The Leaves in Winter (14 page)

“I don’t want you to do this. You need to reconsider.”

Janis stood and kissed her mother. “No. I need to get everything ready. Is the boat house open?”

“Yes.” Sara stood, saddened with the weight of things to come.

Janis headed for the living room. “I guess I’ll take a walk. I need some time alone – to think.”

Sara followed her to the stairs, pleading. “What if Malcolm really had an accident? What if it wasn’t murder? Maybe NovoSenectus wants their things back for security reasons, just like the police said?”

“You don’t get it. Malcolm knew he was in danger; that’s why he gave me the laptop. Riya was hiding a secret from NovoSenectus for a reason.”

“You can’t be sure about anything. Maybe Malcolm stumbled into something else. Don’t you think it’s strange that all the damning evidence about Mass and this 3rd Protocol was found at GeLixCo? Those two companies have been bitter rivals for years.”

Janis stopped her stride. “I can’t believe you’re sticking up for
Mass.
Why would Riya be on the phone with him, angry about a select agent? What about the secret lab in
Austria
, the arrangements with
China
? She was the one who told Malcolm about GeLixCo. Was she deluded too? And what about Colin, her contact – why is he involved? I know for a fact he still works for the
U.S.
government – the child support garnishment proves it.”

“I’m just saying, what if all of this is something else. How do you know it wasn’t GeLixCo that killed Malcolm? He broke into their
Puerto Rico
office? Maybe they don’t want something to get out or be traced back to them.”

Janis strained for an answer.

Sara came closer, armed with a key doubt. “What if NCO were the ones who killed Riya just like all the media are saying? Do you really want to go over to Marseille by yourself and confront Bolard? Why would he listen to you?”

“I have something he’ll want.”

“And why wouldn’t he kill you for it?”

“If he wanted me dead, he would have done it at the Nobel lecture, the same time as Riya.”

“You didn’t have the laptop then.”

“Bottom line, I think he knows where Alyssa is. The police in
Stockholm
and
India
insist everything on the kidnapping points to NCO.”

“It’s crazy! You can’t risk your life over such guesswork!”

“You said I can’t be sure of anything. You’re wrong. I’m sure Alyssa is gone. I’m sure friends have died violently and something evil is going on.”

“But there’s been no ransom demand – no contact about Alyssa at all. What kind of kidnapping is that?”

“There’s been no ransom demand made to
me
. But I’m not the one who can stop
GenLET
. Only Mass can do that. I would expect negotiations for Alyssa to be private, between NCO and
Mass.
”

“And Mass wouldn’t let you, the mother, know this was going on?”

Janis headed up the stairs. “You make it sound like Mass cares. You’re the queen of ‘what if.’ Well, what if Mass doesn’t care if Alyssa is ever returned.”

Sara stood at the first floor landing with nothing more to say.

Chapter 12

Granite Peak
Installation

Dugway Proving Grounds,
Utah

An emergency meeting was scheduled sixty-six feet below the desert sand. Faye Gardner walked into the empty conference room expecting more. An active video display emblazoned one wall dark blue. One of twelve chairs was pulled back from an otherwise undisturbed table. Spots of brightness from track lighting bathed the large oval. One ceramic coffee cup was the only evidence that anyone else had been invited. Faye halted in solitary surprise as another door opened.

Colin Insworth returned to the room holding a remote control. A rare terseness equaled his haste. “Close the door. No one else is coming.”

Faye did as he asked then took a seat. “What’s this about?”

“This.” Standing between pulled-back chair and table, he pressed a button on the remote control. Two pages of a document appeared on the video display.

Faye recognized them right away. “My report…”

“Yes.” The affirmation was laden with a mélange of emotion difficult for Faye to distinguish. Colin sat down and ran fingers along his salt-and-pepper beard. “It differs from the official record.”

“I wrote exactly what happened. What’s different?”

“Yesterday you were wondering why I wouldn’t let you read any of the case files from fourteen years ago.”

“It’s an odd restriction if you want me to get up-to-speed.”

“Not so odd if it exposes discrepancies. I asked you to write out what you remember so I could compare it with what USAMRIID has on file.”

“Go on,” prompted Faye.

“The two accounts are identical except for a couple of things. Your report says a lab worker was accidentally exposed to the virus.”

“That’s correct.”

Colin stared down at the bare table in front of him. “You claim that lab worker was Janis.” He shot Faye a glance but Faye said nothing. “You say she was quarantined.”

The fact that Colin’s surprise involved Janis rocketed Faye through an emotional minefield. Any response now would be awkward. There was nothing to do but attempt a dispassionate review of the facts.

“It was Ghyvir. We didn’t know what to expect so they held her in isolation. She was there for weeks. The confinement triggered a quite serious bout of claustrophobia. We were quite worried. That’s not in the record?”

“None of it.” Colin stiffened and switched the view to USAMRIID documents.

“You believe me, don’t you?”

Colin fought back the twin demons of rising feeling and strategic complication. “I don’t disbelieve you.”

Colin’s hesitation spurred Faye to think it through. “Why would they take that out of the report? As terrible as it was, the accident turned out to be a good thing. We had a human test case, something that was unthinkable otherwise. We dodged a bullet, but it proved to be significant. Despite how odd the virus was, we knew it produced the common cold. Nothing more.”

“Your report called it
remarkable
.”

Colin’s overtone was rife with innuendo. All of it lost on Faye. He was hiding something but considering where they were, it was to be expected. His silence on the matter was pointblank. Her need to explore the wound between them was uncertain.

“It was remarkable because normally common colds are caused by the smallest of viruses. This was something new. Ghyvir was a giant virus but it matched the other 99 types of human rhinoviruses in critical ways. Ghyvir also uses a six-stage lytic cycle. It penetrates a host cell, injects its own nucleic acids, and the host mistakenly copies the viral acids instead of its own. The copies fill up the host until its membrane splits. The copies are then free to go infect other cells. Janis caught a cold. The pathology was critical to our understanding of the virus.”

“Critical.” Colin stood and paced to the video display. “But not in the report.”

“It could have been important to hide the truth. As panicky as everyone was at the time, maybe they didn’t want to admit that a BSL4 accident had taken place. The public outcry about that might have led to more regulation, more restrictions on bio-defense programs across the board. They could easily leave it out. It wouldn’t change our conclusions.”

“The Ghyvir incident was a big deal at the time, wasn’t it?”

“It was all over the media. Unfortunately, news stories only fed the hysteria. A giant virus, never seen before, had been found in the Arctic’s
Beaufort Sea
. Within days, researchers in
South China
also found it in recycled greywater, the kind used for irrigation. We knew then the exposure was global. People were worried.”

Colin groused. “Truth is stranger than fiction. For the most part, news is fiction. The fact is – the public understood little about giant viruses.”

“Many had never even heard of them.”

“With all the terror threats at the time, everyone was invested in speculation.”

“Retelling the history of giant viruses made for bad television. It was rare to hear anything about
Mimivirus
, the first giant virus ever discovered – or
Mamavirus
, the one found in a cooling tower in Paris, or
Marseillevirus
. The fact that those giant viruses were uncovered long before Ghyvir didn’t seem to matter.”

“I remember. There was a lot at stake, especially at USAMRIID. It wasn’t the only lab looking into Ghyvir. The competition involved much more than bragging rights. That was a topic of conversation at your worksite, wasn’t it?”

Faye nodded. “It was suggested more than once that it would be better if we could announce right away that we understood what we had. No one wanted to look like they were taken by surprise.”

“Get to the answer first. That kind of thing can make or break someone’s career.”

Faye watched as Colin stopped pacing to face her. She noticed his silent pause and the way his eyes fell upon her before asking, “What are you getting at?”

He didn’t blink. “Were primates used to study Ghyvir?”

“They weren’t needed. Giant viruses typically infect amoebae, not humans.”

“But Ghyvir was peculiar. Even the research ship that saw it for the first time noticed how different it was. All precautions were to be taken until you knew how it acted. I checked – your lab did make inquiries about primate availability.”

“As it turned out, we didn’t need to go that way – the accident with Janis precluded it.”

“I see. That saved a lot of time – and aggravation.”

Faye burned as his inference bordered on allegation. “If you’re accusing me of something, be clear about it.”

“Sticking with the facts – the official report says monkeys were used.”

“Not in my lab.”

“
Your
lab?”

“The lab I was working in.”

“Did you and Janis ever argue about the use of monkeys?”

“At USAMRIID, Janis and I argued about a lot of things. That proves nothing.”

“I had another lab worker from that time questioned. He says you and Janis argued quite a bit. He even remembers one time overhearing Janis accuse you of doing anything to advance your career.”

“That’s right,” snapped Faye. “That’s what she said. I said a lot about her too – that doesn’t mean any of it’s correct. Janis and I were on a collision course from the day we started at that place. Work on Ghyvir was her breaking point; it soured her to USAMRIID overall. The forced confinement left an emotional scar. She thought the way Ghyvir was being handled was suspicious. She was certain something wasn’t right. When I didn’t share her paranoia, she started distrusting me too.”

“You were the one working closest to her – so what gave her those ideas?”

“Who knows. She accused me of knowing something about the dual-use nature of our research, something I wasn’t telling her. She hated the idea that any of her work would be used to make a weapon. The idea that I would be a silent partner in any of it was too much for her.”

“You thought she was jeopardizing the research, didn’t you? You’d lose out on the competition to find the answer first. That would set back your career and future. She was being unreasonable.”

“Nonsense. We both distrusted our bosses. I wasn’t blind and I certainly wasn’t naïve. I always assumed there was more to it but I had no idea what it was. She thought I did. I told her we were both at too low a level to know such things – or to care. It didn’t matter to me so I didn’t pay attention to the little things. She did – to a fault.”

Colin walked back to his chair and sat down. He leaned back, emboldened to be direct. “Did you rig the lab so Janis would get infected?”

“You’re out of your mind!”

“I don’t know. Am I? At that time, not long out of college, you wanted to advance your career. She was too idealistic for you – no monkeys, no weapons. She picked a time to be difficult just when you wanted to shine.”

“She was my best friend. How dare you suggest I’d do such a thing!”

“Isn’t it true you thought the virus was harmless? You went on the record in an early report, before the accident. You had an opinion on the matter. You thought Ghyvir would act as a rhinovirus or a giant virus – in either case, you predicted it would be found relatively harmless to humans.”

“That doesn’t mean I’d prove my point by turning my best friend into a guinea pig.”

“Your best friend? The same best friend who lured me away from you.”

The personal reference struck too deep for Faye. She was more angry than hurt – and the hurt was unbearable. “That’s insane! I would never expose anyone like that, for any reason. Besides, some dogs don’t have to be lured into the next yard. They don’t mate for love and have no sense of decency.”

Colin calmly responded with his most potent blow. “Did you know she was pregnant at the time?”

“Did you?” Faye tapped into a reservoir of womanly rage. “Or were you too busy pursuing your next conquest?”

“You know damned well Janis and I had been married three months by then.”

“Does it matter?” Faye’s animosity was palpable.

“Janis was at least four weeks pregnant at the time of the lab
accident
– if it was an accident.”

“How can you be so sure of that?” Faye had to wait for an answer.

“It had been that long since she and I – were together.”

Faye stared him down. “Is that normal for newlyweds?”

A wrenching finality came over Colin. There was little left to say but what there was spoke volumes. He leaned forward with arms on the table.

“It sucks when it takes a marriage to wake up. The fact is – I married the wrong woman.” Without saying it, Faye knew his most bitter truth was about her.

Faye digested what she heard with leaden indifference, a full heart, and a careless disregard for the little voice of what might have been. She looked away from Colin, disgusted. “No. She married the wrong man. You don’t know what marriage is. You certainly don’t know how to be a father.”

The final blow was landed. Colin drained of all fire, all resolve to confront her. He reached for the remote control and switched off the video display. Standing, he picked up his coffee cup. His manner was all business but his energy was defeated.

“We both deserved that.” He walked to the door. “Maybe now we can get on with the work. There’s more I need to tell you. But not now. I’m going to the surface. I won’t be available. I’ll call you.” He hurried out the door.

The emergency meeting ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Faye sat in the empty conference room, expecting more.

One of twelve chairs was left pulled back from an otherwise undisturbed table. Spots of brightness from track lighting bathed the large oval. An unbearable tension lingered in the room. It was the only evidence that anyone else had been invited.

Sixteen years of unfinished business between them had gone by in a blink.

Faye felt like crying but couldn’t.

She sat a long while, astonished. A solitary surprise of instant reflection petrified her. Not sure of her feelings, her breaths quickened around a realization.