Girabaldi looked at her team. “Can we have the room, please?”

The four staffers stood and exited without a word. When the door was shut, Girabaldi turned exhausted eyes to Fletcher.

“Lieutenant, I know our requests are atypical. And I do understand it would take a herculean effort on your behalf to completely shut the door on this investigation. But, please, I need you to keep this as close held as possible. I do not want to be out making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows trying to explain this situation. Do I make myself clear?”

Sam didn’t think that was the most politic way to get Fletch to cooperate. He didn’t respond well to demands. She wasn’t surprised to see a matching look of exasperation on his face.

“So you don’t know what she was doing with Cattafi, but I take it you know what the pathogens were doing at the kid’s apartment?”

“Amanda was probably bringing material in to test. Cattafi wasn’t on our—anyone’s—radar. He’d be a safe place to store them if she couldn’t get them to us. And don’t worry about it. Those aren’t pathogens. Those are test vaccines. There’s no real danger from them.”

Fletcher was getting fed up with all the double-talk and subterfuge. Sam could see the impatience in his balled-up fists. “Test on what? Or on whom?” he said slowly.

Girabaldi cleared her throat. “I could lose my job for telling you this.”

“Without all the information, we’re going to have a hard time bringing Amanda’s killer to justice. Besides, we signed the nondisclosures. We aren’t stupid. You can trust me, ma’am. Trust us. I think you’re going to have to.”

She nodded, leaned closer across the table. “Last year, some bad vaccines were shipped into Africa. We don’t know who was behind the shipment. Amanda has been trying to find out where they’re coming from. All the manufactured vaccines have markers in them, almost like DNA. And the vaccines themselves are DNA-based and administered with a gene gun, so the sequence of the DNA might act as a fingerprint to trace back to the source. Amanda has been smuggling batches of vaccines under development out of every company who might have a part in this. Not only the vaccines themselves, but the vials that contain them, the material used in the suspension liquids for the vaccines, the gene guns, everything that goes into making and distributing the vaccines. Are you following?”

“Yes. Different companies create different components and you have to test them all to see where the bad ones are coming from.”

She gave him an appreciative look. “Exactly. It’s been grueling for her. And for us. Clearly she was able to get out another batch, and it must have been a sudden opportunity if she didn’t have time to signal. Though why she didn’t make us aware, I guess we won’t ever know. We could have protected her.”

“What do you mean, bad vaccines?” Sam asked.

“Bad as in worthless. Selling them on the black market, saying they were a cure-all for every household African disease you can think of. There are no cures for many of the hemorrhagic diseases in Africa. It’s snake oil.”

Sam wondered if that was the whole truth. She thought about Tommy Cattafi and his interest in regeneration. “Madam Undersecretary, are you sure there isn’t something else going on with the vaccines?”

She looked surprised by the question. “Like what?”

“This seems like a lot of trouble to go to for inactive, unworkable medicines. If they cause no harm, this is unethical, but it isn’t criminal. And you’re concerned enough to put an operative in play to infiltrate—what, ten companies, twelve?”

“Eight so far,” Girabaldi replied.

“Infiltrate eight separate companies, risking life and limb, for snake oil? What’s really wrong with the vaccines?”

Chapter 20

GIRABALDI SAT BACK in her seat. “John Baldwin told me you were smart.”

“I appreciate the compliment. Now, would you mind telling us what’s really going on here?”

“Be careful what you wish for, Dr. Owens.” She straightened her jacket, smoothed her hair. “You’re aware that transportation, financial and bioterror are the biggest threats we face today. We work tirelessly to thwart attacks on our country, and on our people abroad, through highly sophisticated monitoring of possible hotbeds of terror.”

“Spying, you mean,” Fletcher said.

Girabaldi gave him a cold look, then continued. “Do you recall a biological event in 2006 in Israel, where several Israelis died after receiving a flu vaccination?”

Sam nodded. “Of course. It was big news at the time. A potential bioterrorism scare.”

“That’s right. As it turned out, Israel was a fluke. It wasn’t an actual attack, as far as we could tell. All of the vaccines were given by a single nurse who was ill, and she passed along her infection to the people she inoculated. Four of them did not survive. Sad, but not an attack.

“However, ever since this event, we’ve been closely monitoring anything that could be related to vaccines and bioterrorism. Amanda was our lead on discovering and disturbing these threats. Since we recognize the dangers we face from a sophisticated bioterrorism attack, we gave her every resource we have to do her job.”

Sam was starting to get uncomfortable. Bioterrorism scared the living hell out of her—she knew just how easy it would be to enact, given the appropriate circumstances. She told Girabaldi that.

“Scares the hell out of me, too, Dr. Owens. As it did Amanda. Last year, she discovered an association between measles vaccinations and an outbreak of a virulent viral hemorrhagic fever in Africa. It was similar in nature to Lassa and Ebola, but new. Something no one had seen before. And dreadful. The mortality rate was nearly one hundred percent. The virologists who are familiar with it have been operating under the assumption it may have come from the bat population, which is logical. As the forests get smaller, the hunters must go farther afield to find food, and they come into contact with new, infected animals. Voilà, new viruses are discovered, much to the people’s detriment.”

“But the vaccinations were responsible?” Sam asked.

“We believe that to be the case. Every person who died of this new virus was inoculated for measles at a specific Médecins Sans Frontières station out in the bush, all during a single week’s time frame. The outbreak could have turned into an epidemic, but the bodies of all the victims were gathered up and burned in a mass cremation. The ashes were buried, the vaccinations halted and the outbreak stopped. The batch of tainted vaccines was destroyed, as well. Vaccinations resumed a week later, no one else sickened and the outbreak was written off as a fluke.” She shook her head. “Another fluke.”

Sam was horrified. “Didn’t anyone in Africa put the two things together? The medication and the delayed mortality response? They track these incidents closely.”

“Yes, they do,” Girabaldi said. “But sometimes the powers that be don’t release all they know. Amanda found the records, which showed that the remaining tainted vaccines were taken off-site by a man with a British accent, as he was described, who promised to see them destroyed. The man has disappeared, and there is no trace of the vaccines he took with him.

“Amanda was convinced they’d just witnessed a dry run, a test of something much more sinister than a batch of tainted vaccines. And she felt strongly this man was planning to use the information gained to increase their effectiveness and utilize them for an attack.”

“Had Amanda found the proof of all of this?” Fletcher asked.

Girabaldi shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know exactly what she found. She’d been cabling me information as the search went on, but as far as I know, she hadn’t made any real discoveries. Trust me, she would have told me immediately if she’d found him. All we know about this man is what Amanda had been able to track down, which has been very little. She had a vague physical description, which varies from person to person, and she hadn’t seen him herself.” She paused, then shook her head. “Though I must assume she stumbled across something quite terrible if she was murdered, as you say.”