a policy of asking permission and having it denied. You never ask a lawyer for permission to do something. We are going to do the needful, and the lawyers are going to tell us why it’s legal.”
By this time, the people in the room were shouting and interrupting one another. General Russell, still thinking out loud, boomed, “So the next question is, Who the fuck is going to pay for it?” Before anyone had a chance to speak, he answered the question himself. “I’ll get the money. I’ll beat it out of somebody.”
More shouting.
The general’s voice rose above the noise. “This is a big one coming, so let’s not screw it up, fellas,” he said. “Let’s write the right game plan and then execute it.” In the Army, an important job is called a mission, and a mission is always carried out by a team, and every team has a leader. “We have to agree on who is going to be in charge of this operation,” the general continued. “C.J. Peters has got this action here. He’s in charge of the operation. He’s the designated team leader. Okay? Everybody agreed on that?
Everybody agreed.
“C.J., what we need is a meeting,” the general said. “Tomorrow we’re going to have a meeting. We have to call everybody.”
He looked at the clock on the wall. It was five-thirty, rush hour. People were leaving work, and monkeys were dying in Reston, and the virus was on the move. “We’ve got to pull the chain on this whole thing,” the general said. “We’ll have to inform everybody simultaneously, as soon as possible. I want to start with Fred Murphy at the C.D.C. I don’t want him to be sandbagged by this.”
Frederick A. Murphy was one of the original discovers of Ebola virus, the wizard with an electron microscope who had first photographed the virus and whose work had hung in art museums. He was an old friend of General Russell’s. He was also an important official at C.D.C., the director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases.
Russells put his hand on the telephone on his desk. He stared around the room. “One last time: are you sure you’ve got what you think you’ve got? Because I’m gonna to make this phone call. If you don’t have a filovirus, we will look like real assholes.”
Around the room, one by one, they told him they were convinced it was a thread virus.
“All right. Then I’m satisfied we’ve got it.”
He dialed Murphy’s number in Atlanta.
“Sorry—Dr. Murphy has gone home for the day.”
He pulled out his black book and found Murphy’s home phone number.
He reached Murphy in his kitchen, where he was chatting with his wife. “Fred, It’s Phil Russell… Great, how about yourself? …Fred, we’ve isolated an Ebola-like agent outside Washington… Yeah. Outside Washington.”
A grin spread over Russell’s face, and he held the phone away from his ear and looked around the room. Evidently Murphy was having some kind of a noisy reaction. Then General Russell said into the receiver, “No, Fred, we’re not smoking dope. We’ve got an Ebola-like virus. We’ve seen it… Yeah, we have pictures.” There was a pause, and he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to the room, “He thinks we’ve got crud in our scope.”
Murphy wanted to know who took the pictures and who analyzed them.
“It was a kid who took the pictures. Young guy named—what’s his name?—Geisbert. And we’re looking at them right here.”
Murphy said he would fly up to Fort Detrick tomorrow morning to look at the pictures and review the evidence. He took it extremely seriously.
1830 Hours, Tuesday
Dan Dalgard had to called, and they had to notify Virginia state health authorities. “I’m not even sure who the state authorities are,” Russell said. “And we’ve got to get them on the phone right now.” People were leaving work. “We’ll have to call people at home. It’s going to be a bunch of phone calls.” What county was that monkey house located in? Fairfax County, Virginia. My, oh my, a nice place to live. Fairfax County—beautiful neighborhoods, lakes, golf course, expensive homes, good schools, and Ebola. “We’ll have to call the county health department,” the general said. They would also have to call the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has control over imported monkeys. They would have to call the Environmental Protection Agency, which has jurisdiction in cases of environmental contamination by an extreme biohazard. General Russell also decided to call an assistant secretary of defense, just to get the Pentagon noticed.
People left the room and fanned out along the hallways, going into empty offices and making the calls. C.J. Peters, now the team leader, went into another office down the hall and called Dan Dalgard’s office, with Peter Jahrling on an extension line. Dalgard had gone home. They called Dalgard’s home, and Dalgard’s wife told him that Dan hadn’t arrived yet. At about half past six, they called Dalgard’s house again, and this time they got him. “This is Colonel C.J. Peters, up at USAMRIID. I’m the chief of the disease-assessment division… How do you do? …Anyway, I’m calling to report that the second agent is apparently not Marburg. The second agent is Ebola virus.”
“What is Ebola?” Dalgard asked. He had never heard of Ebola. The word had no meaning for him.
In his smoothest Texas voice, C.J. Peters said, “It’s a rather rare viral disease that has been responsible for human fatalities in outbreaks in Zaire and Sudan within the past ten or twelve years.”
Dalgard was starting to feel relieved—good thing it isn’t Marburg.
“What is the nature of Ebola virus?” he asked.
C.J. described the virus in vague terms. “It is related to Marburg. It is transmitted the same way, through contact with infected tissue and blood, and the signs and symptoms are much the same.”
“How bad is it?”
“The case-fatality rate is fifty to ninety percent.”
Dalgard understood exactly what that meant. The virus was much worse than Marburg.
C.J. continued, “With the information we have, we are going to notify state and national public health officials.”
Dalgard spoke carefully, “Would you, ahem, would you please wait until seven p.m., to allow me to apprise my corporate headquarters of recent development?”
C.J. agreed to wait before pulling the trigger, through in fact General Russell had already called the C.D.C. Now C.J. had a favor to ask of Dalgard. Would it be all right if he sent someone down to Reston tomorrow to have a look at some sample of dead monkeys?
Dalgard resisted. He had sent a little bit of blood and tissue to the Army for diagnosis—and look what was happening. This thing could go way out of control. He sensed that Colonel Peters was not telling him all there was to know about this virus called Ebola. Dalgard feared he could lose control of the situation in a hurry if he let the Army get its foot in the door. “Why don’t we meet by phone early tomorrow and discuss this approach?” Dalgard replied.
After the phone call, C.J. Peters found Nancy Jaax and asked her if she would come with him to meet Dalgard the next day and look at some monkey tissue. He assumed Dalgard would give permission. She agreed to go with him.
Nancy Jaax walked across the parade ground back to the Institute and found Jerry in his office. He looked up at her with a pained expression on his face. He had been staring out the window and thinking about his brother. It was dark; there was nothing to see out there except a blank wall.
She closed the door. “I’ve got something for you. This is close hold. This is hush-hush. You are not going to believe this. There’s Ebola virus in a monkey colony in Virginia.”
They drove home, talking about it, traveling north on the road that led to Thurmont along the foot of Catoctin Mountain.
“This is killing me—I’ll never get away from this bug,” she said to him.
It seemed clear that they both were going to be involved in the Army action. It wasn’t clear what kind of an action it would be, but certainly something big was going to go down. She told Jerry that
tomorrow she would probably visit the monkey house with C.J. and that she would be looking at monkey
