The Nightmare Scenario (33 page)

R
ebecca had been relieved to leave New Delhi. The change of environment would, surely, help her refocus her mind, and put her worries about Roger aside, at least temporarily.

She felt guilty about abandoning her post, but Aeolus had been adamant. She was the one who would take charge of the delegation to the site the North Korean government had told the Chinese was the center of Dr. Choi’s research. Aeolus was right. What was inside this lab might turn the tide and they had to be sure samples and whatever biological evidence there was, was handled properly.

The North Korean government had caved within six hours. The only concession they were able to negotiate was that the team be limited to the specific lab in question and only have access to the research relating to influenza.

Rebecca flew to Pyongyang and met up with the rest of the team. In the helicopter bringing them from the airport to the site were five Chinese soldiers, Special Forces from the Shenyang military command, and seven doctors: three South Korean virologists who would also serve as interpreters, one Chinese to oversee the proceedings and three from her own team.

To her surprise, she fell asleep during the ride. The motion of the KAI KUH-1 Surion wasn’t exactly smooth, and the noise of the propellers cutting through the air was loud enough to wake the dead. Still, having no immediate concerns to attend to put her into a coma-like state of almost euphoric relaxation.

She awakened by violent shake. She opened her eyes and was met by a concerned expression of one of the Chinese doctors.

“It’s all right. I’m not dead. Not yet,” she said in English, unsure whether he understood or not.

They had landed in the center of what looked like a small village. As soon as she stepped out, she recognized the distinct features of nature that she associated with her treks through the northern regions of South Korea. There were large hills, or small mountains depending on how you saw it, as far as the eye could see. There were roads winding along the valleys between the rises of green, covered from top to bottom with dense forest and shrubbery. And even though it was midday, the fog lay thick, forming a mist so compact that small droplets of water coated the skin.

Small huts with straw roofs surrounded the village square. It was like being transported a century back in
time, if not more. At the edge of the village were two concrete barracks, the only modern, or at least modernish, buildings around. Rebecca assumed this to be the lab.

The North Korean envoy led the way and was met by a middle-aged man in a white lab coat storming out of the building. A fiercely agitated debate between the two ensued. Rebecca imagined the envoy told the doctor that the visit had been approved by Pyongyang and that he was to cooperate. It took the interpreter close to five minutes to win the debate.

With the assistance of her interpreters, Rebecca started questioning the doctor.

“Are you the person responsible for this facility?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Hak-Man Choi?”

“Yes, I was his student and assisted him in his research.”

“So you have worked with a strain of influenza based on the 1918 strain?”

The doctor was silent until the envoy once again started yelling at him in Korean, after which he reluctantly responded. “Yes, I did work on it. But that was a long time ago. We have not touched it since Dr. Choi left us.”

“First things first,” Rebecca said, “Are all the samples, documents and other outputs from the research in this laboratory?”

“Yes, apart from some samples that were moved a couple of months ago. We are transferring our um, other research to a more modern facility. By mistake
some of the samples of the strain you are referring to were packed in there.”

Rebecca sighed as she thought, “Well, that’s how it got out. One dropped vial from a refrigeration box, one curious unlucky bird flying south, another unlucky bat in a tussle with the bird. That’s all it had taken.”

Rebecca continued her interrogation, which was like squeezing blood from a stone, and the success of which was wholly dependent on several bouts of yelling from the Pyongyang envoy.

What she learned was discouraging. The vision of Dr. Choi had not been to create a typical bioweapon to be targeted against a specific population, but to create a plague of such potency that it could be used as a second-strike capability to bring down “the wrath of the gods” on the entire world in the case of North Korea being attacked. Usually, second-strike capabilities were announced to the world. How else would they serve as the deterrent they were intended to be? Not so in this case. The North Korean government had reasoned that admitting the existence of such a weapon could be sufficient as a
casus belli
to trigger an American invasion. It made no political sense. It made no sense in any way. But such was, apparently, the twisted reasoning of the paranoid politicians of this isolated nation.

In line with his objectives, Dr. Choi had spent no effort developing a vaccine or any kind of countermeasure to the infection. Instead, he had infected a large number of hosts, humans as well as various animals, monitored the strains mutations and bred the
most lethal variant he could. It was old-school genetics, but it had apparently worked. According to the doctor currently in charge he had increased the mortality from twenty percent to thirty percent.

The doctor insisted there was nothing in the lab other than samples of the strain and documents. Still, Rebecca demanded they be let in. She would go through the buildings with a fine-tooth comb and confiscate everything. Aeolus would expect, and accept, nothing else. As she suited up, she noticed her Korean colleagues were not.

“Hey, get into your HAZMAT suits. We have no idea what’s waiting inside.”

“We’re not scared. We are not women. It’s a lab with vials. We won’t drop anything. We’ll be fine. And the suits are impossible to work in,” the man who was apparently their leader answered in in almost unintelligible English accent.

“You’re going to suit up whether you want to or not. I’m in charge for this excursion and you’ll do as I tell you. I’m not just concerned about your safety, but the risk that you’ll contract the damned bug and bring it back to Seoul. As you yourself say: ‘
Anun gil do muro bogo kara’
.”

Aeolus had equipped her with the phrase before departing, foreseeing that the Koreans might display some of the macho bravado so characteristic of their culture. It literally meant, “Even if you know the way, you should ask” and was their idiomatic equivalent of “better safe than sorry.”

The Korean virologists laughed. She’d struck exactly the right balance between humor and authority. Or actually, Aeolus had. Regardless, the Koreans started putting on their suits.

The building on the left contained one room with eight hospital beds covered by transparent plastic tents and another room full of empty cages, obviously meant for animals. Rebecca realized that this was where the test subjects must have been held while the virus grew and mutated in their bodies.

The building on the right was the actual lab. Upon entering it she was reminded of, and humbled by, what labs looked like in the 1950s, before the safety requirements where well understood and the biosafety level specifications where formalized. There were no suits, no encapsulated glass boxes within which to work with samples. The only safety measure was an exhaust vent under which the doctor had worked with his samples, in the belief that the draft would suck up the virus particles and eject them out into the air.

The fact that the lab was equipped this way was not what was odd. Even American labs had once looked like this. Back then they did not know enough about viruses to understand how insufficient these mechanisms were. What felt so odd was that it had been left in this state up until today. That and that someone was still working under these conditions.

Eventually, Rebecca and her team were able to confirm that there was indeed nothing else there but samples of various sub-strains and a few boxes of neatly
handwritten documents recording experiments. When she called Aeolus to give him the bad news, he asked her to scan all the documents and send them over.

Rebecca, who by now had gained a measure of respect for her Korean colleagues, objected.

“I don’t think you have anyone there who can translate faster than the people we have here on site. Give them a couple of hours and they’ll have a synthesized report for you.”

“I don’t need a translator.”

“You speak Korean?”

“No, but I read it. I had a research assistant from Busan when I was in Africa and she wrote her notes in Korean.”

“Aeolus. You never cease to amaze me.”

“Well, in that case I think you get amazed far too easily.”

POSTREMO
AGMINE
PRAESIDIO

(The last line of defense)

AUGUST 20
^TH
, SUNRISE, WESTBOUND, OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

A
eolus wasn’t wild about the Gulfstream G200, especially not the “Executive Eight” configuration. The eight seats grouped around four tables made the cabin feel cramped. The seats were too narrow and the ample legroom he required had been sacrificed for those extra seats. But worst of all was the cabin height, only six-foot-three, which made him bump his head every time he stood up. His irritation with the arrangement was noticeable.

He was on the phone with Walt, who was updating him on the latest developments. The bad news was the virus had spread to Australia, all of South Asia and a good part of the Middle East. There were no reliable reports from Africa but the sense was that it was out of control and would, within weeks, spread across the entire continent. It was inevitable. In the north, it was now present in four former Soviet republics, with several cases in Chelyabinsk in southern Russia. Russia and China had cordoned off their major cities. It was a massive military undertaking,
but those countries knew how to run crowd control. It was unrealistic, however, to think that the quarantines would hold unless a rapid test was developed within a couple of days, given the need for supplies.

As for Europe, there were scattered cases across Eastern Europe that had, seemingly, been effectively contained. In the west, the containment measures had slowed the onset. There was only one case, in Paris. It had been properly traced, and the patient as well as everyone with whom he’d been in contact was in isolation.

The case in Paris was a godsend for Aeolus. After the discovery of the strain’s origin, NATO had established an alliance-wide quarantine. Still, there were people travelling within the treaty countries. With a case in Paris, Richard – currently sleeping at the other end of the plane – had ensured Aeolus that the US would now go into full quarantine.

Aeolus knew that for Europe, it was no longer about preventing the infection from spreading, but delaying it long enough for micro-quarantine zones to be established. In the Americas, the situation was different. There was still hope that the integrity of the region could be preserved. This was now his main objective.

As they were wrapping up, Walt told him that Yelena had tried to reach him several times the last few hours. Aeolus hung up, called Tomomi, and asked her to get Yelena. Yelena answered within two signals, which meant she wasn’t in the lab.

“Yelena, it’s me.”

“Aeolus. I have some good news and some bad news.”

“Let’s start with the good.”

“We have a working test.”

“By God, Yelena! I could kiss you! How did you do it?”

“It’s not perfect. It has false positives. No false negatives, though. We decided to go for a non-specific test. It catches both this and a broad variety of H1N1 flus, including the current seasonal variants. We found monoclonals to match, and the rest was plain sailing.”

The same argument that had taken place within Yelena’s team played through Aeolus’s head in a matter of microseconds.

“I can live with that for now. How long before you have a real specific test?”

“Weeks.”

“Fine. Get cranking.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be the one doing it, though.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am infected.”

Aeolus closed his eyes and fell back against his seat. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it coming, but still.

“Look, Yelena, it’s a nasty virus, but most still survive. You will be fine.”

“No, Aeolus, I don’t think so. I’m already weak and I’m starting to show those discolorations around my neck the press refers to as ‘The Yoke of Death’. According to Dr. Summers’s reports, I have a one in five chance of surviving.”

Aeolus knew that according to the latest results, it was more like one in ten.

“You’re a tough cookie. You’ll pull through.”

“
Borstj! Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
, right?”

The irony in her voice was clear. He knew she was smiling. She was indeed a tough cookie – as tough as they come.

“Anyway,” Yelena continued, “I am bringing in someone else to finish it.”

“Who are you getting?”

“Boris Yevchenko.”

Aeolus paused for a moment.

“Boris? I thought you didn’t know anyone by that name.”

“Of course I do. He is the best at what he does. He was my most gifted student.”

Aeolus was truly surprised. So it hadn’t been just a white lie. Not only did she know him, she had
trained
him.

“I thought
I
was your most gifted student.”

“You were. Until I met Boris.”

No one had ever told Aeolus that someone else was better than him at his speciality. It was a bit of a shock. Then again, if you had to lose to someone, from what he knew of the man, Boris Yevchenko was the one to lose to.

“Yelena, since you’ll be laid up for a while, I have to tell you that what you’ve done is incredible. It will save millions of lives. It’s the type of achievement that most researchers only dream of. And you most likely saved your motherland from total collapse. The world owes you for what you’ve done. I owe you.”

“Yes, yes… Anyway, I’m going to check myself into the hospital now.”