“I’m not opposed to giving you my opinion, but I’m no medical expert, so I certainly won’t be able to help you much with the fundamentals of the story. And technicals don’t necessarily tell you much on a biotech stock, given their tendency to exhibit extreme volatility and predisposition towards binary outcomes.”

  “I hear you. But how does the saying go: only the bold deserve the beautiful? I’m told this stock could run hard–it’s 4 and change now, and my source thinks it could be 40 or higher if they hit on just one of the vaccines they’re working on.”

  “Interesting. Vaccines for what?”

  “They’ve got a variety of shots on goal. One is for AIDs, another is for Ebola, and one is for rabies.”

  “I believe there already is a rabies vaccine.” Or was it an antidote? Derek tried to remember exactly what the doctor at the ER had told them when giving Jay the anti-rabies shots after the encounter with the crazed raccoon.

  “Maybe so, but these guys apparently have found a way to either come up with vaccines where none exist currently or improve on the existing state of play. If you do end up looking at it, I’d be interested in hearing your take on the story.”

  “I’ll check it out,” Derek said. Jack thanked him, then looked around the room appraisingly. He moved a bit closer to Derek before speaking again.

  “So, have you heard from your dad lately?” Jack and his father were fast friends, although the old man rarely attended Jack’s weekend soirees. The question surprised Derek, as he knew that the two men spoke regularly about the markets and the trades they were putting on. Now that he thought of it, his father had been a bit less communicative than usual in the past few days. Usually he checked in with Derek to see how things were going on the floor at least daily, and often several times a day, especially if he was out of the office and they didn’t see each other there after trading hours were over. However, Derek hadn’t heard from his father since Tuesday evening, when he had called from his hotel in Washington DC to say that that his meetings with his contacts had been very informative–although the elder Taylor hadn’t shared with Derek exactly what information he had learned.

  “I haven’t. Last time I talked to him was Tuesday. He’s in DC, as I’m sure you know, seeing which way the wind blows for Garcia’s tax cut plans.”

  “As far as my sources are concerned, the plan is DOA. Anyway, I was just curious. It’s rare I go more than a day or two without hearing from him and the last time I talked to him was Monday.”

  “The man is an inveterate communicator, I grant you that. I’m sure he’s just busy trying to get his DC buddies to spill the beans about the latest legislation.”

  “You may be right, but there was something off about his tone of voice when we talked on Monday. You know your father better than I, I’m sure, but when I asked him if he had learned anything interesting in DC, he told me there are some things that would be better not to know. I asked him what the hell that was supposed to mean, but he just laughed it off, saying he had been reading too many Le Carre novels recently.”

  “He can get a bit conspiratorial at times, as you know. I’ve heard him explain why Oswald couldn’t have killed Kennedy alone so many times I almost think I could write a book on the subject if I wanted to.”

  They both chuckled at the witticism. Derek pondered what Jack had said for a minute, as the hedge fund manager moved on to greet an arriving guest. He didn’t think his father going incommunicado while in DC on business was all that concerning. His dad had assiduously built up a network of political contacts over the years and was likely just making the most of his chance to meet some of them in person. But Jack was a perceptive guy, and his comment about the old man’s tone being off made him think of his own conversation with his father. He had seemed a bit . . . distracted when they talked. But that was not necessarily cause for concern, given how busy his father was–sticking his finger in every pie, as his mother would say when she was especially exasperated at her husband’s perpetual busyness.

  Derek walked over to where Jay and Dawn were chatting with Gloria, Jack’s wife. Dawn and Gloria were doing most of the talking, and after greeting the three of them, Derek did his best to observe Jay out of the corner of his eye. His colleague and friend worried him lately–ever since that run-in with the possibly rabid raccoon, now that he thought of it. As a precaution, they had gone to get Jay a rabies shot, and while he hadn’t developed any signs of the disease, to Derek he had seemed more irritable than usual in the last few days. Jay was characteristically a pretty laid-back guy, not one to get too worked up over trivialities, so his recent propensity to blow up at people over more or less inconsequential things was worrisome. Jay had told him earlier that he was scheduled for a follow-up visit at the hospital on Monday. If his friend’s irritability was a lingering effect of the antidote, hopefully the medical experts could deal with it then.

  Derek’s attention wandered from his surreptitious monitoring of his friend to the front door, where Jack was greeting Ira Stromberg. Ira was a few years older than Derek and worked for a competitor of PTP’s called Synecdoche Trading Solutions. The man was a bear in the trading pits, or had been before he was promoted upstairs; he had the loudest voice imaginable and was not too scrupulous when it came in trying to slip in front of a trade you made, if he thought he could make an extra buck doing so.

  Despite the rivalry between the two firms, Derek considered Ira more of a frenemy than anything else. He had to admit the guy told a good story off the trading floor, and he was happy to buy you a drink if he ran into you at the bar–notwithstanding any lack of compunction he might display when it came to frontrunning your trades in the pits.

  “Get out my face, you fucking bitch!” Jay shouted.

  Shocked, Derek placed an arm on his friend’s arm. “Jay, calm down, what’s gotten into you?” Derek had been idly listening to Gloria tease Jay about his run-in with the raccoon while he was watching Ira make his entrance, and he was certain she hadn’t said anything worthy of this type of treatment.

  Everyone in the room was looking at Jay, who wrenched himself out of Derek’s grasp and stalked out the front door. Dawn was apologizing to Gloria as Jack and Ira came over to find out what was going on. Derek took a moment to tell them he wasn’t sure what was wrong with Jay and that he would go find out, then followed his friend out the front door. He scanned the neighborhood until he spotted Jay’s truck. Jay was in the front seat and as Derek approached the vehicle his friend burst out the door, hunting rifle in hand.

  “Jay, what’s going on?” Derek said, trying to conceal the alarm he felt. “What the hell are you doing?” Before he could react, jay swung the rifle like a baseball bat, connecting with the side of his head, and stars filled his eyes as he fell to the ground.

  He lay there for a few moments before sitting up groggily, then forced himself to rise to his feet. Jay was out of his mind, that was the only reason he could think of to explain what was going on. He started running towards Jack Laird’s house. Blood from the bruise where Jay’s rifle had hit him obscured his vision. He wiped it away as he entered the house. He knew he had to hurry; if he didn’t stop his friend quickly something terrible was going to happen. He ran into the living room to see Jay with his rifle leveled at Gloria. He was screaming something at her when Jack Laird stepped in front of his wife to shield her. Derek crashed into Jay at a full sprint as a shot rang out. There was screaming and he heard somebody say: “He’s been hit.”

  Jay still held the rifle in his hands. He twisted out of Derek’s grasp, leaped to his feet and raised the rifle above his head before swinging it at him. Derek tried to dodge out of the way, but the butt of the rifle struck him full in the forehead and everything went black.

  ***

  Later that night, Derek sat on the sofa in his apartment drinking some wine. He had been taken to the hospital, where they had examined his head wound and concluded that he had probably suffered a concussion. They advised him to take some time off work and recuperate over the next few days. Jay had shot Jack Laird in the shoulder, but the hedge fund manager was in stable condition at the hospital and expected to survive. Ira Stromberg had used the wrestling skills he had honed on the Northwestern wrestling squad, and along with the other men at the party, had overpowered Jay before he could land another blow on Derek after he had knocked him unconscious.

  Jay was in jail now, where he was being held without bond until a psychiatric check could be performed. What could have set Jay off? Derek wondered. He had told the police Jay hadn’t been himself lately, but what else could he say? He had mentioned the rabies shot and the raccoon, but it was way too soon for the disease to appear if Jay had contracted it, going by what the doctors had said when he took Jay in for treatment after their hunting excursion.

  ***

  Terrell looked out the window while he waited for Jeff, Dr. Kronstedt, he reminded himself, to return to his office. The office was on the 6th floor of the massive Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. It wasn’t a particularly large office, but the view of the Hollywood Hills was killer–Jeff wasn’t doing too badly for himself, Terrell thought. He had been glad to hear that his old football pal had relocated to Los Angeles from San Diego since the last time he had seen him. It had been a while since they had talked, but when he had called, it had been just like old times. The good doctor, as Terrell irreverently labeled him, had been happy to meet even though Terrell had been less than forthcoming about exactly what medical matter he wished to discuss, saying only that it was important and that he wanted the opinion of someone he trusted.

  “So,” Jeff said when he returned to the office, “tell me more about this mysterious medical matter.”

  “You remember Ray Greinke, right?”

  “Of course, damn good guard. I thought he had a chance to go pro if he pursued it.”

  “Me too, but he wasn’t drafted and figured he’d had enough after four years at SC and didn’t feel like trying to knock on doors just to join some team’s practice squad.”

  “Last I heard he was doing well as an architect, so it sounds like he made the right choice.”

  “He’s a smart dude, but he’s in some trouble. He went off on some guys at a bar while I was with him. He was raging like a madman. It took three of us to control him.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Ray, as I remember him. He was tough yes, but he was always under control. He never used his size to intimidate people off the field as far as I knew. When did this happen?”

  “Last night. Here’s the thing. Ray and I were out jogging in Murrieta a few days back, and this rabid coyote, or so we believe, went after this girl while we were running by. We killed it, but it bit Ray before it died.”

  “If one coyote stuck around to fight two guys the size of you and Ray it must have been rabid. Did animal control test the corpse?”

  “I think so, we gave them the general location where we left it, but I never followed up. They told us the rabies shot they gave Ray would kill off the disease if he had it, so it didn’t seem too important.”

  “Rabies has a fairly long incubation phase, typically one and a half to three months, so if they gave him the customary post-exposure prophylaxis treatment soon after the bite, including a rabies vaccine shot, he should have an excellent chance of not contracting the disease.”

  “I know, that’s what I’ve been told. But the way he was acting yesterday, and even before that, short-tempered, flying into a rage over trifles . . . it’s so uncharacteristic of him I don’t know what else it could be.”

  “Are you suggesting he has some new form of the disease?”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Sadly, when it comes to pandemics, we hardly even know what is possible. Who could have predicted a disease like AIDS before it was finally diagnosed?”

  “Well, I certainly don’t have the expertise to figure out what the hell is going on with Ray, but I was hoping you might have some idea.”

  Jeff was silent for a moment, contemplating. “Well, you could probably do worse than coming to see an infectious disease specialist. Rabies is not one of the diseases I specialize in, so I’ve never studied it in particular, but for Ray’s sake I will see if I can learn anything more.”

  Terrell felt relief course through him as Jeff spoke. He had no idea if there was anything to his hunch about what was wrong with Ray, but he felt confident that if anyone could get to the bottom of it, it would be the good Dr. Kronstedt. The man had been relentless on the football field, and he saw no reason why he wouldn’t take the same approach in his medical career.

  Chapter 6

  25 Days Before

  C arl looked out the window from the conference room on the 8th floor of the FBI headquarters in Washington DC, He was waiting for Cory Harkness, deputy assistant director at the FBI’s Laboratory Division to join him. The Laboratory Division was housed at the FBI facility at Quantico, Virginia, but Harkness had other business at the headquarters so had asked that they meet there. Carl had met Harkness briefly two days earlier, but this was their first chance to talk at length. As he took in the view of pedestrians streaming down Pennsylvania Avenue outside the building, he thought back to the meeting which had inaugurated his involvement with the case he was here to discuss.

  Just two days after his talk with agent Dirksen, he had received a call from Deputy Director Gutfreund’s office. He had been directed to fly to DC immediately to discuss a high-priority matter on which his assistance was urgently required. The morning after he flew into the nation’s capital, he was in a conference room with FBI Assistant Director, Counterterrorism, Randall Finnegan, Assistant Director, Counterintelligence, Barrett “Barrie” Holt and FBI Deputy Director Marshall Gutfreund. The DD had only been there to shake his hand and impress on him the absolute requirement for need-to-know secrecy in the effort he was about to undertake, before handing the briefing over to his subordinates and departing.

  Finnegan had led the proceedings. After quizzing him on his work on the Biozeme Corporation case for a few minutes, the AD had explained the assignment. He was to be promoted to special agent in charge of conducting ad hoc bioterrorism investigations under Finnegan’s direction. His first task was to investigate a suspected bioterrorism incident in Rock Creek Park in DC. The park was still closed to the public after a park visitor had been bitten by a rabid animal. The Bureau, with help from Homeland Security, had drawn a tight net over the situation, only releasing the general information that an animal with rabies had been discovered in the park and not that anyone had been bitten.

  The truth was much scarier. While the victim had not exhibited symptoms of rabies in the first few days after being treated, he had displayed signs of contracting the disease, or some variant of it, six days after being bitten. This was unprecedented, Finnegan told Carl, as the incubation period for rabies was generally from 2 to 3 months. The bite victim had attacked the hospital staff when he went in for a follow-up checkup a week after being given the rabies antidote, as this is part of the PEP treatment protocol. Luckily, an off-duty police officer had been in the facility at the time and had shot and killed the man.

  Before he attacked the attending doctor and his assistant, the victim had exhibited classic rabies symptoms such as fear of water and fever. The two medical personnel he had attacked appeared to have avoided any major harm, but they had been sent to a secure facility where they were given the PEP treatment protocol as a precaution. For now, they had shown no sign of contracting the disease, but they were being kept in isolation for their own protection until it was certain that they were free of the virus.

  Another disturbing feature about this case was that rats, which typically did not get or spread rabies, were suspected as the initial vector for the outbreak. Carl had spoken up at this point, asking if it wouldn’t be better to alert the public to the danger of a new strain of rabies rather than trying to cover it up. Finnegan had given him a wan smile in return.

  “If this was a simple matter of some new strain of an existing disease maybe that would work, the assistant director for Counterintelligence had said, “but in this case we believe that we may be dealing with a manufactured pathogen.”

  To Carl’s shock, Finnegan explained that under the previous administration, a particularly bellicose group, development of an attenuated version of the rabies virus for the purpose of designing a wonder “battle” drug had been given the go-ahead. The intent was to develop a drug to give soldiers an edge in combat by enabling them to overcome almost any level of pain, fear or fatigue and remain aggressively focused on their mission. While the program had been dismantled when the current administration had taken office two years earlier, there were fears that this outbreak had somehow been caused by biological agents developed while the program was active.

  “Can’t you test the victim’s remains to see if there is a link between this outbreak and the attenuated virus used in the program?” Carl had asked.

  “We’ve done that, and while the test wasn’t conclusive, there could be a link–the test showed similarities in their biological signatures.” Carl had felt a chill wash through him at these words. Who could be evil enough to develop and release a synthetic rabies virus, assuming the incident in Rock Creek Park hadn’t been accidental? Could the experimental virus have been released inadvertently somehow?

  “Were the remaining rabies program materials destroyed?” Carl had asked.

  “We believe they have been,” Finnegan told him. “DAD Harkness from the Laboratory Division, who’ll you’ll meet soon, has been to all of the relevant labs to make sure of that. He should return tomorrow. Once he’s back, we’ll set up a time for him to update you.”

  “So, what is the current thinking on how likely this incident is to be intentional as opposed to accidental?”

  “That is what you are here to find out,” Finnegan had said.

  The AD had explained that the FBI, working with its CIA and media contacts, had released a story about the potential theft of bioweapons materials by terrorists, which would help provide cover for his investigation. However, he had been told, he wasn’t to allow this or any other narrative to guide his efforts: his job was to find the truth behind the incident–whether it was intentional and, if so, whether it involved domestic or foreign actors of official or non-state provenance.

 

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