'My theory, but the answer is, we don't know,' Wesley said.
'He calls himself deadoc,' I said.
'As in Doctor Death?' Fujitsubo frowned. 'He's telling us he's a doctor?'
Again, it was hard to say, but the question that was most troublesome was also the hardest to ask.
'Dr Martin,' I said as Martinez silently leaned back in his chair, listening. 'Allegedly, your facility and a laboratory in Russia are the only two sources of the viral isolates. Any thoughts on how someone got hold of this?'
'Exactly,' Wesley said. 'Unpleasant thought that it may be, we need to check your list of employees. Any recent firings, layoffs? Anybody quit during recent months and years?'
'Our source supply of variola virus is as meticulously monitored and inventoried as plutonium.' Martin answered with confidence. 'I personally have already checked into this and can tell you with certainty that nothing has been tampered with. Nothing is missing. And it is not possible to get into one of the locked freezers without authorization and knowledge of alarm codes.'
No one spoke right away.
Then Wesley said, 'I think it would be a good idea for us to have a list of those people who have had such authorization over the past five years. Initially, based on experience, I am profiling this individual as a white male, possibly in his early forties. Most likely he lives alone, but if he doesn't or he dates, he has a part of his residence that is off limits, his lab…'
'So we're probably talking about a former lab worker,' the S.A.C. said.
'Or someone like that,' Wesley said. 'Someone educated, trained. This person is introverted, and I base this on a number of things, not the least of which is his tendency to write in the lower case. His refusal to use punctuation indicates his belief that he is not like other people and the same rules do not apply to him. He is not talkative and may be considered aloof or shy by associates. He has time on his hands, and most important, feels he has been mistreated by the system. He feels he is due an
apology by the highest office in the land, by our government, and I believe this is key to this perpetrator's motivation.'
'Then this is revenge,' I said. 'Plain and simple.'
'It's never plain or simple. I wish it were,' Wesley said. 'But I do think revenge is key, which is why it is important that all government agencies that deal with infectious diseases get us the records of any employees reprimanded, fired, laid off, furloughed or whatever, in recent months and years.'
Fujitsubo cleared his throat. 'Well, let's talk logistics, then.'
It was the Coast Guard's turn to present a plan. Martinez got up from his chair and fastened large maps to flip charts, as camera angles were adjusted so our remote guests could see.
'Can you get these in?' Martinez asked the agent at the console.
'Got them,' she said. 'How about you?' She looked up at the monitors.
'Fine.'
'I don't know. Maybe if you could zoom in more.'
She moved the camera in closer as Martinez got out a laser pointer. He directed its intense pink dot at the Maryland-Virginia line in the Chesapeake Bay that cut through Smith Island, just north of Tangier.
'We got a number of islands going up this way toward Fishing Bay and the Nanticoke River, in Maryland. There's Smith Island. South Marsh Island. Bloodsworth Island.' The pink dot hopped to each one. 'Then we're on the mainland. And you got Crisfield down here, which is only fifteen nautical miles from Tangier.' He looked at us.
'Crisfield's where a lot of watermen bring in their crabs. And a lot of Tangier folks have relatives in Crisfield. I'm real worried about that.'
'And I'm worried that the Tangiermen are not going to cooperate,' Miles said. 'A
quarantine is going to cut off their only source of income.'
'Yes, sir,' Martinez said, looking at his watch. 'And we're cutting it off even as we speak. We got boats, cutters coming in from as far away as Elizabeth City to help us circle the island.'
'So as of now, no one's leaving,' Fujitsubo said as his face continued to reign over us from the video screen.
'That's right.'
'Good.'
'What if people resist?' I asked the obvious question. 'What are you going to do with them? You can't take them into custody and risk exposure.'
Martinez hesitated. He looked up at Fujitsubo on the video screen. 'Commander, would you like to field this one, sir?' he asked.
'We've actually already discussed this at great length,' Fujitsubo said to us. 'I have spoken to the secretary of the Department of Transportation, to Vice Admiral Perry, and of course, the Secretary of Defense. Basically, this thing is speeding its way up to the White House for authorization.'
'Authorization for what?' It was Miles who asked.
'To use deadly force, if all else fails,' Martinez said to all of us.
'Christ,' Wesley muttered.
I listened in disbelief, staring up at doomsday gods.
'We have no choice,' Fujitsubo spoke calmly. 'If people panic and start fleeing the island and do not heed Coast Guard warnings, they will - not if - but will bring smallpox onto the mainland. And we're talking about a population which either has not been vaccinated in thirty years. Or an immunization done so long ago it's no
longer effective. Or a disease that has mutated to the extent that our present vaccine is not protective. There isn't a good scenario, in other words.'
I didn't know if I felt sick to my stomach because I wasn't well or because of what I'd just heard. I thought of that weather-beaten fishing village with its leaning headstones and wild, quiet people who just wanted to be left alone. They weren't the sort to obey anyone, for they answered to a higher power of God and storms.
'There must be another way,' I said. But there wasn't.
'By reputation, smallpox is a highly contagious infectious disease. This outbreak must be contained,' Fujitsubo exclaimed the obvious. 'We've got to worry about houseflies hovering around patients, and crabs headed for the mainland. How do we know we don't have to worry about the possibility of mosquito transmission, as in Tanapox, for God's sake? We don't even know what all we've got to worry about since we can't fully identify the disease yet.'
Martin looked at me. 'We've already got teams out there, nurses, doctors, bed isolators so we can keep these people out of hospitals and leave them in their homes.'
'What about dead bodies, contamination?' I asked him.
'In terms of United States law, this constitutes a Class One public health emergency.'
'I realize that,' I said, impatiently, for he was getting bureaucratic on me. 'Cut to the chase.'
'Burn all but the patient. Bodies will be cremated. The Pruitt house will be torched.' Fujitsubo tried to reassure us. 'USAMRIID's got a team heading out. We'll be talking to citizens, trying to make them understand.'
I thought of Davy Crockett and his son, of people and their panic when space-suited scientists took over their island and started burning their homes.
'And we know for a fact that the smallpox vaccine isn't going to work?' Wesley said.
'We don't know that for a fact yet.' Martin answered. 'Tests on laboratory animals will take days to weeks. And even if vaccination is protective in an animal model, this may not translate into protection for humans.'
'Since the DNA of the virus has been altered,' Fujitsubo warned, 'I am not hopeful that vaccinia virus will be effective.'
'I'm not a doctor or anything,' Martinez said, 'but I'm just wondering if you could vaccinate everyone anyway, just in case it might work.'
'Too risky,' Martin said. 'If it's not smallpox, why deliberately expose people to smallpox, thereby possibly causing some people to get the disease? And when we develop the new vaccine, we're not going to want to come back several weeks later and vaccinate people again, this time with a different pox.'
'In other words,' Fujitsubo said, 'we can't use the people of Tangier like laboratory animals. If we keep them on that island and then get a vaccine out to them as soon as possible, we should be able to contain this thing. The good news about smallpox is it's a stupid virus, kills its hosts so fast it will burn itself out if you can keep it restricted to one area.'