House of Acerbi

“From everything we’ve heard, it could grow into a worldwide epidemic. This could very well be the big one they’ve been predicting for so long.”

“Do you really think it’s coming our way?”

“No way to tell. With the speed of modern jet travel, it could already be here in Israel. That’s why your father told us to stay on the compound until he gets back from Rome. We should be safe as long as we don’t go into the city. We have the advantage of being totally self-sufficient here on the farm, and I have the internet for all the research I need to finish my thesis. At least that eliminates the need to drive into Jerusalem for classes.”

“Daniel told me this new virus was acting strange. Some people weren’t affected at all, while others died within hours.”

“I know … it’s horrible. Even your father’s friends in the government don’t seem to have a clear picture of what’s going on. Worst case scenario, it could be a mutation of a type of flu that’s turned super deadly. I’m more worried about my folks back in New Mexico, but at least out on the ranch they’re away from any major population areas. Mom cans fruit and vegetables every year, so they should have enough food stored to keep them from having to go to the store in town, and dad was smart enough to convert over to solar and wind power after they came here for the wedding last year and saw what your father had done on the compound with the new technology.”

Reaching out to each other, they locked hands and looked out at the waves crashing onto the sloping shoreline as the sound of a phone ringing in the background interrupted their brief moment of silence.

“Want me to get it?” John asked.

“No, that’s ok. I need to get some more sun block anyway.”

Ariella lifted herself from the chair and strolled back into the house while John continued watching the waves. He really did live in paradise.

Seconds later Ariella was back, standing over him and blocking the sun. “We have to go.”

“What?”

“We have to go. That was my father on the phone. He just ordered the Carmela’s crew to prepare the yacht for sea.”

“Right now?”

“He wants us underway in an hour.”

“An hour! Did he say why?”

“No. He just said to make sure Alex kept the boat at full speed all the way and …”

“And what?”

“And for us to stay away from populated areas.”

Ariella turned and began walking back toward the house.

“Ariella … wait. Where are we going?”

Ariella stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. “Italy.”

CHAPTER 11

Leo looked down at his shaking hands and realized he was still holding the paper that Morelli had given him earlier. Pushing his glasses down from his forehead, he noticed a bold header that ran across the top of the page: USAMRID, Fort Meade Maryland. Stamped diagonally over the heading was the word ULTRA in bright red letters. The page was filled with cryptic scientific jargon that included lines of numbers, rows of shaded blocks, a few graphs, and a fuzzy digital photographic image taken through an electron microscope.

“What is all of this, Anthony? What’s USAMRID?”

“It’s the U.S. Army’s biological warfare center.”

“Looks like some kind of top secret document. How did you get it?”

“Don’t ask. That paper contains some of the data American scientists have collected so far on the pathogen that struck New York.”

Leo glanced down at the page again. “I’m afraid this is totally outside my realm of expertise. I have no idea what any of this means … all this scientific jargon is like a foreign language to me.”

“Do you mind if I take a look, Leo?” Lev asked.

Leo handed the paper to Lev and stared back out the window as they approached the hill country of Umbria.

“This organism has been artificially engineered,” Lev said. “But there’s more. It has some very specific markers.”

“What kind of markers?”

Lev hesitated as the enormity of what he was looking at began to sink in. “Genetic markers, Leo.”

“I’m not sure I understand?”

“It was designed to affect certain people … maybe even a specific race.”

“Are you saying this thing could be ethnically targeted?”

“Precisely. They could do it by manipulating the pathogen so that it would affect only those with a specific DNA sequence, which itself is actually a code.”

Leo’s mind was reeling from the implications. “That’s monstrous! Who in their right mind would do such a thing?”

It was a typical response, but in truth, Cardinal Leopold Amodeo knew quite well that the world was overflowing with those who would love to acquire a weapon that could wipe out an entire race while leaving others untouched.

Lev cracked his window a few inches before pulling a cigar from his shirt pocket and lighting it with a match. “We know that there have been several attempts at such a thing in the past, most notably in South Africa. Ten years ago, an Israeli Mossad agent spotted a well-known South African scientist at an airport in Libya and followed him to a secret underground biological lab that Colonel Gadhafi had constructed out in the desert.”

“I’ll bet that got the Israeli’s attention.”

“It not only got our attention, but it prompted us to launch a full scale investigation into just what the South Africans were up to. I was working for the Mossad at the time. Turns out the scientist our agent had followed was the head of a South African biological warfare research program. The program was called Project Coast. What we found sent chills up everyone’s spines. We discovered that the South African government had constructed their own biological research facility beneath an old farmhouse located on scrubland ten miles north of Pretoria. We had accidently stumbled upon what was possibly one of the most evil research centers since the Nazi experiments in World War II. They were working with smallpox, Ebola, anthrax, botulinum, the plague … they had it all.”

“Do you think the same scientist is behind this new outbreak?”

“It’s possible. After the apartheid regime collapsed the lab was destroyed, but the scientist, along with most of his research notes, disappeared. Evidently, he tried to burn some of his secret files, but one of his research assistants was actually a Mossad agent that we had just put into place. After the other scientists had left the room, our agent put out the fire and retrieved the notes. That’s when we found out what these guys had really been up to. In addition to learning the essentials of biological engineering, they were discovering ways to freeze dry and weaponize various organisms by mixing them with nanopowder so that the pathogens could become easily airborne and penetrate human lungs. All of this was being done elsewhere around the world of course, especially in Russia and North Korea, but what was different about this program was the fact that they were also doing genetic research and isolating genes with the goal of making a biological weapon that could target a specific race. They were actually creating an ethnic bomb.”

“Sounds like some kind of diabolical Nazi plot,” Leo said.

“Believe me,” Lev continued, “if Hitler had been able to develop such a weapon he would have used it. When word of what the South Africans were up to got out, a well-known Nobel Prize-winning scientist dubbed it the monster in our backyard. He also predicted that the release of a genetic weapon like that would unleash genetic variations that could create a mutant form of the pathogen that would wipe out not only the targeted race, but the entire human species … a real life Andromeda Strain. Unfortunately, we now know that