As for the virology and autopsy work, Slater could take care of most of that himself. But he would still need another pair of hands, and another set of eyes, to assist him in the cemetery, and to help him run the lab. It took him only a few seconds to come up with Dr. Eva Lantos, a virologist with a Ph.D. from M.I.T. and a mind like a steel trap. The last time he’d heard from her, she’d been living in Boston with her latest girlfriend, and working on the mole-rat genome, but if anybody was up for an adventure, it would be Eva.
Slater made a few calls, left a few messages that were, because of the top secret nature of the mission, a lot more cryptic than he’d have liked, and started burrowing through the accompanying paperwork the AFIP had gathered for him. By the time he had written a preliminary request list and sent the memo back to Dr. Levinson’s office, he glanced out the window and saw that it was already dark out; he’d forgotten to have lunch and had somehow powered himself through the day with nothing but black coffee and a packet of trail mix he’d found in his desk. As a doctor — particularly one who suffered from recurring bouts of malaria — he knew perfectly well that he needed to keep to a healthy and well-regulated diet, and do whatever he could to lower his stress levels. But that was a laugh, of course. He had no sooner escaped spending five years in the brig than he’d been posted to an Arctic island on a Level-3 mission. Fishing his pill case out of his pocket, he swallowed a couple of Chloriquine tablets, flicked off the desk lamp, and went down to get something to eat.
Because of the erratic schedules of scientists and researchers, the cafeteria was kept open around the clock, so he grabbed a quick sandwich and a Snapple. A couple of people said hi, and “Weren’t you overseas somewhere?” and he realized, with relief, that the news of his assault on a commanding officer and his subsequent court-martial hadn’t received much play here. The civilians on staff had no idea of its gravity — all they knew about military discipline was what they’d seen on episodes of JAG—and the army personnel were so involved in their own projects and plans, they weren’t concerned with anyone else’s.
He ate alone, and after tossing the sandwich wrapper and the empty bottle into the trash, he considered heading home, but then he thought, to what? An empty apartment? He could always go to the gym and work out, but there was something so forlorn about the gym at night. The fluorescent lights, the acrid odor of sweat that had been building up all day, the weary attendant mopping the locker-room floor. Not to mention all the other guys who, like him, had nowhere better to go.
And even if his body was flagging, his mind was still percolating just fine right now. That was both his blessing and his curse. It always had been. If his brain were equipped with an on/off switch, he had yet to find it. Nights were the worst. His thoughts could take him anywhere and everywhere; it was like a wild ride at an amusement park that never stopped. And right now the roller-coaster car was hurtling him along toward one destination in particular — the AFIP Tissue Repository, housed next door in the archives of the old Army Medical Museum. It had been founded, with his typical foresight and wisdom, by Abraham Lincoln himself — and it hadn’t changed all that much ever since.
The most comprehensive collection of tissue samples in the world, the Repository contained over 3 million specimens — among them pieces of lung tissue from a private at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, the first American soldier who had succumbed to the 1918 flu. Before setting out for the wilds of Alaska, Dr. Slater wanted to see the slides himself and get a look at this ancient enemy he was about to confront.
But when he tried his security card on the main concourse leading to the museum, he found there was a glitch in his clearance — no doubt another problem arising from his military discharge. And though he knew he could get it fixed the next day, that didn’t help him now. He passed the laminated card, which he wore on a chain around his neck, under the scanner one more time, just for luck, and watched as the lights stayed red. A third try he suspected would set off an internal alarm. He waited around in the corridor for a minute or two, hoping to piggyback on someone else going his way, but at this time of night the offices were largely deserted and no one else was around, much less heading over to the gloomy confines of the old museum.
Still, there was another route, and though it was a lot more circuitous, it would allow him to circumvent the particular security system obstructing him now. Going back toward his office, he took a sharp right through the environmental and toxicology wing, descended the fire stairs to the garage level, then walked briskly across the unheated, and nearly empty, garage. Not briskly enough, he thought, as he felt a sudden chill. He picked up the pace, scurrying down a flight of crumbling stairs that opened into a subbasement corridor, originally designed for the discreet unloading of cadavers by horse-drawn carriages in the years following the Civil War.
The hallways here were made of red brick, faded with age, and the lights in the ceiling, each one in a little wire nest, were incandescent bulbs, and low-wattage at that. The doors he passed bore frosted-glass panes, with gold hand lettering and labels that read HISTOLOGY, WAR WOUND RECORDS, or DEPARTMENT OF PALEOPATHOLOGY. It was hard to believe that this warren was still occupied, but Slater knew that the whole Walter Reed complex had long since outgrown its campus, and no nook or cranny was allowed to lie fallow for long.
As he turned the corner toward the Tissue Repository, he came upon the old display cases that had once been part of the public exhibitions. Although they were no longer part of any organized tours, the cabinets exhibited, on dusty shelves behind thick glass, a collection of formaldehyde-filled jars. Some of them dated back to the midnineteenth century, and held specimens of gross physical anomalies — twins conjoined at the torso, or fetuses born with the fused legs and feet of sirenomella victims. Because of their fishlike tails and amphibious eyes, they were named after the mythical sirens, or mermaids, and had seldom survived their birth by more than a day. Now, many decades later, they still floated, silently, intact, and unchanged, in the limbo of their murky jars.
Just inside the doors to the Repository, a night clerk in a crisply pressed tan uniform, his head down and earbuds in place, was typing away on his computer keyboard. He looked up in surprise when Slater entered, quickly yanked the buds, straightened in his chair, and slid a clipboard across the desk for Slater to sign in.
“I’ll need your ID, too,” he said. Slater held out his security card, while the clerk jotted down the number, then checked it online against the name on the register. Slater prayed that a problem wouldn’t crop up, but the clerk nodded, and said, “What can I do for you, sir?”
Slater explained what he was after, but as the clerk started to get up from his chair, he said, “You can stay put. I know my way around in here, and I can get it myself.”
“You sure?” the clerk said, sounding like he’d love to get back to what he’d been doing. Slater caught a glimpse on the computer of some video war game.
“Yes. It won’t take me long.”