Ray said, “The numbers are worse than we’re saying.”
On the left side, a fast-moving montage. Police guarding a cordoned-off Newark hospital. Masked ambulance attendants rushing a patient on a stretcher from a Philadelphia building. The caption: Death toll up in Manhattan. Hundreds more ill.
“It’s three times that by now,” Ray said.
The President said something about a school holiday, and advised precautions for residents in infected areas. Remove excess water collecting in cans and old tires. Wear DEET repellents of between 15 percent and 30 percent strength outside. Wear long-sleeved shirts and long trousers. Avoid being out between dusk and dawn, when mosquitoes are most active. Make sure you have screens on your doors and windows.
“It’s spread by a common anopheles mosquito that lives in the millions along the East Coast,” Ray said. “We believe we’re dealing with intentionally infected insects. Once they pass along the illness, if another mosquito feeds on that victim, it ingests the parasite and becomes a new vector. Which gives us millions more potential carriers.”
“Christ.” Eddie shuddered. “My family is in Boston.”
“It’s not there yet.”
Eddie looked relieved. “I want to phone them.”
“Of course. Captain Santo! The photos and fingerprints that your people sent show that two of the guards you killed were Caliphate. Dr. Sabbir Umar — dental ID confirmed — worked for a French biocompany altering mosquito DNA as a means of controlling insect population. Joe, the blood samples you saved contained parasites matching ones recovered from victims here. And I can tell you that the timing of the outbreak coincides with certain threats received in D.C.”
“What threats?”
“You’ll hear more in a few moments.”
“Threats by whom?” I asked, realizing that we were now talking as if we were part of the investigation, that Ray’s appeal was working. The danger was bigger than complaints by Eddie and me about Ray.
Ray said, “That’s what we need help figuring out. Your memories could be crucial. I’ve set up several meetings for you in Washington, over the next few days.”
The President was back now. “Authorities will spray all vehicles, trains, and planes leaving infected cities. If you live in those places, expect long lines at tollbooths, subways, rail stations, and airports. This is for your own good. The origin of the outbreak remains a mystery so far, but we’re hopeful of learning more soon.”
Eddie looked puzzled. “A mystery? But you just said there were threats. There’s a terrorist link.”
“Evidently the President decided to avoid panic.”
“You think those scenes on-screen are calm?”
“It’s not my call.”
“You’re sitting on the Brazil connection!”
“Why let the bad guys know what we know? Of course there’s been speculation about an attack in the press. You and I don’t make policy, just recommendations. We’re coming up on the conference call. What you say is up to you.”
He was good. He was better than good. He had conveyed a threat without saying it. And the threat was, Ray was our friend but anyone else a potential enemy. He did not approve of secrets, but policy was out of his hands. He had our backs, especially since we could damage him otherwise. If we made a stink, there was no telling what would happen to us since the White House was clamping down on the news.
“You’re a master fuck,” Eddie said. “You know that?”
“This situation has been difficult for us all.”
Eddie turned to me, the message clear in his eyes. He’ll screw us the first chance he gets, Joe. He can’t have us walking around, a threat to him. He never liked you. He resents that Chris had a thing for you. He just wants to keep control. Don’t listen to him.
But Ray sat slightly more at ease; just a fraction, as if he thought that Eddie’s anger, if vented in private, would not come up in the meeting.
Maybe, I saw reluctantly, Ray had a point.
“What’s happening here?” asked Izabel, whose language skills weren’t good enough to follow every nuance, but whose antenna for human behavior was just fine.
I told Ray, my stomach throbbing, “Okay, we start from scratch.”
“You won’t regret it,” Ray replied.
“Dr. Nakamura, are you sure you heard no references to New York, Newark, or Philadelphia?”
“No.”
“At any time, were you given substances to combat your malaria? Is it possible that your captors sought an antidote? Or was their sole interest in cultivating your blood, worsening the disease?”
“Worsening the disease.”
“Dr. Nakamura, you look exhausted. Need a break?”
“No. But thanks.”
The screen now had so many faces on it that it looked like a high school yearbook page. Beside Ray, Dr. Wilbur Gaines, current speaker, headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. I’d worked with him in bioterror war games and found him calm and thoughtful. He tended to address problems step-by-step, favoring process over intuition. But his instincts were good. Next, Chris Vekey, Ray’s fiancée and expert on on-the-ground response to biological threats. She was also our intern Aya’s mom, and neither she nor I had ever acknowledged our mutual attraction. Other boxes showed observers from the CIA. White House. Army Med Command at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
“Dr. Nakamura, you said that Dr. Umar bragged that several existing medicines prevent or treat the disease.”
“Yes, sir. I believe that I got sick initially because Joe and I took different antimalarials. I’m allergic to Lariam, which apparently works against this strain. The guards were taking Coartem, a fixed-dose combination of artemether and lumefantrine. That combo seems to work. I took Malarone, which doesn’t.”
“Pharmacies are experiencing a run on medicines,” said Gaines, with a grimace. “There’s nowhere near enough supply to meet demand, and even if pharma ramps up production, the gap is too big. Every doctor I know is getting calls from patients wanting prescriptions, even in unaffected cities. We had a hijacking on the Ohio Turnpike, shipments bound for New York. The drivers were shot, trucks found empty.”
Chris added, “We’re not even positive that these drugs work yet. We need time to see. And if they do work,” she added in a depressed tone, “they need to be taken every week to be effective. Existing supplies will soon run out.”
Exhausted at the meeting’s end, we tried to sleep.
Over the Caribbean we breakfasted on microwaved eggs and turkey sausage, crisp wheat toast and cranberry muffins. Eddie ate double portions, trying to regain lost weight. Izabel had two helpings of banana pancakes. The Brazilian coffee was hot and strong. Then Dr. Gaines was back on-screen with Chris and Ray and a slide of an enormous magnified mosquito. With its compound eyes, and long proboscis, it looked alien, something dreamed up by Hollywood.
“She’s beautiful, in a deadly way,” Gaines sighed.
“You have a funny notion of beauty,” Eddie said.
“I have respect. In her case, function is beauty,” said Gaines. “Anopheles gambaie… the most delicate of mosquitoes. Legs thin, body lean. Size, no bigger than a contact lens, not like those enormous Asian tigers. Why, you barely see our girl when she’s in the air.”
Eddie hummed the Miss America tune. “Very romantic.”
“Two predominant types of malaria infect humans, as you know,” continued Gaines. “Anopheles carries both. Plasmodium vivax is older, transmitted in both hot and temperate parts of the world. Centuries ago, a huge problem in Europe and North America. But look at these places today, especially southern Europe, and you see interesting genetic changes in humans. They gave people the ability to live with the parasite in their blood. They get sick, but not fatally. So it’s logical to assume that if humans had time to adapt, vivax malaria is a more ancient version of the sickness.”