13 La Balise

 

Paris France. Jul 11. 2033

48°51'32.1"N 2°24'06.4"E

 

Garance Beauchene set her cigarette in the ashtray long enough to sweep stacks of papers and half eaten take-out containers onto the floor. “Merde, quelle désastre!”

“Careful—there’s important stuff on that table!” Callum yelled. He leaned across the adjacent desk to salvage one of the Styrofoam boxes, pausing to look over Garance’s shoulder, “What are you working on?”

“Shhh,” she mumbled, her cigarette balanced in the corner of her mouth. Garance hunched over her keyboard and skimmed the images that flickered before her face through the omnipresent smoke. “C’est pas vrai...”

The newsroom of La Balise was located on the fourth-floor apartment of rue de Bagnolet, and consisted of two tables, a kitchenette, toilet and a plastic ficus tree named Jean Jacques. The website for La Balise was predominantly an aggregate of minor newsfeeds, underground journalism, political activism and a few conspiracy theorists. Callum founded the site after relocating to Paris from Berkeley, California. He called himself the Senior Editor-in-Chief and hired Garance to write articles for the page’s blog section. Recently, a student named Veronique from the Institut Européen de Journalisme à Marseille signed on as a part-time intern. Callum had posted the advertisement mainly to get non-paid help in the newsroom, but Veronique proved adept at research, fact-checking sources and brought Lebanese take-out on her way from the university.

Garance walked over to the kitchen and made herself a cup of espresso, stirring several spoonsful of sugar into the drink as she returned to her desk. “I am still working on this piece about the refugee camps. I began looking into the casualty rates from some of these African camps. It’s unbelievable.”

“Yes, I’m sure they’re just awful, but what’s your angle here?” Callum asked. “The situation in these camps hasn’t changed much since the millennium. What are you digging for?”

“I found three separate sources working in these global aid programs who tell me that cover ups are system wide—the money is simply not reaching the people on the ground. Medicine is being sold on the black markets and the inexcusable death tolls are not being released—or they are being drastically underreported.” She finished her cigarette and brought up another screen on the monitor. “There are sensitive documents that I’ve obtained—thanks to Christoph’s hacking skills—which prove all of this. They show a long history of willful neglect and fraud.”

“Yeah, but can you give it some teeth? I mean, it really needs to pop in order to motivate anyone living in, letssay… Glasgow or Cleveland to click on it,” Callum said.

“Mon dieu.” Garance rolled her eyes and slammed her mug on the desk.

“C’mon, you know what I mean. It needs to grab the reader. Give me a specific example—a name. Give me some weepy-eyed orphans and outraged nurses… Gimme an evil warlord stealing medicine out of the mouths of babies. Then you’ve got yourself a viable story.” Callum returned to his desk and continued to edit his piece about a suspicious fire in a Hong Kong biotech lab.

“Yes, but have you heard anything about the baffling rates of cancer in this Sudanese camp called ‘Wad Sherife’? They are mostly refugees from Eritrea… Allô, Callum? I’m talking to you—have you read anything about this?” She shook her head as she scrolled down the monitor. “It is so bizarre.”

“No, never heard anything about it. But that’s not surprising, is it?”

“Oui, and furthermore, they are not talking about it—at all. Nothing. I’ve just uncovered some internal correspondence from one of the doctors in this camp.” Garance clicked on a link to Médecins Sans Frontières and played a video that showed an outdoor clinic with rows of dying children on makeshift beds. A female doctor guided the cameraman through a shack full of cots and blankets spread out in the dirt, where thirty or more people lay unconscious. She pulled back a soiled curtain that separated the makeshift morgue from the clinic’s treatment ward. Behind the curtain, decomposing bodies were piled four and five-high, awaiting removal.

The doctor spoke directly into the camera, “We are unable to keep pace with the cancer cases in this camp. The first death happened just after the new year and then, within a few weeks, we began treating entire families for the same disease.” The woman paused and let the camera pan to a mother and baby lying next to each other on a narrow bed. Flies crawled across the baby’s face. The camera panned back to the doctor. “Within six months, we have lost… perhaps a fourth of the camp’s 16,000 inhabitants. Two of my colleagues were recently evacuated to Amsterdam with the same symptoms. Our attempts to find the source have failed. There’s been nothing like this on record—such a rapid metastasis… The tumors literally drown the patients in their own fluids. We are at a complete loss as to how to treat this.”

“Cal—you should watch this video.” Garance reached for another cigarette and lit it. “I do not understand why this hasn’t been released—why has no one covered it?”

Callum walked toward the computer and leaned over Garance as she replayed the clip. He gave a grim chuckle and replied, “Why not? Christ Almighty, that’s a very simple answer. There are hundreds of those camps in Africa, Garance. Death is a common theme... Hell, if they aren’t dying of dehydration, starvation or tuberculosis, then Ebola will just resurface and kill half of ‘em. And, if they somehow manage to survive all that—then another civil war will break out and they’ll all be wiped out from a genocide. So what—so, some mystery cancer takes down a few thousand refugees? Really, are you that naïve? Where’s the hang-time in that kind of story? It’s not exactly click bait.”

“Merde, you are a real shit, Callum.

“I’m a seasoned realist is what I am—and a pragmatic editor who needs to generate readers.”

“I still think there’s something ‘off’ about it. You must agree.”

Callum shrugged and went to the kitchen to wash a fork. “Run with it if you think you can find a good story in there.” Wiping a plastic fork across his jeans, he said, “Just don’t expect much of a reaction. Our readers don’t care; the world is numb to those camps.” He sat down at his own computer and dug into the cold falafel leftovers. With his mouth full, he muttered, “Now, if you could find a conspiracy somewhere in there… You might have a viable piece.”

The sound of keys in the lock interrupted their discussion and Veronique opened the door.

“Good afternoon Veronique! Mmm, do I smell a hot lunch?” Callum said.

“Ah, bien,” Garance replied. “Viens ici. I have a job for you—I need help on this story.”

Veronique set the plastic bag of shawarma on the kitchen counter and slipped out of her street shoes. She’d already grown accustomed to this type of response from Garance. Her eccentric coworker had a certain flair for unearthing illusive stories, but in doing so, paid little attention to interpersonal communication. Trivialities like social skills and niceties didn’t matter much to Garance when she was in pursuit of a lead. Veronique opened her pannier and pulled out a tablet. Setting it on the table next to Callum’s computer, she turned around in her chair and said, “How can I help?”

Garance exhaled a cloud of smoke in Veronique’s direction and replied, “Locate a Dr. Yasmeen Talwar with Médecins Sans Frontières in eastern Sudan, on the border of Eritrea.” Garance pasted the information into a text and sent it to her coworker. “Contact her—I want to speak with her about the situation in the Wad Sherife camp.” Snuffing out her cigarette butt in the base of the ashtray, Garance zoomed in on a more current photograph of the camp. “Hmm, who could these boys be, I wonder?”

Garance enlarged the image: The same doctor stood in front of the ramshackle clinic, however behind her shoulder, were two soldiers with carbine weapons at their sides. They were clearly Caucasian, their shaved heads and mirrored sunglasses indicated they were probably Americans, but their uniforms were not that of the United States nor of the United Nations. Garance pressed her nose closer to the screen and whispered, “Intéressant… what are you boys doing there?” She grabbed her mobile and pressed a contact number for Christoph. “Oui. C'est moi. I have an image I want you to take a look at.” She dropped the file into a message and hit send. “Get back to me with some information on those soldiers in the background. I am guessing that they’re mercenaries, but what I can’t figure out is from where? …Oui, ring me back.”

Callum leaned over in his chair and looked at her. “Trying for that conspiracy angle, I see.”

Garance ignored his remark as she typed keywords into the search engine. “What year was that strange virus in the southwest United States that killed a number of people?” She looked over her shoulder at Callum.

“I remember reading about that somewhere when I was in journalism school... ‘Hunt’s virus’ or something like that—it was a lung thing. I think it happened sometime around the turn of the last century. Why?”

Veronique had already pulled the information from her computer. “Hantavirus. ‘A fast-acting pulmonary disease’… the CDC attributed the outbreak to an increased population of deer mice in Four Corners, New Mexico. 1993.”

“Exactement! What if we are seeing something like that again?” Garance drummed her fingertips on the table top as she thought. “Why is it we have never read about more cases of that virus? Is it not curious that—after that one isolated case, it just evaporated? It’s not like they found a cure for it—and the deer mice certainly didn’t suddenly go extinct.”

“Get hold of someone from the CDC and check on whether they’ve heard anything about the cancer phenomenon in your refugee camp. Why not confirm it with that woman on the video?” Callum suggested.

Veronique stared at her screen and said, “That doctor you are looking for—Dr. Yasmeen Talwar? She won’t be of any help to you.”

“What do you mean? She’s the head of the Sudanese program.”

“Yes, except that she’s dead.”

“Shit.”

The phone on Garance’s desk buzzed and she hit speaker. Christoph’s voice emitted from the tinny speaker, “Hallo? Garance? Ja… So I’ve discovered who your mercs are—or rather, who they are working for…”

“Merde, that was fast. Continue.”

“Well, it wasn’t too difficult to piece together. But the news isn’t good: It looks like HighTower is involved in whatever’s going on over there. If I was you, I’d be very careful about digging into those matters, it is definitely a losing situation—regardless of what you discover. I should get off this line now. Tschüss, Garance.”

“Tschüss, Christoph… et Merci.” Garance fumbled for another cigarette, lit it and inhaled. She looked over at Callum. “Are you happy now?”