The Nightmare Scenario (31 page)

“Yes, and when we investigated this further with PCR sequencing, we found that the evolutionary distance between the Russian strain and earlier influenzas, measured as the number of mutations separating them, was short. So short in fact that it was improbable that it could have lived twenty years in another species without changing more. So most scientists agree that it was released from a lab the year before the outbreak, either intentionally or unintentionally. No one’s been able to say which lab, though.”

“Yes, in spite of appearances to the contrary, I am actually quite well versed in the history of the influenzas.” Aeolus started dabbing at the pool of ink with his napkin.

“Yes, well, sir, the problem is that when the lab in Singapore said we hadn’t seen anything like this flu before, that wasn’t exactly accurate. We have seen it before, although not in living form. This virus is a close sibling to the 1918 Spanish flu.”

Aeolus abruptly straightened up, his sleeve landing in the spilled ink. A stain the size of a bagel quickly formed on his blue gingham shirt.

“Now you have my attention,” he said, his eyes intensely focused on the young geneticist.

“Dr. Moynes asked me at the onset to look at the sequencing efforts of the Spanish flu DNA. It was completed in 2005. We’ve been running the analysis on the current strain since we got it. But, as I’m sure you know, that can take weeks. We got the full sequence yesterday, and some segments are very close to the 1918 variant in terms of mutational distance. Almost
identical in fact. I’d say it couldn’t have been out in the wild for more than one or two years.

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not the same, it’s blended with some other strain, but one part of the blend
is
the Spanish flu.”

Aeolus’s jaw dropped ever so slightly and he put his hand over his mouth, his eyes focusing toward some point in the far distance.

Kevin was first to break the silence. “Is there any chance it’s just thawed from some ice block somewhere and got into some animal? You know, global warming and all that?”

Ed launched into a discourse about the probabilities of this, but Aeolus cut him off.

Aeolus pushed the palms of his hands against his eyes and rubbed them in circles.

“No, that’s not it. Someone has it. I can’t believe it! Someone’s had it all this time...”

Aeolus leaned forward, elbows on the desk, ignoring the growing ink stain on his shirt. His first emotion was not anger, surprise or resignation, but sadness – sadness and disappointment with the world around him, and some of the people who inhabited it. It wasn’t long, though, until anger took over, rising from the bottom of his chest and erupting in an outburst of fury.

“Mandy!” He hollered, not bothering to use the intercom, “Get me Yelena Petrova in Jakarta, right now!”

The room was silent as they waited for Mandy to find the Russian doctor. When she came through, Aeolus picked up the receiver, deactivating the speaker.

“Yelena, it’s me. I need to speak to Boris Yevchenko. And I mean right now!”

“But Aeolus, I’ve told you that…”

“Oh, shut up, Yelena! Enough of this! We’ve just completed the sequencing. It’s a sibling of the Spanish flu. It’s not natural, it came from a lab! And I’m pretty sure it was one of yours! Now, Yelena, either you get me Boris Yevchenko within the next fifteen minutes or, so help me God, I will call the station chief in Moscow and have the CIA haul his ass from Koltsovo straight into interrogation. It’s up to you!” Aeolus slammed down the receiver, not giving Yelena a chance to respond.

Richard was first to break the silence.

“Dr. Hughes, this might not be the appropriate time, but I don’t understand what’s happening. You say that the infection came from a Russian lab? How is this possible?”

Aeolus sighed.

“As this is something we’ll want the president to understand properly, I will tell you. The scientific community has long tried to learn more about the Spanish flu by searching for a ‘living’ specimen to grow and study. The idea was that if we could find a person who died quickly, say within a week from infection so that the virus was still replicating in the lungs at the time of death, and who was frozen immediately after death, we could extract the virus from that corpse. A ‘living’ virus dies shortly after the death of the host from heat unless the host is frozen down rapidly.

“A Swede named Johan Hultin led an expedition to Brevig Mission, Alaska, in 1951, to dig up Eskimo
graves. The infection had hit these communities particularly hard, killing approximately ninety percent of the adult population. As the Eskimos traditionally bury their dead in permafrost, close after death, these villages were ideal candidates for his recovery project.

“He found nothing, though. On a second expedition in 1997, he found samples in a woman’s lung tissue. This sample, together with others found in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology archives, drenched in formaldehyde and stored in blocks of paraffin, allowed for a complete sequencing of the virus. The samples were all dead, though, so we haven’t been able to grow them. Now we know someone else found it. Found it. And grew it.”

He shook his head.

“Accidental releases of illnesses from laboratories are not as rare as you might think. Take smallpox. In its time, it was a terrible disease, killing around two million people a year, into the early 1950s. In 1959, the WHO launched an ambitious program to eradicate it. By 1977, we succeeded and smallpox was gone. It was the greatest medical achievement in modern history, if not all of history.

“But that’s not the end of the story. In 1978, two cases of smallpox were discovered in Britain, traced to a lab at the University of Birmingham’s Medical School. The researcher in charge committed suicide when it became evident that the virus had been released from their storage through one form of negligence or another.

“Following this, all stocks were destroyed and the only remaining samples are with the CDC in Atlanta
and the Vector Institute in Russia. That’s why we’re very careful with these substances and don’t keep samples of deadly diseases in regular labs anymore. Apparently, someone didn’t get the memo.”

Aeolus called Hank. Midway through the explanation, Mandy announced she had an inbound call from a Boris Yevchenko.

“Yes Hank, we’re rounding up the usual suspects and starting with the Russians, but hang on. I just got Boris, I’ll keep you on the line but put you on mute,” said Aeolus.

“Fine,” said Hank,

“Dr. Yevchenko! You’re a hard man to track down.”

“Yes, Dr. Hughes, I tend to be. But I am glad to finally get the chance to talk to you. I am a great fan of yours. I am calling because I understand that you have now realized what I have known for forty-eight hours.”

“If you’ve known it for forty-eight hours, how come you didn’t tell us?”

“I had some investigations to conclude. Without them, this conversation would have been pointless.”

“Okay, so tell me. You have it, do you?”

“Yes, we do. In the mid-50s, inspired by your expeditions to Alaska, we managed, after several failed attempts, to find a body of a
Dolgan
buried in permafrost in the northern region of Krasnoyarsk, hundred miles or so north of Tunguska. The virus was perfectly preserved and we managed to grow it successfully.”

“You’ve had it for fifty years!? And you didn’t tell us? Do you know what value a discovery like that could have had for our research?”

“Yes, I do indeed, but you must understand that these were different times. The operation was run by our bio-warfare organization, not the civilian medical community. Making it public would have gone against our national interest, and after
Glasnost
the few of us who knew decided it was best to, how do you say, ‘let sleeping dogs lie’.”

“So, you studied it? You have a vaccine? Please tell me you have a vaccine.”

“Actually, we did not give it much study. Compared to the other projects such as smallpox, pneumonic plague and anthrax, it had limited potential as a biological weapon. It was not lethal enough, but more importantly it was impossible to control. It was too blunt a weapon. In the end, we wrote it off because we struggled with developing a vaccine and were convinced that even if we did, it could very well come back in a mutated strain to which we had no effective protection. It posed too much of a risk for the motherland, so we buried it, stopped our research and decided to keep it as a curiosity that could be used as a bargaining chip in exchange for research from other friendly nations.”

“Great. Not deadly enough? Why don’t you go down and tell that to the four thousand or so dead in the Maluku Islands? So you don’t have a vaccine or even any research we can use?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“But it came from your labs?”

“No, that was one of the items I felt compelled to investigate. Our only stock is at the ‘State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology,’ which I believe you refer to as the ‘Vector Institute,’ here in Koltsovo
in Novosibirsk. All samples are in a pressure-sealed room. The seal has not been broken. I have inspected it myself. It’s not from our labs.”

“Then how…?”

“As I said, we decided to use it to barter…”

“No!”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“The Chinese?”

“Yes. We traded it with the Chinese in the early 60s, when we, in the area of bio-warfare at least, were still friends.”

“So it’s from a Chinese lab.”

“No, it’s a bit more complicated than that. As far as I understand from the sources available to me, the following has happened. The scientist in China who led the research was a man named Hak-Man Choi. His ruthless methods, involving large-scale testing on, and virus growth within, human subjects became too much for the Chinese to stomach. Also, they, like us, realized the limited potential of the flu as a weapon. Hence, they decided to shut him down.”

“And then?”

“Then he disappeared. He left China and brought all the samples and research documents with him.”

“He fled from China? Where?”

“Unfortunately this is where my trail ends. Still…”

“… Hak-Man Choi is a Korean name,” Aeolus finished the sentence.

“Yes, Dr. Hughes. Great minds think alike after all.”

“So,” Aeolus said, “What you’re telling me that a real-life version of Dr. Strangelove defected to North Korea
in the late 60s with live samples of the 1918 flu, to continue developing it as a biological warfare agent with the blessings of Kim Il-Sung? And the result of this scientific abomination has now been let loose upon the world?”

“That would be my guess, yes. And to make matters worse, he seems to have been successful in his efforts. I am not really sure how he did it. It must have taken a considerable measure of luck, given the methods available to him at the time. Well, luck for him… Not so much for us, obviously. I doubt even I could construct a more potent influenza today, in spite of the all the knowledge and technology we have today.”

“Yes, indeed,” Aeolus said hesitantly, not wild about admitting that he was not one hundred percent sure what Boris was getting at. “You’re referring to the gene shift in the second polymerase?” he probed.

“Well, there is that. But more importantly you have the increased density of arginine in the first hemagglutinin sequence. This is why the virus spreads so much more easily and causes more severe symptoms. Also, it helps to explain why it is virulent enough to be effective in different weather conditions and climates.”

“I’m not sure I follow you now,” said Aeolus, humbled by his own ignorance.

“We have done some research recently that shows that an increased concentration of positively charged amino acids in the receptor bindings significantly increases the chance of the virus attaching to cells. It is pretty groundbreaking stuff, actually.”

“You, as in the Vector Institute?”

“Yes.”

Aeolus held a deep resentment for the world’s closed military research departments, and their mere existence usually provoked intense anger. But in this instance his fury was tempered by his admiration for this man’s competence. It was rare for him to meet an equal in his field, or in this case, maybe even more than that.

Instead of bursting out, Aeolus sighed in resignation. “Dr. Yevchenko, you’ve got to publish these things. You can’t just sit on it. You
know
how valuable it would be for the community if others could build on your research.”

“And
you
¸ Dr. Hughes, know exactly why I cannot do that. Besides, Dr. Petrova is close to making the same discovery.”

“And how do you know that, if I may ask?”

“I know a lot of things.”

        
Aeolus went quiet again, letting the full implications of their conversation sink in. “Dr. Yevchenko, tell me, is there
any
way the situation could be worse?”

“I don’t think so, Dr. Hughes. I assume you can take it from here. Anyway, I have done my part and will disappear back into obscurity. You will not hear from me or contact me again. After all, I don’t exist.”

“I still have your paper.”

“Dr. Hughes, such evidence is, as you know, easy to fabricate.
Do zvidania
.”

The line went silent and Aeolus looked the room. What they’d learned was so absurd, so beyond belief, that Ed collapsed into hysterical giggles, pearls of sweat appearing on his bald scalp. Richard was the one who
maintained his composure best, a not unusual ability among lifelong military men. He was also the first to speak.

“Dr. Hughes, I think you might have just found the argument that will make the president join your side.”

“Yes, but if it was up to me, I think I would prefer the world as it looked an hour ago. Hank?”

“Yes, of course. Give me an hour. We need to assemble the joint chiefs. This has now become an issue which has larger military implications.”

“Sure. But Hank, let’s try to keep the monkeys out of it for now, shall we?”

By ‘the monkeys’ Aeolus were referring to the staff at USAMRIID, or ‘United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases’ at Fort Detrick.