The contestants sprang apart, swords at the carry.
As the audience cheered, Blue’s seconds came forward to dab the flesh where it was cut and bleeding. The contestants returned to the on-guard position.
“Ready, gentlemen. Fight!”
The two students once again began to hack away at each other. This time Blue was handicapped by the blood which continued to pour down his face. The students roared their support indiscriminately. What they wanted was action. Who won, who lost was of less concern.
“Another strike to Green! Stand back, gentlemen.”
It was a nasty slicing blow, which had carved the flesh from hair to jawline. There was loud booing from the audience.
“That one’s going to need stitches later,” Schmidtt commented, his professional interest evident. “That’s why the crowd is booing. The cuts are meant to be clean, and they are meant to heal without needing stiches. Stitches spoil the effect.”
“By God, they’re purists, aren’t they? Is Blue going to continue? Surely he’ll give up now, won’t he?”
Schmidtt looked at the man in the blue shirt, by now a hideous sight. The blood had run down and spattered his clothes, and one eye was almost completely shut.
“No, he won’t give up. He’s collected two scars, but he needs a third before being admitted into the cabal.”
“What’s the cabal?”
“That’s the inner circle of the Hessenkraut fraternity, the cream of the cream, if you like.”
“What about Green? Doesn’t he want to collect some scars too?”
“Oh, Green’s already a member of the cabal. He will have earned his scars some years back. He’s simply volunteered to fight the novice, for whom tonight is a kind of initiation test.” His tone changed. “Come, I think we’ve seen enough.”
They pushed through the crowd and back down the stairs the way they had come. After the noise of the fraternity house, the streets seemed very quiet and empty. They walked in silence, each one wrapped in his thoughts.
When they reached the Professor’s house once more, it was evident that Frau Schmidtt had already gone to bed.
“Let’s have a nightcap,” said Schmidtt, pouring two large balloons of brandy.
The two men settled into deep arm-chairs facing each other. The Professor was the first to speak.
“Lowell, my old friend.” Schmidtt looked fondly at the American. “Why do you think I took you to the Hessenkrauts’ this evening?” When Kaplan did not reply, Schmidtt continued: “I took you there because I wanted you to understand some things about us.”
“To tell the truth, Franz, I’m surprised the authorities allow that kind of thing to go on at all.”
“They don’t. Duelling is illegal today, just as it was in the ’sixties. In fact, in the ’sixties, it was even more anachronistic, as you would see it. Remember what it was like in Germany then. Remember the student movements and the power of some of the student leaders. Danny the Red, Rudy Dutshcke. In France, they toppled de Gaulle and brought Paris to a standstill. Here, in Germany, it was touch-and-go. There were riots in the street, all right, but by a miracle there was no spark to light the powder-keg. But there could have been, by God, there could have been!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that what happened here in Marburg in 1967 could have provided the spark, could have rocked Germany to its foundations. Remember, this is a very tense country. We live in the shadow of the Soviet Union on the one hand and of the United States on the other. Materially, we might look good, but we have still not recovered as a nation from the trauma of the Second World War. Always, there are forces at work in our midst ready to exploit the divisions and tensions that exist.”
“Tell me about 1967.”
Schmidtt took a large sip of brandy and lit a cigar.
“Yes, I was here, all right,” he said. “It was not long after I returned from the States that the trouble began. The Head of the Virology Department at the University was a remarkable woman called Irma Matthofer. She was about fifty years old, an extraordinarily able and forceful personality. She ruled her department with a rod of iron, drove herself and her colleagues hard, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Her speciality was vaccines. She believed passionately that vaccination as a medical technique was the key — and a cost-effective one — to mankind’s fight against viral diseases. Many would say, and not merely in Germany, that the development of polio vaccine, for example, owed as much to Frau or, I should say, Professor Matthofer’s work as to that of Salk and Sabine; but she never received the credit, least of all from the Nobel Committee. She was bitter that her contribution had not been recognized, and I think she was probably right to feel bitter. It was a clear case of injustice.
“But what she felt personally was one thing; her professional life was another. Far from letting her disappointment deflect her from the central path of her research, she threw herself into her work with increased vigour, almost as a form of compensation, and drove her people harder than ever . . .”
“What was the line of her research?” Kaplan interrupted.
“Cholera. As you know, existing cholera vaccines have begun to lose their effect and in any case are difficult to mass-produce. She thought she was on the track of a totally new concept when the tragedy occurred.”
Professor Schmidtt rose to refill his glass before continuing.
“Back in the ’sixties,” Franz Schmidtt resumed his tale, “medical research was a large consumer of imported animals. In Germany, the Marburg Clinic was one of the main culprits. I use the word deliberately. Over the last few years we have all come to realize that many animals needed for medical research can be custom-bred in Europe or America for the purpose. We don’t have to raid nature for them.”
“I wish everyone felt the way you do,” Kaplan interjected. “I know of centres in the United States today still importing wildlife in large quantities. And I’m talking about medical centres, not zoos.”
Schmidtt took the interruption in his stride. “Fifteen or twenty years ago,” he continued, “the Marburg Clinic, particularly the Virology Department under Frau Professor Matthofer, was importing large numbers of animals, mainly from Central Africa, where the export trade was well-organized. Monkeys especially were imported, of every shape or size. Some of them were used in toxicological research, much as they are today — although, of course, we have our home-grown varieties nowadays. But others were being used specifically in the Virology Department. What Irma Matthofer had in fact discovered — and the discovery was extremely important to medical science — was that the kidney cells of monkeys were invaluable as media for the culture of viral-based vaccines. They would thrive there as they would nowhere else.”
“Go on.” Kaplan was listening with rapt attention.
“Irma Matthofer grew increasingly excited as her research progressed. You have to understand something of our national psychology to realize just what her achievement meant. Germany as a nation, and the Germans as a race, have made notable contributions to scientific research, but these have not always been for the good of humanity. I need not elaborate. Frau Matthofer’s monkey research was a different business. Here, perhaps for the first time, a German and, what is more, a German woman, would be responsible for a major medical breakthrough. Something that could do more to restore Germany’s standing in the eyes of the world than almost anything else you can think of.”
“You are modest about your country’s achievements.”
“Perhaps. But let me go on. Professor Matthofer was in full cry. It was in her nature to put maximum pressure upon her people. Inevitably, there was a slip-up. The monkeys were caged in the lab. One of Irma Matthofer’s research assistants, a young chap called Peter Ringelmann, made some elementary error while handling an animal and got himself bitten. Shortly after, he fell ill. We believe that the source of his illness was the monkey bite. Five days later he died, exhibiting the symptoms which you, Lowell, have described and which
you know only too well.”
“What happened after that?”
“Twenty-two other people died, every single one of them infected by Ringelmann. There was a positive contact in each case.”
“Good God! How can you be so sure?”
“Ringelmann had scars on his cheeks, freshly made scars. It was perfectly clear how they had been acquired; he was a member of a duelling fraternity. What only became clear later was that each and every one of the twenty-two other casualties had been present on the occasion of Ringelmann’s initiation. Three of them had actually been his seconds. The rest must have been involved in one way or another. Perhaps they had handled the blood-stained clothes, or had been contaminated by sputum. There might even have been airborne transmission — we don’t know.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Kaplan. “So you didn’t rule that out?”
“No, we couldn’t. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that we had a potential scandal of the first magnitude on our hands. It wasn’t just the deaths themselves that mattered, although, God knows, twenty-three out of twenty-three was — and is — pretty horrific . . .”
“To the best of my knowledge, an unprecedented medical phenomenon,” Kaplan commented.
“Exactly. But the extraordinary circumstances which surrounded the deaths were in a way more alarming. For, you see,” (he leaned forward in his chair), “on the particular night that Peter Ringelmann fought his duel, the Chancellor of the Republic himself and two members of his cabinet were among the audience. Once a Hessenkraut, as I told you, always a Hessenkraut. If that had come out, think what the student revolutionaries would have made of it. The government would have been brought to its knees overnight. God knows what would have ensued.”
The Professor leaned back in his chair and was silent for a time. Then he continued: “That was why, when you mentioned the Marburg virus this evening, I pretended not to know. As far as Germany is concerned, we have buried the Marburg story and the Marburg virus. It didn’t happen.”
“You didn’t wholly succeed. I told you we had Marburg data on our computer file in Atlanta.”
Schmidtt shrugged the objection aside. “I agree there were one or two references in the medical literature of the time. But these were purely concerned with the pathology of the incident. There was never any mention in the press of duelling or of the fact that the Chancellor was present on the fatal evening. We’ve kept the lid on the story for fifteen years.”
“Does it really matter if the story comes out now?”
A frightened look passed across Franz Schmidtt’s face.
“I’ve already said more than I should. I had better keep quiet. But I beg you, Lowell, now that you know what happened, to keep it to yourself. Of course the story must not come out. In Germany, old politicians never die; they don’t fade away either, they stick around. I said the Chancellor and two of his colleagues were there that night. That’s not strictly true. Half the cabinet, and I mean today’s cabinet, were there. It was a Gala occasion, the 400th anniversary of the Hessenkraut fraternity. They had all come down from Bonn for the occasion.”
“How the hell did you limit the outbreak?”
“We were lucky to be dealing with a controlled situation. We knew the names of everyone who had been in the fraternity house that evening. We took them all into preventive isolation. It stretched our facilities to the utmost, I can tell you.”
“Even the Chancellor?”
“Yes, even the Chancellor. We had him under observation for a fortnight. We gave out the story that he was indisposed with ’flu of a particularly severe kind.”
A thought suddenly occurred to Kaplan. “How do you know all this, Franz?”
“My dear Lowell, I was there.”
“You mean you were a spectator at the duel.”
“No, I wasn’t a spectator. I was a protagonist.” The words seemed to cost him an immense effort. “I was the other man involved. I was the maestro that evening; Ringelmann, the novice. Do you remember when we were at Yale together that I represented the University at the sabre? I . . .”
Schmidtt seemed to have difficulty in completing his sentence.
Kaplan got up and went to stand beside the other man’s chair. For the first time, he noted the scars which were three-quarters hidden by the bushy sideburns.
“I’m so sorry, Franz,” he said quietly. “So very sorry. If our computer hadn’t thrown up the trace, I would never have come here to remind you of all this. And Heidi. It must have been terrible for her.”
“It was. For years we have lived under a cloud. Of course, in the most practical sense I didn’t suffer, professionally speaking.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when Professor Irma Matthofer was dismissed from the University, I received my promotion to be Head of the Toxicology Unit at the Clinic. That was the lucky break — for me, anyway. I felt sorry for Irma. It was yet another injustice coming on top of the first one. She didn’t deserve it. She was just the sacrificial lamb. They cooked up some story about the unreasonable requests she had imposed upon her staff, leading to a breakdown in laboratory discipline.”
“Didn’t anyone follow up the monkey lead? Wasn’t any attempt made to find out which of the monkeys infected Peter Ringelmann and where it came from?”
“I told you ‘no’. We had instructions from the highest political authorities that any follow-up of whatever sort would be regarded as treason.”
“Treason!” Kaplan was incredulous.
“Not just treason, but high treason!”
Kaplan lapsed into silence, trying to absorb what he had just heard. That the politicians had played the game with a heavy hand didn’t surprise him, though the efforts at concealment struck him as somewhat exaggerated. He wondered fleetingly if there were some person or persons in high places with a reason, apart from the Hessenkraut affair, for keeping a tight lid on the Marburg incident.
“And that’s where matters have rested for over fifteen years?” he asked at last.
“Until you came along, the file has been dead. I beg you, Lowell,” (he leaned forward), “leave it that way. I fear I have been dangerously indiscreet. If you start stirring things up, no good will come of it.”
Lowell Kaplan’s voice was gentle. “Franz, you know I can’t leave things the way they are. There was one outbreak of Marburg virus back in 1967. You were lucky and got it under control. There was a second outbreak this year in the United States. This time we were lucky; we got it under control. But one thing I promise you, Franz, if there’s another outbreak, we will not be lucky again.”
“Third time unlucky?”
“You said it.”
Schmidtt saw Kaplan to the door. On the step, Kaplan paused for a moment.
“By the way, what happened to Irma Matthofer after she was dismissed?”
Schmidtt hesitated for a fraction of a second. “I just don’t know. It was a great mystery. She just disappeared from one day to another.”
“And the cholera vaccine programme?”
“We dropped it like a hot potato. From the moment that monkey bit Ringelmann, the vaccine programme was doomed. We leave cholera to the World Health Organization.”
Kaplan walked back to his hotel through the sleepy streets. The floodlights on the Schloss had been turned out. The roistering students had gone home. The river Lahn ran quietly beneath the bridges of the old town. It all seemed so peaceful. And yet how much had gone on beneath the surface.
Tomorrow, he would begin digging.
He arrived at the Clinic early the next morning. Thinking about the problem overnight, Kaplan had decided that it was worth, even after such a lapse of time, trying to discover more about the source of Ringelmann’s infection. Had a monkey really been responsible? If so, where did it come from? Was there any surviving documentation on shipments of monkeys brought to Marburg from Africa in the late ’sixties? Another reason for heading in the direction of the University was the fact that the Schmidtt
s’ strange but attractive daughter, Paula, was now Head of Medical Records at the Clinic. It seemed too good an opportunity to be missed.
Paula Schmidtt, when he finally located her office, seemed surprised to see him.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you up bright and early this morning. I hear you and father had rather a late night.”
“Yes. It was late. We were talking.”
“And drinking!” She smiled. “I saw the glasses when I came down this morning.”
As they sat together in the cramped but well-ordered room, Kaplan looked at his old friend’s daughter appraisingly. As he had already had cause to observe, young Paula had grown up into a handsome woman. Her dark hair, like her mother’s, was pulled back from her forehead and tied neatly behind. Her brown eyes looked at him steadily. Her expression was composed; almost, Kaplan thought, too controlled. It was as though she had learned to discipline herself to the exclusion of all frivolity. He could sense that she was a woman of strong convictions, though he was not so sure that they were convictions of a kind he would wish to share.
“Tell me,” she said. “How can I help? My father told me at breakfast today that he tried to dissuade you from looking into the question of the Marburg virus, but that you are not inclined to be discouraged.” She looked at him frankly. “My father is frightened, Lowell. He truly believes it is better to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“And do you believe that?”
She was silent for a while. The expression on her face indicated that she was pondering a particularly difficult question.
“No,” she finally replied. “The past is the past, and the present is the present. After fifteen years, you are trying to track down the source of the original Marburg outbreak. You think it may help to understand what happened in this recent outbreak. I’m prepared to help you, Lowell, because I believe in the truth.”
Lowell Kaplan did not doubt the conviction with which the young woman spoke. He wondered, nevertheless, whether Paula Schmidtt, a product of West Germany’s radical ’sixties, would ever truly take sides with someone like himself, whose bags and baggage were so clearly marked with the stamp of U.S. Government. Brushing these reflections aside, he expressed his gratitude for her cooperation and came straight to the point:
The Virus Page 6