The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller (10 page)

“Travis,” he said.

“Hey, bud, it’s Matthews.”

“Hello, sir. How’s Billy?”

“Holding his own.”

“Good. We’re all pulling for him.”

“I’ll let him know you were asking about him.”

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I need a little research done, if you’ve got time. If not, no biggie.”

“It’s a slow day. Shoot.”

I told him what I was looking for, gave him our car’s ID so he could relay the information back through West Detective Dispatch, and hung up.

“Do you always keep investigating cases you’ve been told to drop?” Izzy said.

“It’s a bad habit of mine.”

Research Voorhoede was located in a four-story building tucked at the back end of a high tech industrial park. It reminded me of a car with tinted windows all around, the kind that keep you from seeing what’s going on inside when the guy in the car can see every move you make, like being on the wrong side of the one-way glass in an interrogation room.

“And you don’t trust him because of that?” Izzy asked as she pulled into one of the visitor parking spaces.

“I don’t trust a lot of people.”

“What about me?”

“I trust you.”

“Why?”

I had plenty of reasons to trust Izzy. I thought she was a straight shooter, and I respected that. She was trying her best under tough conditions. I respected that too. And she put up with me.

“Because you look good in a Hawaiian shirt,” I said.

A security guard met us outside the main door and wanted to know our business. When he heard we had an appointment, he scanned our photo IDs with a handheld and radioed for confirmation. When he got it, he called for the guard inside to open up, and we went in. Next up was a full-body scanner.

“No can do,” I said, stopping before we entered it and set it off. I opened my jacket so they could see my shoulder holster. “I’m an armed Federal Agent, and Miss Aimée is with the Belgian State Security Service.”

“We know, sir,” said the guard in charge, “but no weapons are allowed inside the facility. Those are the rules.”

“The FBI’s got rules too, buddy, and the first one is you don’t give up your piece to anyone unless there’s a gun pointed at your head.”

“Sorry, sir, but I can’t let you pass.”

“No problem. I’ll wait outside.”

A voice came over the guard’s radio in the same accent as Izzy’s. “Mr. Dinkins, there is no need to scan them, and they may keep their weapons. They are friends. Let them pass.”

“Yes, sir,” Dinkins said. He waved us around the scanner and gave us temporary badges with our photos from the IDs we’d shown at the outer door. Fast work. High tech.

“Please, follow me,” he said.

He led us to the elevator, and we took it to the top floor. He left us alone in a reception area outside the elder Birot’s office: lots of metal and glass, lots of modern art, lots of flowers and plants.

“Nice place,” I said, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the woods behind the industrial park.

“Yes, it is beautiful,” said Izzy.

“A face this pretty makes me wonder what’s hiding behind the all the makeup.”

“Are you always this suspicious?”

“It’s my job.”

“And what is making you suspicious right now?”

“Oh, I don’t know — maybe the fact that the building has three floors up and five down.”

“The floors below ground level are where we do our research in controlled environments,” Jacques Birot said, coming up behind us. “The ones above ground are for clerical, accounting, and other support staff.”

“Monsieur Birot,” Izzy said. She hugged him. “I am so sorry about François.”

He held onto her like a father would his daughter. I felt sorry for him, being alone like that. Birot had his hand out to shake mine before I could remember the last time I’d hugged my daughter, Peggy, that way.

“A pleasure to meet to you, Mr. Matthews,” he said.

“I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”

“Thank you. Won’t you both come into my office, please? We can chat there.”

Birot’s office was more of the same: glass, metal, fancy art, plants, and windows all around. I’d definitely give up drinking for digs like that.

“Nice,” I said.

“It was my wife, Maryann’s, concept, which she worked to implement with Barouche. You’ve heard of him, perhaps? He is a famous Belgian artist.”

“Can’t say that I have, but I’m impressed. It makes me feel like I’m standing in the woods.”

“An optical effect achieved through a process that we developed in house. The glass is layered to first distort the image to give the illusion of proximity and then, through an emulsion of mirrored particles, it refocuses the light in a fashion similar to a projector. The glass is smoked to filter out harmful light without loss of clarity. Its density can be adjusted electronically in a manner similar to the opening and closing of a blind.”

”So, it’s all done with smoke and mirrors?”

He didn’t take my little joke very well. At least, he wasn’t laughing.

Two guys dressed like cafeteria workers delivered a tea tray and finger sandwiches. They set everything out on a coffee table and left. Birot sat down in a chair on one side of the table. We took the sofa on the other side. I wasn’t a tea drinker, but I accepted a cup to be polite.

“Izzy tells me you spend a lot of time here,” I said. “Thomas Edison was like that. He had a bedroom right next to his office.”

“He and I are very much alike then. My chambers are through that door,” Birot said.

He tried to smile. I tried one of the sandwiches with something green sticking out and was glad I had eaten already.

“Isabelle, what can you tell me about the arrangements?” Birot asked.

There was no easy way to say it, but she tried to tell him delicately that they were doing the autopsy that day and that his son’s body would be released in a few days.

“Do they know what happened?” he asked.

She looked at me. I knew what she wanted to say, but instead she told him that they’d asked her not to discuss it until the final results were in.

That answer didn’t sit well with any of us. He got up and went over to his desk. I hadn’t noticed before, but below its glass top were several computer screens facing upward. The top itself was touch-sensitive. He pressed it in a few places, the windows darkened, and a 3-D holographic image appeared in the middle of the room. It was the walkway to the parking garage beside the Hyatt, but it wasn’t just an image. It was a video. Someone in the crowd had taken a video on their phone, and Birot had it, and had made it into a 3-D movie. He let it run until it showed a close-up of his son with Billy saying he didn’t think he’d been shot or stabbed. He froze the image.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“From the woman who went to the news media with the story discounted so emphatically by your authorities. I paid well to see the last moments of my son’s life, Mr. Matthews.”

“I’m sorry,” said Izzy. “They asked us not say yet.”

“I simply ask for the truth. Was it Ebola?”

She whispered, “Yes.”

He let go the breath that he looked like he’d been holding in since he first got word of his son’s death. “Do they know how he contracted it?”

Izzy shook her head.

“Are there others?”

She nodded. “The man in the video helping François is one.”

“Billy, my partner,” I said.

“I should have been with him,” said Izzy.

Birot turned off the projector and brought up the light again. “I know of your agreement with my son,” he said. “I also know that he liked the women too much for his own good. I do not blame you, Isabelle. He was not always like that. He took his mother’s death very hard. And now that he is gone, all I have left is my work.”

I’d been waiting for the right time to ask. “What exactly
is
your line of work, Mr. Birot?”

“Research,” he said.

That was the cocktail party answer.

“What kind of research?”

“Any kind that strikes my fancy, Mr. Matthews. That is the prerogative of being as rich as I am.”

“Do any government work?”

“Not in quite some time.”

“Why’s that? Government research is a gold mine, isn’t it?”

“It is not about the money, Mr. Matthews. Let’s just say we have our philosophical differences. Would you care to see one of our current projects under development?”

“Sure, why not?”

“We don’t want to impose,” Izzy said.

“I welcome the diversion, Isabelle. It will take my mind off my grief.”

Birot led us into the elevator, swiped his ID, and pushed S3. The doors closed and opened again on the second floor, where a couple of twenty-somethings got on. They looked like two high school kids out on a date in lab coats. They exchanged greetings with Birot and nodded politely to us. One of them hit the button for S1 and the doors closed again.

“How were the results of the experiment?” Birot asked them.

“Perfect, Mr. B,” the guy said. “It was just as you thought.”

“Good,” he smiled. “Let me know if there are any changes.”

When the elevator doors opened at S1 and they got off, I caught a glimpse of the place. It was warm and humid, green and filled with row after row of plants in raised beds under low-hanging grow lights. A sprinkler system covered the ceiling and kept the air heavy with the musky smell of the plants. It looked like an industrial pot farm in upstate Pennsylvania that I’d helped bust once, but the familiar smell on S1 wasn’t marijuana.

“Tobacco?” I said, as the doors closed. “Why are you growing tobacco, and why underground?”

“Very perceptive, Mr. Matthews,” said Birot. “That particular project is an experiment in bio-pharming. We are developing a process to use the natural protein-making machinery of plants, in this case the tobacco plant, to grow antibodies, which are then used to fight disease. Briefly, the idea is to slip the genetic blueprint of a particular protein into the plant, where it is produced quickly and safely, and then extract the protein from the plant tissue for distribution in medications. Growing conditions must be strictly controlled, which is why the tobacco is being grown in this facility and not in a field.”

“Which disease?”

“Our focus is on the process, not the particular disease. That can be anything for which the specific antibody is known. The process has a wide range of applications, but it will be particularly significant in cases in which the immune system has difficulty recognizing a disease and responding quickly enough on its own.”

“Like AIDS?”

“If you mean HIV, then yes, but a mutating virus like that is more difficult to treat because the antibodies required may change with the mutations.”

 
When the doors opened again, we walked off the elevator and into a glass cage adjacent to a lab. There was a locker room full of hazmat gear off to one side of the cage and a glass tunnel leading into the lab with sealed doors at both ends. The workers inside were dressed in space suits like the docs who were caring for Billy.

“This is as far as we go, unless you would prefer to suit up to get a closer look,” Birot said.

“Closer look at what?”

“I know what you are thinking, Mr. Matthews, but this is nothing hazardous. I assure you. It is a clean room and the scientists are dressed that way to prevent contaminating the experiment. We pride ourselves in our attention to detail.”

“François was that way too,” Izzy said.

“Yes. He would have made an excellent research scientist, but he chose the more glamorous path of politics.”

Glass walls closed off a separate section of the lab in the back where there were cages with monkeys inside. They went nuts when they saw us.

“What’s with the monkeys?” I asked. “I get the feeling they don’t like us.”

“Those are bonobo, actually, the closest relative of the chimpanzee. Very rare, found only in the Congo Basin. They are highly intelligent but can be quite vicious toward those they dislike.”

“What cruel things are you doing to them that I might have to tell the SPCA about?”

“Nothing, Mr. Matthews. It is what they are doing for us. The goal of this particular project, simply put, is to develop a better contact lens. Sounds rather banal, doesn’t it? But, if successful, people across the globe will be able to see perfectly, cheaply, and easily. The bonobo is the key.”

“How so?”

“You see, when presented with this project, I approached it just as your Thomas Edison would have: examine the process itself, devise an easier method of achieving the result, and discover the most economical way to implement it. To that end, teams were sent to all corners of the globe to uncover natural methods of improving eyesight. As my father always said, we learn nothing if not from nature. From cockroaches to apes, we studied and catalogued species until we found in this particular primate something very unique: an unusual hydrogen bond in the bonobo’s tears that increases the liquid’s cohesion and adherence to the eye surface, delaying the drying out process and coincidentally enhancing visual acuity. From that discovery came the solution — reduce the tedious and difficult process of inserting, removing, and cleaning contact lenses to the simple once-a-day application of an inexpensive eye drop that serves the same purpose. We have synthesized the bonobo’s tear and clinical trials are set to begin next month.”

“Where’s the money in it for the contact lens manufacturers?”

“It’s a simple matter of economies of scale. For every wearer of today’s contact lens, there are hundreds of thousands of people who either do not have access to the technology or cannot afford it. Instead of selling ten apples for a dollar, they will sell millions of them at pennies apiece.”