Gamay sensed that Lee was in shock from the violence she had witnessed.
“It’s okay, Dr. Lee,” she said. “You’re safe now.”
Lee turned her head, and Gamay saw tears glistening in her eyes.
“I’m a doctor,” Lee said. “I’m supposed to save lives, not take them.”
“You saved our lives,” Gamay said. “That man and his friends would have killed us both.”
“I know that. Still . . .”
“Do you have any idea who they were?” Paul asked.
Lee wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.
“He said he had been watching me for days,” she said. “He was waiting for me where I had left the kayak and forced me to go to the house. We were waiting for people coming to take me away. I pleaded with him. We argued. That’s when I grabbed the knife and ran.”
Gamay put her hand on Lee’s forearm.
“I think you had better start at the beginning,” Gamay said.
Lee gulped down her Coke like a thirsty longshoreman, then began to tell her story.
She had been born in a rural part of China, excelled in science as a college student, and went to study in the U.S. on a grant from the Chinese government. She had seen firsthand the ravages of disease among the poorer citizens of China and wanted to do something about it. She specialized in immunology at Harvard Medical School, and did her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Returning to China, she found a job with a government program targeting the health of slum dwellers. The work centered on prevention, making sure that people were immunized and eliminating the sources of disease in the water and air. Her success led to a position in a hospital, where she was working at the time the SARS epidemic broke out.
Finally, Lee told Gamay how she had been exiled to the countryside after questioning the government’s response to SARS, and about her redemption and assignment to Bonefish Key, to work on a vaccine, based on an ocean organism, for a new virus strain.
“The blue medusa?”
“That’s right.” She seemed surprised. “It’s related to the highly toxic sea wasp. How did you know about it?”
“I badgered Dr. Mayhew, and he showed me the research room.”
“I’m amazed that he allowed you to see it,” Lee said. She stared at Gamay as if she were seeing her for the first time. “I just realized that I really don’t know who you are.”
“I’m a marine biologist with NUMA. I came to Bonefish Key because I was interested in ocean biomedicine.”
“From the looks of it, you were more interested in me,” Lee said.
“Sometimes things just happen,” Gamay said.
Lee smiled.
“You sound like a Chinese philosopher, Dr. Trout. Anyway, I’m glad you were interested or I might not be here.”
“Dr. Mayhew said the blue medusa was a new species.”
“That’s right. Bigger and more aggressive than the sea wasp. After the work moved to the new lab, they were going to use genetic engineering to produce a more powerful toxin.”
“I wasn’t aware there was another lab,” Gamay said.
“It was secret. They called it Da
vy Jones’s Locker. Dr. Kane and Lois Mitchell, his assistant, left Bonefish Key and took a number of scientists and technicians with them. Dr. Mayhew and the remaining staff stayed on to make sure there were no flaws in the original research. I was charting the probable spread of the virus and how best to contain it.”
“How effective was the toxin-derived drug?” Paul said.