Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (13 page)

Salim looked up and down the deserted street
and didn’t care if he got the money. He just wanted to live through
the ordeal, as hopes that he’d live to see his next birthday seeped
into the darkness around him.

When a van painted in gaudy colors pulled up
next to the curb, with friendly lions, zebras, and elephants
surrounding the words “Big Country Safari Photo Tours,” Salim’s
hope rekindled. A safari in Nairobi would be a good first step in
building a tourism backstory prior to returning to America.

Hope was back in Salim’s future.

“Dr. Wheeler, may I come in?”

Dr. Wheeler looked up from his laptop.

Olivia walked into the conference room. “I
was on my way to the cafeteria, and I saw you in here.”

“I should have closed the door.” Dr. Wheeler
smiled widely enough to let her know he was joking. “CDC doctors
have lots of groupies.”

“I’m Olivia Cooper.” She pointed in some
direction she doubted meant anything to Dr. Wheeler. “I was in the
seminar, in the small theater?”

Wheeler nodded. “I remember you.”

“Really?”

“No.” He smiled again. “There were a hundred
people in there. But I can go on pretending, if you’d like.”

Olivia scooted a chair back and sat on the
opposite side of the table. “Are you
flirting
with me?”

“I am, if you’re open to it, and won’t tell
my wife.”

“You’re flirting with me, and you have a
wife.”

“No, I’m divorced. But we both know I’m old
enough to be your dad, and I don’t have a chance at getting
anything out of this besides a sexual harassment complaint.” Dr.
Wheeler made an expansive gesture at the building surrounding them.
“I assume you work for the NSA.”

Olivia looked around the room and gestured at
the walls. “This
is
their building.”

“Cagey.” Dr. Wheeler smiled again. It seemed
to come very easy to him. “Okay, I assume you have questions about
the Filovirus presentation. Since you appear to have made yourself
comfortable, maybe you have a lot of them. What can I help you
with?”

“I’m sorry.” Olivia started to stand. “If you
don’t have time, I can—”

After motioning for Olivia to keep her seat,
Dr. Wheeler pointed at his computer, “I’m just answering email. I
rode out here from Atlanta with a coworker. He’s still in his
meeting. I’ve got some time.”

Olivia lowered her weight back down on the
chair and smiled. “I’m worried about my brother.”

Wheeler leaned back in his chair and looked
over his reading glasses. “Because I have a genius-level IQ and I
just gave a talk about Filoviruses, is it safe to assume that
despite your blue eyes and blonde hair, your brother is an African
bushman in Sierra Leone?”

Olivia laughed. “You know I’m only laughing
so you’ll answer my questions, right?”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself.” Dr.
Wheeler got comfortable in his seat. “I should warn you, though, my
charms are universally appealing. If you feel yourself being
mesmerized by the most intelligent—and, I don’t mind adding
handsome—black man you’ve ever met, just let me know, and I’ll dial
it back a bit.”

“Are you always like this?”

Dr. Wheeler shrugged. “Yeah. At least my ex
said so when she was telling the divorce judge about it.” He leaned
his elbows on the table. “Seriously, though, you didn’t come in
here for my comedy routine. What’s this business about your
brother, and why would I know anything about it?”

“You’re an expert in infectious diseases,
especially Ebola, which is a Filovirus—”

Grinning, Wheeler said, “So you
were
awake through the first five minutes, anyway.”

“—and he’s in Africa.”

“You’re concerned about Ebola.” Wheeler
nodded, but sounded disappointed, which shifted to boredom when he
asked, “Where?”

“Don’t do that, please.” Olivia thought about
getting up to leave.

“Sorry. I’ve been fielding questions for a
month by people who are just sure this Ebola epidemic is going to
wipe out the planet. It’s all over the news. It’s a scary disease,
and when people hear about ninety-percent mortality rates with
bleeding out of the eyeballs and other less pleasant places, they
freak out. You’re not freaked out, are you?”

“Sorry.” Olivia twirled a curl of her blond
hair. “You’d think people would have evolved enough by now to know
that hair color doesn’t correlate with intelligence. I get overly
sensitive when people start talking down to me.”

“I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

“Thanks.” Olivia smiled and twirled her hair
again without thinking about it. “I know he’s probably as safe
there as we are here.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I agree with the
sentiment.”

“He’s just not—” Olivia looked for the right
word.

“Responsible?”

She shook her head. “No, he’s a responsible
kid.”

“A kid?”

“He’s nine years younger than me.”

“He’s nine?” Wheeler flashed a smile.

Olivia laughed out loud and tried to make it
sound mocking. “Does it work when you tell twenty-nine year old
girls they look eighteen?”

“It has.”

“Really?” Olivia feigned disbelief.

“That whole business I mentioned with the
divorce. It started that way.”

“You told a girl she looked eighteen, and
your wife didn’t like it?”

“Oh, you’re sharper than I thought. But no,
that wasn’t it. I married her. We divorced later on. So you’re
twenty-nine. I guessed wrong. I may not be quite old enough to be
your dad. You’re not the type to file a complaint with HR are
you?”

“Oh, that makes me feel
so
much
better.”

“It should.”

“So your nine-year-old, um, I mean,
twenty-year-old brother is in Africa and he’s responsible?”

“Yes, but—” Olivia thought about it for a
moment. “He’s one of those suburban kids who doesn’t understand
anything about the real world.”

“Naïve?”

“Yes, that’s a good word.”

“So, besides being naïve in a third-world
country—which, I might add, could be a good way for him to grow
past his naiveté—what has you worried?”

Olivia put on a fake expression of
exasperation. “There was the Ebola we talked about.”

“Oh, yeah. I think you mentioned that.”

She said, “I’m afraid he’s not going to take
the necessary precautions.”

“I’m assuming you’re not talking about
condoms.”

“Dr. Wheeler!”

“You should call me Mathew.”

“I think I’ll stick with Dr. Wheeler for
now.” Privately, Olivia was starting to think that maybe she and
Mathew could be on a first name basis—except for the age
difference, which seemed pretty stark to her. “Let’s not talk about
my little brother and condoms, okay?”

“You do know that twenty-year-old college
boys seldom think about anything that doesn’t involve a condom,
right? Oh, he is in college, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Texas A&M.”

“Oh?”

Olivia shook her head. “Dad was a die-hard
Texas Longhorn. I think he went there just to piss off my dad.”

They looked at each other, idling in their
conversational cul-de-sac.

Dr. Wheeler sat up straight and slapped a
hand on the table. “Back to business. I’m sure you don’t have all
day to sit here and flirt with me. Ebola and your brother. What
about it? He’s not in Liberia, Guinea, or Sierra Leone, is he?”

“Uganda.”

“What’s he doing there?” Dr. Wheeler
asked.

“He’s a teacher at a school for street
kids.”

“Street kids. You mean like the Backstreet
Boys?” Wheeler smiled at his humor.

Olivia just shook her head.

“I didn’t think it was a bad joke.” Dr.
Wheeler drew a breath full of mock exasperation. “So, orphans?”

“Yes,” answered Olivia.

“That’s good. He’s in Uganda teaching
orphans. He’s not a medical worker or anything like that?”

“No.” Olivia frowned. “Not even close.”

“He doesn’t eat undercooked bush meat, does
he?”

“Bush meat?” Olivia grimaced. Whatever that
was, it didn’t sound good.

“Bats, apes, and such.”

“Eew.”

“Sounds like a no. You probably don’t have
anything to worry about.” Dr. Wheeler’s confidence was about as
infectious as the disease.

“I know.”

“But here you are. And asking questions for a
reason.”

Olivia looked away. “Yes.”

“Do you know how many people died last year
of malaria?”

She rolled her eyes and ventured a guess.
“Eleven?”

Dr. Wheeler laughed. “Dishing it back out.
Okay.” He put on a serious face. “Over six hundred thousand. How
many died of the Ebola virus last year?”

“None,” Olivia answered right away.

“So you’ve done
some
homework. How
about the year before that?”

“Fifty-one.”

“How many in the history of the disease? If
you don’t get this one right, I’ll know you weren’t listening
during my presentation.”

Olivia said, “I was so taken with your charm
that I didn’t catch a single word.”

“When you use that much sarcasm, it actually
hurts my feelings.”

“I’m guessing it just bounces off a deeper
layer of ego.” Olivia smiled. “Maybe sixteen hundred died of Ebola.
The point I guess you’re making is that Austin’s chances of dying
of another infectious disease like malaria are higher than they are
of dying from Ebola.”

“Astronomically higher,” Dr. Wheeler said. “A
person can get malaria from a mosquito bite just for going fishing
in the wrong spot. You almost have to go out of your way to get
Ebola.”

“But thirteen hundred cases have been
reported in West Africa, and not only is the number increasing, but
the curves are becoming steeper. If you graph the number of cases
over time, the curve appears to be exponential.”

“You
have
done your homework. And you
apparently paid attention during your Algebra classes.” Dr. Wheeler
smiled slyly. “Tell me, why do think that is?”

“Because I liked to be prepared.”

“No, I mean, why is Ebola spreading rapidly?”
he asked.

“Poor hygiene. Limited availability of
medical facilities—”

Dr. Wheeler cut in, “And little trust of the
medical infrastructure that exists.”

“—cultural norms,” she continued.

“Like eating undercooked bush meat. You know
certain species of bats are Ebola reservoirs, right?”

Olivia nodded.

“Of course,” Dr. Wheeler went on. “You know
if people expose themselves to infected flesh, they risk infection
themselves. And people there don’t have the same cultural
inhibitions against eating bats, monkeys, rodents, or anything else
they can toss over the fire. Africa isn’t anything like Atlanta. We
can run down to the grocery store when we get hungry. For most
Africans, it’s not that simple. You eat what you can get.”

“I know that.” Olivia didn’t need a lesson on
the different levels of affluence around the world.

“Sorry. I’m just making my point.”

“Which is?” Olivia asked.

“Ebola is transferred through bodily fluids.
That’s it.”

“There was that test with the pigs and
monkeys,” Olivia countered.

“Yes, but pigs give off more aerosolized
particles than pretty much any other species.” Dr. Wheeler
pantomimed a gesture to emphasize the point. “A repeat of that
study with macaques failed at getting a primate-to-primate
transmission. Infected monkeys on one side of the room, clean
monkeys on the other. Same setup as with the pigs. The infected
monkeys died. The clean monkeys stayed clean and went on to live
happy little monkey lives.”

“Happy monkey lives as
test
animals
?”

“You never know, maybe they’re testing the
addictive effects of long-term Viagra use right now.”

Olivia giggled. Wheeler laughed.

Olivia looked over her shoulder at the open
conference room door, feeling slightly self conscious but not sure
why. “But the Ebola virus could mutate.”

“Are you
trying
to get worked up about
this?”

Olivia chose not to answer the question.

Dr. Wheeler leaned forward again, put his
elbows on his desk, and scrutinized Olivia for a moment. “Yes. The
virus
could
mutate. And before you ask, yes, viruses mutate
all the time. I suspect not always for the better—better for the
virus, I mean. You know mutation is a random process, although it
seems like it’s not. Natural selection is
not
random. Once a
mutation occurs, nature decides whether it is better or worse for
the organism. The vast majority of the time, it’s not. The odds of
this Ebola outbreak mutating to become more contagious are
astronomically small. Don’t worry so much.”

“Sorry, Dr. Wheeler.”

“Your brother will probably be fine. As long
as he follows some basic guidelines, he’ll come back from Africa
healthy. If he comes back with a disease of some sort, the odds are
it’ll be something other than Ebola.”

“What’s this about Ebola?”

Both Olivia and Dr. Wheeler looked toward the
voice coming from the open door.

Dr. Wheeler waved Dr. Gonzalez in to join
them. “Olivia, this is Dr. Gonzalez, one of my coworkers at the
CDC. Dr. Gonzalez, this is Olivia Cooper. She was at my
presentation and acknowledges that this is an NSA building, without
admitting that she works here.”

Olivia spun in her chair to face Gonzalez and
extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

Dr. Gonzalez pulled away from Olivia.

Dr. Wheeler said, “He’s a germophobe.”

“Careful is a better word,” said Dr.
Gonzalez.

Wheeler said, “Olivia and I were talking
about her brother. He’s in Uganda this summer. I was telling her
that he’s probably safe from the Ebola outbreak. As you know the
outbreak is in West Africa. Uganda is pretty far from there.”