Pandemic

Kabaal glanced at Sabri who stood motionless with his gun by his side. His face was so devoid of expression that it could have been cast in wax. Staring into Sabri's pale icy eyes, Kabaal fought off a shudder. Partly because he had never seen an execution before, but mainly because he was looking at one of the most fearsome men he had ever encountered.

CHAPTER 7

JIAYUGUAN CITY, GANSU PROVINCE CHINA

Jiayuguan City was named after a section of a wall. Not just any wall. The Great Wall of China. And in the fourteenth century, the Jiayuguan Pass, or fortress, was the westernmost point of the Great Wall. A formidable structure, it was once called the "The First and Greatest Pass Under the Heaven."

Haldane had learned all this from the guidebook he had tried to read, between bouts of nausea and Duncan McLeod's incessant nervous chatter, on the turbulent China Airlines flight. When too green to read, Haldane mulled over what little he knew about ARCS, dejectedly deciding they would need the epidemiological equivalent of the Great Wall to keep it from spreading beyond the Gansu Province.

Thirteen hours after leaving Geneva, with their internal clocks turned upside down, the WHO team — Milly Yuen, Helmut Streicher, Duncan McLeod, and Noah Haldane— touched down at the Jiayuguan City airport. They were met by a sea of bureaucrats and military personnel laden with gifts varying from flowers to local carvings and silks. Everyone was smiles and gratitude. A sharp contrast to the chilly welcome Haldane received on his previous visits to China during the heyday of the SARS uproar. As Jean Nantal had assured, the Chinese government appeared to be taking a different approach from their disastrous policy of secrecy and denial when SARS swept the Guangdong Province.

After an impromptu receiving line of introductions, handshakes, and bows, the Chinese officials led the WHO team out of the terminal to a waiting stretch limousine, which sat in the middle of a row of escort cars. UN flags flew prominently from the antennae on either side of its trunk. With lights flashing, police motorcycles led the procession from the airport.

With their backs to the driver, Haldane and McLeod sat across from Yuen and Streicher in the rear seat. McLeod pointed out the window at the motorcycles flanking either side. "Shite, when exactly was I crowned Queen?" he commented in his Scottish lilt.

Yuen giggled, but Streicher sighed. "Dr. McLeod, must everything be a joke to you?"

"Not everything. Helmut." McLeod stroked his patchy red beard. "But don't you find it a tad curious that we're here to investigate the plague and we get welcomed like we were the Spice Girls… before Ginger left?"

"Ginger?" Streicher frowned, bewildered by the reference.

"If you ignore him, Helmut, he eventually stops," Haldane advised. He pointed out the window. "Duncan's got a point. The government is making a big show of us."

McLeod stretched out in the plush leather seat. "Then again, it's about damn time we got the recognition we deserve."

"Why now?" Milly asked quietly, without making eye contact with anyone.

"Exactly." Haldane nodded. "Last time we were pariahs, now we're heroes. And we haven't done anything except show up."

McLeod shrugged. "The locals know they're going to be under the spotlight soon. They're readying themselves for the circus."

Haldane nodded distractedly. "Yeah. Makes sense."

Streicher fixed his intense gray-blue eyes on Haldane. "You're not convinced." He stated it as fact.

"I'm a born skeptic when it comes to government motives." Haldane shrugged. "Whenever I see them roll out the red carpet, I wonder if it's out there to cover up some serious dirt."

McLeod laughed and slapped the seat beside him. "Haldane, you're a cynical bastard! But I like the way you think."

The procession wound through the streets of Jiayuguan City. With Yuen translating, their driver acted as tour guide, tossing out tidbits of history and geography along with a hefty dose of local political gossip.

With a population of less than two hundred thousand, Jiayuguan was a small city by Chinese standards. Modem and industrial, it was built in the sixties to support the local steel industry. As a result, it had all the gray uniformity of communist construction from the peak days of the Cultural Revolution. But it lacked the ethnic charm seen in the temples, palaces, and other features of more historic Chinese cities that Haldane had seen.

After driving for ten minutes through the heart of Jiayuguan, the scenery was so repetitive that Haldane felt as if they were circling the same block. Just as he turned to McLeod to voice this suspicion, the limo pulled up to the front of the Great Wall Hotel. Stepping out of the car, Haldane suddenly felt uneasy. He didn't know if it was the gray clouds, the oppressively similar buildings, or the specter of the unspecified epidemic that hung in the air, but he experienced a sense of unsettled urgency.