Mirrors (12 page)

“One war zone to another,” Winrod grumbled. “We’ll get you out of here soon.”

We crossed a tarmac surrounded by jungle to a one-floor building. An armed sentry waved us through to a room where a group of men played cards. An officer in a flight suit acknowledged me with a nod. “Hang tight,” he said.

With no seats available, I stood in a corner and used the time to check on the contents of the duffle bag. The bullet that struck the bag earlier had pierced the thick rubber gloves Muñoz and I used to collect specimens but left the individual containers unharmed.

“Full house,” a player said, slapping his cards on the table.

Cursing followed, and with it the game ended. The officer approached. “Pete Nelson,” he said. “I’ll be flying you to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.” He glanced at the duffle bag. “That’s it?”

I nodded.

“Onward.”

He led me to the C-130 and we climbed its ramp. At the top, an enlisted loadmaster took the duffle bag and packed it securely. Inside, with the seating modules removed, the helicopter filled the cavernous space. Our feet gripped the non-skid surface as we made our way forward.

After scaling a ladder to the flight cabin, I was greeted with a nod from the co-pilot.

“Take that seat,” Nelson said, pointing to the rear of the cockpit.

Outside, the turboprops fired up, and it wasn’t long before we took off. After a steep ascent through a layer of clouds that bumped us about, we leveled off. The co-pilot summoned me to his side where he gave me a headset. “Incoming call,” he explained.

It was from Glenn Bird. “I heard you’re on your way.”

“Yes.”

“Muñoz blew your cover down there. That’s why they killed him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He left a photo of himself and his fiancée at the shrimp farm. An employee found it in one of the pools. On the back was a note saying,
To Ricardo Muñoz, my husband to be, at CDC now, but forever in my heart
.”

“
Shit
,” I whispered. I suspected it had fallen from his pocket when he leaned over to hold my legs at the round pond. “Who told you about the photo?”

“Winrod. He got a call from some guy named Redondo, who, in turn, learned of the photo from a friend who works at the farm.”

“Which means they’re hiding something,” I said. “Otherwise, why would they have killed him?”

“They’re saying it was an accident. A guy named Manovic told Redondo the jeep was fueled by natural gas and that a spark ignited a leak.”

“Bullshit! Manovic ran from the jeep before it exploded and later fired at me from a hotel room.”

“We’re sending a forensics team to El Coco,” Bird said.

I grimaced. “Who’s going to call Muñoz’s fiancée?”

A pause, then: “That would be you, buddy.”

I awoke to
the thump of the C-130’s wheels touching ground, a jarring that made me sit bolt upright. Through the cockpit windows, I saw dawn cracking the sky.

When we came to a stop, the loadmaster escorted me to the tarmac where he handed me the duffle bag. An official from the UNIT approached me instantly.

“Follow me, sir,” he said. “You’re to see Dr. Brubeck urgently.”

With rush hour yet to begin, we made it to town readily. Upon reaching the UNIT, I went to the lab where I found Randy Flagstaff and Brubeck huddled in discussion.

“Jason,” Flagstaff said. “Welcome back.” He shook my hand and held it longer than I expected, peering into my eyes as if to express regret for the mission he’d sent me on.

I handed Brubeck the duffel bag. “All yours.”

“Bullet?” Brubeck asked, pointing to a hole in it.

“Better there than in me,” I replied.

His face tightened. “God awful about Muñoz.”

I said nothing.

He continued: “I was just reviewing with Randy the results of XK59 testing for Danny Rogers and the juice he drank.

“The
Electric Jolt
?”

“Yes.” He frowned. “The numbers are eerily similar to those for the Seattle victim and leftover shrimp.”

“How similiar?”

Brubeck inched forward. “One part per billion XK59 in
Electric Jolt
yet one part per
million
in Danny’s blood.”

“What I call the ‘inverted thousand,’ ” Flagstaff said. “One would expect the concentration of XK59 to be a thousand-fold higher in food or drink as opposed to blood.”

Brubeck’s frown deepened. “And the two bacteria,
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
and
Aeromonas hydrophila
, were present in both samples—blood and
Electric Jolt
.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “There’s no connection between the juice and the sea.”

“Product tampering,” Flagstaff concluded. “No other option.”

“If that’s the case,” I said, “we need to test the isolates of
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
from the victims, shrimp, and
Electric Jolt
to see if they’re genetically identical. If they are, they probably came from the same source.”

“Why test only the
Vibrio
and not
Aeromonas
?” Flagstaff asked.

“A fair question,” Brubeck agreed.

“Because
Vibrio
has the record of being a true pathogen, not
Aeromonas
.”

Brubeck frowned. “Very well, we’ll run whole genome sequencing.” For Flagstaff’s benefit, he explained: “WGS, or whole genome sequencing, determines the exact sequence of DNA building blocks—or nucleic acids—that comprise the bacteria’s genes. It’s the most accurate test that exists for characterizing DNA; a gold standard genetic fingerprinting system.”

“As with all bacteria,” I added, “we’d expect a variety of different strains of
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
to exist in nature, each strain possessing a unique sequence of nucleic acids. We can use those differences to distinguish among strains. If WGS shows the isolates from the victims, shrimp, and
Electric Jolt
to be identical, they most likely came from a common source.”

I pointed to the duffel bag. “Let me know what you find in there.”

Before I left
the lab, Flagstaff said he wanted to meet with Glenn Bird and me in Bethesda after I had a chance to see Eve.

“Why not now?” I asked.

“Bethesda’s better.”

I hopped onto Metro to head home. As I rode the train, I scanned the newspaper and found an article with quotes from Crystal Petersen, the CDC physician Glenn Bird recruited to replace Muñoz. She implicated Ecuadorean shrimp as the cause of the poisonings and announced efforts to recall implicated lots from market shelves and freezers around the nation. To my dismay, she referred to a thirteenth victim, a man who fell ill on July 22nd after eating raw shrimp at a sushi bar in Omaha, Nebraska.

I removed a copy of the epidemic curve Muñoz gave me and penciled an additional bar.

At home, I found Eve in the bedroom affixing a mobile over the crib. It held an array of colorful fish encircling a music box which played melodic lullabies. With her belly pressed against the crib, she had to stretch to maneuver the mobile into place. She left it askew while we hugged.

“I don’t like what’s going on,” she said, holding me tightly. “First, Danny Rogers, and now, Dr. Muñoz. I fear for your life.”

“I’m staying close to home,” I replied.

She released me and pulled a business card from her pocket. “I found this on our doorstep last night.”

“
Another
one?” I inspected it …

Giva Bhanjee, M.S.

BioVironics Pharmaceuticals and Neutraceuticals

Germantown, Maryland

“My God,” I whispered.

“Jay … son …” Eve growled, dissecting my name the way she did when she was upset. “Who is that person?”

“I don’t know, but the name of the company has popped up too often in the past few days.” I recounted the episodes.

She sighed.

I squeezed her hand. “How are
you
?”

She looked away.

“Eve …”

“Something changed: the skin over the breast mass.”

I asked to take a look.

“Forever the doctor,” she grumbled.

I didn’t like what I saw. The skin had taken the appearance of an orange peel, slightly swollen and dimpled.

She looked at me inquisitively.

“Several things can do that, including simple inflammation.” I feigned optimism, avoiding mention of more worrisome causes of a condition often referred to as
peau d’orange
, or “orange skin.”

She looked past me, her eyes at peace. “All things in their time.”

I wondered how she could say that. There was
no
time for cancer for a woman on the brink of motherhood. This was a time for discovery, for awe, for shepherding a baby into the world. For a moment, I felt like Job of Biblical lore but rejected the notion because it was Eve, not I, who faced the larger struggle.

After a shower
and nap, I met Flagstaff and Bird at a coffee shop in Bethesda. I waved a newspaper at them as I sat.

“Why did Crystal Petersen exonerate domestic shrimp?” I asked.

“That was McCloskey’s decision,” Bird replied.

“Based on what?”

“Invoices from restaurants and stores where the victims purchased shrimp. They all pointed to shrimp shipped from the Ecuadorean farm.”

I was livid. “What if the invoices are wrong? And besides, McCloskey has a potential conflict of interest: He represents the shrimp industry in Louisiana.”

“Good God, Krispix!” Bird snapped. “He represents the
constituents
of Louisiana! You think his colleagues on the Task Force would allow him to jeopardize the American public to protect domestic shrimpers?” He glared at me. “Besides, why would they have killed Muñoz if the operation was clean in Ecuador?”

“Someone from the U.S. could have orchestrated the murder to make the Ecuadoreans look dirty.”

“But the invoices—”

“—could have been doctored or someone could have slipped tainted U.S. shrimp into shipments of Ecuadorean shrimp. It’s too early to conclude where the shrimp came from. McCloskey should’ve waited until we have results from the samples I collected in Ecuador.”

“And leave the public hanging from a ledge when we
know
it was shrimp that caused the poisonings? We
had
to identify the most likely source and recall it from the market.”

Flagstaff lifted a hand. “Water under the bridge, guys. We need to hit the road.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Germantown.”

“
Why
?”

“To meet Charles E. Oxford, the CEO of
BioVironics
Pharmaceuticals and Neutraceuticals
.”

I extracted the card Eve had discovered on our doorstep. “Did the security detail see who left this one at our house?”

Bird, quiet initially as he examined the card, asked: “Who is this person, Giva Bhanjee?”

I shrugged.

Flagstaff led us from the coffee shop to a UNIT vehicle. We left Bethesda for Interstate-270 north, a corridor lined by pharmaceutical firms funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health nearby. Even in an SUV, Flagstaff outsized the vehicle, his brawn and sinew filling the seat and then some. Had he chosen to, he could have driven with his head out the sunroof.

“I looked into
BioVironics
,” he said presently. “Do you know what a ‘neutraceutical’ is?”

“No.”

“The term derives from ‘nutritional’ and ‘pharmaceutical’ and refers to a variety of products that supposedly provide extra health benefits. Examples include dietary supplements, processed foods, individual nutrients, and herbal products.”

Fifteen miles up the road, we left I-270 for Germantown, a glorified strip mall where we turned right at the second light. After climbing a hill, we dropped into a shallow valley housing a vast glass dome sprouting eight sinuous appendages. A glitzy sign in front announced,
BioVironics Pharmaceuticals and Neutraceuticals
.

We parked in the visitor’s lot and entered the dome where a woman behind a counter greeted us.

“Here to see Dr. Oxford,” Flagstaff told her.

We displayed our CDC badges.

“I’ll let Dr. Oxford know you’re here.”

While we waited, I gazed at a massive aquarium that occupied the atrium, a glass roundabout two stories tall housing a variety of pelagic fish that swam about unhurriedly—sharks, bonito, yellow-fin tuna, and more. A sign informed viewers that it was one of the largest salt water aquariums in the country and was maintained by a team of research marine biologists who worked at the firm. Although no numbers were provided, reference was made to the high costs involved in keeping up the structure.

“Dr. Oxford will see you,” a second voice called.

We followed an escort past the aquarium into one of the building’s appendages. After a short elevator ride, we traversed a long winding corridor to a lobby where luxuriant potted plants stretched toward the ceiling. Water from a fountain trickled down a cascade.

A brunette at a reception desk said, “Messieurs Flagstaff, Bird, and Krispix. Dr. Oxford is waiting for you.” She stood and curved her torso around a doorway. “Your visitors, sir.”

A trim, athletic man with impeccable hair appeared. He wore a cream-colored suit and matching Gucci shoes of the sort a model might don at a hillside Riviera villa. Rings adorned his fingers, enough to make his hands look knobby.

“Ah, the investigative contingent,” he said warmly. “I’m Charles Oxford.”

After introductions, we followed him to a sitting area that resembled the cozy nook of a television news show. I looked about for a meteorologist to break-in with the weather.

We sank into comfortable chairs. With his legs crossed, Oxford’s socks showed the letters
CEO
embroidered across them. I wondered whether they were a play on his initials and his position at the firm.

“Gentlemen, I must admit, I’m puzzled why three members from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are here to see me,” he said.