The Visitor (27 page)

***

Nikolay and three guards came to the Chinese subjects’ cells at six o’clock in the morning to find them sound asleep. Sum was found praying in his room.

They led Sum to Dr. Dorogomilov’s outer lab area and to a separate room with a guard placed outside.

Dr. Volkova appeared in a white lab coat and began Sum’s medical examination. She took his vitals and drew blood for analysis. She was most interested in the blood analysis and took it to an analyzer in another room right away.

She returned several minutes later, bringing in a disposable cup of a clear liquid which she gave to him.

“What are you giving him, Doctor?” Nikolay, asked, speaking in Russian, as he knew the Chinaman did not understand.

“Klophelin,” she answered. “It’ll knock him out, and then we won’t have to fight him to get him under the mask.” She motioned for Sum to drink, and he complied.

“I know of that,” Nikolay said. “Russian hookers sometimes put this in a man’s drink to knock him out so they can steal his money.”

Sum suddenly felt tired, lay back on the table, and closed his eyes. He was out in no time.

“Take off his clothes,” Dr. Volkova told Nikolay.

He slipped off Sum’s gray scrubs, and Dr. Volkova then looked him over as he lay naked on the table. She reached for a set of electric shears with an extension cord on the counter nearby and shaved the hair off his head, the hair falling to the ground. She then lifted his sex organ with one hand and methodically shaved around it as well.

Once finished, she said to Nikolay, “Bring in the gurney.”

He went outside and returned with a gurney and one of his men. They easily put Sum, half their size, onto it and wheeled him behind Dr. Volkova toward Master Surgeon Dorogomilov’s operating room and lifted the naked Sum onto the operating table.

“Please go tidy up the hair, so as not to frighten the next one, and then make another one ready,” Dr. Volkova told Nikolay.

The operating room was large and filled with all the equipment one would find in a regular operating theater. The operating table was in the center, under lights. Behind it was an anesthesiologist’s cart set up with the usual tanks and breathing equipment, ready to go.

Dr. Volkova opened a jar of sterile wipes and began to wipe Sum with them in the area over the liver, the stomach, the scalp, and then his chest. They were going to do all the areas at one time. Any later complaints about the lack of bedside manner would not be a factor.

The door opened and the Dorogomilov entered. Dr. Volkova pulled over a table of instruments selected for the procedures. “This one has been praying in his cell every day,” she told him.

Dr. Dorogomilov first went for a sample of liver tissue, which he took in the form of a needle biopsy. He ran a huge, size sixteen needle with a trochar, a plug inside the needle blocking the opening, right through his abdomen into his liver. Once inside his liver, the trochar was removed and Dr. Dorogomilov put a huge syringe on the needle, applied vacuum, and rammed the needle on into the liver, whereupon he sucked out liver material into the syringe, and then set the syringe in a stainless-steel pan with the tissue samples.

“What next?” Dr. Volkova asked.

“Lungs.”

Dr. Volkova wiped Sum’s chest once again so Dr. Dorogomilov could make a cut over the lung to one side. He then cut through the intercostal muscle and spread the ribs. Taking forceps to pinch a piece of lung for his specimen, he then stapled the lung tissue together leaving the specimen in-between the staples so that when he cut it out, the lung would be already pre-sealed. He then cut the piece of lung in between the staples, and had his specimen.

After stitching up the open chest, he started on the stomach. He shoved a fiberoptic endoscope down Sum’s throat and sniped off a piece of stomach tissue.

“I’m going to take some brain samples as well,” Dr. Dorogomilov told Dr. Volkova.

“What? You have never made a workable race-specific Ebola from brain tissues. The blood brain barrier does not permit it.”

“Hush. This modified virus is more virulent, and I predict it will get past the blood brain barrier. In any event, do not mention it to the guards or to the baron. Sum has been praying since he got here. He may have the difference in the brain that I believe exists between deeply religious people and those who are not. Now that I am back in operation, with resources, I have the chance to test my theory that I can make an Ebola that will only attack fanatically religious people. It is only my knowledge that is bringing me the five million from the baron, and I want to learn what I can now that I have the chance. I will compare parts of Sum’s brain to others as Sum is deeply religious. Imagine what that knowledge could be worth one day.”

Dr. Dorogomilov drew a circle on Sum’s shaved head with a red pen over the parietal area and drilled a pilot hole in the red spot with a drill. With a craniotome saw he cut a hole. The bone fragments sprayed about like sawdust from a woodworker. With a scalpel, he cut the dura, allowing clear, cerebrospinal fluid to seep out. There it was, brain tissue for the taking. Pausing a moment to look at the bounty, he then put a probe deep into the brain, to an area that he had learned of, and then took out what he wanted. He then put in a bipolar cautery electric probe and cauterized the wound to prevent hemorrhaging, as bleeding in the brain was quite often fatal, although the removal of part of his limbic system in the brain would probably keep him from regaining consciousness.

The doctor closed the dura mater, stitched it, but did not bother to put anything back in the hole in the cranium, as there was no need, given the situation.

When he was through with Sum, he looked up at Dr. Volkova and nodded, indicating that the procedure was completed.

He took off his bloody gloves, and tossed them into the wastebasket to go have a tea and then scrub for the next subject. Dr. Volkova methodically put the tissue samples in containers and labeled each one with its place of origin, as well as with Sum’s name
,
and placed them into a refrigerator.

Dr. Volkova covered Sum with a sheet up to his head, went to the door, and called for Nikolay. He came in, with Zuhk pushing the gurney, transferred Sum to it, and wheeled him out to a recovery room. Timoshenko and Yageltchuk were standing by.

Not wasting time, Dr. Dorogomilov utilized the rest of the day completing the tissue sampling from all of the remaining four Chinese, Tai, Mee, So, and Ma. They were brought in one at a time, two hours apart, for the same treatment.

No one put up any resistance except Tai who, when he saw some cut hair on the floor around the table where he was told to sit, decided to try bolting. Rather than voluntarily drinking his Klophelin drug from the cup, he had to be held, with each of four huge guards on one of his limbs, as, shrieking and kicking, he had a gauze filled with chloroform held over his mouth and nose until he became limp.

Within an hour or two following their operations, they came to and were then wheeled to their cells and placed onto their beds by the guards so they could sleep off the final effects of the gas and procedures.

Later that day, they were given strong pain killers, as they awoken in horrible pain and were suffering.

By the end of that long day, Dr. Dorogomilov had the initial tissue samples he needed. He looked at the tissues in their containers through the glass refrigerator door, wondering just what specifics he could expect to isolate.

The following day, the two doctors performed the operations with the Tibetans, the control group.

Everything had gone well. Beginning the next morning, Dr. Dorogomilov would start early.

***

Drs. Dorogomilov and Volkova sat admiring the new equipment that had arrived. Dr. Volkova turned to Dr. Dorogomilov and asked, “Which do you want to start with?”

“I read a study just last night on the Internet that the Han Chinese have a high incidence of liver disease, so we can go there if we don’t find it in the lungs, which I would prefer.”

Dr. Volkova went to the refrigerator and brought lung tissue from one of the subjects. Dr. Dorogomilov first put it into his new sonicator and blasted the sample with sonic waves until it was broken up and blended into a homogeneous brew. He then put the cells into his new density gradient ultracentrifuge, which swung them in a circle at an amazing one hundred thousand times normal gravity. The result was that the dense cells were slung to the bottom of the containers, resulting in cell separation by density into relevant fractions.

Next the doctor added an eluent, to dissolve any contaminants, and put the cells into a high-pressure liquefying chromatography machine which separated the mixture into vertical columns. One cc at a time was removed from the end of the each column and put into a tube, over and over again, until a hundred cc’s had been taken, each with a different density. The cells were then subjected to a densitometer with a light scanner. Once the light scanner turned on the cells, peaks and valleys appeared on the monitor, along a horizontal axis, displaying the differences of the protein components.

He had gone through two thirds of the hundred cc’s with the light scanner, when he noticed that one had a huge vertical peak, clearly distinguishing it as a unique protein.

“Here’s one!” he exclaimed. “Have a look.” He moved aside to let her in closer to the monitor. “Now, Anastasiya, I want you to repeat this with the other lung tissues from each of the Chinese to see if they all have it. As we know that the unique cell is in the lungs, you can shortcut the process by starting with the lung samples from the other subjects and taking the sample from about two-thirds of the way down, or at least very close to it, so you only have to test a few tubes on either side to find and confirm. If you get confirmation with the other four, you can go ahead and concentrate it by mixing it with ammonium carbonate in a dialysis tubing. Then we will see if the Tibetans have it. While you do that, I will get started on tissue from another organ. I’m hoping that if I can’t find it the lungs, I will be able to find it in the liver, so I will try that next.”

He went to the refrigerator for liver tissue to start the process on that while she went to work repeating the experiment on the remaining lung tissues.

As he had done back in the lab’s heyday under the Soviet Union when he was hot on a project, Dr. Dorogomilov had set up small living quarters in the building, so as not to waste time going back and forth to the city, and worked constantly when not asleep. Since his wife died, he had no family, other than hers, and no social life. Dr. Volkova was working on changing that. She stayed in with him, but only on alternate nights, as she had to make sure that provisions were being provided to the prisoners as well as to the animals.

Dr. Volkova went to his quarters at midnight. “Can I help you relax, darling?”

He nodded and began to take off his clothes.

She began to talk about non-scientific things as she undressed. “All I can think of is going to some tropical island, darling. I’ve always wanted to see a beach of sand. I want to go to one of those places where they have tropical fruits. I’ve never had a coconut.”

“Stop daydreaming until we finish this project,” he replied.

She watched him lay down on the bed. Then she moved in to do what he liked and that would help put him to sleep.

***

Tai Won Ong was awakened by Nikolay at six in the morning four days after the operations. He was taken by gurney to a special room which had been set up for him in the high containment area, adjacent to the lab in the back of the building. The room had a toilet, a table, a chair, and a bed. The unusual feature was that, to get to it, one had to go through three sets of high containment doors much like the oval doors in submarines.

Off to one side of the door into the room was a small latch over a shelf where food could be passed to him in the room without anyone opening the door.

At just before seven, the small food access door opened. In came a bowl of steaming rice. On top of the rice were fried strips of the local produce, in addition to egg and meat, which had been prepared by the doctor’s deceased wife’s aunt that morning. The food contained a special additive, however, provided by the doctor, who was serving it while wearing a pressure suit. That special additive was a sprinkling of the doctor’s deadly virus, newly linked to the antibody created to seek the unique protein located in the lungs of any member of the Han Chinese race.