McKean 01 The Jihad Virus

by Thomas Hopp

  “That’s Janet,” McKean said. “She’s just brought the virus up from the delivery bay.” Noticing McKean, Janet shot him a quick smile and then turned her attention back to the counter in front of her. A cubic white Styrofoam box, about one foot on all sides, sat on the stainless steel surface. Janet seemed casual about it, although every surface was marked with biohazard warning stickers: red rectangles with evil-looking black trefoil biohazard symbols on them. I imagined myself holding that box at arm’s length and still finding it too close for comfort.

  “So those are adequate precautions?” I asked. A chill raced along my spine as Janet undid the clear sealing tape that held the lid on the box.

  “Hmm?” McKean looked at me blankly, as if I had disturbed other more important thoughts.

  “The package,” I said. “Is she being careful enough with it?”

  He nodded. “It’s very dangerous at the core, but if the people at the hospital did their job properly, there are multiple layers of sealed containment before you get to the virus.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then no amount of gloving or white-coating will keep her safe - or us, for that matter.”

  My mouth dropped. He began to chuckle. “Really, Fin. Have a little faith in our survival instincts, and our containment facilities.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm my heart rate as I watched Janet lift the lid from the Styrofoam box. Goose bumps rose on my arms as I watched what seemed like Pandora’s big moment. But no cloud of demons arose from the cube when she got the lid off. McKean glanced at me sidelong, and then back at Janet.

  “Relax,” he said. “She’s protected by much more than just that container.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Absolutely. The box is only there to protect the viral sample if it should be dropped, and to keep it cooled on ice. The real bio-safety controls are inside that. Hence, the relatively casual handling up to this point. There are more layers inside the box, the first of which you are about to see.”

  Janet reached a gloved hand into the box and lifted out a cylindrical canister of brown cardboard about the size and shape of a one-quart oatmeal box. This carton had a biohazard label where the picture of the chubby Quaker usually goes.

  “That’s the outer canister of the triple packaging system,” McKean explained. “It has a screw cap and more than enough absorbent material inside to soak up the viral sample if it should spill. And we’re still not through with bio-containment.”

  Janet moved to a ten-foot wide stainless-steel-and-glass cabinet on one side of the room, and placed the container inside a small hatch at one end. She closed the hatch door and sealed it with a revolving metal wheel.

  McKean said, “You’re quite safe now, Fin. That’s the last time the virus will be handled directly, and it’s still inside three layers of sterile packaging.”

  Janet moved to the front of the cabinet, where four round holes entered its lower wall. These were openings for two pairs of integral arm-length black rubber gloves.

  “That glove box,” McKean explained as Janet slipped her arms into two of the holes, “is the only place Janet and I will handle the virus, using gloves that are sealed tightly into the walls of the cabinet. The whole box is airtight and under negative pressure. It’s a compact version of the BSL-4 facilities at CDC and Fort Detrick. It’s secure enough to contain any microbe, no matter how deadly.”

  “If you say so.”

  With her arms up-to-the-elbows in the gloves, Janet looked through a window into the cabinet and picked up something that was beyond my view, presumably the virus in its packaging. She worked quickly, going through motions of unscrewing the cap of the canister and withdrawing its contents. McKean eyed me sidelong as I watched.

  “She’s taking out the inner canister. It’s similar to the outer canister but half its size, with more absorbent in it. Next, she’ll take the sample vial out of the inner canister.”

  “What sort of sample vial?”

  “A screw-capped plastic test tube with the virus inside it, in cell culture fluid like what Robert is making. Hopefully, the screw-cap of the virus tube is still sealed tight.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  “Janet will drop everything and rush out here screaming.”

  I recoiled a step from the window and McKean broke into a broad grin. “You really are a Nervous Nelly,” he quipped.

  I smiled at my own edginess, and McKean’s counter-display of professional coolness.

  He shrugged. “At this point, a spill would be no great problem. The BSL-4 cabinet’s interior is kept sterile by ultraviolet lighting inside its top. Any leaks in there would spill into a virus-lethal environment that we routinely scrub with hypochlorite bleach. The chamber is hermetically sealed off from Janet and everyone else.”

  I watched Janet closely, happy to see that she continued her work without concern.

  McKean said, “Even the packaging won’t come out of that cabinet until it’s been immersed in a bath of chemicals that kill microbes, basically bleach plus detergent. The virus itself won’t come out again until we’ve fragmented its DNA into harmless pieces like we did with the Congo River virus. After that, we can bring the fragments into the main lab here, where we have all the equipment we need to do our work. Out here, we put on gloves and lab coats to avoid contaminating the sample, rather than the other way around.”

  “Really?”

  “The human body is covered in microbes, Fin, no matter how hygienic one tries to be. Most of those microbes are beneficial to us. But they wreak havoc if they come in contact with viral DNA fragments. DNA is really quite fragile.”

  “So chopping the virus’s DNA into fragments is the crucial step for safety’s sake,” I said. “How do you do that?”

  “By a complex process,” McKean replied. “It involves cloning. The first step, which I will personally carry out in a few minutes, is to extract the DNA from the virus and chop it into smaller fragments of known size with Hind-III.”

  “With what?” I asked when McKean pronounced the word. I thought he said, “Hindi three,” referring to the language of India.

  “Hin-dee three.” McKean mouthed the syllables slowly. “Suffice it to say it’s a protein molecule that cuts the virus’s DNA at specific places along its length. We isolate the pieces and splice them together with circular rings of carrier DNA. We put the rings, called plasmids, inside live Escherichia coli bacteria where they multiply. We isolate single bacterial cells and grow them into colonies of millions of identical copies, or clones, each of which carries the same circular plasmid with its chunk of viral DNA. We can analyze the DNA as we please after that.”

  “Complicated,” I remarked.

  “But in the end,” McKean said, “relatively simple and safe. Each fragment of viral DNA ends up in its own separate harmless E. coli culture. You can grow it ad infinitum to produce as much viral DNA as you need.”

  “Clever.”

  “Then, using DNA sequencing techniques similar to what Beryl is doing now, you can read the sequences of the DNA fragments like a series of books.”

  “How safe are you while you’re doing all this?”

  “Very,” McKean asserted. “Because each clone of E. coli carries only a small portion of the viral DNA, there is no chance of the virus escaping. It’s like working with a dangerous criminal, but only after separating his head, arms, and legs to study them individually. He wouldn’t be too likely to escape and commit another crime at that point. Not even with all the King’s horses and all the King’s men helping.”

  “Won’t there be a lot of DNA pieces to keep track of?”

  “Answer: yes. The smallpox genome is one of the largest of any virus.”

  “So how will you sort it out after you break it up? What’s to keep you from ending up with E. coli containing just random bits and pieces of viral DNA?”

  “You’re pretty smart, for a reporter,” McKean said. “The secret is in how the Hind-III enzy
me cuts the viral DNA - only at specific segments where the sequence A-A-G-C-T-T occurs. This sequence exists at just a few places within the viral DNA, so Hind-III yields a reproducible set of nineteen sub-fragments.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said, “although I’m still a little hazy on how it all works.”

  McKean smiled as if pleased by what comprehension I had of his complex subject. He went on. “The nineteen fragments all have unique sizes. The smallest of them is a string of several hundred DNA code letters, and doesn’t contain much that we’re interested in. The largest fragment contains over twenty thousand letters. Our analysis of the virus will begin with the larger fragments. How we use them to obtain sequence data or to make a vaccine are stories for another time. I’ll be glad to explain when we get that far, in a few days or weeks.”

  Janet Emerson withdrew a hand from the glove box and waved to catch McKean’s eye, and then gave him a come here signal by crooking a blue-gloved finger.

  “No more time for explanations,” he concluded, moving toward the outer door of an airlock about the size of a closet. Turning the latch on the airlock door, he added, “She’s got the virus unpackaged and waiting for the extraction and enzyme treatment. I’ll be tied up for some time doing the Hind-III digestion, so I’ll trust you to show yourself out. You can watch us for as long as you like. But it’s a rather lengthy procedure.”

  He shut the door to seal himself inside, then covered his shoes with a pair of paper boots. He put on a hair cover and plastic gloves and went into the containment room with Janet. They put their arms in the two sets of glove openings and immediately began working in tight unison, carrying out a series of manipulations of the virus that I could only imagine, my view being obstructed by the walls of the glove box.

  I stayed for almost an hour, watching them work and occasionally getting a chill when I pondered how Peyton McKean and Janet Emerson were manipulating a live and deadly virus that had already brought at least one person to the brink of death. As I observed them passing materials back and forth inside the glove box with the harmonious efficiency of two long-familiar lab-mates, I realized something. Despite my specialization in medical writing, most of the details of genetic engineering were beyond my grasp. It was a phenomenally complex business.

  McKean and Emerson’s sedate chatting, which I could see but not hear through the safety glass, convinced me the virus was in good hands and would indeed be subdued as McKean intended. I found myself thinking, though, that McKean was a more impressive - and a more peculiar - scientist than any other I had met.

  Eventually I decided I was overloaded with facts and had better start typing before the details faded. I tapped on the window glass and waved goodbye to the busy pair, and then did as McKean had suggested and showed myself out. I took the elevator to the ground floor, dropped off my pass at the front desk and went out onto the streets. I inhaled the lush Seattle air freshened by a passing rain squall, and let the tension of the previous hours pass. I felt the euphoria a writer gets when he has great copy in his head. I walked briskly in the dazzling light of an afternoon sunbreak, hurrying through Pioneer Square to Cafe Perugia, where I bought a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich and a triple shot to take back to my writing office. I ate while feverishly typing the day’s observations into a nicely expanding manuscript. My mind buzzed with more questions for McKean. Would he be able to determine how the virus had evaded Fenton’s immunity by reading its DNA sequence? Could he tell a naturally mutated virus from an artificially mutated one?

  There were more dimensions to this story than I had hoped for. Given how things would turn out, that was still an understatement.

  Chapter 4

  I left my office a little after 5 pm. I wanted to catch the evening TV news and see if the local or national media had picked up the preceding day’s press conference. So far, Kay Erwin’s low-key announcement had made headlines in the Post Intelligencer Online and Seattle Times newspaper, but it had been delivered out-of-phase for the New York Times and East-Coast television media. That wouldn’t last long.

  I pulled my Mustang off the lot and drove up First Avenue to north Belltown, where the Space Needle’s saucer deck hovers overhead like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I make my home in an old four-story brick walk-up building called “Denny Heights” by my landlord and “Dingy Heights” by me. I live alone a small studio apartment, a refugee from a recent live-in romance that fell through. All in all, it suits me. Even my solitude is okay. Freelance writing is a lonesome business and a quiet household keeps my productivity high.

  I have a monthly parking space in a small garage across the street. I crossed to my apartment building and scuffed up the stone staircase to the second-floor landing. My neighbor across the hall, Penny Worthe, has a habit of coming out her door just as I’m going in mine.

  “Have you heard the news?” she asked. “It’s just terrible.”

  “Smallpox?” I replied.

  She looked at me oddly. “Haven’t you heard about the kidnapping? A girl was taken from the Jungle Gym nightclub, just two blocks from here. I was there last Saturday night. It’s freaking me out.”

  “I’m sure you’re safe,” I said.

  “Meaning I’m not much to look at, right?” she replied. “Mousy brown hair, not tall enough, too round in the curves. You figure a sexual predator would pass me by for someone more interesting.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you thought it.”

  “So you’re a mind reader now?” To make her feel better I said in an offhand way, “Okay, Penny, if I were a sexual predator you’d be the first person I would prey upon. Is that better?”

  She looked at me coyly. “Tonight works for me.”

  “G’night Penny,” I said, turning my key in the latch.

  I let myself in and put the six o’clock news on TV and watched out of the corner of an eye while I cooked dinner. I was waiting for the smallpox news to break, but got Penny’s kidnapping story instead. The anchorwoman went into detail about a young redheaded woman who had been missing for four days after last being seen at the Jungle Gym. I started frying a steak on the stove and got some broccoli heating in the microwave while the kidnapping story went on without letup. I cut up some potatoes and put them in a frying pan with hot olive oil. I unbagged a ready-made salad and still the story just wouldn’t quit, so I grabbed the remote to flip to another channel. Just before I hit the button, the anchorwoman said something that stopped me.

  “Police describe the kidnapper as a dark-complexioned man with a Middle Eastern accent.”

  Given that terrorists were still mixed in my thinking about the smallpox incident, I watched while the anchorwoman’s image dissolved into a tight shot of a distraught woman in her early twenties addressing a street reporter’s microphone in front of a suburban home.

  “He was very dark and handsome,” she said. “He bought us drinks and kept asking Charlotte to dance. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and mustache. Very…Arabic-looking…you know, jet black hair, olive skin, dark eyes, a heavy shadow of beard on his cheeks. And handsome - did I already say that?”

  The scene dissolved to a yearbook photo of Charlotte Keller. She looked young, like her friend, and was lightly freckled, with a head of thick, reddish-blond hair and a beautiful smile. The anchorwoman said, “Police request anyone having information to call them at - “

  The sputter of hot grease drew my attention back to the stove. The potatoes were browning to black on one side and my steak was getting way beyond bleu. I rescued them from their infernos and threw them onto a plate and sat down at my kitchenette table to eat. A gardening news segment came on after a commercial, so I picked up the remote and switched channels to try again. I grazed to the next news station while eating, and got more on the kidnapping, but no mention of smallpox. Apparently Kay Erwin’s assurances that the matter was contained had had their desired effect. It seemed to be a non-item, locally.

  At 6 pm, the
national news led off with the smallpox story. I was glad of the low-key spin they put on it. “We are told there is nothing to worry about,” the anchor announced. “The outbreak is contained at its source, the CDC is on the scene to take charge of cleanup, and no terrorist involvement is suspected.”

  So, there it was, just as Kay had intended, scary news coupled with copious reassurances to the public. War news came next, so I switched off the TV and finished my meal. Although Kay’s media manipulation had come off beautifully, I still had lingering doubts about how safe we really were.

  I transcribed the day’s notes onto my home computer, which is cloud-linked to my office computer. Then I decided to turn in early. I was in my loft bed by 9 pm. An uncomfortably odd assortment of thoughts kept me awake for some time - thoughts of viruses, missing girls, Middle Eastern men, and the apprehension I had seen on Kay Erwin’s face at the start of it all. I had an instinct that, despite many assurances to the contrary, all was not right. And perhaps far from it.

  * * * * *

  The next morning’s writing went well. In an hour before breakfast I bashed out the preliminary draft of a segment on ImCo’s involvement in handling the smallpox case. I planned to e-mail a submission to Newsweek the next day. I hustled off to my writing office, arrived, triple-shot espresso in hand, and downloaded the smallpox story from my Internet cloud. Just then, my desk phone rang.

  “Fin?” a half-familiar, thin voice asked from the other end. “Peyton McKean here. I called to invite you to see our first results. Janet and I worked late last night. And we’ve picked up the hint of something interesting.”

  “I’ll be there as quickly as I can!” I gulped the rest of my coffee, hurried down to the street, and jogged the seven blocks to the ImCo building. Once I was seated in McKean’s office, I watched while he and Janet discussed DNA data displayed on his desktop computer. “This is a map of the viral DNA from Mr. Fenton,” McKean said for my benefit, pointing at the left-hand of two tall ladder-like vertical streaks shown on the screen. “Compare it to a known sample of smallpox DNA, on the right.”