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by Frederick Forsyth

  That morning the mother took her son to the doctor. None of the Soviet Bloc embassies merited a doctor all to themselves, but they shared one. Dr. Svoboda was at the Czech Embassy but he ministered to the whole Communist community. He was a good and conscientious man and it took him only a few moments to assure the Russian mother that her boy had a touch of malaria. He administered the appropriate dose of one of the niviquine/paludrine variants used by Russian medicine at that time, with further tablets to be taken daily.

  There was no response. In two days the child’s condition worsened. The temperature and the shivers increased, and he screamed from his headache. The ambassador had no hesitation in granting permission for a visit to Nairobi General Hospital. Because the mother could speak no English, her husband, Second Secretary (Trade) Nikolai Ilyich Turkin, went with her.

  Dr. Winston Moi was also a fine physician and he probably knew the tropical diseases better than the Czech doctor. He did a thorough diagnosis and straightened up with a smile.

  “Plasmodium falciparum,” he decreed. The father leaned forward with a puzzled frown. His English was good, but not that good. “It is a variant of malaria, but alas resistant to all the chloroquine-based drugs such as those prescribed by my good colleague Dr. Svoboda.”

  Dr. Moi administered an intravenous injection of a strong broad-spectrum antibiotic. It seemed to work. At first. After a week, when the drug course ceased, the condition returned. By now the mother was hysterical. Denouncing all forms of foreign medicine, she insisted she and her son be flown back to Moscow and the ambassador agreed.

  Once there, the boy was admitted to the exclusive KGB clinic. This was possible because Second Secretary (Trade) Nikolai Turkin was in fact Major Turkin of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB.

  The clinic was good, and it had a fine tropical medicine department, because KGB men can be posted all over the world. Because of the intractable nature of the small boy’s case, it went right to the departmental head, Professor Glazunov. He read both the files from Nairobi and ordered a series of CT and ultrasound scans then the last word in technology unavailable just about anywhere else in the USSR.

  The scans worried him badly. They revealed a series developing internal abscesses on various organs inside the boy. When he asked Mrs. Turkin into his office his face was grave.

  “I know what it is, at least I am sure I do, but it cannot be treated. With heavy use of antibiotics your boy may survive a month. More unlikely I am very sorry.”

  The weeping mother was escorted out. A sympathetic assistant explained to her what had been found. It was a rare disease called melioidosis, very uncommon indeed in Africa but more common in Southeast Asia. It was the Americans who had identified it during the Vietnam war.

  U.S. helicopter pilots had been the first to produce symptoms of a new and usually fatal illness. Research discovered that their rotor blades, hovering over the rice paddies, whipped up a fine aerosol spray of paddy water that some of them had breathed in. The bacillus, resistant to all known antibiotics, was in the water. The Russians knew this because although they shared none of their own discoveries at that time, they were like a sponge when it came to absorbing Western knowledge. Professor Glazunov would automatically receive every single Western technical publication in his field.

  In a long telephone call punctuated by sobbing, Mrs. Turkin told her husband their son was going to die. From melioidosis. Major Turkin wrote it down. Then he went to see his superior, the KGB Head of Station, Colonel Kuliev. He was sympathetic but adamant.

  “Intervene with the Americans? Are you crazy?”

  “Comrade Colonel, if the Yanks have identified it, and seven years ago at that, they may have something for it.”

  “But we can’t ask them that,” protested the colonel. “There is a question of national prestige here.”

  “There is a question of my son’s life here,” shouted the major.

  “That is enough. Consider yourself dismissed.”

  Taking his career in his hands Turkin went to the ambassador. The diplomat was not a cruel man but he too could not be moved.

  “Interventions between our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Department are rare and confined to matters of state,” he told the young officer. “By the way, does Colonel Kuliev know you are here?”

  “No, Comrade Ambassador.”

  “Then for the sake of your future prospects, I shall not tell him. And neither will you. But the answer is no.”

  “If I were a member of the Politburo …” Turkin began.

  “But you are not. You are a junior major of thirty-two serving his country in the middle of Kenya. I am sorry for your boy, but there is nothing that can be done.”

  As he went down the stairs Nikolai Turkin reflected bitterly that First Secretary Yuri Andropov was daily being kept alive by medications flown in from London. Then he went out to get drunk.

  ¯

  GETTING into the British Embassy was not that easy. Standing on the pavement across the quay Zaitsev could see the big ocher-colored mansion and even the top of the pillared portico that shielded the giant carved-timber doors. But there was no way of just wandering in.

  Along the frontage of the still-shuttered building ran a wall of steel, penetrated by two wide gates for cars, one for “in” and one for “out.” Also made of corrugated steel, they were electrically operated and firmly closed.

  To the right-hand side was an entrance for pedestrians, but there were two barred grilles. At pavement level two Russian militiamen were posted to check on anyone trying to walk in. The Rabbit had no intention of presenting himself to them. Even past the first grille there was a passage and a second barred gate. Between the two was the hut of the embassy security, itself manned by two British-employed Russian guards. Their business was to ask entrants what they wanted, and then check inside the embassy. Too many seeking visas had tried to wangle their way into the building via that gate.

  Zaitsev wandered aimlessly around to the back where, in a narrow street, was the entrance to the visa section. It was seven in the morning and the door would not open for another three hours, but already there was a queue a hundred meters long. Clearly many had waited all night. To join the line now would mean almost two days of waiting. He ambled back to the front. This time the militiamen gave him a long and searching look. Frightened, Zaitsev shuffled off down the quay to wait until the embassy opened for business and the diplomats arrived.

  Just before ten, the first of the British began to appear. They came in cars. The vehicles paused at the “in” gate but clearly each one was expected and the gate rumbled open to let the car in before sliding closed again. Zaitsev, watching down the quay, thought of trying to approach a car, but they all had the windows closed and the militiamen were only feet away. The people in the cars would think he was a petitioner of some kind and would keep their windows closed. Then he would be arrested. The police would find out what he had done and tell Mr. Akopov.

  Leonid Zaitsev was not accustomed to complex problems. He was puzzled but he was also fixated. He just wanted to give his pieces of paper to the people with the funny flag. So through that long hot morning he watched and he waited.

  Nairobi, 1983

  LIKE all Soviet diplomats Nikolai Turkin had a limited resource of foreign exchange and that included Kenyan currency. The Ibis Grill, Alan Bobbe’s Bistro, and the Carnivore were a mite expensive for his pocket. He went to the open-air Thorn Tree Café at the New Stanley Hotel on Kimathi Street, took a table in the garden not far from the big old acacia tree, ordered a vodka and a beer chaser, and sat sunk in despair.

  Thirty minutes later a man of about his own age who had sipped half a beer at the bar eased himself off his stool and walked over. Turkin heard a voice say in English:

  “Hey, lighten up, old pal, it may never happen.”

  The Russian looked up. He recognized the American vaguely. Someone from their embassy. Turkin worked in Directorate K of the First Chief Director
ate, the counterintelligence wing. His job was not only to monitor all the Soviet diplomats and protect the local KGB operation from penetration, but also to keep a sharp eye open for a vulnerable Westerner who might be recruited. As such he had the freedom to mix with other diplomats, including Westerners, a freedom denied to any ordinary Russian on the staff.

  The CIA suspected, precisely from his freedom of movement and contact, what Turkin really did, and had a slim file on him. But there was no handle to grip. The man was a copper-bottomed child of the Soviet regime.

  For his part Turkin suspected the American was probably CIA, but he had been taught that all American diplomats were probably CIA; a fond illusion but an error on the side of caution.

  The American sat down and held out a hand.

  “Jason Monk. You’re Nik Turkin, right? Saw you at the British garden party last week. You look like you just got posted to Greenland.”

  Turkin studied the American. He had a shock of corn-colored hair that fell over his forehead and an engaging grin. There seemed to be no guile in his face; perhaps he was not CIA after all. He seemed the sort of man one could talk to. On another day Nikolai Turkin would have leaned back on all those years of training and remained polite but noncommittal. This was not another day. He needed to talk to someone. He started, and poured his heart out. The American was concerned and sympathetic. He noted the word melioidosis on a beer coaster. They parted long after dark. The Russian went back to the guarded compound and Monk to his apartment off Harry Thuku Road.

  ¯

  CELIA Stone was twenty-six, slim, dark, and pretty. She was also Assistant Press Attaché at the British Embassy, Moscow, on her first foreign posting since being accepted into the Foreign Office two years earlier after graduating in Russian from Girton College, Oxford. She was also enjoying life.

  That July 16 she came out of the embassy’s big front doors and glanced down at the parking area where her small but functional Rover was parked.

  From inside the embassy compound she could see what Zaitsev could not, because of the steel wall. She stood at the top of the five steps leading down to the blacktop parking area, punctured by tonsured lawns, small trees, bushes, and a blaze of flower beds. Looking over the steel wall, she could see across the river the towering bulk of the Kremlin, pastel lime, ocher, cream, and white with the gleaming golden onion domes of the various cathedrals jutting above the crenellated red stone wall that encircled the fortress. It was a magnificent sight.

  On either side of her the raised entrance was reached by two ramps, up which only the ambassador was allowed to drive. Lesser mortals parked below and walked. Once a young diplomat had done his career a power of no good by driving his VW Beetle up the ramp in sheeting rain and parking beneath the portico. Minutes later the ambassador, arriving to find his access blocked, had to get out of his Rolls-Royce at the bottom, and walk the rest of the way. He was soaked and not amused.

  Celia Stone tripped down the steps, nodded at the gate man, got into the bright red Rover, and started up. By the time she had pulled to the “out” gate the steel sheets were sliding back. She rolled out onto Sofia Embankment and turned left toward the Stone Bridge, heading for her lunch date with a reporter from Sevodnya. She did not notice a scruffy old man shuffling frantically after her. Nor did she realize hers was the first car to leave the embassy that morning.

  The Kamenny Most, or Stone Bridge, is the oldest permanent bridge across the river. In olden days pontoon bridges were used, erected in spring and dismantled in winter when the ice became hard enough to ride over.

  Because of its bulk, it not only spans the river but jumps over Sofia Quay as well. To gain access from the quay by road, a driver has to turn left again for a hundred yards until the bridge returns to ground level, then hang a U-turn and drive up the slope of the bridge. But a walker can run up the steps direct from the quay below to the bridge above. That is what the Rabbit did.

  He was on the pavement of the Stone Bridge when the red Rover came by. He waved his arms. The woman inside gave a startled look and drove on. Zaitsev set off in hopeless pursuit. But he had noted the Russian number plate, and saw that on the northern side of the bridge the Rover pulled half left into the traffic maelstrom of Borovitskaya Square.

  Celia Stone’s destination was Rosy O’Grady’s Pub on Znamenka Street. This unlikely Muscovite tavern is actually Irish, and the watering hole where the Irish ambassador is likely to be found on New Year’s Eve if he can get away from the stuffier parties of the diplomatic circuit. It also serves lunch. Celia Stone had chosen to meet her Russian reporter there.

  She found a parking space without difficulty just round the corner, for fewer and fewer Russians could afford cars or the petrol to run them, and began to walk back. As always when an obvious foreigner approached a restaurant the derelicts and beggars hauled themselves out of their doorways and off the pavement to intercept and ask for food.

  As a young diplomat, she had been briefed at the Foreign Office in London before her posting, but the reality always shocked her. She had seen beggars in the Underground of London and in the alleys of New York, the bag people who had somehow slid down the ladder of society to take up residence on its bottom rung. But in Moscow, the capital of a country experiencing the onset of real famine, the wretches with their hands out for money or food had once, and not long ago, been farmers, soldiers, clerks, and shopkeepers. She was reminded of TV documentaries of the Third World.

  Vadim, the giant doorman of the Rosy O’Grady, saw her several yards away and ran forward, clouting several begging fellow Russians out of the way in order to secure safe passage for a vital hard-currency patron of his employers’ restaurant.

  Offended by the spectacle of the supplicants’ humiliation at the hands of another Russian, Celia protested feebly, but Vadim swept a long, muscular arm between her and the row of extended hands, swept open the restaurant door, and ushered her inside.

  The contrast was immediate, from the dusty street and the hungry beggars to the convivial chatter of fifty people who could afford meat and fish for lunch. Being a good-hearted young woman, she always had trouble when lunching or dining out, trying to reconcile the food on her own plate with the hunger outside. The genial Russian reporter who waved to her from a corner table had no such problem. He was studying the list of zakuski starters and settled for Archangel prawns.

  Zaitsev the Rabbit, still plodding on his quest, scoured Borovitskaya Square for the red Rover, but it had gone. He checked all the streets leading off to the left and right for a flash of red paintwork, but there was none. Finally he chose the main boulevard on the far side of the square. To his amazement and joy he saw it two hundred yards further on, just round a corner from the pub.

  Indistinguishable from the others waiting with the patience of the utterly cowed, Zaitsev took up position near the Rover and started to wait again.

  Nairobi, 1983

  IT had been ten years since Jason Monk had been a sophomore at the University of Virginia and he had lost touch with many of the students he had known. But he still recalled Norman Stein. Theirs had been an odd friendship, the medium-height but hard-muscled football player from the farm country and the unathletic son of a Jewish doctor from Fredericksburg. It was a shared and mocking sense of humor that had made them friends. If Monk had had the talent for languages, Stein was the near genius in the Biology Department.

  He had graduated summa cum laude one year before Monk and gone straight to medical school. They had kept in touch the usual way, by Christmas cards. Crossing a restaurant lobby in Washington two years earlier, just before his Kenyan posting came through Monk had seen his friend lunching alone. They had had half an hour together before Stein’s lunch partner had showed. That had enabled them to catch up on each other’s news, though Monk had had to lie and say he worked for the State Department.

  Stein had become a doctor then taken a Ph D in tropical medicine and was even then rejoicing in his new appointment to the research faci
lity at Walter Reed Army Hospital. From his apartment in Nairobi, Jason Monk checked his address book and made a call. A blurred voice answered at the tenth ring.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hi, Norm. It’s Jason Monk.” Pause.

  “Great. Where are you?”

  “In Nairobi.”

  “Great. Nairobi. Of course. And what time is it there?”

  Monk told him. Midday.

  “Well it’s five in the fucking morning here and my alarm is set for seven. I was up half the night with the baby. It’s teething, for God’s sake. Thanks a lot, pal.”

  “Calm down, Norm. Tell me something. You ever heard of something called melioidosis?”

  There was a pause. The voice that came back had lost all trace of sleep.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Monk spun him a story. Not about a Russian diplomat. He said there was a kid of five, son of a guy he knew. Seemed the boy was likely to die. He had heard vaguely that Uncle Sam had had some experience with that particular illness.

  “Give me your number,” said Stein. “I have to make some calls. I’ll get back to you.”

  It was five in the afternoon when Monk’s phone rang.

  “There is—may be—something,” said the physician. “Now listen, it’s completely revolutionary, prototype stage. We’ve done some tests, they seem good. So far. But it hasn’t even been submitted to the FDA yet. Let alone cleared. We’re not through testing yet.”

  What Stein was describing was a very early cephalosporin antibiotic with no name in 1983. It would later be marketed in the late eighties as ceftazidime. Then it was just called CZ-1. Today it is the standard treatment for melioidosis.

  “It may have side effects,” said Stein. “We don’t know.”

  “How long to develop these side effects?” asked Monk.