24 Declassified: Cat's Claw

years passed, Copeland came to understand a basic principle of human nature: greed was powerful, but secondary. Fear was the prime mover of the human species. It was not enough to show human beings that the Amazon could provide them with profit. He had to fill them with fear of death and then show them that the Amazon was their salvation.

For years he had operated with this knowledge but without a coherent plan until, quite by accident, he had discovered the curative powers in the resin of a Croton lechleri tree in Brazil: The resin carried the dramatic name of Sangre de Drago or “Dragon’s Blood.” Then, through either coincidence or design influence (Copeland was not sure he believed in either), he had discovered a virus so deadly, it had never spread out of the deepest part of the Amazon. It was a unique feature of the most terrifying viruses in existence that, without artificial aid, they actually could not spread: they simply killed their hosts too fast. This virus was a variant of hemorrhagic fever, a distant cousin of Ebola and Marburg in Africa. Copeland was a biologist, not an anthropologist, but his own personal theory was that this virus had brought down the Mayan Empire. The common strain, which he’d discovered in a troop of Capuchin monkeys and was harmless to them, killed a human being in about twenty-four hours. In the rural Amazon, it often took more than a week to hike out of the deep jungle just to get to any kind of transportation. Explorers might have “discovered” the virus a thousand times in the last three or four centuries, but no one would ever have survived long enough to carry it into civilization.

The virus, in its native form, was terrifying. Within twenty-four hours it caused lesions in the skin that erupted so quickly that the skin seemed to come apart as though torn by giant claws. Some of the indigenous peoples, living in tiny villages at the fringes of the deep forest, told tales of una de gato, or Cat’s Claw.

Bernard Copeland had found his weapon.

But, with the wry observation that he could no more resist tampering with nature than the next man, Copeland had used his skills to “improve” Cat’s Claw. He nurtured more and more aggressive strains, until he’d developed a strain of the virus that killed within twelve hours.

His plan was simple and admittedly vicious. He would infect people of prominence and force them to publicly acknowledge the need to preserve the rain forests, which provided the Dragon’s Blood cure for the virus. If they didn’t, they would die.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Copeland had spent years gathering a team from the eco-terrorist groups, some of whom were even more radical than he. A few had even suggested simply spreading the virus around the globe, then releasing information about the cure a day later. Make the virus pervasive, they said; it was the best way to ensure that humanity needed the rain forest.

Copeland had balked. He was a scientist, and as a scientist he had calculated the odds and understood that some people might have to die. But if the virus were simply released into the human infrastructure, thousands would die, maybe millions. That was a cost that could be avoided, and therefore should be. Copeland had also studied the actions of classic terrorist groups like the PLO and al-Qaeda, and understood their method: it was not how many people you killed, it was how many you scared, that counted.

Time had passed, and Copeland’s small army grew, though few of them knew his real name. He continued using the nom de guerre of Seldom Seen Smith and called his group the Monkey Wrench Gang, finding cover in the pure ridiculousness of the names, since no one who was not passionate about the cause would take them seriously. He found people of many persuasions in business, in universities, and even in the government, who were faithful to the environment. And when the G8 summit was announced in Los Angeles, he knew he was ready.

Or he thought he had been. The Bernard Copeland who collapsed on the floor of his Santa Monica home was no longer Seldom Seen Smith. Smith had fallen apart in the middle of the Federal Building riots, chased by the police and tracked by a Federal agent. Smith had used his one trick on Jack Bauer, the chemical marker his company had experimented with in the Amazon, to track the agent, only to find that Bauer had outsmarted him. Smith really had one of his followers infect the man’s daughter, but he did not consider her to be in any danger. He had several doses of the vaccine, and it would be a simple matter to deliver it to her. In the meantime, anyone who studied the virus in her blood would be suitably terrified, which was what he wanted anyway.

From that moment on, all his plans had fallen apart. The police detective had…

Copeland shuddered, reliving the moment when she’d fallen into his precious and deadly stack of glass vials. Now Copeland needed the vaccine for himself. He could not be sure if he or Frankie had been exposed to one or both strains. The detective undoubtedly had.

“And she has no idea,” he murmured, his words slurred ever so slightly by the maracuja. “No idea at all. She could kill thousands.”

“So what?”

Copeland sat up, his heart skipping a beat.

“Relax, it’s me,” said Frankie Michaelmas.

She was standing in the doorway to his back rooms as calmly as though nothing had happened. He stood up and walked over to her in a maracuja haze and hugged her. He kissed her, and was too frantic and drugged to notice that her lips offered no warmth or passion.

“Don’t say so what,” he said at last, “don’t say so what. You know what. I don’t even know which strain she was exposed to. Maybe in less than a day, she could be infecting people, spreading the disease all across the city. We have to warn someone.”

Frankie shrugged, dislodged herself from his arms, and sat down in a chair.

“You do have doses of the vaccine, right?” Frankie asked almost lazily.

“Of course I do. But I have to make more now. For you and me.”

“Which strain do you think?” she asked.

Copeland shook his head. “No way of knowing. We have time, if we hurry. I’ll call the others. They’ll help.”

Frankie nodded. “I’ll call them. Tell me who.”

Copeland paused. Secrecy had been part of his protection, both for himself and his virus. Few members of his gang knew all the other members, and as a safeguard against abuse, he had not told those willing to use the virus where the vaccine was hidden. That way, no one was eager to play fast and loose with the virus itself.

“Okay,” he said uncertainly. He went over to a bookshelf to collect the contact information for his colleagues.

“Good. But don’t warn anyone else. It’s a disease. There’s a cure. Spread the disease and tell them where to go find the cure. Best way to get our way.”

So brutal, he thought, though he felt a delicious tremor in his stomach. “We have to warn them,” he said again. “And we have to find a way out. We have to take the antivirus ourselves and then get out. She saw my face. She knows you’re involved. And that Federal agent. I can’t believe the Feds got on our tail so fast. They’ll find us eventually.”

Frankie nodded. “That’s true. But you know that we know people that can help us with that. People with a lot of experience hiding from the government.”

The impact of her words reached Copeland even through his drug-induced stupor. He put down the book containing his contacts and bristled. It suddenly occurred to him that he absolutely should not tell Frankie where to find the vaccine. “Absolutely not.”

“They’re your contacts,” she pointed out. She reached forward to the coffee table and hefted a heavy piece of jade. Copeland had told her a dozen times the story of how he had discovered it during one of his hikes into the wilderness. She’d always liked its weight and its jagged edges. “You’re the one who wanted to learn from them.”

“Their philosophy! How they achieved their ends!” he spat. “We’re not going through this again. They are cold-blooded killers. Their goals are petty. We are trying to—”

“—save the planet,” she said like a teenager mocking her father. “Well, your reward is going to be a jail cell when they catch you. But those people can get us out of the country.”

Copeland shook his head. “I haven’t spoken with them in months. I have no way to contact them.”

“I do.”

Copeland’s eyes narrowed. He forced himself to pierce the tranquilizer’s veil to focus on her. “You? How did you— you have been speaking with them?”