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BY MID-AFTERNOON THE next day, Glenn and Nydia had finished their interviews, and the FBI had found another four emails, dating back six months. They had a first name: Jarri.
“I’ve never met anyone with that name,” Glenn said to Nydia, as they settled down in his hotel room with a bag of deli sandwiches.
“It’s rare. The CIA has other international organizations running searches on it, but I don’t think it’s a real name.”
“A nom de guerre.”
“Yes, probably.”
“It makes sense that he wouldn’t use his real name, I suppose.”
“Well that, plus....”
“What?”
“Remember when I told you I had gotten together a list of all the gods and goddesses of plague and disease?”
“Jarri is one?”
“He is. Hittite.”
“Hittite?” Glenn shook his head. “Isn’t that a dead culture? Like Phoenicians or something?”
“Their end came pretty much at the hands of the Egyptians—the pyramid-building ones, I mean.”
“So it’s not that he’s practicing a religion, right? This isn’t religion-based terrorism.”
“There are people who practice ancient religions, even in the U.S. Or at least, some modernized form of them. People worship Thor or Isis or whoever, probably someone within twenty miles of where we’re sitting right now.”
“Really? They seriously do that?”
“Yeah, but so far I haven’t found any hint there’s a Hittite revivalist movement afoot. I’m looking for one during free moments, but it’s a long shot.”
“But you have to wonder, if that’s the source of his name, how he came to it. Maybe his parents were scholars of the ancient world?”
“That’s a thought. There can’t be very many Hittite scholars.” She jotted a note. “It will also give us a location to look.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Hittite empire was centered in what’s now Turkey. So he might be from there. Do they have a strong medical education system, do you know?”
“It’s not as good as much of the EU, but it’s decent. Decent enough to be a medical tourist destination.”
“What’s that?”
“Healthcare is so expensive here, people travel to India, Thailand, Turkey, or other countries to get procedures like coronary bypasses, bone marrow transplants, knee replacements, and so on. The cost is three to five percent of what it’d be here. So if your insurance here covers only eighty percent, it’d still be cheaper to fly to Turkey and get it done there and pay cash. And you get a vacation to Turkey in the bargain, if you’re well enough to enjoy one.”
“I’d never heard of this.”
“We track medical tourism because there are diseases in hospitals over there you definitely don’t want to get. People come back, and they have them, and we’re on the lookout for them jumping to our hospitals, and some already have. Like antibiotic-resistant staph, and that sort of thing.”
“Sheesh. We hardly need terrorism, do we? We’re killing ourselves.”
“That’s the truth. If this Jarri fellow had stayed patient, eventually a significant pathogen would have hit us.”
“Do you know any people who do what you do—or what the people at USAMRIID do—who are Turkish?”
Glenn thought long and hard. “I can’t come up with any names right now, but it’s possible I might have met someone at a conference.”
“Never ran into anyone out in the field, doing an epidemic investigation?”
“No, never that I can recall. Lots of Belgians, Germans, French, and some Chinese. But if you want, I can send a memo within the CDC—”
“Not right now. Let’s keep it in-house—in the Bureau—for now. Asking your colleagues would be a last-ditch effort. Besides....” And she smiled wryly. “I’m of a minority in thinking this matters. The name could be randomly chosen.”
“But if there’s a god of disease named that, it’s suspicious.”
“I think I’m on the right track with that, but it’s not significant for anyone else. As they rightly point out, it doesn’t mean he’s a Turk. It just means he Googled ‘gods of disease,’ same as me. Okay, so here’s the text of all the emails we’ve found so far. They go back five months.”
Glenn took her tablet and read the messages. They were short and vague. One from two months back said only, “Do you have everything you need?” He said, “Are these all to the same person?”
“Hard to say right now. We do know one other thing—one of these messages, at least, was picked up here, in the U.S. There could be many conspirators at work. We know there are two now, one in Europe, and at least one here.”
“This really tells me nothing. I’m sorry,” he said, handing her back the tablet.
“It’s not much to go on.”
They settled down together doing their separate work. Glenn was glad for the company. In particular, he was glad for her company. She was both comfortable with silence and easy to talk with.
“What?” she said, looking up.
“Hmm?” he said.
“You’re staring at me.”
“Sorry, I was thinking. Zoned out.”
“Any brilliant new thoughts?”
“No.” He went back to sifting through the latest data from the CDC.
There was a briefer report than usual. The figures were all there, but the files that usually came with them—the graphics and animations—were missing. He checked back to yesterday’s reports. They had been missing for three days. It must be getting busy back there at Atlanta.
They ordered an artichoke heart pizza for dinner and kept working as they shared it. He was just deciding if he wanted a fourth piece of pizza or not when his phone rang. He checked. It was Harper.
“Harper! I was just thinking about you.”
“Glenn. Hi.”
He knew at once. “You’re sick. Tell me it’s just a cold.”
“I wanted to call and thank you for how kind you were to me up in Trenton. You’re a great boss. I wish....”
“Don’t. Don’t think like you’re thinking. God, Harper.” He stood and faced the closed curtains of the window. Nydia quietly slipped into the bathroom and shut the door, allowing him some privacy.
“I’m pretty sick.”
“What’s your temp? O2 sat? You can’t be in ICU, or you wouldn’t be calling.”
“It’s not like that, really, not anymore. ICU is full. I’m in a tent in a hallway on a medical floor. I’m lucky to get a bottle of water from time to time.” She stopped and breathed, audibly.
“Do you have someone? I mean, there in Atlanta to help take care of you?”
“No, but—” She pulled the phone away as she fell into a coughing fit. “Sorry,” she rasped when she came back on. “They aren’t allowing visitors anywhere but a children’s floor. For one thing, there’s no place to walk in the halls. One second.”
He could hear her coughing again, and then nothing. “Harper? Harper?”
“I’m here.” Her voice was weaker.
“You have to hang in there. We need you. You’re the best. I could tell something was wrong with you missing. The stats didn’t have your deft touch the last couple days. That’s how good you are.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I have to go. My phone’s low, and I want to call my mom again tomorrow. If I have a tomorrow.”
“You do. Don’t give up. Stay strong.”
“Thank you again. I got to do the job I’ve been dreaming of thanks to you. For a little while at least. Bye.” And the line went dead.
He stood there, fighting back the urge to throw his phone across the room. It wouldn’t make Harper better, and he’d just be out a phone. But God damn it!
He punched in Chanchal’s number, not wanting to bother Emile or risk talking to Lorraine if she was still angry at him. Chanchal answered, sounding weary. “Don’t tell me you’re sick too,” he said.
“Just tired. How’d you know we’ve had illness here?”
“I got a call from Harper Bail, who was out with me on Trenton. New EIS.”
“Right. She must have been in the Incident Command Center.”
“How many?”
“Forty-three so far.”
Forty-three. He probably knew almost all of them. It hit him hard. “Any dead?”
“Not soon enough for that, but there will be.”
Of course there would be. Statistically, he could predict that thirty of those would not make it. “Who was sick first?”
“We’re trying to not scapegoat anyone, but we think someone on the cleaning staff had it first. Probably asymptomatic but shedding virus all over the room. Only people who worked in the Command Center have come up sick so far, but that probably won’t hold.”
No, it wouldn’t. They all had used the restrooms and touched the same door handles and elevator buttons. It would spread throughout the building. “Do you need me back?” Staffing would be a nightmare with that many people off work.
“No! If you’ve not been exposed, then why come here and risk it? Though we’re decontaminating everything, we won’t think it’s safe here until three or four days after the last new diagnosis. Stay away until you’re recalled.”
“The nation can’t afford to lose the CDC right now.”
“It won’t. We have healthy people at home telecommuting, and we have six regional offices without the illness. At worst, we’ll transfer executive responsibilities to one of them.”
“Is Lorraine okay?”
“She’s fine. Physically, at least. We’re all emotionally affected.”
“What treatments are they getting?”
“Best ones we know of, Glenn. Don’t worry about that.”
“Were any of them on the anaphylaxis? Did it work?”
“Yes, several of them were, and the numbers aren’t large enough for reliable results, but maybe 10% effective.”
“Call me if you need anything, would you? And—” he swallowed past a painfully tight throat “—will there be some sort of memo about fatalities?”
“Probably, yes. Or you can call me for a list if we don’t get around to doing that.”
“Thanks. And please, stay well, Chanchal.”
“You too, Glenn.”
He turned off his phone and sat on the end of the bed, poleaxed by the news, unable to move.
The bathroom door opened and Nydia stuck her head out. “You okay?”
“Did you hear all that?”
“I had the water running. I wanted you to have privacy. Is it your sister?”
“No. The call was from a young woman at work. Harper. She—” He couldn’t go on, just shook his head.
“Were you close? Involved?”
“Not involved,” he said. “She’s young enough to be my—my niece. We were together on the ground in Trenton. She’s new. I was mentoring her.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting down by his side.
“The CDC has it. I mean, it’s tearing through the staff in Atlanta now.”
“That must be hard. Do you want to go back?”
“No! No, I don’t. They don’t want me back because they don’t want me to be exposed. But more than ever, it makes me want to catch this guy. It was bad enough when he made my countrymen sick. Now he’s making my friends sick. I want him.”
“Hang on to that anger. Let it fuel you, but don’t let it overwhelm you.”
“It’s easier to bear than grief.”
“I know. Tell me about her.”
“She has both a Ph.D. and an M.D. She’s in her mid-twenties, bright as a whip. Probably not one in ten thousand people has her brain. And hard-working, clever, good with computers. And—don’t take this the wrong way, because she is way too young for me—but beautiful.”
“She sounds special.”
“They’re all special.” The weight of the exhaustion of the last two months was suddenly heavy. “The people in that room, the ones who are getting sick. They’re smart and dedicated. They’re not just my friends. They’re not just other people’s husbands and wives and parents. They’re too important to lose. To the whole country. They are doing critical work.”
“I know, I know.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Can I hold you? Would that help?”
He turned to her and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her neck. She smelled of herself and faintly of shampoo. He took comfort in her scent, and in her warmth and sympathy. Her hand smoothed his hair, over and over again.
When he realized he was getting aroused by her closeness, he felt a stab of guilt. She was trying to comfort him, not to seduce him. And he should be feeling sorrow, not lust. He pulled back from her, but she stopped him by moving her hands to his face. They were gentle hands, smooth, and she stroked his cheek with one and then let her fingertips trail over his lips.
“I—” he said. And then he didn’t know how to finish that.
“I want to comfort you,” she said. “Let me.” And she pulled him closer and kissed him, softly at first, and then when he responded, harder.
Five minutes later, he said, “I’m sorry,” and pushed her away. “I feel like I’m being a bad friend to those sick people.”
“You know that’s not so.”
“I’m crazy about you. I hope you know that. But I can’t, not now.”
“Okay.” She studied his face. “What you might not know is how normal it is to want to make love in the face of loss. People do, you know.”
“Do they?” Despite how awful he felt, he couldn’t help but smile. She looked so earnest.
“Yes. After funerals, during disasters. I theorize it’s hardwiring, the species trying to survive, to replace the lost.”
“Or just a lonely soul needing comfort.”
“That too,” she said, resting one hand flat on his chest.
He felt the touch far deeper than merely on his skin, but he kept his words light. “If you insist.”
“I do. I wish I could make you feel less pain. And I’m sorry if I made you feel worse. The part of you that didn’t want to stop—that’s normal. Know that, at least.”
“Okay.” He was torn in two directions, but he made himself stand up and put physical distance between them. “I’m a little embarrassed right now.”
“Embarrassed? Why?”
He couldn’t put words to the feeling so merely shrugged and shifted to talking about what he did have words for. “I care for you, Nydia. We’ll get back to this when the crisis is over, I hope.”
“Okay. But two years is a long time to wait.”
Two years was far too long. “How about only until after we find this bastard?”
She sat straighter. “Deal. Let’s get back to work.” She reached for her barrette and clipped her hair back, the consummate professional again. If she felt insulted or hurt by his rejection, she was hiding it well.
Maybe he was an idiot for pushing her away. Maybe tonight he’d be lying in bed alone and want to kick himself. Maybe he’d blown his chance with her and would live to regret it.
But he already felt bad for how doing this work with her had taken him away from the CDC. And now, with his colleagues and friends getting sick, the guilt would overwhelm him if he let it. The only way to keep that feeling at bay was to work hard now and have a personal life later.
Though if Harper died, or any of the other people he was close to—
No, don’t even think about it. Keep working.
“Can I look at those emails again?” he said.
