The Judas Strain - James Rollins [102]
“Is Jessie coming with us?”
An even longer pause followed.
Lisa clicked the transmitter again. “Monk?”
A sigh filled her ear. “They caught Jessie. Threw him overboard.”
“What?” Lisa pictured his smiling face and propensity for stupid puns. “He’s…he’s dead?”
“Don’t know. I’ll explain more when we meet.”
She felt a well of grief for a young man whom she had only known for a few hours. Lost in that well, she could not find her voice.
“Twenty-one hundred hours,” Monk repeated. “Keep your radio with you, but out of sight. I’ll contact you again then. Out.”
Lisa removed the headpiece and grasped the radio in both hands. The physicality of the hard plastic helped center her. They would talk again in a couple of hours.
Thunder rumbled.
She clipped the radio inside her pocket, folding and tucking in the headpiece. She kept its bulge hidden by the drape of her blouse.
She stared at the cabin door. If they were going to make an escape, Lisa did not want to leave empty-handed. She knew there were reams of data and files in the room with her patient.
Plus there was a computer…with a DVD burner.
She had talked with Henri and Dr. Miller up at the cocktail party. In hushed whispers, they had related how Devesh and his team were collecting samples of various toxic bacteria produced by the Judas Strain, the worst of the bunch, storing them in incubation chambers in an off-limits lab, run by Devesh’s virologist.
“I think they’re also doing experiments with the virus on known pathogens,” Dr. Miller had reported. “I saw stacks of sealed plates marked Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis disappear into the restricted lab.”
Anthrax and the Black Plague bacterium.
Henri postulated that Devesh must be experimenting to produce a superstrain of these deadly pathogens. During their discussions, one word remained unspoken—the reason for all of this.
Bioterrorism.
Lisa checked her watch and crossed to her door. If the world was going to have any chance of stopping the myriad plagues that the Guild was collecting and producing, they needed as much data as possible from her patient. The woman’s body was healing itself, ridding its tissues of the toxic bacteria, flushing it clean.
How and why?
Lisa knew Devesh was right about Susan Tunis.
This one patient holds the key to everything.
Lisa couldn’t leave without gathering as much data as possible.
She had to take the chance.
Squeezing the door handle tightly, Lisa tugged it open. She crossed the five steps to Susan Tunis’s room. Ahead, the circular bay of scientific suites was still busy with technicians coming and going. A radio was playing honky-tonk, but the singer crooned in Chinese. The air smelled of disinfectant and an underlying earthy smell.
Lisa briefly made eye contact with the armed guard who patrolled the central space, circling the pile of discarded crates and idle equipment. Down the hall behind her, she heard more guards talking.
She ducked over to Susan Tunis’s room, swiped the card Devesh had given her, and pushed inside. As always, two orderlies manned the room. Devesh never left his prize patient unattended.
One man lounged in a chair in the main salon, feet up on the bed, watching television with the volume on low. It was some Hollywood movie shown on a shipwide broadcast. The other orderly was in the well-lit bedroom with the patient, clipboard in hand, recording the quarter-hour vitals.
“I’d like a moment alone with the patient,” Lisa said.
The large man, shaved bald and dressed in scrubs, could be the identical twin of the other. She never learned their names, internally referring to them as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
But at least they spoke English.
The orderly shrugged, handed her the clipboard, and crossed out with his partner.
Lightning flashed brightly through the balcony doors, and thunder grumbled. The world beyond—lagoon and surrounding forested island—appeared in stark relief, then vanished back into darkness with a fierce clap.
Rain pounded more heavily.
Lisa slipped on a mask and a pair of surgical gloves and crossed over to her patient.