Hybrid (19 page)

The German quickly walked around the car and got in again. Time was running out. He found the ignition wires and started the car as expertly as an inner-city car thief. The radio sprung to life, and it took him a moment to turn it off. He felt the other cops on the move and Yaeger regaining consciousness. The car slipped into gear as the young cop began to struggle beneath the Ford, throwing off his cover of snow and rapping his knuckles against the truck’s exhaust pipes. Reisch backed away, but the car was cold and stalled. He started it again, but only after a few more precious seconds had elapsed. He gunned the engine, and the motor began to purr smoothly.

Yaeger struggled to his feet, grabbing at the sedan doors. His eyes were wide with confusion, surprise, and fear as he struggled to free his weapon. Reisch struggled in turn with his lame right arm; he had slid the gear selector past reverse and into neutral and was having trouble pushing it back into the correct gear.

Yaeger raised his weapon and started yelling for Reisch to get out. His hands were shaking visibly.

Reisch found reverse and flew past the officer. Yaeger fired into the passenger-side window, shards of safety glass showering over him and Reisch. Twice more he fired at the fleeing German. The last bullet ricocheted across Reisch’s upper right arm. He barely registered the pain as he quickly shifted into drive. Yaeger tried to block the way, his weapon pointed through the windshield directly at Reisch’s head in a perfect police academy tripod stance. Reisch barely registered driving over the young man as he spun his way out of the parking lot.

They sure know how to travel
, thought Nathan Martin. He was the only passenger aboard the Gulfstream G550; the two marines who sat together in the back of the jet didn’t count. He quietly played with all the buttons in the console next to him. He knew he should still be angry. They had threatened him and then interfered with the workings of his department. It was this violation that still made him fume, but damn, this was exciting. Never once, in all his years of travel, had he ever flown first class, and now he was flying to a secret meeting in a multimillion-dollar jet.

“Hey, Colonel, how much do you suppose this plane cost us taxpayers?” Martin loved to play the liberal card. It was part of his image, but image was all it was now. Nearly four decades of work in the real world had erased any semblance of idealism. Human society would never fully mature so long as humans were involved. There were long spells in his life when he had more respect for the special pathogens he tried to eradicate than for the people he tried to cure.

“I really wouldn’t know, Doctor, but it is my understanding that your taxes are specifically earmarked for the purchasing of army latrines. So, on behalf of a grateful nation, I thank you,” Colonel Scott Simpson said with a deadpan expression.

Martin laughed out loud. “Never let it be said that I didn’t give my all for my country.” Simpson was beginning to grow on him. He wasn’t the stereotypical army automaton. He actually had a personality, and there was an outside chance that he could even think on his own.

Martin watched the clouds go by. Occasionally they opened enough for him to see the earth far below them, revealing all the tiny ant-people in their tiny ant-cars living in their tiny ant-cities. “So can you tell me now where we’re going?”

Simpson responded by getting up and retrieving his briefcase. Martin watched as the marine officer walked up the aisle and sat in the seat opposite him. “What I’m about to tell you is beyond classified. As such, you are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. If you violate this agreement, we will know, and we will arrest you. Do you understand this?” Simpson’s voice conveyed no emotion, but still managed to be threatening.

“I do, and I assume that if I decide not to sign this, you will execute your presidential order, or perhaps just toss me out the door?” Martin smiled, trying to get Simpson to lighten up.

“I have not been given that option, Doctor.” The colonel handed Martin a single sheet of paper.

Martin took the letter. “You have to learn to relax, Colonel,” Martin said absently while reading through the page. “Have you got a pen? Security took mine back at the airport.”

Simpson’s only response was to hand Martin a ballpoint pen.

Martin scribbled his signature and returned the pen and paper back to the colonel. “Okay, I’m listening,” Martin said, becoming serious.

“A little more than seven years ago, the United States attacked and destroyed a terrorist compound in Libya. We had reliable intelligence—”

“Reliable intelligence? For God’s sake, not that excuse again,” Martin said with contempt.

“Doctor, neither of us is here to have a geopolitical debate. Your views on past events are a matter of public record and have no bearing whatsoever on the here and now. I need you to focus on what I am saying and keep your personal opinions to yourself.” Simpson’s eyes bore into Martin.

Martin accepted the rebuke; he knew he had made an illtimed and inappropriate comment. “I’m sorry, Colonel. Please continue.”

“A network of Arab extremists had rather blatantly built a camp in the southern desert and began to train in full view of our satellites, which was somewhat unusual. They are usually more circumspect about their activities. It was a small camp, much smaller than others throughout the region, and seemingly of little concern. At first, we thought that this represented a shift in the Libyan government, back towards state sponsorship of such activities; later we found that that was not the case.

“No one seemed all that eager to deal with them, so for a long time they went about their business, and we simply watched them. In an ideal world, we would have demanded that the Libyans handle the problem, or conversely, allow us to deal with it. However, neither side had enough political will, so the camp remained.

“Just about eight years ago, we began to hear rumors that this camp was more than it seemed. Eventually, someone took an interest, and a disturbing pattern of activity was found— unusual purchases, deliveries of electrical and mining equipment, but most importantly, medical equipment.” Simpson paused and reached into his briefcase. He retrieved a folder and passed it over to Martin. “These are some photographs taken inside the camp seventeen days before it was destroyed.”

Martin shuffled through a dozen black and white eighty-twelves, most of which showed only sand and dirty boots.

“Nothing much to get excited about with those, but these are a good deal more interesting.”

He handed Martin six more photos, and Martin stared at each one closely. The quality was much better, and it was clear that they had been taken inside. Incubators, autoclaves, and isolation stations were readily identifiable. The last photograph clearly showed the arm and paw of a small ape.

“It’s too much to hope for that they were just doing some cosmetic testing,” he said, returning the pictures to Simpson.

“No, they weren’t,” the colonel said and passed over a final photograph to Martin. “Do you recognize anyone in this picture?”

Two men stood side by side, almost as if they were posing for the picture. A tall, thin, dark man dressed in desert fatigues was listening to a much smaller man with a riot of black hair, bushy eyebrows, and a cleft lip. “The tall figure I’ve never seen, but the other man is Dr. Jaime Avanti. I’ve met him many times, but I don’t think I’ve seen him for a few years. A Russian, if I remember correctly. A microbiologist who grew up in the Soviet system, but defected to West Germany years before the collapse of the USSR.”

“Actually, he was Ukrainian, and it’s probably a good thing you haven’t seen him in years, because back in the nineties he began working for Al-Qaeda, long before they were fashionable. In 1998, he tried to buy some anthrax using his old university credentials. Security wasn’t what it should have been, and he came very close to taking delivery of seven vials of weapons-grade anthrax. The FBI managed to intercept the shipment and apprehend several of the individuals involved. Unfortunately, Avanti wasn’t one of them. He was convicted in absentia, and for a number of years, he stayed underground; I’m guessing in this very secret lab that he and a few other disenfranchised researchers developed.

“The other gentleman is an intelligence officer, formerly with the Russians. We think that he was brought in for security purposes. When we entered the camp, neither this fellow nor Avanti could be found. Everyone else was already dead. The interesting thing is that we didn’t kill them, and neither did the Libyans. Apparently, they did it to themselves. We think that they had a rupture in one of their isolation rooms and something ran through the entire camp over a two-day period. Probably some form of Ebola.”

“What do you mean, some form of Ebola? Either it was Ebola or it wasn’t.” Martin was sitting high in his seat, anxiety beginning to grow in his chest.

“It was definitely Ebola, Doctor. We recovered samples from the bodies and the lab. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do any nucleotide sequencing back then. We can now, and a month ago, we traced the source of the Ebola. It came from your lab.” Simpson waited for a response.

Nine years ago, someone had breached the security of the CDC. They had gone straight to Martin’s lab and vandalized it. Nothing had been taken, at least at a macroscopic level, but anyone with the expertise to reach his lab undetected could very easily have taken enough samples to stock a number of bioterrorism labs. There hadn’t been any public comment about it, but Martin and his staff had come under intense scrutiny. Everyone, including Martin, assumed it had been an inside job, and over the next few months, his research team was pulled apart by external pressures and internal suspicions. “So, this is what it sounds like when the other shoe drops.”

“That’s not why you’re here,” Simpson continued. “We know how the Ebola got from Atlanta to Libya. It’s what happened after the virus was stolen that’s interesting.” Simpson produced another photograph and passed it to Martin. It was a very good electron micrograph of a hexagon with six appendages at each corner. “This is why you are here. You recognize it, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. You got this from Libya?” Martin’s voice was artificially controlled, but inside he was shaking badly. He was finally getting answers to questions that had been haunting him for years, and they were only confirming his worstcase scenarios.

“Yes, and you got yours from Honduras. Any idea how it went from the deserts of North Africa to the jungles of Central America?”

“Carrion birds,” Martin said after a moment’s thought. “You said that you didn’t kill the terrorists or the researchers. They were dead before you got there. I’m guessing that the vultures got to the bodies before you did. Hurricanes form off the African coast, and I’m betting that some infected birds probably got a free ride to the New World—which means that birds can carry the virus and disseminate it.”

“You see our problem then,” Simpson said.

Martin looked at the colonel. “No, I don’t. These pictures are seven years old. What does this have to do with anything now?” It was a transparent bluff, and Simpson looked disappointed.

“Don’t try and play me, Dr. Martin. You contacted the FBI this morning after Amanda Flynn contacted you. We have the file from Colorado Springs and pictures of the new mutation. We have the report from your department wrongly identifying this new pathogen as a benign arbovirus. I have been honest with you, and I request the same in return.”

“All right, so you know everything that I know. What’s the reason for the plane ride?” Martin asked defensively.

“Look at the picture again, Doctor.”

“I don’t have to look at it again, Colonel. I’ve got it burned into my memory.” Martin tossed the pile of photographs back at the marine officer. “I see it in my sleep. What I want to know is if you people knew what this was seven years ago, why didn’t you share it with us? Why did you let us release Subject Zero back into the population?”

“Look at the picture again, Doctor,” Simpson ordered, tossing the micrograph of the virus back at Martin. “Now ask yourself: is this an Ebola virus?”

The disconnect in his thinking finally became apparent, and Martin looked again at both of the photos. “No, it’s not,” he said, looking up at Simpson, recognition painted across his face. “You found Ebola in this? That’s not possible. Ebola doesn’t have DNA; it has RNA, the next step in the formation of proteins. This is a DNA virus, there’s no question about it. What else did you find with the sequencing?”

“The original virus contains both DNA and RNA. The RNA is the Ebola stolen from your lab. The DNA is from the common herpes simplex virus. This is an entirely new form of life. It is not viral or bacterial. We are in the process of collecting some of the mutation for sequencing, but our best guess is that it has reverted back to a classic viral form. We think that somehow it has managed to drop the Ebola RNA along the way, which would explain why people aren’t dying by the thousands.”

Martin’s head was swimming with questions. How did they get DNA and RNA to coexist in the same virus? Did it have replicate proteins, stabilizing proteins, ribosomes? How did they splice herpes DNA with RNA back then? Dozens of other scientific questions swirled in his mind, but the most important question remained unanswered by Simpson. “If you knew about this virus, why did you let us release Amanda Flynn? She is the only carrier of this virus. Not only that, but she is also the only survivor of the infection. She is both the problem and the solution.”