Germ

Julia listened and heard Stephen's slow, deep breaths. She was considering waking him to discuss Litt's germ or their plan of attack or anything that might help her not feel so small and alone . . . when she fell asleep.

seventy-nine

Allen could not help himself. His mind kept returning to the video on Julia's computer of the man succumbing to Ebola, or what they had assumed was Ebola. The pain, the bleeding out, the convulsions. He remembered the way he had described it to Julia: 'Internal organs start to decay as though you're already dead, but you're not. Your blood loses its ability to clot, then your endothelial cells, which form the lining of the blood vessels, fail to function, so blood leaks through. Soon it oozes from every orifice—even from your eyes, pores, and under your fingernails. Then you die.'

He felt it in him, dissolving his tissues like acid.

He wished he were imagining it. Eighty percent of med school students experience some form of hypochondriasis—their detailed study of serious illnesses plants the seeds that blossom into psychosomatic symptoms. His roommate had suffered from it so badly, he'd dropped out. Allen wasn't prone to that; even if he were, he thought he'd recognize the difference between made-up pain and real, my-guts-are-disintegrating pain. What he felt was the latter.

The cot's crossbar still pushed into his ribs, but now he imagined his ribs bending softly under the pressure, his liver and kidneys and lungs oozing around it, dripping to the floor.

He opened his eyes. The bright fluorescents jabbed at them. The wall four inches from his nose was painted white. The roller had textured it with fine dimples. A faint brown smudge had remained after the last cleaning. He rolled over, folding the thin pillow to give his head more support.

Someone was standing in his room, leaning into the corner opposite the cot. An angel, he thought. White skin against the white walls. A white tunic draped over the white skin. But no, wouldn't an angel be beautiful? Perhaps not. This one was gaunt, skeletal, its head bald and bulbous. It wore sunglasses.

Allen raised his head, squinted at the figure. It was a man. The tunic was a lab coat, but the distressing angularity of his face and the paleness of his skin were just as Allen had first perceived. He'd seen the face before. The video: he was the man who had approached the camera at the end of the second clip, when Vero was filming the air base and laboratories. Allen propped himself up on an elbow.

The man smiled. 'Good morning, Doctor,' he said.

'What . . .' His throat was raw. He tasted blood. His voice was weak and gravelly. 'What have you done to me?'

'I believe you know.'

'I know . . .' He swallowed dryly. 'You're Karl Litt.'

The man pushed off the wall and stepped closer. His hands came together. With long fingernails he began scraping the back of one hand, then the other. 'How do you recognize me?'

Didn't Litt know what was on Vero's chip? If not, Allen wasn't sure he wanted to tell him. He changed the subject.

'Is this . . . Ebola?'

'Did you determine that from your symptoms? I hope my specialty isn't also getting around.'

'How? How was I infected?' They may have injected him when he was unconscious, but he didn't think so. If it was an airborne strain, then . . . 'Why not you or the other guy . . . Gregor? Why not everyone here?'

'So you don't know it all.' He looked around the room, then sat on the edge of the cot. 'How much do you know about DNA?'

Allen raised his body into a sitting position. He felt his organs shifting and sloshing inside. He scooted back, slowly, painfully, until his shoulder blades were against the wall. 'Not my field.'

'As a physician, I'm sure you know more than an auto mechanic. But I'd hate for you to miss the punch line because the rudiments bogged you down. Oh . . .' He tugged a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it up to Allen.

Allen looked down. Blood had drizzled down his chest. He touched his fingers to his face. Lots of blood. He felt his cheeks, hoping it wasn't coming from his eyes.

'You have a nosebleed,' Litt said. 'It happens.'

Allen took the handkerchief, wiped his hands and his face, and held it firmly to his nostrils.

'DNA,' Litt said. 'The complex molecule is a hereditary blueprint that defines a person's skin pigment, eye color and shape, hair color and texture, height, bone structure—every physical trait, including genetic diseases. Each DNA strand is made up of six billion repeating chemical units called nucleotides, consisting of one of four different kinds of chemicals called bases—A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, and T for thymine. So an individual's genome could be expressed GTTCGTCAAATTG . . . and so on for six billion letters. No two people share the exact same sequence. Twins are close, but still unique. Interestingly, nature—' He held a up a conciliatory hand. 'Or God. I understand your brother is a priest.'

'A pastor,' Allen said flatly.

'Well, then . . . God put markers in generally the same spots on our DNA strands. These markers are the same in everybody. They're like road signs that tell us what the subsequent DNA codes are for— height, hair color, Huntington's disease, obesity. These markers simplify the process of finding sequences unique to specific individuals.

How many thugs are doing time because they left a bit of their DNA at a crime scene—blood, semen, skin, hair roots?'

'All right,' Allen said. 'DNA is unique and identifiable. That doesn't explain—'

'Now, now, Dr. Parker. This is fascinating stuff, if you hear me out.' He cleared his throat. 'I'm sure you're more versed in the ways of viruses. To refresh: A virus is designed to survive. Whatever it needs to replicate itself —to propagate the species, if you will—it will do. That may mean mutating to avoid a threat, such as an antibody, or to avoid competition from a stronger virus. That's why we have so many different ones. Herpes viruses seek out the cells of nerve tissue, the avian flu virus goes right for the alveoli cells, deep in the lungs. A virus is like a key looking for the cell with a matching lock. When it finds the right cell, it unlocks it and strolls on in, a thief with a key to the jewelry store. The virus tells the cell's DNA to stop what it's doing and focus on replicating the virus. So now a cell is destroyed, and the virus multiplies. In Ebola's case, the cells it commandeers happen to be the ones that hold together blood vessels and organs.

'Since we know that a virus has the ability to find what it needs, why not tell it what it needs? Gene splicing is a fairly simple matter these days. The technology exists, for instance, to take out the gene that codes for brown eyes and literally stick in the gene that codes for blue eyes. However, I did not change what the Ebola virus looks for— the lock that fits it. I simply added another lock. When Ebola finds a tissue cell it would normally unlock, it encounters a second lock and can't get in. That other lock is a specific individual's DNA, just enough of a sequence to differentiate that person from all but a few other people in the world. I splice that sequence into the section of the Ebola DNA that tells it what to look for, part of its glycoprotein gene. Now, it looks for only the endothelial cells of the person I told it to find. When both keys match, it takes over the cells, replicates, and essentially becomes full-blown Ebola. Or, more precisely, Ebola Kugel. Kugel means 'bullet' in my native tongue. A bullet instead of a bomb.' His lipless mouth bent upward.

Allen thought a moment. 'You've got Ebola piggybacking on a common cold virus?'

Litt nodded. 'Rhinovirus. It can move across the country in twenty-four hours. But Ebola is not so much hitching a ride as it is spliced into it. That way it replicates with the cold virus. I'm making it all sound very easy,' he said with a wave of his hand, 'but it's infinitely complicated, I assure you. If it weren't, someone else would have already done it.' He slapped Allen's leg with his skeletal hand. 'Now then. Why am I telling you all this?'

When Allen said nothing, he continued. 'To convince you I know what I'm doing. None of this is an accident. I am in complete control. So believe what I say now.' He bowed his head closer to Allen and whispered, 'I have the cure.'

Hope moved through Allen like adrenaline. He tried to suppress it, hold it down, but his heart thumped faster, his stomach tightened in anticipation.

'There is no cure for Ebola,' he said.