“Is access for interviewing going to be a problem?” Albane asked Veronika.
“I do not think so. I filed the necessary clearances myself this morning, but if the military has arrived in the interim, things could get… complicated.”
“Aliases?”
Veronika nodded. “Mr. Archer and Dr. VanCleave, you are both doctors from the CDC in Atlanta, and Ms. Mesnil, you are from the World Health Organization in Geneva. Here are your papers. Any other questions?”
“Are the patients lucid enough to interview?” AJ asked.
“The situation is grim. One of the two American college students died this morning, and the other is in critical condition with full-blown pneumonic plague. The Czech woman’s infection was not as advanced as the others. Her body is responding to the antibiotics, and the infection has not spread to her lungs. The only problem is that she is not talking. She’s in shock, I suppose. We’ve had three different people try to get through to her, including a psychologist, but she just stares off into space,” Veronika explained.
“Don’t worry, she’ll talk to me,” Albane said quietly.
“Will you need a translator?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. I’m fluent in Czech.”
“Okay, very good,” Veronika said, then added, “There is something else I did not report to Mr. Parish, but given the facts of this case I am beginning to suspect it may be relevant.”
Albane nodded, “Go on.”
“One of my duties in the Ministry of Health is to monitor and track all mysterious, contested, or unexplained deaths reported by hospitals, prisons, elderly care facilities, and law enforcement agencies in the Czech Republic. These records are aggregated, reviewed, categorized, and then entered into a database so that they may be readily requisitioned by Interpol, the Czech Central Intelligence, forensic investigators, legal counsel, and even family members in cases associated with civilian deaths. Military records are exempt and maintained by the military. I mention this because I flagged an anomaly in the database last month which I am presently investigating.”
VanCleave fidgeted excitedly and then pounced. “Anomaly? What kind of anomaly? Regressional, correlational or outlier?”
Veronika cracked a smile at VanCleave’s statistical bravado. “Actually a skewing of the mean in an annual distribution of reported deaths of homeless persons in Prague over the past four months. We’ve seen a spike in the number of homeless deaths from January to April of this year. One hundred and forty-eight percent higher than last year.”
“Have you run correlations with mean winter temperature?” asked VanCleave.
“Yes. No correlation. This winter we have recorded historically average temperatures in Prague.”
“What about inflation of food prices or food shortages?”
“We’ve looked at that. No correlation. I’ve also investigated into the possibilities of increased closures of homeless shelters, increased city drug proliferation, a change in police policy toward the homeless, and so on and so on. The one and only thing I’ve found a positive correlation with is an increased number of coroners reporting organ failure due to acute toxicity as the cause of death. I just assumed this meant the homeless were drinking homemade vodka or isopropyl alcohol from the pharmacy this winter, but now I’m not so sure.”
Albane looked to AJ. “Does this mean anything to you?”
“In my line of work, acute toxicity can result from a hyper-immune response to gene therapy. It is a well-documented phenomenon in primate-based gene therapy studies where adeno-virus vectors are used to deliver the transgene, especially when targeting the liver. Alternatively, toxic shock syndrome is not unusual in cases of severe bacterial infection, such as those caused by antibiotic-resistant Streptococcus pyogenes or Staphylococcus aureus. Did you happen to have a bad influenza season in Prague this year?”
“I’m not sure, why?”
“Toxic shock syndrome is most prevalent in persons with weakened immune systems, and there is a documented correlation of TSS occurring after physically stressful events such as childbirth, influenza, and the chicken pox,” AJ explained.
“Actually, I remember hearing that this was supposed to be a bad influenza season, and we had panic in Prague over the new H1N1 virus spreading from the Baltic states. In fact, free inoculation clinics were held this year in the city, until the stockpile of vaccines were depleted,” Veronika said.
AJ eyed VanCleave, his head cocked. VanCleave nodded. They were on the same page.
“What is it?” Veronika pressed.
“Ms. Viskaya, could you please pull whatever information you have on these free inoculation clinics? Specifically, we would like to know where the clinics were held and who was the supplier of the vaccines,” AJ said.
Veronika nodded curtly.
“Also, we’d like copies of any coroner’s reports that list toxic shock as the cause of death for all persons who died in Prague in the past five months,” VanCleave added.
“Of course. I will have the digital scans transmitted to the Coordinator as soon as possible. Anything else?”
AJ shook his head.
“We should probably tend to the issue at hand, interviewing our plague victims. Ms. Mesnil, are you ready?”
Albane nodded and began to walk away with Veronika, when AJ grabbed her upper arm. “Shouldn’t we wait for Kalen?”
“No. Kalen has other matters to attend to.” She reached into her handbag, pulled out a thin leather case, and opened it. Inside was a pair of horned-rimmed glasses, similar to the ones worn by Veronika. Albane unfolded and donned the eyeglasses. She turned to AJ, tapped the frame of her glasses, and winked. “Superman has X-ray vision. We have Gucci with HD video capture.”
“What? No contact lens camera?”
“Abbey’s working on it, I’m told.”
“I’m not surprised… Albane?”
“Yes, AJ.”
“Do you really think this is such a good idea? Can’t you interview the woman from behind the glass? You know, where it’s sterile, safe, and free from aerosolized plague bacteria.”
Albane reached up and put her hand on AJ’s cheek. She looked deeply and tenderly into his eyes, and as she did he felt his pulse quicken.
“AJ, it’s not the questions we ask, it’s how we ask the questions. I cannot show this woman compassion and tenderness from behind the glass. These people are dying. They need human interaction. They need human touch, even if that touch is separated by a yellow plastic biosafety suit.”
He nodded, speechless.
Albane withdrew her touch.
“See, it works,” she said with a coy smile. As she walked away with Veronika, she looked over her shoulder at him and added, “But I appreciate your concern.”
“The suspense is killing me. What did you find out?” AJ asked.
“I was only able to interview the woman; the one living American boy is in pretty bad shape, delirious with fever.”
“Would she talk to you?”
“Yes, but only after we had a good cry together,” Albane replied. “She is terrified that she is going to die. From what I could gather, her name is Sophie, and she is the proprietor of a youth hostel in Prague. She met Foster less than two days ago. A cab driver, who she is friendly with, brought Foster to the hostel in the middle of the night. She said that Foster was battered. The cab driver said that Foster told him he had been robbed and had his wallet and clothing stolen. The cab driver also warned her that the men who had attacked Foster could come looking for him. She took pity on Foster and gave him some old clothes and a bed in one of the dormitory rooms. When two other Americans, college students, checked in, she put them in the same room with Foster. Then the story gets a little fuzzy, but from what I could glean there was some sort of accident involving a glass tube shattering and spilling liquid in the room. She said Foster made her disinfect the room with bleach, but it didn’t matter. By that night, the two boys were exhibiting plague symptoms, and she and Foster tended to them. Of course she didn’t realize it was plague; she thought they had the flu.”