The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller (17 page)

“What about the murder one? What about the five hundred Gs?”

“Forget about it,” I said.

Carmine passed the gun over and we got out of the car.

The police took Carmine’s goons away. I called Evers at home and filled him in, leaving out the parts that would have gotten me fired or jailed. As far as he knew, Carmine DiPasquale was just another mob lieutenant turning State’s evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution and a new identity for himself, his sister, and her family. Evers called the U.S. Marshalls, and they came and picked him up. There was no mention of any DNA evidence, any warrant, or any dropped murder-one charges. As far as anyone knew, Carmine just grew a conscience. I figured letting him off the hook was a small price to pay for bringing down one of New York’s top crime bosses.

Izzy and I went back to Jersey. We celebrated one for the good guys.

When we got up the next morning, I felt like taking a walk. Izzy said she had some things to check on, so Shep and I hit the trail. It’s funny how things in the woods don’t seem to change much, but then trees don’t have the brains we do to know that the world is falling apart and it’s our own damned fault. When we got back, the cat was playing with a mouse on the back porch and the house smelled like an IHOP.

“What are you making?” I asked.

“Waffles and bacon,” she said.

“Maybe it’s just a technicality, but I don’t own a waffle iron.”

“I’m using this electric grill.”

They looked like pancakes with one-way ridges. For once, I didn’t say what I was thinking.

“No kidding?” I said. “George Foreman would be proud. What I can do to help?”

“Make more coffee.”

I put on the coffee and brought out the laptop.

“Jimmy called,” she said.

“Anything interesting?”

“He said that when his men checked Birot’s phone, there was no record of any incoming or outgoing calls.”

“Yeah, he told me that already.”

“He said you asked him to get a court order to subpoena the call records from the phone company.”

“That’s right. I did.”

“It was approved late yesterday.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t know you’d done that. I thought you were keeping me in the loop on the investigation, Bam. After all, Birot was my responsibility.”

“Sorry. I guess it slipped my mind.”

“Is there anything else that slipped your mind?”

It’s no fun getting old and forgetting things. I wanted to tell her that, but it’s also no fun admitting you’re old and forgetful.

“No. I think that’s about it. It won’t happen again. Scout’s honor.”

And there was that smile again. “You were never a scout.”

“Guilty as charged. So what did Jimmy have for us?”

“Birot called All City Cab when he arrived in Philadelphia.”

“Where did they take him?”

“I asked Jimmy to find out,” she said.

“Good. Anything else?”

“Birot called his father the morning of his death.”

“And he took the time to delete the call before he died. Interesting.”

I checked my work email. There was nothing that couldn’t wait. I sent off a message that I would out of the office and checked one of my personal accounts, the one Tim and I used to exchange information. We both had access to it. When we had something to show the other, we just emailed ourselves, leaving no trail for snoops to follow. There was one email in my inbox from me to me. All it said was “test.”

I closed the browser and opened another called Tor. That’s the one used by hackers and anyone else looking to remain anonymous on the Internet. It’s supposed to be secure, but Tim says it’s like locking your door. It only keeps the honest people out, but it’s better than nothing. The IP address I entered into the browser was one of a number we used, depending on the key word in the email. The classified document I was looking for was there on the site. I downloaded it, deleted it from the server, shut down the browser, and rebooted. Breakfast was ready, so I set the laptop aside and we ate. Best one-way waffles I’ve ever had.

“I got the classified document,” I said.

“Do you always break the rules like this?”

“You’re really busting my chops today.”

“Someone has to do it.”

“To answer your question, only when I can’t get what I want any other way.”

“How is that any different than the criminals?”

“Subtle,” I said.

“You’re a complicated person, Bam. I’m just trying to understand.”

“Would you have done it differently?”

“If I were you, I think so. I think I would have tried to find whoever was responsible for giving me clearance to see the document.”

“And they would have told me I’ve got no right to see it. I’ve got no need to know.”

“Then, why
do
you want to know?”

“Because Billy is dead. Because the whole thing smells. Because I want to know how the hell this could happen.”

“You’re stubborn like a bulldog, and you don’t like giving up, do you?”

“Not usually.”

“Yet you gave up on your marriage.”

For someone so young, she sure knew how to fight dirty.

“I wasn’t the one who gave up,” I said.

I must have looked like one sorry sack of defense-mechanism shit, because she looked down at her coffee and apologized.

“You want the truth?” I said. “Here’s the truth. It’s always been about the job for me. I was a lousy husband and a terrible father. I was never there for them. Hell, I was a stranger in my own house. I’m surprised the kids didn’t call 9-1-1 when I came through the door at night.”

She didn’t say anything.

“After the breakup, I used tell myself that the whole marriage thing was a mistake, that I’d have been better off if I’d never done it. But you know what? I’ve regretted a lot of things in my life, but that’s not one of them. Pam and I had something once, something good. And the kids? I don’t care that they never call or write, because they’re my kids and I love them.”

Izzy took my hand and squeezed it.

“Say the word,” I said. “I’ll delete the file, we’ll call it done, and move on.”

“No,” she said. “You won’t stop until you know the truth.”

We cleaned up after breakfast, took our coffees, the newspaper, and the laptop, and went out to the front steps.

Izzy read me the headlines, “The Blacker Death, Ebola Cover-up — Congress to Investigate.”

“They sure know how to sell papers. What are they saying?”

She scanned the articles. “It’s everywhere: Beijing, Delhi, Tokyo, London, Moscow. The Russians are blaming the United States. They’re saying it was a planned biological attack on them that’s gotten out of control.”

“I hope they don’t think they can nuke their way out of this.”

“They’ve raised their alert status. So has NATO.”

“I guess that’s one way to stop it. Kill everyone on the planet.”

“Your Congress is going to hold hearings.”

“That’s decisive action for you.”

“Here’s a story from Paris,” she said. “Residents are barricading their neighborhoods and setting up their own checkpoints. No one goes in or out unless they’re inspected and symptom-free.”

“Great.”

She kept reading. “Israel has closed it borders and instituted a one-week lockdown. Everyone must remain in their homes until it’s over.”

“What about the sick? Who helps them?”

“According to this, no one. They quote the Israeli Defense Minister as saying that because there is no cure, the only hope for Israel is for the sick to die with honor.”

“That’s the Israelis for you. Practical to the end.”

“They’re going to reopen the U.S. stock markets this morning. Your president insisted. He wants to prove to the world that it’s business as usual. It says the other countries are expected to follow suit. It also says that all FDIC-insured banks have been ordered to remain open.”

“He’s got balls. Let’s hope he’s right.”

The classified document Tim had uploaded for me was actually three documents, dated three years ago. Deciphering the first would have meant going back to college and getting a degree in biochemistry. It contained test results, projections, formulas, all Greek to me. I clicked through to the summary at the end. Ebola-B, they called it. It could be transmitted by fluid contact or through the air. The airborne version was identifiable by a slightly different arrangement of nucleotides, whatever that meant. They concluded that a mutation to the airborne type was rare, but even I understood the important point of the summary— if it did, it was always fatal.

The next document read like a rap sheet for two hundred people. Farmers, laborers, hunters, children, aid workers, healthcare workers — their vitals, their bios, an entire village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and they were all marked deceased. Three doctors had died with them.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Wasn’t Maryann Birot, Jacques Birot’s wife?”

“Yes, why?”

“Her name is on this list. She was one of the doctors.”

I did a quick Google search.

“
Médecins Sans Frontières
, that’s Doctors Without Borders, right?”

“Yes,” Izzy said.

“According to this old profile page she was a pediatrician at a hospital in Philly and volunteered every year with Doctors Without Borders. Why do you think the elder Birot neglected to mention this?”

“He’s under a great deal of stress. I’m sure he either forgot or didn’t wish to speak about it. I can’t imagine losing both a wife and son to Ebola. Can you?”

“No. I can’t. Ever heard of Ebola-B?”

“No.”

I googled that next, but nothing came up, so I went on to the third document. That one looked a lot like a battle plan. It laid out different scenarios for the spread of Ebola-B, each estimating the approximate number of deaths. Each had its own coverage map, showing how far the virus would spread. The death tolls ranged up to the millions, except on one map, labeled “airborne scenario.” On that one, the kill zone covered the globe and the number of deaths was in the billions. The section on recommendations listed several possible strategies. One of them was marked “adopted, previously confirmed effective.” I read the section. According to the document, it was the same strategy they’d used in the previous outbreak of Ebola-B in the late seventies.

“My God,” I said. “These people didn’t all die from Ebola. They used a thermobaric bomb.”

“A what?”

“A fuel-air explosive, an FAE. They call it a fuel bomb. It feeds on the oxygen in the air and creates intense heat and a pretty damn big blast wave. Depending on the strength and number of bombs, they could easily incinerate several square miles. Nothing in the blast radius would survive, not man, not virus, nothing. It’s no wonder this never made the news. They murdered everyone in that village to stop the outbreak.”

Izzy’s phone rang. It was Jimmy. He was calling to tell her that the cab had taken Birot to his father’s home the day before he died.

“Feel like taking a drive?” I said.

Izzy agreed that another chat with the elder Birot was a good idea, so I picked out a Glock 9mm from the gun cabinet to replace my .38 until I could get new issue from work. I’d gotten it just to see if I liked it. I didn’t. It was too small, too light, and made me feel like John Wayne riding a pony, but I didn’t want to risk losing any of my other personal weapons on official business.

I asked Izzy to stop at my bank on the way. The line was out the door, so we skipped it. The Gremlin would just have to wait for another day. We took the long way around Philadelphia, keeping to the highways to avoid any problems in the city. Jimmy had warned us that things were getting worse there, and he was right. It was all over the news. The so-called experts were recommending that people buy air purifiers, masks, window and door sealant kits, anything to make themselves and their homes airtight. They were telling them to stock up on non-perishable food and bottled water. They wanted everyone to get a backup generator and extra gas. You’d think these guys were working for Home Depot the way they were throwing fuel on the fire. Big box stores, home improvement places, hardware stores, places that sold any kind of mask, duct tape, insulation kit, or anything else that some bozo on the radio told them to buy, were swamped. Panic had spread to supermarkets, convenience stores, and buyers’ clubs, emptying their shelves in hours. And anywhere the presence of the law wasn’t obvious, the people were taking the law into their own hands. There were reports of fights, shootings, and stores being looted. People were being mugged outside stores and on the subway platforms, not for their money, but for crap that wouldn’t do a thing to stop the Blacker Death.

The mass exodus that had petered out a few days ago, was alive and well on the roads leading out of Philadelphia. I wondered how many of them were carrying the virus with them like rats spreading the plague to the rest of the country.

 
It took us three hours to make the one-hour drive to Birot’s facility. On the way, I called Tim to thank him for the documents and ask him to do one more favor for me. I felt bad that the only time we spoke was when I wanted him to break the law, but we’d never been the get-together-at-Christmas kind.

We were pulling into the parking lot when the president came on the radio to reassure the country, so we sat in the car and listened to his short speech. The stock market had lost another ten percent since the opening that morning, but he was not going to let them close. He was confident that it had bottomed out, and wanted us all know that it was safe to put our money back into stocks and pick up some good bargains along the way. The run on the banks was serious, he admitted, but it was not money lost, just money moved into other hands, and it would be moving back to the banks soon. We would survive. We had to survive. We were the leaders of the free world and the cornerstone of the world’s economy.