Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,14
information. And it wasn’t far from the truth. Her mind had heard what her consciousness had missed and was quickly replaying the words for her. “Sorry,” she said, shaking King’s offered hand. “Sara Fogg. CDC.”
“The CDC?” King said.
“Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Sara added.
“I know what it stands for.” He hid his amusement with a serious voice. Fogg was beautiful, poised, and extremely distracted. Out of her element. Then again, he had no idea exactly what element she’d call home. She didn’t look like the rugged type—styled short hair, face made up—but her short fingernails held chipped polish and what appeared to be a layer of trapped dirt. She wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. “What I don’t understand is why you are here.”
“I’m a disease detective,” Sara said.
Rook raised an eyebrow.
Sara noticed his skepticism. “I’m sure you all think that you’re saving the world by killing terrorists. But statistically you’re only saving a few thousand lives every year. What I do saves millions of lives. Terrorists are not the real killers on planet Earth. Disease is.”
Keasling held up his hand, silencing her. “Let me explain. You’re making a bad first impression.”
King stayed silent. Most people shared Sara’s opinion about what they did. But disease couldn’t fire bullets and it didn’t plot the demise of civilization. Disease was a fact of life, not the enemy. Not an assassin. “Let’s get back to the president. How did he die?”
“Actually, he’s not dead,” Keasling said. “Died. The Secret Service with him at the time were able to bring him back. He’s resting comfortably in a hospital right now, though he’ll be under constant observation for the next few days. But, for thirty seconds yesterday, the president was dead.”
“And?” Knight asked.
“The president had a heart attack. He—”
“I thought the president was a health freak,” Queen said.
“He is,” Keasling replied.
“How does a health nut have his ticker stop?” Rook asked.
“Genetic defect?” Knight offered.
Keasling tried to respond, but Rook beat him to the punch. “A secret addiction to fast food?”
“Rook,” Queen said with the tone of a high school Latin teacher.
Rook shrugged. “Hey, the guy lived.”
Sara’s frustration built. This was going nowhere fast. She grunted and spoke. “It wasn’t a heart attack. The president died from a genetic disorder known as the Brugada syndrome. He’s perfectly healthy. His cholesterol is better than average. His heart rate is like a metronome. He’s in his forties but has the body of a thirty-year-old. And his heart is structurally normal.”
Sara found five sets of eyes on her. They were listening.
“But when he was given an electrocardiograph, a characteristic pattern emerged—one that belongs to people with Brugada. Sudden death is caused by fast polymorphic ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation. Either one of these arrhythmias can occur in an instant, with no warning at all. Sensations commonly warning of a heart attack—pain in the left arm, shortness of breath—do not occur with Brugada; your heart simply stops and you fall over dead. The president was conscious for only a few moments after his heart stopped. He felt a pain in his chest. Then a wave of nausea. That’s it. He doesn’t remember hitting the ground.
“There are no outward signs that any one person has the disease until they fall over dead, unless of course you think to test yourself, which is ridiculous because only point zero five percent of the world’s population has the gene and out of that number only a tiny fraction become active, mostly in men. It’s so rare that most doctors don’t even know about it.”
Sara finished and ran her fingers through her spiky black hair. “Questions?”
Rook gave a flick of his fingers, as though shooing a fly. “So the president was born with some kind of stealth disease. How does this involve us?”
“When a new president takes office, he’s given a gamut of physicals, screened for diseases and genetic disorders that might pose a risk. This includes an electrocardiograph. He was cleared of Brugada two weeks after he took office. The Brugada syndrome is a germ cell mutation, meaning it’s inherited from parents at birth. Tom Duncan did not have Brugada when he took office . . . he contracted the disease one week ago, when he was unknowingly exposed to a new strain of avian influenza—bird flu.”
King felt the hair on his arms rising. He sensed there was more news and that it was dire. Why else would you need the world’s most effective Delta team to deal with a disease? It’s