The Cobra Event (5 page)

Hopkins peered over the dashboard and took the wheel again. The car was going very fast.

“The brakes, Will.”

He jammed on the brakes. Too late. The Nissan spun around backward and slid into the gate, ballooning the wire mesh, punching out both taillights. The gate broke open wide. An instant later, the Iraqi chase cars came screeching and sliding in behind the Nissan in a great cloud of dust.

A rear door of the Mercedes opened, and a thin young man wearing acid-washed blue jeans and a white short-sleeved polo shirt stepped out. He was wearing an ostentatious gold wristwatch, and he had an anxious expression on his face.

“Wow, you are really scaring us, Mark,” the young man in jeans said. His name was Dr. Azri Fehdak, but the U.N. inspectors referred to him as the Kid. He was a molecular biologist educated in California. He was believed to be one of the top scientists in Iraq’s bioweapons program.

“It’s a snap inspection,” Littleberry said to the Kid. “Our chief inspector ordered it.”

“But there is nothing here,” Azri Fehdak said.

“What’s this building?”

“I believe this is the Al Ghar Agricultural Facility.”

A door to the building stood wide open. Inside, in the dim shadows, the inspectors could see ultramodern, gleaming stainless-steel biological production equipment.

A woman came scurrying out of the door, wearing a white lab coat. She was accompanied by several men. “What is this?” she demanded sharply. Under her lab coat she had on an expensive-looking dress. She wore cat-eye designer glasses, and her wavy brown hair was tied back in a loose roll.

“United Nations weapons-inspection team, ma’am,” Will Hopkins said.

“We’re on a snap inspection,” Littleberry added. “Who are you?”

“I am Dr. Mariana Vestof. I am the consulting engineer. This is the
manager-générale
, Dr. Hamaq.”

Dr. Hamaq was a short, stubby man who apparently spoke no English. His eyes moved searchingly across their faces, but he said not a word.

She protested: “We have already been inspected here.”

“We’re just doing a quick follow-up,” Littleberry said. “What are you making here, currently?”

“These are virus vaccines,” she said, waving her arm.

“Oh, good, okay. What kind, exactly?”

The Kid said, “I will check.”

“Does Dr. Vestof know?”

“Our work is medical!” she said.

“
Let’s go
,” Littleberry said. He reached into the car and grabbed one of the black metal suitcases and took off running for the building. The minders parted to let him by. Everyone seemed thoroughly confused.

“Mark! What about our biohazard suits?” Hopkins called after him.

“Never mind the goddamned space suits!” Littleberry yelled back. “Come on, move it, Will! On the Q.T.!” Littleberry wanted to get what he was after before the minders went berserk and shot someone.

Hopkins grabbed his suitcase and the shortwave radio and ran after Littleberry, a motorized Nikon camera slopping around his neck, a face mask dangling by a hook on his belt. A crowd of people followed them into the stainless-steel jungle. There was no smell in the air.

The building, which was windowless, was lit with fluorescent lights. The floor was a kind of pebbled terrazzo. All around them were stainless-steel tanks and tangles of pipes and hoses. The tanks were bioreactors, and they were on wheels. Workers reached them by standing on movable catwalks. The equipment in the Iraqi plant was portable. The entire plant could be moved.

Dozens of workers were tending the equipment. They were wearing surgical masks and white coats and latex rubber gloves, but no other safety equipment. When they saw the inspectors, they drew back and stood around in groups, staring.

Littleberry hurried toward one of the larger bioreactors. He snapped on a pair of rubber surgical gloves. Hopkins also put on a pair of rubber gloves.

“Has this equipment been tagged?” Littleberry said. He addressed his question to Dr. Vestof.

“Yes. Of course!” She showed him the big U.N. tags with identifying information on them. U
NSCOM
was attempting to put tags on all pieces of biological-production equipment in Iraq, so that the equipment could be traced, its movements and locations known.

Littleberry studied a tag. “Interesting,” he said. There was a warmth coming out of the tanks, a warmth of body heat. “Nice equipment you have here,” he said to Dr. Vestof.

She stood very primly, her feet close together, her hair neatly arranged. Her calm was in marked contrast to the agitation of the Iraqi minders.

“We’ll just take a couple of samples and we’ll be out of here,” Littleberry said. He opened a plastic box and pulled out a wooden stick about four inches long with an absorbent pad on the end, like an oversized Q-Tip. It was a swab stick. He popped open the flip-top lid of a plastic test tube that was half-filled with sterile water. He dunked the soft tip of the swab stick in the tube to wet it, and then rubbed the tip—scrubbed it hard—on a valve on one of the warm bioreactors, trying to pick up dirt. Then he jammed the swab back into the test tube, snapped off the wooden stick, and closed the flip-top lid. He handed the tube to Hopkins. It contained a broken-off swab tip and a few particles of dirt sloshing around in the water. “That’s Al Ghar large tank sample number one,” he said.

With a laundry pen, Hopkins wrote “Al Ghar large tank #1” on the tube. He dated it and wrote down the tag number of the tank as well. He then photographed the tank with his Nikon camera.

In a low voice, Littleberry said to him, “Stay close.”

Littleberry moved fast. He was heading deeper into the building, quickly, purposefully. Littleberry wasn’t taking many samples, but he seemed to know his way around.

“Who built this plant?” Hopkins asked Dr. Vestof.

“BioArk. A respected concern.”

“Is that a French company?” Hopkins asked.

“We are headquartered near Geneva.”

“I see. But you personally, are you French?” Hopkins asked.

“I am from Geneva.”

“So, you are a Swiss citizen, Dr. Vestof, is that correct?”

“What are you—the police? I am born in St. Petersburg! I live in Geneva.”

Littleberry had almost gotten away during this exchange. His figure was nearly lost among the tanks and pipes. He was moving through the middle part of the building now, heading somewhere. He stopped at a metal door with no markings on it.

“Don’t go in there!” Mariana Vestof called.

Littleberry pulled open the door.

Everything happened fast. Hopkins saw a hallway beyond Littleberry. In the hallway there were stainless-steel shower stalls—they looked like biohazard decon showers. The decon showers would be for decontaminating biohazard suits and equipment. It looked like a Level 3 staging room, an entry chamber leading to a Level 4 biocontainment zone. “Mark, don’t!” he said.

Littleberry ignored him. He unclipped his mask from his belt and fitted it over his head, and suddenly he had gone into the staging room.

“Stop!” Dr. Mariana Vestof said. “This is not permitted!”

The far door of the staging room had a circular handle on it, like the handle on a pressure door on a submarine. Littleberry reached the door and spun the handle. There was a sucking sound of rubber seals giving way. It opened to reveal a narrow set of rooms, jammed with equipment, and two people wearing biohazard space suits. It was a Level 4 hot zone, and Littleberry had just opened it wide.

“United Nations!” Littleberry yelled. He hurled himself toward the hot zone, a swab stick held in front of him. He was like a terrier going into a rathole.

Frantic activity exploded in the hot zone. The space-suited researchers must have had some advance warning that a U.N. inspection team was in the area, and just as Littleberry started to cross the threshold into the zone, there was a rumbling roar, the sound of a diesel engine revving up.

A crack of gray desert sky opened up over Littleberry’s head. It widened.

The hot lab was inside a truck. It was a mobile hot zone, and it was beginning to pull away from the building.

Littleberry slipped and fell to the ground. Hopkins saw him go down, and he ran for the newly opened space in the wall as if he were in a dream, dragging the suitcases. His camera was banging wildly around his neck. The truck was beginning to move away, and a rear door was swinging. A gloved hand was pulling the door shut. Hopkins jumped to the ground and dropped the suitcases near Littleberry. He fitted his mask over his face and vaulted into the moving truck.

He was standing inside the truck. He saw gleaming equipment, dim lights. There was a clap of rubber seals coming together. One of the men had shut the back door of the truck. Hopkins was shut inside a Level 4 virus-weapons lab, wearing only a mask, and the lab was moving.

There were two men inside the truck, both of them wearing green space suits of a type he had never seen before. They backed away from Hopkins. He could hear the dull hissing sound of air circulating. The older of the two men had tangled gray hair and a lined face and blue eyes. The younger man—who seemed to be an Iraqi—began to circle around behind Hopkins, his suit making shuffling sounds.

Hopkins had to get a sample fast. From his pocket protector he removed a swab stick. He ripped the wrapper off it and looked around for something to swab. His gaze took in control consoles, computer screens. At the far end of the hot zone there was a small cylindrical glass vessel about two feet high. It had a heavy stainless-steel top that looked like a hat. The metal hat had steel and plastic tubes coming out of it that ran in all directions. He recognized it as a virus bioreactor. A very small one. Inside the reactor vessel there was a translucent core shaped like an hourglass. The reactor was full of a reddish-pink liquid that looked like watery blood. The core would be producing some kind of virus.

The bioreactor was too far away to reach. But next to him stood a safety cabinet—a piece of equipment you’d find in any biological laboratory. It was designed for handling infective materials. It had a wide opening in it. Inside the safety cabinet he saw trays full of clear hexagons—six-sided flat crystals, like coins. The hexagons shimmered with rainbow colors.

He touched the swab to one of the crystals.

The younger man had circled around behind him. He grabbed Hopkins, pinning Hopkins’s arms at his sides.

The older man, the blue-eyed man, wagged his finger at Hopkins and said, “
Nyet trogaite!
” He suddenly reached up with one hand and tore off Hopkins’s mask—and with his other hand hit Hopkins in the stomach. Not very hard. Just hard enough to make him lose his breath.

The air flew out of Hopkins’s lungs with a whoosh. He doubled over and threw himself against the rear doors of the truck, one hand flailing for the handle. There was a
thunk
and a burst of sunlight, and Hopkins was flying through the open air.

He landed in the dirt and rolled, gasping, taking in huge breaths of fresh air. He ended up lying on his back, coughing, keeping his body curled around the swab stick to protect it. He had not had time to take a photograph, but the swab might be the bearer of important DNA. The doors of the truck slammed shut, and it roared off down the road.

Morgue

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER, NEW YORK CITY, THURSDAY, APRIL
23

THE SUN HAD RISEN
by the time Alice Austen finished a cup of coffee and a sweet roll in Gerda Heilig’s kitchen. She put her boots and her knife pack into a knapsack and went out onto First Avenue and turned south, walking quickly. She was entering a complex of hospitals lined up on the eastern side of Manhattan, overlooking the East River, like ships at dry dock—New York University Medical Center, with a number of research institutes; Bellevue Hospital; the Veterans Administration Hospital; and other medical institutions. At the northeast corner of First Avenue and Thirtieth Street, she turned up the steps of a gray building, number 520. It was six stories tall—small for this part of Manhattan. It had dirty aluminum-framed windows. The first story of the building was covered with blue glazed bricks, the color muted by dirt and dust. The building was the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City. The front door was locked, and she pushed the night buzzer.

A tall, somewhat overweight man in his sixties let her in. He had curly white hair at the temples and was going bald on top. He was dressed in a green surgical scrub suit. “I’m Lex Nathanson,” he said. “Welcome to the O.C.M.E.—the ugliest building in New York.” The marble walls of the lobby had a peculiar brownish, mottled, streaky color. It reminded her of a cancerous liver, sliced open for inspection. On the liverish wall ran a motto, in Latin, in metal letters:

TAQUEANT COLLOQUIA EFFUGIAT RISUS HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE

“How’s your Latin, Dr. Austen?” Nathanson said.

“Hmm. Let’s see…‘Speech quiets the place where Death is happy…’? That can’t be right.”

He smiled. “It means, ‘Let conversation cease, let the smile flee, for this is the place where Death delights to help Life.’ ”

“ ‘Where Death delights to help Life,’ ” she murmured as she followed Nathanson into his office, a big, uncluttered room located near the front door.

A man stood up to greet her. “Glenn Dudley,” he said. “Deputy chief medical examiner.” He shook Austen’s hand. Dr. Dudley had a massive grip and a tight mouth. He was a handsome, muscular man of about fifty. He had black hair and a square face, and he wore square metal-framed eyeglasses.

Austen opened up her green federal notebook, her epi notebook. She wrote Nathanson’s and Dudley’s names on the first page. “Could I have contact phone numbers for you?”

“Are you a forensic pathologist?” Glenn Dudley asked.

“No. I’m a medical pathologist,” she said.

“You’re not trained in forensics?”

“I
have
worked on forensic autopsies,” she said. “I know basically how it’s done.”

“Where?” Dudley asked.

“In the Fulton County medical examiner’s office, in Georgia. The C.D.C. has a relationship with them.”