He shrugged, took the dry-erase marker, and beneath his earlier underlined heading of Filo, Bill wrote the words Organic/Synthetic, Source, and The Plan. He drew another circle, this time around The Plan.
Bill gestured toward the second woman in the room, a black-rooted blonde with her hair cut short.
“Sadie,” came Sid’s voice.
Sadie stood and Bill returned to his seat. Sadie was taller than most of the men in the room and, like most of the others, looked a little haggard around the eyes.
“Achar’s pathogen is a combination of microscopic synthetic materials and a heretofore undocumented filovirus that was clearly genetically engineered,” she said. The woman spoke with the sort of assuredness Laramie could tell, from just one speech, that Mary the profiler wished she too possessed. “It’s more complicated than this, but here’s how it’s designed to work: no ordinary microorganism, including known strains of filovirus or even the ‘new’ strain contained in Achar’s serum, could possibly survive the direct impact or heat of a fertilizer-bomb explosion. In other words, ordinarily it would be impossible to effectively detonate a ‘bio-dirty’ bomb-the ‘bomb’ portion of the act of destruction would destroy the biological component. In English: the explosion would kill the virus.”
Sadie went on.
“The ‘Marburg-2’ pathogen Achar dispersed was different. I would call it both frightening and technologically staggering. In studying undetonated portions of Achar’s serum, we’ve learned that uniform-size colonies of the filovirus have been coated with a microscopic polymer sheath. Porous enough to allow the filo to survive within, yet capable of absorbing the shock of a massive impact and temperatures in excess of eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. In our tests, upon impact or burning, a significant percentage of the sheaths-over fifty percent-disintegrate, but only after absorbing enough of the shock to allow the filo housed within to survive. The other fifty percent of the sheaths caught fire, or suffered a degree of damage that killed the filo colonies within.
“Final note on the technical specs,” she said. “The Marburg-2 filo appears to be capable of surviving for an indefinite hibernation period when stored at temperatures approaching zero degrees Celsius. Achar was storing it between his freezer and fridge, judging from what we were able to pull from the wreckage-that’d coincide with the right temperature range. This quality is similar to but slightly more hardy than a ‘normal’ flu or filovirus.”
Sadie reached down and punched the space bar on the notebook computer she’d been keeping on her section of table. The sound of a tiny whirring fan kicked in and a large blue square of light faded into view along the wall behind Sid. Images that Laramie assumed were shots of individual “filo” cells-or whatever, she thought, you call a single virus-cycled through a slide show on the wall as Sadie spoke.
“Once released from the sheathing, what we’ve got is a genuine filovirus, not a chemical agent. As Bill covered, it is airborne-you can catch it from a sneeze, not just a blood transfusion. We’ve never seen this before. Also it can pass from animal to human or human to human. It does have a short infectious period, so early quarantining, as we accomplished here, should remain effective. We’re working around the clock to test various antivirals for effectiveness, but don’t hold your breath. Filos are fierce, maybe the single most resistant and fastest-acting viral agent known to man, and this one’s the fastest we’ve seen. Forty-eight hours, infection to death. Breakdown of all internal organs, gruesome hemorrhaging-we’ve been through all this, I just want to emphasize that our lab efforts aren’t likely to deliver overnight results.”
The filo slide show ended and the screen returned to its prior blue state.
“We’re recommending continued stockpiling of Tamiflu and Relenza, over and above what’s already under way in anticipation of the avian flu mutation. These antivirals appear to reduce the infectious period. The best hope for an actual vaccine, however remote, will come from the source of a similar outbreak-if the initial human outbreak of a similar filo took place in Zaire, for instance, there may be somebody there who survived it, or carried it into the community to begin with, without incurring the symptoms. We find out why that host survived and we’ve got a starting point. Again, don’t get your hopes up-no such filo vaccine has been found yet.”
Sadie hit a key on her laptop and a map of the world appeared on the wall, decorated by thirteen red dots positioned on various continents.
“Working from a canvas of the past one hundred years, we’ve tracked thirteen localized outbreaks involving similar symptoms and acquisition rates. Four of our thirteen cases have taken place in the past decade. The closest match is an extremely localized outbreak of Marburg in rural Guatemala-seven patients and a medical staff of four, including two Peace Corps volunteers, died at a medical outpost of symptoms as close to those found here as we’ve been able to identify. 1983.”
A male agent raised his hand. “Where’d we get the description of the symptoms?” he said.
Laramie had a pretty good idea he was CIA just by looking at him.
“One of the Peace Corps volunteers kept a journal,” Sadie said. To Laramie her gravelly voice was starting to run out of fuel. “Copies of the journal made their way back to CDC about ten years ago. We have doctors on-site, but again, don’t get your hopes up. The trail is cold.”
The CIA man, Laramie observed, didn’t nod, offer thanks, or otherwise acknowledge the response to his question. Sadie, who didn’t seem to mind, whacked away at the keys of her laptop and caused a map of the United States to appear on the wall where the blue square had been. Sadie motioned to Bill, who stood again. Laramie took the opportunity to steal a glance at her guide, and found him missing. The doorjamb he’d been leaning against was empty. She did a slow swivel and checked around the rim of the room; no cigar. It seemed he’d flown the coop.
“To the plan, then,” Bill said. “Here’s where we are on this: our guy fucked up. Achar blew himself up before he had positioned all the virus serum in the correct spot. Maybe he made a mistake with whatever fertilizer and fuel he was storing in his garage, maybe it just blew up on its own when he wasn’t ready for it-but don’t forget the wife and son. They left town to see the wife’s parents in San Diego on the same day Achar blew himself up, and she’s admitted he booked the trip for her. So for this reason we think he meant to do it on the day he did it, he just got it wrong. He set off the blast prematurely, and the result of the mistake is he failed to disperse even ten percent of the filo he was keeping in the basement.”
Bill paced in front of the image of the map.
“We need to assume Achar wasn’t operating alone, if only due to the sophistication and quantity of the virus. Under this assumption, Sadie has calculated the potential intended effect on the American populace.”
Laramie glanced again at the doorjamb her guide had abandoned, and something caught her eye. On the floor, where he’d been standing, was a black Tumi travel bag. Laramie knew it was a Tumi because it was hers-the bag Ebbers told her they’d pack and deliver here.
Sadie came up with a remote control about the size of a business card. As she strolled to a spot beside the image on the wall, expanding circles began illustrating themselves on the wall from an epicenter in Florida Laramie assumed to be Emerald Lakes.
“If Achar doesn’t make his mistake,” Sadie said, “and instead gets his entire batch of serum dispersed, then just over two hundred times the amount that got airborne would have been up for grabs.” Animated, wavy lines appeared on the map and spread from the initial area covered by the expanding circles until the circles reached the greater Miami-Dade County area, which began to blink. A number appeared near ground zero-125-then zeroes began fading in at the number’s back end, so that 125 became 1,250, then 12,500, then 125,000, then 1,250,000 with a question mark beside it.