Dr. Stewart stood. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Parker followed Stewart out of the office, down the hall, and across to a single elevator that was marked with several signs that warned of limited access. Security cameras were on each corner of the lobby surrounding the elevator. Stewart flashed his pass at a magnetic reader and led Parker onto the elevator. He pushed the button for the sixth floor.
“Have you ever been in a bio lab, Mr. Jones?”
“No, sir.”
Parker noticed that Stewart had dropped the sarcasm. He imagined that he had been judged as not being one of those insufferable visitors from the Pentagon or the CIA who didn’t seem to have the capacity to respect Stewart or his work.
“Well, in that case, you’re going to start right at the top.”
Paul Stewart was not remarking on the elevator trip. As the doors opened on the sixth floor, Parker was confronted with two armed guards behind a Plexiglas security stand. Again, several red signs warned of limited access. Another sign warned of restricted access to Biosafety Level 4. Parker had read enough to know this was the maximum-security biological laboratory. The very worst bugs were kept in Biosafety Level 4.
Stewart signed in with the guards as they gave the unrecognized guest a stern look.
“This is Mr. Jones. Putting aside his unusual name, he has direct authorization.”
“Doc, if you don’t mind, we would like to call on that.”
The man stood immobile and stone-faced. He was clearly not an ordinary security guard. At a glance, Parker could tell that the man had been trained to kill and knew how to do so without conscious thought. His pay would be at the highest level possible of any security guard in the United States. No doubt he’d passed endless evaluations, background checks, psych testing, and training before he stood his first day’s watch.
“Certainly.”
Parker didn’t mind. If it were easy for a Mr. Jones to get in a Biosafety Level 4 lab, it would be easy for others. This security was appreciated.
The guard made a call, then gave the thumbs-up. “Okay, Dr. Stewart.” A vault-like door clicked and swung open, allowing the two to walk onto the biological lab floor. It was far simpler than Parker had expected. At the end of the hallway they passed through a door that led to a small room with lockers.
“We will now climb into a level-four suit,” Stewart said.
The outfit was straight from a Star Trek movie, with an oversized hood and a thick, greenish-blue padded material that was not particularly light. It seemed to add twenty or thirty pounds to Parker as he walked around the change room. Stewart strapped tape around their wrists and ankles. They stepped from the locker room to another, with multiple showerheads and a hose coupling for each of the suits. He felt the rush of cool air as Stewart helped connect the hose.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” Parker was surprised how well he could hear Stewart when he spoke.
“The shower will come on shortly. It will spray the suit with a disinfectant that should, we pray, kill anything. Hopefully, you don’t have any leaks in your suit.” This was the first bit of humor that Parker had heard from the scientist. “One more pressure test and we are done.”
Again, Parker felt air coming in to the suit.
They entered the laboratory through the vault-like door. It was far smaller than Parker had imagined. There were several glass cases with gloved portals, and inside he saw trays of seemingly harmless vials of different colored liquids. The thick Plexiglas window had a frost coating inside the cabinet.
“You see this one over here?” Stewart pointed to a small, pink vial that had some marking on it Parker could barely make out. “Ebola. That vial could wipe out New York City,” Stewart said in a flat, matter-of-fact manner. “Twelve million easy.”
It had not made an impression upon Parker until he stared down on the small, seemingly harmless container of pink liquid. The laboratory contained vial after vial of liquids, each with the same lethality. As he glanced across the room, he realized that the bacteria and viruses in that one room could devastate much of the planet’s population.
“Here’s your friend.” Stewart stuck his hands into the glove portals and lifted a smaller, bluish liquid vial. It was marked with a numeric code. “Neisseria.”
“Dr. Stewart, let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“A hypothetical.” He paused. “A specific, highly contagious bacteria that could be combated by the rarest of antibiotics. The carrier need be infected, highly contagious for a period of time, but curable. And the bacteria must be able to infect even those who have lived in the meningitis belt and may have developed their own immunity. Would that be Neisseria?”
Stewart hesitated, as if wondering whether he should even answer the question. As a scientist, he would have one opinion. As a physician, another.
“We found a particularly virulent form of bacteria that seems to have the contagious qualities of serogroup A.” He walked over to a round stainless-steel container while he spoke. He lifted a thick, vault-like lid and as he did a white frozen vapor came out. Inside, he pulled out a much smaller vial, marked with several numbers. It too contained a pale blue liquid that seemed so incapable of causing harm.
“We call this NM-13. It came from a small village called Xudun somewhere in northern Somolia. A person infected with this would be highly contagious for a twelve- to thirty-six-hour period. It is actually indeige-nous to this one place in the meningitis belt. With the right stuff at exactly the right time, it can be nonlethal. And thus, not even classified as a biological weapon. But without some very specific antibiotics, he would suffer a horrible and nearly unimaginable death thereafter.”
“Survivors?”
“Odds are very, very few. Probably the black plague descendants.”
“I don’t understand?” Parker kept looking at the pale blue liquid.
“A very few that are the great, great grandchildren of the survivors of the plague seem to have a super defense mechanism, but they would have to be from eastern Europe. Otherwise, no.” Stewart paused as if he were an accountant tallying up the numbers. “No survivors.”
“How would it be transmitted?”
“Saliva. A cough, a sneeze, a shared glass.”
“And what of the carrier?”
Parker could tell that Stewart felt uncomfortable with the questions. The physician was tugging at his conscience. He was committed to do no harm. Parker imagined that Stewart sensed where this was going and who the carrier was, and he didn’t like the choices this conversation was giving him.
“I don’t recommend this, Mr. Jones. The period of incubation could be much shorter and the damage irreversible. I would not recommend that any human being knowingly be exposed to this beast.”
“But with the right battery of antibiotics, do you have a probability of stopping it?”
“Yes, you probably have a seventy to eighty percent chance of stopping it if you pour on exactly the right antibiotics within six to eight hours of the infection.”
“Thanks, Doctor.” Parker paused for a moment. “Let me ask another question, if I may.”
“Sure.”
“Have you ever been to Afghanistan?”
“No.”
Parker smiled. If his life depended upon the right antibiotics at the right time, then Dr. Stewart would be making his first trip to Afghanistan soon. His screams of protest might be heard all the way up to the bio lab, but the director would remind him that a paragraph buried deep in his contract stated that in times of a national emergency he was commissioned as an officer in the Army medical corps. More important, she would stress that the call came directly from the highest authority.