Michael Palmer - Natural Causes

"A virologist, if I'm not mistaken."

"Some would say so."

"From Duke."

"That was twelve years ago," Mulholland said, quite obviously impressed.

"If I recall correctly, you did some wonderful work on tobacco virus phage infection."

"Cater to my ego and I am yours," Mulholland said.

"Well, I am a DNA biochemist, primarily," Athanoulos said. "But I have always had an interest in viruses… and in bacteriophage. In the three years since I left academia to become director here, my interest in both has become more intense and, how should I say, more proprietary."

Rosa, seeing how quickly the two men connected, sensed that the BIO-Vir chief, urbane or not, tended to take men more seriously than women. Ken's decision to stay overnight was turning out to be yet another break in the investigation. She sat patiently through five more minutes of scientific small talk and do-you-knows? then shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. Athanoulos immediately picked up on the cue.

"So now," he said, "what can BIO-Vir do for our friends in Atlanta?"

"I've been in Boston for most of four months now," Rosa said, "investigating three unusual obstetrics cases at the Medical Center of Boston."

"The young resident who gave toxic herbs of some sort to her patients, yes?"

Rosa sighed.

"La potencia de las prensa," she said. "The power of the press. Dr. Athanoulos, despite what you and a million or so others have read, it does not appear that those herbs are playing a major role in this drama. Although I should add that the possibility remains. Ken, do you want to review your studies thus far?"

"Dimitri," Mulholland said, "Rosa here is far too modest to admit it, but she has done a damn thorough job of evaluating these cases. For many years she's been the best field person at the CDC."

"Go on."

"She sent me some serum from one of the victims of this DIC bleeding problem-the one of the three who survived. We've gotten viral growth and identified an antibody indicative of a smoldering infection. Yesterday we finished sequencing the DNA of the bug. Its composition matched a virus created in your lab."

Athanoulos's thick white brows rose a fraction. Mulholland passed over the printout describing CRV113, and the lab director scanned it.

"Come," he said, standing abruptly. "Let us take a walk to our primate unit. I know absolutely nothing of CRV113. The date of its patenting precedes my arrival here. And assuming we once were, we are no longer involved with such a virus. Of that I am certain. Since I took over, we have focused on building viruses that make gamma globulin and viruses that make certain hormones. But nothing like this. Cletus Collins has been in charge of the primates we use since BIO-Vir opened in '80. If anyone would know about this CRV113, it is he."

They took the elevator to the subbasement. Even before the doors opened, Rosa could smell the animals. The nearly silent corridor outside the elevator was lined with glass, which was quite obviously thick. For behind the glass wall were three long tiers of cages, virtually every one of them occupied by an active monkey. A stoop-shouldered old man was swabbing the floor in front of the cages. Athanoulos rapped on the glass.

"Where's Clete?" he said.

The old man, lip-reading, strained to understand the question. Then he smiled. He pointed down the corridor and mouthed what seemed to Rosa to be "the rec room." Athanoulos opened a door at the end of the corridor, and the three of them stepped into a glass cage, five feet square and perhaps ten feet high. Surrounding the cage was a huge room, rising two stories, and packed with toys, ropes, tree limbs, and climbing bars. At the center of the room, with one good-size chimpanzee riding on him piggyback and another, smaller one clinging to his leg, was Cletus Collins. Rosa noted the man could almost have passed for one of his charges, with his simian features and posture. Ken Mulholland had clearly made the same observation.

"Remarkable," he murmured.

"Yes, isn't it," Athanoulos said.

"I'm surprised you let him commune with the primates like that."

"You mean because of the viruses the animals carry? I assure you, Kenneth, after all these years, any virus they have, he has."

"Clete, can we see you for a moment?" he said into a speaker on one wall.

The primate keeper freed himself from the monkeys, came over, and accepted the introduction to the visitors from Atlanta. Concern darkened his striking face.

"We exercise these animals good, real good," he said in a midwestern twang that was several times more defined than Mulholland's. "Every day. I take care of them like they was kin. I promise you that."

"Mr. Collins, we're not with any animal rights group," Rosa said. "We're trying to learn about some research that was done here a few years ago on a virus named CRV113. It was related to-"

"Clots. I know the work you mean."

"Are there any records of it?" Athanoulos asked.

"Who knows? There should be. At least the animal records. Probably in the old metal cabinets in the storage closet next to the boiler room."

"I did not even know that room or such files existed."

"Abandoned projects, mostly. No one's ever been much interested in them."

"I am interested. Would you please take us there, Clete?"

"Sure. You wait in the outer corridor while I get these fellows back in their cages. They'd just as soon bite and scratch your face off as look at you. Everyone except me 'n' old Stan the cage man out there, that is."

The trio of scientists watched from behind the protective glass as he returned the two animals to their cages. Rosa could have sworn that just before one of them let go of Collins's neck, it kissed him on the cheek.

"I sort of liked Fezler," Collins said as he led the three to the storage closet. "But I hated what his damn experiments did to my monkeys. You sure you're not with one of them animal groups? Believe me, I take good care of these guys. Real good care. It's hard on me when they… you know, when they don't make it."

"You have nothing to worry about," Rosa said. "Who's Fezler?"

Collins searched out the storage closet key from a belt ring that might have been holding a hundred. He connected on the second try.

"Warren Fezler. CRV113 was one of his projects. He had about a dozen of 'em, it seemed. Not a damn one worked out right as far as I know. Too bad his job wasn't to come up with a way to kill monkeys. He'd a been a big success then."

Collins's mucusy laugh was cut short by a spasm of coughing. Rosa instinctively backed away from him a step. She wondered how many job-related diseases he might have contracted over the years. He flipped on the light, revealing a small, concrete room, barren save for half a dozen file cabinets.

"Fezler wasn't the best record keeper in the world," he said. "But he was one hell of a worker. Weekends. Two in the morning. Holidays. It didn't matter none to ol' Warren."

"I'm only the director here," Athanoulos mumbled, clearly dismayed. "Why should I know this room exists? Or that we once employed a monkey-killer named Fezler?"

"What happened to the monkeys?" Rosa asked as Collins used one of his keys to unlock a cabinet.

"Just got sick 'n' died. Fezler would put them under with anesthesia, then cut them with a scalpel in some weird way and draw some blood. Then he'd measure how quickly and how well their wounds healed." He flipped through one drawer with no success, and went to the next. "You sure you're not from one of those wacko animal groups?"

"Positive," Rosa said.

"Well, I can't really tell you what happened to the monkeys. They just kinda shriveled up 'n' died. It wasn't on purpose, though. I can tell you that much." He skimmed through the files in that drawer and went to the next. "Fezler liked the monkeys. They liked him, too. He was the only one besides me and Stan that they ever took to like that. He always wore the protective suits when he was in the rec room with them. But suit or no suit, they never bit him that I recall. Not once. They played with him just like they do with me. They liked bouncing on his belly. And believe you, me, he had a whopper. Maybe it was sort of like one of them Moon-walks for the chimps. You know, like at the carnival."