Work in Progress
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Mortal Turpitude - Chapters 11 to 15
Chapter 11
As we ordered and waited for our food, Hoffer worked to keep the conversation at the small
talk level. But Fortino had started a separate conversation with Lisa. She reacted like a
bubbly teenager, giggling at his jokes and even lightly slapping the back of his hand at a
slightly off-color joke. The body language was unmistakable.
I turned to badgering Hoffer about the renewal of funding for Buddy Lester’s research, but
the tete-a-tete between Fortino and Lisa distracted me. Concentration was nearly
impossible until I understood what Lisa was doing. She was a user, and she would always
be a user. She would do whatever was necessary to recruit Fortino to her cause. Her cause,
of course, was Lisa. And it seemed to be working. Fortino seemed about thirty-five, but he
grinned broadly and behaved like a randy teenager while talking to her.
When we’d eaten, and the dishes were being cleared, Fortino suddenly became serious,
and spoke in my direction. “We have to do something about your B-1B complex, and we
have to decide here and now.”
“Why?” I said. “What’s the rush?”
“I think it’d be obvious. Every minute it’s not behind a Level 4 barrier, and under a
national security cover, there’s a chance of it getting loose. It could be tracked out of your
lab on your shoes, or even stolen. I want to move your research into a Level 4 facility right
away.” His eyes gazed at me, dark and serious.
I turned to Hoffer. “Can Major Fortino make us do that?”
“In principle, no,” he said, looking at his plate. “But he can get his way if he wants.
There are provisions…”
“Fuck the provisions,” I said, through gritted teeth. “We’re doing research. We can’t do it
dressed in moon suits. We can’t afford the Level 4 lab or the cost of running it.”
Fortino calmly took a sip of water. “Dr. Croft, I’m going to tell you two stories. I want you
to listen and not interrupt until I’m finished.”
“Once upon a time, there was a man, a grad student, who worked at a university in D.C.
He compiled a huge list of sensitive infrastructure systems from all over the nation –
power grids, water, phone lines, pipelines, fiber optic cables, and so on – and put it all
into a computer. When he was done, he was able to call up any public building, and locate
the power and communications lines going in and out, all entryways, alarms, and so on.
Just the information a criminal or terrorist might want to know, all laid out in an easy-to-
use format. He didn’t think of this database as a weapon, but with it, he could find the two
or three most vulnerable points in an entire city, the places where a couple of terrorists
could bring the whole infrastructure down, a power line, a water main, a gas pipeline.
What’s surprising is that he gathered all his information from open public sources.
“While he was writing his thesis, word spread about his database. The Homeland Security
people realized that it was important to get his technology under a security cover as soon
as possible, before terrorists or criminals could get at it. He resisted. He didn’t want his
thesis locked up. Finally, they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. The university
cooperated, too, so he could get his degree as he hoped. He graduated and set up a
company where he does the same work, but now he does it for America. He’s got all the
freedom he had as an academic, and he’s well paid.”
“Except the freedom to publish,” I said, shrugging. “What if he’d wanted to pursue an
academic career? What would you have done to him?”
“We don’t always find our own destinies,” Fortino smiled. “Sometimes our destinies find
us. This man finally understood that. His creation had taken over his life, and the wisest
course for him was to roll with it. If he’d insisted on pursuing his academic ethics, I can
tell you he would be a much less happy man today, and the information would still have
been locked away in a government facility.”
“What’s your other story?” Lisa was watching him intently.
“Well, this one never made the papers, Miss Grissom. Scientist Number Two was a
professor at a southeastern university, who developed a method of detecting peroxide
explosives. You know, the kind the Shoe Bomber tried to use to blow up an airliner? The
usual instruments can’t detect them.”
He took another sip of water. “His university patented the device, and our people
immediately sealed the patent. The research was done with Federal funds, so we could do
that easily. At that point, the man had a gold mine. We offered to set him up in a
company with a government contract to make the explosives detector, and he would have
been wealthy by now. Instead, he insisted on his so-called academic freedom, and the right
to publish his research.”
“So what happened to him?” I already had a pretty good idea.
“Next thing you know, he finds that his grants aren’t being renewed. His students see the
writing on the wall, and jump ship. But he goes on doing his research anyway, using
private money. He defies everybody, writes a paper on the detector and sends it out for
review. Mysteriously, the envelope was lifted from the mail before it left his building. In a
few hours, he’s arrested under several provisions of the Patriot Act, and his school fires
him.”
“They fired him? On what grounds?”
“‘Moral turpitude’, they called it. It’s a great term; it can mean anything they want it to
mean. It sounds like he’s a child molester or something, and makes certain he’ll never get
another faculty position. Sometimes, I wish the Adjutant General’s office or the
Department of Justice was as loose with terms as universities are.” He grinned
triumphantly, as if he’d arrested the man himself.
“Anyway, he was convicted and given probation. He had to post a bond so he’s not allowed
to build, or write about, or even talk about his own invention. If he does, he forfeits the
bond and off to prison he goes. Another company will build his machine. I heard he’s
designing circuit boards somewhere. His career is shot and his family’s broken up.”
He folded his hands and concluded, “I’m not going to say how all this was done, but I’m
saying that we can do it.” He smiled that baby-faced smile again. He smiled far too much.
I tried to maintain a relaxed posture, but I knew that my face had turned beet red. “I
thought that was the stuff of spy novels and conspiracy theorists. The whole academic
community would have risen up in a rage if they’d found out what was being done to him.”
Infuriatingly, he continued to smile, an unpleasant grimace. “Bad news for academic
freedom, Dr. Croft. Many university executives and faculty people did know about it. But
at the slightest whisper of a threat to their government grants, the so-called academic
community sat on their hands and shut up.”
Straining to keep my temper in check, I leaned across the table at him. “Hypothetically,
what would we have to do to end up like Scientist Number One instead of Scientist Number
Two?”
“Not as much as you think. I mean, I’d like to find the money to build a Level 4 lab at
your school, but there’s no money for any of that, these days. The smartest thing is to
move everyone involved in the project to Fort Detrick, where they can work in a proper
lab, behind a wall of armed guards. Do you have any students other than Miss Grissom
working on it?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. It’s Lisa’s discovery, and she and I agreed she’d have full
control over it until her thesis is done.” I wasn’t about to tell him how she’d wrested that
commitment from me.
“Suppose we moved just her.” He turned his attention to Lisa. “Just you. Suppose we
moved you to Fort Detrick, and Dr. Croft can come out and discuss your work with you at
intervals. Your thesis will be reviewed by a committee of your peers, provided they have
the right security clearances, and you’ll get your degree exactly as you hoped, perhaps
sooner than you hoped. You’ll have help from trained technicians; you’ll work with
colleagues who know things about dangerous pathogens that you’d never learn from the
open literature.”
“I think it’s a bad idea,” I said. “At least, until her thesis work is completed. The logistics
are too complicated.” If there was logic in his idea, it was overwhelmed by thoughts about
Lisa and Fortino working in close proximity, and far away from me.
“I need to think about it,” she said.
“Until tomorrow?” Fortino asked, ignoring me. “Lunch again? Dr. Croft has other
appointments all day, and you’re at loose ends until your plane leaves at 7:30 tomorrow
evening.”
“How did you know that?” Lisa and I burst out together, in chorus.
“Oh, come now, Dr. Croft. You’ve got an appointment with Jeffrey Kapoor in NIAID at 10:
00 am, and Martin Jameson at 1:30. How do you think I know that?” He was clearly
enjoying catching me off balance.
“’No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,’” I said, now feeling seriously violated. I hoped
that quoting Monty Python would hide my rage.
He smiled appreciatively. “National Security is my business, Dr. Croft, and immune
systems are yours. But we’re not so far apart. The United States has an immune system,
too. We detect threats to the nation’s health and either neutralize them or wall them up
somewhere where they can’t hurt anyone.
“In any case, I didn’t have to spy on you from space, or any cloak and dagger stuff. I just
called your secretary – Mrs. Brown? – and asked. She was only too happy to tell me.”
I drank from my glass of water to avoid having to speak.
He continued, “No matter what happened this afternoon, you were definitely going to be
investigated. Routine. Experience says sooner rather than later.” He looked at Lisa. “You
and Dr. Croft were having dinner with his relatives at six o’clock. How would you like to
blow off that date and have dinner with me?”
Lisa looked back and forth at Fortino and me for a moment, baffled. Before I could nod my
assent, she straightened her shoulders. “Sure, Paul. About six?” She used his first name,
undoubtedly the first move in whatever strategy she planned to use on him.
“Six it is. I’ll pick you up at your hotel. I’m getting a kick out of watching you try to
manipulate me.” He gave her a business card. “My cell’s on the front. I’ve already got
yours.” As a seeming afterthought, he handed a card to me, too.
Hoffer and I looked at one another, wide-eyed.
Chapter 12
I had a pleasant, if distracted, dinner with my sister and her husband, and returned to the
hotel by ten o’clock. I tried to shed the mental images of Lisa and Fortino together. He
wasn’t just young and handsome; he could be Lisa’s next step up the power ladder, and
that made him doubly threatening. I imagined he’d be doing everything he could to get
into her pants. I also imagined Lisa holding out until she’d negotiated everything she
wanted, sexually as well as career-wise.
I turned on the TV to the news, but absorbed nothing, until a single tap came at the door.
Through the peephole, I saw Lisa and opened up.
“Reporting in?” I said, trying to smile.
She set her purse on the dresser and returned my smile. “He’s a nice man, very polite.
Handsome, too.”
“Did he pry any information out of you?”
She came close and draped an arm around my neck, reminding me that she was two inches
taller than I. “No. In fact, he said upfront, ‘no business talk’, but I didn’t know whether to
believe him. We went to dinner and then for drinks at a piano bar for the evening. I only
had one alcoholic drink, and went virgin after that. I didn’t want to give away the store
over a couple of Long Island iced teas.”
“So you just had a good time?”
“Well, I could tell by his body language and even his smell that he was pretty turned on.
The signs are always there. Even while he told me about his wife and three kids in
Maryland, pictures and all, the sex flag was flying. But I was looking forward to getting
back here to you.”
I folded her into my arms, wondering whether to believe her. In spite of my suspicions of
moments before, I concluded that nothing had happened. For one thing, I suspected it
would titillate her to give me a detailed description of fucking Major Fortino, before
demanding oral sex from me. By now, she surely had enough confidence in her power over
me that she might do that, just to prove she could.
I kissed her neck, and she nibbled at my earlobe. Her hot breath whistled in my ear. “M-m-
m,” she whispered. “I think he would have had me if I’d given him the slightest
encouragement. You’d better make it worth my while coming back here instead. Take off
your clothes.”
After we stripped, she sat in the easy chair and I did my best to live up to her
expectations. Her honey already tasted of the musk of advanced arousal, and her clitoris
required just a few licks and a little gentle sucking to make it swollen and firm. She
moaned and squirmed in her ecstasy, from time to time pushing me down to lick her
vagina so she wouldn’t climax too soon. But in her overheated state, she was too sensitive
and came suddenly with a mighty heave of her hips, nearly throwing me off. I hung onto
her thighs until the violence was over, and rested, crouching at her feet with my head on
her lower belly. She breathed heavily, recovering.
“That’s pretty much what I had in mind,” she said, grinning. “Now I need a good backrub
before we do any more. You did bring the massage oil, right?” She moved from the chair to
the bed and stretched out on her belly, while I retrieved the vial from my overnight bag.
I trickled the fragrant oil into my palms and began at her bony shoulders. She pulled her
blonde hair over the top of her head to keep the oil off it. From the back, she was not
beautiful. Her vertebrae formed a line of protrusions from between the prominent shoulder
blades to the cleft of her nearly nonexistent buttocks. I thought of the Stegosaurus fossil I’
d seen long ago in a museum. Since she’d come to work in my lab, I’d worried about her
health, but I couldn’t get her to change her dietary habits. She was invariably too busy,
and somehow survived on chips or Ritz crackers and coffee. The poor diet didn’t seem to
affect her performance, in the lab or the bedroom.
I spread the oil under her arms and worked down her sides until she giggled and squirmed
from the tickling. I started long strokes with my palms from her waist nearly to her
shoulders. She wriggled her hips and purred with contentment.
“I should have been one of those ancient Roman noblewomen,” she said, “with big
muscular slaves to look after me all day, to rub me and lick me and fetch for me. And a
rich husband who’d be busy all day buying things to make me happy.”
“Except for the muscular part, and the rich husband part, you’ve got most of that now,” I
said. “And you’d go crazy if you didn’t have your laboratory. You’d end up engineering an
aqueduct or inventing sadistic entertainments for the Colosseum. I can’t see you lounging
around in a toga, eating peeled grapes.”
She chuckled quietly and closed her eyes while I massaged her shoulder blades. As my
muscles tired, I changed positions from time to time to relieve the strain on my arms.
Slowly, I worked her tiny buttocks, the backs of her legs, and rubbed oil into the soles of
her narrow feet.
My mind drifted to thoughts of Rhiannon. I imagined what she would look like, naked and
face down like this. Her shoulders were broad and her legs muscular. The rest of her body
would surely be as spectacular. She must work out almost daily to maintain that figure.
Rather than a jutting bony ridge, her spine would lie in a groove between long, thick
muscles. Her buttocks would bulge with firm gluteals, and her thighs would be hard as
stone. I imagined other things: firm, high breasts; defined abdominals; a dense thicket of
black hair between those powerful thighs.
I wondered if I’d ever find myself giving Rhiannon a massage like this. Imagine matching
my fantasies with the real thing!
Lisa rolled on her back. “First your backrubs get me sleepy, then they make me wide
awake, and now I’m horny. You did such a good job, I’m going to give you a choice. Top or
bottom?”
I smiled. The ‘choice’ was a private joke. It didn’t matter what I chose. “Top,” I said.
“Wrong answer.” She laughed and rolled off the bed. “Now get on your back.” As she
climbed into position over my head, she said, “Of all the things you do, this gives me the
most intense orgasms. I can’t get enough.”
I didn’t realize how the fondling of her body had aroused me until I found myself facing up
into her pussy, which gaped between her spread legs. Desperate, I grunted and lunged
upward, trying to reach her with my tongue. She pulled away, giggling, and teased me,
lowering herself and pulling away as I strained to lick her. When she tired of the game,
she settled in place, nearly cutting off my air, rocking easily back and forth as I worked
my tongue against her. Her breathing was loud, and broken by moans and sighs. She
shifted her pelvis back and forth as she wanted her vagina, then her clitoris, licked in
turn. I fought for breath, but my first priority was to keep my rhythm steady, the way she
liked it, until she stiffened, cried out, and bounced heavily on my face in the frenzy of
climax.
When it subsided, she hurled herself onto the bed beside me. “Ooh, that was super, Barry.
I’m so glad I didn’t go with him. I didn’t tell you he invited me back to his room for a
drink, did I?”
Still gasping for breath, I grinned at her. “You knew I’d be better than some inexperienced
kid. Were you really tempted?”
She grinned. “I’ll never tell. Wait – yes, I will! I was tempted, very much. But he’s
meeting me in the morning for breakfast, and taking me on a tour of Atlanta. Then I guess
we’ll meet you at the Thai place for lunch. He said one o’clock”
“He would probably have wanted to fuck you,” I said.
“That’s one reason I didn’t go with him. See why you don’t have to be jealous of me? I love
oral sex, at least when it’s done on me, and it seems to be your thing, too. I don’t
understand why you love it so much, but when it works out so well for both of us, who’s
going to ask too many questions?”
I stroked her hair while she kissed my nipple and whispered into my thin curls of chest
hair. “Are you ready to do some more for me?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” I whispered back. “I’m not some randy kid that burns out
after one round.”
Chapter 13
My meeting with Jeff Kapoor began well. We were discussing the work my group had been
doing comparing DNA sequences of adenoviruses of different types. About a half-hour into
our meeting, my cell vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it, but a moment later, his desk
phone rang.
He listened for a moment. “It’s your secretary.”
I took the handset. “Mrs. Brown, I’m in a meeting. You shouldn’t call me here.”
Her voice was strained. “I tried your cell first. But something bad’s happening here. I need
to tell you…”
My belly clenched. It was 8:30 in Arizona. Mrs. Brown would have just arrived at work.
She wouldn’t have had time to start her first cup of coffee. This was going to be bad news.
I glanced up at Jeff with a concerned look on my face.
“A group of soldiers were waiting when I showed up. They’re asking everyone questions.
Their officer told me they’ve been told to take some things away. They brought in crates of
equipment, and they’re putting on protective suits right now.”
“Let me talk to someone,” I said. I thought for a moment I was going to eject my bacon
and eggs all over the floor of Kapoor’s office.
I waited a couple of minutes until a deep male voice took the phone. “Captain Washington
here. You’re Dr. Croft?”
“I am, and I want to know what you’re doing.”
“I’ve been ordered to seal off several of your labs and remove certain equipment, sir.”
“On whose authority?” I kept most of the anger from my voice, though I wanted to shriek
into the phone. Several blood vessels on my forehead threatened to burst.
“I’m not allowed to divulge that, sir. I’ve been ordered to seal the corridor and shut off
ventilation and sewerage to that part of the building.”
“Why? We handle all our pathogens according to OSHA and CDC guidelines.” But I was
pissing into the wind. It was clear what had happened.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir.”
“Can’t it wait until I get back?”
“We’ll still be here when you come back, sir. There’s things we can’t touch until you’re
here.”
I hung up and made a sour face at Kapoor, who looked back with concern. We had been
friends for six years, and he supervised about a third of our funding.
“It’s an emergency of some kind. I’m going to have to get back right away.”
“From what I overheard, it sounded like some of your viruses got loose,” he said.
I shook my head. “Nothing like that. It must be precautionary. We’re doing some work for
Peter Hoffer, and the military has taken a sudden interest in it. Apparently more of an
interest than I thought. That’s all I’d better tell you. I suspect it may be classified by
now.”
“I guess you have to deal with that right away?”
I thought a minute. “No. At one o’clock, I have to meet the man responsible. Apparently,
the soldiers aren’t going to do anything drastic until I get back. It won’t hurt them to cool
their heels.”
“Surely you’re not going to be able to talk now? You look pretty upset.”
I reconsidered, and nodded. “You’re right. I don’t think I can concentrate on DNA
sequences and gene activation while all hell is breaking loose at home. Maybe I should go
where I can think things over and make some calls.”
I was indeed distracted. I walked out of the building wearing my visitor pass, and the
guard had to chase after me to retrieve it. I drove to a Starbucks a mile or so away and
bought a latte, which would sit more easily on my stomach than plain coffee.
My phone showed six missed calls. I dug out Fortino’s card and dialed.
“Fortino.”
“Major, what the fuck is going on?”
“Where are you? Aren’t you in a meeting?”
“I was, until I got a call from my lab.”
“Can it wait until our lunch meeting?”
“Fuck, no! Your goons are trashing my lab. Is this what I get for cooperating? For coming
forward with this, like a good citizen?”
“Dr. Croft, this isn’t all about you. This is about national security. Can we meet? Where
are you?”
There were squeaking and banging sounds over the line, and Lisa came on. I could
envision her snatching the phone from him. “Barry, what happened?”
“Some of Fortino’s apes have taken over your lab. We have to get back.”
I heard her shout ‘bastard’, faintly, apparently at Fortino.
Fortino came back on. “Where are you? We’ll come over right now.”
I gave him the cross streets. He knew where the Starbucks was. I took a newspaper from
my briefcase and tried to distract myself, not successfully, until they arrived. He wore his
neatly tailored US Army officer’s uniform today, and looked handsome and soldierly.
Maddeningly, he took the time to order coffee for himself and Lisa before joining me at one
of the tiny tables. He brought them back to the table, but paused a distance away,
grinning. “I need to be sure you’re not going to bite me if I come closer.”
“Not funny,” I said, keeping my face grim. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”
He sat down, leaned close, and lowered his voice. “I’d hoped it’d be obvious. There’s
danger of that discovery of yours getting loose every minute it’s left untended.”
“What are your thugs doing to my lab?”
“They’ve sealed off the ventilation ducts, and shut off the sewer lines. You wouldn’t
recognize your corridor right now. No one is allowed in there without a positive pressure
suit – you know, one of those moon suits.”
“I know what a positive pressure suit is,” I said. “What about the ongoing experiments?
There’s sixteen people working in there. Some of those experiments can’t just be left to sit
while your troops are doing whatever they do.”
He grew serious at last. “Dr. Croft, for an educated man, you’re not understanding what’s
at stake. Experiments can be redone another time. But if Lisa’s B-1B complex gets loose,
say, in one of her adenoviruses, it can’t be put back in the bottle. Someone will come down
with what seems like an ordinary cold, except the fever will just keep going up and up
until they die. From there it’ll spread like wildfire.”
I said, “We don’t know that at all. So far, we’ve got a handful of dead mice and rabbits. We’
ve got no reason to expect those viruses will infect humans.”
He spoke as if he hadn’t heard me. “Your people will have been put into quarantine by
now. We’ve moved them into trailers with living facilities and amenities. They’re
monitored three times a day – you know, take their temperature and a blood sample for
white cells. The likelihood of infection is very small, but we can’t afford to take chances,
can we?”
Fortino saw the shock on my face and leaned forward. “I’ve tried to negotiate with you. I
was hoping to solicit voluntary cooperation. But I can and will overrule you on this. You
can come back to Arizona and help me do this in an organized way, or you can sit and cool
your heels in a CDC isolation ward, while we do what we have to, in a much clumsier way.”
I really didn’t now how much authority he really had, but I guessed it was more than I
imagined.
He said, “In the meantime, you two, especially Lisa, are more dangerous than anyone else
in your lab, since you’ve worked closest with the stuff. We’re going to go out to Hartsfield
now. There’s a C-130 standing by to take us back to Tucson. There’s no way you’re getting
on a commercial flight.”
Chapter 14
We transferred our luggage from our rental car, and I called the agency to come pick it up.
On the way to the airport in his car, Fortino gave us surgical masks and packets of
disinfectant wipes for our hands. He put on a mask himself. “Chances are, you’re not
infected,” he’d said, “If I thought there was the slightest chance, we’d be a lot stricter
than this. But I won’t go down in history as the guy who let the Great Plague slip through
his fingers. I’d go on the wall of shame above Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and Typhoid Mary.”
He drove to the cargo section of the airport and stopped near a C-130, the four-engine,
propeller-driven workhorse of military transport. Inside the windowless fuselage, an area
had been draped with polyethylene sheeting in a sort of tent, and taped to close off all
openings. Fortino led us inside and a soldier taped the plastic shut behind us. An air duct
opened into one side of the enclosure, and from it came the rattle of a fan somewhere in
the vast cavern of the aircraft’s belly.
We strapped in as Fortino demonstrated, and almost immediately, the plane began to
move. We felt the rumble and shaking of takeoff and the tilt and lift and bounce as we
maneuvered through the sky. Unable to see outside the aircraft, I began to feel queasy. I
caught Lisa’s eye. She looked gray.
“Have you got something for Lisa?” I asked Fortino. He raised an eyebrow and dug a
handful of airsick bags from a seat pocket. During the rest of the trip, she hung her head,
and occasionally vomited into one of the waterproof bags. Soon the little enclosure stank
of vomit in spite of the ventilation, and I struggled to keep my own stomach down.
Disorientation triggered my claustrophobia as the aircraft bounced and swayed. I sweated
and clutched at my belly, and I fought the urge to tear down the plastic.
A car was waiting for us on the tarmac at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and scooted us
swiftly to the campus. All this attention further increased my apprehension. Judging by
the resources invested in this exercise, the military was taking this more seriously than I
imagined.
I probed Fortino. “The Army must have a lot of time on its hands.” He ignored me.
Thanks to the gain of two time zones during the six-hour flight, we arrived at the
university while it was still daylight. Once I looked at our building, I would have preferred
darkness. It was nearly concealed behind a wall of trailers and RVs. Chain-link fencing,
bearing the signs of a local rental supplier, ringed the entire building. Five white,
unmarked trailers, looking somewhat like railroad passenger cars, were lined up inside the
fence in a neat array, and other vehicles with military camo paint were parked
haphazardly in front of and around the building. Cables and flexible air ducts wound
among them, and portable lighting towers were being erected. The air throbbed with the
sounds of diesel engines and fans. I counted at least twenty workers in civilian clothes,
and six armed soldiers in uniform.
We passed through a guarded gate into the dark and nearly deserted building, where I met
Captain Washington. He was a huge, six-foot-something black man, wearing a surgical
mask like mine. I reflexively attempted to shake his hand, but he shook his head, no. I
was, I realized with a start, contaminated until proven otherwise.
Fortino, Washington, and Lisa followed me into the building, where we took the elevator to
the third floor. Fortino had been right. I barely recognized our corridor, sealed off with
several layers of heavy polyethylene sheeting held with a wooden framework and wide
tape. The plastic was bellied away from us between the wooden studs as air was sucked
away through high-efficiency filters. To one side of the barrier, several large display boards
had been set up on easels and covered with photographs. Close up, I saw that they were
grainy photographs of the inside of various rooms of the laboratory, apparently made from
the screen of a television monitor.
Washington turned Fortino’s attention to the boards. “We’ve photographed every likely
thing in the hot zone, sir,” he said. “If Dr. Croft points out the things we should take out,
our boys inside are ready to pack them for transport.”
“I’m going in there,” said Lisa. “Get me one of those suits.”
“Are you qualified in positive pressure suits?” snapped Fortino.
“I am,” I said. “I was certified at CDC a year ago.”
Fortino tensed his jaw and shook his head. But he finally said, “Okay, things might go
better with your help. Captain, would you see that Dr. Croft gets suited up? And have
someone bring a suit for me.”
An hour later, we’d reviewed the photos and put on the heavy blue protective suits. We’d
compiled a list of objects that might have come in contact with B-1B, either as the raw
DNA or a virus carrying it. We left a furious Lisa outside the barrier as Fortino and I went
through the airlock, plugging air hoses into our suits. Air roared into my suit, obliterating
any hearing I might have had inside the plastic helmet. A thick pipe ran the length of the
hall, with clusters of coiled yellow hoses sticking out every few yards. Through the plastic,
Lisa’s distorted shadow paced back and forth, backlit by the bright lobby.
We disconnected the hoses, moved through a second barrier, and worked our way down the
hall, plugging into the air hoses every few yards to refresh the air in our suits. Everything
looked foreign, although I recognized office nameplates and notices on the bulletin board
that I’d tacked up myself. I realized it wasn’t the hoses and moon suits that was strange;
it was the absence of people. I’d never seen the corridor vacant before.
I said, “This is fucking ridiculous. We were working in here every day without all this,
until this week.”
“WHAT?” shouted Fortino, and I remembered that he couldn’t hear me over the rush of
compressed air. I waved dismissively and we continued to the end lab where Lisa’s cold
room was located.
I stopped inside the door as soon as I’d plugged in. “MAJOR!” I bellowed until he turned
and looked at me. “WHY IS THE COLD ROOM OPEN? ALL OUR SAMPLES WILL BE
DESTROYED.”
He brought his faceplate close to mine and shouted back. “WE’RE TAKING EVERYTHING
FROM THIS ROOM. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT’S CONTAMINATED.”
“IT WILL TAKE YEARS TO RECOVER FROM THIS.”
“WE’LL TALK ABOUT THAT LATER. IN THE MEANTIME, I NEED THE COMBINATION TO
THE SAFE. I DON’T WANT TO OPEN IT UNTIL WE’VE GOT IT BACK TO THE FORT. AND
I NEED TO KNOW WHAT’S INSIDE IT FIRST.”
“THERE’S JUST LABELED PLASTIC TUBES WITH FROZEN SAMPLES IN THEM, AND
THEY’RE ALL INSIDE PLASTIC JARS.”
“NOTHING THAT WILL BREAK, THEN?”
“NO.” I felt sweat run down my neck in spite of the cool air rushing through the suit. The
blue rubber cocoon felt too small. It weighed down my limbs, and seemed to be getting
smaller. I needed to get free of it, soon.
I managed to hold myself together while we crossed the hall into Lisa’s lab, and I pointed
out the ongoing experiments, at least the ones I knew about. Fortino saw the heavy shelf
of notebooks over her desk, twenty or more inch-thick hardbound volumes.
“I’LL NEED THOSE,” he said.
“YOU CAN’T DO THAT,” I shouted against the blasting air. “THAT’S ALL HER WORK
FROM THE PAST THREE YEARS. SHE NEEDS THAT FOR HER THESIS.”
“SHE’LL GET IT ALL BACK WHEN SHE STARTS WORK AT THE FORT.”
By now, I’d concluded I’d made a terrible mistake by bringing B-1B out of our batcave. All
the stories and legends of military and government authorities stomping carelessly over
scientific work came back to me. Military people were in the business of killing people.
Why would they break a sweat over blotting out a mere three years of someone’s life?
Returning down the hallway, I kept myself by sheer force of will from pulling my air hose
loose and running for the airlock. In a final ordeal, I had to stand with my arms up in a
child’s plastic swimming pool while two blue-suited men sprayed a disinfectant solution
over the outside of my suit. Only then could I step outside and start peeling it off. Instead
of the fresh air I needed, all I could smell was my own sweat and body odor mixed with the
residual smell of the disinfectant.
Lisa said anxiously. “What are they taking? What about my samples?”
“Everything,” I said hopelessly. “Including your notes.”
Her pale face turned red, and she turned on Fortino. “Cocksucker! You can’t take my
notes. Those are mine! You treacherous bastard!”
The Major’s suit was stripped to his waist. His bare torso was muscular and tanned. “That’
s not my decision to make. You’ll get them back again.”
She said, “I’m going to get a lawyer.” But even as she cursed him, she stared at his bare
chest.
Fortino smiled again. “Not right away. We’ve got to get you two into quarantine.”
“Us?” I asked. “Both of us?”
“Of course. I told you already. You two have worked most closely with B-1B. You could be
incubating a B-1B-carrying virus right now.”
Free of the heavy blue suit, I thought of running outside and escaping, but the two armed
soldiers who’d joined Fortino made that moot. “Sergeant, take Dr. Croft and Miss Grissom
down to the quarantine units. Give them masks before they leave the building.”
The female sergeant, whose name tag read ‘Hannon’, seemed apologetic. “Miss Grissom,”
she said through her own surgical mask, “I’m sorry. This is a terrible inconvenience to
you, but we’ll try to keep you comfortable. You’ve been assigned to a women’s unit, No. 3.”
“So you destroy my work and then you put me in jail?” spat Lisa as we entered the
elevator with the two soldiers.
“It’s not so bad,” said Sgt. Hannon. “You’ve got a private room with a toilet and shower, a
computer, a TV and a stack of DVDs. The phone won’t make outside calls unless we
connect and monitor them for you. You’ve got incoming email and surfing, but all outgoing
communications have go through Major Fortino. That includes webmail and forums. We
bring things you need and take away your laundry. We want you to be as comfortable as
possible. Three times a day…”
“Right,” interrupted Lisa in her most venomous voice. “Three times a day someone will
take some blood and stick a thermometer up my ass. I can’t wait.”
The Sergeant sighed, “I was going to say, three times a day, we bring you real food from a
local restaurant. You won’t starve. But there’ll be medical tests. Expect to be here for ten
days unless someone develops an infection. In that case it’ll be longer.”
She seemed startled, as if she’d just remembered something. “And I’ll need your cell
phones.”
At the row of white trailers, Lisa disappeared with Sgt. Hannon, and the other soldier
showed me to my own quarters in Unit 5, a tiny eight by ten foot room with a three by
three window looking out on the next trailer.
So Lisa and I end up in a trailer park after all, I thought wryly.
Chapter 15
The sergeant closed the door behind me, but I was not willing to try the latch. If I found it
locked from the outside, I’d feel like an animal in a cage, and I suppose I was. We
regularly left rabbits, mice, and guinea pigs in cages, too, to see if they’d get sick and die.
So I was on the receiving end of cosmic justice. Karma? Isn’t that what it was called?
I reflexively turned on the computer and waited for it to finish booting up. About 400
emails waited for me, and I scrolled down to look at the newest ones. The most recent was
from Fortino. I couldn’t escape the bastard anywhere. It had been fifteen minutes since I’d
been with him on the third floor. This message was stamped about two minutes ago.
Dr. Croft, Greetings,
I’m sorry to do this to you, but the stakes are too high to worry about your convenience.
You and your colleagues will be in quarantine for ten days, unless someone gets sick. You
are in what’s called a ‘Type X’ facility, which is normally used to house people with
definite exposures to contagious diseases like smallpox. But because of the unknowns
involved in the B-1B complex, we are imposing this level of quarantine until we know
more. Type X quarantine means you are in enforced isolation from society in general but
not necessarily from each other, unless signs of infection appear.
We have limited your communication with the outside world to protect our cover story. We’
ve told the press and the university community that the building is closed due to the
collapse of a ceiling full of asbestos. The public is jaded with asbestos news, and so far,
the news services have barely noticed, in spite of all the disruption around your building.
If the general public were told of the real danger, there would be panic among the students
and their parents, as well as some soul-searching as to whether the university should be
doing such dangerous work. I’m sure you can appreciate the downside of that for your own
research. We’ve limited the number of people in uniform to those needed to guard the site.
The others are in civilian clothes, or are actual civilian employees.
You can communicate freely with the other quarantined personnel, but all emails going
outside the quarantine have to be approved or edited by Captain Washington or me. Be
cautious what you write, and tell your relatives and friends that you are okay and are
being detained for medical examination as a precaution.
You cannot leave the trailer, but when you visit the others in your unit, be sure to put on a
surgical mask.
If it gives you any comfort, I’ve joined your people in quarantine, since I’ve been exposed
to you and Lisa.
Have a good night’s sleep.
Paul Fortino
Since Fortino appeared to be holding all the cards, I shrugged and decided that
cooperation would be the wisest route, at least until a better option presented itself.
Most of the non-spam emails appeared to be from my students, all of whom shared
confinement with me. But about halfway down the list, a familiar name caught my eye.
‘Rhiannon Lane, Attorney’. It was dated yesterday.
Barry,
Your secretary said that you were in Atlanta for two days, but I haven’t been able to reach
you by cell phone. If you get this message, call me back. I have the urge to win some more
money from you. This weekend?
If you’re still out in the Mysterious East, you might not have heard about the ‘catastrophe’
on the campus. Apparently, one of the buildings is full of asbestos, and of course,
everyone is overreacting. They’ve closed it and moved in a large crew of people to clean it
up. I guess you’ll hear about it when you get back.
Rhi
It seemed like months since I’d seen her, though only a week had passed since we’d
played poker in her dining room while my brain seethed with carnal thoughts. Now she
was inviting me to a repeat of last weekend’s pleasant evening, and perhaps more... I
dared to dream. But a ten-day quarantine stretched in front of me, devoid of Lisa, my
beloved research, and now Rhiannon.
I clicked on ‘Reply’ and typed,
Dear Rhiannon,
squinted at it for a moment, and changed it to,
Rhiannon,
I do know about the problem on the campus. I seem to be in the middle of it. All the
members of my group, including me, have been held for medical examination for
asbestosis. I feel fine, but they insist. Perhaps it has to do with the university’s insurance
or something. It’s going to take about ten days, but I’ll be happy to join you for that game
of Risk when we’re out of here. While we’re at it, I need to follow up on that legal advice
we discussed.
Barry
I didn’t know how much checking Fortino or Washington would do, but was there a
downside to trying? I clicked ‘Send’.
Within five minutes, a new email arrived.
Dr. Croft,
You appear to be attempting to communicate outside the terms of Major Fortino’s orders.
Your email to ‘Rhiannon’ will be held for his examination in the morning.
B. Washington, Captain
Shit. Well, it was worth a try. I undressed, used the little toilet in the corner of the room,
and went to bed. But sleep escaped me for a time. I wanted to see Rhiannon. I wanted life
to return to normal. I wanted to set back the clock a week, and postpone the trip to
Atlanta. The only solution was to keep busy, but how was I going to do that for ten days?
I had no books, no notebooks, no access to my files. Even if I could somehow escape from
this place, my lab was a wreck and my office behind a guarded, germ-tight barrier. At least
most of my partially written papers and proposals were backed up in the university
computer center, and I could access almost everything in the library online. Perhaps it
was time to write that review article I’d put off for so long.
Ultimately, I fell asleep in spite of the cacophony of generators and air compressors, and
woke early as my telephone rang. It was Sergeant Hannon’s girlish voice. “Rise and shine,
Dr. Croft. We’re getting Grand Slam breakfasts from Denny’s for everyone. Are you in?”
I grunted an okay, and lay down again. The sunlight shone in through a window, but no
dust motes floated in its beam. Our air was being carefully filtered by one of those loud
machines outside. The room seemed smaller than last night. The plain beige walls were
made of some kind of plastic, presumably suitable for scrubbing and fumigating. In the
corner, a shower curtain concealed a little RV-style sink, shower, and toilet. Six shelves
were arranged on the wall instead of a dresser. A desk and chair stood opposite the bed,
with the beaten desktop computer on top.
Ten days in here was going to drive me batshit.
I washed myself as best I could in the quart-sized excuse for a sink, and dressed in my
damp clothes from yesterday. I finally felt courageous enough to try the door, which
opened easily. I read the placards on the inside of the door:
WEAR A SURGICAL MASK AND GLOVES WHEN OUT OF YOUR ROOM OR WHEN
OTHERS ARE PRESENT.
WASH WITH BACTERICIDAL SOAP AND WATER WHEN RETURNING TO ROOM
FOR YOUR PROTECTION, YOU ARE BEING MONITORED BY CLOSED CIRCUIT TV AT
ALL TIMES.
I backed into the room, saw the little camera on the wall, and made a big, shit-eating grin
into its lens while I pulled a blue nitrile surgical glove over it. Then I donned mask and
gloves, and stepped into the hall.
Mine was the first of five identical doors. I moved down the hall, checking name tags
taped carelessly beside each door. Buddy Lester was in the center unit; George Chaudhury
in the end one. The remaining two rooms were marked ‘empty’. I knocked on each door.
Buddy opened up first. He’d had time to make himself neat. “Welcome back, boss,” he
said wryly, as I stepped inside. “We’ve got the decorators upstairs. They’re making a few
changes.” He took a surgical mask from the box and tied it on.
I followed him into his room. “Yes, I noticed,” I said. “It seems that opening up to the
CDC wasn’t the best idea after all.”
He pursed his lips. “I’m sorry, Barry. I didn’t guess it would come to this, and without
warning, too. They’ve carried a lot of equipment inside the building. I can’t imagine what
they’re doing.”
“I’ve been up there. They’ve wrecked the place.” I shrugged. “But don’t beat yourself up
over it. What you did was morally the right thing. At least the senior officer here has tried
to convince me of that.”
George came into the room wearing mask and gloves, and we nodded seriously at one
another. To him, our confinement was more than an interruption of his work. He was
separated from his family, too, and ten days in here would be a nightmare for him. He even
hated to go to three-day conferences unless he could take his wife along.
“Well, what are we going to do?” asked George, his Indian accent stronger with the stress.
“Somehow I suspect that standing on our rights isn’t going to work,” said Buddy.
“My family is frightened,” said George. “I told them it’s just a bureaucratic thing –
regulations and so on. But they’re scared. They don’t entirely believe me. My wife knows
the kind of viruses we work with.”
I made my voice low and calm. After all, I was supposed to be the leader here. I was also
aware I was probably talking to more than my two colleagues. “We have two choices. We
can just dig in and wait out the quarantine, or we can sneak out or force our way out. But
you’ve probably noticed that nice little Sergeant Hannon with the cute voice. She’s got a
great big gun on her hip, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she has orders to use it if we just
opened the door and tried to walk away.”
“When they put us in here,” said George, “I asked Mr. Washington if we’d broken any
laws, and he said, ‘Not yet.’ What do you think he meant by that?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t understand.”
“George,” said Buddy, “I think his point was that we’d better do as we’re told.”
I said, “Well, we work with human pathogens, and that puts us squarely in their sights. I
suppose if we do the wrong thing, we’d fall under the Patriot Act or one of those other new
terrorist laws.”
“I think you mean anti-terrorist,” said Buddy.
“Whatever. Nobody understands what’s in those laws. Even our Congressmen couldn’t be
bothered reading them. All we know is that the Government can do anything they want,
and they don’t have to justify themselves to anyone.
“So we’ll do what we can do. Right now, we should check in with the students,” I said.
“Has the new Chinese girl got an email address yet? See if there’s anything they need.
Tell them what we know. Be positive, and try to keep their spirits up.” We divided up the
list of students and went back to our rooms.
As I worked at my computer, Sergeant Hannon brought in a flat cardboard box containing
my breakfast. After she set it on the table, she reached up and removed the glove from the
camera.
“Do you really think I’d shoot you?” she said. Her eyes crinkled with a mischievous smile
otherwise hidden by her mask.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“In a heartbeat, Dr. Croft.”
Go to Ch. 16-20
