"Tara." Jack Hudson walked into the bullpen Monday morning at 8:00 am and handed her a file. He leaned over and lowered his voice. "Pull up everything you can on this, transfer it to a portable hard drive, then take the drive down to Tech and have them run it through a Level 8 scan. Then get back up here with it, pronto."
Tara's eyes widened. "Level 8?"
"You heard me. And keep it to yourself." The look in his eyes made a chill run down her spine. She opened the file, and the chill got worse.
Jack straightened and raised his voice to address the room. "Listen up. D, Myles, Sue, Bobby, and Tara – you have an hour to clear your desks. Get whatever you need, write whatever notes it will take for someone else in here to pick it up. Lucy, I need you to go down to Intel and pick up a package for me. They know you're coming, and you'll have to sign for it. It comes straight back here and into my hands in no more than 10 minutes. Then finish up anything outstanding you have as well. At exactly 9 am, I want the six of you waiting for me in Conference 5. Garrett will be joining us."
There was a moment of stunned silence. "C-5?" Bobby asked, and there was an edge in his voice that they all felt.
Jack didn't even bother to nod. "Let's move, people. I'm not kidding."
Things got busy in a hurry.
s
s
Conference Room 5 didn't get used very often. It had the usual setup of table, chairs, wipeboards, aud/vid equipment, and computer terminal that all the conference rooms had. There, the similarity ended.
C-5 was unique. Once designated for a case, it became its own little world. You couldn't get in without a key-card, a passcode (both supplied only by the Director of the FBI himself), and a retinal scan. There were no windows.
The room itself was set up to be soundproof, scan-proof, and any other –proof you could think of. The computer was equipped with the most sophisticated firewall system available (certainly not the type you could pick up at the nearest Circuit City™), and it wasn't connected to the network in the building. It wasn't connected to anything but itself, but it had enough information stored in it to make up for that. Nobody knew who kept it up to date.
There was very little conversation as they waited for Jack, and Ted Garrett. Although only Dimitrius and Myles had ever been in here before, they all knew (Tara and Lucy had just filled Sue in) that C-5 was only used for two types of situations: something for which major was a gross understatement, or something so sensitive that even the FBI in general couldn't know about it. Neither option brought anything but a cold chill and tense silence.
At exactly 9 a.m., Ted Garrett walked in, with Jack right behind him. Garrett turned to a keypad just inside the door and pressed a button. The door closed, and there was the sound of a hydraulic motor closing a second door that would completely soundproof the room.
It had the feel of being shut in a bank vault, and Tara twitched. She was just slightly claustrophobic, and the subject matter Jack had asked her to research was not helping. Fortunately, C-5 was about the same size as the Bullpen.
"All right, people." Garrett's bass voice boomed across the table. "I'm going to let Jack fill you in on the details, but I want to make one thing very clear to all of you. You have all taken oaths to not discuss active cases with anyone outside of work – that's nothing new. But, on this case, you will not discuss anything related to it outside of this room. Not even to each other – you have something to say, you come in here. As of right now, this is your office space for the duration. Is that clear?" Very solemn faces nodded all around the table. "Good. Jack, they're all yours." He handed Jack a manila envelope and sat down.
Jack took a breath, trying to slow his pulse, then gave up. He opened the envelope and said, "Pass these around. One key-card and one slip of paper apiece." He handed the envelope to Tara, who started it around the table. "The pass-code on the paper is to be memorized. The papers will be shredded and burned before we leave here this morning." He paused for a moment, trying to let the tension in the room do something besides get worse. Then he also sat down at the table.
Bobby couldn't stand it anymore. "What the bloody hell is going on, Jack? You've got us all scared to death here."
Jack nodded. "I know, and I'm sorry. This is all procedure, but I agree with Mr. Garrett, and the Director, that it's necessary. If anything at all about this leaks, it's going to cause a panic whether there's reason for one or not." He let that sink in, and noticed that it helped a little—but only a little.
"Tara," he began, "why don't you fill everyone in on what you were doing earlier."
Heads turned. Tara swallowed, hard, and pulled up an image on the video screen. It was a microscopic image, obviously enlarged several thousand times, and it looked like a bunch of snakes wrestling.
"What you're all looking at is an electron micrograph of the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus," she began. She passed out folders to everyone. "The specific details of the disease are in here. I'll just try to summarize it. According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, or Ebola HF is a severe, often-fatal disease in humans, and nonhuman primates like monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees, that has appeared sporadically since its initial recognition in 1976.
"The disease is caused by infection with Ebola virus, named after a river in Africa, where it was first recognized. There are four identified subtypes of Ebola virus. Three of the four have caused disease in humans: Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, and Ebola-Ivory Coast. The fourth, Ebola-Reston, has caused disease in nonhuman primates, but not in humans. There has never been a reported case of Ebola HF in a human in the United States, although there was an outbreak of Ebola-Reston among the monkeys in a research facility in Virginia in 1989. It killed over 400 research animals in less than a week.
"Nobody knows the exact origins, locations, or natural habitat of Ebola, but based on what evidence they have, and the nature of some similar viruses, the general belief is that the virus is zoonotic — that means it's animal-borne, and is ordinarily maintained in an animal host. They just haven't been able to pinpoint it to a single species yet. It is native to the African continent. That's where most of the cases of Ebola have occurred.
"Cases usually occur in sporadic outbreaks, usually within a hospital or other clinical setting. The infection is acute – there's no just being a carrier. The theory is that an index case, the first to show up, becomes infected by contact with an infected animal. Then it's spread through contact with blood or other secretions from the infected person—vomit, feces, urine, semen. The disease can also be spread, and this happens a lot in African health-care settings, through needles or syringes that are reused without being properly sterilized."
She sighed. "I know this doesn't sound like much of a summary. There's a whole lot more that's unknown about Ebola than what is."
"Except that it's a nasty-with-a-capital-N bug," Dimitrius commented.
"That's true," Tara replied, continuing to summarize. "It affects multiple systems in the body, including the immune system. As the name implies, one of the symptoms is massive hemorrhaging, both internally and externally. It hits abruptly—fever, headache, joint and muscle pain, sore throat, and general weakness, followed by diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain. These are similar to malaria or typhoid symptoms, so it's often misdiagnosed until it's too late. A rash or red eyes are other symptoms that may occur—also nonspecific to Ebola. The fatality rate varies – but it's worse than Marburg virus, which has just a 23-25 mortality rate. Same family, different virus," she clarified in response to Sue's raised eyebrow. Sue nodded.
"Ebola, especially Ebola-Zaire, has up to a 90 fatality rate. There's no specific treatment for Ebola. Patients basically receive what's called supportive therapy, which means the medical staff try to keep fluids balanced, maintain oxygen levels and blood pressure, and treat for any secondary infections. Ebola seems to eat up the clotting agents in the blood, so massive transfusions are used as well. The scientists aren't even sure why those who survive it do survive it. There has been some limited success using convalescent serum, from patients who've survived Ebola, but nothing really definitive."
"So, how do they stop this bug from wiping out whole nations?" Lucy asked. "If it's so virulent and transmissible, why hasn't it decimated half of Africa by now?"
"From what I've been reading, it's because the spread can be stopped by using full barrier nursing techniques – isolation of the infected patient, the use of protective clothing, such as gowns, masks, gloves, and goggles, minimal lab work, complete sterilization of all equipment, avoiding contact with the blood or secretions from the patient. Ebola doesn't live very long if it hasn't got a host."
Jack stood up again. "Thanks, Tara. Now, before someone inevitably asks what all this has to do with us…"
"That would be the next step," Myles added, leaning back in his chair.
"…that, as rare as Ebola is, there's still a threat that it can be used as a biological weapon in a terrorist attack. Get a vial of blood from a patient, or even tissue from a cadaver, and you've got the beginnings of your very own, terrifying, epidemic. The World Health Organization has a conference coming up Friday morning at the Regional Office here in D.C. that will address, among other things, some discussion of Bioterrorism Agents and Diseases. Intel has just learned that there's some chatter about an assassination attempt on one of the keynote speakers for that conference – a virologist who has been working on developing a treatment for Ebola."
"A cure?" Bobby asked.
"No," Jack replied, "not a cure. A treatment that does, however, from what little we've been able to find out, seem to weaken the virus' grip on a host. I don't think it's gotten past the animal-testing phase yet, but it apparently has enough promise to warrant presenting it at the conference."
"Now," Jack continued, "the reason this case brings us into C-5 is simply because just the word Ebola is enough to raise chills, so the fewer people who know about this case, the less likelihood of something leaking out and causing a panic. We don't even want enough going around to spark speculation." Heads nodded in understanding, all around the table.
He opened the package in front of him, and handed Tara a CD-ROM, which she put in the computer.
"So," drawled Bobby, "who's the egghead we're gonna be babysitting until this conference?"
"Good deduction," Jack replied. "Bring up the photo, Tara."
On the screen appeared an image of a man in his mid-to-late seventies—tall, silver-haired, with piercing eyes and a demeanor that suggested he was king of whatever domain he stepped into, and that he planned on living forever.
Myles' chair came up with a thunk. "Good lord!"
Jack turned to him. "Myles? You know this man?"
"Well, I wouldn't say I know him, but I met him just last weekend."
Tara's head snapped up. "You don't mean…"Myles nodded. "Oh yes, I do." He pointed at the screen. "That's Dr. David Dillingham. Elizabeth's grandfather."