The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 49

K ate Braithwaite rolled over in the small double bed of her Atlanta apartment, but the phone on the bedside table kept ringing incessantly. She was weary from a sixteen-hour day in the lab, and the night before she’d complained to Imran of a headache and had gone to bed as soon as they’d got back from Halliwell. Kate groped for the handset.

‘Kate Braithwaite,’ she answered sleepily, mildly annoyed at being rung before she was awake.

‘Kate, it’s Imran. One of the chimps is down.’ Professor Sayed was calm but Kate caught the concern in his voice.

Kate sat bolt upright. ‘Which one?’

There was a slight pause. ‘I’m sorry, Kate, but it’s Maverick.’

‘Maverick! God no!’

‘I’ll meet you in the foyer in half an hour.’ Imran had an apartment one floor above Kate’s.

‘Make that fifteen minutes!’ She threw the phone back into its cradle and stumbled toward the bathroom, angry and confused.

Kate found herself struggling into her blue biosuit and she slowed down. Keep calm, she whispered, reminding herself of the extreme dangers that awaited her and Imran on the other side of the airlock. If Maverick was down there wasn’t anything she could do about it, although she felt another surge of frustration at what they were being asked to do.

When she emerged from her cubicle, air regulator over her shoulder, Imran was waiting for her outside the airlock door. He handed Kate her boots and she nodded her thanks. Neither of them felt like voicing the concern that both were feeling. Kate snapped the face plate on her suit shut and followed Imran into the decontamination shower airlock, closing the heavy stainless steel door on the level 3 side. When he was satisfied it was sealed, Imran opened the corresponding door opposite and Kate followed him into the hot side, through the main lab to the animal room at the far end where Richard and Karl were waiting for them, their faces pale behind their heavy face shields.

Again Kate forced herself to remain calm as she reached for one of the red oxygen hoses hanging from the ceiling near Maverick’s cage. Oblivious to the rush of air into her suit, Kate focused on him. He was lying on his side on the floor of the cage. Kate knew from the grimace of pain on his wise old face that her soulmate from the animal kingdom had suffered a horrible death. His brown, blood-flecked eyes stared back at her lifelessly. Kate could almost see the ‘why’ in their depths. Turning to Richard, she motioned for the cage door to be unlocked but Imran held up his hand. He shuffled over and retrieved a long pole from its storage position and Kate nodded in understanding. Even though Maverick was dead Imran had to be doubly sure. A tear in a biosuit from the death throes of a smallpox-ridden chimp would be fatal.

Imran and Richard lifted Maverick’s body out of the cage and onto a stainless steel trolley, then wheeled him across to the necropsy room. Rigor mortis had begun to set in and one of Maverick’s legs remained bent as they lifted him on to the stainless steel dissection table. Both Imran and Kate knew that, of all the procedures in a hot lab, an animal autopsy was one of the most dangerous. One slip with a scalpel or cutting tool could be fatal and Kate turned towards Richard and Karl to make sure they were well clear of the table.

Kate slipped a rubber block under Maverick’s back so that his chest was pushed up and forwards, then she forced his arms down and out of the way. Imran took a scalpel from the workbench on his side of the necropsy room and made a careful Y-shaped incision from either side of Maverick’s neck. Moving slowly, he reached for the stainless steel rib cutters and began to cut through Maverick’s ribs.

Kate steadied herself, unprepared for what was lying underneath Maverick’s breastplate. Imran looked up and gave Kate a meaningful shake of his head. The Variola major had attacked all of the chimpanzee’s organs with a viciousness that neither Imran nor Kate expected. Maverick’s intestines were haemorrhaging. His heart, kidneys and lungs were speckled and reduced to a red mush and there wasn’t a single organ the virus hadn’t penetrated. Variola major, Kate reflected, was far more deadly than most people realised. No wonder the legendary Dr D. A. Henderson, along with hundreds of others who’d worked for decades to eradicate the virus from the planet, had wanted the stocks destroyed.

Imran worked methodically, cutting out Maverick’s haemor-rhaged liver and placing the mushy red tissue into a plastic necropsy container. He stepped back, holding his scalpel clear, and nodded to Kate who reached across for the container so she could label it. The two had worked together for such a long time that each was acutely aware of what the other was doing, but as she turned to place the contaminated plastic container on the bench behind her she collided with Karl, who’d come into the room for a closer look. To her horror, she felt a sharp prick through her glove. Karl was still holding the scalpel he’d been inspecting and it had punctured Kate’s glove in an instant. The plastic container splattered Kate’s biosuit with blood as it dropped to the floor. Maverick’s liver slid over the white tiles, leaving a red stain of hot India-1 virus in its wake.

Karl reeled back, his face white. Despite feeling sick, Kate’s training kicked in. Holding her gloved hand steady with the cut downwards to minimise any seepage, she reached up with her other hand and unhooked the coiled red air hose from her regulator. She glanced at Imran who was doing the same and she eased her way past Karl who was now standing back against the stainless steel workbench, the scalpel still in his gloved hand.

‘Please God, oh please God don’t let any get to me.’ It was an entreaty to a God Kate had not spoken to in a long time. As she turned on the decontamination shower and the blood streaked from her suit, she looked across toward Imran who was turning on the shower opposite. His face was ashen.