The Hades Factor (31 page)

Inwardly he sighed. He wanted Sophia back. Every time he looked at Randi, he wanted her back even more.

The Iraqi woman smiled up at Jon as he helped her unwrap the blanket around the baby. “You will please forgive my deception,” she said in perfect English. “Once we were attacked, I was concerned you might be captured. It was better you not know that I am the one you seek. I am Dr. Radah Mahuk. Thank you for your help in saving this little one.” She beamed down at the child, then bent over to examine it.

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CHAPTER

Covert One 1 - The Hades Factor

THIRTY TWO

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9:02 P.M.

Baghdad

Dr. Radah Mahuk sighed. “There is so little we can do for the children. Or, for that matter, for any of the sick and injured in Iraq.”

On the examining table, which had been repaired with nails and tape, the pediatrician listened to the chest of the baby--- a little girl. She checked the baby's eyes, ears, and throat and took her temperature. Jon guessed she was about six months old, although she looked no more than four. He studied her thinness and the translucency of her fevered skin. Earlier he had noted the eyes were an ivory color and veinless--- indicating a vitamin deficiency. This baby was not getting enough nourishment.

At last Dr. Mahuk nodded to herself, opened the door, and called for a nurse. As she handed the infant over, she stroked the little girl's cheek and gave instructions in Arabic: “Bathe her. She needs to be cleaned. But use cool water to help bring down the fever. I will be out shortly.” Her lined face was worried. Weariness had collected in blue circles under her large dark eyes.

Randi, who had understood the doctor's orders, asked in English, “What's wrong with her?”

“Diarrhea, among other problems,” the pediatrician answered.

Jon nodded. “Common, considering the living conditions. When sewage seeps into drinking eater, you get diarrhea and a lot worse.”

“You are right, of course. Please sit down. Diarrhea is common, particularly in the older parts of the city. Her mother has three other children at home, two with muscular dystrophy.” She shrugged wearily. “So I told her I would take her little girl to see what I could do. Tomorrow morning, the mother will come and want her back, but she does not get enough to eat to produce milk to nurse. But perhaps by then I will find some good yogurt for the baby.”

Dr. Mahuk pushed herself up onto the edge of the examining table and sat. Her legs dangled from beneath the simple print dress. She wore tennis shoes and white anklets. In Iraq, life for most people was basic, and this doctor, whose work had been published widely, who once had traveled the globe to address pediatric conferences, was reduced to nostrums and yogurt.

“I appreciate your taking the risk to talk to me.” Jon sat in a rickety chair at the desk. He looked around the Spartan office and examination room. A worried sense of urgency made him edgy. Still, he smoothed his features and kept his voice casual. He was grateful the pediatrician wanted to help, and he was frustrated from his long day.

She shrugged. “It is what I must do. It is right.” She unwound her white cowl and shook out her long dark hair. As it fell in a cloud around her shoulders, she appeared younger and angrier. “Who would have thought we would end like this?” Her dark eyes snapped. “I grew up during the early promise of the Ba'ath Party. Those were exciting days, and Iraq was full of hope. The Ba'ath sent me to London for my medical degree and then to New York for training at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. When I returned to Baghdad, I founded this hospital and became its first director. I do not want to be its last. But when the Ba'ath made Saddam president, everything changed.”

Smith nodded. “He sent Iraq into war with Iran almost immediately.”

“Yes, it was terrible. So many of our boys died. But after eight years of blood and empty slogans, we finally signed a treaty in which we won the right to move our border a few hundred meters from the center of the Shatt al-Arab to its eastern bank. All those wasted lives for a minor border dispute! Then to add insult to injury, we had to return all the land to Iran in 1990 as a bribe to keep it out of the Gulf War. Insanity.” She grimaced. "Of course, after Kuwait and that terrible war came the embargo. We call it al-hissar, which means not only isolation but encirclement by a hostile world. Saddam loves the embargo because he can blame all our problems on it. It is his most powerful tool to stay in power.

“Now you can't get enough medicine,” Jon said.

The pediatrician closed her eyes with angry frustration. “Malnutrition, cancers, diarrheas, parasites, neuromuscular conditions... diseases of all kinds. We need to feed our children, give them clean water, and inoculate them. Here in my country, every illness is a death threat now. Something must be done, or we will lose our next generation.” She opened her dark eyes. They were moist with emotion. “That is why I joined the underground.” She looked at Randi. “I am grateful for your help.” She whispered insistently, “We must overthrow Saddam before he kills us all.”

Through the door against which she leaned, Randi Russell could hear the low voices of doctors and nurses, whose soft words were too often all they had to give to the sick and dying children. Her heart went out to them and this tragic country.

But at the same time, turmoil raged inside her. As she kept guard against more trouble from Saddam's elite forces, she gazed at the two doctors who continued deep in conversation. From the examination table where she sat, Radah Mahuk's dusky face was tormented. She was a key player in the shaky opposition group the CIA was financing and had sent Randi and others to help strengthen. At the same time, Jonathan Smith slouched in a low chair, apparently relaxed. But she knew him well enough to guess his casual demeanor hid vigilant tension. She thought about what he had told her--- he was here to investigate some virus.

Her gaze hardened. Smith's tendency to be a loose canon could jeopardize Dr. Mahuk and, through Dr. Mahuk, the resistance. Suddenly uneasy, she adjusted the Uzi in her arms.

“That's why you agreed to talk with me?” Smith asked Dr. Mahuk.

“Yes. But we are all watched, hence the subterfuge.”

Jon smiled grimly. “The more subterfuge, the better the CIA likes it.”

Randi's unease rocketed to the surface. “The longer you're together, the more danger to everyone. Ask what you came to ask.”

Jon ignored her. He focused on Dr. Mahuk. “I've already learned a great deal about the three Iraqis who died of an unknown virus last year. They'd been in southern Iraq on the Kuwait border at one time or another near the end of the Gulf War.”

“So I was told, yes. A virus unknown in Iraq, which is strange.”

“The whole thing is strange,” Smith agreed. “One of my sources says there were also three survivors last year. Do you know anything about that?”

This time it was Dr. Mahuk who had to be prompted.

“Doctor?” Randi said.

The pediatrician slid off the table and padded to the door that was closed on the main corridor. She opened it quickly. No one was outside. She looked left and right. At last, she shut it and turned, her head cocked as she listened for intruders. “To even speak of the deaths and survivals is forbidden,” she said in a strained voice. “But, yes, there were three survivors. All in Basra, which is in the south, too, as you must know. Close to Kuwait. It sounds to me as if you may have formed the same theory I have.”

Jon said grimly, “Some kind of experiment?”

The pediatrician nodded.

He asked, “All three survivors were also in the Gulf War, stationed near the Kuwait border?”

“Yes.”

“It's odd that all those in Baghdad died, while the ones in Basra survived.”

“Very odd. It was one of the aspects that drew my attention.”

Randi studied the pair. They were talking cautiously around an issue she did not quite understand but sensed was momentous. Their gazes were focused on each other, the tall American man and the small Iraqi woman, and the intellectual tension was palpable. At the moment, as they probed their mutual quest, the outside world had receded, which made them more vulnerable--- and Randi more alert.

Jon asked, “Can you explain why those in Basra survived, Dr. Mahuk?”

“As it happens, yes. I was in the Basra hospital, helping to treat the victims, when a team of doctors from the U.N. arrived and gave each an injection. They not only improved, four days later they showed no ill effects from the virus. They were healed.” She paused and deadpanned, “It was remarkable.”

“That's an understatement.”

“It is.” She crossed her arms as if she had just felt a chill. “I would not have believed it had I not seen it.”

Smith jumped up and paced around the room. His high-planed face was deep in thought; his blue eyes cold, glittering, and outraged. “You know what you're telling me, Doctor? A cure for a fatal and unknown virus? Not a vaccine, but a cure?”

“That is the only reasonable explanation.”

“Curative antiserum?”

“That would be the best possibility.”

“It would also mean those so-called U.N. doctors had the material in quantity.”

“Yes.”

Jon's words spilled out in a rush: “A serum in quantity for a virus that first broke out in Iraq's six cases last year and then mysteriously reappeared a little more than a week ago in six more cases halfway around the world, in America. And all twelve victims had served on the Iraq-Kuwait border during the war or had a transfusion from someone who'd served on the border.”

“Precisely.” The pediatrician nodded vigorously. “In two countries where the virus had never existed.”

The two medical doctors faced each other across a great silence, both reluctant to say the next sentence.

But Randi could. “It's not remarkable. It's not even a miracle.” They turned to stare at her as she spoke the unspeakable: “Someone gave all of them the virus.”

It sickened Jon. “Yes, while only half were given the serum. It was a controlled, lethal experiment on humans who were uninformed and gave no consent.”

The pediatrician paled. “It reminds me of the depraved Nazi doctors who used concentration camp inmates for guinea pigs. Obscene. Monstrous!”

Randi stared at her. “Who were they?”

“Did any of those doctors with the serum tell you their names, Dr. Mahuk?” Jon asked.

“They gave no names. They said helping the men could get them into trouble with our regime and with their supervisors in Geneva. But I am sure they were lying. There was no way they could have entered Iraq and worked at that particular military hospital without the government's knowing.”

“How, then? A bribe?”

“A large bribe in some form to Saddam himself, I would guess.”

Randi asked, “You don't think they were from the U.N. at all, do you?”

The pediatrician shook her head nervously. “I should have seen the natural conclusion before. It is the problem with today. Just to live is a battle, and so we miss the overall picture. The answer to your question is yes, I believe they were not from the U.N., nor were they practicing doctors. Instead, they acted like research scientists. Plus, they arrived quickly, as if they knew who was going to be sick and when.”

It fit Jon's idea that the twelve victims were part of a test begun at the 167th MASH at the end of the Gulf War. “Did they give any hint about where they'd come from?”

“They said Germany, but their German was textbook, and their clothes weren't European. I think they were Americans, which, a year ago, would have made it even more dangerous for them to enter Iraq without the approval of Saddam himself.”

Randi frowned. She adjusted the Uzi. “You have no thoughts about who could have sent them?”

“All I remember is their speaking once among themselves about excellent skiing. But they could be referring to many, many places.”

Jon paced, contemplating research scientists from America who had a quantity of serum to cure the new virus. Suddenly he realized: “I've spent the day asking about the six who had the virus a year ago. What about since then? Have there been more cases in Iraq?”

Dr. Mahuk compressed her lips in shocked sorrow. She had devoted her life to healing, and now the world seemed to be exploding in a sickness beyond anyone's control. Anger and pain and outrage laced her voice as she told them, “In the past week, we have had many new victims of ARDS. At least fifty have died. We are not sure of the exact number, and it changes by the hour. We are only beginning to investigate whether it is the unknown virus, but I have little doubt. The same symptoms are there--- the history of small fevers, the heavy cold or mild flu for a few weeks, and the sudden ARDS, the hemorrhaging and death within hours. There have been no survivors.” Her voice broke. “None.”

Smith whirled from his nervous pacing, stunned by the large number of deaths. Compassion filled him. Then he realized... this could be the answer: “Were these victims also in the Gulf War? Or from the Kuwait border?”

Dr. Mahuk sighed. “Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple. Only a few were in the war and none was from near Kuwait.”

“Any contact with the original six of a year ago?”

Her voice was discouraged. “None at all.”

Jon thought of his beloved Sophia and then of General Kielburger, Melanie Curtis, and the 167th MASH from ten years before. “But how could fifty people unknowingly be injected with the virus simultaneously--- especially in a sealed-off nation like yours? Were they from one single area? Had they been abroad? Did they have contact with foreigners?”