virus. Any well-funded research lab could do that without difficulty.”
“What about the project you were working on with Vogel?”
“It was more specialized. It was known informally as the ‘Four-Hour Virus,’ because it was designed to have a four-hour lethality. Much more deadly than the 1918 strain.”
Yes. That’s what Paul had told him. A “four-hour lethality.”
“But you were working on the vaccine for this, not the virus.”
She looked off. Charlie looked too, saw the gray waters of the Rhone River five stories below. “That’s where the lines blur. According to the international treaty, developing anything that could be used offensively is prohibited. But to develop vaccines, you have to understand the virus. So we also created viral properties.”
“That was my father’s concern.”
“Yes, that it wasn’t regulated properly. And that private, non-governmental laboratories were becoming interested in the same thing. Labs well-funded by the pharmaceuticals industry. One in particular.”
“A company called VaxEze.”
“Yes.” She showed her smile. “How did you know?”
“I found the name in my father’s notes. But why?”
Their eyes locked, and neither looked away. She seemed to see him differently then, to maybe hear doors opening that she couldn’t open on her own. He began to think something else. Something he probably shouldn’t have been thinking. He was thinking how beautiful she looked.
BY THE THIRD meeting, Charles Mallory had talked with Paul Bahdru and had learned more about the elusive African businessman named Isaak Priest, who supposedly was funding terror groups and supporting corrupt regimes.
But why had that name been in his father’s note, as well? Did Isaak Priest have an interest in bio-weapons? Was he the one who had hired away Ivan Vogel? Who wanted to privatize the bio-weapons research?
They were questions Anna Vostrak had been unable to answer.
They met again in Paris, and over a day and a half became more comfortable with each other, spending time walking through Luxembourg Gardens, Anna talking in greater detail about the projects she had worked on, walking with her arms folded, her right hand occasionally chopping the air to make a point. That was when she told him about the man who had worked with his father on the Lifeboat Inquiry. A man named Peter Quinn, who had “become scared” and quit. She didn’t know why.
Charlie had again admired her sober intelligence. And the sly contradiction of her smile. They had hugged when they said goodbye, a formal hug. But he had imagined what it would be like to give her a real hug. And to kiss her.
THE FOURTH MEETING was in summer. By then, scattered outbreaks of deadly virus had spread through West Africa. Charles Mallory had witnessed one of them after the fact, a small valley of death in southern Sundiata, where two dozen people had perished overnight. He had gone there because of Paul Bahdru, who had also told him about the “ill wind” and the “October project.”
“I keep coming back to another idea,” she said, sitting beside him on a park bench in an Italian garden. “This was what concerned your father. If this virus could be engineered and controlled, it would be the perfect weapon because once it began to spread, there would be no way of ever determining, scientifically, whether it was naturally occurring or man-made. And without conclusive evidence that it was man-made, no one could make that leap. Not definitively.”
Anna brushed at the back of her left hand, her thoughts turning inward for a moment. Wind fluttered through the leaves above them, making patterns on the lake.
“In simplest terms,” she said, “you need only three elements: an agent, a method of delivery, and a vaccine. I don’t know that the public has really thought much in those terms. But if you have those three things, you have, potentially, the most formidable weapon in the world.”
Charlie watched a couple strolling toward them on the tree-lined walkway of the Lake Garden, letting the implications of what Anna had said sink in.
“It would, by all appearances, be a naturally occurring agent,” she said, “and its spread would begin in regions of the world where health care is very poor or in some cases non-existent. Where infectious disease is already epidemic.”
“Couldn’t it spread outside of these regions, too, even if there were a vaccine?”
“Sure, it’s possible. We still don’t understand viruses very well. We can’t accurately predict which ones will survive, which ones will die out. We just don’t know.”
Anna stood first, as if sensing danger, and they began to walk, past the flowerbeds and tufa rockeries and cast-iron pergola, toward the exit.
Charlie had made the same arrangements as before, but with three rooms this time: one for her to spend the night, one for him to spend the night, and a third for them to meet. But two of the rooms he’d rented went unused. In the morning, she had told him it was wrong, and he had not agreed. It was a conversation they would have again.
THE LAST TWO meetings had been with “Frederick Collins,” in Nice. They had a system then. A way of communicating. By the last meeting, several communities had been decimated in Sundiata, and both of them knew that it was real, even if the international media was largely missing the story. But there were still too many things they didn’t know. “I can’t answer all the questions, but I think we should find someone who can help us,” Anna said.
“Who?”
“All of the large multi-national pharmaceutical firms have intelligence branches these days.”
“As do many of the smaller ones,” Charlie said.
Anna nodded. “Yes. There’s too much at stake not to have them. It’s become a trillion-dollar industry, and there’s a huge amount of industrial espionage. We need someone who can go inside the industry and find anomalies. And answer our questions.”
“But if we go to someone who’s any good, wouldn’t we set off alarms?”
She smiled quickly. “I thought you would say that. I know someone, who’s not in the business anymore. Someone they probably wouldn’t look at right away. Maybe you can check him out before I make contact.”
She gave him the name.
“What would you ask him?”
“The four or five most important questions that we can’t answer ourselves. The ones you asked me.”
“Okay.”
“The only problem is it wouldn’t be cheap.”
Charlie shrugged. The government was paying his company big money to go after Isaak Priest and not requiring itemized expense reports. “I think I can swing it,” he said. “Let’s decide on the questions.”
They did, over dinner on Promenade des Anglais. The incongruity of their topic and the beauty of the Mediterranean wasn’t lost on them. The gravity and secrecy of the project had become an aphrodisiac, the way war could be an aphrodisiac. They made love slowly that night and shared stories in the dark about their lives. In the morning, Charles Mallory looked at the calendar. He picked the date and the place where they would meet next. With someone who could answer the questions they couldn’t answer themselves.
But he felt a deep longing when she left, knowing that he had to go forward but at the same time yearning for something else, something that felt akin to a “normal” life.
TWENTY-SIX
Saturday, September 26
CHARLES MALLORY DROVE HIS rented Chevy Blazer into the winding autumn hills around Asheville, toward the home of “R. Steen.”
