Resistant by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online

swirling around her, Jennifer thought there was a serenity there.
    She stood motionless as the violent compressions continued, punctuated by more drugs and shocks. Then finally, after what seemed an eternity, it was over. The anesthesiologist, clearly shaken, checked the clock, thanked the team, and stated the precise time.
    Beneath her mask, Jennifer finally felt the flood of tears begin. Still, she stood there, unaware that she was rubbing at the odd rash between her fingers.

 
    CHAPTER 6
               Should a person offer to plow a farmer’s field for no fee, the farmer would be a fool to plow it for himself.

             —LANCASTER R. HILL, 100 Neighbors , SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P. 24
    “I’m afraid I’ve not progressed as far as I had hoped.”
    Dr. Andrew Pollack’s voice came through the speakers with perfect clarity, not at all distorted this time. The latency from the last encryption program had made conversation almost inaudible. At least, Kazimi thought glumly, this was one thing going right.
    “Just send me what you have,” he said.
    “You’re going to be disappointed, Kaz.”
    Kazimi hesitated. Three years into all this, and he still had not grown accustomed to being called by that name, even though he was—at least according to his driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, social security number, and those associated with him personally or online—the person called Ahmed Kazimi. Those perfect documents were not the product of some fly-by-night backroom forger, but came courtesy of the federal government of the United States of America. As for the Stanford microbiologist who had been born with another name, that man was simply missing—vanished one day into thin air, and presumed by the police, the university, and all those who knew him, to be dead, drowned while sailing in his small sloop.
    “Lately, I’ve come to expect disappointments,” Kazimi replied finally.
    “Well, at least we’re not dealing with a real crisis.”
    Kazimi fought the urge to correct Pollack, who was convinced that he was part of an online task force made up of military men, scientists, and even bestselling writers of fictional suspense. Their mission, conceived and orchestrated by the president himself, was to create scenarios involving bioterrorism and then to devise ways to counter the danger. Kazimi skillfully bounced a soccer ball on one foot while awaiting the brilliant Northwestern University entomologist’s data transmission. It had taken years of constant effort, but finally Kazimi and his virtual team of experts were making real progress in developing a macrolide/beta lactam antibiotic to treat the Gram-positive fluctuation of the bacterium dubbed the Doomsday Germ. To his continued dismay, coming up with an effective treatment for the Gram-negative fluctuation continued to elude them.
    At least Kazimi had the endless resources of the federal government at his disposal. The lab where he worked was located in the basement of a brownstone in Brightwood, a quiet Washington neighborhood near the District’s northern tip. To ensure secrecy, the government, at his suggestion, agreed to hide the lab in plain sight. Nobody, not even the resourceful One Hundred Neighbors, would presume to look for a government-run microbiology laboratory in a residential neighborhood.
    Before he vanished, the lab had been built to Kazimi’s exacting specifications. He had incubators, freezers, an electron microscope, biological safety cabinets, plus several computers. What he did not have—at least not yet—was a viable treatment for the Doomsday Germ.
    “Have you received my transmission?” Pollack asked.
    Kazimi thought he heard a slight phase shift in Pollack’s voice—the equivalent of a digital quaver. Perhaps it was just his ears playing tricks again. Fourteen hours working with few breaks in a basement lab, with no access to sunlight, and rare direct human contact, could do that to a man. Yes,