Pandemic

Gwen felt a vibration against her abdomen under her belt. Nauseous and disoriented, she opened her eyes and squinted through the light. The room smelt musty from mothballs. Springs dug into her back. When she tried to roll over, neither her legs nor her arms would cooperate. With each wiggle, she felt the straps dig tighter into her ankles and wrists.

Anxiety welled in her chest, but she willed herself calm, realizing that panic would be a grave waste of energy.

The cell phone tucked in her waistband stopped vibrating.

She raised her head and looked around the room. The green paint on the walls was peeling. Moldy curtains covered a small row of dirty windows, but the gray light from outside leaked through and around them. The electric radiator hummed loudly.

Though her mind was still bleary from whatever she had been given, she began to put the pieces together. Judging from the metal cot she was bound to, she suspected she was in the bedroom of a cheap motel, possibly the kind with individual cabins.

The sense of orientation helped hold her nerves in check even when she felt the sharpness in her left arm and looked down to see the intravenous cannula sticking out of her elbow's crease. She focused her memory on the face and eyes she had seen in her garage. She had no doubt they belonged to the man whose picture ran constantly on CNN. Abdul Sabri.

She looked up from her arm with a sudden start to see Abdul Sabri standing in the doorway. He took a few more silent steps toward her and stopped by the edge of her cot. In jeans and a collared shirt, he towered above her. His smooth face was blank, but his opaque blue eyes fixed on her intently.

"You have woken, Dr. Savard," Sabri said in a thick but clear Arabic accent.

"Where am I?" Gwen asked.

"It does not matter," Sabri said.

"Why did you kidnap me?" she demanded.

"I wanted to talk with you," he said.

"Why?" she snapped, feeling more violated than scared.

"You are the Director of Counter-Bioterrorism," he spoke the word slowly, cautious with his pronunciation. "I am a bioterrorist. It only makes sense."

"Nothing you do makes sense," she said, and struggled vainly against her bindings.

Sabri seemed to consider her point for several moments and then he nodded. "To you, maybe no. To me, it makes perfect sense."

Realizing how futile her resistance was, Gwen decided to change tacks. "Explain it to me then," she said in a more diplomatic tone.

"I do not think I can," he said, and then his face creased into a very slight smile. "I did not bring you here to talk politics."

"I would really like to know," Gwen said, trying to imagine a way of getting access to the phone tucked under her waistband.

Sabri shook his head once. "I want to know about your new drug. The one the reporters are talking about on the television."

"I wish we had one." Gwen shrugged her bound arms. "It is just a rumor the media has started."

Not a single muscle moved on his face, but his eyes darkened and Gwen could feel the threat as if he were still pointing his gun at her. "I do not believe you, Dr. Savard."

"I am sorry," Gwen said, and swallowed away the bitter taste in her mouth. "What do you want me to say?"

Motionless, he studied her for a long time. His silence was somehow more menacing than anything he had said or done to this point. "It is of no consequence," he said finally. "Let us move on. I would like to hear about your disaster planning."

"What do you mean?" She grimaced.

"A city such as New York, for example," Sabri said. "You must have a plan for dealing with an outbreak. Is that correct?"

"Every city in the country has a disaster plan," she said, calculating how much she needed to share with him to sound as if she was telling the truth. "There are public health officials in each city responsible for nothing but dealing with natural disasters."

"Yes, of course," Sabri said with a nod. "Is there a plan for the Gansu virus?"

Gwen shuffled on the cot, but the ligatures only dug deeper. "You want to know the specific plan for every major city in the States for dealing with the Gansu Flu?"

"No." Sabri breathed slowly, and Gwen sensed the frustration behind his placid exterior. "If the virus comes to New York," he said, "will the ports, roads, and airports be closed as soon as one person becomes sick?"

"We don't deal with epidemics by shutting down a city," she said, though the latest revised draft of the ERPBA called for exactly those measures. "We would send out warnings of course and ask people not to travel. If someone became ill, we would quarantine that person and his or her contacts. The rest is up to local authorities," she lied.

He viewed her for several moments without responding. Then he looked over his shoulder and called out something in Arabic.