He made the initial incision, tracing an arc from the right shoulder to under her breast, and then a parallel cut on the opposite side. The knife chewed through the flesh, resisting the task Henry was forcing it to perform. A trickle of blood seeped through the incision like melting ice. He then opened the belly down to the pelvic bone, peeled back the chest flap, draping it over the young woman’s face. He scooped a portion of coagulated blood into a sandwich bag he found in the pantry.
There was a thin layer of yellow fat, which Henry scraped away to reveal the breastplate.
“At this point, I apologize,” Henry said. “I have no saw available here. I must improvise.” Pathologists often used pruning shears to cut through the rib cage; all Henry could find was a pair of scissors used for cutting bandages. The blades fecklessly gnawed at the bone. “I’m going to try to crack through the breastplate,” Henry said. “Unless someone has a better plan.”
There was silence in Geneva.
Henry lifted the scissors high over his head, then plunged them into the bone with all his force.
Something happened. The doctors in the auditorium gasped. Henry wasn’t sure at first what had occurred, then he saw that his gown was coated in a frothy pink liquid.
The breastbone had only a small fracture. Henry struck again and again. Liquid was streaming off his gown. It was in his hair and his ears. His glasses were so coated that he could scarcely see. He struck again. He could not hear Maria’s cries. His entire focus was on breaking open the rib cage and uncovering the mystery inside. When it finally came apart, the disaster was apparent. Where there had been lungs, there was a kind of spumy swamp. “Pulpy, bloody froth,” Henry said breathlessly, “extensive hemorrhagic and edematous process. It appears that the cause of death—” Henry’s voice suddenly caught, and he had to compose himself. “The cause of death of this brave young doctor is obvious,” he said. “She drowned in her own fluids.”
There was silence in Geneva until Maria spoke up. “Henry, I’m ordering a complete quarantine. There’ll be a team there by morning. But God, Henry, stop what you’re doing. Scrub yourself immediately. We’ll take it from here.”
Henry had one last task. He sent Dr. Champey’s email to Luc Barré through his satellite phone. Then he walked out of the tent and slogged through the muddy camp. It was dark. The monsoon was at full force. From the narrow openings of their tents the detainees watched him pass with dread in their eyes. He was a specter, the ghost of their own futures. When he came to the gate, it opened and closed behind him. He noticed his roller bag sitting on the porch of the officer’s house. Bambang and his rickshaw were nowhere to be seen.
He was nearly certain that the disease in Kongoli was not bacterial. This was something new. It could be a coronavirus like SARS or MERS, or a paramyxovirus like Nipah, but Henry could not stop thinking about the W-shaped mortality curve, which was famously characteristic of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. These thoughts were going through his mind as he stood in the downpour and stripped off his clothes, washing his hair and body in the rain in full view of the detainees and the commanding officer. He was as naked as the young doctor whose body he had just broken into with such violence.
All his professional life, Henry had imagined that he would rendezvous with a disease that was more clever than he, more relentless, more pitiless. There was a game to it, a match. Every disease had its vulnerabilities, and Henry had made a career out of being the best at understanding the strategy of an alien infection, figuring out its next move, imagining the brilliant counter. Eventually, he would win, if he had time. Some diseases didn’t give you time, and then you relied on luck. He had been lucky, until now.
In this case, however, he had the feeling that luck and time were not on his side.
* * *
—
JILL WAS BACK in the classroom taking the clay dinosaurs out of the oven when the call came over the PA system for her to report to the principal’s office. She had never been summoned in this manner before, so she knew something was wrong. Thoughts