Peter May - Snakehead

Margaret said, ‘Agent Hrycyk prefers his English in words of one syllable.’

‘What exactly is it you don’t understand, Agent Hrycyk?’ Mendez asked, still with his patient smile.

‘All this stuff about triggers and nests…’ He glared at Margaret. ‘I don’t know about words of one syllable, but just plain English would help.’

‘Okay,’ Mendez said. He thought for a moment. ‘The Moloney leukemia virus has been used to disguise our flu virus to get it into the genome. It has also been genetically manipulated — there is no point in me trying to explain the process to you, because you simply wouldn’t understand it. But it has been manipulated to contain certain genes required to make the disguised flu virus active by transcribing it back to its infectious RNA form.’ He put a hand up to stop Hrycyk’s protests. ‘Let me finish, Agent. These genes have been programmed to be activated by some kind of protein encountered in the environment — most likely some sort of taste or smell found in a particular food or drink.’

Hrycyk said, ‘What, you mean they eat a pork chop and suddenly they get the flu?’

‘Crudely put, but broadly accurate,’ Mendez said. ‘The trouble is that we don’t know what will trigger that response.’ He waved his hand toward the ceiling. ‘And finding it is going to be like searching for…’ he searched himself for an appropriate simile, ‘…a speck of dust in the Milky Way.’

A long silence settled on the table as everyone around it fully digested the substance of what they had just heard. Margaret, the tension in her chest making her feel almost physically sick, was the first to break it. She avoided looking at Steve and directed her question to Professor Mendez. ‘Professor, you’re telling us that these people have been injected with a form of Spanish flu that will only become active when they eat, or drink, or smell some specific thing.’ She paused. ‘Why? I mean, why would anybody do that?’

It was Zeiss who responded. ‘I think we have to take the view that what we are dealing with here is a bioterrorist attack on the United States. A very clever, very subtle, attack with a lethally effective potential.’

Margaret shook her head in disbelief. ‘But that’s insane! Something like the Spanish flu doesn’t recognise national boundaries. It’s not just Americans who’ll die. A virus like that will kill people all over the world.’

Zeiss said, ‘We are not necessarily dealing with a rational enemy, Dr. Campbell. We could be looking at fanatical extremists who just don’t care about the consequences. Anyone from Islamic fundamentalists to extreme right-wing militia groups intent on discrediting the Chinese.’

Hrycyk cut in from the end of the table. ‘Or maybe the Chinese themselves, trying to bring America to its knees.’ He glared at Li. Li returned the look with an implacable sense of what Fuller would probably have called inscrutability.

Margaret was scathing. ‘By killing their own people?’ she asked.

‘The Japs used kamikaze pilots, didn’t they?’ Hrycyk said, with what he clearly imagined was reason on his side.

‘Jesus…’ Margaret’s exasperation escaped in an oath. She pushed her chair back. ‘I’m not sitting here to listen to this.’

‘Sit down, Dr. Campbell!’ Zeiss’ voice cut sharply across the table. And then he quickly turned his focus on Hrycyk. ‘And shut up, Agent Hrycyk. We’re not hear to listen to your anti-Chinese ramblings.’ Hrycyk’s face reddened, more from anger than embarrassment. He turned his glare from Li to Margaret.

Zeiss continued, ‘The whole purpose of this meeting tonight is to put together the basis of a task force to deal with this emergency in its initial stages. We require to hunt down these people smugglers and take their organisation apart. We need to know who injected the illegal aliens and why. And we need to know how many of them are walking around out there carrying the virus into the population, and how it is going to be triggered.’ He nodded toward the professor. ‘Which is why Professor Mendez has been brought on board.’

‘Without any guarantee of success, I would hasten to add,’ Mendez said. ‘Even if I can identify the trigger, we may still be too late. It may be that the genie is already out of the bottle, and we just don’t know it yet.’

‘Until we have information to the contrary,’ Zeiss said firmly, ‘we must proceed on the basis that we are still in the preventive stage of this operation.’ He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘Unfortunately we are still waiting for Dr. Anatoly Markin from the CDC. Dr. Markin is an expert on viral bioterrorism. He was among the top echelon of scientists who ran the Soviet biowarfare programme, Biopreparat, right up until the mid-nineties. Now he works for us.’ He stood up. ‘I suggest we take a break until he gets here. Then he can brief us on exactly what kind of pandemonium we can expect if this virus gets activated.’

There was a shocked sense of anticlimax as the meeting broke up, albeit temporarily. The implications of the information that had been disseminated around the table were terrifying, and hard to take on board. Li stood up slowly. It had been a difficult meeting for him. No matter how good his English, he had struggled to keep up with the technical jargon. But its meaning, in the end, had become all too painfully clear to him. Illegal immigrants from his country were being injected with a lethal flu virus which they were unwittingly carrying into the United States. The ease with which such a situation could blow up into full-scale confrontation between the US and China was clear to him. Hrycyk’s attitude was likely to be shared by many millions of Americans. The decision to involve Li in the investigation, even if only at ground level, was almost certainly a political one, designed to maintain some kind of equilibrium between the two countries. If, and when, it ever became public, however, there was no telling how popular reaction might shape political responses. Li felt as if he were being asked to perform a balancing act on the razor-sharp blade of a knife. If he didn’t fall to one side or the other, he was in danger of being cut in two. It was not something, he realised, that he could afford to think about. All he could do was keep his head down and focus as narrowly as possible on the investigation. He would ignore everything else and do what he was good at. He turned to see where Margaret was, but only in time to catch sight of her hurrying out into the corridor.

Steve was halfway along it before Margaret caught up with him. ‘Steve…?’ He stopped, and she thought she saw death in those eyes that only twenty-four hours earlier had been sparkling and so alive. ‘Have they tested your blood samples for the virus?’ He nodded. She could barely bring herself to ask. ‘And?’

He said bleakly, ‘I don’t know yet. I haven’t had the results.’

‘Oh, Steve…’ Margaret took his hand. ‘Until you know otherwise, you’ve got to believe you’re okay.’

‘I can’t,’ he said simply. ‘Margaret, I’m frightened to eat or drink anything. If I have got the virus, who knows what might trigger it?’

Margaret said, ‘Then you’ve got to eat Chinese.’

He looked at her with incredulity. ‘Even I don’t think that’s funny, Margaret.’

‘I’m not being funny,’ she insisted. ‘Think about it. If Chinese food triggered the virus it would have happened by now. It has to be something else.’

‘Steve?’ Dr. Ward walked briskly up to them. He looked grim. ‘They tell me the results have come through. We’d better go along and find out the worst.’ He cast a sideways glance at Margaret that made her feel like an intruder on someone else’s private grief.