Blowback

“We don’t know that for sure. If we could isolate DNA that’s on the order of ten to fifteen thousand years old, science might, and I stress might, be able to bring back Pleistocene era species, but it wouldn’t be easy. A perfect example of the best-preserved Pleistocene species we’ve found to date would be woolly mammoths. In their case, though, we’ve only recovered short strands of mitochondrial DNA, not the nuclear DNA necessary for cloning. It’s a very tricky business, all this cloning stuff, and one I’m glad I’m not involved in.”

Vanessa could tell Harvath hadn’t fully grasped what Mr. Whitcomb’s specialty was, and so she tried to elucidate. “For lack of a better term, what Alan does is listen carefully to very old DNA. It talks to him.”

“Kind of like The Horse Whisperer,” joked Jillian.

Vanessa nodded her head and smiled. “Ancient DNA can tell us lots of things about how people lived, such as what their diets were comprised of and what their lives were like, but more importantly ancient DNA can often tell us more about how people died. This is Alan’s primary area of expertise-the makeup, if you will, of ancient disease on a molecular level. By studying how the organic structure of diseases has changed over time, we can hopefully develop a better understanding of how to combat and maybe even overcome the diseases we face today.”

“For instance,” said Alan, “we’re now learning that the smallpox pandemics of the Middle Ages, not the plague, mind you, but smallpox, left generations of people with a rare genetic defect that protects them against infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. We estimate that approximately one percent of people descended from northern Europeans are virtually immune to HIV infection. And of that one percent, Swedes are the most likely to be protected. The Middle Ages may not exactly be ancient history, but this is the type of science that falls within my bailiwick.”

“You see,” added Jillian, “if we were able to locate the original illness, or organic matter from someone who was exposed to the original strain of this mystery illness and had survived, Alan might be able to tell us a lot about the disease itself.”

“Could we cure it?”

“That’s a pretty difficult question, but if we had either the original form of the disease itself or organic material from someone who had been exposed to it and survived, we’d have a fighting chance,” said Alan.

For all intents and purposes, the Whitcombs were investigators, and while Harvath couldn’t begin to fathom how they did what they did, he could relate to how they went about their search for answers. “So, let’s assume for a moment that what killed the people in Asalaam is based on this purple viper venom. Where are the other symptoms coming from? I mean, when you see the people in the advanced stages of this illness, they look like attendees at a Count Dracula convention. “Yet another pop culture reference, but it was the most apt description Harvath could think of.

“You raise an excellent point and one that has been bothering us since Jillian first presented this case to us,” responded Mrs. Whitcomb. “We can only assume that this is either a derivation of Azemiops feae venom that we are not yet familiar with, or that it is being used in conjunction with something else. I have searched the Arthashastra from cover to cover, but can’t find anything that would cause the full range of symptoms that we’re seeing.”

“What also doesn’t make sense is why the illness only seems to affect non-Muslims. How could this thing have been specifically bio-engineered to attack specific religions?” asked Harvath.

“I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at,” said Alan. “In my opinion, it must be something else, like contamination of food or water supplies-which has been a popular method of subduing an enemy since the dawn of time.”

“As for the symptoms beyond the known effects of Azemiops feae venom,” added Jillian, “what we may be seeing here is something the scientific community occasionally refers to as duplexing.”

“What is duplexing?” replied Harvath.

“Duplexing is the combining of two illnesses to make them more lethal than they would be on their own. Australian researchers recently proved this theory quite inadvertently when they incorporated an immunoregulator gene into the mousepox virus. The result was a seriously enhanced, monster mousepox virus that was more virulent than anything they had ever seen before.

“The concern, especially among bioterrorism experts, is that this technique could be applied to other naturally occurring pathogens like smallpox or anthrax, which would dramatically increase their lethality.”

“Let’s just suppose for a second that what we’re seeing here is a case of duplexing and that the snake venom is being added to something else in order to create a more potent bioweapon. I still don’t understand how only non-Muslims were infected while none of the other indigenous people in that village seem to have been,” said Harvath.