The Nirvana Plague (10 page)

Then the phone in her hand started bleeping again. She stuffed it back into her bag, unanswered.

A Humvee was waiting on the tarmac at Andrews. A young private hopped out of it as soon as the C-20 came to rest. Salutes were exchanged, bags transferred, passengers loaded. It seemed that within seconds of landing they were roaring across the airfield on four wheels. Marley barely looked up from his tablet.

The two lieutenants sat up front.

He was scanning the backgrounds and medical histories of affected personnel, bookmarking items to look at more carefully later, scribbling notes of any ideas that came to him — when he noticed something he hadn’t seen before. In addition to military personnel, there was a container for civilian cases. Inside was a subfolder called “Joplin Psychiatric, Chicago, IL.” And there were the full names of all his patients. He tapped open the file on “Sturgeon, Roger” and found himself looking at a copy of Roger’s entire medical record. There on his brand new government-issued computer were his own notes on Roger’s case from his chart at Joplin. Along with absolutely every other scrap of documentation on Roger’s case from Joplin’s records, going back over ten years — every admission record, every medication schedule, every nurse’s shift report, every treatment order, every digital signature.
Marley’s
signatures. In addition to medical records, there were hundreds of items of personal information: identification records, passport photos, tax returns, credit histories, professional resumes, residential addresses going back to birth, next of kin contacts…

The records on all his other patients were just as complete.

Once again, Benford saw the consternation on his face. “Something wrong?”

He looked up. “What the hell.”

“What the hell what?”

“You’ve got all my patient records. Real names. Everything.”

“We have everything we could get on all known or suspected cases of IDD.”

“It’s illegal.”

“No, it isn’t. Under the provisions of the IDCA the CDC can access virtually any non-classified information on known or suspected—”

“What’s IDCA?”

“Infectious Disease Control Authority. It’s the legal instrument which empowers the CDC and other DHS agencies to enforce quarantine.”

“Quarantine? What are you talking about?”

“The Secretary of the DHS has ordered the CDC to impose level one quarantine restrictions on all known and probable civilian and military cases of—”

“When did this happen?”

“This morning. There’s a copy of the order in the materials you have.”

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“This morning while I was seeing my patients?”

“Yes. This morning.”

“And you’ve got all these records already?”

The slightest smile crossed her lips. There might even have been a twinkle in her eye. “Welcome to cyberspace, Dr. Marley.”

“When is the quarantine supposed to go into effect?”

“It already has.”

“It already has?”

“You keep repeating me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why wasn’t I contacted?”

“You were. By me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before we left Chicago?”

“Because it wouldn’t have made any difference. I needed to get you here, and I gave you the information you needed to make that choice. The CDC’s quarantine orders were not relevant to that decision.”

“But these are my patients! I don’t like people messing with my patients behind my back. It’s not just unprofessional. It’s damn bad manners.”

Benford’s face hardened momentarily. But no expression stayed on her face for long. “If you had decided not to join my team, I would have told you about it. But you need to understand something. Either way, under the IDCA, you would no longer have been their primary care physician.”

“I’ve never heard of this IDCA thing.”

“No reason why you should have. It’s just part of the legal infrastructure created to support the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS has a vast scope of responsibilities. Combating terrorism is just one aspect of it.”

“Terrorism? I thought we were talking about infectious disease.”

“It could be both.”

“You’re joking. It’s probably neither.”

“Well, it’s
something
.”

Marley still felt spied upon. “How did you know who these people were anyway? How did you know who I was treating? You just handed me this tablet three hours ago, and it already has all their records.”

“Once the IDCA kicks in, it provides automatic warrants for various types of surveillance, subpoena, and records reviews in order to expedite the initiation of quarantine protocols as effectively as possible.” She rattled all this off with ease.

“I don’t believe you could have pulled all this together that fast.”

“All government records are indexed a thousand different ways. Precisely so that we
can
pull it all together. That’s how intelligence works.”

Marley put his tablet down and looked away from her, out through the tinted windows of the Humvee at the traffic. They were barely moving. Late afternoon on a weekday: the Beltway was a twelve-lane parking lot. No police escort here. This glacier of frozen steel and concrete was utterly indifferent to Benford’s hurry-up take-no-prisoners posturing.

After a few minutes he said: “There’s one thing I still don’t understand.”

“Yes.”

“You told me on the plane that nobody else believes IDD is a bona fide disorder, let alone infectious. Yet you knew when you said it that the CDC was already imposing quarantine measures to contain it.”

“The Secretary ordered quarantine purely as a precautionary measure. It’s a lot harder to catch the horse once it’s out of the corral.”

“The secretary?”

“The DHS Secretary. Eliot Pritzker.”

“Who recommended it to him?”

“I did.”

“And you’re just a lowly Health Affairs officer?”

“Yes. Until a few days ago.”

“So how do you think the Secretary is going to react if it turns out you’re wrong about all this?”

“If he acts rationally, he’s going to be relieved.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

The mercurial smile came and went. “The Secretary is a rational man,” she said.

He smiled to himself and looked out again at the traffic. They had made about two meters of progress.

Karen and Roger came to the street at the edge of campus. A police cruiser passed them, then suddenly did a U-turn, and, beacons strobing blue and red, ran its nose up onto the curb and stopped dead in front of them, half on the sidewalk. The passenger door swung open even before the car came to a stop, and someone jumped out, but lost his balance and went down on one knee.

Karen heard him grunt something, either “Ma’am” or “Damn.” For a wild instant she thought of running, but Roger walked on, indifferent to the show. She grabbed his sleeve to stop him, afraid.

The stumbler quickly regained his feet as the driver yelped over the speakers —

“Halt!”

The stumbler stepped forward, brushing the dirt off his knees, and addressed himself to Karen: “I’m Gordon DeStefano.”

Karen suppressed an urge to laugh. Keystone Kops.

“I’m not surprised,” she said.

“You shouldn’t have hung up on me.”

A crowd seemed to coalesce out of thin air around them. Karen thought of the pigeons. Attracts a crowd wherever he goes.

“What do you want?”

“You’re under quarantine.”

“I am?”

“Roger is,” he said, not looking at him.

“This Roger here?” she said with mock curiosity. “Or some other Roger?”

DeStefano’s lips curled.

He tugged a folded sheet of paper out of his coat pocket and held it out to her.

“This is a court order empowering the Board of Health to place your husband under quarantine. Please get in the car, and we’ll take you home. If necessary, we will take you into custody.”

Karen took the paper automatically, but didn’t look at it. “Quarantine for what?”

DeStefano looked over at the officer by the car, signaling him to come and take Roger by force.

“All right!” Karen barked.

She took Roger by the arm again and stalked toward the car, pulling him after. They sat in the back, DeStefano in front, a plastic shield between them. No one spoke. The engine roared up and the tires squealed as they bounced down off the sidewalk and shot backwards into the street, lights still flashing. Squealed again as they reversed and leapt forward.

The power of fossil fuel, Karen thought as she and Roger caromed off each other in the back seat.

It was only a few blocks to the apartment. She didn’t have to tell them where it was.

Cars, including Karen’s, lined the street in front of the apartment. The officer stopped in the street, leaving the lights flashing. He got out, opened the door on Karen’s side, and stepped back.

Karen stalked up the front steps angrily. It’s just us, the local crime family. On the landing, she pressed her finger to the doorlock scanner. She was trembling.

“Don’t worry,” Roger said.

But when she looked up, she saw that he was talking to the police officer.

The officer avoided his gaze, not looking any higher than his chest.

The four of them filed up the stairs to the second floor apartment. Coming inside, DeStefano blocked her from closing the door behind them, as if he needed to secure his escape route. He started talking at once:

“Your husband is ordered to stay inside the apartment. He may not go outside this door. No one other than yourself or a Board of Health officer or physician may enter the apartment. Other than yourself or a Board of Health officer or physician, he may not talk to or communicate with anyone — on the phone, out the window, through the door, or in any other way. If he fails to comply with this order, he will be taken into custody and placed in isolation at Dade County Psychiatric Hospital. An officer will phone you every three hours. If Roger fails to speak with the officer who calls, it will be considered a violation of quarantine. A video surveillance camera will be placed on the outside surface of this door, and it will be monitored by a security service. If the camera is tampered with or blocked, it will be considered a violation of quarantine.”

Roger had lost interest before DeStefano finished. He crossed to the window and stood looking down at the street, his back to the room.

“Does he understand this order?”

“Does he?” Karen said. “You’re asking me? Does he?”

“Do
you
understand this order?”

“Hell no, I don’t understand this order! What is he in isolation
for?”

“I have been ordered to place him in mandatory quarantine under the Infectious Disease Control Act. If your husband does not acknowledge that he understands this order, then either you, as his legal guardian, must acknowledge the order and accept full responsibility for his compliance with the order, or we will have to take him into custody. Do you acknowledge and accept responsibility for complying with the order?”

“For how long? What about my job?”

“For an indefinite period. If you do not feel that you can make arrangements, then we will—”

“Wait! Can you just wait a goddamn minute, please? What about his doctor? Can’t he talk to his doctor?”

“A Board of Health physician will visit or call periodically.”

“I’m not talking about a physician. What about his own doctor, his psychiatrist?”

“That will be at the discretion of the Board of Health physician. Do you acknowledge the order and accept—”

“Yes, goddammit! Of course!”

DeStefano turned to the police officer. “You witness Dr. Hanover’s acknowledgement of the order?”

The officer nodded.

Out of a coat pocket, DeStefano retrieved a little black sphere, the size of a ping-pong ball. It was the camera. Reaching up, he snapped its flat side onto the lintel, lens pointing downward. A green status indicator lit up, showing it was active.

Karen felt the world spinning ever further out of control.

“What is it you think is wrong with him? Why won’t you even look at him?”

“The physician will contact you tomorrow,” DeStefano said woodenly, and turned away.