“On the third night, Anton climbed down the ladder and started looking for Simon. Of course, when my grandfather found him, he knew he couldn’t send him back up. Anton was terrified; he didn’t understand what was happening. All he knew was that something invisible was killing everyone down there — including him and Simon and all the men he’d come to call his family. To reassure him, Simon explained everything.”
“Why didn’t they just burn the samples?” Cahil asked.
“Part of it was fear and part of it was uncertainty,” Root replied. “This was 1918. Look at it from their perspective: the idea of something so small that not even the most modern microscopes can see it? Something so tiny that it’s dwarfed by the very same ‘invisible bugs’ Pasteur said were the cause of all disease? Imagine the average bacteria is the size of a football; in comparison, a virus would be a grain of sand. That’s what they were dealing with. It was completely alien.
“Not only didn’t they understand Kestrel, but they didn’t feel like they could trust anyone with it. They chose what they thought was the best course: Take Kestrel with them, hide it, and guard it with their lives until something could be done about it.”
“Something can be done about it,” said Oliver. “Why haven’t you told anyone about this? You were the DCI, for god’s sake. Couldn’t you have turned it over to the right people and made sure it was destroyed?”
“You really think the world has changed that much? We’ve dropped atomic bombs, used nerve gas and anthrax, tested hallucinogens on our soldiers. Short of doing it myself — which was impossible — how could I have been certain Kestrel had been destroyed? Besides, the truth is, we’ve kept Kestrel safe for almost a century. That might sound arrogant to you, but for me it’s pragmatism.”
McBride said, “I think we’re missing the big question here. Your grandfather took those samples out of that bunker over eighty years ago. Wouldn’t the virus be long dead by now?”
“When my father passed responsibility for Kestrel on to me, I was fascinated and horrified. I wanted to learn everything I could about it. I read every biology and medical textbook I could get my hands on. At the University of Kansas I got my degree in virology with a minor in biochemistry.”
Cahil whistled softly. “How many people know that?”
Root smiled. “It’s not a secret, but it is a private passion. I wanted to understand what I was guarding; I wanted to understand what had taken over my grandfather’s life, and then my father’s. I knew I couldn’t study Kestrel in a scientific setting. Something that lethal needs a level four biohazard facility; you don’t just walk into one of those, say ‘look at what I found’ and go about your business. Word would have spread.” Root paused, then turned to McBride. “Sorry, I’m rambling. What was your question?”
“It’s been over eighty years. Wouldn’t Kestrel be dead by now?”
“Don’t count on it. By all scientific standards a virus isn’t even alive. Essentially it’s nothing more than a speck of genetic material inside a protein shell. Viruses can’t grow or divide on their own. They reproduce by hijacking another cell and rewriting its DNA to reproduce more virus. When a host infected by a virus dies, the decomposition process kills the virus as well. Without that, viruses go into a state of dormancy; in essence, they put themselves into suspended animation until some signal — so far, no one knows what that is — tells them to come to life again and start working.
“Another thing: Don’t forget how small a virus is, and how fast they reproduce. Two hundred million can fit on the head of a pin. In the space of eight hours, a single virus can hijack and reprogram enough cells to create ten thousand copies of itself. Multiply that by two hundred million and you’ve got trillions of viruses born in the space of an average workday.”
“Which most healthy human immune systems can deal with,” said Tanner.
“Sure. They do it every day, in fact. That’s what’s so damned scary about Kestrel. Instead of fighting off the invasion, an infected system just sits by and lets it happen.”
“Isn’t that what HTV does?” Oliver said.
Root shook his head. “HIV is an immune deficiency disease. With HIV — or any autoimmune disease for that matter — the body’s ability to defend itself is compromised, but it’s still there. With Kestrel, there is no defense. It’s as if the immune system doesn’t even know it’s under attack.”
“I’m lost,” Oliver said. “Are you saying Kestrel disables the immune system?”
“Without being able to test it myself, I can’t be sure, but I have a theory, something I’ve toyed with for the past ten years. Anytime there’s an infection in the human body, the first defender on the scene is what’s called a microphage — essentially a mutated white blood cell designed to hunt down invaders and eat them. Microphages distinguish between what’s foreign and what’s ‘us’ by looking at its shell — its protein coat. If it belongs in the body, the proteins display the right chemical signature. Wrong signature, it gets attacked and eaten.
“I think,” Root continued, “the first thing Kestrel does on entering the body is hijack a host cell, decipher the signature of its protein coat, then change its own coat to match.”
“A disguise,” Tanner said.
“Aperfect disguise. The protein signature is all the immune system cares about. Now invisible to the host system, Kestrel latches onto a microphage and rides it until it comes across an infection.”
Cahil said, “A viral ambulance chaser.”
“An apt description. While the microphage is busy eating the foreign antigen — say for example, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease — Kestrel hijacks one of them, rewrites its DNA, and tells it to start reproducing. Here’s the key: I don’t think Kestrel tells the cell to reproduce more of Kestrel, but more of itself — along with the protein disguise Kestrel adopted when it entered the body.”
Tanner said, “And so the next crop of baby Legionnaires are all wearing a coat that tells the immune system, ‘Don’t attack us’.”
Root pointed a finger at him. “Exactly! And so on and so on until the disease overwhelms the body. Whatever the disease, Kestrel allows it to go unchecked; as far as the immune system knows, it’s not even under attack.”
“You get a cold, the cold kills you,” Cahil said.
“Yes and no,” Root replied. “As the immune system gets overwhelmed, opportunistic diseases pop up — foreign bodies that were already present, but had been suppressed by the immune system.”
“And Kestrel does all this regardless of the disease?” McBride asked.
“It’s not picky. If it’s foreign, Kestrel will use it. I have a hunch it capitalizes on major infections since that’s where a lot of microphages congregate. To use Ian’s metaphor, the more ambulances at a scene, the better.”
Tanner suddenly felt very tired. In the space of twenty minutes they’d gone from a German freelance terrorist and a kidnapping to this … nightmare. He said, “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Root, your story scares the hell out of me.”
“Good. It should.”
“I want to discount it, but I can’t. You have to know: Whatever it takes, we have to keep this thing away from Svetic — and anyone else for that matter.”
“I know. She’s my wife. I have to try.”
Tanner nodded. “Then we better come up with one hell of a plan.”
But of the two outcomes, which counts more? Tanner thought. There was nothing to think about, he knew. One life in trade for millions? Or more? By any measure, it was a fair trade.
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