Oath of Office

Swann raised a hand from out of his slump. “You say one of four known facilities. Are there unknown facilities?”

Trudy shrugged. “Certain life sciences corporations, especially ones that are closely held, could have BSL-4 facilities without the government knowing about it. Yeah. It’s possible.”

Swann nodded.

“The thing that’s different about this facility in Galveston is the other three BSL-4 facilities are located on highly secure government installations. Galveston is the only one on an academic campus, a fact which was repeatedly raised as a security concern before the facility first opened in 2006.”

“What did they do about it?” Ed Newsam said.

Trudy smiled again. “They promised they’d be extra careful.”

“Terrific,” Ed said.

“Let’s get to the meat of it,” Luke said.

Trudy nodded. “Okay. Three nights ago, a power failure occurred.”

Luke drifted just a bit as Trudy went through the material the lab director covered with Susan and her staff the night before. The night guard, the woman, the vial of Ebola. He heard these things, but he was barely listening.

An image of Becca and Gunner on the patio as he was leaving flashed in his mind. He tried to squash it, but it lingered on. For a long second, all he saw was Gunner staring down dejectedly at a striped bass on the grill.

“It sure sounds like sabotage,” Newsam said.

“It most likely was,” Trudy said. “The system was built for redundancy, and not only did the primary power source fail, the redundancy also failed. That just doesn’t happen very often unless someone helps it happen.”

“What do we know about the woman who was inside at the time?” Luke said. “What is her name? Anything new on her?”

“I did some looking into her. Aabha Rushdie, twenty-nine years old. She’s still missing. She has an exemplary record as a junior scientist. Doctorate in Microbiology. Highest honors at King’s College, London. Advanced training in BSL-3 and BSL-4 protocols, including certification to work solo in the lab, which is not a place everyone reaches.

“She’s been at Galveston for three years, and has worked on a number of important programs, including the weapons program we’re concerned with.”

“Okay,” Swann said. “This is a weapons program?”

Trudy raised a hand. “I’ll get to that in a minute. Let me finish with Aabha. The most interesting thing about her is she died in 1990.”

Everyone stared at Trudy.

“Aabha Rushdie died in a car crash in Delhi, India, when she was four years old. Her parents moved to London soon after. Later, they divorced and Aabha’s mother moved back to India. Her father died of a heart attack seven years ago. And five years ago, Aabha suddenly came back to life, with a life story, schools attended, jobs, and glowing recommendations from college professors in India, all just in time to study for her doctorate in England.”

“She’s a ghost,” Luke said.

“It would seem so.”

“But why is she Indian?”

Trudy glanced at her notes. “There are about a billion people in India, but no is really sure of the total figure. The country is far behind the Western world in computerizing birth and death records. There’s widespread corruption in the civil services there, so it’s pretty straightforward to buy the identity of someone who is dead. India is a major global source of fake people.”

“Yeah,” Swann said, “but then you have to hire an Indian ghost.”

Trudy raised a finger. “Not necessarily. To Westerners, there’s very little difference in the appearance of people from northern India, where Delhi is, and people from Pakistan, which is right nearby. In fact, to Indians and Pakistanis themselves there isn’t much difference. So I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Aabha Rushdie is actually a Pakistani, and most likely a Muslim. She might be an agent of the intelligence services there, or worse, a member of a conservative Sunni or Wahhabi sect.”

Ed Newsam audibly groaned.

Luke’s heart did a lazy belly flop somewhere inside his chest. Of all the analysts he had worked with, Trudy’s intel was always at the highest level. Her scenario-spinning ability might well be the best of the bunch. If she was correct in this case, then a Sunni from Pakistan had just stolen a vial of Ebola virus.

Good morning. Rise and shine.

He looked around at the four of them. His eyes landed on Trudy.

“Give us all of it,” he said.

“Okay, here comes the worst part,” Trudy said.

“It gets worse?” Swann said. “I thought we just heard the worst part. How does it get any worse than that?”

“First, the heads of the Galveston facility spent the first forty-eight hours after they realized a theft had occurred covering it up. Well, I don’t want to say they covered it up. They did their own internal investigation, which bore no fruit at all. They sent people to look for Aabha Rushdie, although she was probably already long gone. They could not initially believe that Aabha had stolen a virus. The people I talked to late last night still can’t believe it. Everyone there loved her, apparently, though no one knew much about her.”

“You mean, like they didn’t know she’s been dead for twenty-five years?” Swann said.

Trudy went on. “So they interviewed all of the lab technicians, to see if anyone had taken the vial by accident. No one confessed, and there was no reason to suspect anyone. They checked their inventory records, and of course, the vial had been inventoried as secured just a few hours before the lights went out.”

“Why do you suppose they delayed?”

“That’s the second thing, and probably the worst part of all of this. The vial taken isn’t just the Ebola virus. It’s a weaponized version of the Ebola virus. Three years ago, the lab received a large grant from the United States Centers for Disease Control, and match funding from the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Homeland Security. The funding was to find ways to modify the virus, making it even more virulent than it already was – increasing the ease with which it could be transmitted from person to person, the speed with which the Ebola disease would onset, and the percentage of infected people the virus would kill.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” Swann said.

“The idea was to weaponize the virus before any terrorists could, then study its properties, identify its vulnerabilities, and find ways to cure people who might one day become infected by it. The lab scientists succeeded with the first part of this task – weaponization – beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Using a gene therapy technique known as insertion, the researchers were able to create a number of mutations to the original Ebola virus.

“The new virus can be introduced into a population through an aerosol spray. Once infected, a person will become contagious within an hour, and will show onset of symptoms within at most two to three hours. In other words, an infected person could begin to infect others before symptoms of the disease appear.

“This is important. It’s a radical departure from the virus in its natural state. The progression of Ebola in human populations is normally stopped when victims are quarantined in a hospital before, or very soon after, they become contagious. To stop this virus, an entire geographic area, sick people and healthy people, would have to be quarantined together. You wouldn’t know right away who had the virus and who didn’t. That means road closures, checkpoints, and barricades.”

“Martial law,” Ed Newsam said.

“Exactly. And even worse, this virus can pass from person to person through tiny droplets in the air, and the illness usually presents with a violent cough. So no exposure to blood, vomit, or excrement is necessary, another radical departure from the original.”

“Anything else?” Luke said. He felt like he had already heard enough.

“Yes. The absolute worst part, as far as I’m concerned. The virus is highly virulent and very deadly. The lethality of the hemorrhagic illness it brings on is estimated at about ninety-four percent without medical intervention. This is the rate at which it killed off a colony of three hundred rhesus monkeys at a secure research facility in San Antonio two months ago. The virus was deliberately introduced into the colony, and within forty-eight hours, two hundred eighty-two of the monkeys were dead. More than half died within the first six hours. Of the eighteen who survived, three never contracted the illness, and fifteen recovered on their own over the next few weeks.

“The disease presents a nightmare scenario in which organs fail, blood vessels collapse, and the victim becomes completely debilitated and basically bleeds out, often in spectacular fashion. We’re talking about blood from the mouth, the ears, the eyes, the anus, and vagina, basically any bodily orifice, sometimes including the pores of the skin.”

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