“Where’d he go?” asked Marissa, going on to the next page.
Tad shrugged. “Darned if I know. I think he wanted to go to Ft. Detrick, but he and Woolbert never hit it off. Heberling’s smart but not the easiest guy in the world to get along with. There was a rumor he wanted the job Dubchek got. I’m glad he didn’t get it. He could have made my life miserable.”
Marissa flipped through the list to January and pointed at a name that appeared several times over a two-week period: Gloria French. “Who’s she?” asked Marissa.
“Gloria’s from parasitic diseases. She uses the lab on occasion for work on vector-borne viral problems.”
Marissa rolled up the list.
“Satisfied?” asked Tad.
“It’s a little more than I expected,” admitted Marissa. “But I appreciate your effort. There is another thing, though.”
“Oh, no,” said Tad.
“Relax,” said Marissa. “You told me that the Ebola in L.A., St. Louis and Phoenix were all the identical strains. I’d sure like to see exactly how you determined that.”
“But all that data is in the maximum containment lab,” said Tad weakly.
“So?” said Marissa.
“But you haven’t gotten clearance,” Tad reminded her. He knew what was coming.
“I don’t have clearance to do a study,” said Marissa. “That means I can’t go in by myself. But it’s different if I’m with you, especially if there is no one else there. There wasn’t any problem after my last visit, was there?”
Tad had to agree. There hadn’t been any trouble, so why not do it again? He’d never been specifically told that he could not take other staff members into the lab, so he could always plead ignorance. Although he knew he was being manipulated, it was hard to withstand Marissa’s charm. Besides, he was proud of his work and wanted to show it off. He was confident she’d be impressed.
“All right,” he said. “When do you want to go?”
“How about right now?” said Marissa.
Tad looked at his watch. “I suppose it’s as good a time as any.”
“Afterwards we can go for a drink,” said Marissa. “It’ll be my treat.”
Marissa retrieved her purse, noting that Tad’s keys and his access card were on the same shelf by the door.
En route to the lab in Marissa’s car, Tad began a complicated description of his latest work. Marissa listened, but just barely. She had other interests in the lab.
As before, they signed in at the front entrance of the CDC and took the main elevators as if they were going up to Marissa’s office. They got off on her floor, descended a flight of stairs, then crossed the catwalk to the virology building. Before Tad had a chance to open the huge steel door, Marissa repeated his code number: 43-23-39.
Tad looked at her with respect. “God, what a memory!”
“You forget,” said Marissa. “Those are my measurements.”
Tad snorted.
When he switched on the lights and the compressors in the outer staging area, Marissa felt the same disquiet she’d felt on her first visit. There was something frightening about the lab. It was like something out of a science-fiction movie. Entering the dressing rooms, they changed in silence, first donning the cotton scrub suits, then the bulky plastic ones. Following Tad’s lead, Marissa attached her air hose to the manifold.
“You’re acting like an old pro,” said Tad as he turned on the
interior lights in the lab, then motioned for Marissa to detach her air hose and step into the next chamber.
As Marissa waited for Tad in the small room where they would get their phenolic-disinfectant shower on the way out, she experienced an uncomfortable rush of claustrophobia. She fought against it, and it lessened as they entered the more spacious main lab. Her practical work with viruses helped since a lot of the equipment was more familiar. She now recognized the tissue culture incubators and even the chromatography units.
“Over here,” called Tad, after they’d both hooked up to an appropriate manifold. He took her to one of the lab benches, where there was a complicated setup of exotic glassware, and began explaining how he was separating out the RNA and the capsid proteins from the Ebola virus.