Pandemic

Haldane looked over at Levine. She gripped the steering wheel tightly. She had deep bags under her eyes, suggesting she hadn't slept in days. It occurred to him that Levine's haughty frigidity might have been partly in reaction to the enormous stress she was confronting. Haldane had seen other senior public health officials crumple in the face of lesser outbreaks.

"Dr. Levine," he said, "it would be a good idea to set up screening clinics today in the neighborhoods where there are known cases."

She glanced at him, her face set for an argument, but then her expression softened. "I will suggest it to the others on the Health Commission."

"What about the index case?" McLeod piped up from the backseat.

Levine shook her head. "We've not found her yet."

"Her?" Haldane said. "So you think it is the Spanish woman from the elevator of the hotel?"

"So far, she is the only connection we have uncovered."

"Bloody odd, isn't it?" McLeod pointed out.

"How so?"

"Why hasn't she turned up anywhere for treatment?" McLeod asked.

Levine sighed. "Dr. McLeod, there are countless hospitals and private clinics in London. She may well have presented to one of those before they had been alerted to the existence of the Gansu Flu."

"Or maybe she's dead," McLeod said. "You have checked the morgues, right?"

"Of course, we have," Levine snapped. "None of the cadavers match her description."

Haldane shook his head. "Putting aside the fact that she disappeared into thin air, the question I can't shake is: where? From where would this woman — Spanish, Greek, Italian, whatever — have caught the virus in the first place?" He looked over his shoulder. "Duncan, did you notice many scantily dressed Caucasian women in Jiayuguan City?"

"Not an abundance, no," he said. "But Hong Kong is a different story."

Haldane shook his head. "The outbreaks occurred simultaneously. The timing would have been all wrong for her to become infected in Hong Kong and then spread it here."

"What about the Chinese government?" McLeod asked.

"What about them?"

McLeod leaned forward. "They lied through their teeth about SARS. Maybe the Gansu Flu is rampant in Beijing or some other city and they've been busy covering their asses."

"Then why invite us to Jiayuguan in the first place?" Haldane asked.

"Christ, Haldane!" McLeod threw himself back against the seat. "You're not under the delusion that governments apply logic or reason to their planning?"

"Dr. Haldane is right," Levine said definitively. "We would know by now if the Gansu Flu had spread to central China."

"So where does that leave us with our index case?" Haldane looked from McLeod to Levine.

"A mystery," McLeod muttered. "The fucking Stonehenge of microbiology, isn't it?"

Haldane didn't reply, but he knew from experience that there would turn out to be a very rational explanation for where the woman and the virus she shed came from. He hoped that explanation would come sooner rather than later. He knew they were just spinning their wheels until they found it.

"How's the little girl doing?" McLeod asked from the backseat. "Alyssa."

"I heard she was weaned from the ventilator this morning," Levine said and her lips formed a hint of a smile. "Apparently they have upgraded her condition to stable."

They drove past the landmark Kensington Gardens at the west end of Hyde Park and turned off onto Pembroke Road in the heart of the trendy Notting Hill district of London. Approaching the entrance to the Park Tower Plaza Hotel, Haldane noticed that the streets were lined with rows of trucks and vans, many of which bore TV channel logos on the side. As the car slowed to a stop, Haldane experienced another jolt of deja vu.

The street had been barricaded with police cars blocking either end.

"To keep the press away," Levine explained as she rolled down her window for the officers manning the checkpoint. Once she had cleared security, she inched the car past ambulances and other government vehicles and into the hotel's driveway.

Armed police guarded the entryway. They scrutinized Levine's ID before directing her group to a makeshift change room. The three doctors donned gloves, caps, booties, gowns, and special N95 masks, which were designed for protecting against airborne TB particles. Looking like an entourage of misplaced surgeons, they entered the lobby. The posh hotel had been converted into a makeshift clinic. Fully garbed health-care workers milled about the lobby carrying thermometers, charts, and stethoscopes.

Nancy Levine led the others to the elevators. They rode the same elevator where Alyssa Mathews had acquired her life-threatening infection to the twenty-fifth floor. "We're using this floor as a special quarantine floor, specifically for people known to have acquired the virus," Levine explained. "The gentleman we are to meet, Mr. Collins, was in the Royal Free for three days but transferred back here last night to free up space in the hospital once his fever broke."