by Thomas Hopp
Kay Erwin went on. “As you all know, Immune Corporation is a powerhouse of research on viruses and immunity. They created the first effective vaccine against Congo River virus. That disease was once the scourge of Equatorial Africa, but it’s fading into history thanks to the vaccine, which some have called the Holloman vaccine in honor of its creator. Furthermore, Dr. Holloman’s generous gifts to the hospital were an important source of funding for the isolation facility that houses Mr. Fenton. And I am pleased to announce that Dr. Holloman is once again stepping forward in the current, um - circumstances.”
Holloman smiled a modest smile for a man so heavily praised. I realized now why he had looked unfamiliar. I had interviewed him during the early startup years of Immune Corporation when the company was small and top brass like him were accessible. But after ImCo’s success with Congo River vaccine, he had become hard to reach and the years had changed him on the outside. I had been fooled, not just by his hairline, which had gone all the way over the top, but also by his width, which had grown in proportion to his wealth. The term fat cat came to mind. He had shrunk and widened, compared to the taller, thinner, more physically imposing man I remembered. But my last visit to his office had been years before.
Kay Erwin went on to describe Holloman’s stature in the international research community and his prominence among the donors who financed the isolation ward. I supposed a small tithe of his Immune Corporation stock holdings could have underwritten the whole facility.
Holloman stood in demurring silence, faintly smiling while Kay Erwin praised him. “This morning,” she said, “with approval from the Centers for Disease Control, I’ve agreed to provide a sample of the virus to Dr. Holloman and his coworkers at ImCo. They will immediately begin checking the organism for mutations or altered structure. Along with the CDC and Fort Detrick, Dr. Holloman will field a third team responding to this case, so you should all be reassured that we have triple coverage in the interest of public safety. Dr. Holloman…”
Erwin stepped down and Holloman went to the podium. He adjusted the microphone and thanked Kay for her introduction. Then he swept his gaze across the crowd and said, “I have assigned a team of my best investigators to this project. If I may brag a bit, we have plenty of scientific talent at ImCo to carry out every conceivable analysis of this virus. And if anything unusual is discovered along the way, we’ll institute a top-priority project to create a new vaccine to neutralize it.”
I made some more notes while Holloman leaned into the microphone and launched into a lengthy rap about the skills of his staff, the wealth of research capability at ImCo, including the company’s top-flight biological isolation facilities, which were smaller than the hospital’s but equally secure. He droned on until I had made more than enough notes. After some time, I found myself yawning despite the seriousness of the day’s news.
Finally, Kay Erwin approached the podium and looked at her wristwatch for effect. Squeezing between Holloman and the mike, she said, “It’s good to know your staff can help in the unlikely event that this virus is a new strain. Until then, we really shouldn’t speculate on the virus’s origins or the need for new vaccines.” As Holloman stepped aside, she turned her attention to the crowd. “Now, if there are no more questions - “
“I’ve got one more,” I called out. “You mentioned that Mr. Fenton might have contracted the disease from someone crossing into the U.S. Do you know where that person is?”
Kay’s shoulders slumped. “I wish we did. The best I can tell you is we’ve sent a notice to all hospitals in the U. S. and Canada advising them to watch for people with smallpox symptoms. But Mr. Fenton may have caught the virus from someone who had an extremely mild exposure or was recovering from the disease, in which case the source may never be known. My focus right now is on Mr. Fenton, keeping him isolated and helping him get well.” She looked at her wristwatch again. “We’ve used our allotted time so, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming.”
Some more hands went up, but Kay fended them off with a gesture and a promise of more details in another conference to be scheduled soon. The meeting broke up as she led Holloman out through the stage door, followed by the buzz-cut man, who hadn’t said a thing.
“Do you know him?” I asked Cameron Phipps, pointing at the man as he vanished through the door behind Erwin and Holloman.
“Vincent Nagumo,” said Cameron after a moment’s thought. “Special Agent, FBI. Seattle Antiterrorism Unit, I believe.”
“I can see why Kay didn’t introduce him,” I said. “So they do suspect something is up.”
“Maybe,” Cameron replied, closing his notebook computer. “It all sounds pretty scary, but it sounds pretty iffy, too.” He got up and moved toward the door. “Are you coming?” he asked. “I’ll walk out with you.”
I shook my head and kept my seat. “Prerogative of a freelancer. I don’t have an editor screaming for my copy. No publication deadlines.”
“Poor fellow.” He waved goodbye over his shoulder on his way out. Phipps, a reporter for the Puget Sound Business Daily, recently scooped me on a story concerning a sunburn remedy made from extracts of jellyfish. It was an ironic scoop, considering Phipps is about the darkest African American I know while my own pale skin, on occasion, cooks up red as Dungeness crab. And he had a point this time around. He would be in print by morning. My story would probably come out later, in a weekly blog or monthly print publication. And I would have to compete with other freelancers for attention.
I tidied up my hastily scrawled notes as the film crews cleared their equipment and the other reporters rushed back to their newsrooms. I wrote parts of a first draft on my notepad until one of the hospital cleanup staff came in to vacuum the stage. I put on my windbreaker and tucked the notepad in a pocket and meandered out, retracing my path through convoluted corridors to the main entrance just in time to spot Kay Erwin, Stuart Holloman, and Vincent Nagumo saying goodbye on the stone steps. I homed in on them, but they went in three separate directions. Kay came in through the automatic sliding glass doors as I was going out. I paused to shoot a quick question at her. “Why tell us anything, Kay? Your job would be simpler if you kept this under your hat.”
“Off the record?” she asked.
“Sure, okay.”
“News like this is dangerous if it leaks. Fenton’s neighbors in Sumas are wondering what’s up. It might cause a panic if people knew we were trying to hide something. So, I’m under orders to handle it the way I did today and get the word out as low-key as possible.”
“Orders from whom?”
“Let’s just say high places.”
“High places in Washington D.C.?”
The spooked expression reappeared. “I can’t tell you any more.”
I disengaged from her with a nod and a quick wave. I had other questions, for other people. I hurried down the steps, but my prime target, Nagumo, had quickly vanished. Holloman was meat and potatoes for me too, and I caught him at the curb just as he was about to get into a silver limousine marked “Immune Corporation” that was waiting for him.
“Dr. Holloman,” I called politely. He had already grasped the door handle. He held onto it as he turned to eye me carefully.
“I would like to get some more detail on your plans,” I said.
He thought for a second, and then shrugged his round shoulders. “I suppose I could give you some time. But not right now. I’m due back at ImCo for a board meeting.”
Sensing an interview dissolving like a sea fog, I upped the ante. “I think this story might make Newsweek, or at least the cover of Biotechnology Weekly. I have their editor’s ear.”
He read my face for a second, and then responded with a slow nod. “Call my secretary this afternoon. She’ll schedule a get-together tomorrow morning.”
I let him climb into the passenger seat without further molestation. As the limo drove away, I paused at the curb, thinking that I had the makings of a good story coming together. The interview I had
just arranged could turn out well for both sides. I would get a scoop worthy of Newsweek and Holloman would get what most capitalists want: plenty of people reading about the company’s prospects for making money. Holloman could expect some of those readers to buy ImCo stock and boost his net worth a couple more miles into the stratosphere. For me, a story was the payoff - a smoking hot story.
Earlier on that drizzly Seattle morning, I had parked my Mustang in the rattletrap housing-project neighborhood that surrounds Seattle Public Health Hospital, and hiked a couple of blocks to the main entrance. I strolled back to my Mustang with mixed feelings. Smallpox is a scary thing. The fact that I had never been vaccinated suddenly seemed like a big deal. Just the same, a great story bubbled inside me like strong coffee brewing. I fetched my car and drove back to the parking lot near my writing office in the Pioneer Square District. Bounding up the four flights of stairs, I unlocked the green enameled wood-and-glass door of the little garret and plunked down at my writing desk. I immediately called Dr. Holloman’s secretary. She had been notified, and duly arranged an interview for the only time the next day when Holloman could spare a few minutes of face time, 9 am.
After that I wandered down to the waterfront and grabbed a quick lunch of fish and chips at Ivar’s Seafood Bar. I ate outside on the pier. Enjoying a few sunbreaks that cut the chill of the midday air and inhaling smells of fish, garlic vinegar, and seawater, I listened to ferry honks echoing off the skyscrapers of the Seattle skyline above me. While digesting lunch and the news I had just heard, I flung the last of my fries down to the seagulls riding the green swells of Puget Sound. Then I went back and spent the afternoon at my desk computer, polishing off a first draft of everything I had heard. I figured I would add a lot more detail the next day and have something presentable to an editor by the day after that. I went home that evening knowing the article might just make Newsweek if it covered the subject well and they didn’t dispatch a horde of their own reporters too quickly.
I looked forward to walking ImCo’s halls again.
But I was clueless as to how personal this story would become.
Chapter 2
My full name is Phineus Cornelius Morton. Phineus is after my Greco-American great-uncle Phineus Costas, whom I never met. Cornelius is my mother’s whim. My friends call me Fin. I make a decent living writing articles on medical subjects for the web, newspapers, magazines, and occasional TV or radio reports. Some of what you read and hear about Ebola virus, AIDS, herpes, influenza, and the workings of the human body originated on my writing desk. I don’t have much formal medical training. What I have, came mostly from US Army specialist training as a medical-response Humvee driver. I plied that trade in Baghdad’s Green Zone, and later the mountains of Afghanistan. Nowadays, I follow the doctors and medical researchers of the Pacific Northwest. I’ve got a coyote’s nose for news.
The morning on the day of the Holloman interview found me on my normal headings. I drove my shiny midnight-blue Ford Mustang to the Pioneer Square lot where I rent a monthly space. Then, as on many another misty Seattle morning, I wandered across the mossy, cobbled pavement of Occidental Park and stopped in at Cafe Perugia for a triple shot of espresso, which I doctored with a pinch of raw sugar. I sipped my caffeine overdose as I scuffed up the steps of the renovated old brick building where I rent my writing office.
The fifth-floor garret is an old fashioned cubbyhole of a place with sand-blasted brick walls and a single wood-framed window trimmed in dark-green chipped paint, and streaked outside with diesel soot and seagull poop. The old wood-framed, beveled-glass office door is trimmed in the same green paint as the windows. The small room’s worn Douglas-fir floor still has dark varnish in the corners. I often leave the door ajar to be accessible to the other top-floor tenants, an old Jewish bookbinder, and a gay-and-lesbian marriage counselor, neither of whom ever visit me.
I’ve got a tarnished brass floor lamp with a scorched parchment shade. I clicked it on to banish the gloom of gray daylight, and plunked down at my desk facing the rain-and bird-flecked windowpane. The desk is big, and pretty nice - made of polished oak. It’s the only good piece of furniture in the place. In fact, it’s just about the only piece. There’s an old chair with maroon flower-patterned upholstery in one corner of the room, for interviewees and guests who come by on rare occasions. Three vintage hunter-green metal file cabinets and a small table with my printer on it take up the rest of the space. There’s a white-plastic-faced clock on one wall with a white electric cord drooping across the brickwork to a retrofitted metal outlet near the floor. On the opposite wall I’ve hung my bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington, Journalism major. My office is a cozy place.
I didn’t start work right away. I hadn’t slept too well the night before for obvious reasons. Smallpox and its epidemic implications are not the stuff of sweet dreams. And the dim, wet, gray morning sky hadn’t helped me get my day off to a quick start. I let my brain idle for a few minutes in neutral, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. I love Perugia’s coffee like a boy dog loves a girl dog in heat. I sniffed the aroma coming off that triple shot, somewhere between macadamia nut and dark chocolate, and understood why it has become a drug-like necessity in my morning life. While charging up for the day’s big event, I turned on my computer and erased the morning schedule from my calendar. I had nothing interesting planned anyway, except a visit with a UW professor who was studying the psychological effect of sunshine after a long stretch of rainy days. I figured he hadn’t had much sun in recent weeks on which to base his work. And I knew he would still be analyzing glum-faced college kids long after my story about Holloman and smallpox was published, and long after I had sipped a thousand more cups of Cafe Perugia’s sun substitute.
My mental gears began to mesh. I searched the Internet for the subject of today’s interview, smallpox. I wanted to be up to speed when Holloman talked medical details. I browsed through records on Medline and found some pretty good dope in the Centers for Disease Control’s smallpox section. I rechecked a bunch of pages I had already read on U.S. smallpox preparedness, and got the impression there was a bland assumption the CDC could handle any anticipated smallpox event. Their contention that a bioterrorist attack with smallpox was unlikely rang a little hollow under the circumstances. I searched on. A page headed National Medical Board offered some meaty quotes. “Smallpox is considered among the most virulent diseases of mankind. The causative agent, variola virus, moves from person to person through physical contact, or through the air when victims cough or sneeze during the prodromal phase of the disease.” On another page I found an odd bit: a brief discussion of variolation, the old practice of deliberately scratching the skin with the virus in hope of giving the patient a mild rash followed by immunity. This technique, used in the 1700s and 1800s, sometimes led to a fatal illness that arose more quickly than when patients were exposed normally.
I imagined Kay Erwin visiting these same pages in preparation for her press meeting. If she had, then she would have choked on one note. “In the great epidemics of the past, the virus propagated itself from person to person with extreme efficiency. If one family member came down with smallpox, the entire household might be killed or debilitated.”
And another note. “Smallpox scourged the Old World with plagues of mass death first recorded by the ancient Chinese and Egyptians. It was the deadliest of human infections until the end of the 18th century, when Edward Jenner developed the first smallpox vaccine. Jenner instituted a campaign of inoculation that continued for two centuries, culminating in 1977 when the World Health Organization announced the complete absence of the disease on earth. Smallpox was declared extinct. It exists today only in research laboratories.”
That seemed like plenty of background, but I went looking for more sensational stuff. I googled into the deep ocean of unofficial crap and turned up a web page yammering about experiments by Australian researchers looking for a way to exterminate a plague of mice. They genetically alter
ed the mousepox virus by adding an immunosuppressive gene encoding the interleukin 4 protein, which upped the lethality of mousepox from 20 percent to 100 percent - meaning that every mouse injected with the engineered virus died. The web site hooted some jaw dropping questions about what might happen if somebody did that with the human virus.
But you can’t trust any old web site, so I clicked off along another link trail. Eventually I hit some gritty stuff about Washington State on a page posted by a member of the Duwamish Indian Tribe, a descendant of Seattle’s original native people. It was another jaw-dropper.
“When American settlers first sailed into Puget Sound in the 1850s, a thriving Indian culture existed. The natives lived well in a world of salmon, cedar longhouses, totem poles, elaborate costumed dances, and primitive prosperity. But smallpox came with the Americans on ships from San Francisco and the Orient. Within three years it had wiped out most of the native people, killing ninety percent of some villages in a single year. Corpses lay across the floors of longhouses once filled with the joyous screams of children, now silent forever. The tidal wave of smallpox swept away an entire way of life and left mass graves that can still be seen on the reservations today. During the plague, Old Chief Seattle made his most famous speech, before the governor of the new Washington Territory. In that speech he gave up most of his tribe’s lands to the newcomers without much complaint, saying it was fitting the new settlers should use the land because his people had all but vanished from the places they knew and loved. He mourned his people, brought low by an enemy they could not see or defend against. He said, ‘Your God loves your people and hates mine…he makes your people stronger every day…while mine ebb away like a fast-receding tide.’
Queasy thoughts struck me. Could smallpox impact today’s society as hard as it hit Chief Seattle’s people? Experience told me modern medicine could answer any threat. But my guts told me differently. Hadn’t Kay Erwin said something was strange about this virus? Why was that FBI fellow, Nagumo, hanging around?