Weapon of Choice (37 page)

“Mrs. Goode, I want you to know that I did what in my judgment was necessary,” Stacy said. “For safety. I am so sorry that I ruined your retirement party. I was having such a good time until I saw my colleague acting suspicious. I believed, though I couldn't
be absolutely sure, still am not, that he was trying to poison all of us, infect us with a deadly bacteria. I had to act. If I am right, anybody who ate those,” Stacy pointed at the pastries oozing with cream, drizzled with chocolate, “would die a very painful death.”

Emma tried to scan the surrounding tables for any empty dessert plates, but she couldn't see past the growing contingent of law enforcement and private security people. Her beloved husband, Edward, had told her never to skimp on security. “There are those who don't want to see us succeed,” he'd warned.

Emma pulled Emeril onto her lap. He still sulked but gave in and cuddled when she held him. She gazed the length of her table: all the profiteroles looked uneaten and untouched.

“I just wanted to explain,” Stacy said. “Now I have to make sure that these dessert plates are removed with sterile technique, stored, and secured. Director Cox will be in tonight, and I know she'll give you an update. I hope I was wrong and that this turns out to be a horrific false alarm. I really do.”

“So do I, Dr. Jones, and thank you. You did what you had to do. You were brave. No matter how this turns out.” With a sigh of profound despair, Emma acknowledged her fear that Edward had been right.
They don't want us to succeed
.

S
ATURDAY
, N
OVEMBER
30

Following Stacy's urgent call, Director Madeleine Cox left Tampa City Hospital a little before midnight. She'd commandeered an Air Force jet to fly her and Stan Proctor to Atlanta, where police met them and escorted them to the Palace Hotel.

She'd called Stacy from the air, confirming that she'd endorsed Stacy's initial quarantine orders, locking down the hotel, no exceptions. Not a pleasant task with all the dignitaries in attendance. But security was heavy at the gala, and the Atlanta police commander was a guest. Because Dr. Jones moved quickly to sound a public health alarm and to issue clear directives, the commander said, no one had left the building. One exception the cops knew about: a white male in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed like a Palace busboy, had been seen speeding away from the hotel in a white panel truck. Hotel security had observed the same truck earlier in the evening, parked in the employee lot near the service road exit. Atlanta police said the male driving the white truck resembled Dr. Jones's description of a busboy who scuffled with Charles at the elder Scarletts' table, and soon after, assaulted Dr. Jones herself. When she stood on a chair to warn everybody to stop eating, the busboy pushed her to the floor. After that, he managed to flee the scene.

Stacy had been relieved to see her boss, Stan Proctor, walk into the security director's office of the Palace Hotel. She was ready to transfer some of the tremendous weight of the evening's events to his hefty shoulders. But Stan, geared up in the hazmat suit looked ashen and withdrawn. He already bore too much weight. The toxic
staphylococcal organism meant to infect hundreds of people came from his supposedly secure labs, carried by his supposedly sane scientist—who also held top-secret clearance. Stan's CDC program, already in DARPA's crosshairs, didn't stand a chance of survival now. Neither, probably, did his career.

The security suite of the luxury hotel had its quota of leather armchairs. Stacy had collapsed into a burgundy-toned one and stayed there, surrounded by FBI agents, recording devices, and radio receivers. She still was in her party dress, not yet having undergone the decontamination process the CDC had set up for everyone who'd come anywhere near the Goode banquet.

She answered the agents' questions as best she could. About the bacteria. About Charles. About herself. But the investigators took turns quizzing her, and she could no longer mask her fatigue. At first, the authorities had praised her fast action, but now they had more questions than kind words. Were they starting to look at her from a different angle? For a moment, she wondered if she needed a lawyer.

Director Cox's entrance created a diversion. Stacy got up from her comfortable chair and greeted her big boss. “I need a moment with Dr. Jones,” Cox said, dismissing the cadre of agents.

“Sit down, Stacy,” Cox said, looking odd in the bulky protective suit. “You've had a remarkable evening. How'd you get that tear in your dress? Hair looks good, though. I've never seen it pulled up like that at work.”

The FBI had been harassing and haranguing her, and Madeleine Cox is talking about her hair?

“On our way in,” Dr. Cox said, “Stan confirmed that the creamy centers of the profiteroles already on the tables were teeming with staphylococci. Our AZ3510 staph, the flesh-eating, resistant one. Lucky we have that rapid ID test. Your idea, as I recall.”

Until that moment, Stacy had not known for sure what she had so strongly suspected. Charles's extra incubator minutes—Charles wanted to kill her and her people. The vile, despicable worm.

“Resistant to all known antibiotics,” Cox continued. “Unlike the Tampa staph that's responding nicely to ticokellin.”

“Victor Worth's ticokellin?” Stacy asked, reminded that she'd set up the experiments to confirm he was implicated in the Tampa toxic staph.

“Worth had a good day and a bad day,” Cox said.

“Good?” Stacy could not imagine what about Worth's day could have gone well.

“He got a big job at Keystone Pharma, big comp package, lots of perks.”

“He—?” Then Stacy remembered she had caught that on the seven o'clock news while she dressed for the gala at the Palace. She was so exhausted now, she'd blanked it out.

“Later, the FBI picked him up and put him in a cell. Next voice he hears will be the U.S. Attorney's. Intentionally infecting sick, innocent patients. Premeditated. Serial murder. How do you feel about the death penalty?”

Stacy always had been against capital punishment. But now? She was too tired to think straight, her brain a jumble of ghosts—Natalie Nelson's boyfriend and the others. Now, she couldn't be so sure.

T
UESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
3

The quarantine lasted seventy-two hours. Emma's whole family—all twenty-nine of them—sojourned with her in the large meeting room allocated to them. Each was enveloped by an isolation cocoon, no physical contact, but they could communicate through the high-tech microphone embedded in each of their space suit-like getups. The kids loved it.

Early in their confinement, Emma had been despondent, appalled by the evil that was Charles Scarlett. She needed Edward to help her understand the depth of the hate and contempt that one human element imposes on another. Of course, Edward wasn't there, but Emma did feel his spirit reach down, cajoling her, as he always had, to move forward, to leave the past behind, and make a better world. So she'd shaken off her melancholy, encouraged each of her seven children to follow Dr. King's dream and their father's road of optimism. Each time her little Emeril strutted into view, a little brat compared to his fourteen older cousins, she thanked God. That child had come so close to the most horrible of deaths. Emma also thanked Coretta Scott King for the prolonged prayer that had kept them all waiting to eat their dessert.

On Emma's advice, the family watched one hour of news coverage a day. One hour and they turned it off.

What they learned: Thirteen known victims in metro Atlanta, of the virulent and disfiguring staph. The Goode family knew three of them: a pleasant white neighbor and a former college roommate of
one of Emma's daughters, along with her husband. Also, three security detail, four banquet waitstaff, a member of the mayor's staff, John F. Kennedy Jr.'s bodyguard, and Charles Scarlett's mother. All dead within thirty hours of ingesting the tainted profiteroles.

The Goodes and the rest of the world learned more than they wanted to know about the hate groups out there. And there were many, too many. With the segregation battle lost, descendants of the Klan organized the Council of Conservative Citizens. Well-funded and politically connected, these rabid extremists united not only against blacks, but gays and Jews, as well. The council screened its members, who commonly stockpiled arms. They worked alone, lone wolf; or in small cells, strong packs. Speculation was rampant on the airwaves, but the consensus among experts interviewed on the news was that Charles must have been a member of a small cell that had recruited him specifically to discharge the bioweapon-grade staph. But no one knew conclusively. His mother was dead. His father refused all interviews.

On the last quarantine day, Emma had allowed an exception to the one-hour television rule. They'd be going home the next morning, all healthy, no bacterial growth on the myriad of cultures done on every accessible body fluid and tissue. Local news interrupted normal programming to announce that police had found a body in the driver's seat of a panel truck pulled off a side road leading to the Middle Georgia Regional Airport near Macon.

An off-duty flight attendant had noticed the van both coming and going on his commute on two consecutive days. He decided to take a look and persevered despite the intense odor emanating from the truck. Inside he saw a grotesque, melting body. He did not touch the truck; alerted, like everyone, by round-the-clock news about the deadly, flesh-eating staph. He'd pooh-poohed the coverage as hype, but now, he told reporters, it might have saved his life. On camera, the flight attendant described the body. In fact, the staph had liquefied all flesh and muscle, exposing elements of a slimy skeleton.

Later, the body was identified as William Matthews aka Will
Banks. Age thirty-one. A known white supremacist, member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, wanted by the FBI for questioning in a rash of hate crimes throughout the South.

Emma turned off the television and gathered her family in prayer.

T
HREE MONTHS LATER
F
EBRUARY
1986

Laura and Stacy savored a cup of tea and a croissant in an airport coffee shop. During a random phone call, they'd discovered that their paths would cross in Atlanta. Stacy heading to San Francisco, Laura changing planes on a flight to Philadelphia.

“First flight I've been on since the epidemics,” Laura said. “The hospital's back on course, busy as ever. The kids are in school. And I'm on my way to Tim Robinson's surprise birthday bash.”

“How old is he and what's going on with you two?” Stacy asked.

“Tim's turning forty-five. I got an invite from the Pediatric Surgery Department at Children's Hospital. I got to know a lot of the doctors back when Patrick had his surgery there seven years ago. Tim'll be surprised to see me, in a good way, I hope.”

“I'm impressed that you're going that far, leaving the twins and Patrick at home. No more significant motivation here than a surprise party?”

“No, Stacy, I don't think so. Tim's been there for me, albeit long distance since Steve died, but—”

“We'll see after this weekend,” Stacy said, gulping her tepid tea. “Tell me about Natalie. You were worried about her the last time we talked.”

“At first, she was reclusive, refused to talk to anyone except Nicole. She was angry, she told her sister; angry that I'd let Trey die. She believed that I could have gotten him ticokellin in time to save him. With time, she's improved. You know what helped?
Spending time with Trey's parents. I reached out to them, despite our legal entanglements, which, by the way, have gone away with a settlement to workers. The Standishes have literally put their arms around Natalie and, more than anyone else, have gone a long way toward convincing her that Trey did not have a chance.”

“So she'll be okay,” Stacy concluded.

“I think so,” Laura said. “I hope so.”

Both women checked their watches, smiled, and rose from the table. An elderly couple at the next table turned to gape.

“They're looking at you, Stacy,” Laura said. “You're that famous scientist now.”

“Hey, girlfriend, have a great party. I'll be thinking about you.” Stacy leaned in to hug Laura. “And guess what? When I get back, I've got a date with that special agent who delivered the Tampa staph culture to my lab. Stay tuned!”

While
Weapon of Choice
is a novel, with fictional characters, places, and events, the era circa 1985 was embroiled in the emergence of the biggest health care concern in modern history. Four years earlier in 1981 an outbreak of Kaposi sarcoma and pneumocystis among gay men in New York and California became known as GRID—gay-related immune deficiency. But soon the disease spread to heterosexuals, intravenous drug addicts, and patients receiving blood transfusions. In 1983, a virus was found to be the cause of the disease, and the outbreak became known as HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).

By 1985 a test was approved by the FDA for use in blood transfusions. In the meantime the virus was spreading throughout the country and there was no known cure. Thus the scenario in Tampa—the city's first known case of HIV/AIDS—typifies the reaction of communities all over the country as they grappled with the frightening epidemic shrouded in misinformation and controversy. In 1987, an antiviral drug, AZT, was approved by the FDA. That was the year President Reagan first publicly acknowledged the HIV/AIDS problem and used “AIDS” in a speech. Now, over twenty-five years later, we have dozens of drugs approved to fight HIV, but the disease is still a global plague.

Flesh-eating bacteria, as well as bacteria causing necrotizing fasciitis, are real and are usually due to either a group A Streptococcus or a resistant strain of Staphylococcus. Both are highly lethal. In
Weapon of Choice
, the research scenario in the NIH and the CDC is
fictional, but judging from what we know about the government's experiences with anthrax, not unrealistic. In 1985, Iraq began an offensive biological weapons program producing anthrax, botulism toxin, and aflatoxin. In 1985, what was the United States' secret biodefense program focusing on?