Julia thought the next number, 00:01:49:15, was a tape counter in National Television System Commission protocol: hours, minutes, seconds, then frames, which were ticking off at a pace of thirty per second. This was no amateur shoot; whoever had filmed, edited, and compiled this demonstration was professional.
As the camera followed the two men through the grungy streets of a small village, Stephen stretched across to tap at the number below the counter.
'See that?' he asked.
'Some kind of countdown,' Julia observed. 'Seven hours and four minutes—to something.' She suppressed the urge to look at her watch, almost forgetting that the events playing out on her computer screen were now thirteen months old. Still, that backward-moving timer gave her the chills.
The men on the screen walked into a square where an old military-type truck idled loudly, belching clouds of oily exhaust from a rattling tailpipe. The truck was a sick shade of greenish-yellow, except for spots of pea green on the cab doors where insignias had been stripped away. Other men, all black, converged on the truck from different directions. In turn, each man climbed aboard, disappearing within the
truck's canvas-covered bed. When the 'star' of the video—that's the way Julia had come to think of the round-headed man—disappeared into the shadows, the image flickered once and went black.
Julia realized she'd been holding her breath. She let it out and pulled in another.
A new scene appeared with a jolt of the camera—a close-up of a pudgy man with an enormous gut and a yellow hard hat. He was barking out orders in a tongue so foreign it made Julia's head hurt. From behind came the sound of motors, raised voices, and the staccato rhythm of construction. After a moment, the camera swung to an area where a small group of men were slamming axes into trees. The camera zoomed in on the one in the center— Julia's star.
'The countdown,' Stephen whispered.
It read -00:13:58. Julia's stomach tightened. A car horn from the laptop's tiny speakers drew her back to the video. The horn blasted for about five seconds. In that time, the star looked up, dropped his ax, and started meandering toward the camera, head hung as his left hand massaged his right bicep. The camera pulled back and hobbled away, taking a position some forty feet from the army-style truck. Again men converged on it, each with the day's physical agony showing on their bodies: filthy clothes, hair hued tan with sawdust and forested with spiky wood chips, grimacing faces, joints so stiff Julia could almost hear them creak. Shadows pooled at their feet, betraying a midday sun.
Each leaned into the back of the truck and emerged with a sack or box. They moved to the shade at the edge of a dense forest and sat. They pulled unwrapped clumps of a doughy substance from their containers, then worked vigorously to transfer it to their stomachs. The star ate quietly, perfectly centered in the camera's eye. The camera jiggled occasionally but otherwise remained stationary.
'Anyone got a fix on the location?' Julia asked without turning away from the screen.
'Haven't seen enough of the landscape,' answered Allen. 'I'd guess the language is an African dialect—a form of Swahili, maybe.'
'So, Africa?'
'Just a guess. The town was pretty impoverished, and that foliage appears equatorial. Africa, South America, Southeast Asia. Our best clue—'
Julia stopped him with a raised hand, palm out.
The countdown had reached -00:00:55, and heads began turning skyward, apparently hearing something not yet detectable to the camera's microphone. Their eyes scanned aimlessly, then focused on something up and to the left of the screen. Over their apparent words of curiosity came the escalating drone of an airplane motor, like the hum of an approaching giant. Someone pointed, and one by one the men stood.
At this point the camera swung away from them, catching a white flash of sunlight before finding blue skies over the leafy tips of trees. A black dot grew quickly into a single-engine plane, coming in low over the forest. In an instant it swooped down, blurring hugely in the monitor. As the camera followed, it spewed a fine mist from its undercarriage.
'Crop duster,' Allen remarked, stating the obvious out of sheer befuddlement.
The plane banked right, leaped over the trees, and disappeared.
Angry words poured from the speakers as the camera panned to the men speaking them:
'That was French!' Stephen said. 'I heard
'French again.
As the mist blanketed them, the workers closed their eyes to it, coughed, and shook their fists at the spot where the plane had disappeared. Brushing off a flourlike dust, they spoke in sharp tones to one another and spat at the ground.
'Wait a sec,' Julia said, moving a finger to the keyboard and causing the image to freeze. 'The countdown's at plus twenty-two seconds now.' She moved the cursor on the screen to the rewind button and tapped her finger. In reverse, the workers appeared to powder themselves with dust that magically floated off their bodies and sailed into
the air. Julia froze the image again. 'Negative five seconds.' She started clicking a button. 'Four . . . three . . . two . . .'
'The mist from the plane is just coming into view at the top of the screen,' Allen pointed out. Despite Bonsai's predictions about the converted file's poor quality, the resolution was perfect.
'One.'
The mist was just hitting the tops of their heads.
'Zero.'
The star's head was only a vague shadow behind the layer of dropping mist.
'That's it,' Julia said. 'The countdown was to this point.'
'When whatever was in that mist hit their lungs,' Allen said.
Dead silence filled the van like smoke as the three gazed at the image on the screen. After a few moments, Julia clicked a button to reactivate the video in real time. They had already seen this part: the men hurling insults at the sky, dusting themselves off, checking their food for residue . . .
'So what African countries speak French?' Julia asked, turning to Stephen and shifting in the big chair to tuck a leg under herself. She kept flicking her eyes toward the screen, waiting for something new. Despite being with two civilians, mentally she had donned her investigator's hat and was getting into the rhythm of corporate deductive reasoning.
'Zaire,' Allen said. He whipped a crumpled pack of Camels out of his breast pocket and shook one out. After tossing it into his lips, he said, 'It's obvious, isn't it? Ebola? Zaire?' He replaced the pack and removed a bright red Bic lighter from the same pocket; instead of lighting up, he rolled it between his fingers and raised his eyebrows at her. 'The two are practically synonymous.'
'It adds up,' Stephen agreed.
Julia nodded and turned back to the screen. She wasn't really sure why it mattered at this point, but Donnelley had taught her that every fact, no matter how seemingly insignificant, played a part—sometimes a crucial part—in unraveling the mystery at hand.
'Okay, Zaire,' she said quietly and watched as the camera
panned slowly over the faces of the complaining men, lingering a moment on each one as if to record their identities.
'I don't like where this is heading,' Allen said.
She brushed her bangs away from her forehead. Without turning away from the screen, she said, 'If we really are dealing with Ebola, I think we just witnessed the intentional infection of these people.'
'What bothers me more is that Ebola spreads through body fluids, blood usually.' Allen shifted, agitated.
Julia paused the display as the camera was pulling back to frame the entire group again.
