“Thank you. Tonight I received an emergency call from Dr. Adams.”
“Charles? But I thought he was at the dig site at Tlateloco.”
“He is. He called me on his cell phone. He said his entire team was dead and that he was dying.” Her voice broke as she remembered what Charlie told her over the phone. As best she could she recited symptoms of the illness he described and that now every other member of Charlie’s student excavation team was no longer alive.
“Dios mío!” Matos cried, reverting for a moment into his native language.
As her eyes filled, Lauren struggled to keep from sobbing as she spoke. “Charles said it was some illness, something from the tomb they were excavating and that it had killed all his students and workers. He called it a plague.”
“What kind of plague?”
“He didn’t say… I don’t think he knew.” Her voice tightened again, and she was on the verge of losing control. “He told me the entire site should be quarantined until someone can identify what the illness is, and no one should come there. He was afraid the disease would spread if the site were disturbed.” She hesitated, “He also said the entire place should be burned.”
“Did he say anything else? Did he give any further details of the symptoms?”
“No, he was very ill. He was coughing almost continually, although I could hear him saying something about bleeding, that everyone was bleeding.”
Matos said, “Lauren, try to calm down. I know you and Charles are close, but we must proceed very carefully. This can be a delicate situation.” He paused a moment, static crackling over a weak phone connection. After a few seconds, he spoke again. “The disease must act quickly. Charles has only been in Tlateloco a little over three weeks.”
“Professor, what should I do? I’ve got to try to help them. In spite of what Charles said, some of the students may still be alive. He wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Let me think.” A moment later he said, “The problem is our medical facilities here in Mexico are still somewhat primitive, especially in regards to infectious diseases. Thankfully, the site, though close to Mexico City, is relatively isolated, accessible only by primitive jungle paths. It is unlikely to be visited by anyone not directly involved in the excavation… unless grave robbers discover it.”
“Do you think we could get some doctors from the States to fly in and…?”
Matos interrupted, “We are in a precarious political situation. Our government here is very proud, and more than a little resentful about incursions into our territory by the so-called colossus to the north.”
His next words were drowned out by a burst of static and crackling as a solar flare disrupted transmission.
Lauren said, “Excuse me, Eduardo, could you repeat that? I didn’t hear you.”
“I said, even getting Charles permission to excavate the tomb took months of delicate negotiations at very high levels.” He was silent a moment, then he added, “However, there may be a way. Let me make some calls and I’ll get back to you.” His voice changed and became more forceful. “Until then, Lauren, you must promise me not to tell anyone else of this! No one, do you understand me?”
“No, Eduardo, I don’t. We must get help to Dr. Adams as soon as possible.”
Once again his voice became soft, reassuring. “That is what I am going to do, Lauren, but you must allow me to do it my way. All right?”
Lauren sighed, tears running down her cheeks. “Okay, Eduardo. Just please call me back as soon as you can.”
“I will, Lauren. Just be patient and I will take care of everything.”
Matos sat staring at the phone in his hand for a moment, cursing under his breath. He knew this could be a dangerous catastrophe, not only for the country, but more importantly for him personally. He was the one who’d convinced the government officials to allow the Americanos to come into their country and do the dig in the jungle, arguing that only they had the expensive equipment and expertise to do the job adequately. Now his arguments were going to come back and bite him on the ass unless he acted very quickly and handled this exactly right.
He glanced at his watch and sighed as he dialed his phone to call Dr. Julio Cardenez, director of the Mexican Public Health Service.
The phone was answered after only a few rings. “Hola.”
Matos licked dry lips and started right in. “Julio, this is Eduardo Matos. We have an emergency that I need to discuss with you.”
After a brief pause, “What sort of emergency?”
Matos explained about Adams’s call to Dr. Sullivan and the emergence of some sort of infectious organism from the tomb and how it had killed over thirty workers at the dig site in just a matter of days.
“Dammit, Matos,” Cardenez almost shouted. “I told you we should have sent our own people down there. Now we are looking at an international incident! How am I going to explain the deaths of so many American college students and professors?” He paused, “I must get a team of medical experts together at once and get them down there to see what they can do. Perhaps it is not too late to save some of the workers.”
“Julio,” Matos said, trying to calm the man down. “You are not thinking clearly.”
“What?” Cardenez shouted into the phone.
“We have much more to be worried about than the deaths of a few American students, no matter how famous or influential they might be.”
“What are you babbling about, Matos?”
“Calm down and think for a moment, Julio. What if this infection or plague or whatever it is escapes and somehow travels to Mexico City? We might be looking at thousands, or God forbid, even millions of deaths.”
Matos could hear Cardenez gasp over the phone as the implication sank in.
“And you and I were directly responsible for inviting the Americans here to do the excavation,” he continued. “That means, if you send local doctors down there and the infection spreads and kills more people, you and I are going to be blamed for not containing this plague. We will be ruined professionally. Hell, we might even end up in jail for malfeasance of duty.”
“Goddammit, Matos, this was all your doing. I only…”
Matos laughed grimly. “That’s not going to work, Julio. I may have given you the recommendation, but it is your name on the permit for the dig, not mine.”
“But…”
“No, Julio, we must stand together on this or we are doomed.”
“What do you have in mind, Eduardo?” Cardenez asked, his voice milder and less panicked as his mind searched frantically for a way out of this mess.
“I have an idea that may just get us out of this no matter what happens with the infection.”
“Tell me.”
“The Americanos unleashed this terrible plague, so I say let the Americans deal with it. You could arrange for a team of American doctors to come and investigate the dig site, and that way if the infection escapes the jungle and causes many more deaths, you would be able to lay blame for it on the Americans… say it was their fault the infection was released in the first place, and it was then their fault it was not contained before it could do further damage.”
There was silence on the phone as Cardenez thought this proposal through. “Eduardo, I think you may have a point. I will call the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. They are America’s foremost experts on infection. I will see if I can have them get a team down to the dig site. We will give them full cooperation and if they fail to contain the plague, we will shrug and say they should have done more. Hell, we might even be able to get the American government to pay reparations for all of the damages to our country by the plague they caused to be released.”