A War of Shadows

FIVE

“C’m’on, you little bastard, come to papa,” Mark Spiegelman said insistently. “Come on, you can do it, yes you can.”

The object of the conversation was well away from him, inside a special sealed chamber, and within a gel on a small platform within that chamber. The serologist was watching a CRT screen over 130 centimeters across diagonally, with perfect resolution, the computer-generated picture of what was happening in the gel at that time as seen by the hypersensitive electron microscope.

The creature on the screen was not very thrilling to look at; it was three-quarters of a micron in width and just a little over one micron in length, surrounded by cilia. It was close to a small protein globule, and it almost seemed to be stalking it. The globule, in turn, was obviously attracted to the tiny bacterium, and the two seemed to be in some sort of slow-motion ballet.

Suddenly they touched, and the bacterium absorbed the protein globule.

Dr. Mark Spiegelman smiled in satisfaction, mumbled something about the course of true love, and continued to watch.

Tiny enzymes within the bacterium moved with unusual swiftness, surrounding the antigen and doing something to it.

Spiegelman’s mouth dropped.

In the course of the next three minutes, the globule was completely broken down, so much so that it was impossible to tell that it had ever been there.

“Well I’ll be damned,” the serologist said. He turned to check that the videotape recorder was still running, although hesitant to take his eyes off the creature on the screen.

He grabbed a dictation recorder, punched the record button, and said, “Samples from the Operation Wilderness subjects should be examined for any rapidly reproducing strains of what might appear to be Escherichia coli in the bloodstream, stomach, or intestinal tract, characterized by the formation of antigens in pulses, a large number appearing then disappearing, in constant progression.”

He switched off, plugged the dictation module back into the panel, punched transmit, and settled back.

There were two bacteria on the screen now. He looked at his watch, then turned in his swivel chair to a computer console and asked for a time on the reproductive cycle.

Six minutes forty-six seconds to complete division.

Seven minutes, give or take, he thought wonderingly. About four times faster than the fast-breeding bacteria.

Roughly eight doublings in geometric progression per hour.

He pulled out his pocket calculator, put in a “2.” Okay, that was seven minutes. At fourteen minutes there’d be four, at twenty-one minutes sixteen, at twenty-eight minutes 256, at thirty-five minutes 65,536. He swore. This was getting hairy and he wasn’t even close to the end. At forty-two minutes you had—god!—4,294,967,296! At forty-nine minutes his calculator overloaded and refused to compute any further.

And if the thing defended itself as he’d seen, there’d be little loss. Some, of course, but not very much.

Inside of a day your bloodstream should be crawling with the things, too thick to miss.

He returned to the computer terminal, requesting a comparison of the Wilderness Organism with the microbiology reports from the autopsies and blood samples of prior victims.

None.

Were there abnormal numbers of Escherichia coli in the bodies of the victims? he asked the computer, thinking that they might have been passed over as the common variety often, in fact invariably, found there.

No unusual counts of that or any other bacillus.

He frowned. Why? There was the villain, all right, sitting there fat, dumb and happy on the giant CRT screen, in living color just like home television. He didn’t know a lot about it yet, but he knew for certain that that creature had caused at least the blindness at Boland, and maybe the other ailments as well. Why it acted where it did, and how it did its little tricks there, was still a mystery, but nothing a lot more hard lab work wouldn’t solve.

But it mutiplied faster than any known bacteria or anything else. Okay, he accepted that. But that should make it a thousand times more conspicuous.

Why wasn’t the damned thing in the bodies of the previous victims?

He typed in more instructions to the computer. They would step up the magnification to impossible limits and do a molecule-by-molecule analysis of the damned thing.

President of the United States Jefferson Lee Wainwright looked appropriately grim.

It had been said of him that he was the absolutely perfect presidential candidate; had someone the means and methods of production to create the perfect robotic politician, the result would have been Wainwright. The strong, rugged, Olympian look, the perfectly coiffured light brown hair, the warm, sympathetic blue eyes and patented smile, the sonorous voice—all perfect. His rise to power had been meteoric; Governor of Texas at thirty, senator at thirty-five, President at forty. A liberal on domestic issues, a staunch conservative on foreign policy, he had something for everyone except the radical fringes of the political spectrum.

“My fellow Americans,” he began, radiating charisma, “I speak to you tonight on a matter of grave national emergency. The people of the United States are under attack from a foreign agency.”

He paused for effect, letting the words sink in.

“Everyone is aware of the mysterious and tragic diseases which have struck a number of towns across the United States,” he continued. “From the beginning, all agencies of government were placed on a priority basis to discover the cause of these baffling ailments. All agencies. This morning, at approximately 7:00 A.M… Eastern Time, the break came. The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a raid on a cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California where several wanted terrorists of international repute were reported to be. Those terrorists, which included some of the wickedest and most insidious minds possible in the human race, were indeed there. All were either killed or captured. They resisted with such fanaticism, though, that it is possible none will survive the results of their resistance.”

Again the pause, the slight shift.

“Inside their cabin,” he went on, “were found mysterious containers and some papers indicating their familiarity with at least one of the towns stricken by the mysterious disease. The contents of these containers, now under analysis by the National Disease Control Center of the Department of Health and Welfare, contain bacteria—a germ, if you will—that all of our scientists are convinced is responsible. The conclusions are obvious. Someone, some foreign power, is using germ warfare against us.”

He sat back, aware of the stir, even the panic that he’d just caused. But his timing was perfect.

“Now, there is no cause for panic. So far they have limited their vicious attacks, and we received a lucky break in the raid. We’re on to them now. Your morning newspapers will be printing photographs of the known terrorists connected to the ones in the raid this morning; your local newspeople will be on immediately following this broadcast to give you methods and procedures, and to show you what to look for. All law enforcement personnel are receiving even more intensive training. More, it is a bacteria, like the germs that cause most human ailments. Shortly we will have the information we need to produce some sort of serum, or antitoxin, for your protection, and this will be distributed freely to every human being in the United States. H W Secretary Meekins is even now mapping out the tremendous job of making certain you are protected and quickly.”

He paused yet again, then flashed his confident look for assurance.

“In addition, I have this evening created a Special Presidential Task Force to coordinate the battle against these agents of terror. We will strike at them. We will catch the terrorists and give them what they deserve. We will have a means of combating their dirty germs. And we will find the source of this terror and neutralize it. We will win.”

A last pause, and then he turned and looked out beyond the camera. “I’ll take your questions now.”

There was instant pandemonium as the members of the press clamored for attention. “Mr. Ackroyd,” the President said, and the others quieted for a moment.

“Mr. President,” came a voice familiar to millions, “are you planning any additional measures to make sure these agents don’t strike again?”

He nodded. “I will ask the Congress tomorrow morning to declare a state of national emergency,” he told them. “We must have extraordinary enforcement measures, you understand. But I feel certain that the public and Congress will understand and allow some additional latitude in their own interests.”

It went on and on. Somebody in Conference Room A at Fort Dietrick, near Frederick, Maryland, got up and switched him off.

“Why do I feel like you just committed sacrilege?” quipped an elderly woman, Georgianne Meekins, Secretary of Health and Welfare.

General John Wood Davis, who had turned the TV off, grinned wickedly. As Chariman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff he didn’t worry much about how others saw him.

He resumed his seat and looked around. “Who’s missing?” he asked.

At that moment a door opened and a small figure walked in. The military guards closed the door softly behind him.

Dr. Sandra O’Connell looked up in surprise. He was well dressed this time, clean-shaven and distinguished, but he still had that foul cigar and he was still ugly as sin.

Jake Edelman smiled, nodded to her, and took a chair.

Davis nodded in satisfaction and began.

“As you all know, this task force has a nearly impossible task before it,” he began. “We are under attack, yes—but by whom? The Russians? The Chinese? Who?” He looked at a distinguished appearing gray-haired man two seats down, and everyone else followed his gaze.

“The CIA has pulled out all the stops on this one, but nothing,” the Director of Central Intelligence told them. “Russians? No, I don’t think so. True, some of the radicals in the Wilderness Raid came from Cuba, but they were definitely not trained and equipped there, and our people inside the Cuban government are positive that the Cubans know no more about this than we do. They’ve been falling all over themselves reassuring us on that point. There’s nothing to contradict them so far. It’s true the Russians and Chinese have germ warfare programs—don’t we all, really, despite the treaties?—but we have them pretty well covered. Nothing like this, no tests, no top people unaccounted for or on super projects. And the way their governments are reacting makes us feel that they are either as scared as we are or are putting on the best act in history.”

General Davis frowned. “But the blue cylinders—they are of Bulgarian manufacture, are they not?”

The DCI nodded. “Yes, they are. They are used for the storage of freon and other specialized industrial chemicals. But it’s a dead end there. All of these cylinders were part of a foreign aid deal with Chad, and were filled with agricultural chemicals when they left. The shipment was bound for Lagos, Nigeria, and it got as far as the harbor. There it vanished.”

Davis’ raised eyebrows asked the question.

“Lagos harbor’s been notorious for thirty years for piracy,” the DCI explained. “It’s never been properly enlarged, and ships sometimes sit stacked up for days or even weeks waiting their turns to unload. Sometimes men come in small boats, over-power the crew—or use bribes or threats—and steal various things off the ships. In this case, they stole the blue cylinders.”

“How many?” Jake Edelman’s dry nasal voice cut in.

The CIA man looked uneasy. “Nine hundred sixty,” he said.

That stirred all of them.

“And how many do you figure have been used so far?” Sandra O’Connell asked, not caring who answered.

“There were a dozen of them in the cabin,” Edelman told them. “Five were empty, so we can infer that Boland took five. The other target was not yet hit, I don’t think—we’ve had the watch on them longer than three days. So figure five and a spare per town hit. What have they hit? Five, six towns? Figure over nine hundred left at least, assuming they all have the germs in them.”

That upset them, even the unflappable General Davis. He looked at Sandra O’Connell. “Doctor, what about your end?”

She considered what to say. “Dr. Spiegelman and his team have been working non-stop on this. We don’t know all the answers yet, particularly not how it works and why it isn’t in the body, blood, or tissues by the time its effects appear. All I can tell you is what we do know.”

“Go on,” Davis urged.

“First of all, it’s not a natural organism. It’s related to a common bacteria, yes, an organism inside all of our intestinal tracts at least right now. It’s a parasite but it causes little damage, and may even aid in the digestion of some foods. Because it was common, familiar, easily isolated, and easy to grow in cultures, it was one of the primary organisms used in early recombinant DNA research.”

Several of them looked surprised. “I thought all that was discontinued after the Cambridge and Limitov disasters,” someone said.

She nodded. “True. It’s dynamite with an unstable fuse. Anything done in that department runs the danger of creating an artificial mutant strain that could cause a horrible plague. Both here and in the Soviet Union such things occurred more than a decade ago, and that ended any real research into the subject except in computer models.”

“But the technology exists,” Edelman said. “It could be done by anyone who knew how.”

“That’s true,” she admitted. “But nobody would do it without tremendous safeguards. Even a fanatical group wouldn’t run the risk of self-contamination. Bacteria do not recognize rank or social position. You’d need a lab setup that cost tens of millions of dollars at the very least, and a scientific team capable of handling the risks as well.”

“So you’re saying,” Davis put in, “that no place short of a government or perhaps a major university lab could do it?”

She nodded agreement. “Yes, and even the university lab would be government supported. They’re the only ones with the money.”

“Just what’s involved in this recombinant DNA thing?” Jake Edelman wanted to know. “I’m no biologist.” He felt a little better when he saw a number of other heads nod almost imperceptibly. They didn’t know, either—they just didn’t have the guts to admit that they didn’t.

She sighed. “I’ll do the best I can. A short course in molecular biology is a tough order, though. Let’s start by saying that we’re all made up of trillions of living cells. All organisms are made up of one or more of these cells. And, in a given organism, like a human being, all the cells are from the division of a single cell. You started off the product of one sperm with half a set of genes that penetrated an egg with the other half, creating a single, primal cell. That single cell duplicated in your mother’s womb over and over again. As it did, the cells changed.

“As far back as the 1940s,” she continued, “it was found that the culprit was an odd double-spiraled compound called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short. The stuff is made up of four chemicals, and these are strung together in long chains inside each cell, the chains—the order of the chemicals—telling the specific cell its place, order, and function in the developing organism. It becomes a hair cell, or a tooth cell, or a nail or part of the lung. Back in 1961 Dr. Marshall Nirenberg of the National Institutes of Health, of which NDCC and this center are components, showed how it worked. You string together a series of DNA molecules, use a dash of protein as a period, and drop the thing into a soup of RNA, a compound related to DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of all life. The DNA gives the orders, the RNA takes them, goes to work on the amino acids, and builds a protein molecule to specifications. All of the instructions necessary to build and maintain you were in the DNA of that original cell created by the union of sperm and egg.”

He nodded. “I understand that. I read about the cloning experiments at Harvard. But what’s this recombinant stuff?”

Sandra O’Connell sighed. “Well, once we knew how to read the code, the next step was to write it. Original experiments used Escherichia coli, a one-celled animal. DNA from one was chopped up as was DNA from another. The chopped DNA was placed in an amino acid solution, and the DNA chains from different bacteria combined and built new organisms with differing characteristics. Pretty soon scientists isolated DNA molecules with specific instructions and were able to insert those in place of the originals.”

“A build-it-yourself bacteria,” Edelman said dryly. “A living erector set.”

She chuckled. “I guess you can say that. But the lab conditions had to be rigidly controlled. The organism takes well to man, and the lab strain, being artificially grown in sterile conditions, was particularly susceptible to mutation—to having its DNA changed by outside forces, like cosmic rays and other radiation always present. There was always the danger of producing a carcinogenic organism—a germ, in other words, that would be a new and deadly disease.”

“And that happened in two separate sets of experiments,” General Davis put in. “Just a few little bacteria, ever so tiny, got through imperfections in the labs both here and in the USSR. Maybe it happened a lot of other times, but these two were lulus, and they happened within a year of each other—the result of, I guess, too much research on the stuff when no initial disasters happened. Somebody got careless, and nineteen thousand died in Cambridge and Boston, and almost as many in Limitov. That scared hell out of the people and leaders of all the governments. There was a quick conference, the Treaty of Basel was signed, and that was it. No more active recombinant DNA experiments without the consent of all the signatories.”

“But somebody’s done it anyway,” Jake Edelman pointed out.

Sandra O’Connell nodded. “Yes, somebody has. And I would guess that it would have to be in a lab totally isolated and perhaps deeply buried. Served by a closed staff that contained no leaks, not to the scientific community, not to anyone.”

“Such an installation would have to be a major one, staffed by major people,” the intelligence director pointed out. “I don’t see how something on that scale could be set up without leaks. We might not know what they were doing, but we’d know they were doing something, and be able to infer what it was by the installation and personnel, particularly matching what we now know about this stuff to the intelligence involved. So far—nothing.”

Jake Edelman shifted uneasily. “Now, Bart, that’d be true if it were, say, Russia or China or one of their satellites, maybe even France or one of the other powers. But suppose it was, say, the Central African Empire or maybe Paraguay? If Bhutan had the Bomb but didn’t test it, would you really know it until they did?”

The CIA man shrugged. “I don’t know, Jake. But if it were a third world country not on our questionable list, why pick on us? Besides, they’d still have to have their own nationals highly trained in molecular biology, which means here or in one of the major powers. We’ve already run those through. A few minor question marks, yes, but nobody unaccounted for that I would invest millions in.”

“Which brings us back to Go,” General Davis pointed out. “Now, what do we do about it?”

“Well, here’s what we do know,” Edelman responded. “First, someone, unknown, is manufacturing a disease and, using international terrorists, anarchists, and overage radicals looking for a cause, is testing it out on small towns in the United States. Its incubation period is three days, after which it damages or burns out some area of the brain, then totally vanishes without a trace. In all probability there are over nine hundred additional cannisters of the stuff ready and waiting for us.”

“And it’s a stable organism,” Sandra pointed out. “If, as seems to be the case, those radicals you got yesterday hit Boland, they didn’t go blind! That means that they were immunized. An antitoxin for the bacteria exists.”

That gave them hope. “So what can we do about it all?” Davis asked. The question was rhetorical; procedures already were being formulated. “We assume the CIA is doing all it can. The Coast Guard and Border Patrol is at maximum, with the full cooperation of Canada and Mexico. NDCC and NIH are on the problem.”

“Let’s be truthful and realistic,” Honner, the President’s man, put in. “First, there is no way in hell to seal the borders of the United States. We leak like a sieve and there’s no way we can close all those leaks for a few people here and a few more there. Even the Iron Curtain leaks like mad, and we have nothing approaching it. And for every known possible agent of whoever’s doing this there are three dozen we don’t know about. Inspector Edelman, just how many of the Operation Wilderness terrorists were known to the Bureau?”

“Three,” came the glum response.

Honner nodded. “See what I mean? Three out of —what? Eight? And as for the disease itself—well, suppose we do find a cure or an immunizing agent? They have only to vary the next batch slightly and we’re back to square one again. That’s fine as long as we’re in small towns, but suppose it’s New York or Washington or Los Angeles next? It’s obviously highly contagious.” He didn’t need to go on. It was already in their minds.

“So what do you propose to do about it?” General Davis asked him.

Honner shifted uneasily. “The only defense is preventive medicine within our means,” he said.

Their eyebrows rose. “Which means?” Davis prompted.

“Contingency Plan AOX7647-3,” Honner said flatly.

The rest of them looked puzzled, but Davis appeared shocked. “What the hell? How do you even know about…” He let it trail off.

Honner shrugged. “The President is Commander in Chief. That sort of thing, just its existence, has been rumored for years. We decided to find out, and we did. Presidents can do that sort of thing, you know.”

“I’m confused,” Sandra O’Connell put in. “What the hell is this contingency plan, anyway?”

Davis thought it over, then shook his head. “I don’t think we ought to,” he told Honner. “That’s a little too drastic even for—”

“For what?” Honner exploded, cutting him off. “We are under attack and we have to defend ourselves! It may be the only way!”

“Congress will never buy it,” Davis objected.

“Oh, yes they will,” Honner said. “The people will demand it when this goes on and on and we’re obviously powerless to protect them. They will demand it!”

“You may as well spill it,” Jake Edelman told them. “If you can’t trust the people in this room, who can you trust? Besides, it looks like Honner and his boss—who’s also our boss—already has it in the works.”

General Davis sighed. “You tell them, Honner,” he said, defeated.

“Contingency Plan AOX7647-3,” the presidential aide explained, “is the latest incarnation of a series of plans that’s been drawn up regularly since the Second World War, at least. It is a plan to declare martial law throughout the entire country.”

Most of them gasped. Jake Edelman just nodded. “I thought as much. I can’t see you getting away with it, though. It’s unconstitutional as hell. The Supreme Court at the very least will throw it out.”

Honner shook his head. “During World War II the Supreme Court allowed the internment of all Japanese-Americans, even American-born, and the confiscation of all their property. As far back as Lincoln, this very state of Maryland was placed under military occupation even though it didn’t secede. There were wholesale mass arrests without trial, curfews under which violators would be shot, and so forth. For every man Lincoln pardoned a hundred were jailed for up to five years without charge, trial, or anything else. And the people backed him up! It was the only way. The President and the National Security Council hardly want mass jailings, let alone murders, but we do feel that such a military administration for the limited term of the emergency would be accepted, even welcomed by the people, who are already close to panic. And, unlike Lincoln or the camps, this would not be done without Congress accepting it. What they do can be undone.”

Jake Edelman shook his head sadly. “It’s not that easy to undo,” he replied. “It’s a cure worse than the disease.”

Honner looked a little exasperated at the FBI man. “Can you suggest a better way? Our entire country can be overrun, our military crippled, by these people before we even know who they are. You know it’s the only way.”

Edelman nodded sadly. “I know that, in a blind crisis, people will trade their freedom for security every time,” he admitted. “That’s why the Germans accepted Hitler and the Italians turned to Mussolini.”

Honner jumped to his feet, enraged. “Are you saying President Wainwright is another Hitler?” he shouted, enraged.

“Of course not,” the FBI man said tiredly. “He just ain’t no Abe Lincoln, either.”

Dr. Mark Spiegelman came back with his hundredth cup of coffee and sat again in front of the CRT screen. He glanced at it idly, then turned, did a double-take, and stared again.

The colony of Wilderness Organisms had changed. The great mass on the slide plate wasn’t growing any more.

It was dissolving. The bacteria were slowly breaking apart.

Quickly he was at the computer console, typing away, coffee forgotten. “Of course! Of course! Why didn’t I see it before?” he muttered to himself.

The view changed, shifted, as the computer sampled, looking for what Spiegelman told it to find.

And it found it, almost at the limits of its magnification range.

It was a pattern, like an irregular honeycomb, an alien, odd shape that was growing, rapidly now, at-tacking the very core of the bacteria cells.

“Sure!” he breathed. “Super-bacteria, super-bacteriophage!”