still rising. The telex from Atlanta concerning her blood had arrived even more recently, inspiring his immediate walk to the isolation building. Her fair skin had been pale only a few hours earlier. Now it appeared slightly flushed, and dry. Moudi thought they'd work to cool the patient down with alcohol, maybe ice later, to fight the fever. That would be bad for the Sister's dignity. They did indeed dress chastely, as women should, and the hospital gown she now wore was ever demeaning to that virtue. Worse still, however, was the look in her eyes. She knew. But he still had to say it.
'Sister,' the physician told her, 'your blood has tested positive for Ebola antibodies.'
A nod. 'I see.'
'Then you also know,' he added gently, 'that twenty percent of the patients survive this disease. You are not without hope. I am a good doctor. Sister Magdalena here is a superb nurse. We will support you as best we can. I am also in contact with some of my colleagues. We will not give up on you. I require that you do not give up on yourself. Talk to your God, good lady. He will surely listen to someone of your virtue.' The words came easily, for Moudi was after all a physician, and a good one. He surprised himself by half wishing for her survival.
'Thank you, Doctor.'
Moudi turned to the other nun before leaving. 'Please keep me informed.'
'Of course, Doctor.'
Moudi walked out of the room, turning left toward the door, removing his protective garb as he went, and dumping the articles into the proper container. He made a mental note to speak to the administrator to be sure that the necessary precautions were strictly enforced. He wanted this nun to be the last Ebola case in this hospital. Even as he spoke, part of the WHO team was on its way to the Mkusa family, where they would interview the grief- stricken parents, along with neighbors and friends, to learn where and how Benedict might have encountered the infection. The best guess was a monkey bite.
But only a guess. There was little known about Ebola Zaire, and most of the unknowns were important. Doubtless it had been around for centuries, or even longer than that, just one more lethal malady in an area replete with them, not recognized as anything more than 'jungle fever' by physicians as recently as thirty years before. The focal center of the virus was still a matter of speculation. Many thought a monkey carried it, but which monkey no one knew—literally thousands had been trapped or shot in the effort to determine that, with no result. They weren't even sure that it was really a tropical disease—the first properly documented outbreak of this class of fever had actually taken place in Germany. There was a very similar disease in the Philippines.
Ebola appeared and disappeared, like some sort of malignant spirit. There was an apparent periodicity to it. The recognized outbreaks had occurred at eight- to ten-year intervals—again, unexplained and slightly suspect, because Africa was still primitive, and there was ample reason to believe that victims could contract the disease and die from it in but a few days, without the time to seek medical help. The structure of the virus was somewhat understood and its symptoms recognized, but its mechanism was still a mystery. That was troubling to the medical community, because Ebola Zaire had a mortality rate of roughly eighty percent. Only one in five of its victims survived, and why that happened was just one more entry in the «unknown» column. For all of those reasons, Ebola was perfect.
So perfect that it was one of the most feared organisms known to man. Minute quantities of the virus were in Atlanta, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and a handful of other institutions, where it was studied under conditions resembling those of a science-fiction novel, the doctors and technicians in virtual space suits. There wasn't even enough known about Ebola to do work on a vaccine. The four known varieties—the fourth had been discovered in a bizarre incident in America; but that strain, while uniformly lethal to monkeys, incomprehensibly had no serious effects on humans—were too different. Even now scientists in Atlanta, some of whom he knew, were peering into electron microscopes to map the structure of this new version, later to compare it with samples of other known strains. That process could take weeks and, probably, as with all previous efforts, would yield only equivocal results.
Until the true focal center of the disease was discovered, it remained an alien virus, something almost from another planet, deadly and mysterious. Perfect.
Patient Zero, Benedict Mkusa was dead, his body incinerated by gasoline, and the virus dead with him. Moudi had a small blood sample, but that wasn't really good enough. Sister Jean Baptiste was something else, however. Moudi thought about it for a moment, then lifted the phone to call the Iranian embassy in Kinshasa. There was work to be done, and more work to prepare. His hand hesitated, the receiver halfway from the desk to his ear. What if God did listen to her prayers? He might, Moudi thought, He just might. She was a woman of great virtue who spent as much of her day in prayer as any Believer in his home city of Qom, whose faith in her God was firm, and who had devoted her life to service of those in need. Those were three of Islam's Five Pillars, to which he could add a fourth — the Christian Lent wasn't so terribly different from the Islamic Ramadan. These were dangerous thoughts, but if Allah heard her prayers, then what he intended to do was not written, and would not happen, and if her prayers were not heard…? Moudi cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder and made the call.
'MR. PRESIDENT, WE can't ignore it anymore.'
'Yeah, I know, Arnie.'
It came down to a technical issue, oddly enough. The bodies had to be identified positively, because a person wasn't dead until there was a piece of paper that said so, and until that person was declared dead, if that person had been a senator or congressperson, then his or her post wasn't vacant, and no new person could be selected for it, and Congress was an empty shell. The certificates would be going out today, and within an hour, governors of 'the several states' would be calling Ryan for advice or to advise what they would be doing unbidden. At least one governor would today resign his post and be appointed to the United States Senate by his succeeding lieutenant governor in an elegant, if obvious, political payoff, or so the rumors said.
THE VOLUME OF information was stunning, even to someone familiar with the sources. It went back over fourteen years. The timing could scarcely have been better, however, since that was about the time the major newspapers and magazines had gone to electronic media, which was easily cross-loaded to the World Wide Web, and for which the media empires could charge a modest fee for material which otherwise would have been stored in their own musty basements or at most sold to college libraries for practically nothing. The WWW was still a fairly new and untested source of income, but the media had seized it by the throat, since now for the first time news was less volatile than it had been in the past. It was now a ready source for its own reporters, for students, for those with individual curiosity, and for those whose curiosity was more strictly professional. Best of all, the huge number of people doing a keyword search would make it impossible for anyone to check all the inquiries.
He was careful anyway—rather, his people were. The inquiries being made on the Web were all happening in Europe, mainly in London, through brand-new Internet-access accounts which would last no longer than the time required to download the data, or which came from academic accounts to which numerous people had access. Keywords RYAN JOHN PATRICK, RYAN JACK, RYAN CAROLINE, RYAN CATHY, RYAN CHILDREN, RYAN FAMILY, and a multitude of others were inputted, and literally thousands of «hits» had resulted. Many were spurious because «Ryan» was not that uncommon a name, but the vetting process was not all that difficult.
The first really interesting clips came when Ryan had been thirty-one and had first come into the public spotlight in London. Even the photos were there, and though they took time to download, they were worth waiting for. Especially the first. That one showed a young man sitting on a street, covered with blood. Well, wasn't that inspirational? The subject of the photograph actually looked quite dead in it, but he knew that wounded people often appeared that way. Then had come another set of photos of a wrecked automobile and a small helicopter. In the intervening years the data on Ryan was surprisingly scarce, mainly squibs about his testifying before the American Congress behind closed doors. There were additional hits concerning the end of the Fowler presidency— immedi- ately after the initial confusion it had been reported that Ryan himself had prevented a nuclear-missile launch… and Ryan himself had hinted at it to Daryaei… but that story had never been officially confirmed, and Ryan himself had never discussed the matter with anyone. That was important. That said something about the man. But that could also be set aside.
His wife. There was ample press coverage on her, too, including in one article the number of her office at her hospital. A skilled surgeon. That was nice—a recent piece said that she'd continue that. Excellent. They knew where to look for her.
The children. The youngest—yes, the youngest used the same day-care center that the oldest had used. There was a photo of that, too. A feature article on Ryan's first White House job had even identified the school the older ones attended….
