St. Paul Campus, 8:00 a.m. Tuesday, March 20
Paul walked into Bill Thompson’s office at 8:30 the next morning. “Bill, we’ve got a problem.”
Bill was munching a cheese Danish at his desk when Paul entered. He put his hand to his mouth, chewed rapidly and swallowed. “Yeah, I know. Ann and Jason are the two best grad students I can think of to work on it, though. That was lucky.”
“That’s the problem. Ann came into my office as soon as I arrived this morning. She was crying and blubbering about something. I couldn’t follow most of what she said, but she made it clear that she will not work with Jason again. She doesn’t even want to be in the same room with him.”
Bill put his coffee cup down and looked at Paul quizzically. “What? They were a couple before they moved here. The students in my group have a pool going on how long it’ll take them to figure out they might as well be married.” Bill sat back in his chair. “What the hell happened?”
“Something about a book Ann found in Jason’s couch.” Paul took a chair on the other side of Bill’s desk. “Whatever it was, it really set her off. She’s refused to take calls from him—she said she threw her cell phone in the toilet after he tried to call her five times last night.”
“Damn! That was a nice phone, too.” Bill rapped the eraser end of a pencil on his desk. “Ann’s about as level headed a student as I’ve had. What kind of book could do that?”
“No idea.” Paul leaned forward in thought. “God, I hope it wasn’t kiddy porn or something else illegal.”
“I can’t see that. Jason’s taste runs to well-developed women. He looks at what’s around—hell, all of us do in the summer—but I’ve never seen or heard anything to make me think he was playing the field.”
Paul put his hands on the arms of the chair and stood. He had arthritis in both knees and pushing off with his hands as he stood reduced the pain. “I hope Ann and Jason get this straightened out.” He put his hands on his hips in frustration. “It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I guess I’d better start thinking of someone to act as a liaison between them. Every day is a new catastrophe—I’ve never had a project like this.”
Bill was absently doodling with the pencil as he thought. “What you described is so out of character for Ann. She’s smart, rational, and normally emotionally stable. I wonder … do you think, I mean … could Ann be pregnant?”
Jason arrived at his lab in the basement. It was only twelve feet on a side and without windows. Because boiling is used to melt DNA to single strands and to prepare nutrient broth for growing bacteria, microbiology and molecular biology labs have a little in common with a kitchen. A black counter top, the lab bench, ran along two walls, supported by cabinets that looked, except for their fiberglass construction, as though they belonged in a kitchen. Similar cabinets hung from the walls above the bench and a small microwave oven sat on the bench in a corner.
A biosafety cabinet covered the third wall. It was a narrow stainless steel table on which both ends and back were enclosed in stainless steel panels that merged with a hood four feet above the table. A glass panel covered the front of the cabinet. It hung from the hood, coming within six inches of the table. The opening under the glass provided enough room for technicians to insert their hands and forearms into the cabinet to work. Filter-sterilized air circulated within the hood to assure that neither the work nor the worker was contaminated. All laboratory work on samples from the calf study had to be done in the cabinet.
Jason looked at tests set up the day before, entered notations in his lab notebook to bring it up to date, and watched the clock. He waited until 9:30 before he called Sue. When she didn’t answer, he called Gregg and asked if he’d heard anything.
“She’s only been there fifteen minutes. If they haven’t had any interruptions, they’re just getting warmed up. I’m guessing Ann started by telling Sue what a horse’s ass you are. With a topic that fertile, it could be an hour before Sue has a chance to get a word in. Give 'em some time.”
“That’s easy for you to say, but it’s my future on the line. I don’t know what I’d do without Ann.”
“Then I’ve got a book you can borrow in another month, and you have a shopping trip to make this weekend.”
“Shopping?”
“It’s called a ring. Women go nuts over them, show them to their parents, flash them at their friends, even their profs. The way you said Ann exploded last night, you’d better get the irritating details out of the way now so we don’t have to go through this again.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t think anything of it. I’d have kept my mouth shut and waited for you to get desperate again, but Ann and your television are the only things you’ve got that aren’t junk. Besides, in another month I’ll be getting up at all times of the night with Sue and the baby. I won’t have time to be your marriage counselor. Say, hang on a sec. Sue’s calling. I’ll get back to you.”
Jason put his phone in his shirt pocket. He sat on a lab stool, crossed his arms and waited as long as he could. He stood and paced back and forth along the lab bench from the biosafety hood to the sink. He left his lab and was on the stairway to Ann’s office when his phone rang.
“Jason, Gregg here. You’re okay, but you’ll have to do some groveling.”
“What do you mean?
“Sue and Ann decided you should apologize for not telling her you didn’t know what Ann was talking about.”
Jason stopped on the stairs and leaned against the concrete wall. “That’s ridiculous. I can’t read her mind.”
“Do you want Ann back and your life on an even keel?”
“Sure, but damn—”
“Then shut up. Give Sue and Ann another five minutes and go to Ann’s office. Apologize, tell her what she means to you and propose. Christ, man, do I have to tell you how to do everything? You do know what foreplay is, don’t you?”
Jason went to the next landing on the stairs and suffered another five minutes of anguish before going to Ann’s office. When Paul rapped on Ann’s door an hour later, Ann and Jason were sitting close together. They said they were discussing the next study they planned for the virus. The state of their hair and clothing suggested it was a close and active discussion.
Paul talked briefly with them and walked over the second floor skyway to Bill’s office. The door was open and he walked in smiling to himself. “Bill, you know that worry I had this morning?’
Bill looked up, trying to remember which worry Paul was talking about. “Yeeeah, if you mean the, ah, two students.”
“It looks like that’s one problem we don’t have to worry about. They’ve solved it.” Paul checked around to make sure no other ears were near. “I walked into Ann’s office a little too soon after knocking. They seemed to have a hard time keeping their hands off each other.” He paused and shook his head. “After all these years of teaching, for once I found that comforting.”
Ann and Jason spent another hour talking before taking a leisurely walk to the Student Union for lunch. After the emotional rollercoaster of the last twenty four hours, neither was able to settle down to work until mid-afternoon. Ann was yawning and threatening to fall asleep at her desk when her phone rang.
“Ann, this is Paul. Gettelman and Filburt want to meet with Bill and me in the department conference room at 4:00. I’d like to meet with you, Bill, and Jason in about ten minutes. Can you make it?”
Ann blinked and shook her head. “Ahh, yeah, sure. What’s on the agenda? Anything you want me to bring?”
“Bring your summary of the BCV calf studies we’ve completed.”
“Okay. See you there.” Ann hung up, rubbed her eyes, looked at her watch, shook her head and tried to remember who the heck Filburt was.
Ten minutes later, Ann and Jason walked into Paul’s office. They’d each brought cans of diet Coke for caffeine. They sat next to each other, leaning against each other and trying to keep their eyes open. That Paul was wearing a white shirt and tie was unusual and signaled that a meeting with the university administration or outside dignitaries was coming up, but it didn’t register on Jason and Ann.
Paul was searching his desk for his reading glasses. The search was such a regular part of his day that students joked about it. Piles of papers and scientific journals, stacked a foot high, teetered around the edges of the desk, penning a disorderly collection of loose papers in the center. Paul looked under and around several piles until he lifted an envelope under a sheaf of papers. “Ah, here they are.” He put his glasses on and pulled a manila folder from the middle of one of the piles, stabilizing the top of the stack with his other hand. He put the folder in an open space in front of him.
“I believe you have both met Dr. Gettelman of the CDC. He’s bringing George Filburt of the FBI to talk to Bill and me about BCV, your last study, and the missing samples. Gettelman said he wanted to bring Filburt up to speed on the science, and Filburt wants as few people present as possible. He’s already disturbed by the rumors going around.”
Jason frowned. “So he wants information on our studies, but he doesn’t want to talk to Ann or me, the people who did the studies?”
Bill, also wearing a dress shirt and tie, walked through the door and took a chair. “Jason, you’ve hit on the reason why bureaucracies are inefficient. Bureaucrats put their trust in titles, white shirts and ties. In science, that means they get their information from the people furthest removed from what happened and least likely to know why. We should feel honored that Filburt is willing to talk to anyone below Assistant Dean.”
“So what do you want from us?” Jason asked.
Bill pulled a notebook out of his briefcase and put it on the table in front of him. “Paul and I would like to review the study with you and Ann to make sure we have everything straight for Filburt. With the FBI involved and their history with investigations in science, you and Ann are better off staying out of this.”
Ann looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Google Wen Ho Lee and you’ll understand,” Bill said.
Paul and Bill made copies of Ann’s summaries and spent forty minutes reviewing them with Jason and Ann to make sure they understood how the studies were conducted and the data they had collected to date. At 3:50, Paul looked at his watch and picked up his copy of Ann’s summary. “We’d better get going, Bill. It won’t help if we make them wait.”
They ran into Gettelman and Filburt in a hallway off the PathoBiology departmental office as they walked to the conference room. The conference room was barely large enough to hold an oval mahogany table and the ten steel and plastic swivel chairs around it. There were no windows in the room, but the cream colored walls and overhead fluorescent lights made it feel airy and larger than it was.
Gettelman in a sport coat and Filburt in a charcoal-gray suit took chairs on the east side of the conference table; Paul and Bill took chairs across the table from them. Filburt, a trim man of about forty, pulled a leather notebook and pen from his brief case.
“I’ve asked for this meeting,” Gettelman said, “to let you know what Joe’s lab results were and how that might bear on the results of your last study. I need your ideas and your help, and Agent Filburt needs background information on BCV.”
Filburt leaned forward in his chair and looked first Bill, then Paul in the eyes. “But first, I must insist that no information about your most recent calf study or the missing samples be discussed outside of this group. Agreed?”
Paul slowly shook his head, no. Bill frowned and looked at Paul before answering. “We can’t agree to that. We have two very bright graduate students who ran the study, who know more about it than we do, and who will be processing and testing the study samples. We won’t be doing our job as graduate advisers if we can’t talk to them, and conduct of the lab work and analysis of the data will be adversely affected.”
Filburt’s face turned red, and he turned to Gettelman. Gettelman shrugged. “Professor Thompson’s point is valid. They have to be able to discuss the study with the people who did it and are conducting the diagnostic tests and the analysis. It will only slow the work down, for them and for us, if …” Gettelman looked at his notes, “… if Ann and Jason aren’t informed about Joe.”
Filburt pursed his lips and drummed the fingers of his right hand on the table. “Okay, you can provide them the information you believe is essential to complete their work on the study, but no more. And they have to keep their mouths shut.”
Paul nodded. “We’ll make that clear to them. Do you want a confidentiality agreement?”
Gettelman looked at Filburt. “How much do you want in writing?”
Filburt shook his head. “I’d rather not have a damned thing in writing, but this is a security issue, and if SARS is involved, it falls under Select Agents. I’ll start the process to get them approved for Select Agents. After that, keeping their mouths shut is covered by statute. They’ll keep their lips zipped or they’ll be in solitary at a Federal prison.”
“That’s settled then,” Gettelman said. He described the PCR tests conducted on samples from Joe to detect any coronavirus similar to SARS.
Filburt held up a hand. “Wait a minute. What is PCR?”
Gettelman looked surprised. “It’s the acronym for the Polymerase Chain Reaction. It allows thousands of rounds of duplication of a stretch of DNA. The stretch of DNA replicated is determined by the temperature of the reaction and the small bits of DNA used as primers for the reaction.”
Paul took notes for Jason while Gettelman described the conditions of the reaction, as Jason would be doing the same study in a few days. Bill toyed with a pen as neither he nor Ann were directly involved with molecular work with the virus.
Gettelman, not blessed with a natural talent for public speaking, droned on. He described in minute detail how the test found two Type 2 coronaviruses: the SARS virus from Hong Kong and a previously unknown virus. Sequencing a pair of genes from the unknown virus proved it was a hybrid of BCV and SARS, as Jason had predicted. Gettelman put his notes down and looked at Paul and Bill. “That explains the severe pneumonia produced in your calves.”
Paul leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. “That fits with Jason’s preliminary PCR results.” Paul slid a two page summary of Jason’s data to Gettelman. “Could you determine whether the hybridization of the virus took place in Joe or in the calves?”
“No,” Gettelman said. “It could have taken place in either. More importantly, we didn’t find any Type 2 coronavirus in the samples from Ann or Jason.”
Gettelman, Paul and Bill discussed details of the study for several minutes. Filburt started to take notes, but quickly gave up. When the conversation between the other men ended, Filburt frowned and looked at Gettelman. “About the only thing I understood was Jason’s name. Why were he and Ann working on BCV?”
“BCV is a common cattle virus,” Gettelman told him.
Filburt nodded slowly. “Okay, but if BCV is a common virus, why the hell are we worried about it now?”
Bill opened his mouth, thought a second and nodded to Gettelman. “BCV causes diarrhea in baby calves. The results of Ann and Jason’s study were remarkable for the serious respiratory disease produced in older calves. SARS is a respiratory disease. We proved there was a mutation. A bit of the SARS RNA, the virus genome, was inserted into the BCV gene that encodes for a spike protein. That protein determines what cells the virus can infect. The hybrid gene created a hybrid spike protein that changed the target of the virus from cells in the gut to cells in the respiratory tract.”
“I thought genes were made of DNA,” Filburt said.
“They are in most life forms and in many viruses. A few viruses, like HIV, SARS, Ebola, and the common cold virus have genes made of RNA,” Gettelman said.
“Okay, I got that.” Filburt scribbled in his notebook and scanned his notes. “You said there was a mutation. Why did that happen?”
“The enzymes that makes copies of RNA chromosome aren’t as firmly attached to the chromosome as the enzymes that copy DNA chromosomes. If two RNA viruses infected one cell, the enzyme could have fallen off one chromosome, sort of like a train jumping the rails. Enzymes like that can land on another chromosome and just kept going, producing RNA. In this case, an enzyme produced a gene that was part BCV and part SARS. BCV is an RNA virus, so it’s also prone to frequent smaller mutations.”
“Why?” Filburt asked.
Gettelman’s expression didn’t change, but he started to tap one foot. “The enzyme complex that translates DNA into RNA doesn’t have a proof-reading function. It doesn’t correct its mistakes.”
“Why would you expect an enzyme to correct mistakes?” Filburt asked.
Gettelman put his clipboard down, uncrossed his legs and leaned toward Filburt. The foot that had been tapping stopped. That knee was now bouncing up and down. “Because the enzyme that replicates DNA does have a proof-reading function. When it makes a mistake, it backs up and corrects it.”
Filbert nodded. He was scribbling notes furiously, eyes focused on his note pad. “Why are we concerned about a biological weapon, if this is the sort of thing you expect?”
Paul covered his mouth and coughed. The corners of his mouth could be seen twitching upward behind his hand as he tried to control a smile.
Gettelman looked as though he remembered what talking to his four-year-old son had been like. His knee went into overdrive. “It’s the sort of thing we’d expect, but we didn’t expect North American BCV and SARS to ever be in the same cell. They were continents apart until Joe—”
Filburt looked at Paul and Bill. “Joe? That’s the Chinese kid from Hong Kong?”
Bill nodded “yes”, and Gettelman continued. “We are worried about this as a weapon because the hybrid virus infected Joe. When animal viruses infect people, they tend to be either harmless or deadly. Few are intermediate between those extremes.”
Filbert thought a moment and looked as though he might ask ‘why’ again. Gettelman didn’t wait. “If you want to know why animal viruses are so nasty in people, you’ll have to talk to Jason. He’s more familiar with the evolution of virulence than I am.”
Although his expression remained neutral, Gettelman spoke slowly, as though talking to a child having difficulty understanding an adult concept. “What is critical is that we have identified a hybrid virus that infects people and cattle and causes a severe pneumonia.”
“So … let me get this straight. This is a cattle virus that can infect people and cause pneumonia?” Filburt asked.
Gettelman’s knee stopped. “It’s an entirely new virus, a hybrid human/cattle virus, and it causes pneumonia. Think of AIDS. The HIV virus is a hybrid of two monkey viruses that infected a chimp.”
Filburt dropped his notepad. “Christ! Is this virus transmitted by sex? Then how did Joe get … are you saying the kid was banging the—”
Paul went into a coughing spasm, his face turned red and his shoulders shook. He excused himself and stepped out of the room. Bill covered his mouth with his hand and concentrated on a document on the table in front of him.
“Good God, no!” Gettelman said, almost in a yelp. “I only used HIV as an example of another hybrid virus that was created by the same molecular mechanism. Sex has nothing to do with this virus. I assume it was transmitted in fecal matter or droplets in an aerosol.”
Paul returned to his seat as Filburt picked up his notepad and began writing again. “Okay, then why weren’t other people infected by this hybrid virus? You said Jason, Ann and student help were taking care of the calves?”
“All of them had been repeatedly exposed to BCV,” Paul said. “That immunized them to BCV, and we think it gave them a partial immunity to the hybrid. Their immune systems also weren’t stressed-out by travel and another serious disease, like Joe’s was.”
Filburt looked at his notes and chewed the top of his pen. “How bad an infection is this likely to be in people?”
Seeing Gettelman’s face begin to turn red, Paul answered for him. “We aren’t sure. It’s potentially deadly because it’s related to SARS and, as Dr. Gettelman explained earlier, it is also an animal virus.”
Bill changed the topic. “Any idea where Ahmed or the missing samples are?”
Filburt pursed his lips and considered the questions. “First, I’ll need your promises that everyone here and Jason and Ann will keep their mouths shut about this project. No excuses, no talking. Do I have that?” Filburt glared at Paul first, then Bill.
Paul and Bill nodded assent.
“Okay … this is off the record and must not be repeated to anyone. Got that?”
Paul and Bill again nodded their agreement.
“The airline records indicate he phoned to change flights Friday morning. He took a Saturday flight to Paris, changed planes in Charles De Gaulle and Cairo and arrived in Pakistan on Sunday. Someone fitting his description traveled from the Pakistani Foreign Office to the university on Tuesday morning, Monday night, our time. He returned to the Foreign Office complex but hasn’t been seen since.”
For the rest of the meeting, Paul and Bill filled in details about BCV and Ann and Jason’s studies. Filburt asked a few more questions and took voluminous notes.
As the meeting was winding down, Paul asked Gettelman, “Questions will come up as we test the samples from the last study. Do we have permission to conduct further studies with the hybrid virus?”
Gettelman stopped putting his clipboard away. “Let’s take that on a case by case basis.”
“Do you have another lab animal model for the hybrid virus?” Paul asked.
“No,” Gettelman said as he stood. He looked at the ceiling, at the floor, and turned to Paul. “I see what you’re getting at. You’re right. We should talk about your next study soon.”
The other men also stood to leave. Filburt looked from Paul to Gettelman. “You’re going to let them do more studies? Here?”
“George, Paul reminded me that the calf is the only animal model anyone has for testing this new virus. The group here has experience with working with calves and Ann and Jason are the only people in the world who have experience with this virus. They also have a source of calves and research facilities designed to house cattle. The CDC doesn’t have any of those things. If we want to provide the intelligence agencies with information on the BCV-SARS hybrid, we can fund the studies and have them done here and done quickly, or we can delay them a year while we build a new facility. Even then, we would probably have to hire Jason to conduct the studies. Which would you rather do?”
Filburt shrugged. “Just asking. I can’t argue with it, when you put it like that.”
They all began picking up their notebooks and papers, Gettelman and Filburt packing theirs in their briefcases. Paul and Bill high-fived each other after Gettelman and Filburt left the room.
North St. Paul, 10:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 20
Ann stayed at Jason’s apartment that evening. Sitting up in bed, she turned to Jason. “Okay, who the devil was Wen Ho Lee?”
“I can’t remember the details,” Jason said, “but the FBI investigated a nuclear espionage case a few years ago and messed up big time. They tried to pin it on a respected Chinese-American nuclear scientist and got it so wrong that the judge apologized to the scientist when the case went to court. He was cleared, but his career was ruined.”
“Wow. Talk about depressing.” Ann put the copy of Nature she was reading on the night stand and changed the topic. “Did you miss me?” She pulled the covers to her chin and snuggled against Jason. It was the first time she’d visited his apartment since their misunderstanding.
“How can you ask that after I washed the sheets, picked up my living room, vacuumed the floors, and scrubbed the countertops in the kitchen?” Jason asked. “I’ve never done that for anyone.”
She kissed him and let a fingernail trail south from his chest. “That’s easy to believe, at least that you’ve never done it for anyone else. But scrubbed? Really?” Ann traced her fingers north along the inside of his thigh.
Jason liked where this was going. “Ooooh … ah, well, I wiped the countertops off with a clean sponge. God I missed you.” He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her gently, his kisses moving slowly down the side of her neck. “I don’t want us to be apart again, I want to be there when junior comes along, and when the next one arrives, too.”
Ann slipped her fingers through curly hair and wrapped them around a sensitive new growth. “Hmmmm. I guess you are glad to see me. But do I get a say in how many juniors there’ll be?”
“If you’ll marry me. Will you?” Jason asked again, and returned to kissing her.
“Maybe. If you’re really, really, good in bed.”
For once in his life, Jason got it right and let his actions speak for him.