Pandemic

The setting and uniform had influenced Choy's attitude, too. Though he spoke through the translator in Chinese, his high-pitched voice was more authoritative and certain. "We are doing what your own WHO team recommended. What is necessary. We are controlling the spread of this virus. The people inside" — he pointed beyond the barbed wire—"are being looked after. We are sending food and supplies. And our doctors and nurses are monitoring them. If they require medical attention, we transport them to hospital."

As Choy spoke, two ambulance attendants in HAZMAT suits appeared at the gate. Once the arm of the gate rose, they pushed their stretcher unhurriedly toward him. The attendants moved without any urgency. As soon as they passed by, Haldane understood why. The patient on the stretcher was wrapped in a black body bag.

Haldane nodded his chin at the corpse on the stretcher. "This is what you mean by looking after the people?"

Unfazed, Choy answered through the translator. "This woman was found dead in her apartment. Apparently, she refused the neighbors' help. She was too scared to go out even after she became sick."

"I wonder how many others are going to be scared to death in there," Haldane grunted.

Choy held up his hands. "What is the alternative, Dr. Haldane?" he asked through the translator. "Would you rather we allow this virus to escape from here and sweep across China and beyond, killing one in four who stand in its path?"

CHAPTER 12

PALACE HOTEL, LONDON, ENGLAND

From her toenails to the roots of her hair, every inch of Khalila Jahal throbbed. She didn't know it was possible to ache so badly. She tried to move, but her limbs seemed to pay no heed to the will of her brain. They were deadwood.

Her sheets were soaked with sweat, but she had never felt colder in her life. Her body shivered uncontrollably under the wet sheets. The cough that had started as a tickle in her throat last night now racked her body with predictable waves of spasms. With each paroxysm, it felt as if a pillow had been stuffed down her throat.

The light streaming in between the vertical blades of the blinds told her she had overslept, though she wasn't clear whether what she experienced overnight was sleep or a coma. She tried to move again, managing to roll onto her side, exhausted from the effort.

Please God, give me the strength, she prayed.

She cursed herself for not heading out last night, when her arms and legs still worked. Dr. Aziz had instructed her to wait until the fever peaked. As of yesterday evening, her temperature hadn't broken through the 102 degree Fahrenheit barrier, hovering instead in the 101 range. Still, she knew she was ill enough to venture out, but she had chosen to wait. She risked the entire mission. She could have died overnight. Then where would they have been?

She no longer had the luxury of time to continue the moral wrestling match with herself that had seen her vacillate through the previous evening. It was not her place to judge, but to act. Still, the idea of releasing this thing that consumed her body — to the point where it felt as if she were being boiled from the inside out-gnawed at her as much as the pain did. How could this be God's way? she wondered as she struggled to lift her legs off the bed.

The shivers subsided and she knew from the sudden suffocating heat that her temperature had peaked. Her husband's bearded face floated in front of her. She was happy for the hallucination. She missed Zamil desperately.

They had played together as young children in their village, nestled in the shadows of the great pyramids on the Giza plateau. By the age of eleven, boys and girls were forbidden from mixing, but Khalila refused to accept the decree. And she convinced Zamil to risk beating or worse to explore with her the Nile riverbed and the desert beyond. Knowing better than to act upon the hormones that raced inside them, they maintained a platonic but clandestine relationship throughout those teen years, while the sparks between them built steadily into a white-hot flame.

When they were both seventeen their fathers, ignorant of the pair's preexisting relationship, decided they should wed. Khalila and Zamil were overjoyed. Khalila considered every moment of their time together blissful, even the year away from their friends and families when Zamil studied at the mosque in Paris. Zamil shared with Khalila his studies in the strict Wahhabi sect of Islam. In the privacy of their cramped bedroom under his parents' roof, he tolerated, even encouraged, her thoughtful skepticism. With tender eloquence, Zamil won her mind and soul over. She grew into as devout a believer as he was.

Then came 9/11 followed by the American offensive in Afghanistan. When the call came to join the Taliban brethren in their defense, Khalila begged Zamil not to go. She knew what awaited her peaceful scholarly husband. Though he pretended otherwise, he knew it too, but he refused to shirk what he viewed as his duty.