GILLIAN O’DOHERTY WAS WORKING LATE (HER fifth late night in a row), listening to baseball on the radio. She liked the background noise, the murmur of the crowd, the distant vendors shouting out “Peanuts! Popcorn!” She rarely paid attention to who was winning, or even playing. Tonight the Sox were playing in Oakland, and it looked like extra innings.
She’d spent the afternoon processing Walter Ford’s request to give him a DNA analysis of a suspect he identified as M.J. Probably not Michael Jackson, she presumed, filling out the paperwork the FBI lab in D.C. was going to need to do the workup. He’d sent her a hairbrush.
She’d come back after a late supper to search her database, in response to the e-mail from David DeLuca that directed her to look into anything mysterious or unusual that might have occurred involving dockworkers or the shipping industry. She’d come up with four recent deaths that might have warranted further study. The first was a young man named Murphy, an airport water-taxi captain who’d been stabbed in a bar in Charlestown, but reading the case more closely, he was just a poor kid who insulted another man’s motorcycle and ended up with severed right subclavian and common carotid arteries, bleeding out in the parking lot. The second was a Ukrainian sailor named Alexiev with a blood alcohol level that had been three times the legal limit, who’d fallen off his ship and died when he struck his head on a forklift below, crushing the right parietal bone all the way to the sagittal suture. The third case was a union official who’d been shot in his car, a single bullet from a .22-caliber automatic, the bullet entering the occipital bone at the mid-left-lambdoidal suture and exiting the skull just below the left lacrimal. The officers working the case were looking at it as a mob hit. A test of the hair stuck to the bullet suggested the union official had a cocaine problem, which might have had something to do with why he’d been shot, but it hardly added up to an international conspiracy.
The fourth case was a dockworker named Anthony Fusaro, a burn victim who’d died in a fire in his North End triple-decker. According to the report, he’d been drinking in bed (a bottle of alcohol was found nearby), probably fell asleep smoking a cigarette (a lighter was found next to the bed), and perished in the ensuing conflagration. She had a tissue sample in the freezer to test for the presence of drugs or disease, but it hadn’t seemed terribly important, and no next of kin had been clamoring for answers, so she’d let it slide while she pursued more pressing matters.
She took the sample from the freezer and set it in a petri dish to thaw. It had the familiar yet odd smell of charred human flesh, like roast mutton but slightly more chemical. The sample had been taken from the vastus lateralis, according to the tag. The rest of the body had been bagged and cremated when no one claimed it, but she was sure she had enough tissue to work with.
“Pleased to meet you, Anthony,” she said, holding the sample up to the light. From the sounds coming from the radio, somebody had hit a home run. “Let’s see how you’re doing tonight.”
She washed her hands with betadine, donned latex gloves and a surgical mask, following universal precautions, turned on all the laminar flow units in the lab, and then set about preparing a 1:800 dilution of the subject’s serum. Using a pipette, she transferred the diluted serum to a rack of test tubes containing antigen/antibody complexes. It would take about an hour to create titers. Beyond the usual infectious agents, she tested from a kit that had been supplied to her office by the Centers for Disease Control, containing the more exotic agents likely to be involved in biological attacks, including anthrax, botulinum, aflatoxin, ricin, mycotoxins, hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, rotavirus, and smallpox. Any infectious bug would have to follow Koch’s postulates to be proven—she had to be able to isolate it, propagate it outside the host, and cause the same disease by returning it to a similar host.
While she waited, she examined the tissue itself for cutaneous affects, first with the naked eye, then with a 10X magnifying glass, and finally with a stereo microscope. She perceived, in the burned flesh, what appeared to be an array of abutting rings, approximate circles individually uneven and erosely bordered but evenly distributed. She was surprised at how easily the epidermis separated between the spinosum and basale stratum, with charring on the base membrane and again between the dermis and the subcutaneous musculature, as if the skin had come loose before the fire started. She’d hypothesized that the rings were the result of droplets of fire retardant falling on the smoldering flesh, but a closer look under the microscope suggested a varying density to the carbon residue, as if the skin had been scarred or pocked before burning.
When she returned to the rack of test tubes, she saw that every antigen/antibody complex assayed had come back negative except one.
Her heart jumped in her chest.
Anthony Fusaro had died of smallpox.
Proving Koch’s third postulate was beyond her capabilities, given that the smallpox virus had no reservoir other than human, no intermediate species to jump to between primary hosts, which had, in part, been why it had been possible to eradicate it in the general population. Had there been a secondary host, for example mice or rats, eradication would have been much more difficult.
Quickly, she resealed and sterilized the petri dish containing the tissue sample, double-bagged it, then placed it back in the freezer after affixing a biohazard warning sticker to the outside of the label, upon which she’d written “variola major.” She considered calling the Centers for Disease Control immediately, but it was approaching three o’clock in the morning, so she held off. As a precaution, she cracked open an NBC (nuclear/biological/ chemical) quick-response kit developed by the CDC for distribution through the Strategic National Stockpile Program, found a dose of smallpox vaccine, and inoculated herself. It probably wasn’t necessary, and even if it were, she could have waited until the Public Health Office opened in the morning to get a smallpox vaccination, but why bother other people when she could take care of it herself?
The chempack also contained a Centers for Disease Control reference CD, so she popped it the drive of her desktop and opened the smallpox file. She skimmed the historical information, the story of colonial Lord Jeffrey Amherst killing the local Native American tribes by giving them virus-saturated blankets, and she scanned the story of D. A. Henderson’s work to eradicate the disease, clicking her way to the electron microscopy itself, where she called up a picture of the virus variola major. Then, using her own electron microscope, she compared what she had in her lab with what she found on the CD, expecting final confirmation.
Instead, she observed that the virus under her microscope was different from the organism pictured on the CD. For one thing, the virus in her lab was much smaller, about seven microns across. For another, it had a different shape, a bend where variola major was straight. She copied and saved to disk the digital images she was observing. She saw where the new virus had formed endosomes on the surface proteins of the host cells, and where the viral proteins had formed fusion loops and then trimmers to catapult the virus into the cell’s nucleus, where it would redirect the host cell’s DNA to make copies of the virus rather than of itself.
Then, she saw something she’d never seen before, or rather, she’d seen it, but she’d only seen it in time-lapse microscopy. This was happening in real time, viral particles penetrating host cell membranes and commandeering the host cells’ DNA at speeds she didn’t quite believe were possible. She could actually watch it as it occurred.
Poor Anthony Fusaro had never stood a chance.
Perhaps to reassure herself, she found the syringe she’d used to vaccinate herself and injected a drop of vaccine onto the slide under her microscope’s lens, hoping to document the process whereby the vaccine killed the virus.
But an odd thing happened.
Rather than witnessing the destruction of the virus, she watched as the virus ripped through the vaccine, using it as a kind of energy source. The result, in the human body, would be to turn the body’s immune system (the lymphocytes, antigens, T-cells, and phagocytes) against itself, something like the way AIDS worked, but at a vastly accelerated rate. She directed the computer to record her images at set intervals to document the rate of viral reproduction, fascinated and unable to take her eyes from the scope.
And then, a thought occurred to her. She sat up in her chair, thinking a moment, then found a fresh syringe and extracted a sample of her own blood. She prepared a slide, and then examined it.
The same virus that had killed Anthony Fusaro was now replicating rapidly in her own blood, coursing through her body. By now, it was no doubt everywhere inside of her.
“Oh, my,” she exclaimed. “Well. I guess that proves Koch’s third postulate, doesn’t it?”
And then she set about her business, opening a new file and typing as fast as she could, because she knew she didn’t have much time, and that the morning shift would be arriving in only a few short hours.
When DeLuca was finally able to log on to his computer and check his e-mail, he read only the relevant messages. The CID lab at Fort Gillem regretted to inform him there’d been a delay in processing the syringe he’d sent them, but that he could expect a response in another four to six weeks. Scottie e-mailed him to say he’d forwarded the photographs they’d discussed to Captain Martin c/o General LeDoux’s office, with a brief query added at the end: “How’d the talk with Mom go?”
He read with interest a report from Walter Ford on one Professor Mahmoud Jaburi describing Jaburi’s activities and Ford’s suspicions. He said Gillian O’Doherty was processing the man’s DNA, which Ford intended to use to cross-reference against other crimes in the cities where he’d visited.
Needless to say, I CCed Tommy at HS in case he wanted to go through channels there, but I was also thinking of talking to our friend Mike O’Leary at the FBI. He’s been promoted since we worked the Angiulo thing but I’ve stayed in touch and had him come talk to my classes. He can back me up but he could also take the ball and run with it if I get benched for some reason. What do you think?
Just when you say to yourself you’re too old for this shit, there’s more shit.
Yours,
Walter
DeLuca wrote his friend back saying he thought it would be a good idea to contact O’Leary, and that he probably carried enough weight to run interference against Timmons for him if he needed it, but also to give Tom a chance. He finished by adding:
I’m too old for this shit, too, but fortunately, the shit is aging at the same rate. No rest for the weary. Who did you see a few years ago when you had that back problem? I might need to consult with somebody when I get home.
David
The last e-mail he opened was from Gillian. She wrote:
Dearest David,
I wish I had better news for you, and I suppose in a way I do, because I have achieved some positive and reliable results, but I fear I’ve discovered something I wish wasn’t true.
Attached to this letter, you will find the report I’ve been working on for the last few hours. I’ve sent copies to you, to Walter, to Tom, to the Boston police, to the Centers for Disease Control, to the FBI, to the Public Health office, and a couple other places (a printed-out sterilized hard copy is also in my safe), but let me put it in a nutshell for you.
When you asked about dockworkers, I checked my files and found a man named Anthony Fusaro who’d died in a fire. When I ran my tests, I discovered that Mr. Fusaro had an extremely virulent form of weaponized smallpox that would have killed him if the fire didn’t. It is, I believe, quite different from ordinary smallpox and much deadlier, smaller, more infectious and vaccine-resistant. I don’t know how Mr. Fusaro might have contracted this illness, but I imagine Walter and our friends on the force will be able to track that down. The fact that Fusaro died in a fire is fortunate. I think whatever fomites might have existed in his house would have been destroyed by the heat. None of the EMTs who handled the body were affected. I believe the virus was stopped there, except for that which existed in his blood, where it persisted, in those parts of his body that weren’t burned all the way through.
Unfortunately, in the course of doing my work, I seem to have contracted the disease myself, even though I followed the safety protocols, as I usually do. My mask only filters out particles larger than twenty microns, and these things are about seven, so I may have inhaled the viral particles. The fact that these viral particles can be spread through mere evaporation is alarming, to say the least.
We may be lucky, in one sense. Because of the “Mad Cow” scare and because the prions that cause BSE are such tiny buggers, the HEPA filters in our laminar flow units were upgraded a year ago to two microns. That means, I believe, that the air is safe and that no viral particles have escaped my laboratory, which is not quite airtight but which is kept at negative pressure all the same. The new lab they’re building will be even better, they tell me.
However, midway through my examination, I realized, much to my chagrin, that the agents I’m working with should really only be handled in a level four biosafety laboratory, and mine is only level two. “May be safe” isn’t good enough. I’m sure that if I gave you time, you’d arrive at the same conclusions I’ve arrived at, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll spell it out for you, so you can see my logic:
1. If this agent is easily transmitted, and is extremely dangerous; and
2. If this lab is contaminated and must therefore be decontaminated; and
3. If I too am contaminated; and
4. If I leave this room, I will quite likely spread this disease; and
5. If I could seal off this room somehow and allow the illness to run its course, nevertheless, whoever examines my body will themselves become contaminated;
6. Then I have no choice but to destroy myself in such a way as to avoid leaving a body, while at the same time destroying this laboratory.
And there you have it. Bit of a pickle.
The building is scheduled to be torn down in a few months anyway, and no one else is working in the building at this hour. I’ve scrubbed everything I could think of with betadine. I’ve also gathered together fire accelerants and materials, and I’ve rigged a timer that should work. I’ve left instructions that the building is to be thoroughly incinerated before anybody goes in to look for me.
These instructions MUST be followed.
By then I will, however, be gone. I need to explain this last bit, because it might create an unnecessary amount of ambiguity if I don’t. Because fire obviously didn’t quite complete the job with Mr. Fusaro, at least not until he was ultimately cremated, I fear I cannot consign myself to the flames and hope for better results, plus I quite don’t like the idea at all. However, happily, we have a device here that’s designed to dispose of large animal carcasses (lucky we’re connected to Tufts). All that’s left are the bones, which crumble like soft chalk. These may be interred as per instructions I left with my attorney when I was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. That, FYI, is no longer in remission. I was running out of time as it was.
So please, David, do not worry about me. I believe I’ve taken every precaution now that I could take. The digester works on a timer, and the lid self-seals, so all I have to do is set the thing and get in. We are occasionally called up to euthanize animals, so I’ve prepared a lethal dose of pentabarbitol to use, once I’m inside. I’ll be dead within two or three seconds of injecting myself.
You will find Mr. Fusaro’s tissue sample in my safe, which is fireproof, as well as a sample of my own blood. It’s possible that a vaccine can be made from them, otherwise I would have destroyed these too. I’ve taken care to secure the samples, and they’re clearly labeled. You will also find the Scotch I was hoping to drink with you. Please pass it around at the next poker game and pour a shot over my grave if you get the chance.
I am quite at peace with all this, David. I look forward to being reunited with my Robert. I’ve been a good Catholic all my life, and I believe in the promise of eternal life, and if that should prove not to be the case, I’m going to come back and strangle a few priests I could name. It would have been nice to fill an inside straight against you all one more time, but I’m old and enough is enough. I’ve had a wonderful life and you’ve all been a huge part of it.
I do fear for what could be a rather serious public health crisis, regarding this virus I’ve got. It worries me that there could be more of the virus from wherever Anthony Fusaro got it, and that it could get out into the population. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, in all my years of medical science. But it gives me some sense of peace to know that good men like you are fighting to prevent this. If my death can aid the fight, it will not have been in vain.
Be well, David, and say goodbye to the others for me, and share this letter with them if you see fit. Goodbye, and love.
Gillian
The e-mail had been sent seven hours earlier. When DeLuca finally got Walter Ford on the phone, Ford told him the building had burned completely to the ground, and that Gillian’s bones had been found inside the digester, along with seven partially dissolved buttons, the rubber soles of her jogging shoes, a syringe containing traces of pentabarbitol, her rosary beads, a string of pearls, and an empty picture frame.
The safe had been sealed in plastic and sent to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.