Lieberman had heard a threadiness in his exhalations during a stethoscopic exam he’d performed a couple of hours ago, and he immediately ordered an X-ray series, which showed pulmonary shadows that hadn’t been evident in radiographic images taken the previous day — a typical sign of fluid buildup in the lungs. Lieberman asked for additional pictures at twice-daily intervals and regular updates on Gordian’s condition, thinking that any further decline would likely require his patient be transferred to the intensive care unit. Then he had retreated to his office to examine the charts and laboratory results.

  The bewildering thing was that the early suspicion of influenza had been ruled out, as had its most serious complication, viral pneumonia. A rapid-culture nasal swatch test to detect A and B type flu antigens — molecular components of the viral strains that stimulated defensive reactions by the body — had shown the specimens to be negative. A second type of quick diagnostic on a mucus sample from Gordian’s throat produced identical results within twenty minutes. Both methods were considered 99 percent reliable, an analytical certainty for all intents and purposes.

  Sighing with frustration, Lieberman sat leafing through the papers on his desk for the third time, seeking any clues he might have missed. His grandmother, rest her soul, could have catalogued Gordian’s symptoms with a touch to his forehead and a look down his inflamed, blistered throat with a flashlight, instructing him to open wide in Yiddish. And despite the framed sheepskins and certificates on his office wall, Lieberman’s present insight into his condition went little deeper than that. Examination of Gordian’s blood under a microscope had eliminated the common bacterial pneumonias — primarily pneumococcal, but also staphylococcal, and the even rarer Legionella strains responsible for Legionnaires’ disease. There was no sign of related chlamydial and mycoplasmal organisms. The serological workup had shown a raised level of lymphocytes, the white helper cells in the bloodstream that responded to an attack by foreign microbes. This was basically confirmation of Grandma’s home diagnostic method — clinical evidence that infection was present and the immune system was sending out scent hounds to scout for antigens, just as the swab tests had done. But while the lymphocytes were evidence that a virus was breeding inside Gordian, they would do nothing to establish its identity.

  Lieberman had checked San Jose Mercy’s databases for similar undiagnosed cases reported within the last forty-eight hours and found none. An expansion of his computer search to include the past week, then the past month, also drew blanks. He had next contacted associates at nearby hospitals by phone to see whether they might have recently encountered anything that resembled Gordian’s illness. Again, nothing. However, something had to be done to find out what Gordian was up against. His body was at war with a stealth invader and clearly flagging in its battle. Unless and until its identity was specified, an effective course of medical treatment to aid him would be impossible.

  Lieberman inhaled, exhaled. He ought to know what he was confronting here, and he did not. That alarmed him tremendously. He needed to consult with someone who could provide some guidance and specialized expertise.

  Lieberman lifted the receiver off his phone to get the chair of the virology department on the line but then decided that call could wait a bit and hung up without punching in his extension. There was another person he wanted to speak to first. One of his oldest friends and colleagues, Eric Oh was an epidemiologist with the California health department who had performed some of the principal research on molecular methods for the identification of unrecognized and emerging pathogens and been a celebrated virus hunter for
the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta before marrying a hometown girl who’d insisted he stop fiddling with BL4 pathogens, and move back West to settle down. It was a downright breach of protocol to involve Eric before consulting with a senior departmental head in this hospital. And the criteria that would normally warrant contacting government officials — a cluster of reported cases distinguished by symptoms akin to Gordian’s or data suggesting a full-scale outbreak of an infectious disease in the community — were absent. A single patient with an ailment that had stumped his humble general practitioner for less than forty-eight hours did not constitute a public health hazard, even if that patient was somebody of Roger Gordian’s prominence.

  But Lieberman was getting gut radar signals. The kind you grew to credit more and more with age and experience. And insofar as he was concerned, an informal meeting of the minds with Eric could hardly be considered reproachful professional conduct.

  His lips compressed to a barely visible stitch on his long, careworn face, Lieberman retrieved Eric’s phone number from his pocket organizer and once again reached for the telephone.

  “… can’t believe I was so thoughtless… so stupid… spent three Sundays in a row building a pen for my dogs… all I did… give Dad a hard time…”

  Julia’s voice penetrating his sleep, Gordian stirred, opened his eyes. She was sitting with Ashley near the foot of his hospital bed, back out of the way of the tubes and electronic monitors connected to him.

  He lifted his arm from his side and weakly pulled the loose-fitting oxygen mask down below his chin. The women noticed he’d awakened and turned to face him, starting to their feet.

  “Get me a drink of water, everything’s forgiven,” he managed. The inside of his mouth felt dry and clotted. “Deal?”

  Julia was at his bedside in a snap, her mother behind her. “Dad, I don’t know if you should be taking off the mask—”

  He moved his hand.

  “Breathing’s fine right now.” The words scraped out of him. “Just thirsty.”

  Ashley was already lifting the pitcher from his rolling tray. She filled a paper cup halfway, passed it to Julia, and then pressed the button to raise the upper part of the bed.

  Gordian reached for the water as Ash straightened the pillows underneath him, but Julia shook her head.

  “Let me hold it for you,” she said. “Better take it slow. Little sips, okay?”

  Gordian nodded. He wet his lips, rinsed the water over the sticky film on his tongue. Then swallowed. The coolness going down the hot, reddened lining of his throat was indescribably welcome.

  “Thought you two were going out to grab a bite,” he said.

  “We did,” Ashley said. She stepped closer and touched his cheek. “You were asleep when we got back.”

  He looked at her.

  “How long was I out?”

  “A while… I’m not sure…”

  Gordian shifted, checked his beside clock. Almost two in the afternoon. He’d been sure he had drifted off for fifteen, twenty minutes at the longest. Make that a couple of hours.

  He shifted his gaze back to his wife. Ash had put on her face, as she liked to say. Not that she needed to wear much makeup. So many years of marriage, she looked like the photos taken of her when they were newlyweds. But he could see dark crescents under her eyes. Small lines at their corners that hadn’t been there before.

  “Do you feel like having lunch?” she said, gesturing toward his tray. “The nurse left some lunch. There’s a turkey sandwich. Jell-O, naturally—”

  He shook his head.

  “A little later, maybe,” he said. “My legs are cold. Air-conditioning’s turned up kind of high, don’t you think?”

  He saw Ashley give Julia the briefest of glances. Maybe not so high, he thought.

  “I’ll go ask for another blanket at the nurse’s station,” she said.

  “Count on me waiting right here.”

  She gave him a wan smile and went out into the hallway.

  Gordian took down some more water, thanked Julia, then eased back against his pillows. The window shades were drawn, but the daylight seeping in around them seemed too bright. He let his eyes close for a second.

  When he opened them, Julia was watching him on the bed.

  “You aren’t at work,” he said.

  “No kidding.”

  “It’s a new job,” he said. “I’d hate for you to have any trouble.”

  She sat gently on the edge of the mattress.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I used the old parent-in-the-hospital scam.”

  “Good one,” he said. “Let’s play it to the hilt.”

  She took hold of his hand, still watching him intently.

  “You hear anything new from Dr. Lieberman?” he asked.

  “Not since early this morning,” she said. “He was supposed to look over your information and meet us here, but got called off on an emergency.”

  Gordian nodded, felt the tender swellings under his jaw. It reminded him of when he’d had the mumps as a kid.

  “Dad…”

  He looked at Julia, noticed that her eyes had suddenly moistened.

  “Honey?” he said. “Something the matter?”

  She was shaking her head, but at some unspoken thought rather than in answer to his question.

  “What you heard me saying when you woke up… I’m sorry. About how I’ve been treating you. About the way I acted the other day when you were over at the house.” She squeezed his fingers more tightly, swiped away a tear with her free hand. “I’ve been such a self-absorbed jerk since the divorce…. God, Daddy… I don’t know why I keep taking things out on you….”

  “Might be because we’re two of a kind,” he said. “Good at not being good with our emotions.”

  Julia tightened her grip on his hand, her eyes glistening.

  “It’s like I keep my feelings inside until they fill me up, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Like they’re all mixed together, and I don’t have a clue how to deal with them, and instead try to push them somewhere deeper inside. Convince myself they’ll go away. And then the pressure only gets worse—”

  “I know,” he said. He smiled at her. “Doesn’t make it easy on the people we love. Just ask your mother.”

  They were quiet for a moment, hands joined at Gordian’s side.

  “You’ll sort things out,” he said finally. His throat was on fire, the temporary relief from the water he’d sipped long gone. “It takes time. You’ve been through changes, difficult ones—”

  He was interrupted by a soft knock on the open door.

  They both turned their heads toward Dr. Lieberman just outside in the corridor.

  “Julia, Gord,” he said. His face was drawn. “I hope you’ll excuse my lateness; it’s been one of those days.”

  “Tell me about it,” Gordian said in a ragged voice. “Hello, Elliot.”

  Lieberman’s eyes made a quick tour of the room as he entered. “I was hoping to find Ashley—”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, saw her standing in the hall with a folded blanket draped over her arm, and stepped aside to let her move past him.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m glad the three of you are here.”

  They looked at him. It went through all their minds at once that neither Lieberman’s tone nor his expression remotely approached gladness, his chosen figure of speech aside.

  He reached back and closed the door, then stood silently for what seemed a very long time.

  “We have to talk about my findings,” he said. “Talk very seriously.”

  “Here’s what little I know,” Megan said. “The boss’s condition hasn’t improved since this morning, and the tests aren’t showing what’s wrong with him. His doctor, I think his name is Lieberman, has put in a call to an epidemiologist at the Department of Health in Sacramento.”

  She was looking at Pete Nimec and Vince Scull, th
e three of them seated in Nimec’s office at UpLink headquarters, their meeting hastily convened minutes after Ashley Gordian phoned to update her from the hospital.

  Nimec’s eyes held steady on her face. “That’s it?”

  She nodded.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Scull said. “A case gets kicked up to state level, it means there’s either gotta be a rash of ones like it or a suspicion that whatever’s hit Gord is contagious… and a threat to the public welfare.”

  Megan shook her head.

  “That’s what I assumed, too,” she said. “But Ashley explained the contact’s strictly unofficial. Lieberman has a personal relationship with the government man, and he’s reaching out.”

  They were silent for a while.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do?” Nimec said. “And don’t tell me to wait and pray for the best.”

  Megan regarded him gravely.

  “Pete,” she said, “sometimes you can’t charge to the rescue.”

  He expelled a breath.

  “Goddamn,” he said. “Goddamn.”

  More silence.

  Scull frowned, rubbing a hand back and forth over his smooth, hairless expanse of scalp. Then he looked at Megan.

  “I’m thinking maybe we ought to investigate,” he said.

  “Investigate what?” she said.

  “Same things as the white coats,” he said. “You look at a whole bunch of dots and try to draw in the lines that connect them. I mean, if you get right down to it, this wouldn’t be any different than what’s SOP at my job.”