by Nick Louth
It was Henry Waterson.
Chapter Nineteen
Penny Ryan was not her usual efficient self as she combed through Jack Erskine’s hotel room. She was trying to collect fresh clothes to take to hospital for him, and find any papers that Don Quiggan and the investment bankers might need.
All she could think about was that at this moment Jack was undergoing a blood transfusion, designed to replace dying cells with clean oxygen-bearing blood. Saskia had explained that this would only buy time against the disease. The parasites would take over the new transfused cells, turning them into factories for their offspring until one of two eventualities arose. One, a way was found of killing them, or two, they killed Jack.
Penny imagined little devils with horns and tridents crouching in crimson bubbles, multiplying and multiplying. She found she was crying, and wiped her eyes on a handkerchief.
To rally herself, she tipped out Erskine’s briefcase on to the bed. Most of the papers she had already sorted, but there were plenty of bits and pieces: receipts, gum wrappers, ballpoint pens, computer discs and a postcard.
She picked the card up. The front had a picture of an African market. She turned it over and read the scrawling script.
Dear Jack,
I do hope you are well. I have been thinking of your suggestions from last year. I believe I may have what you are looking for. I’ve sent a sample for you to test. Let me know if it fits the bill!
All the best.
The signature was illegible. The card had been posted in Kinshasa a few weeks ago, addressed to Pharmstar’s Atlanta headquarters. On it were two large colourful stamps. She thought of her eight-year-old son Carl and his stamp collection. She took the card into the kitchenette, boiled the kettle and held the stamped corner of the card into the plume of steam until it softened the gum.
When the stamps slid off she was astonished to find a tiny cellophane packet underneath. Sealed in it, with a few grains of silica gel, was the body of an insect. A little squashed but still recognisable. It was a mosquito.
An hour later we awoke to the sound of the Land Rover being revved, and fear immediately began to flutter in my chest. There were groans in the sweaty heat of the hut. I untangled my arms from Tomas’s still kneeling form, and sat up. One look at him showed he had not slept at all. I knew Tomas was agnostic but circumstances had forced him into the shape for prayer. There would never be a better time for that.
His face showed an acceptance that I found terrifying. But when he parted his hands it was to reveal not a rosary but a black plastic film canister. ‘Erica, please take this. I shot it the morning they arrived. I got the bodies, the killing, everything.’
‘But I thought they smashed your camera.’
‘They did, but I was on the second film. This is the first.’ He pressed it in my hand. ‘Keep it dry and as cool as possible. Get it to my bureau chief in Nairobi. The address is on a business card inside.’
I pressed my lips together as I regarded his face. Heavy feet were approaching.
‘I love you, Tomas.’ I held the canister up. ‘And we’re going to let the world know what they did in Zizunga.’ I put it in my pocket just before the door opened.
There stood the gap-tooth guerrilla from the night before. He was wearing a beret and a short-sleeve military shirt. He indicated us all with a flick of the hand. ‘You come.’
‘Where are we going?’ Georg asked.
‘No questions,’ the guerrilla said.
‘What about the injured?’ Sister Margaret said. ‘They cannot walk.’
He ignored her and walked out. Three scruffy teenagers with rifles came in shouting, one of them Dakka, the name Tomas had given the young guard who noisily predicted our execution.
Georg and Amy helped Jarman to his feet while I crouched with Tomas. Sister Margaret was struggling to help Salvation to his one good leg, but he didn’t want to get up. Only when we heard his screams did we realise they had smashed his remaining knee cap.
I lifted Tomas as best I could, but he was shaking his head. ‘No. No. You can’t.’
Dakka grinned at my struggle and walked over. I thought he was going to take Tomas’s other arm, but instead he pulled me away. Tomas hit the floor, and screeched in pain.
‘See.’ he pointed at Tomas’s writhing form. ‘Dis boy broken, Lady.’
‘You bastard!’ I screamed at Dakka and launched myself at him. I tore at his face with my nails and in a lucky kick, toppled him. The other two boys were on me in an instant. I was dragged outside by my legs while everyone else shouted and screamed.
Dakka reappeared, jogging alongside as I was painfully dragged across the clearing. The scratches I had made on his face were bleeding and the other two guards were laughing at him. Dakka had a machete in his hand and hatred set in his jaw. He windmilled his arms, slicing the air, practising what he was going to do to me.
They took me under some fig trees, talking and laughing all the while. I was still bursting with anger, but the fear spread underneath like ice as I realised that I was totally alone. They stopped, holding my arms wide while Dakka stood there silently, breathing hard, his machete poised near my kicking feet.
For a few moments I stopped screaming and kicking and just listened. I could not understand a word, but the harsh tone of the boys holding my arms was suddenly clear to me. They were goading Dakka, and not just about being scratched by a woman. This was something that mattered to him, some inferiority, which outweighed the absolute power in his hands. I could imagine them in another world, with satchels and blazers, schoolboys of thirteen or fourteen enmeshed by playground anxieties. The vision gave me hope.
Dakka watched as the other two ripped my shirt open. A strange faraway look came into his face as he stared at my breasts. More cold curiosity than lusty heat. It was when he carefully wiped the blood from his face with a sleeve that I knew he was a virgin. His first time, here in front of the more experienced others, would be to overcome a struggling western woman twice his age. He was almost as scared as I was.
Dakka glanced up at my face and lifted his machete with a snarl. He flung it into the ground, just a few inches from my knee. The blade quivered, between our respective fears, as he slowly undid his belt.
(Erica’s Diary 1992)
KLM flight attendant Marijke Wildenberg died within thirty-six hours of being admitted to hospital, never having regained consciousness. Confirmation of her identity, and the fact that both she and Jack Erskine had been on the same flight brought another flurry of visits to Professor van Diemen from delegates to the Parasitology Forum and a deluge of media interest. Van Diemen Fever, newspapers were now beginning to call it, much to the professor’s irritation. Doctors across the country added to the pressure. Faced with any patient with an unexplained high fever they sent off blood samples to the Randstad Medical Centre without a second thought.
The more time Van Diemen was kept from the lab, the more work fell to Saskia. As the only other person who could recognise Plasmodium five, she was seconded to the microbiology lab full time to take up the additional workload. When Saskia raised the question of her studies, Van Diemen promised she wouldn’t lose out. He said he would square it up with the examination board. Besides, here was a chance of a lifetime, to be on the cutting edge of medicine, to make a name for yourself before your twenty-fifth birthday.
It took only a couple of days for the reality to sink in. Nine hours a day squinting down a microscope, and another three writing up notes. She had identified three more cases of Plasmodium five, three out of four hundred samples that had been tested. Now it was nine o’clock at night, time to go home. Saskia was exhausted, her baby was due in just under two months, and her vision blurred from too long looking at slides.
She was clearing up and scrubbing her hands when she remembered a promise she had made that morning. She had just been rushing along a corridor into intensive care when a woman jumped up from a seat and thrust a clear plastic bag into her hand. Saskia ha
dn’t recognised her at first. It was Penny Ryan. Her face was drawn, tendrils of hair had escaped her french twist and dangled loose by her ears. There were dark patches under her eyes.
‘Saskia,’ she had rasped, the smoker’s voice low and liquid. ‘I found this in Jack’s bag. Someone sent him a mosquito. Why would anyone do that?’
Saskia had made no reply, too shocked by the deterioration in Penny’s composure to even look at the plastic bag she had been handed.
‘Jack’s dying isn’t he? You don’t tell us anything but he’s dying of something he got on the plane. But it isn’t an accident, is it? They want to get him. Promise you’ll do something, you’ve got to help find out what it is.’
Saskia mumbled a soothing reply, empty textbook words for dealing with the distraught and the grieving. When she saw the disappointment in Penny Ryan’s eyes, Saskia dropped the platitudes and promised to do all she could. Then she boomed through the double doors into the safety of intensive care, guilt lying heavy on her shoulders.
They want to get him. But who were ‘they’?
Once her hands were dry, Saskia put her lab coat back on and took out the postcard. With tweezers she took the cellophane packet and laid it on a light box then took her biggest magnifying glass from a drawer.
She was no entomologist and this was the first time she had seen a mosquito close up. It was a hunchbacked monster, its tangle of limbs spiderishly repulsive. The flying helmet head, dominated by bulbous eyes, had a long hairy nozzle to pierce flesh and syphon up blood. The long abdomen was fat and covered in scales. A yellow pus emerged where the body had been squashed, caking the profusion of hairs which sprouted from joints in its armour.
This was the kind of detective work Friederikson would love. To Saskia it brought only a faint queasiness, but she pressed on alone because she had been asked to help. Penny Ryan’s conspiracy theory would have brought nothing but laughter from Friederikson, and Saskia didn’t want to get him involved. Not yet at least.
The mosquito identification books had a shelf to themselves in the lab. A dozen thick volumes, yellowed bindings taped repeatedly along the splits. A quick flick through showed what a herculean task she had taken on. More than 2,500 species of mosquito were listed, and with enhanced DNA techniques those species were now being split more finely. There were hundreds of close-up drawings of wings and probosces, antennae and legs and each volume was stuffed with pages of errata and addendums, journal articles and photocopies as users had tried to keep up to date.
To make matters worse there were thousands of other tiny flying insects which might be mistaken for true mosquitoes. The creature in the cellophane packet could have been any of tens of thousands of repulsive boss-eyed bloodsuckers.
Saskia jumped as the door opened behind her.
‘Developed a late-night interest in mosquitoes, Saskia?’ said Professor Friederikson.
‘I’m just trying to identify a particular one,’ she said.
Friederikson peered over the top of his spectacles at the cellophane packet. ‘Where did you get this?’
Saskia handed the professor the postcard and explained where the insect had been found. She made no mention of Penny Ryan’s interpretation. Friederikson sat down and squinted through the magnifying glass. ‘And you were planning to keep this development all to yourself?’
‘Not really. I just thought that you and Van Diemen were so busy…’
‘Would you like to know about the mosquito?’
‘Of course.’
‘It is an adult female. It had not had a blood meal in several days before its death. The body looks good and dry, so we should be able to discover a lot.’
‘What species is it?’
Friederikson looked up at her. ‘Actually, I don’t know. I would start with Gillies and Coetzee, to see whether it is African.’ He tapped the thickest volume on the desk. ‘That will help us narrow it down. Some things are easy, for example you can see its wings have coloured scales which make it appear spotted. That means it is from the Anopheles genera, not Aedes or Culex.’
‘So it can carry malaria?’
‘Only sixty of the two hundred and eighty species of Anopheles can carry malaria. Most of those sixty I am familiar with. This is not one of them. Nor is it a native mosquito of the Netherlands.’
‘So you don’t think it could be the carrier of Plasmodium five?’
Friederikson shrugged. ‘That depends. Five is new to science, so quite possibly the mosquito which carries it is unknown too. There are two possibilities. First, five has parasitised humans for some time but has been overlooked. Perhaps the habitat limitations of the host mosquito kept it to a very small area. Second, we may have just stumbled on zoonosis.’
‘What is that?’
‘A crossing of species boundaries. Perhaps five originally infected other animals, and has recently crossed into man, just as HIV did. Birds, rodents, monkeys and lizards all suffered from malaria before man even appeared on the earth, and still do. It is hardly an intensively studied area, but it ought to be if we are ever to anticipate future human ailments. After all, the four types of malaria that afflict humans crossed species boundaries at some point in the last two million years, and this could be the fifth.’
‘Is there any way of finding out if this mosquito is infected with five?’
‘Not without grinding up the body for chemical tests. As it is the only example we have of this species, I would be very reluctant to do that.’ Professor Friederikson picked up the cellophane packet and postcard and slipped them into an envelope. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I take these back to my lab to study?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I’ll let you know if I find out what it is. Of course, the elegant solution would be to obtain some more of these mosquitoes, alive. With a little practical science then we could really find out if they are carriers of Plasmodium five. For example…’ Friederikson opened his briefcase and handed Saskia a plastic canister with a gauze top. Inside were several dozen mosquitoes, their hunched bodies blood-bloated, resting on the underside of the gauze.
‘Disgusting creatures,’ Sivali said, handing the canister back.
‘Disgusting perhaps, formidable certainly. You should show some respect for anything that can kill more than a million people a year,’ Friederikson said. ‘Anopheles gambiae is the Genghis Khan of the malaria world. Adaptable, tough, fecund and increasingly insecticide resistant.’
‘I still think they are revolting.’
‘But they would love you. They would bite again, even though I have just taken them out to dinner as a special treat.’
Saskia stifled her laugh when she saw Friederikson’s intense stare. ‘What have you done?’ she asked.
‘I took them on a trip to intensive care, to see Mr Erskine. They are very efficient feeders. It only took two minutes with the gauze end of this canister against the body of our favourite pharmaceutical boss.’
Saskia was speechless.
‘Don’t look so worried. The mosquitoes are free of disease, I raised them myself. They can’t possibly give him anything,’ Friederikson said.
‘Professor Friederikson. You know very well you cannot just wander in and interfere with Professor van Diemen’s patients. If he knew about this he would go absolutely ballistic!’
‘Of course he would, but I’m relying on you, someone with an open mind, not to tell him. The problem with Van Diemen is that he is so bogged down with paperwork that there is no room left in his head for imagination. He thinks what we are dealing with is just a nasty little import, some African malarial freak which will kill a half dozen people and disappear as quickly as it arrived.’
‘That’s bad enough, surely.’
‘Individually tragic of course, but in malarial terms irrelevant. Even if everybody who flew on KLM 648 was killed by Plasmodium five that would only be three hours worth of Africa’s annual malarial death toll.’ Friederikson held up the canister. ‘No, it is what happens to t
he mosquitoes that matters. The reason I fed these mosquitoes on Erskine is to see if he can infect them with Plasmodium five. If a wide range of mosquitoes can transmit this bug, then you can forget tuberculosis and HIV. What we would be facing would be the most serious threat to global health since the Black Death.’
Dakka pulled my legs apart and clambered towards me. I ceased struggling only when one of the others held a blood-spattered machete to my throat. Like a merciful guillotine, it severed my mind from what was going to happen to my body.
A revving engine roared up into my consciousness. Dakka leapt up just as the Land Rover burst through the bushes. The other two boys dropped my arms and jumped away, leaving me to cover myself up. Leaning out of the driver’s seat, shouting furiously was the soldier we knew as Gaptooth. He stopped the vehicle and leapt out, together with three or four others. I guessed they were more senior by their age, and the fact they had military boots not plastic sandals.
Dakka’s fright was soon justified. Gaptooth lashed out and flattened him with a single punch, then yelled at the hunched and sobbing form on the ground. The other boys stood to attention. Gaptooth came to me, and lifted me gently by the elbow. He brushed me down and looked at me with concern.
‘I get someone fix button,’ he pointed to my ripped shirt.
I nodded, trembling.
‘Dis soldier,’ he pointed at Dakka who was stirring from the ground. ‘He don’ respect ladies. So we teach.’
Behind him one of the older soldiers kicked Dakka to the ground again, and stamped on his moaning, recumbent form.
‘Brigadier Crocodile wan’ see you. He respect ladies.’
They escorted me back to the village clearing. Standing there were Margaret, Georg and Amy. Jarman was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands over his eyes. Everyone else was staring at me, afraid to ask.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘Nothing happened. I was rescued in the nick of time.’ I tipped my head towards Gaptooth, who was organising the loading of the Land Rover. ‘Where’s Tomas?’