Page 19 of Stars

“My organization provides health services to the Russian penal system, and my crews often travel great distances between isolated gulags deep in the Russian Far East. Two teams of doctors have reported unusual findings on their drives between prisons in the western Sakha Republic.”

Ethan closed his eyes, picturing Russia like a colored map from his childhood. He’d only learned the different districts and oblasts and republics while on the run with Jack, sneaking through Russia’s hinterlands with Sergey and the rest of the Russian insurgency to Sakhalin Island. Bordering Siberia to the east, Sakha was an isolated, wild republic famous for having the coldest recorded temperature in the world. Beyond Sakha lay the even more untamed wilderness of the Far East. Sasha had crossed the Sakha Republic on foot from north to south before finding Jack and Sergey at the Chernaya Noch prison during their sprint for Sakhalin.

There was almost nothing and practically no one in Sakha. Tribesmen. Reindeer herders. Isolated pockets of humanity. Scattered gulags and Russian maximum-security prisons. He held Jack’s gaze as Dr. Mendoza continued.

“My first team came across a body lying on the road. Not an unusual sight in these parts, and the man had been deceased for some time. However, the corpse showed evidence of severe hemorrhagic fever. He’d exsanguinated more so than what we usually see in an Ebola or Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. He’d also enucleated himself—”

“Pardon?”

She paused. “He’d torn out his eyes.” Ethan grimaced. “This was not a typical case of hemorrhagic fever, not something my team had ever seen before. They decided to try to track his movements as best they could. He was a tribesman, a Yakut, so my team went to the two closest Yakut villages. One was perfectly normal. No sign of illness. No one knew who the dead man was.”

“And the other?”

“Burned off the face of the planet.”

Jack frowned. He met Ethan’s gaze.

“Every home, every building, every structure had been burned to the ground, Jack. The villagers had been burned as well. It appeared that some were herded into a central building and murdered. Others were burned alive in their homes. There were twenty-three complete sets of skeletons.”

“Did you report this to Russian authorities?”

“We did, immediately, and I followed up with calls to the administrator of the Mirninsky District and the governor of Sakha himself. We turned over our photos and copies of our evidence. And we never heard a word.”

“Have you been back? Have you seen if anyone has been out to the village?”

“It’s gone, Jack. As if it was never there. The bones, the burned buildings. Even the earth has been dug out, a meter deep, over the entire footprint of the village. Erasing even the fire damage.”

“Jesus,” Ethan breathed.

“You said there were two incidents,” Jack said. “What else?”

“Nine weeks later, we found another village, also removed from the earth, in the same district in Sakha Republic.”

“You said this wasn’t similar to any other case of hemorrhagic fever you’ve seen before? Not like Crimean…” Ethan trailed off, not remembering the full name of the fever Dr. Mendoza had mentioned.

If she was startled to hear Ethan’s voice on the line, she didn’t show it. “Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. It’s less fatal than Ebola but easier to catch. TheHyalommatick carries the disease, and their bite can infect humans. However, theHyalommatick doesn’t live north of fifty degrees latitude. A line drawn on a map stretching from Ukraine to Kazakhstan represents the northern limit of the tick’s range. These villages were all north of sixty degrees.”

“Are you worried about the chance of an outbreak?” Jack asked. He’d grabbed Ethan’s phone and pulled up a map of Russia as she spoke.

“There is a moral and legal obligation to notify the world health community about outbreaks of highly contagious diseases. The country’s government is responsible for notifying the WHO. There has been no notification.”

“I don’t think murdering two villages and scraping them off the earth is Sergey’s style.” Jack shook his head as he glanced at Ethan.

“I have not had the privilege of meeting the Russian president,” Dr. Mendoza said carefully. “I’ll defer to your expertise on him. But, Jack… my team strongly doubts that this was an outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and that these were outbreak containment measures. The corpse we found did not present like CCHF.”

“What do you think this is?”

She hesitated. Ethan heard her sigh. “Human experimentation,” she finally said, her voice low. “You can say I’m overreacting.Many of my colleagues do. I’ve seen more than enough outbreaks in my career, Jack. I’ve also seen war crimes, crimes against humanity. Thisfeelslike that.”

“How so?”

“A man killed by an unknown disease, one that that appears brutally deadly and similar to an extremely virulent, incurable hemorrhagic fever. Isolated communities dying under suspicious circumstances. With such an outbreak, one would expect a panicked response from the authorities. But we’re not seeing that. Instead of action, there’s hiding. It’s the government cover-up and the villages burned to the ground, along with the stonewalling everywhere I turn for answers, that raise my suspicions. Villages don’t just burn to the ground, and the earth beneath them doesn’t just disappear.”

Jack stayed quiet. He held Ethan’s gaze. “No, they don’t. Who have you called for help on this?”

“No one in Sakha is taking my calls anymore. The information I turned over to the local government is gone. The few people I have been able to reach pretend they’ve never heard of my report or even those two villages. Nothing happens when I call Moscow. I’m never put through to anyone. Three times, I’ve been disconnected. I’m never able to get through to President Puchkov or his office.”

“That’s not like him. It’s not,” Jack said.