Chapter 10
Steve Starts Work on the Project
Steve woke up in a sweat, the light of the world not yet on. He didn’t wonder about the time, knowing that he was not going back to sleep so he got up and went to the kitchen as quietly as possible. It wasn’t even four yet and he was pacing back and forth from the refrigerator to the doorway, muttering to himself. He skulked into the family room and turned on his computer. Over the weekend he’d spent some time researching smallpox and saw some of the gruesome photos of the different variants that existed in the world prior to elimination. If the North Koreans had really created a more virulent strain, the world was in for a major shock. He was a polymer chemist, not a medical doctor, but the images in his mind were frightening. Steve had even dreamt of a hospital ward with the patients’ skin falling off in chunks as they lay in untold agony.
Robert had not been in contact with Steve over the weekend but he didn’t really expect anything, everything had been said at their offsite meeting. Now Steve was going to have to balance the work he was doing at Foundation to get the polymer delivery system through FDA trials with the special project for the CIA. It would be easier if he could inform his co-workers but he remembered the harsh language of the documents and knew that the U.S. government is not one to be trifled with when it came to matters of national security.
There wasn’t much in the way of research to do so Steve checked the Vietnam veteran forums to see if there was anything interesting. He had just been there last night but hadn’t been paying much attention because his mind was racing around so much he couldn’t concentrate, which was not typical for him. Steve liked to work on one project at a time and give all of his focus and energy to it, which is one of the things that Rob had been ‘coaching’ him on the past couple of years. He caught up on the messages in the forums and closed the browser, content to play a few games of solitaire to pass the time. That lasted about two minutes and he once again was pacing around in his mind.
‘Wonder if I can find anything about the North Koreans myself?’ he thought and went to a search engine. There were some obscure references to smallpox and the impact on Korea before and after the Korean War but not much beyond it. He did find a couple of posts where they were generically mentioned as a country that might be pursuing biological weapons of mass destruction but it was overwhelmingly Middle Eastern dominated, especially focused on Iraq. Even though the exact contents of what had been found in Iraq were classified and not scheduled for release for another thirty years Steve thought if the American government had found something truly substantial they would have paraded it out for all to see as proof of the rationale to invade. Failing to find anything significant in his amateur sleuthing efforts, Steve caught up on the news of the day, checked the weather, and shut down his computer.
The sun was cresting the horizon and the house began to fill with natural light. Steve knew that Claire would be awake soon, her natural alarm clock rarely failing, so he moved to the couch and pretended to be sleeping, the current book he was reading resting in open position on his chest. He leveled out his breathing and focused, remembering what it was like to try and get sleep in the prison camp in Vietnam. Back then he could go to sleep on command, learning that you ate when you could and slept whenever possible because neither food nor sleep was guaranteed by his captors. The smell of the jungle came back to him in a flash, the noise of the camp not distracting him from his need to sleep, even for five minutes. He lay on a roughshod bed made up of palm fronds on the dirt floor, just enough to hopefully keep the bugs from crawling in his ears and eating his brain. His ankles and feet were numb, he’d been on them for at least a day, forced to stand and stay awake, periodically questioned, hit and then abandoned by the bi-lingual interrogators. If he took his boots off now, he didn’t think he’d be able to get back in them. Sleep came quickly and he found himself praying, a broken English prison camp religion of some sort, hoping that he’d get at least an hour of shuteye before the next round of torture started.
They stood over him, shouting in Vietnamese and shaking him. He wished they’d put a bullet in his head and be done with it. Instinctively he covered his face to protect his eyes, some of his fellow captors had fire ants put in theirs when they didn’t wake up fast enough. He was shouting compliance when he noticed that it wasn’t the Viet Cong above him but Claire, trying to wake him. He teetered on the edge of belief and worry that he was in ‘Nam and dreaming about home before his mind woke up enough to realize where and when he was.
“Are you ok Steve?” Claire had probably seen him like this a few dozen times in their marriage but not in the past few years, when it seemed that Steve had finally gotten past the dreams. This was primarily due to his contact with other vets and the ability to vent it out of his system. The pressure of this assignment, the fact that it was really Southeast Asia and not the Middle East and the knowledge of what might happen had caused him to revert.
“I’m ok Claire, thanks. Woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep so I moved down here.” He looked at the position of the sun on the horizon and knew that he’d only been asleep for a few minutes, funny how the mind can put you into such a vivid dream in a short time period. He slowly sat up and checked his feet, making sure that they weren’t swollen before standing up. Claire hugged him close for several seconds, not saying anything but providing assurance that she was there.
“Guess I’m nervous about the opportunity. This is time sensitive and I need to continue with my delivery system testing and work on this new business opportunity at the same time.”
“What can’t you have Tom or Denise pick up the testing? You always take on too much yourself; they are capable people who are well paid for what they do. Everyone knows it’s your idea.”
“It’s not that Claire, well, who am I kidding, you’re right on some level. I don’t trust anyone else to pick up my work for fear that something will happen. At some point other people will be manufacturing this and there’s enough data to start the trials. Denise has excellent lab habits, maybe I’ll ask Rob if she can pick up some of the work while I’m starting the other project.”
Claire made a cup of tea for herself and went upstairs to get ready. Steve worked on breakfast and packed a lunch, not knowing how long his day was going to be and sure that he would need the energy the way his brain was busy burning up calories. He didn’t like Claire seeing him in the dreams again and hoped that as he moved forward with the project the stress level would go down. Steve skimmed the paper, looking for any new news about North Korea though he knew he was already up to date from his early morning web search. He was confused because everything he’d read stated that North Korea was pouring all of its energy into the nuclear program and not spending any effort on chemical or biological agents.
He left Claire a note on the kitchen table telling her to have a good day and he wasn’t sure when he’d be home that night. Since they didn’t have kids and this was the school year she’d be occupied so that wouldn’t be an issue. There was some early morning traffic on 480, probably the factory workers that started at seven, but other than that the ride was uneventful. The building looked a bit ominous in the dark and as he entered the lobby behind the smoked glass it gave him the feeling of being in a cave. Once he disarmed the alarm he turned the lights on and went upstairs. There was a small kitchen with a coffee pot so he brewed some and went to pick an office. Robert had claimed the one closest to the conference room but hadn’t left anything interest laying around the room. Steve picked a room and spent thirty minutes cleaning it to his satisfaction.
The lab was downstairs behind the lobby and was well equipped with a hood, analysis equipment, mixers, scales and unopened chemicals. This place had been put together recently and no expense had been spared. He marveled at the immaculate soapstone counters and started to inventory the stock on hand against a printed list that had been left on the small metal desk in the lab. There were a handfu
l of laboratory notebooks on the desk; by habit he filled one out with his name and the date, flexing the stiff binding back and forth.
Robert barged into the lab “Why the hell isn’t the door locked? Did I not mention that we’re working on a national security item?”
Steve tried to respond but as quickly as he’d stormed into the lab he was gone, Steve could hear his little bird frame stomping up the stairs. He shook his head and figured he better lock the door behind him, something he’d never had to do in his long career at Foundation. “Might as well get to work.” He designed a set of experiments which would simulate quarter doses in order to minimize the side effects of the vaccine. The first set would release within days of each other and then the time between release would increase by days until the desired duration, which was a four week total cycle. Steve’s previous experiments led him to believe that there was linear scalability, which meant he could predict with accuracy the release time, up to one week increments for four weeks. He didn’t see Robert again until lunchtime because there was a small bathroom off the lab, which meant he didn’t need to go upstairs.
Robert came in as though nothing was wrong, Steve thinking he was going to hear about the door again. “What do you like for lunch?” He surveyed the lab, seeing the early results of Steve’s synthesis. “Nice start on the job Steve.”
“Thanks. And I brought a lunch today, guess I could save it for tomorrow. What did you have in mind?”
“Some fast food, I’ll go find something, you can eat your own lunch today. I’ll lock the door on my way out.” He stalked out, his head forward and his legs barely bending, exaggerating his bird image. “We’ll talk when I get back.”
Robert came back about an hour later and Steve was still in the lab, head down under the hood, making sure that his little spheres were forming normally. Steve completed the delicate phase of rinsing the new spheres, careful not to damage the surfaces. He double checked everything and went upstairs to get some information from Robert, wanted to know more about the project.
“Can we talk? This is a lot of information to take in such a short period of time.” Robert got up from his chair and motioned Steve to the conference room, where they both sat down. The projector warmed up when Robert attached his laptop computer to it, it was the first time Steve saw the computer and hoped he’d get one too.
The first document that Robert put up on the screen looked like one of his Vietnam vet forums and had a bunch of Korean text in it. “Are you familiar with forums and chat rooms?”
“Yes, I know what they are.”
“We have been monitoring a few in North Korea as well as some that are hosted in various places around the world. They are usually ephemeral in nature and finding them quickly is like the proverbial needle in a haystack exercise. Our guys are good and they usually spot them within a few hours of the site being created. This one is an example where they kept it up for several days and we were able to grab almost everything said.” Robert flipped to the next document and it was in English, roughly translated but it was easy to see what was being discussed. “This was almost a year ago and the powers that be dismissed it as radicals. It’s not easy to tell who the forum posters are and there will always be fringes who talk about this kind of thing.”
The next few documents had the date circled and showed that the communication had been escalating the past few months, going from very vague references to more specific dialogues about the strain of the virus they were working on, how it could be effectively delivered using aerosol release systems. Robert had certainly done his homework and this was starting to look scary to Steve, who thought about the pictures he’d seen when searching the web for smallpox information.
“Have they discussed a date and location yet?”
“There were some vague mentions about ‘multiple targets’ but there no indication of where and when. We continue to monitor the channels but they may be going on local networks now, which are harder for us to tap in to.”
“No idea who, when, where. But this is a really big what. I can see why there is some urgency. What is the capacity of our smallpox vaccination supply in the country today?”
“There is enough to vaccinate a few million people but since this is a new strain we’re not even sure if this is going to be helpful, which is why the new vaccine has to be much stronger than the ones we have today.”
“Anything else you need to know at this point?”
“Can I get a computer for this office? I have one at home and one at Foundation but it would be good to have one here and a laptop would be best because I could use it in the lab, office and at home.”
“I will get you one tomorrow, just don’t lose it. Wouldn’t want the data on it getting in the wrong hands.” Steve nodded acknowledgement as Robert closed his laptop and turned off the projector.
Steve wrapped up his first batch and left for the day, not saying anything else to Robert. He went to Foundation to check in, finding that it looked the way it did every other day. Denise and Tom tried to find out what Steve was working on but he said it was a special project for the company and he couldn’t talk about it. Both offered to pick up any of his work that he needed help with. He thanked them for the offer and told them he’d be taking them up on it. Rob was sitting in his office, having a stare down with his computer.
“Hi Rob, just wanted to let you know that I stopped to check in on the next round for the trial. Everything looks ok but I might want Denise to pick up the work for me if I get too busy on the other project.”
Rob must have been deep in thought because he barely acknowledged Steve. “Sure, whatever you say Steve. Need some privacy please.”
Steve shrugged and walked to his desk to open his mail. There were several new journals but nothing urgent so he packed it in his briefcase and went home for the day. It had not been what he had expected, guess he was expecting Robert to be more forthcoming and not just jump down his throat.