my analysis.”
“One hundred sixty three out of two hundred.”
“Yes, but those secondary subjects would have—if they were in an uncontrolled population—caused tertiary infections in others.” Won smiled. “It is hard to predict what the mortality rate would be in that population, but it is also difficult to overestimate the danger of plague when released.”
Filotov said, “I will level with you. I am an intelligence officer. I am no scientist. But my organization would like to know one thing. Do you have everything you need to weaponize this on a larger scale?”
She nodded. This filled her with excitement, although she still took this conversation as theoretical, because Filotov had not mentioned any specifics.
“Is there any question that your weapon will work?”
“There is one gap in my knowledge on the subject, which prevents me from answering that question with specificity.”
Filotov sat up straighter, obviously surprised to hear this from the woman who seemed so completely self-assured about her expertise. “And what would that be?”
“The DPRK knows very little about existing biodefenses set up by the West. Do Western nations have security measures intact to respond to an attack, are hospitals in major cities prepared, are enough oral and IV drugs staged to combat a mass casualty event, are there protocols to identify the origin of a devastating plague outbreak? I simply do not have as much of this information as I require.”
“And where could you go to obtain this information?”
Won shrugged. “Two places that I know of. Stockholm and Atlanta. Stockholm is the location of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States, is the location of the CDC, America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Filotov took some notes. “If we could help you obtain a position at either of these locations, would you be able to fill in these knowledge gaps you speak of?”
Won replied with a little confusion. “I don’t work for Russia. I work for—”
Filotov waved a hand. “Our two nations have shared interests in the knowledge you could obtain. We could speak with officials in your country, and work on this together.”
She thought it over. “I do not want to go to America.” Won smiled now, and she did not smile often. “But I will go to Sweden if you can arrange it, both with the center there and with my leadership back home.”
Within months Won left Russia and moved to Stockholm, taking a job as a researcher at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The Russians secured the job for her, secured her cover identity, secured the money she needed to set herself up in the European capital. The North Koreans, for their part, allowed Won Jang-Mi to go.
The Russians and the North Koreans both wanted to know everything about biosecurity in the West, and Won had the same goal as her masters.
She needed to understand the protective measures in place, so that she and her plague could find a way around them.
Two years to the month after wading ashore on a moonlit beach in Japan, she sat down at the desk in her new office in Stockholm.
CHAPTER 11
PRESENT DAY
The abandoned hospital just south of the hamlet of Rauceby had originally been built in the 1890s and served as a mental asylum until World War II, when it was employed as a “crash and burns” unit for the RAF. After the war it reverted to its original role, run by the National Health Service, serving until the 1990s, when it was shut down for good.
Now the wards, halls, offices, laboratories, treatment rooms, and nurses’ quarters were abandoned, suffering mightily the decay of time. Vines snaked in through windows and mold grew along the tile flooring. Some furniture and fixtures remained, but everything else was rotting or rusted, mildewed or broken.
Graffiti adorned the walls, mice and bat shit were piled everywhere, and green newts clung to the walls.
It was an empty, hollow shell, with dusty shafts of light beaming left and right through broken windows along the long corridors and high-ceilinged rooms.
Anthony Kent stood in one of these shafts in the large and hazily lit dining hall, itself in the center of the massive former sanitarium. A rotting wooden stage loomed at the far end of the hall, and in front of that three men stood around in light jackets with weapons slung over their shoulders. In the center of the group was a man seated on a chair, with a black bag over his head.
Kent knew absolutely nothing