The Moses Virus (17 page)

“But,” replied Tom, “the Moses Virus would not harm the food supply of that country.”

“We know that. But if we used the virus, we would also use other means to wipe out that country’s agriculture.”

“So,” said Tom, “you’d destroy agriculture, livestock, and the population, including the politicians?”

“It’s a stark way to describe it, but, yes, you’re essentially correct,” said Bailitz. “After most of the country’s politicians are eliminated, Belagri will offer our antidote for the virus, and we will immediately supply the country with the means to reestablish its food production. With our state-of-the-art facilities, I am confident we can find the antidote for the treacherous pestilence of the Moses Virus.

“With the antidote we will have a perfect weapon. Our competitors won’t stand a chance to keep up with us. We’ll feed the people in that country—forever.”

“And there will be enough food for everyone?” Tom asked.

“Exactly,” replied Bailitz, with obvious excitement.

“The sacrifice of the few to benefit the many?” Tom said, feeling both sick and sad.

“Just so.”

“And put billions of dollars in Belagri’s pocket?”

“It’s a win-win situation. We are the leader in a growth industry that is essential to man’s survival. It dwarfs Apple’s or Google’s opportunities. Man can live without computers, Dr. Stewart, but
all
men must eat to survive.”

“You are mad.”

“Dr. Stewart, I’m a practical man. I run a large global company. We have a problem, and I have a solution. The world wins. Belagri wins. We will profitably solve the world hunger problem.”

“What makes you think I’d help you, even if I could?”

“You’ve already been quite helpful to us, thanks to your impressive investigatory skills.”

“Well, apparently you know more than I do.”

Bailitz smiled. “You are too modest, Dr. Stewart. We persuaded Father O’Boyle to help us understand the Vatican’s role in all of this. Sigmund Warburg on the other hand was not quite as cooperative.”

“What have you done to Sigmund Warburg?” Tom asked.

Bailitz smirked. “Nothing. He was an old man in frail health. I will simply say that he . . . didn’t respond well to our interview techniques.”

“What makes you think I was any more successful than you with Sigmund Warburg in learning the whereabouts of the virus?”

“Call it an educated guess. We’ll find out soon enough.” At this point, Bailitz pressed a button on a signaling device by his place at the table. The door opened and—to Tom’s surprise—Crystal Close walked into the room. She looked surprised to see Tom.

“Good morning, Dr. Stewart,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”

Tom didn’t respond.

She turned to Bailitiz. “Hermann, I had the impression that Dr. Stewart was under my direction. I was not informed . . .”

“I decided that more aggressive methods were required.”

Tom, who was watching Crystal, thought he saw a flicker of anger flash across her face.

Crystal sat down next to Bailitz without saying anything.

Bailitz continued. “We need to know what you know, Dr. Stewart. Your cooperation could make you a very rich man.”

“Blood money,” Tom said scathingly.

“Spare me your moralizing,” Bailitz barked. “You are in a position to save millions of starving people, victims of the shortsightedness of their leaders.”

“And you would put hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, at risk to prove this point?” Tom cried out. “This virus may start a pandemic. Without an antidote you would be committing mass murder.”

“Semantics,” Bailitz answered. “There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people starving and dying every year because of small-mindedness and corruption. Aren’t these corrupt leaders really the mass murderers you should care about? Besides, we would only proceed if we have the antidote.”

“You’ll never get away with it. Once your plan is exposed, every country in the world will hunt you down.”

“Exposed? Who will expose us? You?” Bailitz laughed. “I hardly think so.”

Tom was silent.

Bailitz became serious and stared directly into Tom’s eyes. “Make no mistake, we will get the virus, whatever it takes.”

Bailitz stood and Crystal followed suit. “Please follow me,” Bailtiz said to Tom. “I will explain further.”

They walked down a carpeted hallway and stopped at what looked like a laboratory door, highly secure, with a heavy glass panel permitting a person on the outside to see everything going on inside.

Crystal opened the door and led the way into a large room filled with a huge oval conference table around which were placed leather chairs. It looked like the boardroom of a major multinational corporation.

Quietly sitting at the large oval table was a distinguished older man, with a shock of white hair. “This,” said Bailitz proudly, “is Stephen Harrington, the former president of the World Bank, and, before that, one of the most venerated chief executives in the global economy, the former head of the Bank of New York.”

“What’s this room for?” Tom asked.

“It’s comforting for Stephen. He sits here every day, never saying anything, waiting for something to happen.”

“Will something happen?”

“Not directly—he’s ‘retired,’ you might say. But he remains a potent symbol. We’ll paste his picture on a website at the appropriate time, to go along with the speech the world will hear from his lips.”

“Even though he doesn’t say anything?”

“We have ‘organized’ a speech for him. It’s one he gave years ago, which shocked quite a few people.”

“I must have missed it,” Tom said, with some interest.

“In short,” Bailitz replied, “Harrington had grown exasperatingly frustrated at the plight of third world countries—death by malaria, AIDS, and a dozen other causes, starvation of the masses, scandalous corruption by the rulers. During an interview by Mike Wallace on
60 Minutes
, Harrington said: ‘The solution to Africa’s problems should be a massive downsizing of its population.’

“‘How would this happen?’ Wallace had asked.

“‘By some act of God, a fearsome virus, perhaps. Wipe the evildoers and sinners out, lock, stock, and barrel.’

“Wallace immediately broke for a commercial, and when the show returned after the commercial, Harrington was gone, and the next guest was sitting in Harrington’s seat. That was the last time Harrington appeared in public view.”

Bailitz then said, “You know, at that moment, I saw that Harrington was correct. It was exactly the wrong thing to say politically. But it was the equivalent of ‘Let the law of the jungle take its course.’”

Tom finally grasped Bailitz’s meaning. “You would set the virus loose somewhere killing people indiscriminately, and have Harrington’s words blame the tragedy on the righteous wrath of the Almighty?”

“No better place for retribution to come from,” Bailitz said. “What’s more, the people who must be silenced, who must be removed, are the bureaucrats. Anyone else is collateral damage.”

Bailitz looked directly at Harrington, who gave no sign he was even listening.

“How would this work?” Tom asked. “You don’t have the virus supply. You don’t have an antidote for the virus. And you only have one old man—and barely that, just to look at him.”

Bailitz reddened. “We will find the antidote once our labs have the supply of virus for testing. And, we have a specific target.”

“Where?” Tom asked caustically.

“Nairobi. Once we strike, killing grain, livestock, and the population, we will devastate Kenya like Moses devastated Egypt,” Bailitz said.

Bailitz gestured to Harrington. “Stephen Harrington, our ‘Moses,’ will pronounce over his website that God has spoken. That corrupt governments must fall. People must be fed. We will let the perilous situation in Kenya fester. The world will wonder, then worry, that the plague will spread wider. Perhaps to their countries. Hysteria will be rampant. And at an auspicious moment, Belagri will announce—with there being no connection with Harrington—that our humane and efficient laboratories have discovered the antidote for the virus. We will offer this to the world agencies for distribution.

“We will also offer newly bioengineered seeds immune from the disease to farmers in the third world whose crops have been destroyed. These seeds will be available from us at rock-bottom prices.”

Tom countered, “What if the world finds out Belagri released the virus in the first place?”

“The Vatican certainly won’t say anything,” Bailitz said. “Their hands are tied with having produced it in the first place. They need to put as much distance between the Church and the virus as possible. Everyone else who knows about it is dead—except you.”

Tom said grimly, “I’ve been thinking about this.”

Bailitz stared at Tom but said nothing.

Tom continued. “The real tragedy is that the virus is likely to kill vast numbers of people. That’s what happened in 1918 with the Spanish flu virus. There is a chance that the virus will become a pandemic, unable to be stopped. This is much more than a ‘local killer.’”

Bailitz said without hesitation, “The real scourge of these countries is their leadership. That’s what we’ll fix.”

Tom looked at Harrington. He had a worldwide reputation for absolute integrity. He was a tall man, six feet five inches tall. His reputation around the world had been made and remained intact. There would be many who would listen to the words of this distinguished world citizen. But Tom grasped the truth. Though he was looking at Harrington, the august man of the past was no longer there. He had declined into dementia. He was solely an instrument for Bailitz to play.

Bailitz said, “I know what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong. Harrington has been retired and out of the public’s eye for eight years. After his wife died, he appeared at her funeral, then he went into seclusion. No one has seen or heard from him since. We kept him out of the press so that the world would not have to see his decline. The beauty of the Internet is that Stephen Harrington can make public statements and even brief appearances over the Internet and no one need know that he has been ‘assisted.’”

Tom realized he needed to know more about Bailitz’s plans if he were to stop this madman. “Frankly,” Tom said, “what you’ve told me sounds like the view from thirty thousand feet. How will you actually inflict this Moses Virus on the government and people of Nairobi?”

Bailitz grabbed Tom by the arm, enthusiastically leading him to the next room.

Tom could see several long tables against the far wall with many computers and large monitors. Lights on the monitors showed that the computers were active. He spotted two young women keeping an eye on the computers and screens, walking back and forth, occasionally typing on the keyboards.

At this point, Bailitz seemed to be on fire with enthusiasm.

“On the evening prior to our operation, our team will arrive by plane from Paris,” Bailitz said. “They’ll check into their hotel and spend the next day tracing and retracing the steps of the plan as well as familiarizing themselves with the area. Nairobi has an urban population of four million, three million of whom are concentrated in the central part of the city. This group is the prime target for the virus—and there’s the real objective: the central district contains most of the major government officials of the country. To the world, Nairobi is notable: it’s Africa’s mile-high city, with Mount Kenya to the north and Kilimanjaro to the southeast. Kilimanjaro’s famed snow-capped flat top has already been receiving international attention for its ice cover which is melting due to global warming. Kenya’s central position in Africa, its prominence, and its history are ideal to demonstrate the message we wish to deliver. In recent years, Nairobi has become world-renowned as a corrosively evil city overrun with crime out of control. It is its government that has failed to keep order. Time for a change, wouldn’t you agree?”

“How will you use the virus to infect the population?” Tom asked with—he admitted to himself—morbid curiosity.

“We’ve selected the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. It’s among the highest buildings in the central business district, has iconic status, and is in walking distance of several five-star hotels.

“Around 10 p.m., our three team members will be waiting in the lobby of the Kenyatta Centre. They’ll take the elevator to the top floor, the Conference Centre’s observation deck on the thirtieth floor. They’ll carry a small canister of the virus, a supply of oxygen to breathe via their face masks, but also oxygen to aerosolize the Moses Virus so that it can be dispensed as a vapor. Once on the observation deck, the leader of our team will lean over the edge of the deck, letting the pressurized oxygen force the aerosolized contents in a spray out in the evening air, falling toward the streets of Nairobi.

“Their orders are to remain on the observation deck for only fifteen minutes, time enough for the first effects of the virus to occur, but not enough time to become widespread. The team will then summon the elevator and descend to the lobby.

“It’s expected that men and women in and around the building—by that time—will be slumped, dead, or dying. The dying ones are highly dangerous as they immediately become agents for spreading the virus. The beauty of this virus is that death spreads geometrically by contagion.

“Our team, with oxygen masks still in place, will put Red Cross insignias on their arms in case there’s anyone to ask them what they’re doing. They’ll walk to their rental car and drive quickly to the airport. We have studied all aspects of typical wind currents. We did this when we thought we’d be using anthrax. But we’re already studying what changes we’ll need to make to accommodate the virus. I can tell you, we’re excited about using it. After disposing of their equipment, our team will board a private jet at the airport, and yes, we’ve made provisions to deal with panic and hysteria which may close down the airport altogether. I believe,” said Bailitz proudly, “that we’ve thought of everything.”

He paused, then continued. “The circle of those infected by the virus will be spreading out from the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The livestock similarly infected, but by the anthrax spores, will be a major loss to the farmers of Kenya. The world wire services will cover the incident. There will be no tie to Belagri. Kenya will have been paralyzed—the country will come to a complete halt. Hysteria will spread rapidly from Kenya to the rest of Africa. Europe will experience the fear. So will the United States. News will get out that the virus is the same powerful contagious virus that the Bible spoke of in the Book of Exodus. Some will believe that this is God’s wrath.”