The Genius Plague

CHAPTER 14

“This is so awesome,” Paul said.

He sat next to me in the car as we waited our turn to pass through the security gate at Fort Meade. Like Katherine Wyatt, he was gaining entrance as a consultant, escort-only, with a single-day badge. It normally took weeks to process something like that for someone not already in the system, but Melody had ways of making things happen fast.

Watching Paul’s amazement, I marveled at how normal the attack dogs, razor wire, and heavily armed guards now seemed to me, after such a short time. It gave me a surge of pride to be showing it all to Paul as an insider.

“Doesn’t it make you nervous?” he asked. “I keep expecting them to peg me as an imposter and drag me out of the car.”

“You get used to it,” I said.

We parked and went through the metal detectors, where Paul took it all in with the same serious expression as the MPs with guns. On the far side, he accepted his red-striped badge as if it were a Medal of Honor. As I now knew, the badges were electronically tracked in the building, registering silent alarms if any badge entered an area for which it was not cleared, or if an escort-only badge was not in close proximity to a valid permanent badge. Which meant that my little exploit in Agent Benjamin Harrison’s introductory class had been doomed from the moment I walked the wrong way down the hall. I’d been lucky not to end up in jail.

I escorted him down to our basement room and into our little conference room, where Melody, Shaunessy, Andrew, and several other members of the team sat waiting. Flashing red lights indicated to anyone entering the room that an uncleared contractor was present, which meant that all classified documents had to be locked away, all classified computers powered off, and all classified discussions held in another room. It was the same arrangement used when specialized outside contractors were needed to repair large-scale plumbing leaks or install new elevators. I made the introductions and gave Paul the floor.

A set of charts with his images had already been processed through security and loaded onto the unclassified computer system. He used them to explain to the team what he had explained to me already. Everyone there had signed non-disclosure agreements at Paul’s insistence, legal documents that would prevent them from sharing or benefitting financially from what he told them.

“What does this have to do with all the Colombian guerrilla activity?” Andrew said. “Do we think their members—”

Melody stood up before he could finish. “Thank you, Dr. Johns, for providing this information. Does anyone have any questions about the science involved?”

Andrew stopped talking, reddening slightly. Paul was visibly disappointed that he wasn’t going to be privy to any NSA shop talk, but he smiled and looked around expectantly.

“How does the infection spread?” Shaunessy asked.

“Spore inhalation,” Paul said. “The mature fungus in the wild produces spores, which the wind blows through the air. If you inhale a spore, it can take root in the lining of your lungs and grow.”

“Can it be passed from person to person?”

“No. Not yet, anyway. There’s no indication that the fungus will sporulate inside a human host. The mycelial strands are haploid, which means they have only one copy of each chromosome. They can’t reproduce unless they encounter another, sexually compatible mycelium of the same species. My guess is that reproduction takes place only in the rainforest, where such encounters are common.”

“Why does it increase intelligence?”

“It’s a classic symbiotic relationship. The more intelligent the affected animal, the better its survival rate. The more value the fungus brings to the animal, the more the animal will protect or even cultivate the fungus. Each benefits the other.”

When the questions were exhausted, Melody thanked him again for his time and looked at me.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll give you a peek at the server room before I escort you out.”

“What, no secrets?” he whispered as we left the conference room. The red lights were still flashing like silent sirens.

“Did you expect any?”

“I thought somebody might let something slip. You know, like who really assassinated Kennedy or where the alien technology is kept.”

I shrugged. “No such luck. One more treat before you go, though.” I waved my badge over the keypad and then pressed the correct sequence of numbers. The electromagnetic bolt clanked free, and I pushed open the door.

A blast of cool air ruffled our hair as the air pressure equalized, and the whir of thousands of rack-mounted servers filled our ears. Paul’s expression was priceless. He stepped into the cavernous space, eyes bright, gaping at the endless racks of machinery that seemed to dwindle into the horizon.

We descended a flight of stairs to the floor. I had only been in here once or twice since Melody showed it to me, since my job didn’t require it. Paul spun, taking it all in. “All the information in the whole world is in here,” he said.

“You may be exaggerating,” I said. “But, yeah. It’s a lot of bytes.”

Paul dropped to the floor—at first, I thought he had tripped—and stared down through one of the grates at the bundles of wires and cables that snaked under the floor, carrying information from the servers to the rest of the building. “It’s incredible.”

“Don’t drool on the wiring,” I said.

He climbed back to his feet, dusting off his hands. “And you’re part of all this. You can access this data, spy on the world, read everybody’s email.”

“Part of it, yeah. Read everybody’s email, no.”

“Just the bad guys.”

“Something like that.”

He grinned. “Thanks for getting me in here. It was pretty cool, even if you didn’t show me the telepathic ray gun.”

“No problem.”

On our way out, we ran into Melody.

“Thanks again, Dr. Johns,” she said.

“How’s your granddaughter?” Paul said. “Neil told me what happened to her.”

I winced inwardly, hoping Paul wasn’t about to voice his opinions on how teenagers should be allowed to take drugs to improve their test scores.

“She’s doing well,” Melody said. “Thanks for asking.”

“Out of curiosity, do you know what drugs they used to treat her?”

“I really have no idea.”

“Is there any medication she has to keep taking? Now that the crisis is past?”

Melody gave him an odd look. “I think there was, now that you mention it. Her mom said something about a pill she was supposed to take for a long time. A few years, she might have said. I’d never heard of anything like that.”

I felt a chill creep up my shoulders. Paul nodded, leaning forward. “This drug, this Neuritol. Do you know where it comes from?”

“Another student…”

“No, I mean originally. Who’s making it? Where does the supply come from?”

Melody crossed her arms. “Why are you asking all this? Is there something you know?”

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “One more question. Does her intelligence seem greater since her recovery? Has she displayed any feats of intellect, such as remarkable memory or surprising bursts of intuition? Maybe performed exceptionally well on tests above her level?”

I could see the understanding dawn in Melody’s eyes. “You’re saying this is the same. That Neuritol introduces the same infection that is spreading in South America.”

“I don’t know. But it seems like a possibility. Someone could be isolating the spores and packaging it as an oral drug.”

“Would that be hard?”

Paul shrugged. “Not very. I could do it.”

I wanted to say, But you wouldn’t, right? I settled for saying, “If this is making its way into the United States, we need to know about it.”

“Agreed,” Melody said, her tone brusque. “Thank you for bringing it to our attention, Dr. Johns. If we have more questions for you on the details, may we contact you through Neil?”

“Of course.”

I walked Paul all the way out to the entrance and past the metal detectors. A uniformed MP took his badge, and he was free to take the car and drive through the gate on his own. I had already arranged with Shaunessy to drop me off on her way home at the end of the day. The phone in the guard booth rang and the MP answered it.

“Neil Johns?” he asked.

“That’s me.”

“Ms. Muniz wants you back in the office as soon as possible.”

I rushed back through the halls and back down to our basement room. “What’s going on?” I asked Melody.

“The DIRNSA called.”

“He wants to see us again?”

“Nope. He wants to see you.”

Kilpatrick had his phone to his ear when I eased into his office. “Well, find out,” he said. “We can’t hold off much longer.”

He hung up the phone and looked at me, his eyes active. “Who are you?”

“Neil Johns, sir.”

“Of course. Listen, Johns. Muniz tells me you’re a rising star.”

“If she says so.” I was pleased at the compliment, but terrified as to what it might mean. I doubted very much that the director of the world’s most powerful intelligence agency had called me into his office to pat me on the head and give me a gold star.

I didn’t have to wait long. “You’re coming with me to Brazil in the morning,” he said. “Our flight leaves at nine thirty.”

I felt panic rising. “Sir?”

“I know your history, and your father’s service, Johns. During the years he was posted in Brazil, you maintained a close friendship with the son of Júlio Eduardo de Almeida, who is now the Deputy Commander of the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência.”

His Portuguese pronunciation was terrible, but I didn’t point that out. Neither did I pretend to be surprised that the NSA knew who my childhood friends were. “I haven’t seen Celso in five years,” I said. “Besides, it’s his father who’s head of intelligence. Celso’s an engineering student. He doesn’t even have a security clearance.”

“All I want you to do is catch up with an old friend while you’re in town on business. Can you do that for me?”

I swallowed. Seeing Celso again would be nice, probably. I hadn’t been back to Brazil since I was sixteen. But Kilpatrick was obviously angling for some kind of information or access, which meant I would be using him, not just reconnecting. Then again, Kilpatrick wasn’t really asking.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Good. BWI, nine-thirty.”

“How long will we be there?”

Kilpatrick shrugged. “A few days. See Courtney for your tickets.”

Courtney was his administrative assistant, and she printed my boarding pass without a word. I was going to Brazil.

I left early. I had to pack a bag and prepare for my trip, though I didn’t really know what I would need. I remembered Kilpatrick’s shrug and mentally revised his “few days” into a week. My phone rang. Talking on the phone while driving was against Maryland law, but I answered it anyway, thinking it might be Melody, or even Kilpatrick.

It was Mom. “I just got the message,” she said. “Is he okay?”

“What? Is who okay?”

“Your father. Paul called to say he was taking him to the hospital.”

“When was this? Did he say why?” I saw then that my phone showed eight missed calls.

“This afternoon. I had to teach a class, so Paul offered to spend the rest of the day with him after he finished with you. The message just said he was heading to the ER, no details. Didn’t he call you?”

“It looks like he tried. Did they go to Baltimore Washington Medical Center?”

“I assume.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’m still a half-hour away, even if I push it.”

“Okay. I’ll call you when I know anything.”

I threw the phone onto the passenger seat and pressed the accelerator. My mind raced through scenarios, picturing a heart attack, a stroke, a sudden worsening of his Alzheimer’s symptoms. I imagined an accident with the stove, or Dad just walking out of the house when Paul wasn’t watching and trying to take the car or the boat, with disastrous results. Five minutes later, I veered into the ER parking lot and stopped in the first spot without worrying about the signs. I called Paul as I ran into the building.

“I’ll meet you in the ER waiting room,” he said.

I asked at the front desk for Dad’s room number anyway, but Paul met me there in less than a minute. “Hey, brother,” he said. “Not much for answering your calls, are you?”

“You know I can’t take a cell phone inside. You should have called my work number.”

“I did. No answer there, either.”

“Mom’s on her way,” I said.

“Okay. Come on, I’ll show you his room.” We walked through the double doors and down a series of hallways. “He’s just down here on the left.”

There was something in Paul’s face. Fear and worry, but something else, too. Guilt. And just the hint of defiance. In an instant, I knew what had happened.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You gave it to him. You did, didn’t you?”

“What?” His guilty look was all the confirmation I needed.

“That parasite! You intentionally infected him with it, gave him an injection, or else put it in his food or something. What did you think would happen? Did you expect you could cure Alzheimer’s with a fungus? The world’s leading neurodegenerative disease, and you were going to fix it with a home remedy?”

His expression turned to belligerence. “Just listen for a minute.”

“Listen? To your excuses and rationalizations? You performed human testing on our father. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Neil. Neil, wait…”

I pushed past him and walked into my father’s room. He lay on his back, his head lifted and straining, one arm tied to the side rail with a Velcro restraint. Two oxygen tubes looped around his ears and snaked into his nostrils, held in place with white tape. A nurse stood beside him, speaking calmly to him and trying to restrain his other arm.

“Get away from me!” He batted at her with his free hand, then tried to reach his IV and rip it out of his arm.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“He keeps pulling out his IV,” she said. “Are you his family? Can you help?”

“It’s okay, Dad,” I said. “She’s here to help you. Calm down.” I caught his wrist and held it so she could fasten the strap around it.

“Who are you? What do you want with me?” he shouted.

“It’s me. It’s Neil, Dad. Your son. You’re sick. You need medicine.”

He rattled his hands against the side rails and strained against the straps. He wore a vest with strings that had been tied to the rails, preventing him from getting out of the bed.

“I don’t need medicine! What I need is to go to work. I’m late for work, and you’re keeping me here against my will.”

Paul stood in the doorway, not coming any closer. The IV beeped, but the nurse made no move to check it.

“You don’t need to go to work,” I said to my father. “You called in sick.”

That stopped him for a moment. “I did?”

“You did. They’re not expecting you. They’ve got it covered for today.”

I thought I had calmed him, but he gave a huge jerk, yanking his whole body to one side. The rails rattled, and the bed itself squeaked against the floor and shifted slightly to the right.

“We might have to sedate him if we can’t keep him calmer,” the nurse said. “Ten minutes ago, he managed to pull out his nasal cannula by rubbing his face against the side of the bed.”

“You can’t break me,” Dad growled. “I won’t tell you a thing. It doesn’t matter what you do to me. You can tell your boss that I’ll die first.”

I sat on a stool next to the bed and stroked his head, speaking softly. “You’re home now,” I said. “You made it. You didn’t tell. We’re going to take care of you.”

He calmed slightly, though his eyes still swung wildly back and forth. “Who are you?” he asked.

I whispered in his ear. “Neil Johns. I’m an NSA agent. I’m here to take care of you.”

“I didn’t tell,” Dad said. “I was strong.”

I stroked his hair, remembering times as a boy when I had been scared at night, and he had stroked my head until I fell asleep. “I know you were, Dad,” I said. “I know.”

The nurse left. Paul came into the room, then, but I glared at him. “No,” I said. “Get out.”

He ignored me. “I was trying to help him. Who are you to send me away? You’ve barely seen him since you started your job.”

“At least I didn’t try to kill him.”

“He’s been worse. A lot worse. He doesn’t even know who I am most of the time. Do you think that’s what he would want?”

I felt the muscles in my neck tighten painfully. I wanted to punch Paul, or else grab him by the hair and make him look, really look, at what he’d done. “Of course it’s not what he wanted. Nobody wants dementia. Then again, nobody wants a fungal infection, either. You could have killed him.”

“But if there was a chance! Even a small chance, that he might get better. Don’t you think he would want us to try? What does he have to lose?”

The IV pole kept beeping. “Did you even ask him first?”

Paul threw up his hands. “What good would that do? He wouldn’t understand.”

“You could have tried. You could have asked Mom. You could have asked me. We could have decided together.”

“Decided what? The choices were between a slow and horrible death, and a chance at something better. It wasn’t like he had a lot to lose.”

I stood up right into Paul’s face, the stool crashing to the floor behind me. My fist clenched, and only the awareness of our father lying next to me held me back from swinging it. “He had plenty to lose,” I said. “He had his life. He might have been sick, but his life was still worth something. It wasn’t yours to gamble away.”

Mom came into the room and saw us like that, facing each other down. “What are you doing?” she said. “Is he okay? You said you would call me!”

I stepped back. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

She saw Dad on the bed, restrained, oxygen tubes in his nose and a wild look in his eyes. She rushed to his side. “What happened?”

“He has a fungal infection,” I said flatly, with a dark look at Paul. “Looks like it’s the same one that Paul picked up in the Amazon.”

“How is he? Is he responding to the medication?”

I realized that with all of Dad’s agitated behavior and my anger at Paul, I hadn’t thought to ask. “They think his chances are good,” Paul said. “But he doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening to him. He keeps trying to get away.”

“You told them what it is?” I asked. “So they know how to treat it?”

Paul looked hurt. “Of course, I did.”

I righted the stool, and Mom sat down. She took his hand. “I’m here, Charles. It’s going to be all right.”

His violence seemed to have calmed, but he was still breathing hard, confused. “That’s not my name,” he said. “You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t know who you are.”

Mom’s eyes were wet, and she stroked his hair as I had done. “That’s okay,” she said. “I know who you are.”

As darkness fell, he became combative again, jerking at his straps and shouting at us. It was typical for Alzheimer’s patients to get worse when it grew dark outside. They called it sundowning, but no one really knew why it happened. At the end of visiting hours, the nurse told us that one of us could stay the night, if we wanted, to help keep him calm, but the others would have to return in the morning. Both Paul and I wanted to do it, but Mom insisted that she wouldn’t leave him.

I drove back to my parents’ empty house. Paul, despite the late hour, decided to drive home to his College Park apartment. I didn’t try to change his mind. When I got home, I realized I still had to pack for Brazil. I hadn’t even told Mom or Paul that I was going.

I put some clothes in a suitcase, wondering what I would need. If I was just meant to hang out with Celso, then casual clothes would be sufficient. If I was going to be invited to meetings with foreign diplomats or intelligence officers, then I would need something more formal. I packed some of everything.

I slept fitfully and woke early, wanting to check in on Dad before my flight. I hauled my suitcase out to the car and made it to the hospital by seven o’clock.

“I’m here to see Charles Johns,” I said at the front desk.

The receptionist looked back at me like I was a bug. “Visiting hours start at eight.”

“I have to be at the airport at eight,” I said. “I just want to see my father, make sure he’s all right before I go.”

Her lips thinned, and her eyes said she’d heard it all before. “Visiting hours start at eight.”

“Look, I know you don’t make the rules,” I said. I gave her my best smile. “But my flight leaves for Brazil in a little more than two hours. I don’t know when I’ll be back. All I want to do is see him before I go.”

Her facial expression didn’t change. “Visiting hours start at eight.”

I eyed the entrance, wondering if I could just make a break for it. A metal detector stood between me and the hallway beyond, but I didn’t think I was wearing any metal that would set it off. I remembered the way to my father’s room. I could just run through the door and be there before anyone could stop me.

The receptionist would call security, though, and I’d already given my father’s name, so they would know exactly where I was going. If they called the police, I’d have a hard time getting out of there to the airport on time. I needed a better way.

Back outside, I started to circle the building, which was enormous, with so many new wings tacked on over the years that no sense of the original shape remained. There were many smaller entrances, which I assumed required a card for access, as well as loading bays and garages, all of which were shut.

Finally, I saw a truck backed up to an open bay, with three men walking back and forth, unloading boxes. The truck was white and read Gulph Medical Supply on the side. A security guard stood at the gate, watching them. I put my NSA badge around my neck on its lanyard—I had brought it in case I needed ID in Brazil—and kept the badge in my hand where it couldn’t be seen easily.

I walked up to the truck. “Finally,” I said loudly. “We’re running so low on specimen containers I was going to have to have my patients pee in my coffee mug.”

I rolled my eyes at the security guard and waved my badge at the guard, fast enough that he couldn’t read it. Then I rounded on one of the workers. “Make sure a box of those gets up to the third floor, will you?”

“We only drop them off here,” the man said. His accent was Australian. “And I’m pretty sure this lot is all sterile gloves and pads.”

I made a sound of frustration. “I’m surrounded by incompetents,” I said, and started to walk through the loading bay doors.

“Where are you going?” the security guard asked.

“I’m going to my office,” I said, “and if there’s not a pot of coffee ready when I get there, and I mean a full one, then I assure you, my staff is going to be looking for new employment.”

I marched past him, holding my breath, waiting for him to call after me. Nothing happened. I walked through the far door, and I was in.

Not that I was out of the woods yet. From there, I had to actually find the room. The hospital was a maze. I couldn’t ask for directions, or even appear to be lost, so I strode confidently from hallway to hallway, trying to study the signs when no one else was looking. Once I barreled into what might have been a surgery prep room, causing five men and women in surgery gowns and gloves to look up at me in surprise. “Has anybody seen Harry?” I asked.

One woman shook her head. I stalked away, muttering imprecations against Harry under my breath.

Finally, I found a recognizable sign and a familiar-looking hallway. I walked by the nurses’ station with the same air of confidence and marched into my father’s room.

The bed was empty. The sheet was neatly pulled up under the pillow. The restraining vest was neatly folded and the Velcro strap removed from the side rails. I gaped at the bed, a rush of adrenaline setting my heart racing. He was dead. He had died during the night. But if that had happened, wouldn’t Mom have called? Finally, I noticed the figure sitting in a guest chair in the corner.

“Dad?” I said. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

He didn’t stir, and I realized he was asleep. I crossed over and stood next to him, watching his chest rise and fall with his gentle breathing. On the table next to him was a newspaper section folded to the crossword puzzle, which was completed. My father held a pen in one hand and a piece of hospital note paper in the other. The paper had the Brazilian Portuguese alphabet written on it—the older alphabet, before they had officially changed it for orthographic consistency with Portugal—with each letter crossed out. Under the alphabet was a sentence in Portuguese: “Um pequeno jabuti xereta viu dez cegonhas felizes,” meaning “A nosy little tortoise saw ten happy storks.” It wasn’t the meaning of the sentence that caught my attention, however. It was the fact that it contained every letter of the alphabet at least once. It was a pangram, the sort of wordplay that my father used to love to do in both English and Portuguese when I was young.

I realized someone was standing behind me. I turned to see Mom, a brilliant smile lighting her face.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“Okay? Neil, he’s more than okay. It’s unbelievable.”

I turned back to Dad and found that his eyes were open. He met my gaze, clear intelligence evident in his look.

“Hello, Neil,” he said.