by Terry Morgan
CHAPTER 9
I don't think I'll ever know why I didn't go to see Anna after Amos Gazit had left? Fear? Uncertainty? I still don't know.
But as I entered the Convention Hall for the Conference on Virology and Infectious Diseases the next morning, the question was bothering me more than what I could possibly do for Virex International, Amos Gazit, the company's Director of Research or Charles Brady, the company's President.
I had called Anna in the bar to say I was tied up in a meeting and could not make it but would call again. But I could have found the time. It had not been so late when I had returned to the hotel down by the river. She had sounded upset again, as I knew she would, but I suppose it was that old familiar thought of starting another commitment that would end in more heartache, that had fuelled my doubts. But my own heartache was already in full swing.
For the moment, I tried to brush it aside and clutching the envelope Amos Gazit had given me the night before, made my way to the registration desk, took out my official delegate form, handed it over and waited while a girl tapped my name and details into a computer. Seconds later she produced a small name card and slipped it, neatly, into a clear plastic name tag and handed it back.
"Thank you Doctor Stevens, " she said in practiced English.
Temporarily rebranded as Doctor Michael Stevens from the University of Kuala Lumpur, I thanked her, moved away to a quiet corner of the huge hall and examined the rest of the contents of Gazit's envelope.
Inside was a list of delegates - several pages of them with University, Research centre or company names and addresses, a small booklet outlining the lectures, the speakers, their topics and the chairmen for each session. I scanned it all. Then I took out the third booklet - a list of companies exhibiting in the adjacent hall and a list of company-sponsored "poster sessions" for those not officially speaking but who had some research topic to promote. I decided the trade exhibition could wait. I wanted to get a feel for the point of the conference - Virology and Infectious Diseases.
Sitting at the back of the vast lecture theatre I scanned the delegates and thought I could see the back of Gazit's head near the front. There were, I reckon, at least three hundred people present and very mixed nationalities. According to my official notes, the speaker was a local doctor, Dr S Vichai, a small man in a white shirt and dark suit made large on a vast TV screen behind him. The subject, "A new variant of Coronavirus?" It was a question rather than a statement.
Dr Vichai spoke in good but accented English, the accent so familiar and my own thoughts tracked forwards to tonight. Should I or shouldn't I go to see Anna? The unusual distraction was making it hard for me to concentrate on the speaker.
"...........AIDS has been a familiar problem for many years now. The public, worldwide, are mostly fully aware of the disease and how it spreads. They are also aware that it is only now becoming controllable with a mixed but expensive drug cocktail..........."
Doctor Vichai continued for a while and then called up another slide that appeared on the screen behind him.
"........this new variant, currently known by my laboratory in Bangkok as TRS-CoV. is different.............. what we have here is something new..........it appears to start with symptoms like a common cold but it then progresses rapidly to something more like whooping cough...........in the two cases where we have been able to take samples from patients before death, the virus appears new. We do not yet understand how it is transmitted............we do not know whether some patients may have recovered normally without progressing to the coughing fits and so we have no understanding of the numbers of cases.........the cases notified to us have all centred on just one area around Ayuthaya to the north of Bangkok.......all the males, aged between twenty two and fifty are from this area. All were apparently healthy individuals with no known health problems. The one young woman was the exception and she was from the Bangkok area."
Next to me, a young man with an tablet phone stuck his pen in his mouth and got up. "Excuse me," he said in an English accent and brushed past towards the exit. A few others near the front of the room did the same. The press contingent were clearly picking up a story but Doctor Vichai was still speaking.
"...........I understand from the WHO that there are reports coming from Nigeria and a possible case in Kenya.......if these are, indeed, all caused by the same virus then this is very unusual as most new respiratory infections are very localised......"
I too got up and followed the English reporter outside. He was now on the phone probably to a London paper.
"Yeh,..........got that? Believe me this is a good story. The implications are horrendous. What? Yes, the speaker -Doctor Vichai - Thai. Look I'll email something right now. Sorry to call you at this hour, Peter, but this has all the appearances of another new influenza or something. Were you still in bed? Sorry. I'll call later."
I remember pulling my own phone out of my pocket on an impulse to phone Anna but then I stopped. No - I'd phone her later. There were things I had to do.