Bite

by Nick Louth

  I lay down next to him and picked it up. He showed me how to balance the weight on my elbows, use the sliding bolt, and aim through the sight.

  ‘I didn’t know you wore glasses,’ he said.

  ‘I stopped years ago. These are for emergencies only. I need to go back in there to get my contact lenses and a whole lot of other things. Like some decent clothes for example.’

  ‘Not until tonight. Or whenever they go. They won’t stay here long. This is a government village.’

  Later I went to the monkey tree hoping Tomas had made it. I waited for two hours but he didn’t come. Even the monkeys had gone. I tore a strip from the hem of my sarong and tied it around a low branch so that he would know I’d been there.

  All day we could hear them in the village. Children were crying and there were some gunshots. By late afternoon it had gone quiet and no-one had yet come down the path to Jarman’s hut. He ran back and fetched some dried fruit and beef jerky. He had plenty of rice and pasta, but what little water he had in his jerry can we decided to eke out for drinking.

  We waited until it was dark and edged closer to the clearing. We smelt smoke. The guerrillas had made a big camp fire and were standing around it, laughing and joking. The sleeping hut was thirty yards away from the fire, but the entrance faced it. It was a risk, but I had to get some clothing. We also agreed the torch batteries, shortwave radio and a big collapsible jerry can were pretty much essential. Jarman offered to go alone, but I pointed out that he wouldn’t be able to lug the water and the stuff I needed, and have his pistol in his hand.

  He checked and loaded the rifle and passed it back to me. We moved through the bush around the perimeter of the clearing until the sleeping hut was between us and the fire. Keeping low, we sprinted across until we reached the shadows of the veranda. There was no sound, so we crept in.

  I put the rifle aside and went ahead into the darkness. We couldn’t risk attracting attention by using Jarman’s torch. I found trousers and shirt and put them on. Spare underwear and toiletries I stuffed into my breast pockets.

  On the floor next to my boots I found a polythene bag containing my diary and pen. I put them in my trouser pocket and was about to get up when I heard a sound, very close. There was someone here ahead of me. Jarman cocked the gun. I could hear breathing. It was fast and urgent.

  ‘Who is it?’ I hissed.

  There was no reply. Jarman decided he had to risk the torch. Its beam lit a terrified Salvation flat on the floor, hiding among the backpacks. I crouched down and kissed him on the forehead.

  ‘Salvation, I’m so glad you are safe. Have you seen Tomas?’ My heart was beating hard as I asked.

  ‘Kaipelai took him. Smash camera. Beat him.’

  I helped Salvation up, hugged him, and handed him his crutch. Jarman turned to the door. He had only taken one step outside before a huge blow from a rifle butt smashed him to the ground. I screamed as they came in for us. Salvation stood between me and two guerrillas hopping on one leg with his crutch held like a club. They swept him and his foolish bravery aside effortlessly.

  I was punched repeatedly until I fell. Then an agony as a heavy boot smashed me in the mouth. I felt the blood and the last thing I remembered thinking was about my dentist in Dorchester, and how happy I would be to sit there in his waiting room reading magazines, until he was ready to fix this mess.

  Someone was holding my hand as I awoke. It was dark but I could sense several people nearby.

  ‘Erica are you awake?’ It was Tomas.

  I tried to voice my relief, but only a low yowl escaped as I moved my jaw. Fresh blood seeped onto my tongue. I hugged Tomas close and heard his sharp intake of breath. He was hurt too. ‘Careful,’ he said.

  I touched his face. The wetness was more than sweat and I traced it back to his brimming eyes. Then I kissed his sweaty, salty neck. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. I flexed my mouth and breathed a low whisper. ‘Are Jarman and Salvation here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Not good.’

  I heard Georg’s voice. ‘They beat them both. They are sleeping.’

  ‘Oh, Georg. Who else is here?’ I asked, afraid to ask directly about Amy.

  ‘Amy is here. And Margaret.’

  I heard their greetings.

  ‘What about Annette? And Etenzi?’

  No one spoke for a few long seconds. ‘No,’ Georg said, softly.

  Gradually, I told them about Cecile, and they told me of the killings they had seen and heard. Etenzi had been killed with machetes in front of his screaming grandchildren. Annette had been led away by one of the captors. No-one had seen her since.

  ‘You are being moved on in the morning,’ Tomas said.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘No, I mean all of you.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I can’t come.’ He was kneeling, motionless next to me on the hard cement floor.

  ‘Why not?’ No one else said a word. I could sense they were all in on this secret.

  ‘I tried to escape this afternoon. They caught me and held me down. They cut my achilles tendons with a machete.’

  ‘Oh God! Tomas.’ He allowed me to feel down along the back of his legs. There were rough tourniquets around both ankles, and under the crust of dried blood, they were both wet.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Tomas said. ‘We journalists use the verb hamstring all the time. I had never thought what it really meant. Now I have to kneel like this just to keep the wounds closed. I can’t even crawl, and I’m getting numb beneath my knees. If I’m lucky the government may come through in a couple days with a truck or a jeep. Or…’ He shrugged.

  ‘What about medical kit?’

  ‘They won’t let us have it. And we don’t have any water.’ Amy’s voice was thick with hatred. ‘And they took Georg’s medication.’

  Everyone shut up the moment we heard voices. A door was thrown open and light bathed our prison. It was Zizunga’s schoolroom. It was ten feet by twenty, bare cement, with a zinc roof over a few cobwebbed wooden beams. Jarman and Salvation were asleep at the far end. On the wall were a crucifix and a large framed photograph of Pope John Paul II. Wooden benches were stacked along one edge.

  A guerrilla walked in holding a hissing hurricane lamp and a machete. He was tall and thin, with a shiny bare head like a teak carving. His deepset eyes blazed in the lamplight and he looked at each of us in turn. I noticed that the righthand sleeve of his fatigues was spattered with dried blood. We all cowered, unwilling to meet the malign gaze.

  ‘We need water.’ Georg’s voice was low but firm. ‘We haven’t had any all day. And we must have medicine.’

  He turned to Georg and unsheathed a gap-toothed smile. ‘Water. Yes.’ He turned and went out, leaving his lamp to two young guards behind him.

  One, a boy of perhaps thirteen, stepped in grinning. He had a tatty green shirt and cheap plastic sandals. I realised he had been in last week’s KPLA patrol, and felt oddly relieved that some had survived.

  The boy looked at us then suddenly lunged forward with his aged rifle to his shoulder. ‘Dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka!!!’ he yelled. ‘Tomorrow!’

  In my fright I knocked into Tomas and he cursed as his wounds opened up again. Margaret was sobbing. Amy had her head in her hands.

  The boy looked around and nodded as he edged out. ‘All dead. Tomorrow,’ he said, and closed the door.

  (Erica’s Diary 1992)

  Chapter Seventeen

  Penny Ryan stood silently with Don Quiggan at the hospital bed. It was hard to believe that the shrunken, pale figure plugged full of tubes was Iron Jack Erskine. Penny had softly called his name, and Jack had turned his head. He opened his mouth but no words emerged, just a dry click. He didn’t seem to recognise them.

  The doctors said the fever had dropped, but his red blood cells were still being infected and destroyed. He might need a transfusion unless there was a clear positive response to the anti-ma
larial drugs they were using. Penny had arranged for Erskine’s wife and kids to fly out to see him. She tried to think what she could say to reassure them when they arrived. There was the fact that he was apparently in the care of a famous professor, a tropical disease expert. Penny had seen a lot of hospitals in a lot of places, and was confident there could be no better care than was being provided here.

  Quiggan had eaten half the grapes he had brought and was starting on the banana when Saskia walked in with Professor van Diemen. She introduced him to Quiggan and Penny.

  ‘I am sorry I have not been able to speak to you before,’ Van Diemen said. ‘But we have been grappling with the unexpected. As I think you have been told, this seems to be a new form of malaria. As far as we know the only two cases in the world are here in intensive care.’

  ‘Who’s the other one?’ Quiggan said through a mouthful of banana.

  ‘A mysterious young woman,’ he pointed through the glass partition to the adjacent room. ‘In a moment I will take you to see her. We know nothing about her, so if she is known to you we can start to find out what she and Mr. Erskine have in common.’

  ‘You mean they got infected the same way?’ Penny said.

  ‘Almost certainly so. No new forms of malaria have emerged anywhere in the world for a hundred years. The statistical chances of two such occurrences happening independently is miniscule. I think we will find they were in the same place at the same time, and were infected in the same way.’

  ‘But Saskia told me that Jack hadn’t been to the tropics recently enough to get malaria anyhow.’

  ‘From the travel details you have given, that is true. But we cannot rely on normal malarial parameters. All we know that he and the other patient have in common is that they have both been in the Netherlands. What other places they have visited, I do not know. Maybe New York, maybe other places, I just don’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t think we had malaria in New York,’ said Quiggan.

  ‘Neither do we have it in the Netherlands, not since the early 1950s. But when one is dealing with something new, it is best not to make any assumptions, that’s all.’

  Quiggan shrugged.

  ‘I’ve read stuff about global warming moving malaria up from Africa to Spain and the Balkans,’ Penny said. ‘Could this be it?’

  ‘No. They are referring to existing malaria types extending their range. This is different, we have a new parasite, and I mean new to science, unknown to literature. We literally know nothing about it except that under the microscope it resembles the worst form of malarial causing parasite and those who have it in their blood seem to have all the symptoms of severe malaria. Its genes however, match nothing in our parasitic library.’

  ‘I just don’t understand how he could have got it,’ Penny said.

  ‘Perhaps the parasite lies dormant much longer before causing malarial symptoms, so we need a longer travel history. Perhaps they were bitten by tropical mosquitoes that were trapped in an aircraft cabin. Or perhaps this is a new temperate malaria carried by local mosquitoes. We just do not know.’

  ‘There is another possibility,’ Saskia said. ‘We can’t assume the involvement of mosquitoes at all. There is a theoretical risk of contracting malaria via blood transfusion, drug needle sharing and so on.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Quiggan said. ‘Next thing you’ll say is we don’t know for sure it’s malaria at all. We want results! All you are telling me here is what you don’t know. Jack Erskine built Pharmstar into a knowledge-based corporation that transformed the pharmaceutical industry, and now he’s lying here with a tube up his nose like some junkie AIDS faggot. You had better understand this. We can’t afford to lose him. And you are gonna pull him through.’

  ‘Don, please, this isn’t helping.’ Penny pulled him back on the chair.

  ‘Penny, look. We could medevac him tonight. Get him into a good private hospital back home. Get some quality care.’

  ‘You know he’s too sick to be moved.’

  ‘Look. We don’t have to take this. I’m going to call Howard right now and get those supercomputers cranked up in Princeton. See what we can come through on the genetics. We got ten million bucks we can toss in to make it an emergency project. Use the databases, hook in the CDC in Atlanta. We’ll find out all the cases of this new bug worldwide, track ’em back to source.’

  Penny sighed. ‘Don, please. They are doing everything that can be done.’

  ‘Your chief executive will live or die based on what we can do with current knowledge, I’m afraid,’ Van Diemen said. ‘However much you have to spend, you cannot buy a medical advance overnight.’

  Quiggan rubbed his temples. ‘Shit, the timing is awful. We need Jack fighting fit. We got a lot of deals on the boil right now. There’s no end of guys out there wanting to eat our lunch.’ He stood up. ‘I’m gonna make some calls.’ He dug out his mobile phone, tossed the banana skin into a bin, and stalked into the corridor.

  Professor van Diemen watched him go. ‘He can really find ten million dollars just like that?’

  ‘Easily,’ Penny said.

  ‘But that would provide a mosquito net for every child in Tanzania.’

  ‘To Pharmstar ten million is petty cash,’ Penny said. ‘Last week it took him only a dozen phone calls to get three billion dollars together.’

  ‘What on earth for?’ the professor said.

  ‘The takeover of Utrecht Laboratories.’

  Van Diemen grunted. ‘I read about that. Takeovers, acquisitions. I never see the point of companies passing staff, research and factories back and forth between them. It never seems to make a single sick person healthier.’

  ‘Trust me, it’s the reverse. Pharmstar’s investment bankers are killing themselves to get this deal together on schedule. Yes, I do know what you mean. Seeing Jack here like this really brings it home,’ Penny said.

  Van Diemen took Penny into the next room, where two nurses were wheeling a heart monitor aside to make room for a second IV stand. Lying there unconscious, fair hair slicked dark with sweat, was a young woman.

  ‘We can only stay a moment. She is about to have a blood transfusion,’ Van Diemen said.

  ‘That face is familiar,’ Penny said, as Quiggan came into the room.

  ‘Don, do you know this woman?’ Penny asked.

  Quiggan nodded. ‘Could I ever forget a face like hers? That’s the attendant from our KLM flight.’

  Max stepped out of the courtroom into warm sunshine and breathed deeply as if he had never done it before. Henk’s lawyer, a sleek-headed weasel in tasselled loafers called Maarten Winkel had got Max bail in the teeth of the prosecutor’s opposition. There was a price: bail equal to about twenty thousand bucks which Henk had stumped up; Max’s surrendered passport, and the worst of all, reporting in daily at the Warmoesstraat police station.

  Henk had one condition of his own, and the fact he made it showed how the warmth and trust between them had stiffened into a kind of brittle formality, just one light tap away from destruction. Max was to sign over almost all his sculptures in the exhibition to Henk to cover Winkel’s fees and the bail bond. Winkel’s finger pointed out each section of the form, his breath irritating Max’s neck as he signed and signed and signed again.

  The art dealer suggested one practical step too. As Max was broke, Henk offered him a place to stay, with a spare couch to sleep on. The apartment was one floor below the gallery, and Max could have the spare keys. No point footing unnecessary bills, Henk had said.

  So Max went back to his hotel, to the memory of Erica’s last evening with him, and packed up the last part of his old life. The chambermaid had done her best with the mess Max had left. Erica’s clothing was neatly folded on a chair or hung up in the wardrobe, the journals stacked, the toiletries on a table by the window. Max packed twice, once for himself and once for her. The strange thing was he half expected to see something among her stuff that would make him think of where she could be, make him edge a little closer to t
he why of her disappearance. There was nothing, just a struggle to fit the discarded accessories of her life, the three thick still-unread volumes of her life story, all into her two not-over-large suitcases.

  It was his own clothing that yielded the surprise. Max had filled his own case and had taken his best jacket from the wardrobe, folding it to put on top, the last item before the lid came down. He heard something tick and click on the quarry-tile floor like a falling button. But the jacket was fine, no buttons missing on breast or cuffs. Down on his knees, Max found what had made the noise. An orange tablet with a blue spot, which must have found its way into his jacket side pocket during the flight. That’s right. He remembered the nervous-looking guy next to him having his tablets knocked all over the place.

  Max dinged the tablet into the waste bin.

  He drove the crowded canal-side mile to Henk’s place, blocked the narrow street while he unloaded the cases, then returned the rental car before returning to Henk’s place by tram. Max’s jaded eye took in the quaint side streets, the bustling shoppers and the columns of cyclists as if he were looking up at them from the murky bottom of a canal. His memory of being here with Erica, the excitement of his first European exhibition was just surface light and distortion, now he was drowning in a different world.

  If that’s how it was, he’d better adapt.

  Back at Henk’s apartment Max took a shower and as he towelled himself in the tasteful saffron-tinted bathroom, he caught his reflection in the long gilt-framed mirror. Long gone was the sculpted muscular definition he had during the Coast Guard days, the hummocked arms that could bench two hundred pounds, twenty reps without working a sweat. Then he weighed a hundred fifty-five. Now he was a chunky hundred ninety pounder. In ten more years he’d be called fat.

  When Henk returned an hour later Max was on the lounge carpet dressed only in shorts, grunting and cursing his way through an old Coast Guard fitness regime.

  ‘Oh, it’s my birthday! Someone’s given me a half-naked bodybuilder.’ Henk made a theatrical expression of delight.

  Max grimaced as he finished his forty-seventh press-up, and lifted himself to his knees. ‘I’m rebuilding this body from the foundations, starting today.’