Miasma

Eleven

Steven rubbed his eyes and yawned as he shut down the article on DRC. It seemed an all too familiar tale of poverty and malnutrition among the people while the apparent vast mineral wealth of the country was exploited by others. The country had constantly been beset by wars and the corruption of its politicians who had been generally shunned in recent times after 88 million pounds of tax revenue from mining went missing. It took until 2013 for the rest of the world to accept that feasible measures had been put in place to counter corruption and encourage the flow of foreign capital back into the extraction of copper, cobalt and diamonds.

Diamond smuggling was still a problem, with a significant number leaving the country unrecorded and small unofficial mines operating in remote areas. There was ongoing conflict in North Kivu province on the eastern side of the country, a wild and lawless area plagued by violence where dozens of armed groups operated. Over a thousand people in the area around Beni, a city of over three hundred thousand people, had died through violence since 2014 and thousands more had been displaced from their homes.

Steven took some comfort from the fact that Tally was in Equateur Province, several hundred miles away to the west, but his biggest comfort was the thought that she was coming home soon.

Next morning Tally got into her Land Rover, an elderly vehicle that had been round the block more than a few times, and drove out to the village where she had first met Monique. She found her surrounded by children as she had been the last time and smiled as she witnessed the same enthusiasm. Hands shot up every time a question was asked and a chorus of small voices pleaded their case to be heard. One of the children waved to Tally and she waved back, causing Monique to turn and see her.

Tally wasn’t quite sure that Monique was pleased to see her, but she came over and managed a smile and a formal hello.

‘I thought I would come and say goodbye,’ Tally explained.

‘You’re leaving?’

‘The outbreak has been declared over, I’m going back to my hospital... to my children,’ Tally said with a fond look towards the children sitting on the ground, ‘they obviously adore you.’

‘They are keen to learn,’ said Monique, ‘that makes my job easy.’

‘You must be pleased that the outbreak is over so quickly this time?’

‘Of course.’

‘It made such a difference having more vaccine available.’

Monique looked down at the ground but didn’t comment. This was the situation Tally was looking for if only she could get Monique to open up.

‘You still have doubts about the vaccine?’

Monique shrugged.

‘I really don’t understand,’ said Tally gently, ‘the vaccine saved hundreds — maybe thousands of people and you still have doubts?’

‘The vaccine killed ten people... my family... my friends.’

Tally felt stunned. ‘When was this?’

‘In the last outbreak.’

‘Maybe they were given the vaccine too late,’ said Tally. ‘It doesn’t work with people who already have the disease.’

‘They didn’t have the disease,’ said Monique bitterly. ‘They were perfectly healthy and were told the vaccine would protect them, but it didn’t. They caught Ebola and died. All of them.’

Tally felt confused. The official report on the 2014-16 outbreak said that no one who had been given the vaccine had caught the disease. She said so to Monique.

‘They are lying.’

‘Who gave them the vaccine, Monique?’

‘The aid workers.’

‘Why were they given it, Monique, were they contacts?’

Monique shook her head. ‘There was no Ebola in the village.’

‘But vaccine supplies back then were very limited. Why did they give it to your people?’

‘They said it was a new vaccine — experimental, they called it — it hadn’t been fully tested but they were sure it worked. They said there might be a few side effects, but nothing serious.’

‘It sounds like the same one they’ve been using this time,’ said Tally, ‘it’s still classed as experimental... but it worked really well.’

‘Then we have to disagree,’ said Monique, ‘I really must get back to the children. I wish you a safe flight home.’

‘I’ll try to look into this before I go, Tally said, ‘and see what the explanation is. If I find out anything, I’ll come back and tell you.’

A shrug.

As Monique turned to go back to her class, Tally had one more question.

‘Monique, you said the vaccine killed ten people, was that the total number?’

‘Thirty-seven died.’

As Tally drove back on the bumpy trail, constantly tugging at the wheel to correct her course, she regretted having returned the official WHO report to Marcus Altman. She wanted to check on what she hoped she had remembered correctly, that no one who had been given the experimental vaccine in the 2014-16 outbreak had subsequently contracted Ebola. Something was wrong and it could be her memory. For that reason, she didn’t want to ask Altman for another look at the report. She felt she’d already made herself look silly by not considering river travel in her calculations. Maybe she would ask Steven to check for her.

‘We’ve finally heard something back from Beer Sheva University,’ said Jean when Steven arrived at the office. The tone of her voice suggested that it was not going to set the world on fire.

‘He was working on the design of vaccines that would give protection against diseases caused by killer haemorrhagic viruses.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Apart from the fact that he had a grant from the World Health Organisation to do it.’

‘We knew that,’ Steven complained. ‘Nothing about how successful he was being or what particular diseases he was working on?’

‘No, it beats me why it took the Israelis so long to tell us that,’ said Jean.

Jean had a habit of highlighting details that needed highlighting. ‘I wonder if MI6 knows any more than we do,’ said Steven.

‘Want me to tell them you’re on the way over?’

Steven nodded. ‘Ask if Jane Sherman will talk to me.’

An hour later, Steven walked over to Albert Embankment, showed his ID, jumped through the required hoops and waited until someone came down to escort him up to Jane Sherman’s office.

Sci-Med and the intelligence services were not exactly bosom buddies, but they were civil to each other and, when push came to shove, recognised that they were on the same side and behaved sensibly. This was better than the frostiness which existed between the police and the intelligence people — MI5 in particular — although rumours were that this had greatly improved lately thanks to the terrorist threat at home.

‘Hello Steven, haven’t seen you in ages.’

‘That’s why we’re still friends, Jane.’ He was rewarded by some semblance of a smile.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘We asked the University of Beer Sheva what Samuel Petrov was working on at the time of his murder and they took a long time to come back with “vaccine design”. I wondered if you folks might know a bit more?’

Jane Sherman smiled and said, ‘I don’t think the university is holding anything back, they’re just feeling embarrassed. As it turns out, they’ve no idea what he’s been doing.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Steven, feeling a stab of genuine alarm. ‘How could that happen?’

‘When Beer Sheva University learned that Petrov had expressed a desire to come and work there and that money from WHO would be forthcoming to support him, they provided him with a lab kitted out with what he would need for carrying out molecular biology on dangerous organisms — the haemorrhagic viruses. His stated plan was to disable them by altering parts of their genome so that they would no longer be able to infect people but would still produce antibodies which would act against the real thing when injected into people.’

‘Makes sense,’ Steven said.

‘Apparently there aren’t too many people working on that sort of thing because many of these diseases don’t affect people living in the affluent countries of the world. They’re largely confined to countries which have very little money. Support for research has to come from philanthropy and large charity concerns like WHO and the Red Cross. Beer Sheva was happy to be associated with the work but couldn’t afford to offer Petrov any technical assistance so he had to work alone while he was there. He seemed happy with that, saying that, at least, no one else would be in danger.

‘After the murder, the university had to get together a skilled team to enter Petrov’s lab, disinfect everything, make it safe and recover what they could of Petrov’s notes on what he had been doing and how successful he’d been, only the team didn’t find what they expected. They reported that Petrov must have been planning to leave. There was no trace of what he had been doing although it was clear the apparatus had been used. He had been using restriction enzymes and running acrylamide gels as you would expect for someone cutting and pasting nucleic acids, but everything had been sterilised and cleaned. The fridges and freezers had been emptied of virus stocks and their contents autoclaved so that there were no cultures of live viruses left to work with. There was however, a large circular container containing lots of packing material to protect one small sealed glass flask. The container was addressed to someone at WHO in Geneva and was obviously waiting to be sent off. The team didn’t want to open the flask without having any indication of what was in it so, after discussion with the university authorities, it was decided that WHO be contacted and asked what they would like done with the container. I understand that WHO said they would arrange for its pick-up.’

‘Did the university ask them what was in the flask?’

‘WHO said they didn’t know,’ said Jane.

‘So, why did they arrange for its pick-up?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why didn’t they just ask for it to be put through the steriliser like everything else?’

‘Wanting it back suggests they did know, don’t you think?’ Steven asked.

‘I do, Steven,’ said Jane in condescending fashion, ‘but an alternative explanation might be that the person at WHO being asked the question might genuinely not know, but might also feel that they did not have the authority to authorise its destruction without referring the matter to a higher authority. Haven’t you noticed? People don’t make decisions any more, they avoid them by referring them to someone else. The higher authority will be equally uncertain and call for a meeting, the purpose of which will be to share the blame involved in actually taking the decision. Corporate responsibility I think they call it.’

‘Blame-free guilt,’ said Steven.

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, you may very well be right, Jane,’ said Steven, ‘but, as my granny used to say, where there’s doubt... check it out.’

Jane’s demeanour changed. She held out the palm of her hand, a gesture designed to stop Steven who was getting up to leave. ‘Is that what you intend to do?’ she asked.

Steven sank back down slowly, looking for some clue in Jane’s facial expression, but not finding any. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘is that a problem?’

‘Would it suffice to say we at MI6, would rather you didn’t?’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Steven. His facial expression had become as unyielding as Jane’s. ‘I want to know what Petrov was doing at Beer Sheva. It’s important to my investigation and it looks like I’ll have to go to Geneva to find out.’

‘There’s a danger you will trample all over something we are interested in.’

‘Then I suggest you tell me what that is and I will do my best to avoid doing any such thing.’

‘It’s more important than your... scientific interest,’ said Jane.

‘You missed out the words “little” and “unimportant”,’ said Steven getting to his feet.

‘Wait.’

Steven turned, but kept his hand on the door handle.

‘Please sit down.’

‘Please don’t tell me WHO has weapons of mass destruction,’ said Steven resuming his seat.

‘I’m sorry if I seemed to belittle Sci-Med’s interest. There is more than one investigation going on here and there’s a danger of paths being crossed and many months of work being wasted.’

‘I only know of one and I intend to pursue it.’

‘I can see that. I can even understand why you want to find out what your Ruskie expats have been up to; it’s intriguing, but there’s always a bigger picture...’

Once again, Steven made a move to leave.

‘What do you think of the World Health Organisation?’ Jane asked.

‘Big respect, a huge organisation that has done tremendous good in the world — they wiped out the scourge of smallpox for a start. I’m sure it will have its faults, but all big organisations do.’

‘And the Red Cross?’

‘Much the same.’

‘Med Sans Frontierès?

‘Yes, where are you going with this?’ Steven asked.

‘Nearly all of us think that way... and we’re right, but recently it has become apparent that these organisations have been infiltrated by organised crime and I’m not talking about the occasional wrong un.’

‘Why?’

‘Just think about it, access to hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, not seen by them as vulnerable people, but as a ready supply of drug mules, prostitutes, you name it, an easy way of advancing the interests of crime empires on a big scale.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Unfortunately, yes, the behaviour of some of these interlopers has been giving the game away of late and, if public trust is lost in big aid organisations and funding disappears, it could mean absolute disaster for so many.’

‘Point taken,’ said Steven. ‘How am I going to get in the way?’

‘Phillipe Lagarde,’ said Jane, ‘one of your murder victims.’

‘The WHO strategist.’

Jane nodded. ‘For some time now, he has been a person of interest to the intelligence services, shall we say, a selfless hero who risked life and limb to help the poor unfortunates of the world, and someone we think was doing quite the opposite. He was up to his neck in organised crime.’

‘Wow, but...’

‘WHO support for Petrov’s research at Beer Sheva was signed off by Lagarde and the flask found in Petrov’s lab was addressed to Lagarde in Geneva.’

Steven shrugged and shook his head. ‘In which case we all want to know what was in it.’

‘You could say. US Intelligence are expecting it to be a new, synthetic drug, highly addictive and useful in the cause of enslaving people for life. Do you have any thoughts on the subject?’

Steven felt embarrassed but confessed, ‘I thought it might be a new super-efficient vaccine, capable of conferring immunity to multiple diseases.’

‘I hope you didn’t bet your house on that,’ said Jane.

They both smiled and the conversation relaxed.

Steven said, ‘Ten minutes ago I was intent on flying to Geneva to find out what had happened to the flasks Petrov had been sending. I suspect that might have been a wasted journey?’

‘We managed to get Israeli help in intercepting the flask before it was collected for delivery to WHO,’ said Jane. ‘It’s on its way to England as we speak.’

‘Why England?’ said Steven.

‘A decision had to be made, CDC Atlanta or Porton Down in England, toss of a coin, England won — or lost depending on how you look at it, then maximum biological security had to be agreed on — the flask could contain anything for all we know, Lassa Fever, Marburg disease, Ebola or the latest Chelsea party drug.’

‘Keep me in the loop?’ Steven asked.

‘Will do,’ said Jane, looking as if she meant it.’

If there had been a can lying on the pavement outside MI6 headquarters, Steven would have kicked it into the back of beyond in a bid to free himself of the frustration he felt. He had come here hoping to get information about the vaccines Petrov had been working on and now he was leaving, feeling he’d just taken a giant step backwards. Whatever Petrov had been working on, he had obviously finished before his killers had got to him. His lab had been cleared for shut-down, leaving the only clue in the flask he had prepared for transport to WHO in Geneva.

His mood didn’t improve when he got back to the Home Office and sensed that Jean and John Macmillan were exchanging glances behind his back as if preparing to tell him something he was not going to like.

‘I take it you haven’t heard,’ said Macmillan.

‘Heard what?’

‘The authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have announced a new outbreak of Ebola.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Steven, ‘How can they? It’s only a week since they announced the epidemic was over. What the hell are they playing at?’ He felt angry and confused at the same time. ‘There must be some kind of misunderstanding,’ he insisted.

‘That’s what we thought too,’ said Jean, ‘but they’re officially notifying it.’

‘Crazy, crazy, crazy,’ said Steven. ‘It has to be a left-over pocket of disease from the outbreak they’ve just declared over. Did they say where the new cases are?’

‘North Kivu Province,’ said Jean, referring to her notes.

‘But that’s a lawless hell hole, hundreds of miles away from Equateur... how in God’s name did it get there...’

Macmillan shook his head and said, ‘It didn’t travel from Equateur, they’ve had more than forty cases of haemorrhagic fever in Kivu and seventeen have been confirmed as being Ebola by lab tests. The real crunch came when genetic testing of the virus revealed it to be a completely different strain from the one in Equateur: that’s why they’re calling it a new outbreak; they have no option, it really is.’

‘The tenth,’ Steven murmured, feeling utterly dejected and not at all looking forward to an upcoming discussion with Tally.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Tally. ‘The world’s gone crazy... Less than a week since the end of one outbreak another one erupts... it’s just not possible... it’s just not fair!’

Steven could hear the emotion in Tally’s voice and it wasn’t making things any easier for him to persuade her that she must turn away from it all. ‘How did you hear about it?’ he asked.

‘The regional manager for WHO, Marcus Altman, called me this morning. He’s not sure what’s going to happen...’

‘Tally, what do you know about North Kivu?’

‘It’s hundreds of miles away from where I am.’

‘I’ve been investigating with help from the Foreign Office,’ Steven said, ‘it’s a little piece of hell on earth, completely without law and order with a civilian population living under the most atrocious conditions because so much in the way of housing has been destroyed in the continual fighting in the region. This has led to such severe overcrowding that Ebola will rage through the community like a forest fire after a long drought. The warring factions are completely without mercy and would put ISIS to shame when it came to inflicting pain and slaughter on their fellow citizens. You must not even consider going there.’

‘I haven’t been asked... no one has... no one saw it coming,’ said Tally, still sounding upset.

‘You might be,’ said Steven. ‘In the absence of any better idea, it will be an almost automatic thing for the authorities to ask those already in the country to carry on without putting any real thought into it and that could lead to absolute disaster. It’s clear thinking that’s needed not three cheers for the firemen as they walk into the flames never to return.’

‘We can’t just turn our backs, Steven.’

‘You must. It’s time for others to do the right thing, it’s a different response that’s needed.’

‘Which is?’

‘They have to stop the virus getting out of Kivu. Nothing else matters. Kivu is to all intents a war zone where no one can tell friend from foe. It’s pointless for outsiders to even try. All acts of human kindness will have to be side-lined and cold hard facts recognised. You know as well as I do, we cannot treat Ebola — we have nothing to treat it with — and highly skilled nursing will only save one in ten at great risk to the nurses. All efforts have to be centred on stopping the virus escaping and starting the pandemic we all fear could sweep the world. The only thing we have in our armoury is a vaccine and please God, we can get enough of it. It has to be used to create a belt of healthy immunised people round the whole infected region so that the virus cannot cross it. Viruses need living tissue to survive. If they can’t find someone new to infect, they will die. People trying to break out of the region have to be turned back.’

‘And if they have guns?’

‘They will have to be met by people with bigger guns.’

‘But, who...’

‘Surrounding countries will be keen to protect their borders and allowed to do so but United Nations action will be needed — and I mean action, not a bunch of freeloaders sitting on their arses passing resolutions.’

‘Oh my God,’ Tally murmured, ‘I need time to get my head round all this. I don’t know what to say.’

‘Please promise me you won’t agree to go anywhere before we speak again. I would get down on my knees and beg you to come home as quickly as possible if I thought it would do any good, but I know it wouldn’t and, ultimately, you will make up your own mind, so, promise me that?’

‘I promise.’