He disengaged the drive and handed it back to Sam. “Looks like it’s a dud. Let’s eat, I’m starved.” Fletcher went to the kitchen and brought back some sodas, and they dug into the sandwiches.

Fletcher closed his eyes in bliss. “You weren’t kidding, Marcos. Can I call you Marcos?”

“Yes, sir. Or Marc. Or Daniels. I get Agent a lot. I even answer to Hey, you!”

“Funny guy. I’m Fletcher. Or Fletch. Stick around, be my full-time chef? I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Not sure how Quantico could function without me, sir, but I’ll ask.”

Sam finished the first half of the sandwich, musing as she chewed. “We’re missing something.”

Fletcher tapped the top edge of the laptop, which had gone to sleep while they were eating. “Yeah, someone who can crack codes. Wish Lonnie would get back to me with Mouse already.”

Daniels stopped eating. “I’m not bad at it, Fletcher. Code-breaking, I mean.”

Sam eyed him, and he flushed a bit under her gaze, tucked his chin down and took a big bite of grilled cheese.

“Daniels, does Agent Shultz know that, too?”

He nodded. “I did a semester of cryptography at Yale.”

Sam smiled. “I think I know why she asked you to stick around. Finish your sandwich, then you can have a go at the laptop.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Daniels said, “I’m in. This program is a little hard to get started—it doesn’t launch by itself. You need to look at the codex and give it parameters before it can begin the process of identifying the initial code and rearranging the numbers into the codex.” He turned the screen to face Sam.

Fletcher came to read over her shoulder.

At first, the words made no sense. Then Sam realized what she was seeing.

“Oh my God.”

“What is it?” Fletcher asked. “This is all gibberish to me.”

She pointed to the screen. “These are vaccination schedules, dated from last week all the way back to 2005. Throughout the pan-Africa region, but concentrating in Sierra Leone and Guinea. But that’s not what’s so interesting.” She scrolled down. “Look at the findings. Wow. This isn’t good.”

“Are the vaccines killing people?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She pointed at the screen. “See these two columns? These are inoculation dates and death dates. The death dates increase dramatically starting last March.” She looked at Fletcher, troubled. “This wasn’t a one-time test run. They’ve been at it for a year, injecting people with this new bug. God, Fletcher. Amanda’s instincts were right. They’ve been perfecting it.”

Chapter 29

FLETCHER WAS TRYING, and failing, to make sense of the information from the SD card. He stared at the screen, watched Sam scroll through the data. He had to take her word he was looking at vaccination schedules.

“Why would they do that?” he asked. “Why would they take the chance? This can’t be quiet over there, people talk. Look at the massive Ebola outbreak last year—that was on every television station and in every paper around the world. How are they keeping this quiet?”

Sam was more pragmatic about things. She had a strange way of being able to separate herself from the case, to see it objectively. It was a skill that was turning her into an investigator, one he used to think he had, until his world blew up this morning.

“I think they’re using the Ebola outbreak from last year as cover. The symptoms of Ebola hemorrhagic fever and this new bug are very similar. And as a result of the outbreak last year, the CDC and WHO fast-tracked human trials for an Ebola vaccine, too. They got desperate, and were given permission for compassionate use on the drugs they had that weren’t fully tested. ZMapp, for example. It worked in several severe cases, boosting the immune systems, effectively curing them of the disease. So they sped things up, trying to find a way out of the epidemic.”

“Could someone be trying to create their own vaccine? Using human trials?”

Sam shook her head. “There are always people who will offer up a cure. And there are always people who will be desperate enough to take them at their word. No, Fletcher, this is purposeful. I think Girabaldi is correct—this is the testing ground for a biological attack.”

“Are you sure?”

She turned to face him and shrugged. “Until we find all of Amanda’s notes, I don’t think we’ll know anything for sure. But we have to prepare as if an attack is coming.”

Daniels was messing with the computer, scrolling through the pages. “There’s something else that could be going on.”

“What’s that?” Sam asked.

“It could be one hell of a money-making scheme. If they have tainted vaccines, and they had engineered a cure, they could be slipping the illness into other inoculations or medicine, then selling their lifesaving medicine.”

“True, it would be a boon to the bottom line of a company who was first to market with an all-encompassing vaccine. But this? All these deaths? It’s catastrophic. If I were approaching this as a scientist, to me it looks like there is a completely new bug being given in the standard vaccines. I think Amanda was probably onto something. A mysterious man in the African bush, hundreds dead and the lead investigator and her pet doctor murdered? I think we’re dealing with someone who’s trying to cover their tracks.”

They let that sink in.

“Fletcher, should we call Girabaldi? Tell her what we’ve found?” Sam said.

Fletcher shook his head. “Hell, no. This is the information she’s after, I’m sure of it. This is why she sent us off to investigate the case, hoping we’d uncover something, then she’ll swoop in and wrap it into her little cover-up.”

Sam sat back in her chair and regarded him thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Fletch. If what Amanda brought in does contain live viruses, we could have a major problem. Some infected with hemorrhagic fevers take up to twenty, twenty-five days to become symptomatic. People could be exposed and moving around the country, the world, and not know it. That could be the attack plan.”

Daniels looked completely terrified. “You mean they could be bringing this new hemorrhagic fever into the country, and we wouldn’t know?”

“Sure. It happens more than you’d think, sick people coming in from infected areas around the world, but we have such superior medical facilities and health standards that a full-blown outbreak here is extremely unlikely. But if someone’s passing around a new disease without knowing it? That’s a potential problem, sure.” She turned to Fletcher. “Do you think Girabaldi’s in on this? That she knows what’s happening and condones it? And is trying to make sure the information doesn’t leak?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. She had the Africa desk at the meeting this morning—clearly he’s in on it. What’s the guy’s name...Kronen?”

“Kruger,” Sam said absently. “The on-site HAZMAT folks said the vials of viruses we found at Cattafi’s place were simple vaccines, and so did State. What if... Let me see the computer again, Daniels.”

He handed it over, and she looked through the pages of material, reading slowly this time, trying to make sense of the numbers and letters she was seeing. There was a medical shorthand here that she was thankfully familiar with. She looked for the pages that would have the behavioral risk factors, which could indicate how the disease might be spreading after the vaccine inoculations. She didn’t see anything strange or out of place there. She went on to the reporting schedules. The files were far from perfect; self-reporting of this infection was practically nonexistent outside of the major population centers due to the ultraquick mortality, so the numbers were skewed to a representative sample of subjects vaccinated at a specific station in Uganda. But from what she could tell, ninety percent of those inoculated died within the first week. These entries were all labeled HR—high risk.