Louise's grandmother tucked inside his pocket.
The little girl still had only mild symptoms. Her blood showed what could be bricks of virus. No worms. No progression of anything that looked like worms. And unlike her mother, Mary Louise's blood didn't light up when tested with actual Ebola.
Platt knew the statistics by heart. Te n to fifteen percent infected with Ebola Zaire recovered. No one understood why or how. It was a small percentage, but Platt hoped Mary Louise would be included in that small percentage. The vaccine would improve those odds.
With her mother incapacitated and without her grandmother here, there was no one to sign the waivers. So Platt had given Mary Louise the first injection himself. It would all fall on his shoulders anyway. He was willing to take the heat for this, too.
He had told Mary Louise that the needle would sting, but just for a second or two like a 'big ole mosquito.' She crinkled her nose at that and laughed, then asked, 'Will it itch?'
In his mind he kept calculating the hours and minutes. By now he couldn't shut it off if he tried. Time ticking away and yet he couldn't remember what day of the week it was.
Mary Louise searched for a different crayon. She seemed perfectly content. Totally unaware of the firestorm brewing all around her.
His Sunday routine—when he took a Sunday off—was quiet, with him and Digger on the screened-in back porch overlooking the woods. His parents took care of Digger when Platt worked long hours, never once suggesting he find a different home for the dog, knowing the two were inseparable, dog and man bonded by the absence of a little girl they both adored.
Dr. Drummond came into Mary Louise's suite and the little girl stood to greet her. Platt waved goodbye and she waved back. He hated to leave. It was silly but he wished that if he could just keep watch over her maybe nothing more would happen.
He left the Slammer and took the stairs.
Down in the Level 4 suites he changed once again into scrubs and prepared to get into a space suit for the third time in as many days. He had decided to keep his circle of staff small, pulling in those who had worked on some of his toughest assignments. Earlier he had handed off to Sergeant Hernandez the mailing envelope that Agent O'Dell had taken from the Kellerman home. He knew it was a tall order for the budding scientist even before he saw the surprise in her eyes. She had assisted him plenty of times in the lab and he knew she was more than capable. He also knew that she would test and retest her results before she presented them to him and that would be a bonus.
She was still working when he came in, her gloved hands too busy to wave an acknowledgment. He stood quietly beside her, making sure she noticed his presence despite the hiss of her space suit. He didn't crowd her or rush her.
Hernandez must have pinned back or tied up her unruly curls but he could still see them swirling around inside her helmet. A few now stuck to her damp forehead. She glanced up and Platt caught a glimpse of her green eyes through the plastic. Her eyes were intense, a little wild. She'd found something.
'WHAT IS IT?' he asked, no longer able to wait.
'THE PLASTIC BAG INSIDE THE MAILING ENVELOPE…' She sounded breathless. 'I FOUND SOMETHING. TISSUE, BLOOD CELLS.'
'ENOUGH TO TEST?'
'YES.'
'EBOLA?'
'YES, DEFINITELY. THE CELLS ARE BLOWN UP WITH WORMS.'She stopped her hands.'THERE'S SOMETHINGELSE,SIR.' She looked up at him and met his eyes. 'THEY'RE NOT HUMAN CELLS.'
'MONKEY?'
'AS FAR AS I CAN TELL IT'S MACAQUE. I'M TESTING AGAINST OUR OWN MACAQUE SAMPLES. THEY'RE VERY CLOSE.'
Suddenly Platt got a sick feeling in the bottom of his gut. He'd asked McCathy about a possible contamination. Could they have contaminated Ms. Kellerman's tissue sample from inside their own labs? McCathy had shrugged off the idea. To o many walls of biocontainment. No way one of their recorded tissue samples got mixed up with Ms. Kellerman's or any of the other three patients'. They ran a tight ship, no doubt about it.
But how was someone able to send Ebola to Ms. Kellerman in the first place? Where had the microscopic tissue from a macaque monkey come from, tissue hot with Ebola? Was it possible it had gone missing from their own freezers? In their research experiments they used macaque monkeys. So did other research facilities, but few other facilities had Ebola. Could someone from within USAMRIID have stolen it? Could one of their own have done this?
'GOOD WORK,' he told Hernandez. 'GO AHEAD AND FINISH UP HERE.' He gestured that he was leaving.
He needed to do an inventory. He'd check their Ebola samples, every last one of them. But would he be able to tell if any was missing? All it took was a small amount. A microscopic amount.Years ago a scientist, an ex- employee of USAMRIID, had been accused of smuggling out anthrax, the anthrax that had caused five deaths. It ended up there was little evidence to support that accusation but just the speculation had raised questions about their procedures and security measures.
Now Platt realized that Janklow must be thinking the same thing. He had to wonder whether the virus could have come from within their own laboratories. Was he concerned about new accusations? Did the commander want this to all go away quietly, secretly, because he worried about USAMRIID's reputation? Or was it his own reputation he was worried about? And just what was the commander willing to do to keep it under wraps?
CHAPTER
58
With her father gone, Emma had spent the entire afternoon reading the letters from Indy to Liney. He wrote to her almost every day of September, filling her in about his life at Quantico, the cases he was working, his friends Razzy and J.B. Some of them rambled, others were brief but sweet. Actually, she thought it was sweet that he couldn't go a day without talking to her even if it was in a letter.
At first Emma didn't understand why they didn't just call each other, that was, until she found out they didn't have cell phones back then. Long-distance calls were expensive. What an ancient civilization.
Emma flipped through the previous letters. Wow, she thought. This was the first time he'd signed a letter, 'Love, Indy.' She wondered what the difference was. He didn't even make a big deal out of it, just signed it. Maybe
