Bite

by Nick Louth

  The hierarchy was trumped the moment Professor Jürgen Friederikson arrived. The experts parted to let the great man take his place at the microscope, and waited in silence for his verdict. Van Diemen stood with one proprietorial hand on the microscope and one on Friederikson’s chair.

  Friederikson tapped his fingers on the desk. ‘Yes, Cornelis. Definitely.’

  A beatific smile lit Van Diemen’s features as he waited for the rest of Friederikson’s comments.

  ‘It is, definitely, something new,’ Friederikson said. The two stepped away from the stand, other delegates following in their wake, listening to history in the making.

  Turning around to remove the slide, Saskia saw the microscope salesman peering down his own instrument at the sample. She laughed, and Miller looked up, startled and perplexed. ‘Can you tell me what I’m looking at here?’

  ‘It is a new form of malaria. So new, in fact, that it was discovered only this morning.’

  ‘Wow. And by that guy?’ He pointed at Van Diemen.

  She smiled. ‘I expect that is how it will be recorded.’

  Shaun peered back down the instrument. ‘Is it dangerous?’

  ‘All malaria is dangerous. But this might be the worst kind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Simply because we don’t know where it came from, we don’t know where the patient caught it and we haven’t a clue if our drugs will stop it. All we know is that it progresses very, very fast.’

  Shaun flinched back from the microscope. ‘Jeepers.’

  Saskia’s beeper began to sound. ‘Got to go.’ She took the slide and put it in a plastic wallet. ‘Thank you for loaning us your microscope.’

  ‘You’re very welcome.’ Shaun said offering her his business card. ‘Let me know how it goes, okay? If history was made right here, today, on our model 2010, I’m gonna have it plastered all over the sales brochure.’

  Saskia took the card and smiled at the speed with which glory was being grabbed. ‘I’ll call you if I have time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a sick patient to see.’

  It was almost midnight when Professor Jürgen Friederikson slipped his 1964 midnight blue Bentley into his reserved parking bay at the research campus of Utrecht Laboratories. From the passenger seat he took a pile of medical journals and a polythene bag containing a plastic vial, and hauled himself laboriously out of the vehicle.

  Friederikson nodded at the night receptionist, who greeted him by name and wished him a good evening. At his office he dumped the journals on a bulging in-tray and tutted at the flashing ‘memory full’ light on the answering machine. Letters, phone calls, e-mails, everything could wait another week. It was not very often he could take science into unknown territory.

  His hands trembled as he held the vial to the light. This was 10cc of very special blood. More would have been better, but it was all he could get for now.

  He took the lift to the basement. In a storeroom he donned a white coat and picked out tubes, boxes and receptacles which he put on a plastic tray. At a door marked ‘Restricted’ he pressed his magnetic card against a sensor. The door slid open and a wave of humid warmth slid out into the corridor.

  The professor turned on the light and looked around the room. On the floor was a cage of white rats, and on the shelves two dozen rectangular fish tanks, each wrapped in fine netting. At first glance the tanks appeared to contain nothing more than a shallow dish of water. But as the professor peered in to each tank in turn, they became alive with mosquitoes, dancing into a frenzy as if they had been longing for his return.

  Today I finally discovered the secret of the monkey colony. Jarman and I were sheltering in his hut while the rain machine-gunned the zinc roof when I just came out and asked him. He was lounging on a hammock under the knotted mosquito net and he lifted his head and squinted at me with those sad brown eyes. For a long time he didn’t say anything, then he began the story.

  In 1978 Sophie was working through the storage area of the university laboratory in Graz when she found a fifty-year-old monkey head and organs preserved in formaldehyde. They were labelled as those of a colobus monkey. She had worked on colobus and she was certain this monkey was no colobus. But what was it? It looked like nothing she had ever seen. Then in a zoological journal from 1953 she came across a fuzzy picture and brief description of a small, and very shy nocturnal monkey from the northern forests of what was then Congo. The article was by a David Fowler of Cambridge University. Intrigued, she contacted Cambridge University. They said Sir David, as he now was, retired long ago, but they believed he was still alive. Eventually she made contact, with him at a nursing home in Wisbech, on a crackly phone line. He must have been in his late eighties, but he was still lucid, and her description convinced him that what she had was indeed a Fowler’s monkey.

  There were no Fowlers in captivity anywhere in the world, and Sophie as a relative unknown found it hard to raise the money for a trip to Zaire to study them in the wild. It was 1980 by the time a sponsor was found, a private Swiss firm called Tetro-Meyer which offered one hundred and fifteen thousand Swiss francs in exchange for regular reports. Sophie was happy enough to agree without asking any further questions, and Jarman who had been studying tropical mosquitoes was now able to do so first hand.

  The trip began disastrously. Sophie and Jarman spent three months in Zaire and found not a single Fowler’s monkey, despite offering hefty rewards for live specimens. In the next six months they travelled to the Central African Republic, Sudan, Cameroon, Rwanda and Burundi with no success. In Sudan they both contracted dysentery. In Cameroon driver ants devoured Jarman’s mosquito colony while he was sick with hepatitis A. In Burundi, without even knowing she was pregnant, Sophie miscarried.

  Finally, exhausted and dispirited they returned for a last week to Zaire. They were in Zizunga on the last night before they were due to leave when a village woman knocked on their door at about midnight. She had for sale a young and terrified monkey in a sack. It was a Fowler’s monkey.Sophie bought the animal, which appeared to be just a few months old. She named it Sam and tried to feed it on mashed bananas and figs while Jarman improvised a big cage out of chicken wire and wood. At first Sam pined away, screeching all night and refusing to eat. Whenever either of them came to the cage Sam would hide. It was a month before he began to eat properly.

  They told Tetro-Meyer of their success, and the firm extended the grant on condition a sample of Sam’s blood and a throat swab were sent back to its Swiss headquarters.

  One night he and Sophie were awoken by animal screaming, coughing and grunting. They looked out and found a group of Fowler’s monkeys laying siege to Sam’s cage. Two large males were jumping up and down on the roof, tearing at the wire, others were trying to dig underneath. One female was running up and down outside the cage, her movements mirrored by Sam on the inside. At one point they nuzzled and groomed each other through the mesh. When the cage roof started to give, Jarman ran outside and scared the monkeys away. They scampered noisily into the trees. After a few minutes the screeching and branch shaking ceased, and Jarman started repairing Sam’s cage. Just when he assumed the troop had gone, he felt a warm spattering of monkey urine on his shoulders and far above heard a little grunt of triumph.

  Sophie was delighted at the monkeys’ group bonding and altruism, but it made her uneasy about establishing the cage colony that Tetro-Meyer had in mind. They had sent on the samples, but no money came for a while, and their telexes went unanswered.

  Finally they were summoned to a meeting in Kinshasa with Bruno Zilkich, a young and very excited scientist from Tetro-Meyer’s headquarters. He said Sam’s blood and saliva samples showed a remarkable immune system, parallel with that of man, a far closer similarity that that between man and his otherwise closest living relative, the chimpanzee.

  He told them Tetro-Meyer made extensive use of primates to test promising new drugs on behalf of other companies, and the Fowler’s monkey would be an invaluable addition. There
would be no question of harming the monkeys. Only when drugs had passed their toxicity tests would they be used on Sophie and Jarman’s monkey colony, to see how effective they would be on man.

  Zilkich was quite open about the problems Tetro-Meyer faced. A growing animal rights lobby had tried to close down the company’s chimp colony in Berne. They had failed, but the public relations image was suffering. People failed to understand that curing human disease required testing on human-like animals. His only misgiving about Fowler’s monkeys was that they were even more visually appealing than chimps. He said his ideal would be a primate with a face as repulsive as a bat’s. In any case, all new primate experiments would then take place in Kinshasa, well away from prying eyes, using monkeys supplied from Zizunga. Sophie and Jarman would of course have to sign a confidentiality agreement as part of continued funding, and arrange for the capture of many more monkeys.

  Somewhat stunned, Sophie asked what kind of drugs would be tested. The scientist checked his notes and said the first candidate compound was a slimming aid.

  (Erica’s Diary 1992)

  Chapter Sixteen

  Professor Friederikson went to the refrigerator and removed a plastic jug labelled ‘equine concentrate’. He donned a pair of surgical gloves, decanted half of the thick crimson liquid into a measuring jug, tipped in half of the vial of precious infected blood and topped it up with water. The mixture he carefully poured into four ashtray-sized plastic receptacles until they were brimming. These he covered and sealed with a filmy membrane, then clipped on to each a small heating device.

  The professor checked his watch. After two minutes each pot was body warm. He opened a drawstring on the long netting sleeve into the first of the four chosen mosquito tanks, and carefully slid in the warm, blood-filled receptacle. Then he pulled his arm out rapidly and closed the sleeve. Within ten seconds a dozen insects were poised on the membrane, thrusting their feeding tubes through the skin into the warm blood.

  After repeating the process with the other three tanks, Friederikson fed the rest of his colony. Horse blood was fine for some mosquito species, but others would only draw blood from live prey. He picked a rat from the cage, anaesthetised the struggling creature and rested it on the netting of a tank. Within seconds scores of mosquitoes were poised on the underside of the rodent, sucking its life blood. This process he went through with three cages, returning the rats to their cage after five minutes.

  Finally, he turned to a tank marked Anopheles gambiei. This mosquito species was the usual African bearer of the most deadly malarial strain. ‘Now, I have a special job for you little devils,’ he muttered. He held one arm just above the netting, but out of reach of the insects. The blood-thirsty females shot up to the fine material like needles, straining to reach him, while the nectar-sipping males remained distributed around the tank. He put a long plastic tube known as a pooter in his mouth and inserted the other end through the drawstring of the netting sleeve. With a sharp inhalation he sucked a half dozen females into the tube, where they were trapped against a gauze filter. Still sucking, he withdrew the tube from the sleeve, closed it, and blew the insects out into a plastic jar before screwing on the lid.

  The mosquitoes in the jar needed to stay hungry for a while. For the rest of these deadly but fussy creatures there was only one way they would feed. The professor rolled up his shirt sleeve and pressed his bare arm to the netting roof. Within a few seconds hundreds of ecstatic female mosquitoes darted and pierced his flesh, gorging themselves on his blood.

  It was before dawn when I heard screaming and then shots. I jumped out of the hammock and grabbed my sarong. Tomas was already at the door with his camera, cursing as he tried to connect the flash unit. Amy was up and trying to rouse Georg.

  More shouting and horrible, continuous screaming. Without time to find my contacts I grabbed for my old glasses and edged out of the door. In the half light I could see the silhouettes of men with rifles and machetes, running across the clearing. Where was the Zaireian Army when we needed it?

  Tomas raised his camera, but I grabbed it. ‘Tomas, don’t be stupid. They’ll see the flash. Do you want us all to be killed?’

  He pushed me away angrily. ‘This is why I’m here. Go into the bush. Hide. I’ll find you later.’

  Georg rushed past and into the darkness with Amy in tow. ‘Come on,’ he hissed. ‘If you’re coming. See you at the Land Rover!’

  ‘Tomas, please.’ I tugged at his arm. ‘Don’t be a hero. Wait until it’s light, or until they’ve gone. Then you can get your pictures.’

  He turned and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. If you don’t make it to the Land Rover I’ll see you by the monkey tree. Hurry.’ He ducked along the edge of the hut, past the volleyball net, and was gone.

  I balled my fists and cursed him for his stupidity, then ran off after Georg and Amy. Behind me there was a low roar and one of the huts on the far side burst into flames.

  Two men were ahead of me, facing away. They were standing over a dark bundle. One was pointing a rifle at it. The other lifted something shiny over his head and I saw reflected in its blade the first orange glint of morning. Then he brought the machete down hard. It struck with a soft, evil noise. The bundle moaned. Rising gently from it came an arm, a woman’s hand opening wide like a flower to the sun. The man with the rifle laughed and lit a cigarette. Then the blade came, again and again and again.

  I sprinted quietly away towards the bush. Behind me, against the fire, I could see men with guns. I crouched behind a stack of old truck tyres and watched. Some of the men were dragging heavy bundles. I heard the Land Rover engine start up. I prayed it was Georg and Amy, but within five seconds I knew was wrong. They would not have hung around, revving the motor crazily. A sustained burst of gunfire drowned out the engine. I could hear arguments.

  It was getting light and hiding anywhere in Zizunga would soon be impossible. The nearest trees were thirty yards away. A hundred yards beyond was Jarman’s hut and the monkey cage. Maybe the KPLA wouldn’t find him. Even if they did, I remembered he had a gun.

  I moved beyond the tyre stack and tripped over something. Lying on her back on the ground was a woman, brown legs akimbo, arms flung apart. Her long flower print dress reeked of urine, and had been yanked up over her head to expose her.

  I couldn’t bear to lift the dress to see her face, and I didn’t need to. Where the delicate primrose print touched her torso and face, it had soaked in a crimson image of her excruciation. She was Cecile, the young bride of Etenzi. Raped, murdered and mutilated the day before her fifteenth birthday.

  (Erica’s Diary 1992)

  * * *

  The cops called her the sleeping beauty. Even by Dutch standards she was tall, mid twenties, long wavy blonde hair, perfect teeth, big brown eyes. On Monday she had been found unconscious in a toilet on the Amsterdam to Arnhem express. There were no indications of what had happened. She was fully clothed. There were no needles, no bottles, no pills, no wounds, no bruises. And no identification. If she had ever had a purse or handbag it was gone by the time the ticket inspector had found her, seated on the toilet, body slumped against the half closed door.

  When she didn’t come round they stopped the train at Utrecht and an ambulance was called. Maybe she had been robbed, but the police were happy enough she didn’t seem to have been assaulted, and handed her over to the paramedics. In the hospital they didn’t have time to worry about her name, they were more worried by a spleen, sitting in her abdomen hard as a pebble: that beautiful body was fighting something, fighting for its life. But when the blood tests came back negative for overdose of any kind, and the fever burned on, they wanted to know. Who is this woman?

  Day one was hypoglycaemia and renal failure. The response was intravenous glucose, kidney dialysis and anti-pyretics. The doctors knew they were not saving her life, just keeping it in limbo. Several times she came close to consciousness, eyes flickering and lips moving. Soon though,
doctors were using the word coma. Complications piled on: jaundice, electrolyte and acid-based disturbances, severe anaemia, fluid gathering in the lungs.

  But it was only on day two, when her urine poured out black, that they knew. This was blackwater fever, a sign the woman’s blood was dying in her veins. The overwhelmingly likely cause: severe malaria.

  The Utrecht doctors looked at a thick film blood slide, but could not interpret the result. That was when they couriered off a sample to the Randstad Medical Centre. And that was how it got to Saskia Sivali, sitting at her microscope, to discover case two of what they began to call Plasmodium five.

  But it needed someone else to find out who the sleeping beauty was.

  Jarman didn’t seem to be at his shack. When I called for him he hissed at me from a nearby bush. I wanted to tell him about Cecile but I didn’t have the words. Instead tears welled up inside me and I clung on to him, trembling and sobbing. Jarman put his arm around my shoulder and patted my back, then led me away into the bushes. Eventually, I stopped crying and lay on my back, staring up at the billowing clouds. It was nearly time for rain. I had been there for an hour before Jarman spoke. He asked me whether I knew how to shoot.

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘You have the perfect chance to learn. I’m taking the Beretta because it is harder to aim. You can have that.’ He pointed to a huge, heavy rifle in a canvas bag beside him.

  ‘I can’t use that.’

  ‘It is up to you. It is a Short Magazine Lee Enfield 303. I admit it is old and heavy. But for fifty years it was the weapon of choice of the British army. Today it could save your life. And if we survive until tonight it could get us some supper.’