They were less than helpful there.”
Marissa went on to describe what had happened out on the reef, saying that she felt that Wendy’s death might not have been accidental.
“And I’m beginning to think that my own life may be in jeopardy,” she added.
“But I really can’t say I have any evidence of that.”
Tristan sighed.
“This all brings back bad memories,” he said with a shake of his head. He tilted his hat back and scratched his forehead.
“But maybe I’d better tell you my story so that you have some idea what you are up against. Maybe then you’ll go home and live your life. But the telling will take a while. And it’s for your ears only. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Marissa said.
“All right,” Tristan said.
“Let’s go inside and get a couple of stubbies.”
Tristan went into the canteen and walked directly into the kitchen. The crew were busy cleaning up from the noonday meal, From the fridge he got two ice cold beers and carried them into the empty dining room. Motioning toward one of the picnic like tables, he popped the tops of the beers and handed one to Marissa.
She sat down facing him.
“I was employed by FCA directly from my specialty training in pathology,” he said after a long pull on his beer.
“I was impressed by the organization. It was expanding. Right after I was hired, the chief of the department, that’s what he called himself, came down with hepatitis and had to take an extended leave. Since there were only two of us in the department back then, I found myself the chief.” Tristan chuckled.
“Almost immediately,” he continued, “I started seeing these cases of granulomatous salpingitis, one after another. I knew it was unique, and having just come from training, the possibility of making some kind of academic discovery held great appeal. I have to admit I also liked the idea of getting a paper in one of the journals. So entirely on my own, I decided to write the cases up.
“My first suspicion was tuberculosis, despite TB being rare here in Australia. But since we’d been having a recent increase in immigration from Southeast Asia, where TB is still endemic, I thought it was possible.
“But I had to be sure it was TB. I ruled out fungi through elaborate stains. It definitely wasn’t fungi. I looked exhaustively for organisms, but could never find any. But still I was sure it was
TB.”
“What about sarcoid?” Marissa questioned.
Tristan shook his head.
“It wasn’t sarcoid,” he said.
“The chest X-rays were all normal and none of the patients had swollen glands or eye problems.
“So I was confident that it was TB although I had no idea how it was spread. But then I made an association with something else that was going on at the clinic. About a year before I began seeing these cases, the clinic had started having Chinese technicians and security people rotate through some sort of fellowship program.
I thought that the clinic was training the technicians in in vitro fertilization to go back to Hong Kong where they’d come from.
But I wasn’t sure. They always came in pairs and didn’t stay long.
Only for a few months. Many didn’t even speak English. But the fact that they were coming from Hong Kong, where there had been a significant influx of Southeast Asian boat people, made me think they might have had something to do with the rash of TB salpingitis.”
“Where did they go after their fellowships?” Marissa asked, recalling the pair of Chinese at the Women’s Clinic.
“I had no idea,” Tristan admitted.
“I assumed back to Hong Kong. I had never been interested, at least not until I started looking into the TB cases. Then I became curious. So I scheduled a meeting with Charles Lester, the director of the clinic, and I asked him about the Chinese. But he told me it was classified information. All he would say was that it had something to do with the government!”
Tristan shrugged.
“What could I do? I asked a few other people, but no one seemed to want to talk about it. But then a pair of Chinese got in a bad car accident. Bad enough to kill one and hospitalize the other. They hospitalized him in the FCA facility. He was the only male patient they’d ever had.