“Why?” Graham’s mouth twitched. “What the hell was in that old air anyway?”
“The secret to the most infamous plague in history.” Simona stopped short of the laboratory. Her voice sounded slightly muffled behind the partition. “The Black Death.”
Chapter 79
“The Black Death?” Beverly gaped at Simona. “Are you insane?”
“I was hired to save the world.” Simona smiled sweetly. “And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Graham arched an eyebrow. “Not one for humility, are you?”
“I prefer honesty.”
“So, the whole geoengineering thing is just a scam?” Beverly asked.
“You know about that?” Simona looked thoughtful. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. As to your question, I wouldn’t call it a scam. Rather it was a means to an end. A way to get resources and unobstructed access to the sky.”
I glanced at Beverly. “You’re right. She is insane.”
Simona regarded me carefully. “I’ve done a little research on you, Mr. Reed. We’re very much alike, you and I.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“Do you know how we’re alike? We’ve both dedicated our lives to paying for the sins of our fathers.”
My gaze hardened.
“At first, your arrival here confused me. Why would some salvage jockey travel halfway around the world to retrieve a stolen artifact? It didn’t make sense. That is, until I read about your dad, about all the history he destroyed when you were a kid.”
My lips tightened.
“My dad was a developer too. A real greedy one who ripped up a bunch of forests just to get his hands on the timber. I hated him for it. But initially, my focus was limited. I just wanted to do some good, to make up for his destruction. It seemed simple enough. I’d build the world’s most sophisticated computer model and use it to engineer the climate. That way, I could undo his damage.” She sighed. “But over time, I realized it wasn’t enough. My dad wasn’t the source of the problem but rather, a tiny offshoot of it. So, geoengineering, even if it worked, would never address the real issue.”
“And what issue is that?”
“Industrialization, of course.”
I frowned.
“Geoengineering might slow climate change, but it won’t stop businesses and so-called progress from hurting the environment. Just like you might save some artifacts, but you won’t stop people from destroying the past. You see, it’s not enough to paper over historical sins. The sin itself — industrialization in both our cases — has to be removed.”
I couldn’t help but marvel at her easy manner. “And you think killing people will do that?”
“Most environmentalists — including the ones who helped me build this place — are brilliant, but shortsighted. Rather than make the tough choices, they want to use climate engineering as a way to buy humanity a little time. Time to turn the wheels of government, to bring about lasting change. Unfortunately, that’s just a pipe dream.” She looked into my eyes. “The only way to save this planet is by weeding out the very thing that’s hurting it. That is, industrialization. Consider my version of the Black Death a sort of high-tech cleansing, a major disruption that will bring modern society to its knees.”
“You really think a disease —?”
“Who said anything about a disease?” she said, interrupting me.
“But you said—”
“I said the Black Death.”
I frowned.
“From 1347 to 1350, the Black Death ravaged Europe, reducing its population by somewhere between thirty and sixty percent.” Simona adopted a mask of solemnity. “It’s considered one of the most lethal pandemics in history.”
My mind raced. If the Black Death wasn’t a disease, then what was it? And what did it have to do with the ancient air she’d secured from the reliquary?
“The Black Death was caused by bubonic plague,” Graham said. “Everyone knows that. It’s considered the third great outbreak, following the Plague of Athens and the Justinian Plague.”
She smiled. “That’s what the experts say. But they’re wrong.”
Slowly, the guards spread across the room. I shifted my gaze, trying to keep them all in view.
In the process, I snuck a glance at the far northeastern tube. I saw two shadows — Benigno and Carrie — near a wall. I couldn’t imagine how Benigno felt. He’d lost his wife and son. Now, the woman most responsible for their deaths was within striking distance.
Unfortunately, he was unarmed. If he tried to attack Simona, he’d go down in a hail of gunfire. His best bet was to stay in the shadows.
Easier said than done.
“Let me back up a second.” Simona took a breath. “The conventional wisdom, of course, is that the Black Death was caused by bubonic plague, spread by rats and fleas. It’s assumed that infected rodents in Central Asia, or perhaps Africa, brought the disease to the Black Sea region and the Central Mediterranean via trade routes. By late 1347, the plague had arrived in Europe, striking at a severely weakened population.”
Beverly arched an eyebrow. “Weakened population?”
“That’s where the conventional theory begins to show holes. The dirty little secret is that a weakened population is the only way the plague theory makes even the remotest bit of sense. You see, the Black Death killed people at an extraordinary rate, far higher than that of a typical bubonic plague outbreak.”
Sweat poured down my fingertips. “So, that’s your argument? The Black Death was too efficient to be bubonic plague?”
Her smile widened. I could see she was enjoying the opportunity to share knowledge, to debate. “It’s a good argument,” she retorted. “In the 1900s, a confirmed bubonic plague outbreak spread through India and China. The kill rate was just three percent.”
Graham shook his head. “That’s five hundred and fifty years later. By then, doctors would’ve known how to treat it, how to isolate it.”
“Actually, doctors of the time observed bubonic plague didn’t spread very easily. Relatives visited patients without getting sick. Few nurses or doctors contracted the disease.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.” He crossed his arms. “Maybe the population had somehow gained immunity by that time.”
“Maybe. But here’s the odd thing. Those same doctors still wrote that the bubonic plague was highly contagious.” She paused to let the implications sink in. “In other words, they observed a disease that didn’t spread very easily, yet still told others it was extremely contagious.”
“Why would they do that?” Beverly asked.
“I believe the so-called truth about bubonic plague, namely that it was highly contagious, had been beaten into their heads during medical school. It was so engrained in them that they couldn’t see the real truth.”
Simona had snagged my curiosity. I knew our lives were in danger. And yet, I couldn’t stop trying to figure out the mystery of the Black Death.
“So, the population was weakened somehow,” I said slowly. “That’s the only explanation.”
“It was weakened,” she replied. “But the Black Death still wasn’t caused by bubonic plague. Consider the transfer mechanism. Supposedly, great masses of infected rodents spread north across Europe. As they died, their fleas — now infected — searched for new hosts, eventually deciding on people. However, the disease spread far too fast to be carried by rats and fleas alone. Plus, there are no written documents from that time describing the vast legions of dead rats which would’ve been required to carry the plague.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Graham retorted. “Maybe dead rats in the streets were commonplace back then. Or maybe they died indoors.”
“Perhaps. But the conventional theory has other problems. First, the Black Death killed over half of Iceland’s population. But rats didn’t actually reach Iceland until the nineteenth century. Second, it moved in almost magical ways. For example, it leapt over Constantinople on its way across the Mediterranean. Third, it continued to kill people during the winter months in northern Europe. However, the plague requires relatively warm temperatures to survive.”