by Thomas Hopp
McKean nodded thoughtfully. “You risked a lot when you decided to rescue us.”
Jameela sighed. “I hoped not to be discovered. And now my parents may be in mortal danger because of my choice.”
“A brave choice,” said McKean. “And your brothers, where are they now?”
“My elder brother is safe in England. But my younger brother, I do not know. He has disappeared. He was an angry young man. He expressed sympathy for Islamic radicals. In the Arab Spring demonstrations, he marched with them. I am afraid he will follow a man like Sheik Abdul-Ghazi. I have heard him quote the Qur’an’s most warlike words.”
“An unfortunate emphasis,” said McKean. “There is as much in the Qur’an about peace as about war.”
“You have read the Qur’an?” she asked.
McKean nodded. “I have delved into all the great religions of the world, although not as deeply as I know the scientific literature.”
“Then you know Islam is not fundamentally a violent religion,” said Jameela.
“Yes,” said McKean. “It says, ‘Requite evil with good and he who is your enemy will become your dearest friend.’ That’s clearly a call to peace over war. I take it you subscribe to the voice of moderation in the Qur’an, Jameela.”
“Yes,” she said emphatically. “My family history requires it. You see, my father is a Muslim, but my mother is a Coptic Christian. In our home, we learned a simple faith. Like Jesus, Mohammed’s message was peaceful: believe in one God, Allah ar-Rahim, a God who is merciful; Allah ar-Rahman, a God who is compassionate. I don’t believe Allah wants anyone killed for any cause.”
“Allah as-Salam,” said McKean.
“Exactly,” replied Jameela, “Allah is the bestower of peace.”
“And you’re Coptic Christian as well,” said McKean.
“I celebrate Christmas and Easter, and other Christian holidays, as well as Muslim,” she said. “Do you know that the celebration of Easter continues a forty-five-hundred-year-old springtime festival from the times of the Pharaohs, Sham El-Nessim, celebrated by Muslims too?”
“I did not know that,” McKean admitted.
She smiled. “Are you a man of faith, Dr. McKean?”
He smiled in return. “Suffice it to say, I have no doubts.”
“Really? I would expect a scientist to have many doubts about matters of faith.”
“But I am not in doubt.” He smiled obscurely. “I am absolutely convinced that I don’t know. I’m as pure an agnostic as a person can be. There may be a God and an afterlife, or there may not, but I am sure I don’t know the answer. I hold closely to the Greek origin of the word agnostic, which means, quite simply, not knowing.”
“I have never doubted,” said Jameela. “And you, Fin?”
I adjusted the gauze of my bandage. “I hope that Allah, or Jesus, or somebody, will get us out of this mess.”
“God will save you,” said Jameela, “if you have faith. Do you?”
“Tough question,” I said. “I go back and forth. One day I’ll look at a glorious sunrise or the simple joy of a child, and I believe there must be a God who made it all. But then I see people committing mass murder, torture, genocide - and I can’t believe there is a God sitting on the sidelines while it happens. Let’s just say I’m confused.”
She turned to McKean. “But is there nothing you believe unconditionally, unquestioningly?”
“Very little,” said McKean. “Although I do have a deep and abiding belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”
Jameela laughed, not taking his meaning.
“I’m serious,” he said. “American Christianity is a lesson for the world. The fact that our most widely celebrated holidays are such great fun, and that we exalt children and indulge them with gifts, probably says more about the good nature of Americans than anything else we do.”
“Bravo!” cried Jameela.
“But what’s this?” McKean turned to the TV set, which we had neglected during our breakfast conversation. On the screen was the same female reporter we had seen the night before. Illuminated by morning sun, she stood near a Humvee marked FBI, parked by a familiar stone gate, now crisscrossed with police crime-scene tape. I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
“We have just been briefed,” said the reporter, “by Special Agent Vincent Nagumo, on events that transpired overnight here at the Arabians Unlimited horse ranch. Police and FBI units detained two men in this black truck.” She indicated a familiar large black pickup, pulled out behind the gate. Its front windshield was smashed and bullet holes riddled its fenders. “They then entered the ranch about midnight. Many shots were fired. Two suspects were critically wounded, but no injuries were reported among law enforcement personnel. Seven people were taken into custody at the ranch’s main house.”
“Seven?” said Jameela. “But more than a dozen lived there.”
“These were transported to the FBI’s Seattle facilities for interrogation. All were of Middle Eastern origins, but none was the reputed owner of the property, Sheik Abdul-Ghazi. The Sheik eluded capture, but his family was detained, including his wife and four children. Three other men arrested on the property claimed to be recently hired help who cared for the Sheik’s horses.”
“That’s not true!” said Jameela. “I cared for the horses myself.”
The reporter walked to an equestrian fence beside the gate and held out a hand with upturned palm. A horse thrust its pink muzzle under the top slat, nuzzling in vain for a treat.
“Zahirah!” cried Jameela, her face lighting with joy. A moment later, the black stallion reached his head over the fence to nuzzle the same empty hand. “Majid! Oh, my beauties found their way home.”
“Police and FBI agents,” the reporter went on, “were responding to reports of a clandestine operation here, said to be infecting victims with smallpox. However, no evidence of such an operation was found, nor any sign of a pit full of bodies that had been rumored to be here. There were no signs of captives, no smallpox, and no bodies. Just a herd of Arabian horses, including these two - and they’re not talking.”
“That’s impossible!” I exclaimed.
“Authorities say their investigation is at a standstill. However, they consider their sources of information credible, so the search will continue. The three arrested men were in violation of immigration laws and will be held along with the Sheik’s family pending his apprehension.”
The reporter signed off, and when a man shouting about a furniture warehouse sale came on, I lowered the volume.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “We weren’t seeing things, were we? The redhead, she’s one dead body for sure.”
McKean drew his fingers over his chin. “The Sheik must have cleared out right after we escaped. He surely knew a response by the authorities was likely. He must have retrieved the bodies and dumped them elsewhere. And then he absconded with any other evidence.”
“Including that damn virus,” I said.
McKean looked at me closely. “You know, Fin,” he said, “you don’t look too well.”
“You’re so pale,” Jameela remarked, looking into my face.
A chill ran through me. Suddenly I felt as bad as they said I looked. I broke a sweat as McKean continued eying me carefully. “Your pallor might be an early manifestation of illness. I feel okay, myself.”
“But you were vaccinated when you were young, and I wasn’t.”
McKean nodded affirmatively, continuing to observe me closely. “A fever arising in you, first, would be consistent with our immunization histories.”
My heart began to palpitate. There was a long moment of silence.
And then a tone came from the computer at the on-duty station. McKean hurried out, sat down and said, “Hello, Janet.”
He smiled, but as Jameela and I followed him, his smile faded. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.
Over McKean’s shoulder, we saw Janet, sitting at her laboratory desk as before. But now her
eyes were damp with tears. She held in her hands a large glass jar with a blue plastic lid, from which protruded a short length of stainless steel pipe - a freeze-drying flask. She held it up so we could see that there was no white vaccine powder inside. It was empty.
“Someone - ” Janet’s voice cracked with emotion, ” - got into the lab last night. We can’t figure out how they got past security. They took the sample jar from the freeze-drier and washed the vaccine down the sink.” She hung her head and sobbed.
“Who would do such a thing?” Jameela cried.
McKean sat in silent thought for a moment. And then he shook his head. “That’s it, then,” he said. “They’ve beaten us.” He looked at his bandaged arm. “Time is running out.”
Janet sat bleary-eyed and trembling. “I stayed up half the night. I finished it! I put it on the freeze drier and went home to get some sleep. If only I had stayed - “
“Don’t blame yourself,” McKean said to her softly. “You’ll just have to start all over again, that’s all.”
“Of course I will, immediately. But will it be too late?”
“Answer: probably - for us. But for America: no.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “But I want to help you,” she sobbed.
“I’m afraid there’s no help for us,” said McKean, “except our own innate immunity, and that’s in serious doubt given the death of Fenton and the illness of his family. Fin’s already showing some signs…”
A wave of dizziness washed over me. I felt myself trembling. Fear was part of my reaction, but the bigger part was rage. I slammed a fist on the duty-station counter. “Who did this? How the hell did someone know what to look for?”
McKean shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m out of ideas.” He looked brittle.
“Our security guards were on the alert,” said Janet.
“Not alert enough,” I growled.
“Dr. Holloman has increased security,” Janet replied. “He’s brought in two Seattle police officers to patrol the halls.”
“Now that it’s too late,” I muttered.
“It will have to do,” said McKean. “The next batch has got to be completed as soon as possible. You know what you have to do, Janet. You’d better get to work.”
“Okay.” Janet leaned forward to switch off her computer. “Goodbye, Peyton.” She took a long look at him.
McKean nodded a silent farewell and clicked off the video window.
“Who would do such a thing?” Jameela asked.
“An inside job?” I suggested.
“It’s easy to think that,” McKean agreed. “No one has ever gotten past security at ImCo. But it’s hard to imagine anyone inside ImCo wanting the vaccine to fail.”
“The ones most immediately hurt,” I suggested, “would be you and I. Maybe this is directed at us. How about Holloman himself?”
“Answer: no. He may be angry with me, but not enough to jeopardize human lives - or ImCo’s profits.”
“Then who?”
“I’m drawing a blank. It does seem like someone wants us dead.”
He got up and wandered away down the hall, absorbed in thought.
After a few moments of silence, Jameela put a hand on my shoulder. “You are so pale,” she said. “You should get back in bed.”
McKean came back and stopped in front of the counter.
“More depressing news,” he murmured.
I shrugged. “Okay, hit me with it. What could be worse than what we just heard?”
“This.” He laid his forearm on the counter and pulled the gauze away from his wound. The gash looked better, already healing around the black stitches. But the surrounding skin had reddened for several inches. And on one side of the red area was a single, small, white dot.
I gasped. “Is it…?”
“Answer: yes,” said McKean. “It’s a pock, classic in form. Note the pus-white color, and the outline of bright red inflammation around it. My first pock, but I’m sure it’s not my last.”
I tugged the gauze back from my wound. A half-dozen white spots surrounded it.
“Oh, my God! I’m worse off than you!”
McKean nodded. “Again, Fin, you’re the more susceptible one. The virus hasn’t disseminated throughout our bodies yet, but these spots are the first steps along the way. The infection will gain momentum with time. The old vaccine clearly is not working.”
Chapter 15
Never in my life have I hit a point as low as the hours following the discovery of the pocks. I lay down on my bed, and Jameela sat near me, offering comforting words. But she couldn’t sooth away the obvious fact that the disease was gaining ground. McKean wandered the halls in a manic mood, muttering to himself in polysyllabic scientific jargon, and occasionally shouting out in exasperation.
He came back into the room mumbling something about “traitors” and “turncoats.” And he abruptly stopped and pointed up at the TV on the wall. “Hey, what’s this?”
A late-morning news bulletin had interrupted a cooking show that Jameela and I had been ignoring. The camera view showed a freeway stretching over flat, shrubby grassland dotted with cattle, and a mountainous horizon. A white semi truck was overturned in the median, its cab crushed and the trailer’s sides crumpled. The ground around it was strewn with dozens of bodies covered in bloodied white sheets.
The camera panned past the vehicle to a black-haired female reporter, identified as Andrea Winchell in the logo line at the bottom of the screen. She held a microphone to the mouth of a state trooper in a smoky bear hat. As I turned the volume up, the trooper said, “The ones that weren’t killed in the crash came out shooting. They had pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons, you name it. We backed off and called in a SWAT team. It was a real bad scene for a while, but they couldn’t get away. Country’s too open. We had ‘em pinned down from the start. There’s a good fifty dead men there.’
Winchell faced the camera. “There you have it, from the Colorado State Trooper who was involved from the start of the chase. Apparently, there were no survivors among the occupants of the truck. All of the men chose to die in what has been described as a fierce gun battle with police and the SWAT team. But the men didn’t go down easily. Several hand grenades were thrown from the truck. One destroyed a state patrol car in the early minutes of the shootout.” The camera swung to show a squad car, windowless and blackened by flames, still smoldering. “But in this open country, the men had nowhere to run, correct, Trooper Harris?”
“That’s right. We held them down until a SWAT team of sharpshooters came in by helicopter. They were able to stand off a safe distance and set up sniping positions, and use the helicopter as a fire-point too. The perpetrators kept shooting, so we had to kill them all, one-by-one. None of them wanted to be taken alive.”
Winchell said, “The pursuing officers, including Trooper Harris here, are being called heroes by the Governor. The chase that led to the shootout began near the Utah border and continued for twenty miles before police used spike strips to blow out the truck’s tires, sending it off the pavement at high speed. The gun battle lasted several hours, during which traffic on this busy east-west freeway was halted by authorities, and backed up for miles. Other details are sketchy right now. The purpose of so many young men traveling in the back of a truck remains unknown.”
“Not to us,” I said.
“One thing is certain,” the reporter went on. “No one here has lived to tell about it.” The camera panned across the grassy landscape and the dozens of bloody, sheet-covered corpses.
“Mike!” McKean exclaimed in anguish. “I he must have died in the crash.”
“Or was shot by a jihadi,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” said Jameela.
The news station went to a commercial and I turned the volume down. None of us said much, until the computer beeped again. McKean hurried to the on-duty station and we followed. Janet was on the screen with a smile lighting her face.
“You won’t believe thi
s,” she bubbled as McKean sat, and Jameela and I crowded over his shoulders.
“Try me,” said McKean.
“They dropped one of the analytical sample tubes on the floor. I found it.”
McKean jumped visibly in his chair. “How much material?”
She held up a tiny plastic test tube in her rubber-gloved hand. “A routine sample at the last step of synthesis, taken to monitor the completion of the final reaction. Maybe two milligrams. Just a speck.”
“That speck is enough to hang a hope on,” McKean exclaimed. He leaned back in his chair and his face blanked like a computer screen doing massive calculations. “It might be enough!” he finally said. “Enough vaccine for a bare minimum immunization of three people. Fin, Jameela, and me!”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” Janet agreed. “I’ll detach the vaccine from the beads with hydrofluoric acid, and dry it in a little flask on the freeze dryer. I can get it to you by mid-afternoon.”
“Excellent!” McKean replied. “Meanwhile, have Robert keep moving on the new large-scale synthesis to replace what’s been lost. I have a hunch many people’s lives may depend on it.”
“He’s already working on it,” said Janet.
“Perfect!”
McKean’s face was lit by new hope.
Sometime past 3 pm, Janet arrived outside the window wall, white-coated and delighted to see Peyton McKean on his feet and still showing no general signs of illness, though chills had driven me to my bed several times. Janet held up her precious cargo of vaccine. It was a small, clear-plastic test tube about two inches long. In its pointed, conical bottom was what looked like a tiny half-drop of milk.
“That’s it?” I asked.
McKean nodded. “She simply suspended the dry powder in a drop of saline. It’s not much, but enough for three if we’re careful.”