“The samples that came in from North Georgia Regional Hospital earlier today, they tested positive for Ebola.”
Again silence. Then, “Are you shitting me, Dwight? This isn’t one of your ‘let’s yank the boss’s chain’ little antics, is it?”
“I wish it were. I ran an ELISA on the blood sample. It came back positive for Ebola antigens—”
“It’s a nonspecific test, you know that. Ebola antibodies have shown up in the blood sera of Native Americans in Alaska, for Christ’s sake, people who’ve never been anywhere near Ebola or vice versa.”
“I did a PCR, too.”
“And?”
“That’s what scared the crap out of me. The genetic structure looks a lot like Ebola-Zaire and a lot like Ebola-Reston. Zaire, as lethal as hell to humans; Reston, lethal only to monkeys.”
“The guy that’s sick, the guy the samples came from, he isn’t a monkey, is he?”
“Obviously not. What’s your point?”
“That if he’s sick, it’s Zaire, not Reston.”
“I know that. That’s scary enough. But here’s what’s even scarier; that if he’s got—actually had, he died this evening—Ebola, it could be an airborne form. Yeah, Reston doesn’t make humans sick, but it sure as hell does a job on monkeys and is probably transmitted through the air.”
The lightning relented slightly, dwindling to occasional flickers somewhere over Stone Mountain. The thunder morphed to distant grumbles. Zambit’s breathing into the phone became arrhythmic, almost spastic. Finally he drew a deep breath and said, “Dear God. You’re telling me we’re dealing with Ebola that’s mutated, become transmittable through the air, like the flu or a common cold?”
“Could be. But I haven’t looked at it yet. I haven’t done the electron microscopy to confirm it’s a filovirus.”
“Let’s do that before we go running in circles, waving our arms and screaming.”
“Okay. But if we discover it’s a filovirus, then can we go running in circles, waving our arms and screaming?”
“Wait for me, and we’ll do this Kodak Moment thing together. I’ll be there in about 20 minutes. At least the friggin’ storm is letting up.”
“Au contraire, bossman. It may be just starting.”
“That’s what I like about you, Dwight. Happy, happy, joy, joy.”
An hour after Dwight phoned Zambit, the two men, clad in full-body positive pressure protective suits, sat in a Biosafety Level-4 lab at the CDC. The suits, tethered to an external air supply, were topped by large, boxy, transparent hoods. Though not unaccustomed to Level-4 labs, Dwight’s heart rate soared. The reason, he understood, was simple. Level-4 labs were reserved for work with organisms lethal to human beings. For the most part, there were neither treatments nor vaccines for diseases triggered by BSL-4 agents.
Dwight peered through the protective hood and manipulated the dials and switches controlling an electron microscope. A greenish glow radiating from the microscope’s viewing screen in the darkened lab, together with the men’s bulky protective gear and breathing hoses, lent them the appearance of deep-sea divers. And like deep-sea divers, they were in an alien environment. Dwight well knew they had entered a world where the tiniest mistake—a leak in a hose, a rip in a suit, a tear in a glove—could kill them. Not instantly like it would a diver, but slowly, agonizingly, efficiently. No one needed to remind him that the margin for error in a BSL-4 lab is absolute zero.
The virologist moved the scanning microscope slowly across a landscape—a cellscape, really—looking into a world magnified 150,000 times, far beyond what most people could ever imagine. It was like viewing the earth’s surface using satellite imagery, searching for unique structures that signaled trouble, such as burgeoning cumulonimbi—precursors to hurricane formation—in a disturbance over a tropical ocean. Neither man spoke, their hoods suffused with the noisy rush of piped-in air.
To clearly converse under such circumstances sometimes required turning off the air supply, not a popular procedure. The fluorescent image of the viewing screen reflected off Zambit’s faceplate as Dwight slid the focus of the microscope from one cell to the next, searching for what he did not want to find but knew he inevitably would.
Then it was there. A cell destroyed, appearing riddled with worms or microscopic snakes. Dwight twisted a dial, and the image grew larger. The cell was dead, “eaten” alive not by a horde of worms or snakes, but by a virus.
“Don’t let this be,” he muttered. He turned to Zambit who nodded, confirming what they saw: a filovirus, Ebola, unique in appearance in the universe of human viruses—narrow and stringy. It reminded Dwight of emaciated spaghetti, albeit spaghetti invisible to the naked eye. Spaghetti lethal to human beings.
Despite the air hissing into his helmet, he heard the pounding of his pulse, a steady, staccato reverberation. There’s no way Ebola-Zaire or Ebola-Zaire-Reston, or whatever the hell this was, could be loose in the U.S., he thought. No way. The only confirmed deaths from Ebola until now had occurred in Africa, its natural reservoir.
He turned to Zambit. “What the hell is going on?” he yelled. “How the fuck did Ebola get into America? Into Atlanta, for God’s sake?” His respiration became choppy. He struggled to catch his breath. He yanked at his air hose.
Zambit jumped toward him, put a restraining hand on his arm. “Come on. Out now,” he said loudly. He inclined his head toward the exit and guided Dwight ahead of him, careful not to rush, careful not to tear his suit.
Minutes later, after passing through a Lysol shower in their suits and then through a body shower, the two men sat naked in a dressing room.
“Sorry about that,” Dwight said.
Zambit ignored him, staring dead-eyed at a row of lockers in front of him. He finally looked at Dwight, as though the sound waves had been delayed in reaching him. “What?”
“Never mind.”
Zambit stood and stepped into his boxers. “All right,” he said, “what’s first?”
“I’d like to find out where this stuff came from, but I don’t think that’s our priority at the moment.”
Zambit nodded and pulled on his pants.
“First,” Dwight continued, “we need to call North Georgia Regional, tell them they’re hot as hell, tell them to nuke the place, everyplace the victim was. And isolate everyone who worked with him, everyone who handled samples, clothing, bedding; everyone who got near him. Then we need to find out if they’ve admitted anyone else with the same symptoms. We’d better contact other hospitals in the area, too.” He was standing and pacing now, forgetting he was naked as a maple in winter. “And we need to notify the state health department. Probably the FBI, too.”
Zambit pulled on his shirt and raised an eyebrow at Dwight. “You don’t think—”
“I’m like a goddamned virus right now. I don’t think, I just react. I’d like to believe this is some kind of bizarre, point-off-the-curve, explainable anomaly. But right now we don’t know. We don’t know jack shit, in fact. Yeah, I think we at least need to give the FBI a heads-up. Just in case.”
Zambit stepped into his loafers. “Okay. Agreed. Lord, I hope we can keep this away from the media until we get a handle on it. Anything else?”
“Better beef-up the emergency operations center.”
“I’ll call the director. Oh, and Dwight?”
Dwight stopped pacing and looked at Zambit.
“It’s okay if you’re a little scared.”
“It wasn’t for myself... what happened in there,” Dwight said, annoyed Zambit had brought it up.
“I know. It’s for what it might mean for everyone. Let me say it again, it’s okay if you’re a little scared, because I’m petrified.”
Dwight nodded, then in a whisper said, “And there before me was a pale horse.”
Chapter Four
NORTH METRO ATLANTA
MONDAY, AUGUST 19
Richard Wainwright pulled his rented Mini Cooper S into a reserved parking slot at BioDawn International early on his first day on the job as the company’s interim CEO. He shut off the engine, set the parking brake and gazed into the hazy dawn. Intellectually, he acknowledged it was time to end his self-imposed exile from the corporate world and pitch himself back into the workforce. Emotionally, he remained ambivalent. He had lost so much.
But he knew Ned and his other friends were right. He had to press forward. He exited the car, placed his briefcase on top of it and took a moment to survey his new domain. The corporate headquarters resided in a tree-studded office park, a bucolic campus surrounded by a sprawl of unchecked growth and business development. Dogwoods and azaleas, long since past their spring glory, lined a well-manicured walk leading to the headquarters building, a gleaming five-story glass and steel structure. Two similar but smaller buildings, each two stories, flanked the larger one on either side. Adjacent to the building on the right, a compact blockhouse-like structure squatted behind a Cyclone fence topped with razor wire. Unlike the other BioDawn facilities, the blockhouse was windowless except for several tall, narrow slits near its entrance. The building seemed out of place.
Richard grabbed his briefcase and headed toward the main entrance. Heat and humidity hugged him in a steambath-like embrace, a palpable change from the semiarid freshness of Oregon’s high desert. He ran the back of his hand across his brow, sweeping away beads of perspiration, unexpected for so early in the day. He knew, however, they were the result of more than the weather. The image of an exploding Gulfstream jet filled his mind.
He entered the building, checked the directory for the executive offices—fifth floor—then walked up the stairs to his new, albeit temporary, job as CEO of the fourth largest biotechnology company in the world.
He discovered he needed a key card to enter the executive suite, so he rapped on its double glass doors to gain the attention of someone inside. He caught his breath as a woman approached. It was as though he were back on the Brickyard at North Carolina State University. Back in a moment years ago when he’d initially glimpsed his first love, Martha De la Serna. Though their relationship hadn’t endured beyond college, the residue of its awkward passion had, lodging itself permanently in his subconscious, then slithering out at unexpected times, like now, to remind him of youth gone by. Of guilty pleasures.
Although the woman walking toward him was uncommonly attractive, she looked nothing like Marty. She opened the door. “I’m Anneliese Mierczak,” she said, introducing herself, “and since your credentials and reputation precede you, I have no doubt you’re our CEO pro tem. Welcome to BioDawn.” A touch of smokiness, drizzled in syrup, permeated her voice.
“Richard Wainwright,” he said as they shook hands. “Rich will do.”
She laughed lightly. “No, Mr. Wainwright will do. I’m your executive assistant, not your lover.”
She smiled, and her dark eyes flashed something at him, just the hint of a tease perhaps, the essence of a challenge. But probably he had read too much into a fleeting glance. Still, he was no stranger to the advances of women, however subtle and understated they might be—a glance, a word, a touch. At six-foot-four with obsidian hair swept back into a tight pony tail and a face that remained tanned and taut even after four decades, he realized he was not unattractive.
Of course, the fact he made a great deal of money and held positions of significant power made him even more desirable to a certain subset of females: lionesses on the prowl. Sexual temptation, at least until recently, had stalked him constantly. Despite being lured—well, to be honest, allowing himself to be lured—to the brink more than once, he had remained monogamous and resolutely faithful to Karen. Even now. Even after she was gone.
Though Marty had been attractive and, to a point, uninhibited when it came to dealing with his male urges, it was Karen who’d captured his soul. Karen Howerton. Wild and reserved; demanding and selfless; silly and wise. A girl/woman, the daughter of a Marine Corps colonel; a young lady not afraid to put a young lieutenant at Camp Pendleton in his place. Not afraid to surrender her life and unconditional love to a man leaving the Corps and embarking on a journey in the corporate jungle, armed only with a Harvard Business School degree. He could have asked for no better gun-bearer.
A wave of nascent guilt surged through him as Anneliese led him into the interior of the suite. Her form-fitting black skirt and white blouse left little to the imagination and little room to doubt that what one saw was real. Her face could have sold cosmetics or graced the cover of Town and Country. But he sensed something contradictory about her, something both alluring and forbidden. Maybe even dangerous. One of his strengths as a CEO was in evaluating people, and he instantly judged he should tread carefully around this woman.
He shook off his contemplations as she ushered him into his office. A wide, tinted window in the far wall overlooked a small pond backed by a stand of pines and oaks at the rear of the building. The pond, about an acre in size, was encircled by a gravel walkway along which several wooden park benches resided.
A polished mahogany desk and matching conference table the size of a small airfield dominated the office. The table was rigged for videoconferencing and topped by an electronic topography of computer terminals and telephones. Leather chairs stood at attention along the table’s periphery while something akin to a rollaway throne towered behind the desk.
Color photographs of BioDawn facilities around the world lined the paneled walls of the office. Above each, a digital clock indicated the local time: Tokyo, Munich, Stockholm, London, Kuala Lumpur, Zurich. Slick, colored posters touting the benefits of BioDawn products and research also adorned the walls.
In contrast to the ordered symmetry of the photos and posters, the huge desk presented a cluttered landscape of paper and binders. Corporate literature. Project summaries. Annual reports. Balance sheets. Resumes.
“Well,” Richard said, “I see I’ve got my homework cut out for me.”
“If it would help,” Anneliese said, “I could schedule project managers and key people from accounting and finance to brief you.”
“The sooner the better, Ms. Mierczak—”
“Anneliese. You don’t work for me. Other way around, remember?” A hint of a smile snuck across her exquisitely chiseled features.
“All right, Anneliese. Set up the briefings for my office.” He looked at his wristwatch, forgetting he was surrounded by clocks detailing global time. “Let’s start right away, say ten o’clock. Project managers only. I’ll go over the financial stuff myself.”
DRUID HILLS, ATLANTA
MONDAY, AUGUST 19
Mid-morning. Doctors Butler and Zambit sat in a small anteroom, a team room, adjacent to the CDC’s EOC, the Emergency Operations Center. Dwight surveyed the facility, noting that nearly half its 85 workstations were occupied. In order to avoid leaks to the media and thus preclude panic, employees had been told they were working a no-notice exercise; a sort of operational readiness inspection. It was a subterfuge that likely had a short shelf life.
Dwight, fighting fatigue, stared at a stack of hand-scribbled notes on the table in front of him. He reached for a pen that lay nearby and in the process bowled over a paper cup full of fresh coffee. Dark liquid flooded across the table, splattering his notes and dribbling onto his shirt.
“Shall we take that as an omen?” Zambit asked.
“I think we’ve had enough friggin’ omens already,” Dwight muttered as he dabbed at his stained shirt and soggy notes with paper towels.
Zambit waited.
Dwight continued his mop up.
“North Georgia Regional is scrubbing down everything in its ER with bleach, Lysol, whatever they’ve got,” he said. “They’ve isolated the doctors and nurses who
had contact with Mr. Gullison and are monitoring them 24/7. Mr. Gullison’s body will be cremated today.”
“Additional cases?”
“’Fraid so. Mrs. Gullison was admitted to North Georgia last evening. Same symptoms as her husband.”
“Shit. Any more?”
“Yeah.” Dwight examined his blotchy notes. “A Mr. Alan McCarthy delivered himself to St. Joe’s late last night. HF-like symptoms.”
“St. Joseph’s knows what to look for?”
“Yeah,” Dwight said, “they do.”
“Hopefully there’s a commonality between McCarthy and Gullison. Hopefully we aren’t dealing with diverse sources.” Zambit’s voice resonated with a strange timbre. A violin string about to snap.
“They were best friends, in fact. Golfing partners. They lived in the same subdivision.”
Zambit sipped his own coffee and grimaced. “Good thing you spilled yours,” he said. “How much social contact did Gullison and McCarthy have the past few weeks?”
“Not much, apparently. According to McCarthy’s wife, just once a week on the golf course.”
“I assume that neither worked in a bioresearch lab, handled monkeys or traveled to Africa recently.”
“Nope. Gullison was retired. McCarthy is an investment advisor.”
Zambit expelled a long breath and pushed his coffee away. “I take it there’s no other common point of intersection? Like a theater, a restaurant, a sporting event?”
“We’ll have to delve more deeply into that. In the meantime, I’d like to dispatch a field team to the subdivision. Have it prowl around homes, yards, the golf course, maybe the country club. Gather some samples, ask questions.”
“What’s the cover?”
“State health inspectors checking on the source of a possible salmonella outbreak.”
“Flimsy. And the country club isn’t going to like it.” Zambit rested his elbows on the table and steepled his hands underneath his chin.
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