Pandemic (21 page)

Three minutes later the dust rose again, as the Merlin lifted into the air and wheeled around to the north-east on a direct track over Lefká Óri back to the
Invincible
.

Kandíra, south-west Crete

The accommodation wasn’t ideal by any means, but it was better than nothing.

Three large tents had been erected within the cordon late the previous afternoon. One held a bottled-gas-powered cooking range and sufficient provisions for about a week, though everyone hoped
they’d be out of there long before that. The second had a dozen camp beds and the third a couple of chemical toilets, four sinks and two showers. Hot water was supplied by an on-demand gas
heater fed by three one-thousand-litre plastic water tanks.

Well away from these three tents was a single, much smaller, one. It held only the two large chest freezers that had been requested in the CDC response to the Cretan Ministry of Health. These
were powered by a Honda petrol generator sitting outside the tent in a sandbagged enclosure, the noise of which provided a constant throbbing background hum.

Inspector Lavat, after consulting the doctor, had insisted that everyone who had been in recent contact with Spiros Aristides or his house should take a shower as soon as the system was working.
All their clothes were then placed in the same cordoned-off pile in the street, which already held Dr Gravas’s and his assistants’ white coveralls, as well as Lavat’s discarded
uniform. Only when the last person had emerged from the shower tent, wearing fresh clothing brought in from outside the village, did Gravas begin to relax.

They heard the helicopter arrive, like everyone else in Kandíra, so Lavat and Gravas were waiting as the sandy-haired civilian walked up and stopped by the cordon. Behind him, four police
officers struggled under the weight of the cases.

‘I’m Tyler Hardin, from the Centers for Disease Control. Does anybody here speak English?’

‘Welcome, Mr Hardin.’ Lavat extended a hand and gestured for the police officer to let the American through. ‘I’m Inspector Lavat of the Crete police force and this is Dr
Gravas. We both speak English. Are you by yourself?’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Hardin said, shaking hands with both. ‘Yes, I’m just the advance guard. The rest of my team will be arriving soon with more equipment. Dr Gravas,
you’re the person who alerted us, I think?’

‘That’s correct. I’ve been hoping ever since that I didn’t over-react, but I’ve never seen anyone die like this man Aristides. And,’ Gravas added,
‘there has been a second death, superficially identical.’

‘Another one?’ Hardin asked. ‘What do you mean “superficially identical”?’

‘I mean it looks as if this second man, called Nico Aristides – he was a nephew of the first victim and had been drinking with him in the local bar the previous evening – was
killed by the same pathogen. But all we did was to enter his apartment and view his body from a distance. I made no examination of the corpse, and we have also had the apartment sealed ever since,
just like the other property.’

Hardin nodded in satisfaction, and the three began walking towards the tents erected at the periphery of the village.

‘OK, I see you’ve got a cordon in place but what restrictions have you imposed?’

‘Everyone who was already here in the village when I examined the first body has been kept inside the cordon, including the police officers and my assistants. Except for yourself, nobody
has been allowed into or out of the village since.

‘All those who had any recent physical contact with either of the properties where the bodies were found have been identified and we’ve tried to decontaminate them with showers and
changes of clothing. And, as I said, the properties themselves have been sealed.’

‘Good. That’s very good,’ Hardin said. ‘With the limited facilities you’ve got available here I can’t think how you could have done better.’

Gravas smiled and led the way into the first tent. ‘We can offer you some coffee? Or perhaps you’d like something to eat?’

‘Coffee, please,’ Hardin replied, ‘but no food, thank you. I seem to have eaten my way non-stop across the Atlantic.’

Lavat asked the woman serving behind the counter – one of several villagers offering to help the investigation – for three cups of coffee, then the men sat down together at a
table.

‘Right,’ Hardin said. ‘We received your initial report at the CDC, but I’d appreciate it if you could just run the sequence of events by me again, in case there’s
anything I missed or you overlooked. Your English, by the way, is excellent.’

‘Thank you,’ Gravas said. ‘I had the benefit of two years at Oxford. Now, what happened here was simple enough. Yesterday morning a village woman heard a moan of pain coming
from Spiros Aristides’s house. She gathered up a friend, and a few minutes later they entered the house and made their way upstairs. Looking into the bedroom, they saw Aristides lying fully
clothed on his bed but completely covered in blood. Assuming he had been hacked to death, they ran out of the house and called the police.’

Lavat took up the story.

‘I was then summoned from Chaniá and arrived here about an hour and a half after the alarm was raised. I set up a cordon around the house, then went inside myself. I looked into the
bedroom and saw exactly what the women had reported. I touched nothing in the room, just closed the door and waited for the forensic specialists to arrive.’

‘A question,’ Hardin interrupted. ‘You said that one of the women heard a moan of pain, but when they entered the house the man was already dead. What was the interval in
between?’

Gravas looked at Lavat.

‘No more than ten minutes,’ he said. ‘She headed from Aristides’s house to the square, found the other woman almost immediately, and they went straight back.’

‘What, exactly, did she hear? Was it just moaning, or did she hear any words?’

Lavat consulted his notebook. ‘She said it was a moan, but she’s here, close by, so I can go and ask her again, if you think it’s important.’

Hardin nodded. ‘It could be vital, Inspector,’ he said.

As Lavat walked out of the tent, Gravas looked questioningly at the American. ‘Why is what the dying Greek said important?’

‘What he actually said is of no importance at all. All I really want to know is whether he was still capable of speech. That could be a vital indicator.’

Gravas was still looking puzzled when Lavat walked back into the tent. ‘She’s not absolutely certain,’ he began. ‘She thinks he called out “Help me” in Greek,
but Aristides’s voice was very distorted, so she might just have interpreted some sounds as speech. She can’t be certain he actually said anything, but she definitely heard him making
noises – he was in distress.’

Hardin nodded. ‘OK, so the victim was able to emit sounds, speech or otherwise, up until about ten minutes before he finally died. That’s interesting. What happened next?’

‘I arrived some time after the police,’ Gravas intervened, ‘because I was over in Irakleío when I was alerted. The Inspector here explained what had happened. I usually
enter the scene of a crime first by myself to make an initial survey and to confirm that the victim is actually dead – being a medical doctor as well as a forensic scientist – before
bringing in any of my team members. In this case, I entered the bedroom and saw the body exactly as Inspector Lavat has described. From my initial inspection I was certain that he had been
butchered, probably with a knife or an axe. His corpse appeared almost drained of blood. Once I confirmed that he was dead, I called in my team to begin checking the rest of the house.

‘I remained in the bedroom to carry out a physical examination of the corpse, and that was when I discovered no evidence whatsoever of any kind of physical injury. I had expected at the
very least to find one or more puncture wounds in the chest to account for the amount of blood on the body itself, but there was nothing.

‘Normally, we would then remove the corpse to our mortuary without further examination, but this absence of wounds troubled me, so I broke the rules. I cut off the man’s clothing and
carried out a detailed examination of his body. I found no fresh wounds of any kind, but I did find indications of severe internal trauma. He appeared to have haemorrhaged blood through every
orifice, something I have never encountered before.

‘I was about to finally order his body taken out of the house when I suddenly recalled an article I had read years ago about the disease Ebola. I remembered it describing how the bodies of
victims almost liquefied, with blood erupting everywhere, and that seemed to me to be the only explanation that made sense. I ordered my team out of the house, closed the bedroom door and, to use
your American expression, called in the cavalry.’

Hardin smiled briefly and looked down at the notes he had been making. ‘As I said before, Dr Gravas, you seem to have done everything exactly as it should be done. I hear what you say
about Ebola, and from your description of the dead man here there are certainly some disturbing similarities. But actually I don’t think it’s Ebola we’re dealing with, mainly
because of the timescale involved.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Two reasons. First, Ebola takes a lot longer than that to kill its victims. Typically the time between the onset of the infection and the death of the victim is a minimum of four or five
days, sometimes a week or even more. You told me that this guy Spiros Aristides was drinking in the bar here in Kandíra on Monday evening, but on Tuesday morning he was dead. That’s
one reason.

‘The second reason is what the woman heard. Ten minutes or so before his death, the victim moaned or perhaps cried out. In fact, and contrary to anything you may have read, Ebola actually
attacks only the circulatory system, causing uncontrollable bleeding within the body and affecting every organ. That includes the brain as the skull fills with blood. Victims may suffer what appear
to be epileptic seizures, strokes or convulsions, but they invariably go into a deep coma in the last stages of the infection, as brain functions cease. If Aristides had been suffering an attack by
Ebola, he couldn’t possibly have cried out.

‘Instead, I think what we’re dealing with here,’ Hardin looked from Lavat to Gravas, ‘is a brand-new hot agent that could make Ebola look like a mild case of
influenza.’

HMS
Invincible
, Sea of Crete

Paul Richter’s cabin was on the starboard side of Two Deck, almost directly below the Harrier tie-down spot, a fact that quickly became obvious to him at a little
after eight ten that morning when the 800 Squadron maintainers began slam checks on a Harrier that had just had an engine change. With about half an inch of steel plate and pretty much no sound
insulation between him and a Rolls-Royce Pegasus running at full power, Richter woke up fast and stayed awake.

He shaved and showered and decided not to bother with breakfast. He grabbed a cup of coffee in the Wardroom, then walked up to the Harrier briefing-room on Two Deck to be in time for
Shareholders. He didn’t actually need to attend, as he was in reality little more than a passenger, and there were no more fixed-wing flying operations planned until after the ship left
Piraeus, but Richter made the effort anyway.

Just after nine he wandered up to the bridge and sat down in Commander (Air)’s swivel chair in Flyco, staring out at the Mediterranean.

Invincible
was maintaining station about five miles north of Réthymno, so the north coast of Crete was clearly visible to the south of the ship, extending from left to right as far
as the eye could see. The Merlin that had been used earlier to ferry the CDC specialist to Kandíra from Irakleío was lashed down on three spot, rotors folded, and the Flight Deck was
more or less deserted, apart from a handful of goofers peering through cameras and binoculars at the distant shoreline.

He had been sitting there ten minutes when somebody spoke from behind him. ‘A penny for them, Spook.’

Richter recognized Roger Black’s voice immediately. ‘Hi, Blackie. Just taking a last look around. Don’t know when – or even if – I’ll ever be aboard this war
canoe again.’

‘Oh. I thought you might be bored here: no flying, nobody shooting at you.’

‘Nope.’ Richter grinned. ‘Boredom’s a state of mind, not a state of place. I never get bored, even when nobody’s shooting at me.’ He took a last glance round
the horizon, then got up from the seat. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you a coffee.’

Kandíra, south-west Crete

The three men sat in silence for a few minutes, seemingly stunned by the possible implications of what had happened in the quiet village.

‘OK,’ Hardin said, rousing himself. ‘The diagnosis can come later. Before I get suited up to take a look at this man, I’ve got a few more questions. First, you said that
both Spiros and Nico Aristides were drinking in a bar last night. Have you traced anybody else that was there? Anyone who saw them, I mean.’

Lavat nodded. ‘Yes, we interviewed the owner, who’s also the bartender. He saw the two men together, but said they were acting normally – no signs of illness or anything else.
We spent most of yesterday afternoon locating the other customers from the bar that night, and all those we managed to trace seem fine. No health problems, and none recalled anything unusual about
Spiros or Nico.’

‘Apart from finding the aircraft, that is,’ Gravas murmured.

‘Aircraft? What aircraft?’ Hardin demanded.

‘It’s probably unrelated,’ Lavat said, ‘but two drinkers overheard Spiros telling Nico about a crashed aircraft he had found somewhere off the coast. He’s a diver
– he was a diver, I mean. To be exact, he was an unlicensed diver. Unfortunately, those two locals turned up outside the cordon and talked to one of our local reporters, with the result that
the papers have been splashing a lot of nonsense about some poisonous germ from the seabed all over their front pages.’

Hardin grunted. ‘Another question. Did Spiros and Nico arrive at the bar together or separately?’

‘They met there,’ Lavat said firmly. ‘Apparently Spiros arrived first, in a bad mood, and sat drinking whisky for quite some time before Nico walked in. The barkeeper’s
impression – but he’s definitely not the best of witnesses – was that Spiros didn’t expect to see his nephew, and was pleased when he showed up.’