But that institution might have frowned on his work. So Tarik built his own suit area. He sealed a five-foot corner of the basement in floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas, then covered the Plexiglas with thick plastic sheeting, creating a plastic bubble whose air could not circulate into the rest of the room except through an intake and exhaust system protected by HEPA filters.
Inside the bubble Tarik needed his own sealed air supply. Because Canada, like other industrialized countries, restricts the sale of full-body positive pressure suits, Tarik couldn’t order one. Instead he used a respirator and oxygen tanks like those worn by scuba divers. To avoid contaminating the open part of the basement, he installed a Plexiglas passage off the door to the bubble, creating a crude airlock. He always changed into and out of his respirator in the airlock. Inside the bubble he had installed a stand-alone safety cabinet that held a mouse cage and a nebulizer, a machine that blew air through liquids to produce aerosol sprays. On the bubble’s plastic floor he had placed a half-size refrigerator and a cage big enough for a cat or a small dog. He hadn’t used the cage yet, but he expected to change that soon.
The space wasn’t ideal. Tarik could work inside it for only short stretches, until his tanks ran out of oxygen. And his respirator wasn’t as reliable as a genuine BSL-4 pressure suit. Still, the bubble had worked so far. He hadn’t gotten sick, and neither had the mice in the open half of the basement, a crude but effective way to measure exposure. Too bad he couldn’t show his professors — they’d be impressed.
TARIK FLICKED ON the overhead lights and checked to be sure the benches and beakers and agar dishes were exactly as he had left them. Down here the street and the world seemed far away. Only the faint rustling of his mice intruded on the silence. He counted them, making sure none had gone missing.
He stripped naked and folded his clothes on a chair. Normally he worked first with less dangerous germs before entering the bubble. But tonight he wanted to be close to his “specials,”
Finally he opened the inside door of the airlock and stepped into his bubble.
In here he could have been underwater, or on the moon. Only his breathing broke the perfect silence. He slid noiselessly to the safety cabinet. A week earlier he had grown
AFTER GROWING THE plague, Tarik injected it into six mice. Only one survived more than two days. Now it, too, lay on its side in the safety cabinet. Tarik put the mouse’s carcass in a glass container, then filled the container with hydrochloric acid to destroy the remains. At McGill he would have autopsied the animal to see how exactly it had died, but in here that wasn’t important. He simply wanted to prove to himself that he could grow a good, virulent strain of
But Tarik knew he had taken only a small step toward his ultimate goal. Infecting people with pneumonic plague was much harder than sticking a needle in a mouse. He needed to figure out a way to spray the germ in a fine mist that could be inhaled and caught in the lungs. He would have to test different solutions, different plague concentrations, chemicals that might allow the mist to disperse more easily without killing the bacteria inside it.
That challenge had perplexed scientists in labs much more sophisticated than this basement. Aum Shinrikyo, an apocalyptic Japanese cult, had spent millions of dollars in the 1990s trying to develop biological weapons, and had even sprayed Tokyo with botulism and anthrax. But Aum had never managed to infect anyone. Its only successful attack had come with nerve gas, which was far easier to make than biological weapons.
Furthermore, military scientists weren’t exactly publishing reports about their experiments with plague. Tarik would have to make his own mistakes. He wished he could talk to someone about the technical difficulties. But his only confidant was Omar Khadri. Khadri was a typical nonscientist. He seemed to think that unleashing an epidemic should be as easy as growing germs in a beaker and then tossing them on subway tracks. He had been bitterly disappointed when Tarik had explained otherwise.
“You received my present?” Khadri had asked in their last conversation, a few days after the plague arrived. Tarik was at a pay phone at a gas station in Longueuil, on the other side of the Saint Lawrence River, miles from his house.
“Yes. Thank you, Uncle.” They always spoke French and never used names or specifics.
“So how long will it be?”
“I can’t say, Uncle.”
“Your best guess then. A month? A few months?”
“For the purpose you require, a few months at the earliest.”
“You know I’m anxious to see your work.”
Tarik shifted anxiously from foot to foot. He hated to disappoint Khadri. “I beg your forgiveness. But this job cannot be rushed.”
“Will you need more money?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“The same as January.” That was $200,000. Tarik had spent carefully, but the equipment he needed was unavoidably expensive.
“The same?” Khadri laughed, but the sound had an edge. “You think your uncle is so rich?”
Tarik said nothing.
“I’ll make the arrangements,” Khadri finally said. “And how is your wife?”
“Uncle, I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t let her become a distraction, my nephew.”
How easy for you to say, Tarik thought. “Will you visit soon? I’d like to see you.”
“I wish I could,” Khadri said. “But I’m very busy these days. You’re sure you don’t have any competitors?”
“I’ve been very careful.”
“Well. Nephew. In this I am in your hands.” Khadri sighed, as if he found that admission particularly painful. “Keep up your work. You know the whole family has great hopes for you. We’ll speak again soon.”
“I won’t disappoint you, Uncle.”
Click.
TARIK WISHED KHADRI could see the basement now. He was certain his “uncle” would be impressed. Two days before, Tarik had moved colonies of
Tarik poured the broth into a glass mixing dish, carefully scraping the colonies of
This was the most basic way to aerosolize bacteria, Tarik knew. But he wanted to see whether
