The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller (19 page)

“It’s a public garage, so we can’t tow until it hasn’t moved in thirty days.”

“Do you photograph the vehicles when they come in?”

“Sure do. Got all the plates on that little computer over there.”

“What about this one?” I gave him the Jag’s plate number.

He looked it up. “It came in last Friday. Looks like it’s still here.” Picking up a walkie-talkie, he said into it, “Jack, have we got a silver Jaguar anywhere? It’s been here about a week.”

“Yeah,” came the reply. “It’s up on the hotel level.”

“Thanks.” The manager put the walkie-talkie down. “There are only ten cars in the garage right now. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”

We thanked him, and walked up a level to where Birot’s car was parked.

I tried the door. It was locked.

“Birot didn’t have any keys on him, did he?” I said.

“No.”

I looked in the window. The keys were on the seat. I took out my knife.

“You’ll set off the alarm,” Izzy said.

“I know.” My knife had a couple of useful gadgets on it. One was a center punch on the butt end. I jammed it into the window. The glass shattered, and the alarm went off. I opened the door from the inside, got in, and started up the car, silencing the alarm.

“Is it safe to be in there?” Izzy said.

“Damn it,” I said, getting out of the car. I called Tom at the CDC. “Tom, it’s Bam. What would you say if I told you that I was just in Birot’s car for about thirty seconds?”

“The Birot who died?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, it’s been a week. I’ve read that Ebola can survive for at most twenty days under ideal conditions outside a host, unless it’s been frozen. I’d say if the surfaces are dry, chances of any of the virus still being there and infectious are negligible. Did you touch the steering wheel?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the most likely place it would be. Don’t touch your face. Don’t scratch your nose. Don’t rub your eyes. Go wash your hands. Use hydrogen peroxide or something with bleach in it if you have it. You might want to get out of those clothes too and have them cleaned.”

“Anything else?”

“Just keep an eye out for symptoms. That’s all you can do.”

“Got it. Thanks. How’s everything else going?”

“New cases are popping up everywhere: Pittsburgh, Scranton, Baltimore, D.C.”

I knew there was more. “And?” I said.

“It’s out of control, Bam. Thousands have died, that we know of. We trying to keep track of it, but the people keeping track are dying too.”

“Jesus.”

“I know.”

“Let me ask you something. What do you know about those classified outbreaks of airborne Ebola?”

“Only what Dr. Champion said at our meeting, Bam. They brought him in because he had prior experience with it.”

“Would you tell me if you knew more?”

“Probably not, unless you had a damned good reason for asking.”

“What if I did?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ever hear of Ebola-B?”

“No. Where’d you come across that?”

“Just something I read. No biggie. Listen, thanks for the help. I’ll let you know how I make out.”

I said good-bye and hung up. That’s when I saw a small plastic box under the front seat of the car. I picked it up with my handkerchief. There was an EpiPen inside.

“What do you make of this?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Izzy.

“Did Birot carry an EpiPen?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then, I wonder why he had this.”

“That’s the Research Voorhoede logo,” she pointed out. “It must belong to his father.”

“I guess you’re right.”

I wrapped the box in my handkerchief and dropped it in my pocket. After eyeballing the rest of the car, I popped the trunk, but there was nothing in it other than a spare, a jack, and lug wrench.

“I need to get cleaned up.”

Izzy took out her phone, called the Hyatt, and reserved me a room.

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll call when it’s ready and give you the number.”

“Thanks. Something to wear would be nice too.”

She made some crack about a little black dress and left. Funny, there I was with that Ebola shit crawling all over me and she was making with the jokes. She reminded me of me.

She called about a half hour later and told me that Room 1420 was ready and she’d left the door open. I took the stairs up. I didn’t want to risk coming in contact with anyone else, and when I got to fourteen, I made damn sure the hall was clear before I left the stairwell and jogged to the room. When I passed a maid’s cart, I snagged a bottle of cleaner that smelled like bleach, a garbage bag for my clothes, and a wastebasket liner for the EpiPen. Izzy had left the room key and a janitor’s uniform on the bureau. I emptied my pockets onto the table, stripped down, and put my clothes in the bag. After a shower, I cleaned off everything, got dressed in the uniform, and called Izzy.

“Where are you?” I said.

“I’m at the Nineteen.”

“I’m not exactly dressed for that.”

“I don’t think they’ll mind.”

She was right. When I got there, the place was empty. Izzy had a nice table overlooking the city. You couldn’t tell from looking at Philly’s skyline that it was coming apart at the seams.

“I’m surprised this place is open. Have you eaten yet?” I said.

“No, and I’m famished.”

The waiter came over, wearing a mask. He tried to act like nothing was wrong, but I could see that he was scared shitless.

“Are you going to be all right there, buddy?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They took my neighbor away to the Navy Yard this morning. That’s where they’re sending them, you know.”

“I heard. The important thing is to remain calm, stay clear of sick people, wash your hands a lot, and don’t take that mask off.”

“Are you a doctor? You seem to know a lot about it.”

“No, but I know this — you’re better off here than out there.”

We both ordered steaks and sat there looking out on the night.

“My hands smell like a damned swimming pool,” I said.

“I noticed.”

“I’m thinking it might be a good idea for us to keep separate for a few days, you know, just in case?”

“Why? Dr. Stalter said that there was very little chance of infection.”

“What if I didn’t get it all off?”

“You took a shower. You have new clothes. You washed everything in bleach. What more can you do?”

“Nothing but keep an eye out for symptoms. That’s what he said.”

“So, it’s safe.”

“Maybe. I’d just feel better if you stayed away for a few days, that’s all.”

“I’m not staying away.”

“Izzy, please…”

She said no one more time, and I let it drop. There’s only so long you can argue with a woman before it’s time to give up.

After dinner, we went out to the front desk where I showed the guy my ID and told him I wanted 1420 sealed off for two weeks: no cleaning, no changing the beds, no nothing. I wanted it locked up tight and treated as a crime scene. He wanted to know who was going to pay for the room, so I gave him my FBI credit card and charged it to Fink. There were no complaints after that.

We stopped at the garage manager’s office on the way out. I told him to call his towing service and have the Jag taken to the city impound lot. Then I called Jimmy to let him know that it was on the way, and asked him to make sure they knew not to touch the inside for a few weeks, for all the good that would do.

When we got back to my place, I fed Shep and Baby while Izzy took a shower. When I came upstairs, she was already asleep, so I ditched the uniform, got dressed in my own things, and went back downstairs to do a little reading.

I had fallen asleep on the living room floor with a bottle of scotch, a pack of Pall Malls, and my laptop, following the news that was getting worse by the minute. The world was in a financial meltdown. Countries were closing their borders. Governments were trying to maintain order, but people were dying everywhere, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

It was still dark when I got the call.

“Matthews.”

“It’s Tom.”

“What time is it?” I said.

“Two-thirty.”

“What’s up?”

“Are you still at the office? We’re having a meeting in ten minutes.”

“No. I’m home. Give me the short version.”

“We’re suspending all testing for the disease.”

“Why?”

“There’s no point, Bam. Patients are dying before we can get the results back.”

I looked over at Shep sleeping by the front door, barking at something in the middle of a dream.

“Anything else?”

“They’ve evacuated the president to Camp David. He’s going to run the country from there for the time being. He’ll be issuing a four-day isolate-in-place order for Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Those are the worst hit. They’re hoping the curfew will stop the spread.”

“So much for business as usual.”

“There’s more, Bam. North Korea attacked the South. They’ve broken through the DMZ.”

“You’re kidding. Have they used their nukes?”

“Not yet, but they might have done something just as bad. The South Koreans think they released anthrax into Seoul’s water supply.”

“What the hell is wrong with us?”

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“We’re not going to make it, are we?” I said.

“I don’t know, Bam, but if we do, let’s go get drunk somewhere.”

“You got it. See you, Tom.”

I turned on the TV and watched the news until it got light out. The North Korean invasion bumped Ebola from the headlines for about two hours. They’d punched a big hole in the South Korean defenses, but got bogged down about fifteen miles north of Seoul. We were pounding them hard from the air, but with a force that big, it takes a lot of pounding to make a difference. Why they would want to attack Seoul after dropping a biological weapon there was beyond me, but I wasn’t the lunatic with a million-man army.

When the president came on to make his announcement, the news from North Korea took a back seat.

My fellow Americans…

That’s how it always began, as if we were all in this together. But we weren’t. Some of us were in it more than others.

I heard Izzy come down the stairs. She came up beside me, sat down, and we listened to the president lay out his five-minute plan to save the country. Isolate in place. Die where you are.

“Have you been here all night?” she asked, pulling closer to me.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

When she put her arms around me like that, I wished the Big Guy would hit the reset button and let me play another quarter. But life isn’t like that. There’s only sucking it up and moving on.

“I have a friend at McGuire Air Force Base,” I said. “I sent him a text earlier. He can get you on a military transport to NATO headquarters in Brussels. We can be at the base in an hour.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not going.”

“This might be your last chance to see your folks, Izzy. Get out of Dodge while you still can.”

“I said, no.”

A washed-up loser like me finally finds someone like her, and what did I do? I blew my stack. I told her to pack her things and get out. I told her there was no future here with me. I told her I was a burnt-out, bitter old man that she was better off without. I didn’t need her pity. And then I lied. I said I didn’t need her. And you know what she told me?

She said, “You can lie to the others but not to me. You do need me, Bam, and I need you.”

Later that morning, I emailed Evers, and copied Travis and Fink. I told them I wouldn’t be back until after the curfew. Izzy and I spent the next four days at my place. We took walks in the woods, we played with Shep and Baby, and we lived on scrambled eggs and bacon. We made a pact that first day that we would only check the news once every twenty-four hours. What was the point? It was all bad, and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it.

They expanded the curfew to six more U.S. cities the second day with nearly every other country in the world following suit. By the third day, all of America and most of the world was either in lock-down or under some form of martial law. The North Korean invasion ended in a coup and a civil war. Russia invaded the Baltics and then lost half their 150,000-man force to Ebola. Israel bombed Damascus for sending infected refugees across the Golan Heights by the thousands. China bombed one of its own cities where the outbreak was completely out of control. There were riots and looting everywhere, people were ignoring the curfew, and the disease kept spreading. It was pretty clear the life-as-we-know-it train was coming to the end of the line.

The power grid on the Eastern seaboard held those four days, so we still had TV, phone, lights, and Internet, but tornadoes in the Midwest left millions in the dark with no one around to restore power. My daughter called from Omaha on the third day.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“I’m with Mom. Can you please come get us?”

I still kept a picture of the kids on the bookcase in the living room. They were little ones then, full of energy, full of life. I picked it up and looked at it.

“I can’t, sweetie. You know that.”

“Daddy, please. We’re almost out of food. There’s no power. Bobby left.”

“Who’s Bobby?”

“He was my boyfriend.”

“Did you talk to your brother?”

“Yes, he’s fine. Things are still okay there.”

“Can you get to him?”

“It’s a thousand miles away, Daddy. Please.”

“Honey, I can’t. Everything’s shut down.”

She begged me, so I promised. I said that after the curfew I’d come get her. I told her I’d always be there for her. I lied. Worthless, rotten shit that I am, I lied.

We took stock of our supplies after the curfew officially ended. Being the paranoid bastard that I was, I had a six-month stock of emergency rations that still had fifteen years on its expiration date. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking fifteen years ago when I planned for disaster, but it wasn’t this. The farm had its own well and a hand pump for when the power went out. I had an underground three hundred gallon gas tank that I always kept filled. That one also had a hand pump for emergencies. The house had a natural gas backup generator, and there was plenty of dead wood other than me on the property that we could burn in the wood stove if it came to that. I figured we could make it till spring. Then maybe I’d get that boat and we’d head south.

Days passed. It seemed like weeks. Fewer and fewer stations were still broadcasting. Activity on the Internet was grinding to a halt. I decided to take up biochemistry to pass the time, and I reread the classified document, looking up the parts I didn’t get, which was most of it. I took notes, as if that would help, jotting down things that might be important. Loose ends. Always the loose ends.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when Izzy brought me coffee, looked over my shoulder, and pointed at one of my scribbles.

“What’s a natural reservoir?” she said.

“If you had asked me that two days ago, I would have said, beats me. But now I can tell you, it’s the virus’ original host, the one living creature it infects but doesn’t kill. The virus spreads to humans when we come in contact with the natural reservoir. It could be a bite, like from the mosquito that transmits malaria. It could be something we eat, like an infected animal. Sometimes all we have to do is breathe in what the host is breathing out. Once it gets going in humans, we do the spreading ourselves. The difference is, we die. For all the other strains of Ebola they never figured out what the natural reservoir was. Most people seem to think it’s a fruit bat that the natives in the Congo like to eat.”

I clicked back through the document until I found what I was looking for.

“For this Ebola-B thing,” I said, “they discovered during the second outbreak that the natural reservoir is something called a
Pan paniscus
.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s Latin for some kind of bat.”

I was curious, so I looked it up. It wasn’t a bat. It was a great ape.

“It says here, the
Pan paniscus
has been hunted nearly to extinction. Its natural habitat is a small area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo called the Congo River Basin. The common name for it is bonobo. Why does that word sound so familiar?” And then it came to me. “Birot. Those are the monkeys he’s got in his lab.”

I called Tim on my cell, hung up and waited. It was an hour before he called back on the home line, and his number wasn’t spoofed. It was his direct line at Fort Meade. I put him on speaker so Izzy could hear.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, things are falling apart. Half the North American grid is down.”

“Izzy is here with me. I have you on speaker. Is it safe to talk on this line?”

“Bam, it doesn’t matter anymore. Nobody’s listening.”

“This is unbelievable.”

“Don’t act so surprised. Back in the Middle Ages, it took the Black Death seven years to spread across Europe and kill two hundred million people. The Blacker Death did that in two weeks. It’s the Information Age, brother. People can fly anywhere in the world in a couple days and so can Ebola. Who would have thought humans would be the perfect WMD?”

“Yeah. Who would have thought… Are you still okay there?”

“We’re fine. They sealed the base before it really got going. What about you?”

“We’re good for now.”

“Did you get my email?” he said.

“I didn’t check.”

“I uploaded MP3s of those calls you wanted a couple days ago.”

“Thanks, I’ll pick them up when we get off the phone. Right now, I need your help. Do you still have access?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s easy now. No one’s minding the store.”

“I need to know who was responsible for hunting a monkey called the bonobo to extinction in the Congo. I’m guessing it was a recent U.N. subcontract job.”

“When did you suddenly become a Greenpeace groupie?”

I heard him typing in the background, as I gave him the dates from the classified document and filled him in.

“I guess they missed a few or we wouldn’t be in this boat, would we?” he said.

“I think they missed on purpose, Tim.”

“Okay, got it,” he said. “You were right. It was a U.N. contract with a company called Wraak, Inc. Cheap, too. Only twenty million dollars.”

“Can you get me the company officers, owners, anything?” I asked.

He began typing again. “Their address is a P.O. box in Philadelphia. The contract signer was someone named Albers. He’s listed as CEO. According to the Pennsylvania Department of State corporation website, the company officers are…”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Jacques Birot.”

“He’s president and treasurer. François Birot is VP and secretary.”

Tim was typing again. “This is interesting,” he said. “I just googled them, and you know what came up? Wraak is spelled W-r-a-a-k. That’s Dutch for revenge.”