Code of Conduct

CHAPTER 35

It’s referred to as the fifth pillar of Islam. Every Muslim who is physically and financially able is obligated to make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca in their lifetime,” said Harvath.

On his end, Nicholas was scrolling through the pictures of it he had pulled up. “I don’t think I have ever seen crowds this big.”

“It’s the largest gathering of people in the world. Last year, there were two-point-one million people there.”

“It’s the ultimate petri dish.”

Harvath agreed. “Especially when you have millions of hands trying to touch or kiss the Ka’aba and drink from the sacred well of Zamzam.”

“Is the Ka’aba that outdoor, box-shaped structure I see people walking in circles around?

“That’s it. When Muslims pray toward Mecca, technically it’s toward the Ka’aba, which is located in the center of Islam’s most sacred mosque, the Al-Masjid al-Haram. Muslims believe the Ka’aba was built by Abraham, and it’s considered their holiest site.”

“It looks like a crowd control nightmare,” Nicholas stated.

“It is. In fact, thousands of people have died at the Hajj. There have been fires, riots, bombings, stampedes, structural failures because of overcrowding, you name it.”

“What about disease?”

“Plenty of it, and none of it good,” Harvath replied. “There have been outbreaks of meningitis and cholera, as well as things like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, also known as MERS. It normally doesn’t get caught until the Hajj participants return to their home countries, and then the illnesses flare there.”

“Don’t they screen them as they come into Saudi Arabia?”

“They try, but people can be asymptomatic when they arrive. They also require specific vaccinations as a condition of entry, but for many pilgrims forged immunization records are easier and cheaper to get than the actual vaccinations. It’s a public health nightmare. The Saudis know it and so do we.”

“Then what’s being done about it?” Nicholas asked.

“I just told you.”

“Global public health is based on the honor system, backed up by supposedly vigilant border guards and passport-stampers?”

“Pretty much.”

“We’re screwed.”

Harvath agreed. “That’s one of the problems of modern air travel. An infected person can get on a plane anywhere in the world and be anywhere else within twenty-four hours.”

“Do you think that’s what this is? Damien and his Plenary Panel cooked up this illness and somehow got it into Mecca? They spread it through the Hajj and then the infected get on planes back to their home countries to start a global pandemic?”

“It’d be a clever way to do it,” said Harvath, as he clicked over to another site to look at something.

“If this is African Hemorrhagic Fever, how did they get it in to Saudi Arabia? You can’t even get near Mecca unless you are Muslim.”

“If I had the resources Damien does, and I was putting this operation together, I’d do it via Zakat.”

“What’s Zakat?” Nicholas replied.

“It’s like an Islamic income tax, or a mandatory form of alms-giving. Allegedly, it’s used in part to help poor Muslims and can even be applied to paying their costs for attending the Hajj.

“Because of how many people want to participate, Saudi Arabia sets quotas for each country. Not only is Congo extremely poor, but it has a very small Muslim population. If I were Damien, I would take advantage of both of those factors.”

“Meaning, you’d fund a group of Muslims from Congo to go to Mecca?”

“Exactly,” Harvath replied. “I would quietly work my diplomatic connections to get the amount of visas I needed and then put the word out in the Congolese Muslim community that a wealthy Muslim benefactor had established a fund to underwrite their pilgrimage to Mecca.”

“Where does African Hemorrhagic Fever enter in?”

Harvath scrolled down on a web site with information about the Hajj. “The Saudi government publishes a list of required vaccines for pilgrims. Yellow fever, polio, things like that. Whether or not my Congolese Muslims had been vaccinated, I would send my own team in, tell them the list had been updated and that they needed an additional immunization.

“And after making sure their travel and medical documents were in order,” Nicholas added, “all you would have to do is just send them on their way.”

“You’d want to do more than that. I’d maximize the spread of the disease by breaking them up at different hotels and attaching them to different tour groups once they arrived in Mecca. But at that point, it would all come down to how communicable the disease was.”

“Then what? Do the Congolese Muslims crash and bleed out in Saudi Arabia? Isn’t that the kind of thing the Saudis would be on the lookout for?”

It was, and Harvath remembered what Leonce had told them about the sick man who had arrived at the Matumaini Clinic and how a nurse believed he could be Muslim because she thought she had overheard him moan the word “Allah.”

No loose ends.

“You’re right,” Harvath replied. “Just because the fuse was lit, it doesn’t mean Damien was off the hook. No bomb maker — even one who has cooked up a plague bomb — would want pieces of it traced to their source. If I were Damien, I’d want those pilgrims back before the Saudis knew what had happened.”

“Which means you wouldn’t leave their return up to commercial air travel. Too many things could go wrong. He probably would have chartered a flight for them.”

“Good point. See what you can find — visas, all of it. And while you’re at it, see what kind of CCTV footage you can get your hands on. The Saudis monitor everything, particularly during the Hajj.”

“Anything else?”

“If Damien did take them back to Congo, I’m betting they were taken to the Ngoa facility. The staff would be able to quietly get rid of the bodies and public health authorities would be none the wiser.”

“But wasn’t the Matumaini Clinic in touch with the WHO representative in Kinshasa?” Nicholas asked.

“They were. Whoever that rep in Kinshasa is, he’s a part of this. He either tipped Damien or the Ngoa lab about their missing patient. That’s probably why he asked for a picture to be emailed. I assume somebody wanted confirmation before Damien sent Hendrik and his men in to kill everyone.”

“If that’s all he needed, why did he ask for blood and tissue samples?”

“Probably,” said Harvath, “because that’s what they normally do. He was smart enough to not break with protocol. If he ever gets called on the carpet, it looks like he followed every step to the letter.”

That made him think of something, and he made a mental note.

While he was doing that, Nicholas brought up a new question, something that had been weighing on him as well.

“We know Damien wants to drastically reduce the earth’s population,” the little man said. “We also know that he’s a eugenicist who believes that certain races and bloodlines are unfit and should be snuffed out.”

“Correct.”

“So if a guy like that launches a global pandemic, how does he control who gets it?”

It was an important question, especially now that the genie appeared to be out of the bottle, but it wasn’t the right question.

When disease was used as a weapon, the intent was for it to go anywhere and everywhere. No place was to be off-limits or safe. The only people meant to survive were the ones who had launched it and whatever subgroup they felt was worthy of living.

To answer Nicholas’s question, Harvath replied, “He doesn’t control who gets it. What he controls is who doesn’t get it.”

“So there’s some sort of an antidote?”

“Or a vaccine.”

“But based on the ‘Outcome Conference’ document that Mordechai told you about,” Nicholas said, pushing back, “the Plenary Panel’s goal is to skin the earth’s population from over seven point two billion down to five hundred million. That’s a ninety-three percent drop. How do you do that?

“I mean, we’ve got a pretty good idea of how they want to get the six and a half billion — plus people infected, but how do you save the others? How do you not only give an antidote or a vaccine to five hundred million people, but the right five hundred million, the ones you want to see survive? And on top of that, how do you do that without them knowing what the hell is going on?”

They were terrifying questions, none of which Harvath had answers for. He couldn’t even begin to fathom how the world wouldn’t collapse with a die-off of over six point five billion people. There’d be nobody to bury the bodies, much less maintain civil order.

Even the Black Death, said to have been the most devastating pandemic in history and estimated to have claimed up to fifty percent of Europe’s population, was no comparison to this. Weaponized African Hemorrhagic Fever would not only blow it away, it would take the lead for worst calamity ever on earth, second only to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

If there was one thing Harvath knew, it was that Mother Nature moved fast, while science moved very, very slowly. If they couldn’t get out in front of this virus, billions of people were going to die.

Looking up from his computer, he wasn’t thinking about himself. He was thinking about Lara and protecting her, as well as her little boy and her parents back up in Boston.

There was also his own mother out in California, as well as others he had always promised he would never let anything happen to.

The magnitude of the task pissed him off. Not because he had to figure how to take care of so many people so important to him, but because he had been put in this position in the first place by an insane, agenda-driven asshole like Pierre Damien.

Harvath knew that there was a special place in hell for a man like Damien; he just hoped the President would let him send him there.

As Nicholas went through the rest of his checklist, Harvath’s mind was going in multiple directions. He had been taught to think in layers, to make plans for contingencies — if not that, then this. What are my routes of attack and avenues of escape?

He found himself needing not only to focus on his work, but also on the people he cared about. It was the very position he had always said he never wanted to be in. Yet, here he was.

While the SEAL mottos about perseverance and never giving up floated to the forefront of his mind, so did another saying. You can’t always choose the situation you find yourself in, but you can choose how you react to it.

His mother had said it to him a million times growing up. She said it so often it drove him crazy to hear it. But he had never forgotten it, its wisdom timeless and invaluable.

“Scot?” Nicholas said, trying to regain Harvath’s attention.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked how the hell Damien planned on immunizing five hundred million people. And then when you didn’t answer, I said that if anyone could get it out of him, it’d be you.”

“Only if the President sees this the way we do.”

“How could he not?”

“He’s the President. He operates at a completely different level of calculus. There are always other factors. I think he gets it, though.”

“He’d better,” replied Nicholas.

“Listen, one other thing. When we ran Damien, there were mentions about his involvement in pharmaceutical companies. See what you can find. If there is some sort of antidote or vaccine, there may be some connection there.”

“Got it.”

Harvath was about to reassure him when another call came in.

It was the Old Man.