Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

“The lab?

?s work and location were tightly held secrets, but somehow it was hijacked along with the staff. Joe and I think that the lab’s disappearance, the bathysphere attack, and the attempt to kidnap you are all connected. Dr. Kane told me about the medusa project. What was the exact nature of your work at the Florida lab?”

“I’m a virologist trained in epidemiology,” Lee said. “I stayed on Bonefish Key to concentrate on the probable path an epidemic would take and how best to position our resources and the vaccine-production facilities.”

“That would make you an integral part of the project.”

“I like to think so. The vaccine would be useless without a strategy to deploy it. It would be as if a general sent his troops into battle without a plan.”

“What would have happened to the project if you had been kidnapped?”

“Not much,” she said with a shrug of the shoulders. “The plans are almost all in place, waiting for the cure to be synthesized into a viable vaccine. With the lab gone, there isn’t much chance of that happening.”

“Don’t give up hope, Dr. Lee. The lab is the object of a massive search. In fact, Joe and I are on our way to Micronesia to see if we can help the searchers.”

Lee dropped her gaze to the map lying on the table.

“You’re going to Pohnpei?” she asked.

“It looks that way,” Austin said. “Have you been there?”

“No, but the island was the epicenter of the deadly epidemic that struck the Pacific whaling fleet in the mid-1800s. This is extremely significant.”

“In what way, Dr. Lee?”

“At Harvard Medical School, I did a paper for a Professor Codman that was based on an article I came across in an old medical journal. The doctor who wrote the article had compiled statistics about a group of New Bedford whaling men who had been virtually disease-free for much of their very long lives.”

Austin tried to glance at his watch without being obvious. He had little interest in oddball medical phenomena. The whine of the Citation’s engines warming up provided a convenient out.

“It has been a great pleasure meeting you,” he said. “We’re going to be taking off soon . . .”

“Hear me out, Mr. Austin,” Lee said, raising her voice above the engines.

Austin smiled at the unexpected firmness.

“Go on, Dr. Lee, but please keep it brief.”

She nodded.

“The men in the study group had all crewed aboard the whaling ship Princess. They became ill after the ship stopped in Pohnpei.”

“I still don’t see the connection to the lab . . .”

It was Song Lee’s turn to be impatient.

“It’s right there in front of you, Mr. Austin. The crew all survived! If that doesn’t get your attention, maybe this will. The symptoms of the disease were almost identical to those of this latest epidemic. The crewmen should have died, but instead they enjoyed robust health for the rest of their lives. Somehow, they were cured.”

“Are you saying that what cured the whalers might work for the new virus?” Austin asked.

“Precisely.”

Austin’s mental machinery kicked into gear. A bunch of whalers lived disease-free to a ripe old age after a trip to Micronesia, the same neighborhood where the blue medusa lives. He connected that to what Kane told him about the toxin keeping its prey healthy until the medusa made a meal of it. He glanced around at his colleagues.

“The log of the Princess for that expedition would make interesting reading,” Paul Trout commented.

“I tried to track the 1848 logbook down through Harvard’s Widener Library,” Lee said. “My research led me to New Bedford. A dealer in antique books named Brimmer said he might be able to locate the book, but I was about to leave for home and had to put the whole thing aside.”

The pilot’s voice called back from the cockpit.