Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

The doorman escorted Pitt and Loren down a side corridor to their room at the end. Audrey watched them depart, then mingled with a few of the guests. She worked her way across the rotunda to an ornate stairway and climbed to the top landing. She retrieved a key card and entered a door to the side.

Inside was a long, narrow room with a one-way mirror overlooking the rotunda. Evanna McKee was sitting in an embroidered chair, studying a typewritten speech. Rachel, the tall black woman and ever-present watchdog, was sitting in the far corner.

“The guests are anxious to see you,” Audrey said.

McKee didn’t look up. Audrey noticed a sense of heaviness about her.

“They’ll be more attentive if I make a dramatic entrance in the dining hall,” McKee said softly. “Are all of the effects ready?”

“Everything is prepared. Lights, music, aromatherapy—and of course the drinks. You will have the most receptive audience on the planet. The UN Environmental Program director will introduce you, and she is suitably energized for the task.”

“Very good. It’s our most impressive crowd yet.”

“There is one problem.” Audrey cleared her throat. McKee looked up with a studious gaze.

“The NUMA Director, Dirk Pitt, has accompanied his wife.”

“So I saw.” McKee raised a slender finger toward the one-way glass.

“He confirmed his appointment with Dr. Perkins this afternoon. He says he brought a water sample from El Salvador that he wants tested.”

McKee barely moved, her features still, as if cut from an iceberg. “I was aware of the appointment. Our good Dr. Per

kins is prepared to meet him. But I didn’t know about the water sample.”

“Our people claim they recovered them all in Washington.”

“Then, it will be an opportunity to determine if more exist. Monitor what Pitt knows. If it is too much, you must be prepared to eliminate him.”

She gave her mother a knowing smile. “That is a task for which I am quite prepared.”

“Very well. You best go attend to the guests. I’ll be down shortly.”

Audrey gave her mother a kiss on the cheek, then left the room followed by Rachel. McKee sat alone and stared at the one-way mirror. Her focus was not on the guests below, but at her own reflection. The face in the glass stared back at her with a familiar look of worthlessness. An emotional wave of self-loathing fell over her, as the grasping talons of depression clawed at her mind.

The battle with her demons was everlasting, one she had waged for most of her life. It had originated at an early age, when her father had abandoned the five-year-old Evanna and her mother without saying a word. One day he was there, the next he was gone. Rumors told of him moving to Dundee and starting a new family. The young Evanna felt responsible, carrying the guilt of the separation and the grief it imposed on her mother. The guilt only exploded when her mother, unable to cope with the emotional and economic strain, took her own life.

Evanna’s world spun out of control. Raised by a senile aunt and an abusive uncle, her guilt burgeoned into rage. Rage against her father, her uncle, and most all men. A cloud of despair, along with her own suicidal thoughts, followed her like a shadow.

She found temporary escape from her ills by marrying a young soldier named Sadler. A daughter arrived, bringing new joy to her world, then her husband was taken from her to serve in the Middle East. The gloom and depression returned, along with a failed suicide attempt. Things turned up when Frasier McKee entered her life. His bright, enthusiastic, fun-loving personality swept her away, promising a happy life. That, too, came to a bitter end.

McKee put her hands to her face and peered at her reflection. As she had done so many times before, she willed away her doubts and depression with anger. Clenching her hands into fists, she squeezed until her knuckles turned white, and took a deep breath. Rising from her chair, she extended her body erect, then strode from the room with vengeance on her mind.

35

Dr. Susan Montgomery inserted a slide into the chamber of the electron microscope and activated its power controls. Once the machine created a vacuum and scanned a beam of electrons over the inserted specimen, a dark, blurry object appeared on the attached desktop monitor. She adjusted the magnification until a trio of oblong shapes appeared on the screen. They were blackish in color with a fuzzy perimeter, and resembled a handful of licorice jelly beans.

The epidemiologist for the CDC Surveillance and Data Branch compared the image to a stock photograph of Vibrio cholerae stored on the computer. Visually, at least, the bacteria sample on her glass slide was a dead ringer for the cholera-inducing bacteria. But a battery of other biochemical tests had told her that it was not the same.

Montgomery knew that not all forms of the cholera bacteria were toxic. The bacteria in the water sample from Cerrón Grande, however, showed clear evidence of toxin production. And it passed most of the biochemical tests for V. cholerae O1, the classic subset, or serogroup, most commonly found in lethal outbreaks of the disease. Yet several of the test results were inconsistent, leading her to believe she had something different on her hands.

She was well aware that cholera, as a disease, had been a scourge of mankind for centuries, if not millennia. No less than seven worldwide pandemics had been attributed to cholera since 1817 alone, killing millions in the process. The disease, still common in developing countries, was normally spread by water supplies or food contaminated with fecal matter. Children are most harmed by the disease, often succumbing to rapid dehydration.

Cholera as a modern danger was exhibited in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Aid workers from Nepal inadvertently contaminated the Artibonite River, Haiti’s largest waterway and a major source of drinking water. The outbreak has led to over ten thousand deaths in the devastated country in the intervening years.

Montgomery stared again at the magnified image on her monitor, when the door to the lab swung open and a bushy-haired man in a green lab coat entered. He carried a binder under his arm and a grimace on his face. Montgomery knew the division’s Lab Research director to be an ebullient jokester, and she immediately noted the change in his demeanor.

“Hi, Byron,” she said. “Are those my DNA homology reports?”