I hold up my hand. “You mean to tell me that because a single pig in Kansas ate some duck shit one morning, 100 million people died?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. In general.”
“And what’s all this got to do with Rachel?”
“Every year the World Health Organization hosts a meeting among the top scientists in the world, and public health officials, to determine if the Spanish Flu could return that year.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“I’m not surprised. But you’re not alone. Even newspapers and text books in the years that followed the pandemic barely mention the Flu of 1918.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Nor do I know why kids aren’t taught about it in history. Maybe they don’t want to cause a panic. But what I do know is the world is smaller now than it was in 1918. And every year it’s more likely the Spanish Flu will return. And when it does, it’s going to wipe out a third of the Earth’s population.”
“You still haven’t told me what Rachel’s blood test has to do with this.”
“Pull up a chair,” Sam says, “because here’s where it gets interesting.”
“I hope to hell it does,” I say, “because if I wrote all this in a book, my readers would be snoring by now.”
25.
“There is no cure for the Spanish Flu,” Sam says. “And scientists can’t make a vaccine for it, because the live virus has only been seen twice. The first was in 1995, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, when a researcher found a preserved tissue sample from a Spanish Flu victim who died 77 years earlier. Unfortunately, that sample was taken from a soldier who died before the flu mutated into the deadliest form.”
“I thought you said this was getting interesting,” I say.
“By the end of 1918 the flu had spread throughout the world,” Sam says, “including Alaska. In 1997 a scientist found the body of a young woman he and some Eskimo helpers dug out of the permafrost. The flu-causing agent was still in her lungs. They’ve tried to isolate and identify the genetic code for that strain ever since.”
“So?”
“I think they found it.”
“So why can’t they create a vaccine?”
“If I’m right, they lack a live strand of genetic code that contains a natural receptor to the exact form of the virus that wiped out all those millions of people. They’ve got the wild duck and pig strains isolated. But the chances of finding the perfect human genetic match are…impossible to one.”
“But somehow Rachel has it?”
“That’s my guess,” Sam says.
“I always said Rachel was one in a million.”
“This would make her one in six billion.”
“And they’ve what, checked every blood sample in the world every day until they finally found the receptor gene in hers?”
“For the last five years. In developed countries, anyway.”
“But how?”
“Computer analysis.”
“Wouldn’t every doctor or blood lab tech be able to recognize it?”
“Not if they don’t know what to look for. It would show up as an anomaly. No one is going to read the results and say, ‘Aha!’”
“Except the scientists who know what to look for.”
“That’s right. Most people would look at Rachel’s blood test results and think the sample had been contaminated.”
“So why kill her doctor? Why try to kill Nadine? Why kidnap Rachel?”
“You mean, why not just ask her to donate enough blood to start creating a vaccine?”
“Exactly.”
“Think of the implications for bioterrorism. What would happen if word got out that Rachel was the missing link to the deadliest virus the world has ever known?”
“I suppose all sorts of good and evil people would be clamoring to kidnap her and harvest her receptor gene.”
“Yes, but the bad guys could also inoculate themselves against the flu, and unleash it on the rest of the world.”
“Holy shit!”
“I told you it was interesting.”
“So you think our government kidnapped her and is holding her somewhere to harvest her blood?”
“At the very least.”
“What’s that mean?”
“If you were the government, what would you do?” Sam says.
“Raise taxes?”
“Funny. They can’t take a chance on her dying. So they’ll take as much blood as they can, freeze it, and harvest her eggs, create children who will continue supplying them with genetic code.”
“They want Rachel’s children?”
“That would be my guess.”
“How much blood do they need?”
“To inoculate the world? Every year? I have no idea, but it’s probably more than any twenty people could provide. How much blood is required to yield a single proper genetic strand? I don’t know. But it’s a lot, because they’ll have to combine the proper strand from a duck, a pig, and a human. And even though they’ve isolated the proper components, the flu is an RNA virus.”
“You mean DNA?”
“No. DNA has double strands of genetic code, RNA has just one.”
“So?”
“RNA is highly unstable, and breaks down in hours, not days.”
“If they get the right combination, how do they make the vaccine?”
“They have to create the actual Spanish Flu virus in the lab. Then culture it in eggs.”
“Rachel’s eggs?”
“No, chicken eggs, you dolt.”
He sighs at my stupidity, then continues. “They inject a minute portion of the live virus into a chicken egg. After a few days, that creates maybe a teaspoon of vaccine. It will take millions of gallons to create enough vaccine to inoculate the world, and they have to do it one egg at a time.”
“That would take forever.”
“Not one egg then a second one,” Sam says. “They start with a few hundred, then a few thousand, then tens of thousands at a time. It involves time and people. And millions of chicken eggs. And money, and resources. And that’s just for one flu season. And only if the Spanish Flu turns up that year. In other words, they won’t start producing the vaccine until they know they need it.”
“They’d go to all that trouble for something they won’t even use?”
“No. They’d go to all that trouble if the Spanish Flu comes back. And they’ll keep Rachel locked up until that happens. And if it doesn’t happen in her lifetime, they’ll have her offspring on hand in case that strain of flu breaks out in their lifetimes.”
“You’re telling me that someone plans to create children and lock them up as lifetime blood donors for a flu vaccine that only occurs when a human infects a pig who gets infected by a duck who re-infects the human?”
“By George, I think you’ve got it!” Sam says.
“Yeah, that sounds like a government project,” I say. “But no one is going to lock up Rachel’s kids. Not on my watch.”
Sam laughs. “Like there’s a lot you can do about it. If I’m right, Rachel has just become the most important person in the world. They’ll have her locked up so tight the President himself won’t be able to find her. I bet there aren’t five people in the world who know where she is.”
Lou and I exchange a look.
Sam says, “How could you possibly locate her?”
“By locating those who need her.”
He frowns. “If you do find her, how could you possibly hope to rescue her?”
“I’ll find a way. Trust me on that.”
Sam says, “You’re insane.”
“In my line of work, being insane is a plus.”