The Nightmare Scenario (28 page)

“So, they’re toughening up on the opposition. Egregious violations of human rights are hardly rare in that parody of a nation. I’m sorry, Mr. Burton, but I don’t see what this has to do with me.”

“The reason they’re killing these people isn’t because they’re the opposition, it’s because they’re sick. A terrible epidemic’s hit Burma and the military is fighting it by killing everyone who shows symptoms or who they think’s been in contact with someone infected.”

Roger was silent while Aeolus digested what he had just heard. His mind was racing, trying to find some reason for what this journalist had told him would not be true. He found none.

“
Helvete
!” cursed Aeolus, slamming his cane into the floor. “
Helvete
!”

“After all my efforts to build direct relations and establish networks of informers all over the world, of
course this daughter of the devil shows up in the
only
country where I don’t have visibility. There must be thousands of infected by now. While we’ve spent our efforts quarantining individual cases in Malaysia and Vietnam, Burma has been a humongous 435,000 square mile Petri dish where the virus has enjoyed exponential growth for two weeks.

“How the hell could this happen? And how the hell could they have been so stupid not to tell us? I mean, this must be some sort of record, even for that moronic regime. And you have to ask yourself, if they could have handled the situation any worse? I mean, even if we disregard for a moment the fact that genocide is generally a bad idea, half of the people they’re killing won’t be infected. About three-fourths of the rest would have survived. And while they’re doing this, hundreds, if not thousands, of asymptomatic carriers are travelling around the country, fleeing in panic from the military pogroms.
Hel-vete
!”

He turned to Richard.

“This, Richard, is the explanation of the yellow dots. As you see they’re centered on ‘the Golden Triangle’ for drug smugglers. This is why we have cases in northern Thailand, but not in the southern parts. It traveled north from Burma.

“It’s difficult to see how this could be any worse. Even if the epidemic hadn’t spread out of Burma, which it clearly has, there’s absolutely
no way
to stop these people from traveling the 1000-year-old smuggling routes through India, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.
They earn their living from bypassing the military and police efforts to stop their cross-border travel.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Hughes,” interrupted Richard, “but I don’t understand. How can there be so many infected? If we compare it to the other Southeast Asian countries, there should be a handful, maybe hundreds; not thousands.”

“Someone from Indonesia went to Burma, a not uncommon sea-route by the way, around the time of the third incident in Limbong, before we even had the first quarantine in place. It explains
everything
. And what’s worse is that all our actions so far have been completely in vain. There is no way we can save the Eurasian continent now. Absolutely no way! The quarantines we have are pointless. This changes everything.”

Aeolus dropped into the closest chair. The room was silent. Everyone stared at him, waiting for a cue as he laid his cane on the table, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and gazed at the ceiling, taking deep slow breaths. It took him almost a minute to focus his thoughts and find that drive, deep inside him, that had always allowed him to rise to any challenge, yield to no obstacle and attack even the most insurmountable problem with an unceasing stream of energy.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mr. Burton. Usually I’d ask you to hold a story like this to avoid panic, but we’re beyond that point. Print what you feel you must.”

Aeolus disconnected the call, then clicked back to Mandy and erupted:

“Get
everyone
in the SHOC right now. And I mean
everyone
.
Right now
!”

Aeolus studied the cane’s handle. The time for offense was over. It was time to switch to defense.

It took five minutes to get everyone gathered. It took another three minutes for Aeolus to explain the situation. It took an additional minute for it to sink in, and then the room was quiet, the group caught in moment of stasis, while everyone was looking at Aeolus for leadership.

Aeolus spoke slowly: “As you can see, we’re now in a very different situation. The ambition of quarantining whole countries has now, with a few exceptions, at least for the Eurasian and African continents, become totally unrealistic. Instead, we have to search for micro-areas we can protect.

“We have to determine which cities can be isolated effectively. We have to understand what contiguous areas have geographical chokepoints where we can stop the inflow of people. I want to get everyone on this. Everyone. We need to work with others. National geographic societies should be helpful. And speak to Hank Wiley. The guys at Fort Detrick must have run simulations on this, at least for the NATO countries. I need you to put together a ranked list based on potential lives saved versus effort required to quarantine, as fast as humanly possible. If we can save the larger European cities or Russian areas enclosed by mountains, we might still be able to save a lot of people, a hundred million or so.”

He took a breath.

“That’s our first priority – Kevin and Ed will take the lead. Walt, I want you to help with figuring out what non-WHO resources can be of help, and use Stan to pull them in. After all, this is more of an exercise in geography and paramilitary planning than one of medicine.

“Our second priority is to buy time. If we can delay the spread a week, or maybe two, we can give Yelena the space she needs to develop a rapid test.”

He saw some skeptical faces.

“Don’t look at me like that. She can do it. I know she can!

“With a rapid test, enforcing quarantines will be easier and they’ll be more sustainable in the longer term. The way we buy time is by limiting travel as much as we can. I’m talking about stopping international flights, as well as domestic. I’m talking about shutting down highways and border-crossings, between countries and within. I’ll take the lead on this.

“Our third priority, although it might turn out to be the most important, is to get the American continents isolated. This is the most difficult task, but the one with the highest potential for saving lives. I’ve tried to make this happen already. I’ve exhausted my bag of tricks.”

He turned to Richard again.

“I’m asking you, Richard, to help us with this. I think you have learned enough by now to understand the gravity of our current situation. It’s clear the president listens to you, and I want you to tell us what you need to convince him. What proof, analysis, instructions, understanding, forecasts or expert opinions are required for you to make that recommendation? And
once you do, I swear to God, we’ll put every resource at our disposal to work on it.”

He looked around at his staff.

“I know what you all think and feel right now. And you are right. This is a disaster - a disaster of biblical proportions. We’ve just lost a hundred million lives, at least. That said, there are still hundreds of millions to be saved. And we cannot – we will not – give up. This is not over. Pick yourself up. Call on what energy you have left, and let’s get to work.”

AUGUST 11
^TH
, MORNING, AEOLUS’S SUITE, WHO REGIONAL OFFICE, 22, SHAM NATH MARG, NEW DELHI

R
ebecca woke up with her arm around Roger, her head resting on his chest. She still couldn’t believe their room. The ceiling was fourteen feet high. The bed, king-size at least, was made up with smooth Egyptian cotton sheets. The dark-brown wood furniture, she’d been told, was all Victorian original. There was an abundance of fresh flowers, mostly lilies, her favorite, although she couldn’t understand how the butler had figured that out. The room was what she imagined a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria would look like. It was Aeolus’s personal room at the combined offices of WHO New Delhi and the Indian National Centre for Disease Control.

As part of his project to raise the standard of the WHO’s local infrastructure, Aeolus had pushed for refurbishment of the regional offices. He insisted they have the capability to be completely self-contained for a period of
up to six months so that the staff could continue working, no matter what epidemic was on the loose outside.

The sites had been rebuilt, not only as a place for people to work, but to live. There were sleeping barracks, a mess with a sufficient supply of food and water, self-generated electricity and support staff – everything required for the office to function in total isolation. Nowhere was this more important than in New Delhi, where the density of the population would make it impossible to prevent the staff from getting infected on their way to and from the office.

Obviously, the WHO budget was not created to pay for the indulgences of Aeolus’s private residence. He’d paid for that himself. Say what you want about the man, but he knew how to live in style.

She called the butler for coffee and the wonderful truffle-sprinkled Eggs Benedict she’d become addicted to. She woke Roger with a gentle nudge.

As they chatted and read the newspaper, ironed flat by the butler, they couldn’t have been further removed from the calamity surrounding them. They were more like a couple on a honeymoon than two people in the midst of the battle against humanity’s greatest enemy in a century.

Roger put down his coffee cup and spoke the words she’d been hoping she wouldn’t hear.

“Rebecca, you know I have to go.”

“Go where?” she said, feigning surprise as she looked up from the foreign affairs section of the International New York Times, her mind trying to structure the most compelling argument against what was coming.

“I have to go to Burma. Someone has to tell the story.”

“Oh, someone else can do that. You’re not the only journalist in the world,” Rebecca said casually, pretending to return to the paper. Her synapses were firing at full speed. Maintaining her poise took significant effort.

“They won’t be able to get in. And even if they do get in, they won’t be able to move around undetected. You need
deep
relationships with the drug runners. Relationships I have. I’m the only one who does.”

Rebecca tried a new angle. She looked at Roger with the stern gaze of an executive carrying tremendous responsibility: “But I need you here.
We
need you here. The world needs you here. This is more important. I need your help to do what I do, and what I do is save lives – on a very large scale.”

“Twinkie, honestly, I might be of some use to you here, but there are hundreds of people who could do help you the way I do. That’s not my job. My job is to make sure no human suffering, or injustice, goes unnoticed. My job is to expose those aberrations of humanity for what they really are. My job is to stop them, and more importantly, make sure something like this never happens again. Ever.
That
is my job.”

Rebecca fell silent for a moment, desperately trying to find a new approach. When she failed to find one, she chose to settle for the truth.

“Roger, do you understand how dangerous it is? The virus is rampant there! You’re going to be in contact with infected people wherever you go. And you’ll have no means of protecting yourself.”

“I’ll use masks and goggles like in Indonesia.”

“But this isn’t like Indonesia! There’s no clean zone! There’s nowhere you can take off your gear and be safe. You’re going to have to sleep at some point. How are you going to do that? With your mask on? And what about when you need to change filters? How are you going to do that? You’ll get infected!”

“No, I won’t. I’ll follow the rules you taught me. And even if I do get infected, most people survive. I
have
to do this. They’re killing innocent people by the thousands! This might be the most important story of my life!”

“But Roger…” Rebecca stood and took Roger’s hands in hers. Looking deep into his eyes, she pleaded, “Please, don’t go. These last weeks with you have been my best in years. And that’s in spite of the situation we’re in. I made a mistake once, because I was too proud, too young, too foolish. And I lost you. I will not make that mistake again. I won’t lose you again!”

“Rebecca. You’re not the only one fighting the epidemic here. I might not be able to what you do. I can’t stop the virus. But I
can
stop the other thing, what it turns men into; what it makes people do to others. The population of Burma is about to be exterminated. Now sixty million might not be a lot of lives in your trade-off calculations, but it sure as shit counts in my book.
This
is how I contribute. This is how
I
fight the pandemic.”

Roger squeezed her hands gently, and looked into her hazel eyes.

“Turn the situation around,” he continued. “If it was me asking you to stop the work you’re doing and elope with me instead, would you?”

“Without a doubt,” answered Rebecca, but she knew her eyes betrayed her. It simply wasn’t true – and they both knew it.

Roger rose and pushed her hands away. “Sorry, Twinkie. I’m going.”

WHO SITUATION UPDATE REPORT:
A/Singapore/4/2015(H1N1) – 2015/08/12


Indonesia


Infection spread over entire country with confirmed presence at 16 locations in Java, Sumatra, Borneo and the eastern archipelago. Virus is spreading rapidly at exponential rates. Situation in critical areas as follows:


Maluku Islands: Reach of epidemic spans entire geographical area. Local health system has broken down with only sporadic treatment available. No reliable figures but estimates of around 40,000 infected. Casualties at this point are in the thousands.


Jakarta: Epidemic present in entire city and spreading rapidly. Estimate around 50,000 infected. Local health system lacks capacity to treat the infected. Casualties so far are in the low hundreds.


Malaysia


More than 2,000 infected in Kuala Lumpur. A total quarantine is in effect around the city but containment might have been breached. There are four potential, yet unconfirmed, cases in the cities of Port Dickson, Seremban, Kuala Pilah and Kuantan.