“So the problem is a biohazard,” Nick said soberly.
“The worst kind. I work for the CDC, as I said. At the moment, I am engaged in a project aimed at developing a universal kill switch for viruses. You can imagine the utility of being able to turn viruses off. We are a very, very long way from achieving our goals but we are close to a working model in theory. My colleague in this project, which will run to the end of the year, is Dr. Elias Field. He is an expert in gene splicing and is working on a computer model of the genome of the smallpox virus.”
Silence.
Nick looked briefly pained, then schooled his face to passivity again. “Smallpox, eh?”
Alex nodded her head.
“I thought we had eradicated smallpox. Wiped it off the face of the earth. My great grandfather died of smallpox. I’m not even vaccinated against it.”
“None of us are.”
“But it’s gone, right? Over. Extinct. Whatever it is that happens to germs.”
“Viruses,” Alex said. “Not germs. And, yes, in theory smallpox has been eradicated. But of course, there are still samples available, kept very securely, both at the CDC and VEKTOR in the Russian Federation.”
Nick cocked his head. “But? And I wouldn’t trust anything the Russian Federation says.”
Alex sighed. “There are rumors. There are always rumors. I can personally attest to the fact that the live smallpox kept at the CDC is kept under very secure conditions. And colleagues who have been to VEKTOR say the same about the samples in Russia. But in 2014, six vials were found, mislabeled, in an FDA lab. The CIA believes Russia has illegal, undeclared stocks. They wrote a report in 2002.”
“What?” Jacob leaned forward. “How come we haven’t heard this?”
“I think, ahm, the CIA keeps its secrets pretty well,” Alex said, voice dry.
The CIA was a sieve. Jacob was angry that something like this hadn’t been reported.
“So, Alex, your colleague?” Nick was frowning.
She sighed, looked at her hands, took a beat. Two. “Well, this is where it gets tricky. Because my colleague has been missing for three days, going on four. He is not answering his phone, he is not answering on our Whatsapp group, he is not answering his emails, either personal or work email. We are in the middle of a delicate project in a Level 4 Biolab and I cannot continue on my own. But if I report him missing, his career is over. Yet I can’t ignore that he is AWOL. I spoke about this to… to Jake—Jacob…” she stumbled over his name. “Elias had been acting strangely and has been throwing money around. I hadn’t actually put two and two together until Jacob made me. And—and I guess I just have to accept the possibility, the very real possibility, that Elias has defected. If that’s the word I want.”
Alex looked over to Jacob, as if to ask if the debriefing was okay. She was clearly rattled.
Jacob faced the huge screen. Nick was looking serious. They’d faced a lot of bad situations before, but this one had the potential to be devastating.
“Alex received a call, but the number was blocked. We unblocked it. There was no message because it was scrambled. It came from Zalny.” Jacob halted. Nick’s mouth tightened. Like Jacob, he rarely showed emotions, but his reaction was unmistakable. “You know what it is, Nick?”
“I know what it was,” Nick responded. “It was a secret bioweapons lab under the Soviet Union but was shut down in 1994, subsequent to the Treaty.”
“It might not be so shut down,” Alex said. “There were rumors, but then in my business there are always rumors. We deal with very bad things.”
“Wait.” Jacob ran requests through his system. Black Inc. had a proprietary AI that would have been worth millions of dollars on the open market. But he kept it in house, where it was used for good. It was insanely useful. “Ah. Here we go. I ran coordinates through a system that checks historical satellite footage and—fuck. Look at that.”
The footage showed high speed recordings of the area over the past two years. Far from being a disused lab, in the past two years, there were numerous truck deliveries and unmistakable signs of underground construction. The last image showed an innocuous terrain looking abandoned, with a small shack.
The footage was running for Nick, too. His face tightened. “Goddamn. That’s Russian. Got to be. Vostokova doesn’t have that kind of money. And Russia probably paid the Vostokovan authorities off to look the other way. The local authorities wouldn’t care. They are all venal and corrupt. Except for one Minister.”
“There is a good likelihood that there is now a world-class virologist in that complex. Who is an expert on smallpox.” Jacob looked at Alex. “With maybe a sample?”
She nodded, sadness in her features. “It is not beyond the realm of possibility. Either a forgotten vial in some lab here in the States, or he is with people who have access to smallpox. There’s an urban legend that the Russian mob has kilos of the stuff.”
Jesus. Jacob tried to wrap his head around someone having kilos of smallpox.
“But, that’s not the bad news,” Alex said.
Nick blinked, which for him was a sign of extreme surprise. “It isn’t?” he said.
“It isn’t?” Jacob echoed.