"Richard Preston - The Cobra Event" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

seeming to ignore her. 'They've had two cases of something pretty unusual. He asked me if
we had anyone to send up there to help him out. Quietly.'
'Why don't they use the city health department?'
'I don't know why.' He looked a little annoyed. 'I know Lex from way back, so he called me.'
Walter Mellis had a pot belly, gray frizzy hair, and a mustache. He refused to wear his
Public Health Service uniform on Wednesdays, and today he had on a shirt the color of mud,
with frayed cuffs. She found herself imagining Mellis as a younger man, grooving at a Peter,
Paul, and Mary concert, believing the world was about to change. Now he was getting close
to retirement. He had become an aging federal official, stuck at the same government pay
scale forever, while the world had changed far more than his generation had expected.
'This could be something good,' he said. 'You never know. It could be a John Snow case.'
Dr John Snow was one of the first great disease detectives, a founder of the science of
modern epidemiology. He was a physician in London in 1853 when there was an outbreak of
cholera. Snow found a cluster of cases. He began interviewing the victims and their families,
carefully tracing their activities during the days just before they became sick. He discovered
that the sick people had been using the same public water pump on Broad Street. The paths
of the victims crossed at the water pump. Something in the water from that pump was
causing the disease. Snow did not know what substance in the water was making people sick,
because the microorganism that causes cholera had not been discovered, but he removed the
handle from the water pump. It stopped the outbreak. He did not need to know what was in
the water. This is the classic story of epidemiology.
The C.D.C. has a coveted award called the John Snow Award. It is presented each year to
the E.I.S. officer who is judged to have done the best case investigation. Walter Mellis was
suggesting to Alice Austen that there was a possibility that the New York case could lead to a
John Snow Award.
She did not buy it. 'Is this case part of your project?' she asked. Mellis had some kind of a
mysterious project going, a project that no one at the C.D.C. wanted to be involved with, or
so she'd heard.
'My project? The Stealth Virus Project? Yes -- it is. My idea is that there may be unknown
viruses out there. They don't cause obvious outbreaks. They sneak around. They're not very
contagious, so they just hit one person here and one person there. They're Jack the Ripper
viruses, serial killers -- stealth viruses. Lex Nathanson knows a little bit about the Stealth
Virus Project, and I've asked him to keep an eye out for anything like this.'
She noticed that he was wearing a beeper on his belt. She wondered why he needed a
beeper.
'Are you telling me everything?'
Mellis put his hand up. He sighed. He was accustomed to people ducking his project. It
didn't seem to be going anywhere. 'Look,' he said, 'if you don't want to do this, I'll call Lex and
tell him we just don't have anyone available right now. He'll understand. It's no big deal.'
'No. I'll go.'
Mellis looked a little surprised. He opened up his file folder and pulled out a Delta Air Lines
ticket and a government expense sheet. He put them on her desk. 'I appreciate this,' he said.




Vision

Alice Austen drove her Volkswagen Jetta back to her rented condominium in Decatur, a few
miles from the C.D.C. She changed out of her uniform and put on a blue silk-and-wool skirt