Pandemic Read online

  Haldane shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Anna didn’t respond.

  “It’s not like I’m heading off on a golf trip, Anna.”

  “No, you’re off to save the world,” she said with a trace of bitterness.

  “You can drop the melodrama,” Haldane said. “I didn’t ask to go.”

  She looked up at him, her face softening. “I know, Noah. You never do.”

  He reached over and laid a hand on her knee. She didn’t respond to the gesture, but neither did she withdraw from it as he had half expected she would.

  They sat for several silent moments on the couch. Recognizing how much intimacy had been lost between them, Haldane felt a pang of remorse.

  Free of makeup and wearing a loose hooded sweater, Anna struck him as painfully beautiful. Barely five feet, she had a slight figure, a ballerina’s form. Her large brown eyes, high cheekbones, and slightly crooked smile aside, Anna possessed a fragile porcelain-doll quality that only enhanced her attractiveness.

  He squeezed her knee. “When I get back—”

  She shook her head. “Noah, there’s no point in talking about it until you are back.”

  “I think we need to talk about it now,” Haldane said. “This is about more than just you and me.”

  Anna stiffened in her seat. She pulled his hand off her leg and put her mug down on the coffee table. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Sometimes, you don’t act like you know it,” he said.

  She grunted a humorless laugh, and eyed him stonily. “You disappeared for over four months. Besides, you were gone before you left. Remember?” she said, referring to the stormy few months when Noah, by his own admission, had withdrawn from their marriage.

  Haldane knew better than to let it escalate, but he couldn’t help himself. “And that was reason enough to fall in love with someone else?”

  She crossed her arms. “I wasn’t looking for an excuse to. I was very lonely. It just happened, Noah.”

  “Bullshit, Anna,” he snapped. “It doesn’t just happen. I know I left you and Chloe, but there was a crisis going on, remember? I was needed over there.”

  “I needed you here,” she said softly, looking down at her feet.

  “Me?” He grunted. “Or just somebody?”

  She shook her head without looking up. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “No, Anna, I don’t. But you had better make up your mind soon. I’m not sharing you with another partner.” He paused for a deep breath. “You are going to have to choose between her and me.”

  WHO HEADQUARTERS GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  Despite the sunshine and cloudless blue sky, the autumn chill brought a shiver to Haldane who, expecting warmer weather, was jacketless. Nonetheless, he welcomed the crisp Geneva air, which provided a partial reprieve from the exhaustion, jet lag, and slight hangover that were blending into a throbbing headache.

  He stood with his suitcase slung over one shoulder and his laptop the other-4here had been no time to stop at his hotel on the way in from the airport—while he surveyed the familiar WHO headquarters. In the foreground fluttered a big blue WHO Bag, which consisted of the UN flag with a superimposed caduceus (staff and serpent). In the background rose the imposing main building whose waffle-style design looked a little more dated with each visit. What caught his eye this time was the never before seen show of force. Armed guards shouldering automatic rifles were posted on the street and at the entryways. An incongruent sight for peaceful Switzerland, but since the lethal bombing of a UNICEF meeting in Baghdad the UN wasn’t taking chances. Haldane found all the security measures a depressing reminder that the world was a little less safe than it used to be.

  He lingered for a few more breaths of the refreshing air before heading up the main pathway. After flashing his credentials for two sets of guards, he entered the foyer where an assistant met him, stored his suitcase, and shepherded him up to the tenth-floor conference room.

  The meeting was already in progress when Haldane stepped inside. With his usual French flourish Dr. Jean Nantal rose from his seat and rushed over to greet Noah with a hug and kiss on each cheek. “Ah, Noah, how good of you to come.”

  Impeccably groomed, lean with a long narrow face, Dr. Jean Nantal appeared the epitome of a distinguished European professor. In his mid-sixties, Nantal was a legend in Public Health circles. In his youth, he had been one of the architects of the wildly successful international smallpox eradication program of the ’60s and ’70s. With his ready smile and soothing French accent, the WHO’s Executive Director of Communicable Diseases had a gift for putting people at ease, which helped explain his enormous popularity and his ability to draw Herculean effort and self-sacrifice from his staff.

  “Hello, Jean,” Haldane said. “Sorry, I couldn’t get over any sooner.”

  Nantal waved his hand as if it were a bird taking flight. “Nonsense, Noah. We appreciate you coming on such short notice.” He indicated the others in the room with a sweep of his hand. ”I think you know everyone here, NON?”

  Noah nodded to the three people at the table. “Hello, Helmut,” he said to Helmut Streicher, the stern young Austrian epidemiologist with blond hair and brooding grayish blue eyes. “Milly.” He smiled at the petite shy Taiwanese microbiologist, My Li Yuen, who called herself Milly, if she spoke at all. But he saved his warmest wet-come for Duncan McLeod, the gangly Scottish virologist and fellow emerging pathogens expert who, personality aside, made an unforgettable impression thanks to his flaming red hair, scraggly beard, and lazy left eye. “Duncan, how the hell are you?” Noah asked.

  “Great! Shite! Couldn’t be better,” McLeod bellowed with typical loud irreverence. “The Chinese have finally done it this time, Haldane. Unleashed unholy Armageddon on us from one of their overcrowded farms. And the best part? Jean’s going to drop us into the eye of the hurricane like a couple of ill-fated palm trees!”

  “Ah, Duncan, always so colorful.” Nantal laughed. “I think you are getting ahead of yourself.” He turned to Haldane. “Have you had a chance to peruse the material we sent?”

  Haldane rummaged through his carrying case, pulling out the e-mail printouts, before sliding into the seat beside Yuen. “I read through what you sent, Jean, but there are a few holes in the picture.”

  “No shite!” McLeod piped up. “You could drive a tank through them”

  Nantal flashed his unflappable smile. “Let’s review what we do know, shall we?’ He looked over at Streicher, ”Helmut, for Noah’s benefit, do you mind reviewing the fascinating details you’ve just shared?”

  Streicher frowned before reaching for the open laptop computer in front of him. “Please.” He pointed at the screen on the far wall. He clicked the mouse and a map of China appeared. He tapped a key and the map zoomed in on northern China. An area in the screen’s center, roughly the shape of Florida, turned light pink. “Gansu Province.”

  Streicher clicked the mouse again. A small red “X” appeared north of the largest regional center, Jiayuguan City. “First known infection was documented on a farm fifty miles north of Jiayuguan City.”

  “Same old story, Haldane,” McLeod cut in. “Pigs, sheep, ducks, and Farmer Chan all drinking out of the same water supply. Common waste system, too. Shite! The whole farm probably ate with the same pair of bloody chopsticks. Their viruses allowed to—no. hell, encouraged to—mingle, share DNA secrets, and superinfect each other’s hosts. Lo and behold we get the second coming of the plague.”

  McLeod waved to My Li Yuen in a belated “no offense” gesture, but his diatribe had no visible effect on her. His acknowledgment, however, caused her to flush. “I know, Duncan,” she said in a slight high-pitched voice with only a trace of an accent. “You don’t hate all Chinese, right?” she giggled.

  “Very true. Especially the Taiwanese. Marvelous folks. Shite, Milly, truth be known, I’ve got a gigantic crush on you.” He blew her a kiss, which drew another giggle and a deeper shade of red from the mi
crobiologist.

  “As I was saying,” Streicher said, unamused. “According to the authorities the first four cases, two adults and two children, developed symptoms just over three weeks ago. ”

  “Has the Chinese government played ball so far?” Haldane asked.

  Nantal nodded. “Noah, it seems they’ve learned from their last experience,” he said, without specifying the SARS outbreak. “They’re the ones who invited us to come.”

  “Fucking great!” hollered the redheaded Scot “I was wondering where to send the thank-you card!”

  Like a child whose story had been interrupted one time too many, Streicher huffed and raised his voice louder. “Over the ensuing two weeks we see direct spread to neighboring farms. Eighty infected, twenty dead. The notable feature in this pocket of infection is the very short incubation period. Two to three days.”

  Streicher tapped the button and a few more Xs appeared in a cluster around the first one. “From these index cases,” he said, using the medical term for the first patient or patients responsible for local outbreaks, “we see spread to the towns north of Jiayuguan. Hundreds more infected. Same rapid incubation.”

  “Mortality rate?” Haldane asked.

  “The early figures suggest roughly twenty-five percent” Streicher ran a hand through his thick blond hair. “Appar . ently, the young and the healthy are worst affected.”

  “Oh ...” Haldane muttered. “That sounds familiar.”

  Jean Nantal read the recognition on Haldane’s face. “Ah, yes. We’ve been wondering about that, too. Maybe the Spanish Flu has come back to visit, NON?” Nantal grinned in his disarming way. “It’s a bit premature to know.”

  “The first case was documented four days ago in Jiayuguan City,” Streicher said. “According to local authorities they’ve only had a handful of cases in the city itself, but it is early.”

  “Very.” Haldane nodded. “And the hospitals?”

  “Coping quite well.” Nantal clasped his hands and shook them in a victorious gesture. “They’ve been doing better so far than with the SARS outbreak. No documented spread of the infection within hospitals. You see, Noah? There is a silver lining.”

  Not much of one, Haldane thought, but he nodded without comment.

  Nantal turned to Yuen. “Milly, can you share a little background on the microbiology?”

  Yuen shuffled through her notes. Though she wasn’t reading them, she kept her eyes fixed on the pages as she spoke. “We’ve only had the blood samples for under a week, but the bacterial and viral cultures are negative thus far. We’re running standard phenotypical and molecular viral diagnostics. We have run PCR, polymerase chain reaction, to every common viral family ... so far nothing conclusive.”

  Haldane picked up on her hesitancy. “What, Milly?” he asked.

  Yuen looked up from the papers and caught Haldane’s gaze. “It’s not hard science or anything, but some of the RNA probes were weakly positive for influenza.”

  “So it’s a strain of the flu?” Haldane asked.

  “We can’t say that,” Yuen said and dropped her eyes to her notes again. “All we’re testing for is viral DNA and RNA. The source patients might have all been exposed to an influenza outbreak ten years ago, and we’re just seeing the remnants of the dead virus in their blood.”

  “No causality.” Haldane nodded. “I understand, but what does your gut say, Milly? Is this the newest strain of the flut’

  “No,” Yuen said, but then her voice wavered. “I can’t say for sure, but it’s more like this microbe cross-reacts with the influenza on testing.”

  “Close but no cigar, huh?” Haldane said.

  Yuen nodded enthusiastically. “That’s my hypothesis. This isn’t any known influenza A or B, but a closely related virus. Probably one we’ve never seen.”

  Haldane wasn’t so sure. He leaned back in his chair and looked over at Nantal. “What do the Chinese expect from us?”

  “Noah, they only want what every government that comes to us wants.” Nantal held his arms wide open in front of him and smiled. “To find the cause and wipe out the disease.”

  “Right,” McLeod said. “And do it yesterday. And let them take the bloody credit.”

  “They can keep the credit,” Haldane said. “This bug sounds a bit too familiar. Short incubation. Related to influenza. Hemorrhagic pneumonia. Targeting the young and the healthy .. ”He paused and caught the eye of each of his colleagues in turn. “As you know the Spanish Flu—a form of Swine Flu—disappeared in 1919 just as quickly as it came. They’ve only ever found remnants of the actual virus. Thus, only part of the virus’s genome has ever been sequenced. We wouldn’t recognize it for sure if it had resurfaced.”

  “Ah, Noah, it’s early to make that leap,” Nantal said.

  “Yeah?” Haldane said. “But if it is the Spanish Flu, or some descendent of the same, it would be catastrophic to overlook the possibility.”

  “Understood.” Nantal nodded. “But you know the rules, my friend. Until we isolate a pathogen, we only refer to it by the syndrome it produces.”

  “Which is?”

  “‘Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome.”’ Nantal pointed proudly to Yuen. “We have Milly to thank for the acronym. ARCS.”

  The term sounded to Haldane as innocuous as the other viral acronyms, like SARS and AIDS, which had surfaced in the past few decades. But hearing it spoken aloud sent a chill through him as if he had just stepped out into the cool Geneva air.

  He wondered, grimly, if ARCS was going to make the world forget about all other viruses.

  CHAPTER 5

  GEORGETOWN WASHINGTON, D.C,

  With Peter’s possessions gone, their spacious three-bedroom condo felt empty to Gwen Savard. Not in a heartsick, if-only-we-had-one-more-chance way. Just barren. Peter had wanted to divide the furniture equally, but Gwen had insisted he take most of it. Now she regretted it. Guilt, she realized in retrospect, was not a helpful emotion when it came to dividing assets.

  What did she have to feel guilty about? she wondered. She hadn’t been unfaithful. She had never treated him with malice or cruelty. She had cooked her share of meals and had done more than her share of the laundry. She even attended most of his firm’s insufferable socials, ever the lawyer’s dutiful wife. Though Peter cited her consuming career as the cause, it was not the reason their relationship had derailed. Neither was the infertility issue. At painfully introspective moments like these, which only came after the breakup, Gwen realized her heart hadn’t been in the marriage from the outset As hard as Peter tried, one person cannot carry a romance. After he finally threw his hands up and walked away from their pleasant but passionless relationship Gwen assumed the lion’s share of the blame.

  Unwelcome childhood memories stirred. Gwen could picture her mother’s face. Not the current surgically pulled and heavily painted version, but the youthful stunning face of Gwen’s childhood. How Savard remembered her mother’s pained half smile that failed to conceal her disappointment when the A wasn’t an A+ or when the silver piano prize wasn’t gold or when the state scholarship wasn’t a Rhodes scholarship. Gwen imagined her mother’s youthful face, lips locked in that letdown grin, reassuring her how much better off she would be without Peter. Gwen’s stomach tightened. Like every day since Peter had left, she decided it best to put off telling her mother for another day.

  The unadorned walls amplified Savard’s sense of emptiness until it became oppressive. She needed to escape the reminders of her failed marriage, which explained why the country’s Bug Czar packed for a business trip that could have been handled over the phone.

  NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

  Gwen arrived in the early evening feeling rested. A self-confessed ’70s music addict, she had passed the six-hour drive—which accounted for the longest stress-free stretch in Gwen’s recent memory—listening to her favorite CDs, including Elton John’s Captain Fantastic, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, and Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.

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p; Driving through New Haven she was flooded with nostalgic memories of her postgraduate days at Yale, especially when she passed by her old apartment block. In sixteen years nothing had changed from the outside. Slowing to a halt at the front door, she could practically smell the exotic flavors that permeated her cramped studio apartment year round thanks to the thick hallway carpets, which absorbed her multi-ethnic neighbors’ cooking, magnified the aromas, and then released them. Gwen wondered if her unit still had the same blue and pink pastel-colored walls, which she and her friends had impulsively slapped on one day and regretted thereafter.

  Her career since graduation had been so demanding that in retrospect the four years spent completing a PhD at Yale while working two part-time jobs struck her as carefree by comparison. By college, Gwen had accepted her driving ambition as part of her makeup; neither good nor bad, but as much a part of her as her passion for travel or her tireless work ethic. Most of her fellow students kept the goal of their PhD as their primary focus. Not Gwen. She planned her life well beyond the degree. But she never envisioned a career within government. As a student, she assumed she would get her own lab and a national health research grant. To one day have a shot at a Nobel Prize like her mentor, Dr. Isaac Moskor.

  Savard was surprised to realize that she hadn’t seen Isaac in almost four years. He never left New Haven. And she rarely found time to make it back. They had kept in touch by e-mail and phone, but Isaac wasn’t much of a phone-talker and even less of a social writer. Professionally, Gwen tried to keep abreast of Moskor’s research because many considered him the leading researcher into antiviral antibiotics. Though fiercely secretive with his work, he trusted Gwen enough to share breakthroughs with her.

  Driving by her favorite student haunts, Gwen meandered her way across New Haven. Eventually she reached the sleepy middle-class neighborhood at the edge of town where Moskor lived. She pulled up to the curb in front of his modest, fifty-year-old beige bungalow. Like her former student residence, the house had not changed in the past twenty years.