CHAPTER 25

Benjamin Platt leaned his elbows on the lab countertop. He pressed his eyes against the microscope and adjusted the magnification. Once in a while he glanced up at the test tubes he had prepared, watching for the results. Ronnie Towers’s blood had already tested negative for several of Platt’s best guesses. He was running out of ideas.

The small laboratory suited him despite the strong smell of disinfectants. It was well equipped and quiet, much better than the conditions he was used to on the road. Platt had learned long ago to travel with a hard-shell case filled with everything he’d need to run basic lab tests whether he was in a war zone, a hot zone, or even a tent in Sierra Leone.

He sat back on the stool and stared at the test tubes. No change. A good thing, albeit frustrating as hell. The young man’s prosthetic leg rested on the counter next to him. He had carefully scraped some of the bone paste applied to the prosthetic during surgery. He smeared it on a slide then prepared a second slide from the sample tissue taken from Ronnie Towers.

What he had found so far was something he identified as a strain of clostridia, a family of bacteria that caused a number of infections. The most prevalent one was tetanus. Another was sepsis leading to toxic shock syndrome. Except what Platt saw under the microscope looked more complicated.

To his left, Platt had opened his laptop, accessing a database he had worked for several years to put together. Now on the screen was a close-up of the clostridia family. He needed to wait for all the files to download before he could begin clicking through the photos in his database. He hoped he would find an exact match to what he saw under his microscope.

While he waited, he pulled out his cell phone. Certainly he could get some basic information without breaking his word to Captain Ganz about keeping this situation classified.

He keyed in the number, expecting to get the voice-messaging service for the Centers for Disease Control’s chief of outbreak response. Platt was surprised when Roger Bix’s slow, Southern drawl answered, “This is Bix.”

“Roger, it’s Benjamin Platt.”

“Colonel, what can I do for you?”

“I didn’t expect to get you on a Sunday.”

“It’s a 24/7 job.” He laughed. “I doubt you’re calling me from a golf course. What’s up?”

“I’m wondering if you have any recent reports of life-threatening infections related to … say, any kind of donor tissue or bone transplants?”

“Illnesses, sure. Deaths? None if your definition of recent is the last forty-eight hours. I’d have to check for sure. Are you calling to report one?”

Platt had forgotten how direct and to the point Bix could be. Not a bad thing. The last time the two men had worked together they were dealing with two separate outbreaks of Ebola.

“Just need information,” Platt told him. “If there was a possible contamination at a tissue bank or a hospital, you’d know, right?”

“Depends what the contamination is. Tissue banks are required to screen donors for HIV, hepatitis B and C, and other blood-borne viruses.”

“What about bacteria?”

“What kind of bacteria?”

“I don’t know, Roger.” He felt himself shrugging as he stared at his computer screen. “Infection-causing bacterium.”

“The FDA doesn’t require us to culture donors for anything beyond blood-borne viruses. Many of the accredited tissue banks don’t go beyond those requirements. Infections are rare. I won’t say they never happen. I remember several years back three deaths in Minnesota. Routine knee surgeries using the cartilage from a cadaver. But that was a freaky case. Even our investigation couldn’t determine whether the donor was already infected or whether the tissue became infected while it was processed. The tissue bank blamed the collection agency and the collection agency blamed the shipper. It’s a crazy business.”

“Business?”

“Sure. It’s a business. Organ transplants have strict regulations. Only one organization per region. Have to be nonprofit, so plenty of federal oversight. Whole different ball game. But you get into tissue, bone, ligaments, corneas, veins—the supply can’t keep up with demand. A cadaver might be worth $5,000 to $10,000, but sliced and diced—excuse my flippancy—and sold piece by piece? That same cadaver’s worth anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000.”

“I thought it was illegal to sell cadavers and human body parts.”

“Ben, no offense, but man, you need to get out of the lab more often. Selling body parts might be illegal but it’s not illegal to charge for the service of procuring, processing, and transporting. But truthfully, a lot of good comes out of this stuff. Some of the technology is amazing. They say one donor—by using his bones, tissue, ligaments, skin—can affect fifty lives.”

Platt felt his stomach sink to his knees. One donor could infect fifty recipients?

“Ben, I hope you’re not working on another fiasco that the military is trying to keep quiet.”

“No, of course not.”

Platt was glad Roger Bix didn’t know him well, or he’d recognize what a terrible liar he was.