Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

She thought a moment, then said, "I don't believe they started out to deceive… I think when it hit them how close they were to a workable vaccine for simian Ebola, they saw the possibilities of transferring the technology to a private laboratory where the next logical step was a human vaccine. Maybe they believed that this was the best thing in the interests of humanity. Maybe they thought they could develop this vaccine more quickly and effectively outside this place, which is — like most government agencies — prone to red tape and slowness."

Max said, "Let's stick to the theory of profit motive, Dr. Chen. The interests of humanity isn't cutting it for me."

She shrugged.

Beth motioned toward the microscope. "Can I take a look?"

Dr. Chen said, "Those are dead Ebola, of course. Live Ebola is only in Zone Five. But I can show you live Ebola viruses safely on videotape." She turned to a TV monitor and hit the VCR. The screen brightened to show four almost transparent crystals, tinted a sort of pink color, three-dimensional, reminding me of a prism. If they were alive, they were playing possum.

Dr. Chen said, "I'm mapping the molecular structure, as I said, so that the genetic engineers can cut and splice this or that piece, then the altered virus is propagated and injected into a monkey. The monkey has one of three responses — it contracts Ebola and dies, it doesn't contract Ebola, but doesn't produce Ebola antibodies, or it doesn't contract Ebola and does produce Ebola antibodies. That is the response we're looking for. That means we have a vaccine. But not necessarily a safe or effective vaccine. The monkey may develop Ebola later, or more commonly, when we later inject the monkey with natural Ebola virus, the antibodies aren't effective in overcoming the disease. The immune response is too weak. Or the immune response does not protect against all strains. It's very frustrating work. Viruses are so simple, molecularly and genetically, but they are more challenging than bacteria in that they are easy to mutate, hard to understand, and hard to kill. In fact, the question is — are those crystals really alive as we understand life? Look at them. They look like ice chips."

Indeed, we were all staring at the crystals on the screen. They looked like something that dropped off a chandelier. It was hard to believe that those guys and their cousins and brothers had caused so much human misery and death, not to mention animal deaths. There was something scary about an organism that looked dead but came to life when it invaded living cells, and reproduced so fast it could kill a healthy two-hundred-pound man in forty-eight hours. What was God thinking?

Dr. Chen turned off the TV monitor.

Beth asked Dr. Chen about the Gordons' behavior yesterday morning, and Dr. Chen said that the Gordons seemed somewhat tense. Judy complained of a migraine, and they decided to go home. This did not surprise any of us.

I asked Dr. Chen directly, "Do you think they took anything out of here yesterday?"

She thought a moment, then replied, "I don't know. How can I say?"

Beth asked, "How difficult is it to smuggle something out of here? How would you do it?"

"Well… I could take any test tube here, or even in another lab, go into the ladies room and insert the tube or vial in one of two orifices. No one would miss a single vial, especially if it hadn't been logged and identified. Then I go into the shower room, throw my lab clothes into a hamper, shower, and go to my locker. At this point I could remove the vial from wherever and put it in my handbag. I get dressed, leave through the lobby, get on the bus to the ferry, and go home. No one watches you shower. There are no cameras. You'll see when you leave here yourself."

I asked, "And larger items. Items too big to… well, too big."

"Whatever will fit under your lab clothes can make it as far as the shower room. It is there where you have to be clever. For instance, if I took a sequencing gel into the shower room, I could hide it in my towel."

Beth said, "You could also hide it in the hamper with your lab clothes."

"No, you can never go back. The clothes are contaminated. In fact, after you use the towel, that must also go into a separate hamper. It is here that anyone who is looking would see if you were carrying anything. But if you shower out at an odd time, the chances are you will be alone."

I tried to picture this scene, of Judy or Tom smuggling God knew what out of this building yesterday afternoon when no one else was in the shower room. I asked Dr. Chen, "If it's assumed that everything in here has some degree of contamination, why would you want to put a vial of something in your whatever?"

She replied, "You practice some basic decon first, of course. You wash your hands with the special soap in the rest rooms, you may use a condom to wrap a vial or test tube, or use sterile gloves or sheet latex for larger items. You have to be careful, but not paranoid."

Dr. Chen continued, "As for computer information, it can and is electronically transferred from biocontainment to the offices in the administration area. So it's not necessary to steal disks or tapes." She added, "As for handwritten and typewritten notes, graphs, charts, and so forth, it's standard procedure to fax all of that out of here and into your own office. There are fax machines all around, as you can see, and each office outside of biocontainment has an individual fax. That's the only way you can get notes out of here. Years ago, you had to use special paper, rinse it in a decontaminating fluid, leave it to dry, then retrieve it the next day. Now, with the fax, your notes are waiting for you when you return to the office."

Amazing, I thought. I'll bet the folks who invented the fax never thought of that. I can picture the TV commercial — "Laboratory notes covered with germs? Fax them to your office. You have to shower, but they don't." Or something like that.

Beth looked at Dr. Chen and asked her directly, "Do you think the Gordons took anything out of here that was dangerous to living things?"

"Oh, no. No, no. Whatever they took — if they took anything — wasn't pathogenic. Whatever it was, it was therapeutic, helpful, antidotal, however we want to term it. It was something good. I would bet my life on that."

Beth said, "We're all betting our lives on that."

We left Dr. Chen and the X-ray room and continued our tour.

As we walked, Dr. Zollner commented, "So, as I said before, and as Dr. Chen seems to agree, if the Gordons stole anything, it was a genetically altered viral vaccine. Most probably a vaccine for Ebola since that was the main thrust of their work."

Everyone seemed to agree with that. My own thinking was that Dr. Chen had been a little too pat and perfect, and that she didn't know the Gordons as well as she or Zollner said she did.

Dr. Zollner gave a commentary as we strolled the labyrinthine corridors. He said, "Among the viral diseases we study are malignant catarrh, Congo Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and bluetongue. We also study a variety of pneumonias, rickettsial diseases, such as heartwater, a wide range of bacterial diseases, and also parasitic diseases."

"Doc, I got a C in biology and that's because I cheated. You lost me on the rickshaw disease. But let me ask you this — you have to produce a lot of this stuff in order to study it. Correct?"

"Yes, but I can assure you we don't have the capacity to produce enough of any organism in the quantities needed for warfare, if that's what you're getting at."

I said, "I'm getting at random acts of terrorism. Do you produce enough germs for that?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps."

"That word again, Doc."

"Well, yes, enough for a terrorist act."

"Is it true," I inquired, "that a coffee can full of anthrax, spritzed into the air around Manhattan Island, could kill two hundred thousand people?"