I Am Pilgrim

The narrative returns to al-Nassouri, who has returned to Afghanistan, once again a combat zone. When stopped, either by US forces or their opponents, he maintains his new alias as a doctor. He conceals his equipment for working with infectious biohazards and disguises his virus among real vaccines he carries.

Murdoch explains the most likely method for bioengineering a previously extinct pathogen. Ironically, a Pentagon-funded research study al-Nassouri read informed him that buying all the key DNA for a virus, and reconstructing its genome, is all possible using the internet. Murdoch reports that he himself verified the ease and rapidity of acquiring the information.

Al-Nassouri converts his garage in Beirut into a laboratory. His most challenging task is to ensure that his vaccine is both highly lethal and vaccine-evasive, so that he can render the US government’s vaccine stockpile useless. He returns to Afghanistan, new virus in hand, with the hope to conduct a small human trial. He arrives at a heavily fortified fortress, formerly British, now held by an Afghan leader: al-Nassouri’s old acquaintance, Abdul Imran Khan.

Al-Nassouri asks Khan to dismiss his retainers, and he calmly explains that he needs help: three non-Muslims for use in his experiment, since their deaths will be acceptable.