“If our investigation continues to stack up, then yes.”
Li chips in. “But, Jessie, that would take weeks and months, waiting for local governmental and secret service process to complete. That still leaves us vulnerable to Family First in India, especially if they elect a candidate like Jingo, and especially if his medical company is involved in something underhand.”
“Got it. So you want me to go full steam ahead,” I confirm.
“Yes, but I’ve reviewed your sleep data for the past week,” Li adds. “It’s highly unsatisfactory. I recommend you try to meditate now and get a few hours of quality sleep.”
“I’ll do my best,” I reply, resisting the urge to salute.
Li makes it sound so easy. I hang up and spend some time riling myself into annoyance at Li’s placid logic, which leaves pretty much no room for emotion, tension, or stress. Then I try using a meditation app on my phone. I remember doing a lot of deep breathing but I don’t remember falling asleep until an insistent knocking on my door wakes me. I force my eyes open against the bright sunshine pushing its way in through the window blinds. Shuffling to the door while grasping for the hotel robe, I open up for Peggy to sweep in. She looks so perfectly put together that I can only imagine she’s been getting ready since dawn.
“The lab has something for us, but they won’t discuss it on the phone,” she says. “Can you be ready in ten minutes? We’ll go over there together.”
Clutching an iPad, Ajay is standing outside the lab door to greet us as soon as we arrive. If he wasn’t wearing a different suit and tie, I would have sworn he’d just stayed there all night, standing to attention and anticipating our arrival. It strikes me that I’ve yet to meet an Indian who believes in nine-to-five work hours.
Peggy greets him warmly and we all move at a fast clip through the foyer and into an elevator made of glass that rises up through the building, giving us a cool view of the labs that are arranged out from the center of the building like spokes on a wheel.
We emerge onto the top floors, a light-flooded oasis of white corridors. A younger man meets us as we leave the elevator. He holds open a lab door and we enter to find an impressive array of equipment lining the counters, and high ceilings studded with LED lights.
“My name is Raj,” the doctor introduces himself. “Ajay asked me to oversee this case and put myself at your disposal,” he adds. “I’ve also heard personally from the Indian ambassador in London that I should make myself fully available.”
Good old Peggy and her contacts. Never more than two degrees of separation from someone useful and, we hope, trustworthy. It feels like Raj is looking for us to reciprocate on the introductions, but Peggy just thanks him effusively and once she is finished, we both watch him, waiting for information. He gets on with it.
“The vial you brought in from India Laboratory—by the way, not a real lab, with any real credentials—contains a toxin.”
“What kind of toxin?” Peggy asks.
“It’s a neurotoxin. But it is made very difficult to detect because it is so tiny. You see, the toxin is encapsulated in a nanoparticle,” he explains. “This has the effect of making it untraceable with regular blood tests. Even the centrifuge is not stable enough on particles so small. But we used an electron-transparent support on the vials you brought in, and it showed up.”
He turns to a desktop screen and jiggles a mouse around to wake it up. What he shows us is a computer-generated image that looks like an egg.
“The toxin seems to be a virus, and a virus generally looks like this—a shell with DNA inside. The shell is sticky. It seems that whoever made this concentrated the virus into a nanoparticle to make it more potent.”
Peggy’s worried eyes flick to mine, then back to Raj.
“Are the girls carrying it?” Peggy asks him.
Raj looks at Ajay, who steps forward, with his iPad at the ready. On it is a list of names and, I presume, test results.
“I am sorry to say that the girls are all carrying it,” Ajay confirms. “When we knew what we were looking for, we knew how to find it. The good news is that your blood test was clear, Jessie.”
“Thank God,” Peggy breathes. But I’m not relieved.
“What about Riya?” I ask.
Ajay hesitates and my heart sinks. “She has it too.”
Take a breath, Jessie. Think.
“So why aren’t the girls sick, if they’re carrying a powerful virus?” My voice sounds unnatural in the unfamiliar atmosphere of the lab.
“Good question,” replies Raj. “The protein moiety that allows the virus to work is currently ‘hidden’ by a molecular structure attached to the nanoparticle.”
Seriously? How is it helping to talk to us like we’re advanced medical researchers? I look at Peggy in frustration, and Peggy gently asks Raj if he could explain it in a simpler way. He apologizes, embarrassed, then quickly goes on:
“Basically,” he says, “there is a structure sitting on the nanoparticle that is preventing it from passing through the blood-brain barrier. That’s the border that protects the brain from foreign substances.”
“So, the girls are safe?” I ask.
“At this moment, yes. Right now, the virus is dormant. Until the structure is displaced. That would expose the moiety, so the nanoparticle could pass the blood-brain barrier.”
“And then?” Peggy asks.
“And then—the toxin would attack the brain. There is no cure. And it would probably work very quickly. Within seconds. Possibly a minute or two.” He hesitates. “Quicker would be better. It would be a traumatic way to go.”
Peggy places her hand on the lab bench behind her, looking for support. For a moment, a tense silence settles on the four of us, there in the clean, white lab. I pull out my phone and show Raj the pictures that I took of the bodies outside the furnace. Even
