Plum Island

CHAPTER 12

We returned to the lobby and stood before the two yellow doors. Dr. Zollner said to Beth, "Donna awaits you in the locker room. Please follow her instructions, and we will meet you at the rear door of the ladies' locker room." Zollner watched her go through the yellow door, then said to us, "Gentlemen, please follow me."

We followed the good doctor into the men's locker room, which turned out to be a hideous orange place, but otherwise typical of any locker room. An attendant handed us open locks without keys and freshly laundered lab whites. In a plastic bag were paper underwear, socks, and cotton slippers.

Zollner showed us to a row of empty lockers and said, "Please remove everything, including underwear and jewelry."

So, we all stripped down to our birthday suits, and I couldn't wait to tell Beth that Ted Nash carried a.38 with a three-inch barrel and that the barrel was longer than his dick.

George Foster said, apropos of my chest wound, "Close to the heart."

"I have no heart."

Zollner pulled on his oversized whites and now he looked more like Colonel Sanders.

I snapped my padlock on the locker hasp and adjusted my paper underwear.

Dr. Zollner looked us over and said, "So — we are all ready? Then please follow me."

"Hold on," Max said. "Don't we get face masks or respirators or something?"

"Not for Zone Two, Mr. Maxwell. Maybe for Zone Four, if you want to go that far. Come. Follow me."

We went to the rear of the locker room, and Zollner opened a red door marked with the weird-looking biohazard symbol and beneath the symbol the words "Zone Two." I could hear rushing air and Dr. Zollner explaining, "That's the negative air pressure you hear. It's up to a pound per square inch less in here than outside, so no pathogens can escape accidentally."

"I hate when that happens."

"Also, the particulate air niters on the roof clean all exhaust air from in here."

Max looked stubbornly skeptical, like a man who doesn't want any good news to interfere with his long-held belief that Plum Island was the biohazard equivalent of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl combined.

We went into a cement block corridor, and Zollner looked around and asked, "Where is Ms. Penrose?"

I replied, "Doc, are you married?"

"Yes. Oh… of course, she may take longer to get changed."

"No 'mays' about it, feller."

Finally, from the door marked "Women," Lady Penrose appeared, dressed in loose-fitting whites and cotton slippers. She still looked sexy, more cupid-like in white, I thought.

She heard the rushing air sound, and Zollner explained the negative air pressure, gave us some instructions about being careful not to bump into carts or racks of vials, or bottles filled with lethal bugs or chemicals, and so forth.

Zollner said, "All right, please follow me, and I will show you what goes on here so you can tell your friends and colleagues that we are not making anthrax bombs." He laughed, then said in a serious tone, "Zone Five is off-limits because you need special vaccinations, and also training to put on the biohazard suits and respirators and all of that. Also, the basement is off-limits."

"Why," I asked, "is the basement off-limits?"

"Because that's where we hide the dead aliens and the Nazi scientists." He laughed again. I love being the straight man for a fat Ph.D. with a Dr. Strange-love accent. Really. More to the point, I knew that Stevens had indeed spoken to Zollner. I would have liked to have been a tsetse fly on that wall.

Mr. Foster attempted humor and said, "I thought the aliens and the Nazis were in the underground bunkers."

"No, the dead aliens are in the lighthouse," Zollner said. "We moved the Nazis out of the bunkers when they complained about the vampires."

Everyone laughed — ha, ha, ha. Humor in biocontainment. I should write to Reader's Digest.

As we walked, Dr. Zany said, "It's safe in this zone — mostly we have genetic engineering labs, some offices, electron microscopes — low-risk, low-contagion work here."

We walked through cement block corridors and every once in a while, Dr. Zollner would open a yellow steel door and say hello to someone inside an office or laboratory and inquire as to their work.

There were all sorts of weird windowless rooms, including a place that looked like a wine cellar except the bottles in the racks were filled with cultures of living cells, according to Zollner.

Zollner gave us a commentary as we walked through the battleship-gray corridors. "There are newly emerging viruses that affect animals or humans or both. We humans and the higher animal species have no immunological responses to many of these deadly diseases. Present antiviral drugs are not very effective, and so the key to avoiding a future worldwide catastrophe is antiviral vaccines, and the key to the new vaccines is genetic engineering."

Max asked, " What catastrophe?"

Dr. Zollner continued walking and talking very breezily, I thought, considering the subject. He said, "Well, regarding animal diseases, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, for instance, could wipe out much of this nation's livestock and ruin the livelihoods of millions of people. The cost of other foods would probably quadruple. The foot-and-mouth virus is perhaps the most contagious and virulent in nature, which is why the biological warfare people have always been fascinated by it. A good day for the bio-warfare gentlemen is a day when their scientists can genetically engineer the FMD virus to infect humans. But worse, I think, some of these viruses mutate on their own and become dangerous to people."

No one had a comment or question on that. We peeked in on more labs, and Zollner would always say a few encouraging words to the pale eggheads in white who labored in surroundings that made me nervous just looking at them. He'd say things like, "What have we learned today? Have we discovered anything new?" And so on. It appeared that he was well liked, or at least tolerated by his scientists.

As we turned down yet another in a series of seemingly endless corridors, Zollner continued his lecture. "In 1983, for instance, a highly contagious and deadly influenza broke out in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There were seventeen million dead. Chickens, I mean. Poultry. But you see what I'm getting at. The last big deadly human influenza epidemic in the world was in 1918. There were about twenty million dead worldwide, including five hundred thousand in the United States. Based on our present population, the equivalent number of dead now would be approximately one and a half million people. Could you imagine such a thing today? And the 1918 virus wasn't particularly virulent, and of course, travel was much slower then and less frequent. Today, the highways and skyways can spread an infectious virus around the world in days. The good news about the deadliest viruses, such as Ebola, is that they kill so fast, they barely have time to leave an African village before everyone in it is dead."

I asked, "Is there a one o'clock ferry?"

Dr. Zollner laughed. "You are feeling somewhat nervous, yes? Nothing to fear here. We are very cautious. Very respectful of the little bugs in this building."

"Sounds like the 'my dog doesn't bite' crap."

Dr. Zollner ignored me and continued on, "It is the mission of the United States Department of Agriculture to prevent foreign animal pestilence from coming to these shores. We are the animal equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. As you may imagine, we work closely with Atlanta because of these crossover diseases — animal to human, and vice versa. We have a huge quarantine complex in Newburgh, New York, where all animals coming into this country must stay in quarantine for a period of time. You know, it's like a Noah's Ark of animals arriving every day — foreign race horses, circus animals, zoo animals, breeding stock, exotic commercial animals such as ostriches and llamas, exotic pets such as Vietnamese potbellied pigs, and all sorts of birds from the jungle… Two and a half million animals each year." He looked at us and said, " Newburgh has been called the Ellis Island for the animal kingdom. Plum Island is the Alcatraz. No animal that comes to us from Newburgh or from anywhere leaves here alive. I must tell you, all these animals being imported into this country for recreation and amusement have caused us here a lot of work and much anxiety. It's only a matter of time…" He added, "You can extrapolate from the animal kingdom to the human population."

I certainly could.

He stayed silent a moment, then said, " Plum Island 's cannons once guarded the shores of this country, and now this facility does the same."

Rather poetic, I thought, for a scientist, then I recalled reading that line in one of the press releases that Donna handed me.

Zollner liked to talk, and my job is to listen, so, it was working out okay.

We walked into a room that Zollner said was an X-ray crystallography lab, and I wasn't about to argue with him.

A woman was bent over a microscope, and Zollner introduced her as Dr. Chen, a colleague and good friend of Tom and Judy. Dr. Chen was about thirty, and rather attractive, I thought, with a long shock of black hair, tied back with a sort of netting, suitable for close microscope work by day, I guess, and who knew what at night when the hair came down. Behave, Corey. This is a scientist, and she's a lot smarter than you are.

Dr. Chen greeted us, and she looked rather serious, I thought, but probably she was just upset and sad over the deaths of her friends.

Once again, Beth made sure that it was understood that I was a friend of the Gordons, and on that level, if no other, I was earning rny buck a week. I mean, people don't like a bunch of coppers hammering them with questions, but if one of the cops is a mutual friend of the deceased, then you have a little edge. Anyway, we all agreed that the Gordons' deaths were a tragedy, and we spoke well of the dead.

The subject shifted to Dr. Chen's work. She explained, in lay terms so that I sort of understood her, "I am able to X-ray virus crystals so that I can map their molecular structure. Once we do that, we can then attempt to alter the virus to make it unable to cause disease, but if we inject this altered virus into an animal, the animal may produce antibodies that we hope will attack the natural, disease-causing version of the virus."

Beth asked, "And this is what the Gordons were working on?"

"Yes."

"What specifically were they working on? What virus?"

Dr. Chen glanced at Dr. Zollner. I'm not happy when witnesses do that. I mean, it's like the pitcher gets the signal from the coach to throw a curve or a slider or whatever. Dr. Zollner must have signaled for a fast ball because Dr. Chen said straightforwardly, "Ebola."

No one said anything, then Dr. Zollner said, "Simian Ebola, of course. Monkey Ebola." He added, "I would have told you sooner, but I thought you'd want it explained more fully by one of the Gordons' colleagues." He nodded to Dr. Chen.

Dr. Chen continued, "The Gordons were trying to genetically alter a simian Ebola virus so that it would not cause disease, but would produce an immune response in the animal. There are many strains of the Ebola virus, and we're not even sure which strains can cross the species barrier — "

"You mean," Max asked, "infect people?"

"Yes, infect humans. But this is an important first step toward a human Ebola vaccine."

Dr. Zollner said, "Most of our work here has traditionally been done with what you'd call farm animals — food- and leather-producing animals. However, over the years, certain government agencies have underwritten other types of research."

I asked, "Such as the military doing biological warfare research?"

Dr. Zollner didn't answer directly, but said, "This island is a unique environment, isolated, but close to major transportation and communication centers, and also close to the best universities in the nation, and close to a highly educated pool of scientists. In addition, this facility is technically advanced. So, aside from the military, we work with other agencies, here and abroad, whenever something very unusual or potentially… dangerous to humans comes along. Such as Ebola."

"In other words," I said, "you sort of rent rooms here?"

"It's a big facility," he replied.

"Did the Gordons work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture?" I asked.

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"Where did their paychecks come from?"

"All paychecks are from the USDA."

"But not every scientist who gets a USDA paycheck is a USDA employee. Correct?"

"I don't intend to get into a semantic duel with you, Mr. Corey." He looked at Dr. Chen. "Please continue."

She said, "There are so many separate tasks and steps to this sort of work that no one can see the whole picture except the project supervisor. That was Tom. Judy was the assistant project supervisor. In addition, they were both excellent researchers themselves. In retrospect, I can see what they were doing, which was to ask for tests on procedures that were something like a red herring, and sometimes they'd tell one of us on the project that they'd reached a dead end. They closely monitored the actual clinical tests on the monkeys, and the animal handlers were not well informed. Tom and Judy were the only ones who were privy to all the information."

She thought a moment, then said, "I don't believe they started out to deceive… I think when it hit them how close they were to a workable vaccine for simian Ebola, they saw the possibilities of transferring the technology to a private laboratory where the next logical step was a human vaccine. Maybe they believed that this was the best thing in the interests of humanity. Maybe they thought they could develop this vaccine more quickly and effectively outside this place, which is — like most government agencies — prone to red tape and slowness."

Max said, "Let's stick to the theory of profit motive, Dr. Chen. The interests of humanity isn't cutting it for me."

She shrugged.

Beth motioned toward the microscope. "Can I take a look?"

Dr. Chen said, "Those are dead Ebola, of course. Live Ebola is only in Zone Five. But I can show you live Ebola viruses safely on videotape." She turned to a TV monitor and hit the VCR. The screen brightened to show four almost transparent crystals, tinted a sort of pink color, three-dimensional, reminding me of a prism. If they were alive, they were playing possum.

Dr. Chen said, "I'm mapping the molecular structure, as I said, so that the genetic engineers can cut and splice this or that piece, then the altered virus is propagated and injected into a monkey. The monkey has one of three responses — it contracts Ebola and dies, it doesn't contract Ebola, but doesn't produce Ebola antibodies, or it doesn't contract Ebola and does produce Ebola antibodies. That is the response we're looking for. That means we have a vaccine. But not necessarily a safe or effective vaccine. The monkey may develop Ebola later, or more commonly, when we later inject the monkey with natural Ebola virus, the antibodies aren't effective in overcoming the disease. The immune response is too weak. Or the immune response does not protect against all strains. It's very frustrating work. Viruses are so simple, molecularly and genetically, but they are more challenging than bacteria in that they are easy to mutate, hard to understand, and hard to kill. In fact, the question is — are those crystals really alive as we understand life? Look at them. They look like ice chips."

Indeed, we were all staring at the crystals on the screen. They looked like something that dropped off a chandelier. It was hard to believe that those guys and their cousins and brothers had caused so much human misery and death, not to mention animal deaths. There was something scary about an organism that looked dead but came to life when it invaded living cells, and reproduced so fast it could kill a healthy two-hundred-pound man in forty-eight hours. What was God thinking?

Dr. Chen turned off the TV monitor.

Beth asked Dr. Chen about the Gordons' behavior yesterday morning, and Dr. Chen said that the Gordons seemed somewhat tense. Judy complained of a migraine, and they decided to go home. This did not surprise any of us.

I asked Dr. Chen directly, "Do you think they took anything out of here yesterday?"

She thought a moment, then replied, "I don't know. How can I say?"

Beth asked, "How difficult is it to smuggle something out of here? How would you do it?"

"Well… I could take any test tube here, or even in another lab, go into the ladies room and insert the tube or vial in one of two orifices. No one would miss a single vial, especially if it hadn't been logged and identified. Then I go into the shower room, throw my lab clothes into a hamper, shower, and go to my locker. At this point I could remove the vial from wherever and put it in my handbag. I get dressed, leave through the lobby, get on the bus to the ferry, and go home. No one watches you shower. There are no cameras. You'll see when you leave here yourself."

I asked, "And larger items. Items too big to… well, too big."

"Whatever will fit under your lab clothes can make it as far as the shower room. It is there where you have to be clever. For instance, if I took a sequencing gel into the shower room, I could hide it in my towel."

Beth said, "You could also hide it in the hamper with your lab clothes."

"No, you can never go back. The clothes are contaminated. In fact, after you use the towel, that must also go into a separate hamper. It is here that anyone who is looking would see if you were carrying anything. But if you shower out at an odd time, the chances are you will be alone."

I tried to picture this scene, of Judy or Tom smuggling God knew what out of this building yesterday afternoon when no one else was in the shower room. I asked Dr. Chen, "If it's assumed that everything in here has some degree of contamination, why would you want to put a vial of something in your whatever?"

She replied, "You practice some basic decon first, of course. You wash your hands with the special soap in the rest rooms, you may use a condom to wrap a vial or test tube, or use sterile gloves or sheet latex for larger items. You have to be careful, but not paranoid."

Dr. Chen continued, "As for computer information, it can and is electronically transferred from biocontainment to the offices in the administration area. So it's not necessary to steal disks or tapes." She added, "As for handwritten and typewritten notes, graphs, charts, and so forth, it's standard procedure to fax all of that out of here and into your own office. There are fax machines all around, as you can see, and each office outside of biocontainment has an individual fax. That's the only way you can get notes out of here. Years ago, you had to use special paper, rinse it in a decontaminating fluid, leave it to dry, then retrieve it the next day. Now, with the fax, your notes are waiting for you when you return to the office."

Amazing, I thought. I'll bet the folks who invented the fax never thought of that. I can picture the TV commercial — "Laboratory notes covered with germs? Fax them to your office. You have to shower, but they don't." Or something like that.

Beth looked at Dr. Chen and asked her directly, "Do you think the Gordons took anything out of here that was dangerous to living things?"

"Oh, no. No, no. Whatever they took — if they took anything — wasn't pathogenic. Whatever it was, it was therapeutic, helpful, antidotal, however we want to term it. It was something good. I would bet my life on that."

Beth said, "We're all betting our lives on that."

We left Dr. Chen and the X-ray room and continued our tour.

As we walked, Dr. Zollner commented, "So, as I said before, and as Dr. Chen seems to agree, if the Gordons stole anything, it was a genetically altered viral vaccine. Most probably a vaccine for Ebola since that was the main thrust of their work."

Everyone seemed to agree with that. My own thinking was that Dr. Chen had been a little too pat and perfect, and that she didn't know the Gordons as well as she or Zollner said she did.

Dr. Zollner gave a commentary as we strolled the labyrinthine corridors. He said, "Among the viral diseases we study are malignant catarrh, Congo Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and bluetongue. We also study a variety of pneumonias, rickettsial diseases, such as heartwater, a wide range of bacterial diseases, and also parasitic diseases."

"Doc, I got a C in biology and that's because I cheated. You lost me on the rickshaw disease. But let me ask you this — you have to produce a lot of this stuff in order to study it. Correct?"

"Yes, but I can assure you we don't have the capacity to produce enough of any organism in the quantities needed for warfare, if that's what you're getting at."

I said, "I'm getting at random acts of terrorism. Do you produce enough germs for that?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps."

"That word again, Doc."

"Well, yes, enough for a terrorist act."

"Is it true," I inquired, "that a coffee can full of anthrax, spritzed into the air around Manhattan Island, could kill two hundred thousand people?"

He thought a moment, then replied, "That could be. Who knows? It depends on the wind. Is it summertime? Is it lunchtime?"

"It's like tomorrow evening rush hour."

"All right… two hundred thousand. Three hundred thousand. A million. It doesn't matter because no one knows and no one has a coffee can full of anthrax. Of that, I can assure you. The inventory was quite specific on that."

"That's good. But not as specific on other things?"

"As I told you, if anything is missing, it is an antiviral vaccine. That is what the Gordons were working on. You'll see. Tomorrow you will all wake up alive. And the day after, and the day after that. But six or seven months from now, some pharmaceutical company, or some foreign government, will announce an Ebola vaccine, and the World Health Organization will purchase two hundred million doses to start with, and when you discover who is getting the richest from this vaccine, you will discover your murderer."

No one replied for a few seconds, then Max said, "You're hired, Doctor."

Everyone smiled and chuckled. In fact, we all wanted to believe, we did believe, and we were so relieved that we were walking on air, giddy over the good news, thrilled that we weren't going to wake up with terminal bluetongue or something, and in truth no one was focusing as closely on the case now as we had been earlier. Except me.

Anyway, Zollner continued showing us all sorts of rooms and talked about diagnoses and reagent production, monoclonal antibody research, genetic engineering, tick-borne viruses, vaccine production, and so forth. It was mind-boggling.

It takes an odd type to go into this sort of work, I thought, and the Gordons, whom I considered normal people, must have been considered by their peers as somewhat flamboyant by comparison — which was how Zollner described them. I mentioned this to Zollner and he replied, "Yes, my scientists here are rather introverted… like most scientists. Do you know the difference between an introverted biologist and an extroverted biologist?"

"No."

"An extroverted biologist looks at your shoes when he talks to you." Zollner laughed heartily at this one, and even I chuckled, though I don't like it when people upstage me. But it was his lab.

Anyway, we saw the various places where the Gordons' project had been worked on, and we also saw the Gordons' own lab.

Inside the Gordons' small lab, Dr. Zollner said, "As project directors, the Gordons mostly supervised, but they did some work here on their own."

Beth said, "No one else worked in this lab?"

"Well, there were assistants. But this laboratory was the private domain of the Doctors Gordon. You can be sure I spent an hour in here this morning looking for something that was not right, but they wouldn't leave anything incriminating around."

I nodded. In fact, there may have been incriminating evidence at any previous time, but if yesterday was to be the culmination of the Gordons' secret work and final theft, then they would have sanitized the place yesterday morning or the day before. But that supposed that I believed all of this stuff about an Ebola vaccine, and I wasn't sure I did.

Beth said to Dr. Zollner, "You are not supposed to enter the workplace of homicide victims and look around, remove things, or touch anything."

Zollner shrugged, as well as he should under these circumstances. He said, "So, how was I supposed to know that? Do you know my job?"

Beth said, "I just want you to know — "

"For next time? All right, the next time two of my top scientists are murdered, I'll be sure not to go into their laboratory."

Beth Penrose was bright enough to let it go and said nothing.

Clearly, I thought, Ms. By-the-Book was not handling the unique circumstances of this case very well. But I gave her credit for trying to do it right. If she'd been one of the crew on the Titanic, she'd have made everyone sign for the life jackets.

We all looked around the lab, but there were no notebooks, no beakers labeled "Eureka," no cryptic messages on the blackboard, no corpses in the supply closet, and in fact, nothing at all that the average lay person could understand. If anything interesting or incriminating had been here, it was gone, compliments of the Gordons, or Zollner, or even Nash and Foster if they'd ventured this far on their earlier visit this morning.

So, I stood there and tried to commune with the spirits that possibly still occupied this room — Judy, Tom… give me a clue, a sign.

I closed my eyes and waited. Fanelli says the dead speak to him. They identify their murderers, but they always speak Polish or Spanish or sometimes Greek, so he can't understand them. I think he's pulling my leg. He's crazier than I am.

Unfortunately, the Gordons' lab was a bust, and we continued on.

We spoke to a dozen scientists who worked with or for the Gordons. It was obvious that (a) everyone loved Tom and Judy; (b) Tom and Judy were brilliant; (c) Tom and Judy wouldn't hurt a fly unless it advanced the cause of science in the service of man and beast; (d) the Gordons, while loved and respected, were different; (e) the Gordons, while scrupulously honest in their personal dealings, would probably screw the government and steal a vaccine worth its weight in gold, as someone phrased it. It occurred to me that everyone was reading from the same script.

We continued our walk and climbed a staircase to the second floor. My bad leg was dragging, and my bad lung was wheezing so loudly I thought everyone could hear it. I said to Max, "I thought this wasn't going to be strenuous."

He looked at me and forced a smile. He said to me softly, "I get claustrophobic sometimes."

"Me too." In truth, it wasn't claustrophobia that was troubling him. Like most men of courage and action, myself included, Max didn't like a danger he couldn't pull his gun on.

Dr. Zollner was going on about the training programs that were conducted here, the visiting scientists, graduate students, and veterinarians who came from all over the world to learn and teach here. He also spoke of the facility's foreign cooperative programs in places like Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Canada, and England. "In fact," he said, "the Gordons went to England about a year ago. Pirbright Laboratory, south of London. That's our sister lab there."

I asked Dr. Zollner, "Do you get visitors from the Army Chemical Corps?"

Dr. Zollner looked at me and commented, "Whatever I say, you see something to question. I'm glad you're listening."

"I'm listening for the answer to my question."

"The answer is it's none of your business, Mr. Corey."

"It is, Doctor. If we suspect that the Gordons stole organisms that can be used in biological warfare, and that's what got them murdered, then we have to know if such organisms exist here. In other words, are there biological warfare specialists here in this building? Do they work here? Experiment here?"

Dr. Zollner glanced at Messrs. Foster and Nash, and then said, "I would be less than truthful if I said no one from the Army Chemical Corps comes here. They are extremely interested in vaccines and antidotes for biological hazards… The United States government does not study, promote, or produce agents of offensive biological warfare. But it would be national suicide not to study defensive measures. So, someday, when that bad fellow with the can of anthrax paddles his canoe around Manhattan Island, we can be ready to protect the population." Dr. Zollner added, "You have my assurances that the Gordons had no dealings with anyone from the military, did not work in that area, and in fact, had no access to anything so lethal — "

"Except Ebola."

"You do listen. My staff should pay as much attention. But why bother with an Ebola weapon? We have anthrax. Trying to improve on anthrax is like trying to improve on gunpowder. Anthrax is easy to propagate, easy to handle, it diffuses nicely into the air, kills slowly enough for the infected population to spread it around, and cripples as many victims as it kills, causing a collapse of the enemy's health care system. But, officially, we don't have anthrax bombs or artillery shells. The point is, if the Gordons were trying to develop a biological weapon to sell to a foreign power, they wouldn't bother with Ebola. They were too smart for that. So put that suspicion to rest."

"I feel much better. By the way, when did the Gordons go to England?"

"Let's see… May of last year. I recall that I envied them going to England in May." He asked me, "Why do you ask?"

"Doc, do scientists know why they're asking questions all the time?"

"Not all the time."

"I assume the government paid all expenses for the Gordons' trip to England."

"Of course. It was all business." He thought a moment, then said, "Actually, they took a week in London at their own expense. Yes, I remember that."

I nodded. What I. didn't remember was any unusually large credit card bills in May or June of last year. I wondered where they'd spent the week. Not in a London hotel, unless they skipped out on the bill. I didn't recall any large cash withdrawals either. Something to think about.

The problem with asking really clever questions in front of Foster and Nash was that they heard the answers. And even if they didn't know where the questions were coming from, they were smart enough to know — contrary to what I indicated to Zollner — that most questions had a purpose.

We were walking down a very long corridor, and no one was speaking, then Dr. Zollner said, "Do you hear that?" He stopped dead and put his hand to his ear. "Do you hear that?"

We all stood motionless, listening. Finally, Foster asked, "What?"

"Rumbling. It's a rumbling. It's…"

Nash knelt down and put the palms of his hands on the floor. "Earthquake?"

"No," Zollner said, "it's my stomach. I'm hungry." He laughed and slapped his fat. "Lighten up," he said in his German accent, which made it sound even more funny. Everyone was smiling except Nash, who stood stiffly and brushed his hands off.

Zollner went to a door painted bright red, on which was plastered six standard OSHA-type signs, as follows: Biohazard, Radioactive, Chemical Waste, High Voltage, Poison Hazard, and finally, Untreated Human Waste. He opened the door and announced, "Lunch Room."

Inside the plain white cement block room were a dozen empty tables, a sink, a refrigerator, microwave oven, bulletin boards covered with notices and messages, and a water cooler and coffee maker, but no vending machines, the fact being that no one wanted to come in here and service them. Sitting on a counter was a fax machine, a menu of the day's fare, and paper and pencil. Dr. Zollner said, "Lunch is on me. He wrote himself a big order which I saw included the soup du jour, which was beef. I didn't even want to think about where the beef came from.

For the first time since I left the hospital, I ordered Jell-O, and for the first time in my life, I skipped the meat dishes.

No one else seemed particularly hungry, and they all ordered salads.

Dr. Zollner faxed the order and said, "The lunch hour here doesn't start until one, but they will deliver quickly because I requested it."

Dr. Zollner suggested we wash our hands, which we all did at the sink with some weird brown liquid soap that smelled like iodine.

We all got coffee and sat. A few other people came in and got coffee and took things out of the refrigerator or faxed orders. I looked at my watch to see the time and saw my wrist.

Zollner said, "If you'd brought your watch in, I'd have to decontaminate it and quarantine it for ten days."

"My watch wouldn't survive a decontamination." I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was five minutes to one p.m.

We made small talk for a few minutes. The door opened and a man in lab whites entered, pushing a stainless steel cart which looked like any other lunch cart, except it was covered with a sheet of plastic wrap.

Dr. Zollner pulled off the wrap and disposed of it, then — perfect host — gave us each our orders and dismissed the man and the cart.

Max asked, "That guy has to shower now?"

"Oh, yes. The cart is first put in a decon room and retrieved later."

I asked, "Is it possible to use that cart to smuggle large items out of here?"

Dr. Zollner was arranging his large lunch in front of him with the expertise of a real trencherman. He looked up from his labor of love and said, "Now that you mention it, yes. That cart is the only thing that makes a regular journey between administration and biocontainment. But if you used it to smuggle, you'd have to have two other people in on it. The person who pushes it in and out, then the person who washes it and takes it back to the kitchen. You're very clever, Mr. Corey."

"I think like a criminal."

He laughed and dug into the beef soup. Yuck.

I regarded Dr. Zollner as I slurped my lime Jell-O. I liked the guy. He was funny, friendly, hospitable, and smart. He was lying through his teeth, of course, but other people had forced him to do that. Probably the two jokers across the table, for starters, and God knew who else in Washington had briefed Dr. Z on the phone all morning while we were rambling around the ruins and getting brochures on rinderpest and blue balls or whatever. Dr. Z in turn had briefed Dr. Chen, who was a little too perfect. I mean, of all the people we could have questioned, Zollner led us to Dr. Chen, whose work seemed to be only peripherally related to the Gordons' work. And she was introduced as a good friend of the Gordons, but wasn't; I'd never heard her name mentioned before today. And then there were the other scientists to whom we'd spoken briefly, before Zollner whisked us off — they, too, had been on the same page as Chen.

There was a lot of smoke and mirrors in this place, and I'm sure there always had been. I said to Zollner, "I don't believe this story about the Ebola vaccine. I know what you're hiding and what you're covering up."

Dr. Zollner stopped in mid-chew, which was a chore for him. He stared at me.

I said, "It's the Roswell aliens, isn't it, Doc? The Gordons were about to blow the lid on the Roswell aliens."

The room was real quiet, and even some of the other scientists glanced at us. Finally, I smiled and said, "That's what this green Jell-O is — alien brains. I'm eating the evidence."

Everyone smiled and chuckled. Zollner laughed so hard he almost choked. Boy, I'm funny. Zollner and I could do a great routine; Corey and Zollner. That might be better than The Corey Files.

We all went back to our lunches and made chitchat. I glanced at my companions. George Foster had looked a little panicky when I said I didn't believe the Ebola vaccine thing, but he was fine now, eating alfalfa sprouts. Ted Nash had looked less panicky and more murderous. I mean, whatever was going on here, this was not the time or place to yell bullshit or liar. Beth and I made eye contact, and as usual I couldn't tell if she was amused by me or if she was annoyed. The way to a woman's heart is through her funny bone. Women like men who make them laugh. I think.?

I looked at Max, who seemed less phobic in this almost normal room. He seemed to enjoy his three-bean salad, which is not the thing that should be on a menu in an enclosed environment.

We picked at the chow, then the conversation got back to the possibly purloined vaccine. Dr. Z said, "Someone before mentioned that this vaccine would be worth its weight in gold, which made me recall something — a few of the vaccines that the Gordons were testing had a golden hue, and I recall the Gordons once referring to the vaccines as liquid gold. I thought that odd, perhaps, because we never speak in terms of money or profit here…"

"Of course not," I said. "You're a government agency. It's not your money, and you never have to show a profit."

Dr. Zollner smiled. "And the same in your business, sir."

"The very same. In any case, now we believe that the Gordons came to their senses, and, no longer satisfied with working in the interests of science for government wages, they discovered capitalism and went for the gold."

"Correct." He added, "You've spoken to their colleagues, you've seen what they did here, and now you can draw only one conclusion. Why are you still skeptical?"

"I'm not skeptical," I lied. Of course I was skeptical; I'm a New Yorker and a cop. But I didn't want to upset Dr. Zollner, Mr. Foster, or Mr. Nash, so I said, "I'm just trying to make sure the facts fit. The way I see it, either the Gordons' murders had nothing to do with their work here, and we're all following a false trail — or if their murders were related to their work, then most probably it had to do with the theft of a viral vaccine worth millions. Liquid gold. And it would appear that the Gordons were double-crossed, or maybe they tried to double-cross their partner, and were murdered — " Ping.

Jeez. There it was again. What…? It was out there. I couldn't see it, but I could hear its echo, and I could sense its presence, but what was it?

"Mr. Corey?"

"Huh?"

Dr. Zollner's twinkling blue eyes were appraising me through his little wire frame glasses. He said, "Is there something on your mind?"

"No. Oh, yeah. If I had to remove my watch, why can you keep your glasses?"

"That's the one exception. There is an eyeglass bath on the way out. Does this lead you to yet another clever thought or theory?"

"Gel sequencing plates disguised as eyeglasses."

He shook his head. "Idiotic. I think the gel plates were smuggled out in the lunch cart."

"Right."

Dr. Z looked at the clock on the wall and said, "Shall we continue?"

We all stood and deposited our plastic and paper in a red trash can lined with a red plastic bag.

Out in the corridor, Dr. Zollner said, "We will now enter Zone Three. There is a higher risk of contagion in Zone Three, of course, so if anyone does not want to go, I will have someone escort you back to the shower room."

Everyone seemed eager to burrow farther into the bowels of hell. Well, that might be overstating the response. Presently, we moved through a red door that was marked "Zone Three." Here, Zollner explained, his researchers worked with live pathogens — parasites, viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other yuckies — and he showed us a lab where a woman sat on a stool at a sort of opening in the wall. She had a mask on and her hands were covered with latex gloves. In front of her face was a plastic shield, something like a sneeze shield at a salad bar, but she wasn't handling cole slaw. Zollner said, "There is an exhaust in the opening where the pathogens are, so the risk of anything floating into the room is small."

Why," Max asked, "does she have a mask and we don't?"

"Good question," I agreed.

Zollner said, "She's much closer to the pathogen. If you want to get closer to take a look, I'll get you a mask."

"Pass," I said.

"Pass," everyone agreed.

Dr. Zollner moved closer to the woman and exchanged a few inaudible words with her. He turned, approached us, and said, "She's working on the virus that causes bluetongue disease." He thought a moment, then said, "Perhaps I got too close." He stuck out his tongue, which was actually bright blue, and looked down his nose. God in heaven… or is it the blueberry pie I had for lunch?" He laughed. We laughed. In truth, the gallows humor was wearing thin, even for me, and I have a lot of tolerance for stupid jokes.

We all left the room.

This part of the building looked less populated than Zone Two, and the people I saw looked a bit less jolly.

Zollner said, "There isn't much to see here, but if I say that, then Mr. Corey will insist on seeing every nook and cranny of the place."

"Oh, Dr. Zollner," I said, "have I given you cause to say such things about me?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, let's see every nook and cranny of the place."

I heard some groans, but Dr. Z said, "Very well, follow me." We spent the next half hour or so looking at nooks and crannies, and in truth, most of Zone Three looked the same — room after room of men and women peering through microscopes, making slides out of slime, slides from the blood and tissue of living and dead animals, and so on. Some of these people actually had their lunches with them and were eating while they played around with disgusting stuff.

We spoke to another dozen or so men and women who knew or worked with Tom and Judy, and while we were getting a more clear and more fully formed picture of their work, we didn't learn much new about their heads.

Still, I thought this was a useful exercise — I like to fix in my mind the milieu of the deceased, and later I usually think of something bright to follow up on. Sometimes, just casual chats with friends, family, and colleagues will turn up a word or two that can lead to the solution. Sometimes.

Zollner explained, "Most of these viruses and bacteria cannot cross the species barrier. You could drink a test-tube-ful of foot-and-mouth disease virus and not get much more than an upset stomach, though a cow would die from a quantity that would fit on the head or a pin.

"Why?"

"Why? Because the genetic makeup of a virus has to be able to… well, mesh with a cell to infect it. Human cells do not mesh with FMD virus."

Beth said, "But there's some evidence that Mad Cow Disease has infected humans."

"Anything is possible. That's why we're careful." He added, "Bugs bite."

Actually, bugs suck.

We went into another brightly lit room, and Zollner said, "In here we work with parasites. The worst is the screwworm. We've found a clever way to control this disease. We have discovered that the male and female screwworms only mate once in their lives, so we sterilize millions of the males with gamma rays and drop them by plane over Central America. When the male mates with the female, no offspring result. Clever, yes?"

I had to ask, "But is the female screwworm fulfilled?"

"She must be," Zollner replied. "She never mates again."

Beth offered, "There's another way to look at that."

Zollner laughed. "Yes. There is a female point of view there."

The persiflage finished, we all took turns looking at screwworm larvae under a microscope. Disgusting.

And on we went, into laboratories, and into rooms where horrible microbes and parasites were grown and stored, and into all sorts of weird places whose purposes and functions I only dimly understood. I kept in mind that my friends, Tom and Judy, walked these corridors and entered many of these rooms and labs every day. And yet, they seemed not to be depressed or anxious about any of it. At least not so I noticed.

Finally, Dr. Z said, "That's all of Zone Three. Now, once again I must ask you if you want to go farther. Zone Four is the most contaminated of all the zones, more so, actually, than Zone Five. In Five, you are always in a biohazard suit and respirator, and everything is decontaminated often. In fact, there is a separate shower for Zone Five. But Zone Four is where you will see the animal pens, the sick and dying animals, and also the incinerator and the necropsy rooms, if you wish. So, though we are clinically dealing here with animal diseases only, there may be other pathogens in the ambient environment. He added, "That means germs in the air."

Max asked, "Do we get face masks?"

"If you wish." He looked around and said, "All right. Follow me."

We approached yet another red door, this one marked "Zone rour, with the biohazard symbol. Some clown had stuck a particuarly gruesome skull-and-crossbones decal on the door — the skull was cracked and a snake slithered out of the crack and threaded itself through one of the skull's eye sockets. Also, a spider was crawling out of the grinning mouth. In fact, Dr. Zollner said, "I believe Torn is responsible for that horrible thing. The Gordons added some levity to this place."

"Right." Until they died.

Our host opened the red door, and we found ourselves in a sort of anteroom. There was a metal cart in the small room on which was a box of latex gloves and a box of paper face masks. Dr. Z said, "For anyone who wishes."

This was sort of like saying parachutes or life vests are optional. I mean, either you need the damn things or you don't.

Zollner clarified his offer. "It's not mandatory. We're going to shower out after this anyway. I personally don't bother with gloves or masks. Too cumbersome. But you may feel better with them."

I had the distinct feeling he was daring us, as in, "I always take the shortcut through the cemetery, but if you'd rather walk the long way, that's okay with me. Wimp."

I said, "This place can't be any dirtier than my bathroom."

Dr. Zollner smiled. "Most probably a lot cleaner."

Apparently no one wanted to look like a pussy by practicing good prophylaxis, which is how little bugs get us in the end, so off we went, through the second red door, and found ourselves in the same kind of gray concrete corridor as in the rest of the biocontamment zones. The difference here was that the doors were wider, and each one had a big latching handle on it. Zollner explained, "These are airlock doors."

I noticed, too, that every door had a small window, and a clipboard hung from the wall beside each one.

Dr. Zollner took us to the closest door and said, "All these rooms are pens and all have viewing windows. What you see may upset you or make your lunch unsettled. So no one has to look." He examined the clipboard hanging on the concrete wall and said, "African equine fever… " He peeked through the viewing window and said, "This guy's not bad. Just a bit listless. Take a look."

We all took turns looking at the beautiful black horse in the enclosed, prison-like room. True enough, the horse looked okay, except now and then you could see him heave as if he were having trouble breathing.

Zollner explained, "All the animals in here have been challenged with a virus or bacteria."

"Challenged?" I asked. "Is that like infected?"

"Yes, we say challenged."

"Then what happens? They become less than well, then go into an involuntary nonbreathing mode?"

"Correct. They get sick and die. Sometimes, however, we sacrifice them. That means we kill them before the disease has run its full course." He added, "I think everyone who works here likes animals, which is why they are involved with this type of work. No one in this facility wants to see these creatures suffer, but if you ever saw millions of cattle infected with foot-and-mouth disease, you'd see why the sacrifice of a few dozen here is necessary." He put the chart back and said, "Come."

There was a great warren of these unhappy rooms, and we went from pen to pen where a variety of animals were in various stages of dying. At one pen, the cow saw us and walked unsteadily up to the door and looked at us looking at her. Dr. Zollner said, "This one is in bad shape. Advanced FMD — see how she walked? And look at those blisters on her mouth. She can't even eat at this stage because of the pain. The saliva looks like rope, it's so thick. This is a dreadful disease and an old enemy. There are accounts of this in ancient writings. As I said, this disease is highly contagious. An outbreak in France once spread to England on the wind across the Channel. It is one of the smallest viruses yet discovered, and it seems to be able to live dormant for long periods of time." He stayed silent a moment, then said, "Someday, something like this may mutate and begin infecting human hosts…"

By now, I think, we were all mentally and physically challenged, as Dr. Z might say. In other words, our minds were numb and our asses were dragging. Worse, though, our spirits were down, and if I had a soul, it would be troubled.

Finally I said to Dr. Zollner, "I don't know about anyone else, but I've seen enough."

Everyone seconded that.

I, however, had a last, stupid thought, and I said, "Can we see what the Gordons were working with? I mean, the simian Ebola?"

He shook his head. "That is Zone Five." He thought a minute, then said, "But I can show you a pig with African swine fever, which, like Ebola, is a hemorrhagic fever. Very similar."

He led the way to another corridor and stopped at a door numbered "1130." He examined the chart on the wall and said, "This one's in the final stages… the bleeding-out stage… he'll be gone by morning… if he goes before then, he'll be put in a cooler, then dissected first thing tomorrow, then incinerated. This is a very frightening disease that has nearly wiped out the swine population in parts of Africa. There is no known vaccine or treatment. As I say, it's a close cousin to Ebola…" He looked at me and motioned toward the viewing window. "Look."

I stepped up to the window and looked inside. The floor of the room was painted red, which surprised me at first, but then I understood. Near the center of the room was a huge pig, lying on the floor, almost motionless, and I could see blood around its mouth, snout, and even its ears. Despite the red floor, I noticed a glistening pool of blood near its hindquarters.

Behind me, Zollner was saying, "You see it bleeding out, yes? Hemorrhagic fever is terrible. The organs turn to mush… You can see now why Ebola is so feared."

I noticed a big metal drain in the center of the floor, and the blood was running into the drain, and I couldn't help it, but I was back in the gutter on West 102nd Street, and my life was draining into the damned sewer and I could see it, and I knew how the pig felt watching his own blood leaking out of him, and the rushing sound in the ears, and the pounding in the chest as the blood pressure dropped and the heart tried to compensate by beating faster and faster until you knew it was going to stop.

I heard Zollner's voice from far away. "Mr. Corey? Mr. Corey? You can step away now. Let the others take a look. Mr. Corey?"