The procession plunged deep into the warren of slums, entering a hellish landscape of a no-man’s-land that was so burned out and devoid of human life even the most desperate slum dwellers avoided it. The vehicles turned onto a narrow, unlit street and went through a gate, pulling up next to an abandoned brick warehouse. Weathered plywood covered the widows, broken glass and boards from packing crates littered the oil-soaked dirt parking lot, but the razor wire topping the electrified chain-link fence that gleamed in the headlights was brand-new.
The guards poured out of the SUVs and formed a cordon between the Mercedes sedan and a loading platform. The man riding shotgun in the sedan’s front seat got out and opened the rear door. The lone passenger emerged and walked briskly toward the platform, accompanied by his bodyguard. As the men climbed the platform stairs, a door on well-greased rollers slid silently open.
They entered the warehouse and the door slid shut. The illumination from fluorescent overhead lights revealed that the passenger from the Mercedes was a small man dressed in a medium blue suit that had been hand-tailored in London, a neatly knotted silk tie, and Testoni shoes that sold for two thousand dollars a pair. He had a rigid, almost military posture about him.
Silver hair, neatly parted on the left, and black-plastic-framed glasses gave Wen Lo an avuncular air of bland respectability more befitting a desk clerk in a three-star hotel than the head of a giant real-estate and financial consortium that was the cover for extensive prostitution, gambling, and drug operations on a global scale.
Wen Lo’s face was asymmetrical, not from left to right but from top to bottom. The lower part of his face featured plump cheeks and a boyish smile while the upper part had a wide forehead, heavy furrowing brows, and soulless jade-green eyes that showed no more emotion than an abacus.
Waiting inside the warehouse door were three men in blue-green hospital gowns and a pair of heavily armed guards wearing generic tan security uniforms. The hard-faced guards carried Tasers, sidearms, and clubs that hung from their wide leather belts.
A balding, weasel-faced man dressed as if for the operating room stepped forward.
“An honor to have you visit us, sir,” he said, giving a quick bow of the head.
Wen Lo responded with a barely perceptible nod.
“Tell me how your work is coming, Dr. Wu,” he said.
“We are making progress,” Wu said with cheerful optimism.
Although the lower part of Wen Lo’s face smiled, his eyes didn’t mirror the same pleasant expression.
“Please show me your progress, Dr. Wu.”
“I’d be glad to, sir.”
Wu led Wen Lo and his personal bodyguard through two sets of airtight chambers and along a short corridor that ended in a thick glass door. Responding to a gesture from Wu, a guard pressed an electrical switch that unlocked the door. Wu, Wen Lo, and the bodyguard stepped into a cellblock. Steel doors, solid except for small rectangular openings, enclosed a dozen cells.
As they walked between the cells, Dr. Wu said, “The men and women are segregated, four to a cell. We maintain full occupancy at all times.”
A few inmates pushed their faces close to the barred openings and called out to Wu and his guests to help them. Wen Lo, his face devoid of pity, turned to Wu.
“What is the source of these lab rats?” he asked.
Dr. Wu was rewarded handsomely enough for his work to afford a large apartment in a new high-rise overlooking the Yangtze and to keep his wife and his mistress clothed in the latest fashions, but he had convinced himself that his research was for the good of mankind. Although his work required that he suppress his humanity under a thin veneer of medical noninvolvement, the coldness of Wen Lo’s question stunned him. He was, after all, still a physician.
“As medical professionals, we prefer to call them subjects,” he said.
“Very well, Dr. Wu, I’m sure these subjects appreciate your professionalism. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“My apologies, sir,” Wu said. “This lab is surrounded by teeming slums, and it’s easy to lure the subjects in with promises of food and money. We choose only those in relatively good physical shape. People in the slums rarely report the missing, and the police never follow up.”
Wen Lo said, “Show me the next phase. I have seen prisons before.”
Wu escorted the two men out of the cellblock to a black-walled room. One wall was half glass, like the viewing area for a maternity ward. Visible through the glass were a number of full-sized beds, each occupied and enclosed in a transparent cylinder.
The occupants of the beds were quiet for the most part, but occasionally someone stirred restlessly under a tightly tucked sheet. Figures in white body-encasing protective suits moved like ghosts among the beds, checking electronic monitors and IV tubes.
“This is one of several sick rooms,” Wu said. “The subjects in each have been injected with the new pathogen and are proceeding through the stages of the virus. Although the virus is waterborne, it can be spread through contact as well. You can see by the way the technicians are dressed, and the separately vented enclosures for each subject, that we take every precaution to keep the disease contained to the rooms.”
“If the subjects were left on their own, they would die?” Wen Lo asked.
“That’s correct, sir, within twenty-four hours. The disease would take its course by then, and it is always fatal.”
Wen Lo asked to see the next phase.
They set off down another corridor, through more airtight doors, and entered a second observation area similar to the first. The room on the other side of the glass held eight gurneys enclosed by cylinders. On the gurneys were four men and four women. Their faces looked like they had been carved from mahogany. Their eyes were closed, and it was difficult to tell if they were alive or dead.
“This is phase three,” Wu said. “These subjects show the dark rash that is typical of the virus, but they are still alive.”
“You call these ripe vegetables in your little garden alive, Dr. Wu?”
“Admittedly, it would be preferable if they were up and about, but they are still breathing, and their vitals are sound. The experimental cure is helping.”
“Would you like to be infected and helped by your cure, Dr. Wu?”
Wu couldn’t miss the implied threat. Sweat trickled down his back between his shoulder blades.
“No, I would not, sir. The cure is imperfect at this time. The virus is amazing! Its ability to adapt quickly to any treatment we try has made our task difficult but not impossible.”
“In other words, you have failed.”
Wen Lo’s smile could not counteract the coldness in his eyes.
“Success is possible,” Wu said. “But it will take time. I don’t know how long.”
“Time is the thing we have in little supply, Wu.”
Dr. Wu couldn’t help but notice that Wen Lo had dropped his title. He was doomed. He started to croak something about one more chance, but Wen Lo wagged a finger at him.
Wu was about to faint, but Wen Lo clapped him on the back.
“Don’t worry, Dr. Wu,” he said. “We appreciate your hard work here. We are near to developing a highly promising cure at our offshore facility. You will go there to make sure the work is satisfactory.”
“I’m grateful for another chance,” Wu said. “When might I expect to start new tests?”
“There won’t be time,” Wen Lo said. “The testing will be done using computer simulation.” He turned back to stare at the forms on the gurneys. “Dispose of this material. The subjects in the cellblock too. We will find our way out.”
After Wen Lo and the bodyguard left, Dr. Wu glanced through the glass at the supine forms on the gurneys and sighed heavily. He had fifty subjects going through tests and most of them would die, so it was simply a question of disposing of the remains. But those in the cellblock would pose a particular problem, and it was going to be a messy job getting rid of this batch. He hurried back to the main lab to fill his staff in on the task that lay ahead.