“Not entire governments. We need only a few enlightened minds who are well placed and have access to funds. The benefactors of our organization — a Deputy Prime Minister, two Ministers of Health, a Politburo member, an Undersecretary of Economic Planning — they understand the social imperative of our mission, even if the leaders of their countries may not.”
Luke tried to quell his anger, show the man an impassive face. “These benevolent patrons — they supported your decision to murder a village of Mayan Indians?”
“That wasn’t my decision, Luke, but it was the right thing to do. We couldn’t allow one unfortunate mishap to jeopardize this project.”
“Mishap?”
Kaczynski took a heavy breath. “Initially, I used conventional injections, not mosquitoes, to test my vaccine and validate the concept.”
Luke remembered Rosalinda mentioning CHEGAN’s hospital for children with genetic disorders. He didn’t need to ask Kaczynski whom he had used as test subjects.
“Those injectable doses,” the geneticist continued, “were much larger than anything I could hope to attain in the saliva left behind from a mosquito’s blood meal. So before I recoded the genome of your father’s mosquitoes to add my vaccine, we made some modifications to my antigen to boost the immune response. Ironically, it worked too well.”
“What happened?”
Kaczynski lifted his gaze to the moon. “We released the first testing batch of my mosquito in the area around Mayakital about a year ago. There’s a high prevalence of a rare cystic fibrosis mutation in their tribe. It’s one of the reasons we chose that area for our initial field tests. Almost sixty percent of the villagers are carriers, but it’s an innocent mutation. Even those with two copies of the mutation have virtually no clinical disease. It’s probably an adaptive mutation.”
Luke knew that, just as the mutation for sickle cell disease protects against malaria, the cystic fibrosis mutation affords some protection against cholera and typhoid.
“My vaccine induced an immune response that was several thousand times stronger than we had anticipated. Villagers who had the disease and were bitten by the mosquito — they were devoured by their own immune systems.”
“Killer T-cells,” Luke said.
“Exactly.”
“I thought you said your vaccine was only active against reproductive cells.”
“It is, but unfortunately, Killer T-cells are not nearly as precise in their targeting as my vaccine. T-cells are programmed to respond to specific antigens, but they’re also opportunistic killers and will go after any cell that secretes stress proteins, so any cell that’s injured or defective is fair game. Apparently, this particular CF mutation burdens affected cells to the point that they produce stress proteins even though, to outward appearances, the cells function normally.”
Luke thought back to Jane Doe, and the pieces started to come together. The cells most affected by CF — the epithelial lining of her airways, the exocrine glands in her pancreas, and her bile ducts — were producing stress proteins that were not, of themselves, potent enough to induce an immune response.
But they were sufficiently abnormal to become an inviting target for the swarms of activated Killer T-cells that were prowling around, hunting for prey. She and Josue Chaca were dead long before their hearts stopped beating.
“We realized what was happening within a few weeks,” the geneticist said, “but we’d already released our third batch of mosquitoes by that time. There was nothing we could do but watch it happen.”
The mosquitoes had done their work over many weeks. Luke now understood why the illness had appeared to spread.
Megan shouted, “You have killer mosquitoes breeding out there?”
“The testing prototypes were infertile females. Those three colonies were extinct within several weeks of releasing the first batch.” He shrugged. “But the biological fire they left behind smoldered for a lot longer.”
An image of Josue Chaca flashed in Luke’s mind. “What I saw wasn’t a smoldering reaction.”
“If you’re talking about the boy, he has his mother to blame. Leaving their village to get medical care only hastened his death. She exposed her son to viruses that his immune system had never seen before. His immune system became a raging inferno.”
Luke thought of the cold virus found in Jane Doe’s nasal passages.
“So Zenavax’s vaccine had nothing to do with this?” he asked.
“Nothing at all.” Kaczynski brushed a spider from his pants leg. “What happened in Mayakital was a tragedy, but we’ve corrected the problem. It won’t happen again.”
Kaczynski leaned forward and draped his hands over his thighs. The man’s strength was sagging.
“You know you’ll be stopped,” Luke said.
“On the contrary, there will be nothing to stop. My genetic vaccine is invisible even to those whose ovaries and testicles are affected. The biological mechanism — apoptosis — leaves no trace of itself. The impact of our program won’t even be seen until the next generation of children is born. Twenty-five years from now, when the effect of our work becomes apparent, we’ll have already purged those societies of genetic disorders. The gene pool will have been cleansed. By then, I suspect that most will see the benefits for what they are.”
“So,” Megan said acidly, “women that have a breast cancer gene just won’t exist in your perfect world.”
Luke remembered Megan telling him that her mother had tested positive for one of the breast cancer genes before dying from the same disease. She — and in domino fashion, Megan — simply wouldn’t be allowed to live in Kaczynski’s world.
Everyone turned to a giant forklift coming through the mouth of the tunnel. On it was a twenty-foot-square Plexiglas cage. A large generator was humming along its side.
As the forklift passed under the wash of a portable floodlight, Luke saw mosquitoes swarming inside the clear container. Four monkeys — a source of blood meals for the insects, he figured — leapt between the branches of what looked like a miniature arboretum.
“Somewhat more primitive than your father’s equipment, but equally effective,” the geneticist said. “Within a few months our breeding facility in China will be producing enough of my mosquitoes to begin deploying them on three continents — all with your father’s blessing and support, who will think that we’re using his mosquitoes.”
The clear container brushed against the side of the tunnel’s entrance. A loud scraping sound sent the monkeys into a frenzy.
Kaczynski went ballistic. “Take it easy with that pen, you fools!” He turned to one of his keepers and muttered, “Clumsy idiots almost wiped out five years of work in this hellhole.”
The forklift backed up a few feet and turned to the right. When it finally cleared the entrance, a large cloud of dust was boiling in its wake.
Seconds later Calderon emerged from the dark brown haze like a ghost. He was wearing a miner’s hat, its halogen light piercing the night gloom like a spear. When he spotted the geneticist, he yelled to the Asian, “Get him to the ship. Now.”
Kaczynski glanced at the freighter, then looked between Luke and Megan. “I’m sorry it’s ending this way for you two…I truly am.”
As soon as Calderon reached his captives, he leaned down, grabbed Luke’s neck with one hand, and lifted him to a kneeling position. “Cockroach, you’re coming with me.”
Luke squirmed, struggling to free himself from Calderon’s grip, but the blood flow to his brain had already ceased and a dark void quickly overtook him.
53
“My mother was afraid of the dark, cockroach. She always had to keep a light on at night.” Calderon kissed his thumb and traced an X over his heart.
They were deep inside the mountain and two of Calderon’s men had just finished securing Luke, Megan, and a priest named Joe to wooden support columns in the center of a cavern. The three captives faced one another like points on a triangle.