CHICAGO
O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Platt and Bix didn’t talk the entire trip from the north side of Chicago to O’Hare. They were stunned, exhausted, overwhelmed. Now, tucked away in the midst of a crowd of travelers, they finally felt safe.
Bix listened to his messages. Made a few calls. Platt bought a large coffee. He thought about getting something to eat but the smell of raw beef lingered in his nostrils.
Bix closed his phone and released a long breath, as if he had been holding it all day.
“There’s a reason no one could identify this strain of salmonella,” he said, shaking his head and rubbing his temples. “It changes.”
“You said it might be a mutated strain,” Platt said.
“No, I mean it changes once it’s inside the human body. Fifteen of the Norfolk victims that were released as okay two days ago are back in the hospital.”
“Maybe it takes longer to leave the body in some victims.”
“But they’re telling me that six days later the bacteria itself looks different than it did on day four.”
“Different, how?”
“Stronger. More resilient. It’s like it’s mutated to better survive and invade its new environment. It’s clinging on to the wall of the intestines.”
“It’s not unusual to need some antibiotics with salmonella infection, especially if it hangs on or spreads.”
“That’s what they thought. So far, not much of a response.”
“Antibiotic resistant?”
“Big-time.”
“We’ll need to come up with a cocktail of antibiotics.”
“What if it’s something they developed?” Bix asked in almost a whisper. “Tell me why that guy, Tegan, was so excited to see someone from USAMRIID. And what projects from the 1970s was he talking about?”
Philip Tegan had ended up giving them a short tour after realizing the two men he had allowed inside his facility might actually not be aware of all the classified work done in the laboratories despite their impressive credentials. He told them about the different hybrid crops they had been able to genetically engineer and he showed them—in excruciating detail—how they were able to do that. He informed them that 77 percent of soybeans are genetically engineered as is 85 percent of corn in the United States. The biotech crops decrease the use of pesticide, require less water, and reduce carbon that normally is released into the atmosphere. All good things for our environment.
When a skeptical Bix asked if it’s healthy, Tegan reassured him that, of course, it was and that these crops were fed only to animals—not used for human consumption.
China, he told them, had created a new corn that contained an enzyme that makes pigs better able to digest the nutrient phosphorus, which would decrease the amount in their excrement. Phosphorus, he went on to explain, was the major polluter of waterways. “Isn’t that amazing?”
But when Bix asked what happened to people when they ate the pork that ate the special corn, Tegan just laughed. “We’ll have to wait and see, huh?”
Platt knew about the technology. He also knew Tegan’s tour didn’t include any of the labs they had seen soldiers guarding or those where they had seen an armored truck leaving. They wouldn’t see those. At least not on this visit.
“So what was USAMRIID doing back in the 1970s?” Bix asked when Platt hesitated too long.
“During the Cold War, when there was a race to create ultimate weapons—before Russia and the United States signed a treaty agreeing to stop—USAMRIID had a program to develop bioweapons.”
“Like mustard gas?”
“Like mustard gas. And anthrax. Other viruses that we might be able to launch on an entire population.”
“Jesus!” Bix sputtered. “And now they’re going to fucking do it with food?”
They sat side by side, staring straight ahead, waiting for their flight back to D.C. to be called.
“When your friend calls,” Platt said, continuing to use their code word for the whistle-blower, no longer because it was necessary but now because it had become habit, “tell him we need to meet him face-to-face.”
“He won’t do that.”
“Tell him he has to or we’re calling a press conference.”