He took a long breath. “Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan. From U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.”
There was silence. She seemed to be writing down his name and “company.” She came back on. “Hold, please.”
He fumed. He had been running into the same bureaucratic red tape for the past four hours. Only the CDC had confirmed that they had not called the families. The surgeon general’s office told him to put his request in writing. The various possible institutes at NIH referred him to general information, and the man there said they had been ordered to not discuss anything to do with those deaths. No matter how much he had explained that he was a government researcher already working on those deaths, he had gotten nowhere.
By the time he was turned away by the departments of the navy and air force and Health and Human Services, he knew he was being stonewalled. His last chance was the NIH’s Federal Resource Medical Clearing House (FRMC). After that he was out of options.
“This is Acting Director Aronson of FRMC. How can I help you, Colonel?”
He tried to speak calmly. “I appreciate your talking to me. There seems to be a team of government doctors interested in the virus at Fort Irwin, Atlanta, and—”
“Let me save you time, Colonel. All information on the viral incident at Fort Irwin has been classified. You’ll have to go through channels.”
Smith finally blew up. “I have the virus! I’m working with it! USAMRIID is the information. All I want is—”
The dial tone buzzed angrily in his ear.
What in hell was going on? It looked as if some idiot had clamped a lid on anything to do with the virus. No information without clearance. But from whom? And why?
He rushed out the door, strode furiously along the corridor, and barged past Melanie Curtis and into Kielburger’s office. “What the hell’s going on, General? I try to find out who had those teams of `government doctors’ call Irwin and Atlanta and everyone yells `top secret’ and won’t talk.”
Kielburger leaned back in his desk chair. He knitted his thick fingers over his beefy chest. “It’s out of our hands, Smith. The whole investigation. We’re top secret. We do our research and then report to the surgeon general, military intelligence, and NSC. Period. No more detectives.”
“In this investigation, we are the detectives.”
“Tell the Pentagon that.”
In a flash of understanding, the past frustrating three hours suddenly made sense. This could not be merely government red tape. There was too much of it, too many agencies were involved. And it was illogical. You did not take an investigation away from those who knew what was going on. Certainly not a scientific investigation. If there were other teams of “government doctors,” there was no reason to keep that from him or anyone else at USAMRIID.
Unless they were not government doctors at all.
“Listen, General. I think—”
The general interrupted, disgusted. “Your hearing gone, Colonel? Don’t you understand orders anymore? We stand down. The professionals will work on Dr. Russell’s death. I suggest you go back to your lab and focus on the virus.”
Smith took a deep breath. Now he was not only furious, he was scared. “Something’s very wrong here. Either someone very powerful is manipulating the army, or it’s the army itself. They want to stop the investigation. They’re stonewalling this virus, and they’re going to end up killing one hell of a lot of people.”
“Are you crazy? You’re in the army. And those were direct orders!”
Smith glared. He had been fighting grief all day. Every time Sophia’s face flashed into his mind, he had tried to banish her. Sometimes he would see something of hers— her favorite pen, the photos on her office wall, the little bottle of perfume she kept on top of her desk— and he would start to fall apart. He wanted to sink to his knees and howl at the unseen forces that had stolen Sophia, and then he wanted to kill them.
Smith snarled, “I resign. You’ll have the paperwork this afternoon.”
Now Kielburger lost his temper. “You can’t quit in the middle of a goddamn crisis! I’ll have you court-martialed!”
“Okay. I’ve got a month’s leave coming. I’m taking it!”
“No leave! Be in your lab tomorrow or you’re AWOL!”
The two men faced each other across Kielburger’s desk. Then Smith sat down. “They murdered her, Kielburger. They killed Sophia.”
“Murdered?” Kielburger was incredulous. “That’s ridiculous. The autopsy report was clear. She died as a result of the virus.”
“The virus killed her, yes, but she didn’t contract it by any accident. We missed it at first, maybe because the reddening didn’t appear for a few hours. But when we took a second look, we spotted the needle mark in her ankle. They injected the virus.”
“A needle mark in her ankle?” Kielburger had a concerned frown. “Are you sure she wasn’t—”
Smith eyes were hard blue agates. “There was no reason for an injection except to give her the virus.”
“For God’s sake, Smith, why? It makes no sense.”
“It does if you remember the page cut from her logbook. She knew— or suspected—- something they didn’t want her to know. So they cut out her notes, stole her phone log, and killed her.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“Smith, you’re upset. I understand. But there’s a new virus loose to run across the world. There could be an epidemic.”
“I’m not sure about that. We’ve got three widely separated cases that haven’t infected anyone else in their areas. Did you ever hear of a virus breakout in which only one single person in an area was infected?”
Kielburger considered the question. “No, I can’t say I have, but—”
“Neither has anyone else,” Smith told him grimly. “We still get new viruses, and nature confounds us all the time. But if the virus is as deadly as it appears, why haven’t there been more cases in each of the three areas since? At best it indicates this virus isn’t very contagious. The victims’ families and neighbors didn’t get it. No one in the hospitals got it. Even the pathologist who was sprayed with blood didn’t get it. The only person we can be sure of who got it from someone else is the Pickett girl in Atlanta, who had a direct blood transfusion from her father years ago. That indicates two facts: One, the virus, like HIV, appears to exist in a dormant state inside a victim for years, and then it suddenly turns virulent. Two, it seems to take a direct injection into the bloodstream for infection, either in the dormant state or the virulent state. In any event, an epidemic looks remote.”
“I wish you were right.” Kielburger grimaced. “But you’re dead wrong this time. There are already more cases. People are sick and dying. This crazy virus may not be highly contagious in the usual ways, but it’s still spreading.”
“What about Southern California? Atlanta? Boston?”
“Not in any of those places. It’s in other parts of the world— Europe, South America, Asia.”
Smith shook his head. “Then it’s still all wrong.” He paused. “They murdered Sophia. You understand what that means?”
“Well, I’m—”
Smith stood up and leaned across the desk. “It means someone has this virus in a test tube. An unknown, deadly virus no one’s been able to match or trace. But someone knows what this virus is, and where it comes from, because they’ve got it.”
The general’s heavy face turned purple. “Got it? But—”
Smith hammered his fist on the desk. “We’re dealing with people who have given the virus to other people! To Sophia. They’re willing to use it like a weapon!”
“My God.” Kielburger stared at him. “Why?”
“Why and who, that’s what we’ve got to find out!”
Kielburger’s burly body seemed to quiver in shock. Then he abruptly stood up, his florid face as white as it had ever been. “I’ll call the Pentagon. Go and write up what you told me and what you want to do from here on.”
“I’ve got to go to Washington.”
“All right. Get whatever you need. I’ll cut official orders for you.”
“Yessir.” Smith stood back, relieved and a little stunned that he had finally gotten through Kielburger’s thick brain. Maybe the general was not as rigid and stupid as he had thought. For a moment he almost felt affection for the irritating man.
As he ran out the door, he heard Kielburger pick up his phone. “Get me the surgeon general and the Pentagon. Yes, both of them. No, I don’t care which one first!”
__________
Specialist Four Adele Schweik flipped the intercept shunt on her telephone inside her cubicle, warily listening for any sound of Sergeant Major Daugherty leaving her office. At last she lied briskly into her phone, “Surgeon General Oxnard’s Office. No, General Kielburger, the surgeon general isn’t in the office. I’ll have him call as soon as he returns.”