The Virus

by Stanley Johnson

  “Don’t move. Don’t say anything. It’s too late for that.”

  Kaplan was talking into the W/T. He stopped virtually in front of the mouth of their hide-out and she could clearly hear what he was saying.

  “Cartwright? Can you hear me? We ought to be directly across the valley from you now. We’ll take the southern hemicycle, and we’ll move in down the slopes of the crater towards the river in the middle. The monkeys are in the trees alongside the river. Take it easy. Descend at the same rate as we do. That means you’ll have to keep your eye on us. But I’ll also come in on the W/T from time to time to give you an altitude reading. We’re spread out along the 1500 foot contour right now. We’re going to drop at the rate of about 500 feet every half hour till we reach the bottom; then we proceed at the pace of a slow walk. Mugambu will give the order to fire when we’re all in position. Is that all clear? Over and out.”

  She heard Cartwright’s voice coming in loud and clear from a distance of less than two miles away.

  “That’s fine, Kaplan. We have you in view now. Just tell your men not to fire any of those darts by accident. We’re right in your line of fire.”

  “The same goes for you, friend. Keep your ammunition for the monkeys.”

  Once again Stephanie felt her anger boiling over and once again Ngenzi had to restrain her.

  The bark of the chimpanzee came from down below. Urgent. Insistent.

  “That’s Kodjo,” Ngenzi told her. “He must be near the monkeys now.”

  After that, there was nothing they could do except wait. Wait in the hope that Kodjo would succeed and that both he and the monkeys would escape.

  By mid-morning they realized that it was too late. They could see that the line of troops virtually surrounded the trees in the centre of the valley.

  “They know what they’re doing all right,” Ngenzi commented despairingly. “The guenons will always stay in the trees rather than run in the grass.”

  “And Kodjo?”

  “God knows where Kodjo is!” There was a note of despair in Ngenzi’s voice. He had already lost two of his best men. He did not wish to lose a third.

  It had been a long time since they last heard the sound of the chimpanzee in the valley below. Looking down, they wondered where Kodjo could be. Was he somewhere inside that ring of death? And if he was still inside, how could he ever hope to escape?

  Stephanie found that she had begun to pray; to pray for the monkeys, for herself, for Kodjo, for Ngenzi, for the two men who had already died, for an end to the whole horror.

  “Oh Lord,” she prayed. “Spare us all.”

  Ngenzi overheard her. “The God of Africa has his own ways, Stephanie. He will not always seem to hear you when you pray.”

  Involuntarily, she reached for his hand and held it for a long moment.

  There was a sudden noise at the entrance of the cave. The grasses and fronds were pushed aside and Kodjo, gasping for breath, pulled himself inside.

  Stephanie flung herself on him.

  “Kodjo! I’m so glad you made it! Did you find the monkeys?”

  Kodjo shook his head, totally crestfallen.

  “Too late, Miss Stephanie! I was too late. I only just escaped from the ring of soldiers myself. The long grass hid me.”

  When he had recovered himself, he said:

  “I’m not sure if the monkeys would have moved anyway. I didn’t get close enough, I know; but when I barked from a distance, they didn’t take much notice. Perhaps there aren’t any chimpanzees down on the valley-floor.”

  The whispered conversation was interrupted by the first volley of sound as the circle of soldiers closed in. They saw the men advancing steadily, ruthlessly. One step at a time.

  “What chance do they have?” Stephanie was sobbing. “What chance do they really have?”

  The first monkeys fell from the branches of the trees. They were too far away to hear the death-screams of the animals; but they could imagine it all.

  Stephanie watched through the field-glasses for five minutes. Then she put them down and turned her face to the wall of the cave.

  When it was all over, they watched a squad of soldiers gather the bodies of the animals where they had fallen. The men went about their work slowly. They were not used to moving in pressure suits with breathing apparatus on their back. They piled the animals, carcass upon carcass, in a clearing, handling them from a distance with six-foot long tongs. Even though all the men wore masks, all contact with the infected animals was to be kept to the barest minimum.

  Ngenzi watched them. “The fools!” he exclaimed. “Do they think they can leave that pile of bodies there? Is that the way to destroy the virus?”

  Now that the slaughter was over, Stephanie found herself once more able to watch.

  “I think they’re going to burn them,” she said. “Isn’t that a flame-thrower they’re bringing up there?”

  By late afternoon, the search parties had completed their work. Hour by hour the pile of bodies had grown larger. Now that it was over most of the soldiers had climbed back up the sides of the crater. The WHO team remained below.

  As far as José Rodriguez was concerned, the operation had been a complete success. Once he had become acclimatized to the jungle, he had obviously thoroughly enjoyed himself. He could already see the headlines. “Rodriguez leads WHO expedition to Zaire jungle to eliminate mankind’s latest scourge!” He would see that the international press gave the story the right treatment and that adverse publicity was kept to a minimum. He had heard something about harsh punishment meted out to a couple of blacks while he and the rest of his team were having their afternoon siesta. Enthusiasm, he supposed, on the part of Mugambu, the silly ass! He’d have to make sure the press didn’t pick up that kind of detail. And he didn’t want any pictures of the monkeys either. With the curare-tipped darts sticking into them, it was altogether too strong meat. Time and time again in his professional career as a doctor and administrator, he had come up against the strength of the animal-lovers lobby. That was why he had given the order: Absolutely no photographs of the monkeys. No long-shots; no close-ups, no nothing. Plenty of pictures of José Rodriguez, mind you, on his mercy mission to save mankind. The fat Brazilian smiled.

  Ivan Leontiev, like his boss, had absolutely no regrets over their mission or indeed over the manner in which it had been accomplished. Animals, large or small, meant nothing to him. If the sperm-whale carried a lethal virus, he would have helped to eliminate the sperm-whale with as much enthusiasm as he had just showed in helping to eliminate the tribe of green monkeys. (The fact that the whaling fleet of his own country, the Soviet Union, had already made a pretty good job of eliminating the sperm-whale was, in Leontiev’s eyes, neither here nor there.) Animals aside, Leontiev had other good reasons for rejoicing over the day’s events. His smile was not as full and fat as that of Rodriguez. After all, he was a Russian not a Brazilian. But it was still a smile.

  Unlike Rodriguez and Leontiev, Cartwright, the bearded naturalist, was sickened and disgusted by the whole business. He had already determined to hand in his resignation as soon as he got back to Geneva. He blamed no one except himself. At the time of preparation he had thought that the operation was justified. Though he had had scruples on certain points, he had gone along with it. Now he knew that he was wrong. A naturalist was like a doctor. He took a hippocratic oath not to harm under any circumstances those whom he was sworn to protect. Once the bodies had been piled, Cartwright turned his head aside and walked away. He had seen enough. He had no wish to see more. A tribe of green monkeys — and perhaps it was the only tribe of green monkeys left in the world — had been destroyed. That was something his conscience would have to live with for the rest of his life.

  For Lowell Kaplan, things were much more complicated. He couldn’t help recalling the conversation he had had with Stephanie in Paris not long before. He remembered the fire and the passion with which she had spoken of the animals and of her mission in life. He would
have given the world not to be standing where he was now standing. The day’s carnage had left him feeling more exhausted than he had ever felt in his life. It was not the physical effort which had tired him, though that had been strenuous enough. It was not the grind of eight hours’ march day after day through the equatorial forest. No, it was the emotional trauma of being party to a massacre. No more, no less. For as long as he lived Kaplan would be able to see the death-throes of the monkeys as they were, one after another, transfixed by the lethal darts; would be able to hear the quick thud as the bodies hit the ground beneath the trees. He found himself hoping that the monkeys had not suffered too much.

  By five o’clock that day, it was all over. There was nothing left except a patch of smouldering ashes on the river bank in the middle of the valley. By nightfall, the long grasses, which had been creased when they brought in the flame-throwers, were already re-asserting themselves. The African sparrows, callous as ever, quickly returned to the great over-arching trees which had served as shelter to the monkeys. The gazelle which had disappeared at the first hint of armed men came coquettishly back to the crater, tripping delicately round the edge of the circle of scorched earth. A cheetah flickered quickly in and out of the grass.

  Michel Ngenzi and his party slept for the second night in the cave, taking it in turns to keep watch. When day broke and they looked out once again into the valley, the last smouldering fumes had disappeared.

  Ngenzi himself went out to reconnoitre. He was not prepared to risk any more of his men. When he came back, he said: “It’s clear they’ve all gone. Pulled back to Bukavu, I should think. There’s not a sign of them. I think we should leave now. There’s nothing more we can do.”

  Stephanie looked at him. “I want to go down there. There may be something still alive down there.”

  “What’s the point?” Ngenzi tried to dissuade her. “You saw what we all saw. Nothing could have survived that holocaust.”

  “I’m going down.”

  “In that case, I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re not protected. I’ve got the serum. You haven’t.”

  “I’ll stay back.”

  Four hundred yards from the river and the trees, Ngenzi stopped to let her go on ahead. He sat down on a fallen tree and took out his binoculars so as to be able to keep her under close observation.

  For half-an-hour he watched her poking in and out of the trees; then she began to quarter the area systematically. From time to time he saw her stop, as though she was examining the ground. Once she looked in his direction and signalled with her fingers that she wanted another twenty minutes. He waved his agreement but at the same time pointed towards the sun as though to say: “Don’t be too long!” They had a long way to go that day and he wanted to get started.

  When the twenty minutes were almost up, he saw her bend down and reach to pick up something from the ground. He focused on her with his binoculars. She had an animal of some kind in her hand.

  She was waving now and running towards him in her excitement.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Don’t come any closer. What have you got there?” He cupped his hands to make his words carry.

  “I’ve got a monkey. A baby monkey,” she called back. “I’d say about six weeks old. Somehow it must have managed to escape.”

  “Hold it up. Let me take a close look at it through the glasses. Don’t let it bite you or scratch you.”

  “It’s not going to. It thinks I’m its mother.”

  At a range of two hundred yards, Ngenzi examined the animal through the glasses as she held it up for him. Something puzzled him. The colour of the animal wasn’t right. He was an expert. He knew about these things. There was too much grey in the fur of the animal. Perhaps it was the distance. In spite of the powerful degree of magnification which his binoculars afforded, two hundred yards was hardly an ideal range from which to conduct a scientific examination.

  “Come closer,” he shouted.

  She came closer, cradling the animal in her arms. He could get a clear view now of the markings. They were guenon markings all right. The tiara of fur about the head; the beard and the moustache; the stripe on the rump. But the colour was definitely not right. It wasn’t green. It was grey-green.

  Ngenzi knew that there was one infallible test if one wished to distinguish the true green monkey from the cognate species, the grey-green monkey. The difference between Cercopithecus viridens and Cercopithecus quasiviridens, which was the scientific name for the grey-green monkey, was a question of fungus in the fur.

  “Have a look at the fur,” he shouted. “Run your fingers through the fur. Does it leave a stain?”

  Stephanie knew what he was talking about. She remembered what she read in the text book that night in Paris, the day Kaplan left (she felt a sudden stab of anger as she thought of the American — anger, yes, but was there a trace of regret as well?)

  She did as he asked. She ran her hands through the animal’s fur. There was no trace of any fungus.

  “Nothing,” she shouted.

  “Do it again. Rub the animal behind the ears.”

  The little monkey was visibly reassured to be tickled behind the ears. It simpered with pleasure.

  “Still nothing.”

  Negenzi stood up and walked towards her. If there was ever a time when he had staked his life on his scientific competence, this was that time.

  “I want to take a closer look,” he called.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll take the risk.”

  She walked part-way to meet him.

  Still, he took care. He circled her twice examining the animal from all sides. He asked her to hold it up by the front paws so that he could look at its underside. Finally he was sufficiently convinced by what he had seen to touch the animal itself.

  He spoke to it as he worked; talking to it in a low voice; speaking in the dialect of his childhood, a kind of ki-swahili which was what he always used when working with animals.

  “Now, then, don’t worry! I’m not going to hurt you. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Okay, so they killed your mother and your father and your brothers and sisters. But those were mad men, dangerous men. We’re not like that. We want to help.”

  He unscrewed one of the lenses from his binoculars. He wanted to be able to examine the animal’s fur with the aid of a magnifying glass. There was no sign of any fungus.

  Finally he was satisfied. “I know I’m right. That’s not a green monkey. That’s not Cercopithecus viridens. I’ll stake my scientific reputation on it.”

  “You’ve staked more than that,” Stephanie said. “You just staked your life.”

  They climbed back up the hill together. Stephanie was puffing with the exertion — she wasn’t as fit as she thought — but still she was able to express her perplexity, her utter bewilderment.

  “How can this baby monkey be a grey-green monkey and all the others green monkeys? How can they be part of the same tribe and still be different species?”

  “They can’t,” Ngenzi spoke quietly. “That’s just not scientifically possible.”

  “Did they kill the wrong monkeys then? But how? I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either,” the tall gentle Tutsi replied. “But we’ll find out.”

  11

  Colonel Albert Mugambu was pleased by the way it had all gone. He was more than pleased; he was delighted.

  The two specially constructed crates had been safely loaded into the cargo compartment of the plane. Now, conscious of a job well done, he sat curtained off from his men like a sultan in his splendour, a glass of Turborg Export beer in one hand and his ever-present fly-swat in the other. From time to time he looked out of the window and by the light of the full moon saw the thick equatorial jungle unroll beneath the wingtips.

  He took another pull at his glass of beer as the plane, showing no lights, began to drop down towards a deserted airfield once used by the West Germans for a “secret
” rocket project. (The Germans had pulled out, largely as a result of political pressures, after the “secret” became known, but the installations remained. The jungle had begun to encroach on the perimeter; nevertheless, the runways were perfectly serviceable.) Mugambu burped contentedly. Yes, he reflected, he had more than fulfilled his task. Men like that pompous American, Lowell Kaplan, might think of him as a drunken oaf. How wrong they were! Half a dozen of the darts used in the operation in the crater had been tipped not with curare but with a highly potent tranquillizing drug. Two of these darts had been used to good effect. The still-alive bodies of two green monkeys, instead of being burned with the rest, had been secretly removed from the crater area — it was easy enough to find a moment when the attention of the WHO team was engaged elsewhere — and had been placed in crates that formed part of Mugambu’s personal baggage.

  Mugambu had every confidence in those crates. He had personally taken delivery of them from his contact in Kinshasha. He had inspected the life-support system, the air-filtration system, the recycling system and so forth. He was personally quite convinced that there was no danger that any virus could escape from the animals while they were contained within the crates. But to make doubly sure he had insisted that his hand-picked team retain their masks and pressure suits at all times when handling the load.

  The airstrip rose suddenly to meet them out of the forest. Then they were down. The Zaire Air Force DC8 taxied bumpily to the side and waited. Mugambu remained on board. There was nothing to tempt him out of the plane — the forest which loomed on all sides had a distinctly unfriendly appearance. And besides, the arrangement was that his cargo would remain on board until the other party arrived.

  Sweating, now that they were on the ground, and smelling of beer, Mugambu went to stand by the open door of the plane. He lit a cigarette and the tip of it glowed in the night. He could feel the tension mounting inside him. What if the American didn’t come? Should he fly on to Kinshasha? But then what would he do with the animals? How would he dispose of them? What if somebody else came and not the American? He fingered the belt of his service pistol nervously.