The Russian’s eyes went wide. “Very much so.”
She cued up a file on her screen. “This video has never been shown outside Pyongyang. It has never been shown outside my research laboratory, to the best of my knowledge.”
Filotov said, “I am honored.”
She looked back to him. “You might find it disturbing.”
Now the Russian smiled and took another drag. “I sincerely hope I do.”
She hit play on the device, and the screen displayed a group of men and women in white prison uniforms, standing in orderly rows in the center of a concrete prison yard. Walls and barbed wire were evident behind them, and armed guards ringed the group.
“Who are the test subjects?” Filotov asked.
She hit pause. “Political prisoners in the DPRK. We gave them Western-sized rations for six weeks to build their strength to approximate the enemy population. We also gave them more access to sunlight, more sleep, more water, more medicine. The majority of these subjects were quite healthy when the test began, although, frankly, they were not nearly so healthy as the average Westerner, so I suspect the test results ultimately were skewed in the direction of slight exaggeration of outcome.”
“How many prisoners were used?”
“We used one hundred for the primary test, which I thought to be excessive, but I was overruled. The demonstration could have been made just as easily and the results nearly as statistically significant with twenty men and women.”
Filotov said, “One hundred is a good even number. Please, continue.”
The screen showed the prisoners, still in the prison yard, in two lines walking through a small concrete building, not much larger than a potting shed.
Won said, “Here they are being administered the agent I personally designed. My strain of bacteria has been altered to allow increased pathogenicity, meaning a stronger effect from the spores, and a shorter incubation period, meaning less time before the effects become fatal. Furthermore, my strain allows more time before symptoms present, an average of four to six-and-a-half days. This will give the hosts time to infect others with secondary pneumonic plague before their own sickness even registers.”
“That is impressive, Doctor.”
The video showed the inside of the small building now. Nozzles jutted from the walls and ceiling. She said, “It is sprayed in aerosol form but it is odorless and completely invisible. The sound of the expulsion of the agent would have been evident to the prisoners, but there was no way they would have been able to discern what was happening to them.”
She added, “After they were exposed, they retired to their cells. The guards were given daily courses of antibiotics, so they would not have to wear protective gear and skew the test results by making it obvious the population had been infected.
“If antibiotics are not administered in the first eight hours and continued through a course of a week or more, the patient has little chance of survival.” With nonchalance she added, “This population was administered no antibiotics whatsoever.”
A new camera angle, again of the concrete yard, and again all the prisoners were lined up in rows. Won said, “Here they are at the end of day one. No symptoms evident, even after twenty-four hours. The same at the end of day two. This is to be expected with normal strains of pneumonic plague.”
The video image changed to show a woman in a prison uniform, obviously in an infirmary or clinic there at the labor camp, having her blood pressure taken by someone in a full hazmat suit. She was coughing into a paper towel.
“On day three, hour fifty-five in the trial, a single subject showed symptoms. This is a sixty-one-year-old woman who had already spent ten years in the labor camps.” Won glanced to Filotov. “Chronically malnourished, unhealthy, notwithstanding the weeks we attempted to strengthen her and bolster her immune system. I assessed her health as that of the average eighty-five-year-old Westerner.”
She played the video a few seconds more, and there were more men and women in the clinic now being evaluated. Some lay on gurneys; others remained standing.
“On day four there were seven showing symptoms. The sixty-one-year-old woman was unable to get off the stretcher without help. The others had coughs; two presented with fever. Again, these were the older and the less fit.”
Filotov watched more film: the sick lined up in a darkened hallway, guards walking among them.
“On day five sixteen prisoners had fallen ill. Our first subject was wholly incapacitated at this point.” The monitor displayed the woman on a hard floor mat, convulsing and vomiting. “We quickly took the fifteen who showed symptoms but were still ambulatory and put them here, in a second prison yard.”
A similar space to the first was shown, and a large group of men and women stood at attention in the middle of the concrete floor.
“This location is sequestered five hundred meters from the first. Our aim here was to check the efficacy of secondary pneumonic plague. As in the primary trial, one hundred subjects were exposed.”
The fifteen men and women showing symptoms from the primary trial entered the yard, the prisoners were dismissed from their rows, and soon they were all intermingling.
Won said, “It is not an airborne disease. For someone to become a secondary patient, they generally must be within two meters of a host subject who is showing symptoms. Coughing, for example. Still, the West is a generally crowded place. Plague can be an insidious beast.”
“I have no doubt, Doctor.”
“On day six, twenty-six patients in the primary trial showed symptoms. On day seven, that number had grown to seventy-one. The woman who presented first died on this day, along with another subject.”
The grainy video continued, showing the dead woman and rows of prostrate sick, lying in the open yard.
Filotov leaned towards the screen, entranced by the power of the microscopic bacteria.
“Day eight,” Won said. “By now eighty-eight showed coughing, fever, vomiting. There was morbidity in some extremities: the onset of gangrene. It was really quite impressive.”
The camera in the prison infirmary showed blackened fingers and toes on many of the patients.
“By day nine all one hundred of the primary subjects had developed symptoms of plague; nine had died. By day ten, the number of deaths had risen to fifty-one.”
The Russian leaned back in his chair now. “Ultimately, of the one hundred primary subjects, how many died?”
“All of them died, Mr. Filotov. The longest lived fifteen days, which was something of a miracle, but he was twenty-one and very healthy before he was infected.”
“And of the one hundred secondary subjects? What was their mortality rate?”
“Sixty-three dead, so sixty-three percent. My prediction had been between fifty and seventy-five percent, so I was quite satisfied with my analysis.”