Calypso Directive (31 page)

She looked at him, dumbfounded.

“Oh Jesus.” His lower lip began to tremble, and he fought back tears. He had been worried about Rutgers and Frankie, and the news that they had died uncorked a geyser of guilt and pain. “It's my fault they died.”

She took his hands in hers. “It was an accident, Will. You didn't know what was in the vial.”

“I should have been more careful.”

“It's not like you intentionally infected those boys.”

He stood in silence and did not answer her.

“Will, I know you're upset about those boys, but it doesn't change the situation we're in right now. I need you to focus. I need you to help me understand why Vyrogen would inject you with live
Yersinia pestis
cultures unless they were trying to kill you?”

“Because that's exactly what they were trying to do.”

“Kill you?”

“No,
trying
to kill me. I was their experiment. They injected me with pathogens and watched to see what happened.”

“How did you survive? Did they give you antibiotics after they infected you?”

“No.”

“Then why didn't the plague kill you?”

“Because my body was somehow able to overcome the infection.” He closed his eyes and reminded himself that she had proven her allegiance. It was time to tell her his secret. “Julie, in the time we were together, do you ever remember me getting sick?”

“Sure, don't you remember the time you puked your brains out the morning after your twenty-first birthday?”

“I'm not talking about that sort of thing. Do you ever remember me getting a stomach bug or a cold or food poisoning or athlete's foot or anything like that?”

“Actually, now that you mention it, no, I don't. Even the time that nasty flu had me laid up for days, you didn't catch it.”

“I know. It was the same when I was a kid too. I won the attendance award every year in school. It was the running joke with all my friends that Will Foster's mom would never give him a sick day. In fact, when I think back on my childhood, I can't remember ever being sick. There's something inside me that's different. Something unique about my immune system. It's the reason I have immunity to all the bugs on your list. It's the
why
you've been looking for.”

“I don't know what to say,” she said.

“Do you believe me?”

“Of course, it finally all makes sense. The question is . . . what do we do now?”

“You need to tell me what these are?” he said, pointing to the SEM images of his mysterious lymphocyte.

“I'm an oncology researcher, Will. Not an immunologist.”

“So?”

“This is out of my league. We need someone with subject matter expertise to look at these.”

“Okay, then let's go see an immunologist. Vienna is a major city. There has to be somebody local we can talk to. Do you know anybody who fits the bill?”

Yeah, Bart Bennett, Julie thought, but did not say. “No, unfortunately, I don't.”

“All right, then Google it. You're the search engine guru.”

She sighed as she turned back to her computer. She entered numerous search criteria, but the one that finally yielded results was “Plague + immunity + Vienna + research.”

He leaned in for a closer look at the laptop screen.

“Dr. Roger Johansen, head professor at the Institute of Micro-biology and Genetics, has real potential. His specialty is apparently using genealogy to trace patterns of immunity that develop in populations exposed to pandemics.”

“I don't see what that has to do with me. How can he help us?”

“I don't know if he can, but this is the best option I could find who is local. We need an immunologist and I found one. Plus, I can't imagine that a guy who studies pandemics and genealogies in Vienna doesn't know volumes about plague. Vienna was practically the Black Death capital of Europe in the Middle Ages.”

“Okay, let's go see Johansen. I like the fact that he works for a university. At least we don't have to worry about him being a Vyrogen spy!”

“Yeah,” Julie said, as she wrote down the professor's office address, phone number, and email address. “You never know who might be on Vyrogen's payroll.”

•     •     •

“
HELLO, WE
'
RE HERE
to see Doctor Johansen,” Julie said to the middle-aged woman sitting behind an old wooden desk covered with piles of journals, books, and papers.

“You are?” the woman replied, peering over her reading spectacles.

“My name is Julie, and this is my colleague, Will. We have some microscope images we think the professor will be very interested in seeing.”

“Doctor Johansen never mentioned this to me. Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but I assure you this will only take a few minutes of his time.”

“Doctor Johansen does not see anyone without an appointment. You can leave the images here with me, and if he is interested, he will contact you.”

Julie looked at Will. He shook his head, no.

“I'm afraid we can't do that.”

The woman sighed with annoyance. “Show me your pictures.”

Julie retrieved two prints of Will's lymphocytes from her backpack and set them down on the least cluttered area of the desk. The assistant looked carefully over the images.

She stood abruptly, carrying one print in each hand.

“Wait here.”

Julie nodded and looked at Will. She tried to appear serious, but she could not suppress a smile. She looked back at Johansen's assistant to give her authorization, but the Austrian woman had already disappeared.

After what seemed like an eternity, Johansen's assistant returned with a lanky, balding, handsome gentleman of sixty in tow. The assistant handed the images back to Julie.

The man greeted them in English, flavored with a Scandinavian accent. “Hello. My name is Dr. Roger Johansen. Please, follow me.”

They followed him down a hallway and into his immense office.

“Have a seat,” said Professor Johansen, motioning to a group of vacant chairs set haphazardly around a large round table in the middle of his immense office. The remainder of the room was more reminiscent of an architect's model city than a microbiologist's office, with books and journals rising from the floor in stacks like skyscrapers. Several paths wove between the towers like city streets, the widest of which led to his partially occluded desk.

Main Street.

“This round table is where I hold all of our staff meetings. It is an excellent place for discerning discourse and heated discussion.”

“Very Arthurian,” Julie said.

“Indeed, except instead of Excalibur, in my laboratory I have one of the world's most powerful bright field microscopes.”

Julie and Will chuckled, politely.

“Your names again, I'm sorry?”

“I'm Julie, and this is my colleague, Will.”

“Julie and Will. Good. You are Americans, no?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Good, I like Americans. Now, let us talk about why you are here, shall we?”

“We're here to discuss possibilities,” Will began.

Johansen laughed, grinning ear to ear. “Possibilities. Marvelous! Did you rehearse that opening?”

Will smiled, uncertain how to respond.

“Forgive my sense of humor,” said Johansen, settling down. “Let's take a look at the images together.”

“Of course,” Julie said. She retrieved all the pages from her backpack and spread them out across the table.

Johansen retrieved a pair of eyeglasses from his shirt breast pocket, put them on, and leaned forward to take a closer look.

“These are lymphocytes, yes?”

“Yes, except . . .”

“Except, this one is not a classical lymphocyte,” Johansen interrupted pointing with the tail end of his pen at the image. “What is this cell here?”

“We don't know. Which is exactly why we've come to see you.”

Johansen scrutinized the pictures in silence, while they waited patiently. Then he took off his eyeglasses, folded them, and looked up.

“What else can you tell me? This is interesting, that's for certain, but I can teach you nothing by looking at naked images. When were they taken? Do you have the blood panel that accompanies these? What was the medical condition of the subject? I can think of a thousand questions to ask you. So please, tell me, what other information can you provide?”

“These images were obtained using a scanning electron microscope on blood samples taken from a patient who demonstrates an unnatural resistance to infection. In this particular case, the patient had been exposed to live
Yersinia pestis
bacilli. The sample was drawn seven days after exposure to the pathogen.”

“Excuse me?” Johansen replied, practically falling out of his chair. “By patient are you referring to a nonhuman primate?”

“No.”

“Do you work with UNICEF?”

“No.”

“This patient was encountered during fieldwork of yours?”

“No. Laboratory trial.”

Johansen's face hardened. “Young woman, are you playing games with me?”

“Absolutely not.”

“If what you are telling me is true, I should be reporting you to the police, not trying to help you with some sick experiment.”

“This is not my work. This is not my patient. I'm an oncologist, not an immunologist. I came to you because this is way out of my league. When I found your biography on the university website, I thought you might have the expertise necessary to help us.”

Johansen took a deep breath. “What you are telling me is that these images were derived from samples drawn from someone who is not your patient, enrolled in an experiment in a laboratory where you do not work, and in a field of study which you have no expertise?”

“Yes.”

Johansen smiled and looked at Will. “What is your role in all of this? Let me guess, you operated the microscope?”

“No,” Will said, “I'm the patient.”

The professor looked at Will, then at Julie, and finally back at Will. He slowly and deliberately unfolded his eyeglasses, and put them back on. “Okay. I think I see what is happening here.”

“What is that?” asked Julie.

“Either, you are both lying to me with this fantastic story—for what end I do not know—or, you are telling me the truth, and we have a bona fide mystery on our hands. From the look on your faces, I am inclined to believe the latter.”

“Professor Johansen, we come to you now at considerable risk,” Will began. “We have no one else to turn to. Nowhere else to go. There is something inside of me. Something that makes me different. I want to understand what that something is. We were hoping that with your help, I might finally be able to get some answers.”

“If you want my help, then you must agree to my conditions.”

“Which are?” asked Julie.

“First, we agree to be completely honest with each other at all times, even if the truth is unpleasant. Second, you must agree that I can include the findings in my immunology research.”

“We will agree to your conditions if you agree to one of ours,” Will said.

“Which is?”

“You agree to maintain complete and absolute secrecy about our identities and the nature of this finding.”

“Without question. I will maintain complete confidentiality at all times. You have my word.”

“Then you have mine,” Will said. He turned to Julie.

“And mine,” she added.

“Good. Where shall we begin?” asked Will.

“With a history lesson,” Johansen said with a smile. “I came to Vienna almost twenty years ago. It was the logical place for me to locate my laboratory,” Johansen explained.

“Why is that?” asked Will.

“Vienna has a rich and fascinating plague history—a dubious distinction in most people's minds—but for my type of work, it's perfect. Geographically, Vienna is centrally located in Europe. The Danube River flows east through the center of the city and stretches 2,800 kilometers from Germany to the Black Sea. Through most of its history, Vienna has been a crossroads in Europe.”

“A crossroads of what?”

“Trade, migration, war—the inevitable mixing and mashing of different peoples from different lands. All converging here, all carrying germs, making Vienna a crossroads for disease as well.”

“Resulting in epidemics . . . you study epidemics, right?” Julie asked.

“Very good. It's true, Vienna suffered many epidemics over the centuries, the most famous of which was the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679. Death estimates from this massive epidemic range from 75,000 to over 100,000—literally half the population of the city was infected with bubonic plague. What is so fascinating about the 1679 scourge was that it was the result of two converging epidemics—one sweeping east from England and France, and one traveling west from the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Taken as a whole, the bubonic plague was more than epidemic—it was pandemic—meaning it spread throughout most of the known civilizations of Europe and Asia.”

“Why is that of interest to your research?” Will asked.

“Because I am keenly interested in immunity factors associated with disease epidemics. Bubonic plague is the ideal research candidate because it was common practice for afflicted cities to institute quarantines. In some cases, townships quarantined themselves, in entirety, to prevent the spread of the disease to neighboring towns. The death tolls in quarantined sectors were horrific.”

“I don't get it. Why do you care about the death tolls in quarantine areas?” asked Julie.

“Good question. The death toll is only useful in the sense that it gives me an indication of the virulence of the particular strain of plague bacterium. What I really care about are the plague survivors, or more specifically, the survivors' progeny. For fifteen years I've been building a genealogical database tracing bloodlines of plague survivors all across Europe. Five hundred years worth of birth and death records, from over sixty towns, spread across twelve countries.”