Clayton held up a hand. "Okay, stop the hocus-pocus. Tell me in plain English what the hell you are talking about!"
"The Gansu Flu virus is a mutation of influenza, right?" Gwen hurried to explain. "All flus, including the Gansu Flu, are sub-typed by two proteins on its shell — H for hemagglutinin and N for neuraminidase. Until now, we have only seen the Gansu Flu H2N2. But the new virus found in the monkey is a Gansu Flu H3N2."
"I get it." Clayton nodded. "But what does it mean?"
"It means," Haldane said slowly, "that the terrorists have created a new virus."
"But how could it be any worse than what they've already thrown at us?" Clayton asked.
"Well, Mr. Bond," McLeod said. "The bug could be worse if it was more lethal — but it's hard to imagine a flu virus much more deadly than Gansu H2N2—or if it were more contagious. And sadly, there is a lot of room for improvement on that front with H2N2."
Haldane felt a chill as if he had just stepped into the Washington air. He intuitively knew McLeod was right. "Son of a bitch!" he said. "They've come up with a more contagious form of the bug."
"Shite, can you imagine?" McLeod said, shaking his head and sighing.
"No," Clayton said. "I don't have a PhD or MD so explain exactly to me what that would mean."
"It's an exponential thing, Alex," Gwen said quietly, her slim fingers still resting on her temples. "If you make a virus twice as contagious, then twice as many people are likely to become infected. And now double the number of people are infected to pass it on to twice as many people. So by the second 'generation' alone there are four times as many people infected. And so on…"
McLeod pointed to Clayton. "You can see how it wouldn't take long to cause a wee problem."
"I understand that, but" — he held up two fingers—"A, we don't know that this new virus is any more contagious than the last, and more importantly, B, we still don't know that an army of terrorists is left alive to spread it."
Gwen nodded. "The first part is easy. CDC can give us an answer in days as to how contagious it is. The second part…" She shrugged. "Especially after those autopsy findings on Kabaal."
"Besides, you wouldn't need an army to spread it," Haldane said wearily, as much to himself as the other members of the group.
"How come?" Clayton asked.
Haldane sighed. "With the previous strain, four terrorists caused vicious, but subsequently controlled, outbreaks in four cities. But with a superbug that was much more contagious…"
Clayton squinted hard, struggling to put it together.
McLeod threw up his hands. "Once this cat gets out of the bag, there's no stuffing her back in."
Clayton's mouth opened in realization. "So you're saying that if the bug is infectious enough, only a few terrorists would be needed to start a pandemic?"
Haldane nodded slowly. "Or maybe only one."
Since he ran away from his Jericho home at age thirteen, Dabir Fahim had spent most of the past ten years on cruise ships. A tireless worker, the young Palestinian had struggled his way up the ladder from cabin boy to waiter and from small ship to transoceanic liner. Dabir, who went by David, had worked aboard the
Aside from his outgoing personality and gift for languages, Dabir excelled at his job because he understood people. He never forgot a name or a face. And he had a gift for predicting what people wanted sometimes before they even knew themselves. But the tall muscular man Dabir served on the sixth and final night of their journey perplexed the young waiter with his distinct but unreadable face. In spite of the man's piercing blue eyes, smooth face, and designer French clothes, Dabir had no doubt that he was a fellow Arab. He also suspected they shared the same sexual orientation, but Dabir was far too professional to ever flirt with a client, no matter how attractive.
Dabir had seen him only one other time in the seven-day passage. He wondered if he traveled with the silent, little bearded Arab man Dabir had once served lunch to, but they seemed a very unlikely and mismatched couple.
Bringing the enigmatic man an espresso after dinner, Dabir decided to satisfy his curiosity. "A good meal, yes?" Dabir asked in Arabic.
Though the man neither moved the cup from his lips nor changed a muscle in his face, his eyes burned into Dabir, sending a chill up the young waiter's spine. "Excuse me," the man said in English, "I do not understand what you have said."
"Oh, excuse me…" Dabir stuttered. "I thought you might speak Arabic, er, like me."
The man put his cup down slowly. "My father did," he said coolly. "But he left my mother and me when I was only two. After that, there was never much reason to learn Arabic in Marseille."
"Oh, I see," Dabir said, knowing there was nothing French about the man's accented English.
