All of a sudden, a second report crackled over the airwaves. A worker had collapsed at a construction site in San Leandro. That was on the other side of the bay. They didn’t know if it was a heart attack, or something ingested.
As we tried to follow up, a news flash broadcast came over one of the monitors: “Breaking news… In Redwood City, the local elementary school has been evacuated after children were rushed to a nearby hospital, having collapsed, showing signs of violent sickness, possibly related to a toxic substance. This, on top of broadcast alerts of possible terrorist activity today…”
“Any more reports of illness from the school?” Molinari spoke into the phone.
“None yet,” the principal replied. The school was completely evacuated. The helicopter was still circling.
Suddenly a doctor from the ER gave us an update. “Their temperatures are one oh three point five to one oh four,” the doctor reported. “Acute nausea and dyspnea. I don’t know what’s causing it. I’ve never had experience with this sort of thing before.”
“You need to take immediate mouth and nasal swabs to determine if they were exposed,” the toxins expert was instructing. “And chest X-rays. Look for any kind of bilateral infiltrates.”
Claire cut in. “How are the pulmonary functions? Breathing? Lung activity?”
Everyone waited anxiously. “They seem to be functioning,” the doctor reported.
Claire grabbed Molinari’s arm. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t think this is ricin,” she said.
“How can you be sure?”
Claire had the floor. “Ricin attacks through a necrosis of the vascular cells. I saw the results. The lungs would already be starting to degrade. Also, ricin has a four-to-eight-hour incubation period, does it not, Dr. Taub?” she asked the toxicology expert on the line.
The expert begrudgingly agreed.
“That means they would’ve had to have been exposed during the night. If the lungs are symptom-free, I don’t think it has anything to do with that water. I don’t know if this is some kind of staph attack, or strychnine…. I don’t think it’s ricin.”
The minutes passed slowly as the doctors in Redwood City ran through the first series of diagnostic tests.
An EMS team was already on the scene in San Leandro. They reported that the construction worker there was having a heart attack and had been stabilized. “A heart attack,” they repeated.
Minutes later, Redwood City reported back. A chest X-ray showed no deterioration of the lungs in any of the children. “The bloodwork showed traces of staphylococcal enterotoxin B.”
I watched Claire’s expression.
“What the hell does that mean?” Mayor Fiske demanded.
“It means they’ve got a severe staph infection,” she said, exhaling. “It’s serious, and it’s contagious, but it’s not ricin.”
Chapter 80
THE RINCON CENTER was full at noon. Hundreds of people chatting over lunch, scanning the sports pages, rushing around with bags from the Gap or Office Max. Just relaxing under the enormous plane of water that fell from the glittering roof.
The pianist was playing. Mariah Carey. “A hero comes along…” But no one seemed to notice the music or the player. Hell, he was awful.
Robert sat reading the paper, his heart beating wildly. No more room for talk or argument, he kept thinking. No more waiting for change. Today he’d make his own. God knows, he was one of the disenfranchised. In and out of VA hospitals. Made crazy by his combat experience, then abandoned. That was what had made him a radical.
He tapped the leather briefcase with his shoes, just to make sure it was still there. He was reminded of something he had seen on TV, in a dramatization of the Civil War. A runaway slave had been freed and then conscripted to fight for the North. He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. After one, he happened to spot his old master, shell-shocked and wounded among the Confederate prisoners. “Hello, massa,” the slave went up to him and said, “looks like bottom rail’s on top now.”
And that’s what Robert was thinking as he panned the unsuspecting lawyers and bankers slopping down their lunch. Bottom rail’s on top now….
Across the crowd, the man Robert was waiting for stepped into the concourse—the man with the salt-and-pepper hair. His blood came alive. He stood, wrapping his fingers around the case handle, keeping his eyes fixed on the man—his target for today.
This was the moment, he told himself, when all the fancy speeches and vows and homilies turn into deed. He tossed down his newspaper. The area around the fountain was jam-packed. He headed toward the piano.
Are you afraid to act? Are you afraid to set the wheel in motion?
No, Robert said, I’m ready. I’ve been ready for years. He stopped and waited at the piano. The pianist started up a new tune, the Beatles: “Something.” More of the white man’s garbage.
Robert smiled at the young red-headed dude behind the keyboard. He took a bill out of his wallet and stuffed it in the bowl.