Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science Read Free Page B

sealed laboratory suites—Biosafety Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4. The corridor was filled with a weird, burning, moist smell. This smell, which will never leave my mind, was the odor of giant autoclaves—huge, pressurized steam ovens, full of equipment and waste from the labs, cooking the stuff at high heat and pressure, to make it sterile.
    The researchers’ names will be given here as Martha and Jeremy; those are not their real names.
    Jeremy glanced at Martha. “I was thinking it might be a good day for going into BL-4,” he said.
    “I was thinking so, too,” she answered. She was looking at me.
    Jeremy turned to me and said, casually, “Are you up for BL-4 today?”
    We were standing before an inconspicuous door marked AA -5. It led to one of the Ebola suites, a group of rooms where Ebola research was actively being done. “What will we be doing in there?” I asked.
    “Somebody died,” Jeremy answered ominously. “The blood samples came in the other day. We’re doing tests to try to identify any virus in the samples.”
    The dead person’s identity had not been disclosed to the Army researchers. They had been told he was a “John Doe” male. He had apparently been a U.S. government employee. He might have been a soldier. Or he might have been a diplomat. Or, possibly, John Doe had worked for an intelligence agency such as the CIA. The researchers would never learn his name, the circumstances of his death, where he had died, or who his employer had been.
    The Institute had relationships with various U.S. government agencies and offices. They were known as clients. The Institute’s clients included the White House, the Department of Defense, and, almost certainly, a number of intelligence agencies. The Institute performed research for its clients. Whichever client John Doe had worked for, he had died with symptoms that suggested a hot virus. His death had apparently involved tiny, starlike pools of blood under his skin, and blood might have been flowing from his orifices.
    “I don’t know where the samples came from,” Jeremy said. “They didn’t tell me. Maybe the Middle East. The X virus, if it’s there, seems to be Marburg-like.”
    Marburg virus is a type of Ebola that is associated with Kitum Cave, in the rain forest on the eastern side of Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano in East Africa. On at least two occasions, people who went inside Kitum Cave died shortly afterward of Marburg virus, having apparently caught the virus inside or near the cave.
    “If there’s a virus in the blood samples, it’s considered a Biosafety Level 4 agent,” Jeremy continued. “This is because the guy died and because it [the putative X virus] hasn’t been identified. It’s an Unknown,” he said.
    Martha swiped her ID card across a sensor, and a computer-synthesized voice issued from a speaker by the door: “RTU downloading.” There was a chime. “One moment please,” the computer said. A green light went on, and there was a click. The entry door had unlocked.
    Martha went through the entry door and closed it behind her. The light over the door went from green to red.
    Meanwhile, Jeremy and I waited in the corridor. Beyond the door was a locker room. Martha would take off all her clothing in the locker room and then would proceed inward through some other rooms, where she would put on her space suit and head into the Ebola zone.
    In a few minutes, the light turned green again. This meant that Martha had left the locker room and had gone farther inward. Now we could enter.
    Jeremy swiped his security card on a pad by the door, I swiped mine, and we entered the locker room. As we went into the room, we passed through an additional security system that won’t be described here.
    In the end, I never found out what role the commander had in my visit to Level 4. But I think he must have known about it. Jeremy and Martha were experienced, cautious professionals with impeccable safety records. I speculated that