The Ark: A Novel (30 page)

"You're crazy!"

"And you're getting too emotional to see what I'm trying to accomplish. What if our leaders decide to start a nuclear war tomorrow? Then every single person on the planet will die, and the human race will cease to exist. Disease, environmental degradation, pollution, any one of these disasters could completely wipe us out. Even worse, humanity is on a path to destroy every other species, except the ones that are useful to it. It would repudiate Noah's work to save animal life. I can't allow that to happen."

"So Noah's Ark is involved in this? My father really did find it?"

"Oh yes. He discovered its location and a relic that has made my vision for the New World possible. I was so disappointed when I couldn't reveal it to the world, but that would have interfered with my new vision."

Dilara couldn't help getting excited about the archaeological significance, even in her present situation.

"You actually saw it yourself?" She asked.

"I never went inside the Ark. It would have brought too much attention. But I know where it is, that it in fact exists, and that it holds an identical relic inside. All thanks to your father."

She exploded out of her seat, but the handcuff kept her out of reach of Garrett. "Where is my father?" she shouted.

"That I don't know." For the first time, she could see that he was lying.

"My father helped you plan all this?"

"His work was instrumental in setting all this in motion. In fact, it was your friend Sam Watson who introduced us. I had confided in Watson about my search for Noah's Ark, and he mentioned that your father was a leading authority. Hasad worked for me for two years, and then we had a breakthrough. Or he did. He wasn't as forthcoming as I would have liked. But without that discovery, none of this would have been possible. It was a sign from God that I was to be His messenger. His instrument."

This guy was nuts, but Locke was right. He was an incredibly smart nut. Dilara had to calm herself and hold back her disgust of him. She sat back down and smoothed her dress.

"What could a flood 6000 years ago give you that would make all this possible?" she asked mildly. "So what if a river overflowed its banks or the Black Sea filled up when the Mediterranean burst through the Bosporus, or whatever the true origin of the story was?"

"Ah, we now get to the really interesting part. You assume the Deluge was a flood of water."

"What else could it be?"

"As much as I would like the Bible to be a literal, infallible document," he said, "it is truly useful for its metaphor. You are thinking literally." Garrett spoke as if he were talking to a child rather than a PhD archaeologist, but Dilara ignored the patronization.

She quoted from the Douay-Rheims Bible, Genesis chapter six. "'Behold, I will bring the waters of a great flood upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life under heaven. All things that are in the earth shall be consumed.' Seems pretty clear to me."

"The key phrase is 'to destroy all flesh,'" Garrett said. "The water was an agent of destruction, but it wasn't the cause of death. Think about it. What have you seen lately that fits that description?"

Dilara's mind immediately went to the wreckage of Rex Hayden's airplane. The gleaming white bone they'd found stripped of all flesh.

"The plane crash..." she said, gasping in dawning recognition. "The passengers dissolved."

"Exactly," Garrett said. "Their flesh was literally consumed. That's because the Flood wasn't a deluge. The waters merely carried it. The Flood was a disease."

Three hours after leaving the Genesis Dawn with the device from Garrett's cabin, Locke was in an observation room at the CDC. Space-suited doctors were visible on the closed-circuit cameras inside the Level 4 containment lab.

First, the tube was plugged to prevent material from being released. Then a hole was drilled in the case, and a tiny camera was snaked inside to make sure there were no explosive materials. When they were satisfied it was safe, the case was opened. As Locke suspected, the countdown timer immediately reset to zero, set off by circuitry inside the lid.

Inside the case was a complicated device. Three clear cylinders, each the size of a two-liter soda bottle, were connected to one another by metal tubing and were ringed with colors to distinguish them: red, blue, and white. The blue cylinder was connected to the external tubing.

Opening the case had started several mechanisms in the device. A clear liquid was being pumped from the white cylinder into the blue one. The red cylinder was disgorging its contents in a stream of air. The lab technicians stepped back, but whatever was being ejected didn't seem to be affecting their safety garments.

Within seconds, the pumping into the blue cylinder stopped, and the stream of air from the red cylinder slowed to a hiss. They capped each cylinder and drew samples from all of them.

Locke had already briefed the technicians that whatever was inside was probably related to the bioweapon that had been used on Rex Hayden's plane, so it was exceedingly lethal. He noticed that the technicians had heeded his warnings and were proceeding cautiously, although not as fast as Locke would like.

Now that the danger of explosion was over, Locke's expertise was no longer needed. He was escorted to a waiting area while the technicians analyzed the samples. The adrenaline drain of the day's events finally caught up with him, and Locke dozed off on a break room couch.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and his eyes popped open. He glanced at his watch. It was almost 10am Friday morning. Locke saw a slim, balding Indian man in a white lab coat hovering over him. Next to him was Special Agent Harris.

"Dr. Gavde has the test results," Harris said. "Since you're involved with the Hayden crash, I thought you should hear them. Remember, this is all classified, but you're cleared for it."

"Did you find out what the bioweapon is?" Locke asked as he stood. Harris seemed edgy. She must had heard some of this already.

"I'm afraid so," Gavde said in a slight accent that sounded like a combination of Hindi and BBC British. "Of course, we have only done preliminary tests, but the findings are quite disturbing. This is very scary stuff we are dealing with here."

"So is it a bacteria or virus?"

"Neither. The active agent inside those cylinders are prions. Do you know what they are?"

"Vaguely. They're what cause mad cow disease."

"Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is the best known disease, yes, but there are many others. Prions are not well-understood. They're infectious agents that are composed entirely of proteins. One thing that prion diseases all have in common is that they are fatal, and this one is no different. But in other ways, it's like no prion disease I've ever seen."

"Why is that?" Locke asked.

Gavde sounded like he was in awe of it. "The way this one works is quite insidious. It attacks human cadherins, the proteins that hold together your body's cells. However, it does nothing to animal cadherins. We tested samples of mouse, rat, and monkey cells. They remained unharmed. But human cells were attacked with vigor."

"What happens when the cadherins are attacked?"

"All the cells in your body are bound together with these cadherins. If they break down, the cells no longer hold together, and the cells themselves burst open. The only part of the human body that wouldn't be affected would be the skeletal system because the osseous tissue in bones is mineralized."

Locke thought back to the pilot of Hayden's airplane. In the transcript of his communication with LA Control, he had screamed that they were melting. But just like the Wicked Witch of the West, he had used the wrong word. They hadn't melted. They had dissolved. Only in this case, their bones were left.

"Is there any way to stop it once you're infected?" Locke asked.

"I asked the same thing," Harris said.

Gavde shook his head. "Other than being fatal, the other thing this prion has in common with others is that it's untreatable. As a byproduct of its attack on the cadherins, more prions are produced, so it's self-sustaining."

One part of this didn't make sense to Locke. The prions in Hayden's plane had reduced everyone on board to bones in a matter of hours. If the same thing happened on the ship, it would have been depopulated long before it got to New York. That would defeat the purpose of transmitting it to a widespread population.

"How fast would this stuff work?" Locke asked.

"That's an interesting question," Gavde said, clearly fascinated by the prion. "As you saw, there were three cylinders inside the case. When the case was opened, a valve was switched on, so that the red cylinder was emitting prions, and the blue cylinder was injected with saline from the white cylinder."

"Salt water?"

Gavde nodded. "At first, we couldn't figure out why. When we tried to obtain a sample from the blue and white cylinders, we could only find a few active prions. The rest had been destroyed by the saline. Under the microscope, the prions from the blue cylinder looked virtually identical to the ones in the red cylinder. But they weren't. When we tested them, one type of prion was much faster acting than the other. A more thorough examination of the device showed why."

The booby trap,
thought Locke.

"I'm guessing the red cylinder had the prions that were faster acting," he said.

Gavde looked surprised. "How did you know?"

"That's how I would have designed it. If it was left alone, it would operate as intended, infecting the entire ship. If it was disturbed, whoever did it would be killed in minutes with all those prions blowing at them and infecting them."

Gavde nodded again. "That makes sense. Whoever designed these prions was very clever. I would say that the longer-lasting prions would take days before any symptoms would manifest, allowing the disease to spread beyond any possible quarantine."

"Designed?" Harris asked. "So you're confirming this is man-made?"

"Because of small but specific differences in the two types of prions, I have to assume they were engineered. However, it's very unlikely they were produced from scratch. I would guess that they started with a prion source that was similar in some ways and then biochemically altered. But I've never heard of a prion disease that's even close to this. Where they found it, I don't know."

"Anything else, Dr. Gavde?" Harris said.

"One more interesting point. We detected trace amounts of argon, so we believe the cylinders containing the prions were sealed with the inert gas."

"Why is that important?" Locke asked. He found the entire conversation both intriguing because of the science and nauseating because of its implications.

"The fast acting version begins to break down within minutes if it isn't acting on a cell. It's life span--if a prion can be said to have life--is very short. They act quickly, but must replace themselves just as quickly. Once all the human cells are robbed of their cadherins, the prions themselves dissolve. I would bet that the longer acting ones do the same, only over a longer time period. Unfortunately, we didn't discover this fact until all of our prion samples had destroyed themselves."

Another answer to why they hadn't found any prions at the crash site. They had broken down long before the plane crashed. Their inherent self-destructive nature also made sense if Garrett was going to unleash these prions on an unsuspecting world and had a bunker to hide in. All he had to do was wait out the end of civilization, and eventually the prions would self-destruct, leaving the earth wiped clean of humanity for him to emerge and claim for himself.

"Can anything kill these prions before they're released?" Locke asked.

"We did some quick tests of their durability. They don't break down unless they are subjected to a temperature above 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. The other way, of course, is with saline. The salt is highly corrosive to them."

"I've got to make some calls," Harris said abruptly, opening her cell phone and striding down the hall.

"You were lucky to get to that device before it was used to infect that ship," Gavde said. "I hate to think there might be more of this stuff out there."

Locke was sure there was. The only question was where.

"That's ridiculous," Dilara said, unable to control her amazement at Garrett's assertion that the Flood was a water-borne disease. "The Flood story is a central theme of many different ancient texts."

"And you believe that waters actually covered every mountain on earth to a depth of 15 cubits?" Garrett asked, obviously enjoying the repartee. He seemed to have forgotten that Dilara was the enemy.

"That's just as ridiculous. There isn't enough water on the planet."

"Then you concede the story can't be taken literally. If you're ready to throw out one portion of the story, why do you adhere so vehemently to another part?"

"Floods were a common calamity in the ancient world. Most settlements were built at the water's edge. Tsunamis, hurricanes, rivers overflowing their banks. It happened all the time. It makes sense that stories of God's retribution would encapsulate some of these events."

"Pestilence was also common in previous millennia," Garrett said. "Why is it so hard to believe that Noah survived a plague?"

"The Bible is very specific," Dilara said. "I'm quoting the King James version now. 'And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.' It also talks about how the water covered the land. 'And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.'"

Garrett held up a finger. "The Bible also says, 'And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.' That description could easily describe the effects of a plague."

"Then why doesn't the Bible say 'plague' instead of 'flood'?"