Bite

by Nick Louth

  The next thing he was aware of, Quiggan was propping him up against the wall in the bathroom splashing water on his face.

  ‘Come on, Jack. C’mon. How you feeling?’

  ‘Weird. What happened?’

  ‘You keeled over just as you were shaking her hand.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. What a disaster.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it. She got her jacket off, told me she was a qualified doctor, and put you in the recovery position herself.’

  ‘Fuck. Just tell her I got the sweats. That’s all. Tell her I’ll be out in a couple minutes, okay?’

  ‘Jack, I do think you need a doctor. Postpone the meeting. You’re real pale, boy.’

  ‘No. I’ll be fine.’ Erskine dried his face and stared at Quiggan. ‘No more postponements. I’ve never cried off a meeting because of ill health and I definitely ain’t gonna start with this one.’

  After Quiggan had gone Erskine stared closely at his face in the mirror. His fleshy face and large jaw looked like raw pastry. The tan had vanished. His pale blue eyes were bloodshot. Sweat had darkened the collar edge of his blue Lauren shirt. His joints were aching and he felt lightheaded. He took three deep breaths and opened the door. Everyone was looking at him. He beamed, boomed a hello and jogged down the two steps into the conference room like a chat show host.

  ‘I’m so glad to see you so recovered, Mr Erskine.’ The minister shook his hand warmly. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m just fine,’ he said. ‘I think I may have a touch of the flu, but it takes more than that to put me out. You know, I was only saying to Don here the other day what a great place to fall ill Holland would be. You guys resource the health sector properly.’

  ‘I’m glad you approve. Perhaps that was why you wanted to buy our biggest pharmaceutical company?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he beamed. ‘And I guess that whatever it is I’ve got, those guys will have a cure for it.’ A ripple of laughter ran around the room.

  I have read that Henry Stanley visited Zizunga in the last century, but no-one here knows about it and from what I can see he could not be blamed for having moved on straight away. Zizunga has neither strategic merit nor agricultural advantage. It is a long, steep haul back from the river for the women carrying water. The lowland fields are frequently flooded and the rain is eroding the sloping land because of bush clearance. Most days a thin acrid smoke from the fires permeates the whole place.

  Zizunga’s headman is a thin and wrinkled grandfather, Etenzi Babelundo. Etenzi speaks Gbaya, which none of us understand, but not a word of English. Fortunately, Georg speaks enough of the trade language Sango to communicate with him. The first thing he told us was that it would not be safe to stay in Zizunga for long. Georg asked him why and Etenzi laughed and clapped his hands. Then he pointed with his stick out to the south east and the Ruwenzori mountains. ‘Kaipelai coming,’ was all he said.

  (Erica’s Diary 1992)

  Chapter Nine

  Professor Friederikson was being interviewed in the lobby by a radio reporter when Max walked into Amsterdam’s RAI Congress Centre. Beyond him delegates queued at the registration desks and wandered around the cavernous exhibition centre. Max buttonholed one of the organisers and asked if Erica had arrived yet. The woman tapped at a computer and told him that she had pre-registered by e-mail two weeks ago, but no, she hadn’t yet checked in. Her conference travel bag, papers and other registration paraphernalia were still waiting for her. He scrawled a message for Erica and left it for them to give her when she arrived.

  Friederikson’s interview looked to be over and a press officer in a houndstooth jacket, pearl earrings and pleated skirt was shepherding the professor away.

  Max intercepted them. ‘Excuse me, Professor Friederikson?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m Max Carver. Erica’s boyfriend.’

  He nodded, but said nothing, while the press officer examined her watch.

  ‘Have you seen Erica today?’

  ‘Why, have you lost her?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Check with the registration desk, they will tell you…’

  ‘You mentioned a friend of hers. At the restaurant. Who was it?’

  ‘Professor,’ the press officer rested a heavily-ringed hand on the professor’s arm. ‘RTL 4 TV is waiting in Milward’s office.’

  ‘Let them wait, Tanya. Mr Carver, what is the problem?’

  ‘Who was the surprise friend you mentioned?’

  ‘If you must know he’s the Health Minister from The Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr Loebe. I’ll introduce you when he arrives if you want. Now if you will excuse me.’

  Friederikson and the woman headed off to an office marked private, leaving Max to sit in the lobby. For an hour he watched delegates arrive, as multi-ethnic as a New York bus queue. Among them somewhere, he was convinced, was his nothing special, middle-aged bespectacled rival. The man Erica had met last night. Someone she had not bothered to tell him about.

  While he waited, Max opened his bag and pulled out Erica’s journal. As he did so an old British newspaper cutting drifted to the floor. The headline was Missing Briton among aid workers held by African rebels. The photo with the article was of Erica; younger, and less sophisticated, but already showing her zeal and determination. The article was dated March 1992. It said they had been held for four months and attempts to find them had so far failed.

  Four months is a heck of a long time to be held hostage. It was a month longer than he and Erica had spent together. Through their time together, she had talked incessantly about Africa. But she had never mentioned being kidnapped. That seemed very strange. He wondered what else she hadn’t told him.

  This evening the two nuns offered to let me watch them feed the monkeys. They took me away from the centre of the village, past the doctor’s hut and battered Jeep. Beyond them was a sturdy metal cage about thirty feet square and ten high, from the inside of which had been draped fine mosquito netting. Sister Margaret opened a padlock on the gate and unzipped the netting so we could approach the inner cage. The moment we were through she zipped the netting back up, joking that Sophie would have preferred she and Sister Annette to get malaria than one of her precious monkeys to catch the disease.

  Sister Margaret unlocked the inner cage and I followed her inside. One end was a tangle of bushes and dead branches and at the other a trough of water, and some plastic buckets. Sister Annette topped up the water from a jerry can and replenished the food buckets with maize and figs. She said that in the wild the monkeys would eat fruit, insects and some of the more easily digestible forest leaves.

  There was a rank feral smell, but no other sign of life. Annette pointed to the thicket of branches. They were hiding, she whispered, waiting for me to go. She said it took over a year for them to trust her and Sister Margaret enough to even show themselves in their presence. Only Sophie and Jarman could pick them up.

  We left and locked the inner gate. The nuns took me around in the narrow corridor between the inner and outer cages and behind a big vertical sheet of zinc which had been leaned against the inner cage. It had slots cut in it at eye level so we could watch the monkeys without being seen. It was five minutes before I saw any movement. An orangy-brown creature not much bigger than a squirrel scampered down a branch and emerged from the shadows. It had a face like a little old man, a squat white nose, watery brown eyes and orange whiskers hanging from its jaw. A tuft of hair like a baby’s stood vertically from its head, and a striped black and brown tail curled and squirmed as it sniffed the air. Then it bounded towards a bucket and reached in. A dozen more monkeys then scampered down, including three females with tiny babies hanging grimly onto their backs. Soon they were gambolling and cavorting on the floor and chasing each other around the branches.

  I had never heard of Fowler’s monkeys until I came to Zizunga. Now I have seen them I think they are the most delightful creatures, and it saddened me to see them caged.


  The nuns say Sophie and Jarman loved to talk about monkeys but were secretive about the work they do for the Swiss firm. Some things cannot be hidden in a small village, however. Every month, a brand new Land Cruiser fitted with a big refrigerator comes from Kinshasa, driven by two mondeles. They take sealed plastic packages from the doctors and put them into this fridge. In return they leave non-refrigerated packages. Sister Annette saw an empty package in Jarman’s hut once. It was addressed to the Geneva laboratories of Tetro-Meyer oHG, and was labelled ‘tissue samples’.

  ‘Etenzi has his own explanation,’ Sister Margaret said. ‘They are stealing the spirits of the monkeys.’

  (Erica’s Diary 1992)

  ‘Hi, Max. What are you doing here?’

  Max looked up to see Zoe Whelan, Erica’s colleague and one of her friends since school. He closed the journal and stood to greet her. ‘Hi. I’d forgot that you would probably be here too.’

  ‘Yes, others of us are giving papers too, you know.’

  Zoe specialised in intestinal parasites. Two months ago he, Erica and Zoe spent a memorable evening in a New York restaurant. Zoe’s idea of conversation was describing how some tape worms could live twenty years in the human gut, growing fifty or sixty feet and laying thousands of eggs a month. At one point Max had dropped a forkful of spaghetti and clam sauce on his plate, unable to continue. She and Erica looked like they were going to die laughing.

  ‘Have you seen Erica today?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I only arrived this morning.’

  ‘You got a few minutes, Zoe?’

  ‘Of course.’ She shrugged off her shoulder bag and sat down. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Erica walked out of our hotel room last night and never came back.’

  ‘Did you have a row?’

  ‘No. But the waitress at out hotel saw her having a drink with some guy at midnight. He was middle-aged and wore glasses, I know it’s not much of a description. Do you have any idea who it could be?’

  ‘It’s a bit vague. No-one springs to mind.’

  ‘Has she mentioned any old friends or colleagues to you?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to her in a few days, but no. I’m sure she’ll straighten it out when she turns up.’

  ‘If she turns up. I can’t help wondering what if…’

  ‘Now Max, there’s no way she would miss today, I can tell you that.’

  ‘You gotta believe me, Zoe, none of this adds up. She wasn’t planning to be away overnight. She didn’t even take her contact lens stuff, her toothbrush or any spare clothes as far as I can tell.’

  ‘It certainly sounds reckless considering how important today is going to be for her,’ Zoe conceded. ‘But it’s a big step to go from this strange behaviour to assuming she has been kidnapped. Especially as whoever she met she must have trusted. Let’s face it, people are rarely abducted by friends or colleagues, and if she had any worries about meeting someone she would have got you to come too.’

  Faced with Zoe’s scepticism Max felt he had to let her know about the laptop theft. She listened, twisting a finger in a hank of her blonde hair, evaluating Max as if he was already just a piece of history in Erica’s life.

  ‘I hope I don’t sound conceited, Zoe, but I think something has happened to Erica that is nothing to do with her and me. Our relationship is fine. I’ve got a hunch that this is something to do with the conference and her work.’

  ‘I tell you what Max,’ laughed Zoe. ‘It’s one thirty now. If Erica isn’t here by five, then I’ll believe you.’

  ‘Let’s start here,’ Zoe told Max. ‘If John doesn’t know what’s happened to Erica, we should at least alert him to the gap in his schedule.’ She led him past the registration desk into the conference back office. It was chaotic and crowded, a cacophony of pager beeps and mobile phone trills, and the rhythmic lightning of photocopying.

  Behind waist-high stacks of paper, cursing over a row of facsimile machines they found conference organiser John Milward. Zoe introduced Max to Milward’s back and then asked casually: ‘John, have you seen Erica at all in the last twenty four hours?’

  ‘No. But I wish I had, I’m still waiting for her paper. The bloody server’s down, there’s no e-mail, so I’ve been here, wrestling with these bastard things.’ He thumped the top of one of the fax machines. Milward seemed to sense something in the silence and turned to them. ‘Why? What’s the matter?’

  Max spoke. ‘She’s disappeared. Went out around eleven last night, met someone in a bar, and hasn’t been back since.’

  ‘Good God.’ Milward ran his hands through his thick greying hair and sat on his desk.

  ‘She doesn’t even have fresh clothes or her speech with her,’ Zoe added. ‘It doesn’t look like she will come straight here.’

  ‘Have you been to the police?’ Milward said.

  ‘They’re not interested. Say it’s too early,’ Max responded.

  ‘Too early!’ Milward picked up a pile of papers and tossed them back on the desk. ‘The conference starts in ninety minutes. She’s got a paper to give at five. She was supposed to be here already so that I could run off copies.’

  ‘That’s leaving it a bit late anyway, isn’t it?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Milward shuffled through the papers. ‘I have her original paper filed here, the one that went to Nature magazine. But she phoned me and said she wanted to make last minute revisions. I said it was cutting it a bit fine, but as long as I received it before eleven this morning...’

  ‘When did she phone?’ Max asked.

  ‘Tuesday last week, I think.’ Milward unlocked a filing cabinet and riffled through the papers. ‘Here it is.’ He turned to them with a thick folder in his hand.

  Zoe stretched out her hand for it. ‘I’m curious to see what she’s really been doing all this time.’

  Milward suddenly pulled back his hand. ‘Now I’m not sure what I should do.’

  ‘Why?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘She made me absolutely promise not to let anyone see it. Absolutely nobody.’

  ‘John, I’ve known her since we were eleven,’ Zoe said.

  ‘Yes, but she hasn’t told you, has she?’

  ‘No. We’ve all been in suspense.’

  ‘Only three people in the world have actually read the paper.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Max asked.

  ‘Her professor at Columbia University. The peer review panel chairman at Nature. And me.’

  ‘And is it good?’ Max asked.

  ‘It is truly astonishing. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it’s the parasitological equivalent of the splitting of the atom.’

  There was a hiss of an artificial leg behind them and the lean form of Professor Friederikson lurched into the room, trailed by Tanya the press officer. Milward dropped the paper back in the filing cabinet, turned the lock and pocketed the key.

  ‘Ah. Erica’s entourage,’ Friederikson said. ‘And is the great woman herself here yet?’

  Milward and Zoe looked at each other. It was Max who spoke. ‘No she isn’t.’

  ‘Well, I hope she hurries up. We are all impatient to hear about her breakthrough, if that is indeed what it is.’

  Milward turned to Max. ‘Professor Friederikson will be showing his own results for the eradication campaign on Monday. It is thanks to his contacts in Africa that we have been able to get the latest World Health Organization project…’

  ‘Pish. Don’t get too excited about that. Insecticide and bed nets, good will and chit chat. Malaria is not so easily overcome.’

  Behind Friederikson stood a powerfully-built bespectacled African wearing a sharp suit and a gleaming smile, Erica’s surprise visitor from Africa. Loebe gave them all a firm double-handed handshake, grinning delightedly. Each smile puckered his cheeks to reveal symmetrical tribal scars. To Max it was like a baring of knives.

  ‘When are we going to hear about the vaccine?’ Loebe said.

  ‘The minister is a great belie
ver in vaccines,’ said Professor Friederikson, managing simultaneously to convey that this view was unwisely optimistic.

  ‘And I understand that Dr Stroud-Jones has developed one,’ the minister beamed. ‘The new unity government is pledged to improve the health of all our people and we would be happy to be the first to test any malaria vaccine.’

  ‘I think you may be working on rumours, minister,’ said Milward.

  ‘Of course he is,’ Friederikson exploded. ‘We all are. When is she going to tell us what she has discovered? Then this pointless speculation can cease. I trust Mr Milward that the paper will be presented by someone, even if Dr Stroud-Jones is not here to do it?’

  ‘No. I have been expressly asked to keep it confidential. If, God forbid, Dr Stroud-Jones does not appear, another paper will be substituted.’

  ‘Preposterous! What is she playing at? God knows malaria gets little enough newspaper coverage when there is HIV and bird flu to chase after, but what little we get is focused on her alleged discovery. Every time a journalist speaks to me they only want to know one thing – Have I read the Stroud-Jones paper? I haven’t, and I want to.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Loebe asked.

  ‘I’m afraid nobody knows,’ Zoe said. ‘She’s disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared? There can only be one explanation,’ Friederikson said. ‘Her discovery is a myth. It doesn’t work, she now knows it doesn’t work and she’s too cowardly to come out and say it.’

  ‘What a crock of shit,’ Max said. ‘I’m no scientist, Prof, but I know one thing. You don’t have the first idea what’s going on, so why don’t you wait until you do, okay?’

  ‘And I’ve known Erica for twenty years,’ yelled Zoe. ‘She has more moral courage in her little finger than you, Professor, have in your entire body. If it didn’t work she would admit it. Your trouble is that you don’t want it to work.’