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TWO DAYS AFTER GLENN had handed off the taskforce to Jackson, he was seated in an interrogation room at the FBI. But he wasn’t being interrogated. The door was propped open with an old-fashioned wedge doorstop to allow him to come and go, but he was under orders not to go beyond the restroom or the nook with a coffee machine unless accompanied by an agent. And he had to wear his visitor badge at all times.
He was glad once again for the uniform, which set him apart as something more than a casual visitor. After the first full day, they grew used to him and barely spared him a glance. He probably could wander the halls unmolested.
But he didn’t have time to test that hypothesis. All around him, piled on the tables, were printouts of articles from scientific journals. What they’d done already, in the week he was with the taskforce, was to run an analysis of frequency of word use in all the articles they had found about influenza. But they needed someone with the context to pick out the really important words. He had already crossed many words off the list they had compiled and today was combing through additional articles he had found for words to add. He could have done it online, but he found himself glazing over after five solid hours at the computer yesterday, so Nydia had shown him which printer to send to. Periodically, she came by and delivered a stack of printouts to him.
Nydia had said two days ago as she had settled him in the room where he was to work, “Think of running a Google search. If you’re searching for a name like Glenn Stevens, you get a million hits, right? If you’re searching for, say, Tallulah Bankhead, you will probably only get hits about that one woman. So how would you modify your search to get only the Glenn Stevens who was you? We need terms that someone who designed the flu would use, or maybe only a dozen people, but not every microbiologist on the planet. Right?”
“Right.”
“This is all technical information. But if there are abbreviations, or slang terms, or something you’d know but we wouldn’t see in these articles without having your contextual knowledge, write that down too.”
“Will do.”
“I’ll check with you every few hours.”
The hardest part of the job now was not getting distracted by the content of the articles. There were several interesting papers here, and from journals he did not typically follow. He kept up with the epidemiological publications, but that meant he missed a lot of the nuts and bolts work going on in virology. He had to keep reminding himself to quit getting engaged in reading the content and keep on-task, hunting for searchable terms.
It took self-discipline, but he got better and better at tossing aside articles that were fascinating but not at all relevant. It was like triage, in a way. The Rotterdam experiment and any letters in response to it, he read word for word, hoping that something would jump off the page, a phrase, perhaps in the letters. He also kept an eye out in those for any comment or attitude that might make him suspicious.
When Nydia came in mid-morning to check on him, he said, “It’d go more quickly if I could call Chanchal on a few questions I have.”
“Maybe later. We’ll see what you can give us working alone, and if you come to a dead end, we’ll talk about your calling her then. Do you need coffee? A snack?”
“No, I’m okay. Though I guess I should get up and stretch, or I’ll end up stiff as a board after a few days of this.”
“Walk with me then.”
They took a stroll through the hallways, well beyond his designated area. “You’re sure this is okay?” he said. “Me being out here?”
“We tend not to pin classified documents to the walls,” she said.
“You’re teasing me.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“Want to have lunch together?”
“I have a meeting at 11:00. Can I call you when it’s over?”
“I’m not going anywhere but the men’s room.”
She stopped and put up a finger. “Idea. Let me get you back to your temporary office.” She pivoted and walked faster than they had getting to this point.
When she had dropped him off, he spent five minutes doing some stretches, and then he went back to work. A half-hour later, Nydia came in, lugging a portable television. “I knew we had these. Took me a minute to find one. More reliable than trying to stream anything on the tablet.”
“Let me help you.”
“I have it. Just clear off a corner of the table if you would.” She got down on her hands and knees and crawled around until she found what she was looking for, plugged the TV in to outlet and a cable, and stood, brushing off her knees. “Don’t trip over the cord here. I thought you’d like the news on while you work. So you can keep up with what’s going on.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.”
“Just don’t stop to watch SpongeBob or something.”
He laughed. “I’ll control myself.”
“See you at lunch.” And she was gone, leaving behind a pleasant hint of her scent again.
He turned on the TV but kept the sound off. It was already on a 24-hour news channel, and he left it there.
He continued to work, glancing up at the TV only a few times. It was often showing a commercial. He caught the tail end of one, followed by one of those cards where they’d come up with a name for the news event. “Killer Flu” was this one, and it was not just a card but an animation. He wondered if they all employed a former advertising copywriter to do this, to “brand” disasters and tragedies. This term wasn’t incorrect, of course. There was influenza, and it was killing people. But the station had turned the letters of the two words into jagged shards of red glass, and they dripped little round drops of red blood from their tips, which became what he thought were supposed to be red blood cells, and those swam around the words on the screen in a shaking, panicky motion.
He wasn’t sure what the hell kind of disease you’d have if your blood cells were moving like that. Something worse than flu.
He continued to watch for a few minutes. There were scenes of a grocery store with a guard up on a tall raw wood platform, obviously recently erected. He held a rifle and wore a respirator. Considering how far above floor level he was—he looked a bit like a lifeguard at a pool—the respirator was certainly not necessary. Sick people at floor level could cough up in his direction all day long, and the virus would never hit him. Of course, he’d have to get off that platform eventually. The camera showed shelves that were about a quarter full, and then they interviewed a matronly woman who pointed at the shelves and shook her head.
The camera panned down three aisles. It looked like junk food had sold out, but there was plenty of healthy food left. He wondered where the store was, but not strongly enough to lean over and turn on the sound. The northeast, probably. Or maybe here in DC. The flu had reached the nation’s capital and for the next month would only get worse here.
He turned back to the journals and printouts, working until Nydia came to collect him. “I need to introduce you to my boss before we go. I hope you’re not too hungry.”
“No, that’s fine.”
She led him to another floor and to an office marked “NCAVC.” He’d ask later what that meant. She introduced him to an older man wearing glasses. He looked like a fullback gone to seed and had a thick head of wavy gray hair.
“Nydia warned me you don’t shake hands.”
“I’m on a personal mission to rid the nation of the habit—at least for a few years.”
“We appreciate your help on this. It’ll save us a lot of time.”
“Happy to do it.”
“Can I ask your opinion on something?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Do you think this is an act of terrorism? What’s your gut tell you?”
Glenn hesitated. “You know, I’m the wrong person to ask. I tend to be an optimist about people. I’ve seen a lot of heroic and selfless behavior in the field during disease outbreaks. Also, I tend to trust my colleagues. So I’m having a hard time believing someone who could be working to save lives would make the opposite choice. If you guys think it’s possible, then yeah, technically, it’s possible. I also trust that you know your job as well as I know mine.”
“Could you do it?”
It took Glenn a second to realize he meant could he be the terrorist. “Me? Morally, no. The thought never would cross my mind. Technically, also no because I’d have to catch up to today’s techniques first. And then, maybe, yes, if it weren’t for my moral objections and if I had at least one other person working with me. I’m not the world’s best in the lab, so I’d need an expert there, and I’d prefer a team of six.”
“Thank you. Again, I appreciate your help.” It was a dismissal.
Nydia took him to the elevator. “We’ll go to the cafeteria, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Easier for me, as I don’t know the area or any good restaurants.”
“He liked you.”
“Your boss?” Glenn shook his head. “How could you possibly tell?”
“I can read his face.”
“He doesn’t know me.”
“He goes on gut. And he’s almost never wrong. I’ve seen him make intuitive guesses that ended up being eerily right. When he did serial killer profiling, I think most of his work hours were spent justifying his intuition. He knew the answer, and then he’d have to backfill logic. It’s a different world now in profiling than when he was young. All computers. Rule-based bots and spiders. The next guy in that chair will be a computer guy, not an intuitive genius.”
“But it takes a human mind to program the computers. That’s what I’m helping with, isn’t it? Telling the computer what to look for.”
“For now. For the next generation of agents, I suspect that won’t be necessary. In two generations, it’ll be one guy heading the department, no agents, one guy with a can of compressed air cleaning electronics, and offices filled with computers programming themselves.”
“I can’t tell if you’re upset about that vision or not.”
“You can’t change what you can’t change.” They walked into a cafeteria that was only a third full. “It can’t be the world I want it to be. If it were, I wouldn’t have a job.”
“I’d always have a job. There will always be diseases.”
They selected their food, she paid with some sort of swipe card, and then they sat together at an empty table for eight.
She said, “If you could, would you make it so there weren’t any diseases?”
“No,” he said.
She looked surprised. “Why not?”
“It’s not the way nature works. What we call diseases are just life, and life that predates us by billions of years. In a sense, they made us. We’re modes of transportation for them, conveniences, useful in our own small way, like a tick is useful. We like to see ourselves at the center of everything, but it isn’t so. It’s easy for me to think of the planet and the ecosystem from the virus’s perspective. We humans are but one species, doomed like every other to extinction, on a small planet at the edge of an unremarkable galaxy. Viruses and bacteria were here before us, and they’ll be here long after we’re gone.”
“So why do you fight diseases then?”
“That’s part of nature too. We’re hardwired to keep our fellow people alive and well. I want to help alleviate human suffering. Evolution gave me the capacity for empathy and the brain to understand diseases. So that’s what I do. That’s what you do too, right? Not the disease part but the trying to help your fellow humans part.”
“It’s a weird way to look at it. Like you’re part of a computer yourself and you’re just a program designed to do this.”
“Never said I wasn’t weird.” He smiled at her.
“You were one of those geeky kids in high school, weren’t you?”
“Not too bad. A little geeky in my love of science. But I was on the baseball team, so I had some jock cred. How ‘bout you? What were you like in high school?”
“Entirely confused.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why my parents didn’t just lock me in a closet until I turned eighteen.”
“Really? Like, you were in trouble?”
“Not bad trouble, but I took stupid chances. Didn’t know which way was up. Couldn’t figure out boys.”
“I’m surprised. I thought the FBI only recruited smart, together people.”
“I had myself together by my sophomore year at college. Freshman year was rough.” She changed the subject. “Did you see anything on the news about the nurse?”
“What nurse?”
“There was this nurse who was exposed to the disease, and they wanted her in isolation or quarantine, and she refused. Got a lawyer and it’s some big deal now.”
“She should know better. I can forgive citizens who don’t understand the way diseases are transmitted balking at being given a quarantine order, but a medical worker definitely understands the why of it. She should be setting a good example.”
She smiled at him again.
“What?”
“Nothing, really. You’re just....” She shrugged.
“I’m what?”
“Sort of old-fashioned or something.”
“Well I’m older than you, I’d venture to say.”
“You’re forty-two. I’m thirty-four. We’re in the same generation. And nobody says ‘venture to say.’ Sometimes I suspect you of having arrived here via a time machine.”
He wasn’t offended. “You know what that could be that you’re hearing?”
“What?”
“International work. I have to communicate with a lot of people, many speaking English as a third or fourth language, some of them having learned it from classic books. I know a couple hundred words in—sheesh, I don’t know—maybe twenty languages. That probably also changes the way I talk. Or maybe it’s the nuns.”
“Nuns?”
“A lot of nursing in Africa is done by nuns, mostly from Europe. Maybe I’m just talking like a nun.”
“I’ve never met a nun like you. Come to think of it, I’ve never met a nun at all that I know of.”
“For the most part, in Africa, they still wear headscarves or wimples. They’re easy to pick out of a crowd.”
“I guess we should be talking about work,” she said.
“I was enjoying a moment off. It’s dark thinking, you know, trying to imagine what’s in the mind of a scientist who would unleash this on the world.”
“Is it?” she said, cocking an eyebrow. “Dark for you? Upsetting?”
“Sure. Sorry, you know that, of course. It’s your job to do just that.”
“I compartmentalize. It seldom gets to me. I’m still working on the population control thing as his motivator. I’ve also been reading up on various religions and their view of either the end time or a winnowing of humanity, following the hypothesis that there’s religious fanaticism behind this.”
“Is that common? The winnowing thing in religion?”
“Yeah. It’s usually about dividing people into us and them. Us, the righteous, will be spared while those bad guys—all of you—will die horribly. Because it’s only what you deserve, being someone who doesn’t believe exactly as we do.”
He sighed. “I’ve heard the concept before, yes. People seem hardwired for that too, unfortunately.”
“So I’ve added all the religion-specific words for end times to the searches, from both those that are linear and cyclical.”
“So some of them have end times that come again and again?”
“Yes.”
“That’s much closer to the reality of pandemics.”
“Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind. So every term from ‘Rapture’ to ‘Fimbulwinter’ is being looked for, but there’s a lot of that sort of stuff out there, millions of people babbling about it. And now I’m digging into religions that have a god or goddess of disease or pandemic, coming up with more terms to look for.”
“There are some gods of disease?”
“Yeah. Sometimes it’s a part-time job for the god. They might do famine and disease both, or miscarriages and disease, or animals and disease.”
“That last one is interesting. It tells you a little about what ancient people thought of disease and where it came from. Animals and disease as a pair of godly responsibilities suggests they knew about the source of anthrax or smallpox.”
“And there are a few gods that are entirely about disease. It’s their raison d’etre. So I’ve put them into the mix for the searches.”
“No computer could have come up with that. They still need you.”
“No computer today, certainly, not that I’m aware of. Anyway, if that triggers another of your brainstorms, let me know.” She piled empty dishes onto her tray.
“Thanks for lunch. Here, let me take that.” He reached for the tray.
“It’s okay, I have it.” She carried their lunch debris to a corner of the cafeteria and he followed her.
At the elevator he said, “You know, I have no idea what I just ate. I recall chewing and swallowing.”
“I get like that. Everything but the job goes on automatic. I wake up, and apparently the house got tidied last night, but I can’t remember being the one who did it.”
“Maybe you hired a maid and forgot you did.”
The elevator arrived. “Again, Glenn, I appreciate your help. It can’t be fun work.”
“It’s interesting, actually.” He watched the numbers light up on the elevator as they rode it. “I’m an investigator, you know. It’s what I do. So it’s not all that different than combing through death records, trying to find an index case buried in history.”
“You did that with the New Flu?”
“We—the team—did without finding a new patient zero. Someone still is hunting for him, I imagine.”
“And you’ll let me know if you find that our timing is all off, won’t you? We’re still working on the first dead bird date you gave me. I mean, we’re keeping an eye on certain matters from 2014 on, but we’re looking through emails and phone metadata starting about the time of the dead birds.”
“As soon as I know, you’ll know.” The elevator door opened and he hesitated.
She held the door for him. “It’s straight down the hall, on your right about halfway down.”
He knew that. He had been hesitating because he didn’t want to stop talking to her.
Before she thought he was an idiot, he left the elevator. I should just ask her out. The worst that could happen is that she’ll say no, right?
He pushed the thought aside. People were dying. He shouldn’t be thinking about his love life right now. It was time to get back to work.
Late that afternoon, he took a break to catch up with his most urgent email and to take a look at the new data. It was definitely here in DC. A smattering of cases were being reported all over the country in the biggest cities. Atlanta had its first hundred hospitalized cases. He’d call his sister and mom tonight and beg them to stay home.
When he was done, he glanced up at the TV. There was a man in a suit at a podium and, beneath that, a bit of white text on the screen saying, “FAA issues travel ban.”
He turned up the sound.
The man said, sounding a little exasperated, “As we said nearly two weeks ago, this day was coming. People had plenty of chance to get home. And you can still go home. You just need to drive there. If home is on another continent, check with your embassy for instructions.” The pack of reporters shouted at him and he pointed to one.
“Are you saying air travel is dangerous?”
“It’s as good a way of catching the flu as I can imagine, short of French kissing random strangers. So yes, I’d call it dangerous right now.”
Another reporter: “Are there any proven cases of people having gotten ill from a fellow passenger?”
“We took all the facts into consideration in making the decision. I’m not going to list them all. There were hundreds of factors considered including historical data on transmission that can be linked to air travel. That’s of many diseases, over many decades.”
He made a good point. As the questions continued, Glenn thought the reporters sounded like a bunch of whining teenagers trying to wheedle a different decision out of a parent, and in his role as sensible parent, the FAA man was sounding as exasperated as one. Glenn wondered why it was necessary to bother with these Q and A sessions. Why not just say, “Commercial planes aren’t flying any more. See you later,” and walk away?
Good thing he’d gotten his rental car, finally. If people were going to drive home—and DC seemed as crowded a starting point of any he could think of—the cars would all be snapped up now. He turned down the sound on the TV and went back to work.
By the time he was done for the day, he estimated that he had another half-day of work remaining. They’d have to find something else for him to do, or maybe they’d release him and he might have to return to the taskforce.
To get caught up on what was happening there, he phoned Jackson while he was driving. “Hey, man, how’s it going?”
“Slowly.”
“I see you got air travel suspended.”
“Yeah, we can chalk that up to someone listening to the evidence, but I can’t claim personal credit.”
“So what’s been happening at HHS?”
“Some jockeying for power, for one thing. ACF nonsense.”
“I thought this was all worked out years ago. The Homeland document or whatever.”
“Too much room left for interpretation. Too many paragraphs that use words like ‘communicate’ and ‘coordinate.’ Everybody wants to be the coordinator, and nobody wants to be the coordinatee.”
“Frustrating. But I suppose the wording had to be vague because no one knew exactly what might happen.”
“Don’t talk logic at me. I want to be surly.”
“I’m sure you deserve to be. What other news have you heard? Anything new?”
“Yeah. You been watching the news?”
“Very little. Enough to hear the air travel thing.”
“You’ll probably see this tomorrow on the news if you do watch. The USDA sprung some news this afternoon at the taskforce. The flu has jumped to domestic chickens.”
“Oh, shit. They’re a hundred percent sure?”
“It’s still presumptive at this point, but ninety percent sure. And they only found it in two free-range flocks and a couple of small-scale homeowners who called it in. They reassured everyone that factory birds haven’t shown a sign of it, not that most people will hear that distinction.”
“Is it killing the sick chickens?”
“Yeah, but not like it’s killing people. Ten percent fatalities. Hard to nail that down for sure so soon, and considering how they responded, impossible now. They’ve destroyed all the infected farms’ birds, sick or healthy, so they’re a hundred percent dead.”
“I’m sure you or he mentioned that if it’s birds with access to the outdoors only, odds are they got it from the crows, not the other way around. If birds that are kept inside buildings aren’t getting it, then they’re safe as long as they’re still inside.”
“Which, considering the egg situation, is good news.”
“Yeah, we’d be screwed if we lost the eggs. I saw in my email they’re going into vaccine production on Monday. I hope they have all the eggs they need on hand already, in case the flu somehow gets into the designated flocks.”
“They started the vaccine fast.”
Glenn said, “We had so much luck with this. Finding the crows so quickly. Sequencing the genes in record time. If only we’d have known about the outbreak four days earlier, we might have contained it.”
“I don’t know, man. It’s in a wild bird population. It’d be like putting out spot fires all over. One of them would have gotten loose eventually.”
“I know, I know.” Glenn felt as if he should have done more, though logically he knew he had done everything he could, and everything according to the book, and that luck had been on his side in many ways. And yet here they were, watching the disease overtake the eastern U.S. “The death toll will crest a hundred thousand soon.”
“Yeah. When it does, at least we can say the vaccine is in production.”
“No one’s going to like hearing about the six-month delay to getting it.” Not that everyone would be getting it on demand. He fully expected riots in six months when that sunk in.
“Oh, I gotta tell you this. The USDA guy, when he announces they’ve found it in commercial poultry, he clucks like a chicken.”
“Seriously?” Glenn laughed.
“It was like shades of Arrested Development. Balk-balk-balk.”
“And they think we’re weird.”
“And you’ll be happy to know that they’ve cured themselves of hand-shaking. Some people have come in new, and they get that lecture before they’re two steps off the elevator.”
“Anybody there sick yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard of. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good. You still having the headaches from the antivirals?”
“No. Or rather, I think I was just dehydrated.”
“Good, glad you’re feeling better. How’s Jeannie?”
“Missing me. Feeling cooped up.”
“At least you convinced her to stay at home.” Glenn couldn’t help but think of his mother, who was still not being as careful as he would like her to be. He had convinced her to wear a mask in public places, but that was as far as she was willing to adjust her behavior. Only the fact that many of her friends were being more sensible was keeping her at home many days.
“If Jeannie weren’t pregnant, she’d be less compliant, I’m sure.”
“Okay, anything else I need to know?”
“Can’t think of anything. You’re getting all my reports, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m a day behind in reading them. Maybe two days.”
“Still can’t tell me what you’re doing?”
He’d discussed it with Nydia, and she asked him not to mention the help he was giving her, pointing out that if this turned out to be an act of domestic terrorism, particularly by someone with any connection to the CDC staff, which seemed likely considering how few people worked in the field of virology, they didn’t want details of the investigation getting out. It’d be simple for the guilty party to adjust his behavior once he heard he was being sought. “Not yet.”
“So it’s something for Homeland or the NSA or whatever.”
“No comment.”
“Or the President maybe.”
“No comment.”
“Okay, I’ll drop it.”
“But I might not be here forever. I might be back in your hair soon.”
“Good. You can have it. Maybe they’d let me go somewhere else more interesting.”
“If that’s the case, I’d grab that for myself. Privileges of rank.”
“I’ve gotta go. I’m meeting these people from State for supper.”
“Have fun.”
Instead of going straight back to his hotel, he took a side street to find a restaurant Nydia had mentioned. The place was half-empty. Bad for them but good for him. He’d have a leisurely meal and catch up on email and memos, and leave the waitress a hell of a tip to partly make up for the empty tables and the money she’d be losing over the next months.
Back at the hotel room, he watched the news for a half-hour. Nothing yet about the chickens, but they had plenty to say about crows.
One talking head, a physician he’d never heard of, said to avoid washing your car, that bird droppings might give you the disease. Probably good advice. Once the droppings had been dried for an hour, the virus shouldn’t be alive. If Glenn were asked by people who wanted to wash their cars, he’d suggest wearing a respirator or at least a mask into a drive-through car wash once a week, turning off any fresh air and the fan inside the car as you drove through. Then the bird droppings or invisible saliva would be gone without your touching them. Park the car, walk away for a half-hour while it dried, toss the mask, and you’d have a safe vehicle again.
Of course, it would still be better to simply stay at home.
Someone representing the NRA pointed out how useful it was that Americans had guns because they could shoot the crows “who did this to us,” which was wrong on so many levels, Glenn wouldn’t know where to begin to respond to it. The pathogen had done it to the crows and the humans both—they were fellow victims. Shooting crows left dead crows on the ground and, infected with flu or not, they would be a public health problem. The very last thing you wanted to do was shoot the crows.
The interviewer asked the NRA guy a rare intelligent question. “Do you think most people know what a crow is? Mightn’t they shoot the wrong sort of bird?” Also a good point. You’d have people killing starlings and blue jays and turkey vultures. At least one might have some disease transmissible to humans, or parasites that harbored a disease, and there could be a secondary outbreak of a lesser disease.
He couldn’t stand the inanity any more, so he turned off the TV. The CDC would need a fleet of experts stationed at every news network to counter this nonsense. And as the news would present it all as of equal value, and as discussions would probably descend into useless yelling matches, there’d be little point to doing that.
Glenn was glad communication wasn’t his responsibility. When all was said and done, it’d be the toughest job to have in the agency, hammering home the correct messages, trying to make them stand out from a sea of noise. He had an image of them literally hammering, putting up a flyer with the correct information on the door of a town hall, but then all these other people coming along right behind them would hammer up their own silly or outright harmful messages, and the CDC person would have to come back again and put up another flyer to cover up those, on and on, every day for months.
