The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller (13 page)

“So, you’re not buying a sailboat and heading south?”

“Not yet. I’ve got a little unfinished business.”

Izzy took my coffee cup and went back into the kitchen. Travis picked up on the second ring.

“I’ve got a little job for you, bud, if you’ve got the time,” I said.

“Yes, sir. Anything you need.”

“Remember that Taney case?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you get me their marriage license?”

“I can, sir, but it could take a while, unless you know when and where they were married. State records, county records, they’re a mess, sir. They all have to be searched individually and not all of them are online.”

“Start with Brooklyn and work your way through the five boroughs. Their kid is three, and they’re Catholic, so check back three to five years. When you locate it call me, day or night. Got it?”

“Will do, sir.”

When I hung up and went into the kitchen, Izzy was talking on her cell in Dutch. I listened. I liked the sound of it and thought maybe I’d ask her to teach me a few words someday.

I washed out the mugs, refilled them, and planted myself in front of the computer. That wasn’t my only mistake that day, but it was the biggest. Billy’s death was plastered all over the news. Somehow, they’d dug up an academy graduation photo of him in dress uniform, and I was staring into the eyes of my dead partner one last time. Someone at the hospital, one of those guys they call an informed source speaking off the record because he’s not authorized to say anything, in other words a damn snitch, had leaked it to the media that it was Ebola.

Reporters may be royal pains in the ass, but they aren’t stupid, and they like to play connect-the-dots. They wanted to know which of the other first responders had come in contact with Birot, if any of them were hospitalized, if any of them had died. They were pressing every doorbell they could find to come up with more names, but so far no one was answering. It didn’t matter. They knew Birot’s death wasn’t a fluke and couldn’t be explained away as a one-off anymore. They connected Junior’s death to Birot and Birot’s to the Frenchmen. They now knew, and the world knew, that the Blacker Death was here and spreading.

Izzy got off the phone and sat down. I knew something was wrong.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“My father. An old friend in our government told him that they are considering shutting down the airports, restricting air traffic, and setting up checkpoints at all roads in and out of Luxembourg and France. No flights or trains will be allowed from those countries. They are considering closing the Belgian borders entirely if it gets worse.”

“That’s crazy. Don’t they know that’s the absolute wrong thing to do? That’s what’s going on in Africa, and people are suffering, people are starving and dying because they can’t move supplies into those countries fast enough now.”

“He also said that my country will be voting tomorrow to restrict travel from the U.S.”

“I can get you to the airport in thirty minutes.”

“My place is here.”

“Your place is with your family.”

“Is that what your wife said before she left you?”

Harsh, but deserved. She apologized. I told her to forget it.

Her phone chimed. She read the text message and frowned. “I’ve been recalled. My orders are to return to Brussels immediately.”

“Daddy did that?”

She shrugged.

“He wasn’t just a cop, was he?”

She paused, like she was trying to decide whether or not to let me in on a secret. “He was Bureau Chief before retiring.”

I was just getting used to the idea of having Izzy around, but there’s no accounting for bad luck and no fighting City Hall.

“Get packed,” I said. “I’ll book the flight.”

She took out her phone, said she had to call her people in New York, and went upstairs. I went to work. By the time she’d come back down with her bag, I had her booked on a flight from Philadelphia to New York to Brussels with a stopover at London Heathrow. We had two hours to make the thirty-minute drive to the airport. Rush hour was over. It should have been a piece of cake. It wasn’t.

We took the Commodore Barry Bridge into Pennsylvania, south of Chester. Northbound I-95 heading toward the Philadelphia International Airport was a parking lot. The traffic report said there were a couple of accidents up ahead. Only one lane was getting by. They also said the airport was jammed. I checked their website. All flights in and out of the International Terminal were on time, but there were one and two-hour delays on most of the domestic ones. Every domestic flight out of the city was booked solid. The exodus had begun.

I turned on the siren and lights and told Izzy to take the shoulder. That got us to Chester and the first accident, an overturned tractor-trailer, but there was no getting by it until the ambulance moved. We lost forty-five minutes there. We never made it to the second accident. About a mile north of that, the wheel jockey cowboys were blazing new trails and had blocked the shoulder. We inched along until we could get off at the next Chester exit. Izzy pulled over and I called Jimmy.

“That place is a bomb waiting to go off, Bam. The airport can handle over 80,000 passengers a day. Sounds like a lot, but I think every one of them is there right now trying to catch a flight out of town. The cars are lined up like lemmings out onto 95. People are abandoning their vehicles and hoofing it. We’ve had fights. We had a shooting. A TSA checkpoint was overrun. I’m surprised we haven’t had a hijacking yet. It’s a damn mess. SWAT is sending additional men down by chopper. You can hitch a ride with them if you can be here in thirty minutes, but I can’t guarantee the place won’t be totally shut down by the time you get there.”

“We’ll never make it,” I said, “but thanks anyway.” I hung up.

“Time for Plan B,” I said to Izzy. “Our best bet is to head west to Pittsburgh. I can have you there in six hours. You can fly to Canada and catch a flight to Brussels from there.”

She ignored me and began thumbing a text on her cell. When she hit send, she looked up at me and smiled. If you know anything at all about women, you know that means you’re in trouble.

“Pittsburgh?” I said again.

“Philadelphia.”

“What about your orders?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Okay. Where in Philly?”

“City Hall.”

Elvis taught me a long time ago never to argue with a hardheaded woman, even if I wasn’t a softhearted man. “Okay. You’re the one driving this train. Let’s go.”

We plodded along with all the other people who had bailed off the highway into Chester until we came to a road that crossed over I-95 and took us into Delaware County. I didn’t know the area and had only a general idea of which direction to take to get to Philly from there. The car’s GPS did, too, and didn’t like the way I was doing it, so it kept recalculating a route back to I-95 until I finally shut the annoying little yapper off and contacted Philadelphia central dispatch to see if they could help. They couldn’t. They were too busy with real emergencies. They transferred us to Delaware County dispatch, where we got the same treatment.

“Do you know anyone else we could call for directions?” Izzy said.

“Yeah, I do.”

I took out my phone, put it on speaker, and dialed the number in Fort Meade, Maryland.

“This is Tim,” came the voice from the other end.

“I need a favor, Tim.”

“I told you not to call me here. Ever. If you have a request, send it through proper channels.” He hung up.

“Maybe you should try someone who is actually a friend,” Izzy said.

“Don’t sweat it. Tim and I go way back.”

“It certainly sounds like it.”

My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the incoming number. I picked up.

“Matthews.”

“It’s Tim.”

“Where the hell is 613?”

“Ottawa. I’m routing the call through one of the Prime Minister’s secure lines.”

“You guys scare me sometimes.”

“Just sometimes? What do you need, Bam?”

“We’re in a borrowed Philly detective’s car, and we’re in a jam. We’re lost in Drexel Hill and trying to get to City Hall.”

“Who’s we?” he said.

I looked over at Izzy. “She’s okay. She’s a friend.”

“Nice to meet you, Tim,” she said.

“Likewise,” said Tim. “Love the accent, by the way. Where are you from?”

Izzy smiled. “Belgium.”

I remembered my manners and introduced them. “Tim, this is Izzy. Izzy, Tim.”

“A pleasure,” she said.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw me in person,” Tim said. “I’m scary ugly. I’m also scary good.”

“Can you help us or not?” I said.

“What happened to Philly’s finest?”

“They’re a little busy, or haven’t you heard?”

“Yeah, I heard. Do you see that little metal strip on the side of your computer?”

I tilted the box sideways. “Got it.”

“Read me the thirteen digit number.”

I read it off. The computer screen changed to a map of Drexel Hill with a little red dot indicating our position.

“It looks like your best bet is to cut over to the Expressway and come down through the Art Museum area.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“I’ve got thirty-six screens on my wall, Bam, and I’m looking at every traffic cam, security cam, and idiot taking a selfie along the route.”

“You’re kidding?”

“About the selfies, not about the rest. I’m marking the route with a blue line. See it?”

“Got it.”

“If the traffic situation changes, the software will reroute you automatically.”

“I’m impressed.”

“You should be. It’s the same program the Secret Service uses for presidential motorcades.”

“Do they know about this?”

He laughed. “Yeah, right. I’ve got about three minutes left before I have to get off this line. Anything else?”

“Thanks. That about does it, unless you can pull a stolen Caddy out of thin air for me.”

“That depends. What year?”

“I don’t know, but I can look it up.”

“Don’t bother,” Tim said. “I’ve got it. You
are
talking about the one that came after you last night, I assume?”

“That’s the one.”

“Let’s see. Here’s the VIN. Perfect. It’s got OnStar, and they let it expire after the free period.”

“We know. We already checked that.”

“You locals are so quaint. This will just take me a sec to hack into GM. And… there you go.”

The traffic map panned out and another dot appeared in South Philly.

“How the hell did you do that?”

“What most people don’t get,” said Tim, “ is that OnStar doesn’t shut down when you stop paying. They keep it running to make it seamless if you decide to re-up. They know exactly where your car is from the minute you leave the dealer till the day you trade it in, unless you’re smart enough to cut the wires.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s buried in the contract you sign when you first get the free trial for the service. It also lets them sell the data as long as it’s aggregated and anonymous. And they say we’re the bad guys for collecting everyone’s phone records. God bless the United States of Paranoia.”

“How long will we get the Caddy’s feed?”

“Indefinitely, unless someone on one of the servers in between figures out you’re spoofing their IP. Time’s up. Gotta go. Good hunting, pal.”

The line went dead.

“Are we going after them?” Izzy said.

“Not yet. You wanted to go to City Hall. We’re going to City Hall.”

The computer took us through a maze of back streets that led to a bridge over the river. Traffic on our Secret-Service-sponsored route was light. We were heading down the Parkway when both of our phones rang. Izzy answered hers. I recognized the number on mine right away, took it off speaker, and picked up.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I listened to what Evers had to say, said, “Yes, sir,” again, and hung up.

Izzy put her phone away.

“Ladies first,” I said.

“That was my superior. I’ve been ordered to remain here as my country’s representative to the CDC Response Group.”

“That’s funny. I just got a call from my boss. Seems they need someone to babysit the Belgian representative to the CDC Response Group. I guess Daddy was worried when you told him you couldn’t come home.”

“That sounds like Father.”

“All right, lady. Let’s get down there and see what’s what.”

Evers had told me over the phone to bring Izzy back to the Six, so I nixed the route to City Hall, and we headed across town. The bureau was coordinating the local CDC response from there and I was agent in charge of the op. Izzy’s role was as one of the Response Group members, so she technically reported to the CDC, but Evers made sure I knew that it was my job to keep her out of trouble. Daddy had long arms.

He also told me to keep FEMA in the loop, and that meant reporting to Fink. FEMA had moved their command center out of City Hall across the street to the Ritz Carlton when their chief, Cathy Eland, found out that the antiquated structure was a medieval castle sitting on top of a dungeon of subway tunnels. It couldn’t be secured, it didn’t meet their power needs or their network requirements, and the food wasn’t as good.

When we got to my office, Fink was waiting with a stack of paperwork for me and a leave request form that he told me to have back on his desk by the end of the day. He wanted to know why I was still nosing around a homicide that wasn’t any of my business.

“Well, it’s like this,” I said. “If it wasn’t any of my business, Billy and I wouldn’t have been at the Hyatt, and he wouldn’t be dead. Any other questions?”

“Just remember,” he said, “I’m your FEMA contact on this. Anything you get from the CDC, you bring to me first. Clear?”

“Do me a favor. Close the door on your way out.”

Fink dropped the papers on my desk and left.

“I don’t want to be the one to tell you how you should act toward your superiors,” Izzy began.

I cut her off. “Then don’t.”

The phone rang. We were wanted in the situation room for a teleconference.

The Six was built in 1975 and had a situation room that was state of the art during the cold war. A hardened bunker fifty feet below the VIP parking garage, it could withstand anything from a major earthquake to a small-yield nuclear blast. It had enough food and water in storage to feed twenty people for a year. In other words, it was a glorified bomb shelter. The bureau upgraded it after 9/11 when paranoia sent us all scurrying underground like rats and there was nothing we could do but cower in a corner, eat our stale MREs, and suck on our water bottles. They put in a network of computers that are upgraded yearly, a satellite communications hookup, worldwide net access, and citywide tie-ins to surveillance systems, banks, hotels, and public buildings. The U.S. taxpayers sprung for the whole shebang, but as far as I knew, no one had used it. Your tax dollars at work.

I was explaining all this to Izzy as I swiped my ID across the elevator keypad, giving us access to the bottom floor.

“Oh, and sorry about snapping at you back there,” I said. “My shrink told me I have brain to mouth coordination issues.”

When she answered that it was one of my more endearing qualities, I asked her what she was doing after the meeting.

The situation room had a table big enough for the president’s cabinet, but only one person was sitting at it — Travis. He stood up when we came off the elevator.

“Hello, sir, ma’am,” he said.

I did the introductions.

“Izzy,” she said, shaking his hand.

“Kenneth. Nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m sorry about Billy, sir,” he said to me.

“Yeah, tough luck all the way around.”

“Do they know the funeral arrangements yet?”

“His body’s already been cremated. His dad is taking the ashes back to California.”

“How’d he get a flight out?”

“Military transport from McGuire. Where is everyone?”

“We’re it, sir.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No, sir. All the other agents are assigned to FEMA.”

I had never liked being stood in a corner as punishment when I was a kid, so I swore I’d never do that to mine. My ex came up with her own version of it that she called the timeout step. Never liked that either. This assignment felt a lot like somebody’s idea of paybacks.

“When’s the conference start?” I asked, looking at the wall with the bank of empty screens. I figured the big one in the center was for the meeting. What I wouldn’t give to have that baby in my living room to watch football. Having a sofa would be nice too.

“Ten minutes,” Tavis said. “You two want coffee or anything?”

“You’re not our damn waiter, Travis,” I said. “You’re an FBI special agent. Don’t you forget that.”

Too much Billy in his eyes and not enough distance — that was most likely it, now that I look back on why I exploded on him like that. I must have scared the poor kid pretty good, coming at him that way. I said I was sorry.

“That’s okay, sir,” he said. “I understand.”

“I take mine black, thanks,” I said, and gave him a pat on the back. “I appreciate it, kid.”

Izzy went with him to a side alcove where there was a coffeemaker, a sink, a microwave, and a candy machine — everything you’d need to survive World War III except cigarettes. I wanted one in the worst way just then, but the center screen came on with Tom Stalter’s face in it. It had been a long time. He looked beat.

“Hey,” I said.

“Jesus, Bam. You look like shit.”

“Thanks. I love you too.”

“Look, I’m glad you’re on,” he said. “Sorry about earlier. You did the right thing to go to the U.N. on this, and I appreciate your giving me the heads up.”

“No problem. Are you part of this get-together?”

“Someone upstairs decided that I was the right man for the job. I’m Response Group leader now.”

“What happened to the other guy?”

“He’s been moved to Washington to coordinate with the military.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It isn’t. Anyway, I’m glad you’re with us on this, Bam.”

The smell of coffee was replacing the stale stink of the room. My urge for a smoke passed.

“Likewise,” I said.

One by one, as the other members signed on, the big screen spilt into smaller ones until all twelve members were present. Tom introduced Izzy as the Belgian representative. I guess he wasn’t sure what my role was, so I introduced myself as the FBI guy.

Tom started off with a summary of what he knew so far to get everyone up to speed. Sixteen confirmed cases in Philadelphia and a hundred fifty suspected that were hospitalized, awaiting test results. They were beyond running out of room. They were swamped. Four local deaths: Birot, the morgue worker, one of the EMTs, and Billy. The media only knew for sure of Birot and Billy, but they had guessed the story on the morgue lady and were doing their damnedest to weasel information about the others out of anyone connected with a hospital.

Eighty-nine samples were in the pipeline from New York for testing. So far, the only other deaths that he knew of were the three Frenchmen and the guy from Luxembourg. As of an hour before the meeting, fifteen U.N. ambassadors were showing symptoms.

The most troubling aspect, Tom said, was how it seemed to be spreading. People who had no contact with Birot were exhibiting symptoms. The contact tracers connected many of them to the hospital, the Hyatt, and the train Birot took, but some had no apparent connection.

Next, Tom took the delegate reports. First up was the woman from the U.N. She was Constance Fairweather, Assistant to the Secretary General — the one Izzy had called. She seemed nice enough for a politician. I might even have asked her out in some other life. She said that they were still compiling the list of attendees and others who might have been exposed, but they had let all the delegates know immediately that there might be a problem. According to her, all of the U.N. delegates carried cell phones programmed to receive emergency texts from their headquarters in New York, like the colleges that use an emergency automated calling system to notify teachers and students of a lockdown or a 9-1-1 incident on campus. Their system sent the text in both French and English, the two official U.N. languages. I was impressed. One hundred twenty had already responded and were getting themselves checked out. Fairweather’s staff was still trying to get in touch with the others, but many were resistant to sharing any information. In addition to the ones the CDC already knew about, she reported that another eleven with symptoms and one death.

Tom thanked her and congratulated her on a good job of managing the problem. He seemed to think their quick response was hopeful. That’s when I stepped in to rain on their parade.

“Did you ask them how they got home?”

“We assume they flew home, Agent Matthews,” she said.

“Did you ask if any were any showing symptoms in transit?”

She looked a little flustered. “No. Why?”

“That’s when a person with Ebola is contagious, ma’am, and I was just wondering if they took private planes or flew commercial, and what the plan was for tracking down everyone else on those planes. As Dr. Stalter pointed out a little earlier, people on the same train who had no direct contact with François Birot have come down with it. Then, there’s the airport, the taxis, the chauffeurs. How many more were exposed that we don’t know about? ”

I waited while the translators passed that bit of good news along to their bosses to digest.

Tom jumped back in. “The people who were on that train are only exhibiting symptoms, Bam. Nothing is confirmed with any of them yet.”

“Okay. Fair enough. So, I’ll ask the question another way. Is the plan to wait until they all start coming down with it, or do we deal with this now before it becomes a biological WMD?”

I let them chew on that awhile.

“What do you suggest we do, Agent Matthews?” the British representative finally said.

“The president is making an announcement tomorrow. Tell him to come clean. It’s the only way we’ll find everyone Birot and the rest of the U.N. ambassadors came in contact with.”

“You want him to tell people there is a worldwide Ebola epidemic?”

“The world is going to find out sooner or later. Don’t you think it’s better they hear it from you first than from some dipshit reporter?”

“Look at what is happening in Paris. I, for one, will not be responsible for creating a worldwide panic,” the guy said.

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

They went back to arguing among themselves. I got up and left. I took the elevator up to one, went outside, and had a cigarette. Traffic was light on Arch Street. Rush hour was just beginning. Some guys in line at the hot dog stand were chatting it up with the owner. A couple of people coming out of the Federal Reserve building across the street were laughing and talking, heading off for happy hour by the looks of it. Cars still stopped on the red and went on the green. It all seemed pretty normal to me, but I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d never witnessed the spread of an epidemic into my backyard before. I guess I figured it would be something like what happened at the airport that morning only on a bigger scale: every street in the city clogged with cars trying to escape, people abandoning them and running around in panic, looting, burning, that kind of thing. I figured there was still plenty of time for that. This was just the beginning.

Izzy found me sitting on a wall on the 6
^th
Street side of the building.

“You can come down now. The meeting is over,” she said.

“Did they cancel my club membership?”

“No, actually they’re hoping you’ll join your friend Dr. Stalter to represent them at the FEMA meeting later this evening.”

“Did they decide what to do about telling the world?”

“The consensus was to present the facts without recommendation to FEMA, who will relay them to the president for his decision. They feel that it would be irresponsible on their part to call for full disclosure at this time.”

“So, they’re passing the buck.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think about all this?”

“I think I want to go to Pico’s.”

I looked at my watch, but I felt like I was looking at the Doomsday Clock, and it was five minutes till midnight.

“I need to make a call first.”

I called my volunteer fireman buddy, Frank, told him I needed a favor, and asked if he could get his son to feed Shep and Baby. I said I wasn’t sure when I’d be back, so if he could have the kid stop by to check on them tonight and tomorrow, I’d let him fire my vintage Colt .45 at the range next weekend. He asked if my being away had anything to do with Ebola and the big mess in Philly. I don’t like lying to friends. I told him to stock up on groceries and stay close to home for a while until they figure out what’s what.

“Do you think telling him that was a good idea?” Izzy asked when I got off the phone.

“No, but I’m fresh out of good ideas.”

When we got back to the car, I turned on the computer. We’d lost the traffic map with the little red dot showing where the stolen Caddy was. I called Tim, let the phone ring once, and hung up. He called right back from another area code that I didn’t recognize.

“Aren’t you going to ask where I’m calling from this time?” he said. “This one’s actually pretty cool.”

“No. I thought you said the OnStar hookup would stay on indefinitely.”