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They might be lucky once again, and the avian virus wouldn’t mutate in time for the next influenza season, but Rodrigo refused to rely on luck. The mutation could happen at any time. He was in a race with the virus, and he was determined to win.
“It’s your job to make certain there aren’t any more setbacks,” he told Vincenzo. “An opportunity such as this comes once in a lifetime. We will not miss it.” Left unsaid was that if Vincenzo couldn’t get the work done, Rodrigo would bring in someone who could. Vincenzo was an old friend, yes—of his father’s. Rodrigo wasn’t burdened by the same sentimentality. Vincenzo had done the most important work, but it was at a point where others could take over.
“Perhaps it isn’t once in a lifetime,” said Vincenzo. “What I have done with this virus, I can do again.”
“But in these particular circumstances? This is perfect. If all goes well, no one will ever know and, in fact, we’ll be praised as saviors. We’re perfectly positioned to take advantage this one time. With the WHO funding your research, no one will be amazed that we have the vaccine. But if we go to the well too many times, my friend, the water will become muddied and questions will be asked that we don’t want answered. There cannot be a pandemic every year, or even every five years, without someone becoming suspicious.”
“Things change,” Vincenzo argued. “The world’s population is living in closer contact with animals than ever before.”
“And no disease has ever been studied as thoroughly as influenza. Any variation is examined by thousands of microscopes. You’re a doctor, you know this.” Influenza was the great killer; more people had died in the 1918 pandemic than during the four-year Great Plague that had devastated Europe during the Middle Ages. The 1918 influenza had killed, it was estimated, between forty and fifty million people. Even in normal years influenza killed thousands, hundreds of thousands. Every year two hundred and fifty million doses of vaccine were produced, and that was only a fraction of what would be needed during a pandemic.
Labs in the United States, Australia, and the U.K. worked under strict regulations to produce the vaccine that targeted the virus researchers said would most likely be dominant in each influenza season. The thing about a pandemic, however, was that it was always caused by a virus that hadn’t been predicted, hadn’t been seen before, and thus the available vaccine wouldn’t be effective against it. The whole process was a giant guessing game, with millions of lives at stake. Most of the time, the researchers guessed right. But about once every thirty years or so, a virus would mutate and catch them flat-footed. It had been thirty-five years since the Hong Kong influenza pandemic of 1968–69; the next pandemic was overdue, and the clock was ticking.
Salvatore had used all his influence and contacts to win the WHO grant to develop a reliable method of vaccine production for avian influenza. The selected labs that normally produced vaccine would be focusing on the usual strains of viruses, not the avian virus, so their vaccines would be useless. Because of the grant and Vincenzo’s research, only the Nervi labs would have the know-how to produce the avian vaccine and—here was the important part—have doses ready to ship. With millions of people worldwide dropping like flies from the new strain, any effective vaccine against it would be priceless. The sky was literally the limit to how much profit could be made in a few short months.
There was no way to produce enough to protect everyone, of course, but the world’s population would benefit by some judicious thinning, Rodrigo thought.
The explosion in August had threatened all of that, and Salvatore had moved swiftly to control the damage. The ones who had set the explosion had been eliminated, and a new security system installed, since obviously the old one had huge flaws. But despite all his efforts, Rodrigo had never been able to discover who hired the husband-and-wife team to destroy the lab. A rival for the vaccine? There was no rival, no other laboratory working on this particular project. A general
business rival? There had been bigger targets that could have been selected, but were ignored.
First the explosion, then three months later Salvatore was murdered. Could the two be linked? Over the years there had been many attempts on Salvatore’s life, so perhaps there was no connection between the two events. Perhaps this was simply a very bad year. And yet . . . the Joubrans had been professionals, the husband a demolitions expert and the wife an assassin; Denise Morel was probably also a professional assassin. Was it beyond the realm of possibility that they’d been hired by the same person?
But the two events were very different in nature. In the first, Vincenzo’s work had been deliberately targeted and destroyed. Since it was no secret he was working on a different method of producing influenza vaccine, who would benefit from that destruction? Only someone who was also working on the same project, knew Vincenzo was close, and wanted to steal a march on him. Undoubtedly there were private laboratories that were trying to develop an avian flu vaccine, but who among the many researchers would not only know how close Vincenzo was but have the financial wherewithal to hire two professionals to stop him?
One of the regular sanctioned laboratories that produced influenza vaccines, perhaps?
Killing Salvatore, on the other hand, in no way affected Vincenzo’s work. Rodrigo had simply stepped into Salvatore’s place. No, his father’s murder served no purpose in that arena, so he couldn’t see a connection.
The phone rang. Vincenzo got up to leave, but Rodrigo stayed him with a lifted hand; he had more questions about the vaccine. He picked up the receiver. “Yes.”
“I have an answer to your question.” Again, no names were used, but he recognized Blanc’s quiet voice. “There was nothing in our data banks. Our friends, however, came up with a match. Her name is Liliane Mansfield, she is American, and she is a contract agent, a professional assassin.”
Rodrigo’s blood ran cold. “They hired her?” If the Americans had turned on him, matters had just become enormously complicated.
“No. My contact says our friends are greatly disturbed and are themselves trying to find her.”
Reading between the lines, Rodrigo interpreted that to mean that the CIA was trying to find her to eliminate her. Ah! That explained the American man who had been to her flat searching for her. It was a relief to have that mystery explained, as well; Rodrigo liked to know who all the players were on his chessboard. With the vast American resources and extensive knowledge they must have about her, they were far more likely to succeed before he did . . . but he wanted to personally oversee the solution to her breathing problem. She breathed, therefore she was a problem.
“Is there any way your contact can share their knowledge with you, as they receive it?” If he knew what the CIA knew, he could let them do the legwork for him.
“Perhaps. There is one other thing that I thought would be of great interest to you. This woman was a very close friend of the Joubrans.”
Rodrigo closed his eyes. There it was, the one detail that made sense of everything, that tied it all together. “Thank you,” he said. “Please let me know if you can work out this other matter with our friends.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’d like a copy of all the information you have on her.”
“I will fax it to you as soon as I am able,” Blanc replied, meaning when he returned home that night. He would never send information to Rodrigo from the Interpol building itself.
Rodrigo hung up and leaned his head back against his chair. The two events were connected, after all, but not in any way he’d imagined. Vengeance. So simple, and something he understood with every cell in his body. Salvatore had killed her friends, so she had killed Salvatore. Whoever had hired the Joubrans to destroy Vincenzo’s work had set in motion a chain of events that had ended with his father’s murder.
“Her name is Liliane Mansfield,” he told Vincenzo. “Denise Morel’s real name, that is. She is a professional assassin, and she was friends with the Joubrans.”
Vincenzo’s eyes widened. “And she took the poison herself? Knowing what it was? Brilliant! Foolhardy, but brilliant.”
Rodrigo didn’t share in Vincenzo’s admiration for this Liliane Mansfield’s actions. His father had died a very painful, difficult death, robbed of dignity and control, and he would never forget that.
