The Darkness Drops

by Peter Clement

  On March, 16, 2003, as the rest of America settled down in front of their TVs and tuned in the incessant drumming of bulletins building up to the invasion of Iraq, Anna kissed Kyra goodbye and set off to fight the war against SARS. Waiting for her flight in the Cathay Pacific lounge at Kennedy, she glanced through USA Today and came across a follow-up article about two people who’d contracted bird flu in Hong Kong a month earlier. One of the victims had died, but there’d been no further cases in twenty-four days. That outbreak, at least, appeared to be over. However, health authorities in Guangdong province now admitted that these two initial victims had visited a farm near Guangzhou two weeks prior to falling ill, and there they came in contact with a third woman who was already suffering from a respiratory illness. This woman also subsequently died but, had never received medical attention or diagnostic testing. “Whether she succumbed to avian influenza or SARS is academic. Her body was cremated and presents no further public risk,” a health official was quoted as saying.

  Anna had shuddered at the recklessness of such a cavalier pronouncement. No further public risk? The occurrence of bird flu in humans--a rare event to begin with--midst the outbreak of a completely new and different infectious disease, both incidents originating within the province most known to be a breeding ground for emergent infections, suggested the perfect storm of genetic flukes that virologists never even want to think about.

  That’s when she’d noticed the source quoted in the report--Dr. Wey Chen.

  “I see your former student is not only still free, but risen in stature,” Anna had said to a very startled Terry Ryder. “Become an official government-approved mouthpiece for the ministry of cover-ups and bullshit reassurances.” She’d reached for her cell phone and dialed him up on impulse, using WHO credentials to get past the protective nurse who’d initially refused to interrupt his shift at Honolulu General.

  “Anna?” He’d sounded incredulous to hear her voice. Little wonder. They hadn’t spoken since their conversation on the beach in Kailua the previous year. Not that he hadn’t tried to contact her innumerable times in the interval.

  “Tell me, Ryder, have you heard any more from her since my visit?”

  “Why, yes. Now and then.”

  “Did she ever mention meeting up with me?”

  “No! You actually saw her?”

  As if you didn’t know, Anna had thought.

  Or maybe he didn’t. She’d never figured out for certain whether he had been part of the setup. “Tell me, Ryder,” she said on a hunch, breaking a silence that had built up on the line like ice, “what’s the word on the dissident husband of your former student?”

  At first her question had elicited a stunned silence. “Why, it’s good news,” he finally said. “For some reason they set the guy free about a year ago. But why are you asking about him?” Terry sounded truly puzzled. Or knew enough to act that way.

  In any case, she’d hung up on him, having confirmed at least one of her suspicions. Human currency wasn’t much different in Guangzhou than it had been in Sverdlovsk. To get something, you gave them someone. For betraying a Russian-American doctor she didn’t even know, Wey Chen had regained her man.

  The train rattled over a set of switches, lurching Anna back to the present.

  So what had Yuri traded for his Anechka?

  She stared out the window, steadying herself.

  If winning her freedom had been the price, he would have done whatever the Chinese and Bori had asked, however despicable.

  The swirl of snow heightened the sense of speed, hurtling her through a white vortex. In an instant she rethought why someone would go to all the trouble of inviting her into China, use Wey Chen to set her up, and then let her go.

  As Yuri sat in the back seat of the car while they’d been driven to the Guangzhou airport, he talked of good guys and bad guys as if they were in one of those noir films he adored. But subsequent events in China bore him out. For more than a year, the entire world witnessed evidence of a struggle between hardliners and moderates, the climax coming with the appointment of a new premier, Wang Jiawei, in March of 2003. During the early days of his regime, newspapers were ripe with speculation that the old guard might have prevailed, Jiawei’s mentor having been General Bao Chao, the man who many held responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre. Such suspicions were further stoked by the fact that Jiawei himself had acted as chief negotiator with the students before the tanks rolled. But by lifting the code of secrecy surrounding the SARS outbreak within weeks of taking office, he proved those speculators wrong. Commentators soon saw him as a moderate who would lead China to build good relations and stronger economic ties with Western democracies. Shortly afterward, he visited the United States, and the then president made a very public show of looking him in the eye and declaring, “I see a trustworthy man, and can call him my friend.”

  I wonder if Jiawei was one of the good guys who got me out of Gangzhou, she’d thought at the time, nevertheless keeping herself assigned to Vietnam for the SARS fight. It seemed a good precaution to stay clear of China, at least for the near future. When she did ultimately return to Beijing, the idea that in his ascent to power, Wang Jiawei had freed her from some of the more regressive forces at work in his country gave her comfort. And as China had become progressively more open, she further relaxed her guard, sometimes even traveling there with Kyra during school breaks. They happened to be visiting Beijing together during the the bird flu outbreak in early January 2007, and were among the first American dignitaries to receive their shots at the Department of Public Health. A highly publicized event, it served as an endorsement, Chinese and Western health authorities joining forces to recommend that everyone be immunized as soon as possible. Wang Jiawei himself attended, getting his needle and officially offering China’s latest vaccine technology to the world, a gesture of unprecedented openness in the coming battle against the anticipated pandemic. She and Kyra even shook his hand, and the three of them posed for the cameras, showing off the Band-Aids on their arms after the inoculations. A man of small stature with his black hair slicked straight back, he wore a plain gray suit, a simple blue tie, and an ordinary white shirt. The second-in-command for over a quarter the world’s population appeared as benign as her local dry cleaner.

  Now, in the midst of today’s outbreak, she had to ask herself if, with Yuri’s coerced help, Wang Jiawei was the instigator of a biological war.

  * * * *

  Two hundred nautical miles east of Oahu, Terry Ryder churned up his navy-issue bed sheets on a regulation-sized bunk, his sleep similarly troubled by jumbled thoughts of Guangzhou, bird flu, and March 2003.

  He awoke thinking of a map. Not the startling WHO depiction of a globe under attack, but one that he’d erected in his Waianae Mountain home six years ago, during the SARS outbreak.

  “It’s always bugged me,” he told the general minutes later, having rousted him out of a neighboring bed and hauled him into a nearby briefing room. Activating a giant overhead screen, then using the USS Clinton’s onboard computers to access his office archives, he clicked up a high-definition, full-sized wall map of the world, its surface stuck with red and blue pins. Each red indicated a case of SARS and carried a tab marked with the date of its occurrence plus a small black cross if the patient had died. Each blue represented a human case of bird flu and carried the same information. Reds numbered an overwhelming 8000, the earliest entries clustered around Guangzhou and Guangdong province. The rest extended up to Beijing, down to Hong Kong, across the China Straight to Taiwan, then west to Hanoi, south to Singapore, and, finally, jumped east all the way to Toronto, Canada. Only a few hundred were scattered throughout the US.

  But the pins that had troubled him the most since the day he’d first positioned them there were two blues in Hong Kong dated February 20, 2003, and one blue pinned to Guangdong province with a question mark on it dated March 16, 2003.

  He’d not liked them being there. Hadn’t from the beginning. />
  Because human cases of bird flu arriving in the middle of a SARS outbreak had been against all odds.

  He didn’t disagree with what the scientific world said about crowded conditions in the region exposing animal and human viruses to each other. Nor did he dispute that a juxtaposition of microbes favored the exchange of DNA and genetic makeovers. He just hadn’t been able to accept those explanations for the blue pins.

  Because with that inner eye of his, he’d conjured up what had actually happened on the molecular level. Pools of avian and human influenza viruses tangled themselves up like clumps of glistening gray earthworms. Random strands of RNA broke away from one helix, drifted through cytoplasm, and inserted themselves in another. Except the exchange process was also random. Bits of code floated about with no more purpose than scraps of litter. Eventually the specific genes carrying the structural information that enables a chicken virus to infect the human respiratory tree might end up in the exact place on that virus’s helix where it would be copied and acted upon, but this took time.

  He’d also visualized multiple strains of corona virus, what most experts accepted to be the source of SARS, and saw a blizzard of spheres covered with crowns of tiny balls. These however, were the original version that could only infect animals. He mentally tinted them a luminous scarlet for easier tracking and sent them spinning through a colorless galaxy of completely dissimilar microbes with a million different shapes. Random couplings were more often repelled by spikes and ill-matched surfaces than consummated. But eventually, one of the scarlet spheres paired up with a virus that mirrored receptor sites in the human respiratory tree, incorporated its genetic material, and acquired the ability to attack people. Again, the process took time.

  He’d simulated these visual scenarios as quickly as other scientists might think their way through them. That’s how he reached the same conclusion they did, that the necessary exchanges of genes could happen, but not easily. What he balked at completely was that two disparate animal viruses could get so lucky in the same small patch of the planet within months of each other.

  “So how do you explain it?” Daikens asked, squinting up at the screen after Terry finished briefing him about his concerns. “And what the hell has this to do with our current mess?”

  “Remember how it was back then, post 9/11, everyone focused on Iraq. What if, while we were all waiting for the next big whatever, watching for dirty bombs in Times Square, checking envelopes for traces of white powder, or barring terrorists with funny looking shoes from boarding a plane--all essential steps, don’t get me wrong--but what if the big attack were already underway? An attack that appeared to be caused by mother nature, but in fact was man-made.”

  The general leaned closer to the map, as if greater proximity might reveal its secrets. “Go on.”

  “I think the only way two rare genetic events could produce two types of deadly viruses on top of one another is that they were engineered.”

  The general said nothing for a full minute, wearing the blank expression of a man who’d stood too near a grenade blast. He kept glancing uneasily at the three blue pins in the center of screen, the way he’d keep watch on a stray scorpion. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded far away as if he were talking with himself. “You mean the SARS outbreak, even the bird flu, might have been the result of a bioweapon?”

  “You got it.”

  “That’s a hell of an accusation.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But we’ve never had even a hint from our intelligence reports to suggest an active bioweapons program in China. Jesus, that would have taken us to the highest defense readiness condition, DEFCON 1. We’d have put the whole world on alert.”

  “Maybe we need to keep a closer watch.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. They bore the brunt of SARS.”

  “Maybe they had an accidental release, like what happened with the Russians in Sverdlovsk.”

  The general thought long and hard on that possibility. “Still, it seems inconceivable that we’d have missed something so vital to our national security.”

  “Remember how things were in Washington at the time. With Iraq front and center, no one wanted to hear about a threat from China. And Wang Jiawei, their new premier, had reversed his administration’s attempts to cover up SARS overnight. Public health officials acted more openly than ever before, statistics were made available, outside experts were invited in for on-site inspections, and all China-watchers in WHO heaved a sigh of relief. I did too. Figured the bad old days were gone.”

  The general frowned. “Right. An Asian Glassnost. It’s also not the behavior of a regime intending to use SARs or any other organism as a weapon.”

  “What if all that good-world-citizen stuff within weeks of the appearance of SARS and bird flu had been a front--the classic magician’s feint to divert attention away from what they were really doing. If so, the feint worked. The rest of the world lowered their guard, again, myself included.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense. If SARS or bird flu were a weapon, China’s helping to contain the viruses would neutralize their own threat.”

  “If it was a leak, they’d have no choice but to contain it, for their own country’s sake.”

  Daikens scowled at the map in silence for a few seconds. “I don’t know Ryder. It all seems such a stretch, especially since the Chinese saved the world’s butt in ’07 when it came to the bird flu pandemic. Why do all that, then come at us now?”

  “I don’t know,” Terry said. “I can only tell you that those three little blue pins bug the hell out of me, and I think we should keep an eye on the People’s Republic in all this.”

  The general reached for the mouse, clicked over to the G-TOED feed, and directed his scowl at the continuing spread of red dots. “Okay, I’ll run it by PACOM,” he said, “but it’ll be a hard sell. As much I encourage you to exercise that creepy, wonderfully suspicious mind of yours, Terry, this time, I think you’re over the top. My advice? Drop it, and get some rest.”

  But back in his quarters, Terry couldn’t drop it.

  All because of three little blue pins.

  Should he table the idea with his team. He could imagine their eyeballs doing a collective rollover. “Hello? Terry? Anybody home? Since SARS and bird flu, the Chinese are consistent leaders in a global effort to develop, distribute, and market effective vaccines and treatments against all emergent diseases. That’s not what bioterrorists do.”

  Resident paranoid hits stone wall.

  Maybe he should just let this one go, he thought, lying back on his bunk. After all, there were a lot of other radical lunatics out there. From the off-the-record chatter that he’d picked up on board the Clinton, no one believed the official “we haven’t evidence of bioterror” line, but most officers were fingering the usual suspects in the Middle East.

  Best to keep an open mind and not let China become a distraction for him, or worse, an obsession, the way Yuri and Anna had for the general.

  Now there was a scary thought.

  Proof? We don’t need no stinkin’ proof.

  But as far as forgetting about those three blue pins, they might as well have been stuck directly into his brain.

  Unable to sleep anymore, he set out for the infirmary, knowing they could use a hand.

  The good news--he no longer required his HAZMAT suit. The bad news--a few hours earlier, he and the ship’s doctor had begun to screen the crew, only to find that the USS Clinton already had SHAKES on board.

  * * * *

  Dr. Wey Chen woke drenched in a cold sweat, completely unaware that she, Anna, and Terry wandered at the dark edges of each other’s dreams. She knew only that the seminal event in 2003, a black star at the center of their shared past, had sucked at her own sleep, devouring it.

  Throwing off her down cover, she let the night air from an open window dry her clammy skin. Seconds later, a floorboard creaked in the hallway outside her room. “Jade?”

  A f
lurry of little steps sounded the rest of the way to the side of her bed, and a dark-haired torpedo scooted in beside her. “You were making scared noises in your sleep again, Mummy.”

  Wey Chen scooped her seven-year-old daughter into an all enfolding embrace. “Just another stupid, bad dream,” she said, attempting a reassuring laugh but not quite making it. “And the best part of a bad dream is?”

  “When we wake up, and we’re cozy in bed,” Jade said, all smiles as she snuggled closer. “May I stay here with you?”

  “For a little while.” The feel of Jade lying safely at her side soothed her own fears. “But can I still carry you back to your bed after you’ve fallen asleep,” she added in a mock serious tone while pulling a clown’s sad frown, “or are you too big and heavy now?”

  Jade giggled with delight. “I’m big, but can take in a deep breath and blow myself into a huge balloon that floats. Like this.”

  By the glow of moonlight streaming through the window, Wey Chen watched Jade breathe in, puff up her chest and cheeks, then stare crossed-eyed at her, like some round-faced blowfish. It made her laugh, for real this time,

  Jade deflated, and attempted to pull the same funny face a dozen times more, finding her own joke as hilarious on the umpteenth performance of as on the first. Or was she just desperate to keep a smile on an overly grim mother, Wey Chen fretted. The worry that her own despair might have a long-term effect on her daughter was never far from mind. “Time to lie quiet, Jade,” she added, and began to stroke the girl’s hair, their favorite bedtime ritual.

  A half hour later she made her way through the darkened corridor, easily carrying Jade back to her room. After gently laying her in the bed and pulling up the covers, she stood at her side a few minutes, wanting to be sure that the absence of mummy didn’t wake her.