Chapter 31 #2
“I was thinking about you this morning. Actually, I was going to call you.” She inclined her head toward the coffee table, where a stack of notebooks sat.
“I’ve been working my way through those, which is taking longer than I anticipated.
He’s crammed a lot of research into those pages, let me tell you. ”
Dan’s heart went into overdrive. “I wonder….”
“You wonder what?” Sam asked as she spooned coffee into the filter.
His skin tingled, the sensation so acute that it hurt. “Maybe if I hold them, I might learn something.” How he managed to sound so calm, he would never know.
She froze. “Oh God. Of course. Give me a sec.” She flipped the switch, and seconds later, coffee began to drip into the pot. Sam joined him on the couch. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
He gave a nervous laugh. “Er, no? I’m only surprised I didn’t think of this on Friday when we were here.” He did his best to breathe normally, but his heart was having none of it.
“I think you were a little overwhelmed at the time. We all were.” Sam picked up the notebook from the top of the pile. “Here. Try this one.”
Dan swallowed, then took the proffered soft-backed notebook. He held it in both hands and closed his eyes.
Please. Show me something we can use. Something to give us an indication of what’s about to happen—and when.
He had no clue who he was addressing, but surely there was some great force that guided his visions, that allowed him to see, to feel.
Dan lost track of time. He focused on opening up his mind, letting his consciousness flow over the notebook, willing himself to accept whatever morsel was handed to him.
“Dan. Dan.”
He opened his eyes. Sam crouched in front of him.
“You scared me. You were so still, I thought you’d died.”
He forced a smile. “Sorry about that.” He glanced at his phone, shocked to see how much time had elapsed.
“Well?”
He gave her the notebook. “I wish I could tell you I saw his whole plan.” He took a moment to breathe.
“You didn’t… feel anything?” She flushed. “I’m not sure how this works, so please, forgive me.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Two emotions had swamped him—anger and sorrow—coiling around him, tightening, squeezing the breath out of him, but there’d been nothing he could latch on to, nothing that showed Robert’s intentions.
He tapped the notebook with his fingertip.
“This is one angry man, but at the same time, there’s a sadness that pervades his anger, mingling with it until it’s almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. ”
Then he realized Sam had fallen silent.
He glanced at her. “Are you okay?”
“Not really, no.”
He recalled her earlier words. “Why were you going to call me?” Then ice etched its way over his skin, a coldness the fire’s heat could not disperse. “You found something else.”
“I wish I hadn’t.” A shiver rippled through her, followed by another, and another, and Dan’s pulse quickened.
“What have you discovered?”
She lurched up off the couch. “Coffee’s ready.”
Whatever it was, it had obviously shaken her.
He waited until she rejoined him, handing him a cup. “Tell me,” he said with a calm he didn’t feel.
“I… I found some notes on an outbreak of enterovirus D68.”
“Catchy name,” he quipped in an attempt to break through the layer of panic that had settled on her. “What is it, exactly?”
“A virus that causes respiratory illness. The symptoms start off subtle, rather like that of the flu, but then come the rashes, abdominal pain, breathing difficulties, dehydration.”
“Sounds delightful. Is this a new virus?”
She shook her head. “Cases of EV-D68 have cropped up in the US for decades, but not that many. We’re talking twenty-six reports of it in a study of thirty-six years, from 1970 to 2006.”
“Okay.” He leaned back against the seat cushion, his hands wrapped around his cup, letting her talk.
“In 2014, the CDC in Atlanta developed a real-time PCR test to speed up detection of the virus.” She peered at him. “Do you know what a PCR test is?”
He bit back a smile. “You’re talking to someone who gets tested regularly. As a gay man, it’s par for the course.”
“Ah. Okay.” She sipped her coffee, then stilled, her gaze locked on him. “Oh. Oh. When you said Gary was still asleep, I didn’t even think about it, but now that I do….” She tilted her head. “Are you here as coworkers, or as something else?”
“Let’s go with something else. And much as I’d love to talk about Gary, I’d rather you finish telling me whatever it is that’s got you so wound up.”
She took a mouthful of coffee. “Well, the reason why the CDC developed that test is because in 2014 there was an outbreak of EV-D68. It was suspected of causing a polio-type disorder called acute flaccid myelitis. Those most at risk were children under the age of five, those with asthma, and adults who were immunosuppressed.”
“Could they treat it?”
“Not really. There’s no specific treatment, or even a vaccine.” She paused, and Dan seized the moment.
“Sam, why are you telling me this?”
“I’m getting there, I promise.” Another drink of coffee. “The outbreak began with eleven cases, mostly in the Midwest. By September, there were one hundred forty-five suspected cases.”
“A bit of a jump from twenty-six,” he acknowledged.
“Yeah, just a little, but it didn’t stop there.
According to the CDC reports I was able to access, from mid-August to October twentieth of 2016, six hundred ninety-one people contracted the virus in fourteen states.
” She paused. “Five children died. And while that is terrible, what really caught my attention was what happened in Atlanta.”
“Why do I think I’m not going to like this?” Dan muttered. “I assume there was an outbreak.”
She nodded. “What interested me about Atlanta was that the cases showed up in only two communities: among the homeless—and gay men.”
Lightbulb.
“You think the professor was behind the outbreaks.”
“If he wasn’t, then why all the notes on the structure of EV-D68? Its communicability? But he couldn’t have been the one to spread the virus, not like we think he did in Florida. He didn’t leave Harvard all that year. At least, I don’t think he did.” She set her jaw. “It couldn’t have been him.”
Dan gave her a sympathetic glance. “I think you’re ignoring the obvious.
He stayed in the light—and his two friends worked in the shadows.
” He held his hand up when she opened her mouth to respond.
“Yes, I know you don’t think they have anything to do with it, but I’m not so sure.
Only, I’m confused. It doesn’t sound as though he was targeting specific genetic markers. ”
Sam sighed. “I don’t think he was either.
It looks to me as if this was a test of another system of deployment, like he did with monkeypox.
But―” She drew in a deep breath. “—I found something else. He’d done a hell of a lot of research on the Democratic Republic of Congo.
And once I did a little digging into his possible reasons behind his research, that was when I really got scared. ”
“Why?” Dan wasn’t sure he could even point to the Republic on a map.
“What I found was… the DRC has suffered from a lot of outbreaks over the years. Bubonic plague in 2006—sixty-one people dead. In 2007, it was Ebola—one hundred eighty-seven people died. And from 2010 to 2014, there was an outbreak of measles.”
Dan blinked. “Measles? What little kids get?” He fought to suppress a chuckle.
Her eyes flashed. “You may think it’s amusing, but more than four thousand five hundred people died as a result of that outbreak.” She drained her cup. “As soon as I saw that, I called Nathan. He had a theory about it.”
“I thought he might.”
“And you need to hear it.”
He stilled as Sam reached for her phone. “Wait. You’re not going to call him now, are you?”
She snorted. “Don’t worry, I won’t be getting him out of bed.
My brother is the proverbial early riser.
” She tapped her phone. “Hey. Have you got a minute? Dan Porter is here, and I’ve been …
No, he didn’t come back to see me, he’s here in Provincetown for a few days …
I’ve been telling him about the DRC, and I’d like you to share your theory.
Hang on while I put you on speaker.” She set the phone down on the coffee table.
“Hey, Dan.” Nathan sounded as though he was in a bathroom, his voice rebounding off the tiles. “Not sure I’m totally happy with you being away from Boston right now, but there isn’t a lot I can do about that.”
Yes, there is. You could tell us what you know.
“Okay….” Nathan cleared his throat. “I think Professor Martin is looking at the DRC because it has lots of recorded outbreaks. So many that one more wouldn’t raise eyebrows.”
“You think that’s where he’s going next?” Dan’s heartbeat raced.
“No, I don’t. I think that’s what he’s working toward, once he’s developed a pathogen tailored to genetic markers. But there’s another reason he could have chosen the DRC, and that only reinforces my idea that he’s not working alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“The DRC provides seventy percent of the world’s supply of cobalt.”
Dan frowned. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“It will if you drive an EV. Cobalt’s an essential part of its lithium-ion battery. So the world needs cobalt. With me so far?”
“Just about.”
“More than eighty percent of the mines are owned by Chinese companies.” Nathan paused.
“Let’s say the professor engineers an outbreak of something virulent and nasty, like anthrax but worse.
Let’s say instead of spreading in on a battlefield, to wipe out one of our country’s enemies, he hits them on home ground. ”
“But why?”