Thirty minutes after the meeting at the White House, all two hundred and fifty-two BurgerFantastic outlets were shut down. By the next day, the first supplies of cephalosporin, newly constituted by Maria Cabrini’s formula of acids, were being delivered to hospitals throughout New York and the adjoining states. Twenty-four hours later, doctors began to report an improvement in patient symptoms. A further thirty-six hours later, the tipping point had been reversed and hospitals began discharging patients, while fewer patients were presenting with new infections.
One year later, a full Congressional Inquiry was complete. The final report stated that 122,086 people died as a result of poisoning with e-coli O157:h7, which had initially proved untreatable owing to antibiotic resistance. The first recorded victim was Mrs Esther Wolfowitz, a pensioner of Apartment 68, 9012 Jay Street, Manhattan. The last recorded death was Ricky Morgan, aged twenty-five, a football player with the New York Giants. The Inquiry concluded that the cause of the outbreak was deliberate infection with e-coli O157:h7 and that the motive was terrorism.
A powerful Senate Committee of Inquiry was established to investigate Detective John Wyse’s theory that the epidemic was caused by the deliberate acceleration of antibiotic resistance in New York, prior to the introduction of the e-coli bacteria. Despite thousands of hours of investigation and cooperation between various government agencies, it was found that this theory could not be proven. The presence of cephalosporin particles at the BurgerFantastic factory, while suspicious, was not conclusive. Furthermore, there was no formal report before the Inquiry by the Food and Drug Administration into the alleged misleading advertising of SuperVerve, as Yamoura Pharmaceuticals had withdrawn the campaign voluntarily.
The FDA was praised for its intervention in the case.
(Maria Cabrini was of the view that the FDA inquiry probably forced the perpetrators to introduce the e-coli bacteria earlier than they had planned. Had the population continued to consume cephalosporin at the same rate for another six months, she believed that the epidemic of infection would have been completely overwhelming. Also, she suggested, the terrorists had been rushed into introducing the e-coli in December, rather than the following summer. The warmer summer humidity would have increased the survival and transfer of bacteria and would have caused even more deaths.)
However, the Committee of Inquiry did direct the FDA to formally reassess the country’s vulnerability to widespread antibiotic resistance.
At private committee level, Maria Cabrini proffered her theory that Tsan Yohoto had deliberately added his own DNA into the infecting organism in order to increase the incidence of leukaemia in New York. This theory proved difficult to investigate, as a sample of Tsan Yohoto’s DNA was needed in order to compare it against the bacteria. Tsan Yohoto had been killed in a plane crash in Japan and his body had been completely incinerated in the subsequent fire. An enquiry was made as to the availability of DNA from any relatives of Tsan Yohoto. It was reported that Tsan Yohoto’s only relative was his mother, Saina Yohoto. Unfortunately, she had died in the same crash as her son and, in accordance with his will, what very little remained of their bodies had been cremated and their ashes scattered in a public park in Hiroshima.
E-coli O157:h7 was discovered in the sauce containers in all the BurgerFantastic restaurants on the day they were closed. It is believed that these were all from the last two vats of sauce, which had been infected the previous night. The prime suspect for the deliberate infecting of the sauce is Takar el Sayden, the BurgerFantastic owner and the Inquiry held that his motive was terrorism, in collaboration with persons unknown.
The file on the murder of Abdel Moamer, the founder of the Quick ’n’ Tasty restaurant business, remains open. It is not known whether he was aware of the plot. Detective John Wyse offered the view that he had been murdered, either because he would not take part in the conspiracy, or to put pressure on his nephew, Takar el Sayden, to cooperate.
A request was sent to the Libyan authorities asking that they cooperate in returning Takar el Sayden to the US, to assist the investigation. The Libyan government respectfully pointed out that the evidence was flimsy and that they doubted if Mr el Sayden would receive a fair trial, given the media coverage of the events. An extradition warrant was served but is not considered likely to have much chance of success. Takar el Sayden now lives with his family near Tripoli and is reported to be a very wealthy man. The BurgerFantastic company was closed down permanently and the Newark production facility freehold and the restaurant leases were sold by the liquidator, in one lot, to a national pizza chain.
Yamoura Pharmaceuticals continues to thrive. Following Tsan Yohoto’s death, his old friend, the silver-haired Yamoura chairman, Lumo Kinotoa, was appointed as daitoryou or chief executive.
Dynamic Communications have continued their profitable growth. They were never accused of any foul play in connection with their marketing campaigns for SuperVerve and BurgerFantastic.
Professor Alan G.F. Milton was issued with a verbal warning by his colleagues at the Food and Drug Administration, concerning the thoroughness of his work in the SuperVerve case. Two months later, a senior lecturer unexpectedly entered Professor Milton’s study one evening, shortly before the end of term exam results. Professor Milton was sitting on the edge of his desk, receiving oral sex from a blonde twenty-two-year-old student, who had been concerned about her grades. Two weeks later, following a university inquiry, he was fired from his position as Professor of Otolaryngology. The following day, his wife Sylvia threw him out of their house and filed for divorce.
Dr Peter Phillips never worked again as a doctor. He moved to Miami, and worked for three months in his brother’s car hire business before committing suicide.
One week after the White House acted on his colleague John Wyse’s theory, Detective Michael Cabrini was called into Sergeant Jim Connolly’s office at the police station. Already in the room were the police department lawyer and a police doctor. Sergeant Connolly told him that they were of the opinion that his alcohol abuse was seriously affecting his work and went on to list a number of examples. The final straw had been his non-availability to assist Detective Wyse in confronting the curtain swishers at the hospital. (It transpired that Detective Cabrini had gone for lunch at Harry’s and had met Detectives Smith and Williams, who were discussing problems in their marriages. He decided to have a beer, and ‘one thing led to another’.) Detective Cabrini accepted that this was a dereliction of duty. He was suspended and given two options – either an inquiry would be held into his conduct and he would probably be dismissed, or he could choose to stop drinking and enter an addiction treatment centre, with the full support of the police department.
Detective Cabrini entered the six-week residential programme at the Cedars Rehabilitation Institute in Brooklyn. Cabrini described the experience as ‘life-changing’ and subsequently remained sober. Six months later, his wife Liz invited him back into the family home in New Jersey. A few months later, he retired from the Force and now works as a qualified addiction counsellor.
Detectives Smith and Williams, who were both on final warnings about their drinking on duty and unreliability, refused the option of attending rehab. They were both fired and now work as security guards at a New Jersey mall.
The Inquiry considered the roles of Anna Milani and her fellow ‘curtain swisher’ Muhammad Fattar Attabak. The Inquiry concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove that they were trying to spread infection by manipulating curtains in the wards. Instead, it was proposed that they were observing conditions in the hospitals and reporting to persons unknown.
Wyse and Cabrini later pieced together a few of the clues. Milani is a common Iranian surname, and it transpired that her family were Sunni Muslims, originally from Iran. (‘You always said her eyes reminded you of a Persian cat,’ Cabrini told him, half joking.) Anna was born and reared in Leeds, in the north of England, where she had come under the influence of a group of radicalised al-Qaeda supporters, as did a number of her peers who were involved in the London tube and bus bombings, and the second Glasgow airport attack. Later, Wyse remembered the day of their first kiss in Central Park. She had brought him to see her friend’s paintings. He realised now that the one she liked most had been of the mountain setting for the Battle of Jaji, Osama bin Laden’s legendary defence of a training camp known as ‘The Lion’s Den’. And he wondered if her Muslim faith accounted for her refusal of sex until well into their relationship. Wyse remembered all those ‘projects’ she was working on, at unusual hours – perhaps they had nothing at all to do with Dynamic Communications.
Homeland Security discovered a diary kept by Anna Milani, under a pile of magazines in her bedside locker. John Wyse was shown her last entry, which was on Saturday 14 December, the day before she died.
I love John so much it’s scary! Pretty sure I’m pregnant, but haven’t done the test yet. OMG! People are dying from this food poisoning thing. It’s awful. Cindy’s out sick too – hope she’s okay. Very worried. Tired doing this curtain swishing thing, and keeping it from John. Don’t know what the point is? I need to get out of it as soon as I can, but I can’t risk anything happening to them at home. Stuck for now.
Maria Cabrini was awarded a Presidential Citizens Medal, for her role in reversing the catastrophe. She accepted a post as a researcher, specialising in antibiotic resistance, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Detective John Wyse was granted two weeks’ compassionate leave and counselling, following the death of his fiancée. He stayed with his sister’s family in Malibu, where he spent most of the time walking on the beach contemplating the shocking events, with the voices of the dead echoing through his head.
He was invited to a private lunch with the President at the White House, together with his parents, where the President praised him for his detective work and his leadership in bringing an end to the crisis. The President presented him with an Excellent Police Duty award.
John Wyse was delighted to accept an offer of a new position with the Joint Terrorism Task Force with a brief ‘to encourage lateral thinking and to assess the USA’s ability to predict and react to terrorism threats of a non-traditional nature’. Unknown to him, a covert Homeland Security team is currently keeping him under surveillance, because of his link to Anna Milani. On Saturday night next, he is having dinner at Mike and Liz Cabrini’s house. The Cabrinis have also invited Mike’s sister, Maria.
Ibrahim Fallah continues in his position of chief librarian at the New York Metropolitan Library on Fifth Avenue. The maintenance crew’s van was never connected to him. Along with hundreds of others who attended the same Bronx mosque as Anna Milani and her fellow curtain-swisher, he was routinely checked out by police and no suspicions were raised.
He subsequently received new instructions from Afghanistan and now spends most of his spare time carrying out surveys of the Manhattan subway system. What he doesn’t know is that Lumo Kinotoa, the chairman of the Chess Club, has drawn on his learning as a military historian to conceive a new strategy. That plan would soon see Fallah involved in an extraordinary new plot, which would bring widespread terror to western cities.