the opening-night cocktail party in Geneva ten days before. His cane had been burned, along with his spare clothes, and Henry slogged barefoot across the soggy ground—having also sacrificed the only shoes he had brought on what was supposed to have been a three-day trip to Geneva.
Lights had been set up on stanchions around the camp perimeter so the crew could work around the clock. Two new MSF tents were staffed by colleagues of the dead doctors. Mercy Corps was here. The Red Crescent had a truck with a camper attached. Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, wearing yellow gowns, were attending patients in a large tented infirmary. A cell tower loomed over the camp, and the roofs of the WHO trailers were covered with solar panels. Every agency that could get a team together was either here or on its way. Nothing like a sexy little epidemic to flush them to the surface. It could be another bureaucratic shouting match, Henry realized, just like with Ebola.
Inside the WHO trailer was a stripped-down field lab, but at least it contained the essentials. There was a jerry-rigged field isolator—essentially, a plexiglass box with ports containing thick, black latex gloves, which allowed the lab technician to manipulate the virus samples inside without fear of contamination. Live virus was dabbed into plastic well plates—trays with small, evenly spaced indentations—containing human cells in a liquid medium. Once infected, the cells began growing the virus. Other technicians were attempting to amplify sequences using polymerase chain reaction. If the source of the infection was an unknown virus, it might require deep sequencing that would have to be done in Atlanta.
“You’re back,” Marco dryly observed. Marco was an ideal EIS officer: courageous, intuitive, and unmarried. On his left forearm was a tattoo of a dancing girl, a memento of the rabies epidemic in Bali that he and Henry had worked together. Marco even spoke a bit of Malay, which would be useful.
“Who’s in charge?” Henry asked.
“Everybody,” Marco said.
Exactly what Henry had feared.
“Is anybody checking the hospitals?” he asked. “The clinics?”
“Terry is on that. Nothing so far.”
“The morgues?”
“Somebody is. I think the Red Crescent.”
“We should have daily updates,” Henry said. “Any suspicious deaths have to be investigated.”
“Already happening,” Marco said. “Don’t you want to get an update on what we’ve found?”
“It’s viral,” said Henry. “And it’s something new. Probably avian.”
“Jeez, Henry, how’d you know all that?”
“I want a meeting with every delegation in half an hour. We don’t have time to have people bumping into each other. There’s a lot of work to be done, and quickly.”
“I’ll let them know,” said Marco.
“And let me look at the lab reports.”
“Sure, but first can I make a suggestion? You really, really need a shower.”
The truth of that statement was evident. Marco pointed to a large suitcase in the corner, which Henry recognized with a sudden start of delight. “Jill sent you some fresh clothes,” Marco said.
* * *
—
SCRUBBED AND REFRESHED, Henry stood on the porch of the officer’s house. The officer and the other guards who oversaw the detention camp were themselves now quarantined behind the fence with other exposed personnel.
Representatives of a dozen international health organizations were gathered in front of Henry. Standing around the trailers and tents were another fifty or so medical workers from various countries. Some of the faces were familiar from previous epidemics or conferences. They were mostly young people, average age early thirties—the same population represented by the spike on the disease mortality graph. Over the years, Henry had noticed a strong slant toward women in these crises. When he was younger, almost all the EIS officers had been men. Now men were a minority, even in the Red Crescent. Some of the medics were wearing Tyvek coveralls, and others were wrapped in garbage bags sealed with duct tape. Once again, Henry was stirred by the sheer nobility of talented young people placing themselves in the path of an unknown peril.
Among the faces in the crowd, Henry noticed, was the health minister, Annisa Novanto. She looked worried. Panicked, even. It was an unforgiving country she lived in.
For those gathered on the soggy parade ground who did not know him, Henry must have seemed an odd figure, small and slightly bent. Who was he to simply seize command of this impressive international array of medical talent? Some of the younger ones noticed the deference that the older heads in the crowd paid to him, but all were curious to see how this unprepossessing fellow would handle a