The CIA had learned that a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda had stolen a small quantity of smallpox virus from a biocontainment laboratory in Siberia. The lab was one of two places in the world where the virola was contained under stringent World Health Organization (WHO) protocols. The other was the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The Siberian facility had a security system built by the Bechtel Group and paid for by the U.S. government to protect freezers containing 120 different smallpox samples. The CIA had still not established how the theft had happened or where the virus had been taken.
The president had been briefed that the virus was one of the most deadly diseases on earth; in the twentieth century alone it had killed 300 million people. It was not until 1980 that WHO announced smallpox had been eradicated. Now on that January morning, POTUS had summoned her fellow leaders to tell them it was once more a threat.
They sat in a U-shaped area of desks on which were phones, computers, and TV screens. Each desk bore a name: Prime Minister of United Kingdom; President of France; Chancellor of Federal Republic of Germany; Prime Minister of Canada; Prime Minister of Poland; President of European Commission; Prime Minister of Sweden; Director General of World Health Organization.
POTUS took a seat in their midst and began to outline the theft from the Siberia laboratory. She was still speaking when the television screens on the desks came alive. A masked man said he represented New Jihad, a group affiliated to al-Qaeda, and claimed responsibility for the theft of the virus. It would be used against the enemies of Islam.
The screens went blank and the stunned listeners looked at each other in disbelief. The ringing of their telephones broke the silence. The calls brought news that the first cases of smallpox had already been reported in the Netherlands; in Rotterdam over eight hundred people had become infected with the virola, which had been spread through the air ducts in the city’s subways. Some victims were already displaying rashlike spots on their skin and lesions in their mouths, a sign victims were at their most infectious. Similar cases were being reported in Istanbul. Turkish doctors saw that papules, the rashlike dots of the disease, had begun to turn into pustules. This usually occurs on the fifth or sixth day. A few infected saliva droplets on the breath would bring a victim close to death.
The next report came from Frankfurt International Airport, where passengers were showing difficulty in eating and swallowing. Some of the travelers had flown in from Munich from where the first reports of the presence of smallpox in Germany had come: a family had manifested the symptoms after arriving from Turkey. By noon, two hours after the first telephone calls, the number of cases had risen to 3,320. Most were in Europe, but in the early afternoon reports came of infected passengers from Mexico arriving at Los Angeles International Airport.
Meantime, anti-Muslim riots had broken out in Rotterdam, and panic-driven Poles along their country’s border with Germany had fought with border patrols trying to stop them entering the Federal Republic. Poland’s stockpile of smallpox vaccine was able to protect only some 5 percent of its population. The Federal Republic was only one of a handful of countries with sufficient stocks to vaccinate its entire population. The others were the United States, Great Britain, France, and Holland. The U.S. government had stopped mass vaccination of its population twenty years previously, when it was decided the risk of side effects from the vaccine outweighed the possibility of catching the disease. The death from side effects was calculated at 100 per 100 million vaccinated.
Five hours into the outbreak, just as in the wake of 9/11, the United States closed its borders. But it was too late. On Wall Street trading came to a halt, as it did in London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, and all the other financial centers around the world. It was the onset of global economic collapse.
As the crisis unfolded, so did the decisions. An appeal from Turkey—a NATO ally and a moderate Muslim country—for the United States to provide vaccine was rejected.
“The United States feels unappreciated now because of world condemnation of our position in Iraq. A lot of Americans are asking why should we help countries who do not support us,” said POTUS.
The British prime minister reminded his fellow leaders that “the harsh economic climate following the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a brain drain of former laboratory scientists who had worked in the country’s bioweapons programs. Leaving in droves, some made their way to Syria, Iran, and North Korea. The result is what we’re confronting here.”
