The Virus

by Stanley Johnson

  As she passed the tacky souvenir shops which sold sepia-tinted postcards of Berlin in the good old days, Paula Schmidtt recalled the time when, in her early ’teens, she had joined the vast crowd in the Potsdamer Platz to listen to President Kennedy telling the crowd: “Ich bin ein Berliner”. Her father had still been in the States but they had sent her back to visit relations in Berlin. She remembered that Chancellor Adenauer had been there with Kennedy on that cold day in January 1963. So had Willy Brandt, then Mayor of West Berlin. After the speeches, men had mounted the platform as she was about to do now, to look out sternly onto a different world. Sixteen years later, President Carter had done the same thing. By then Paula’s political preferences were inalterably set.

  She climbed up the steps with some Australians in front of her and some Japanese behind. At the top, she spent some minutes looking into East Berlin across the cleared area covered with barbed wire and concrete traps. There were mines there, too, she knew; and sensors of every kind. Down here, men had met their deaths trying to escape. Some of them had been shot down in cold blood and left to die where they fell. There was a time when she might have sympathized. Not now.

  She stood pressed up against the wooden railing and checked her watch. It was exactly one p.m. She opened her handbag and took out a packet of Marlboroughs. Then she rummaged again in the bag and produced a lighter. She let the flame flare for three full seconds before lighting the cigarette.

  Two hundred yards away, in the top left window of one of the grey forbidding blocks of houses that bounded the eastern edge of the cleared zone, a “Vopo” — an East German frontier guard — was watching through powerful binoculars. He noted the time the black-clad woman arrived on the wooden platform, the brand-name on the cigarette package and the play with the lighter.

  “Fritz,” he called out to his companion (the Vopos were never trusted by their superiors to stand guard duty alone; they always performed in pairs), “she just showed up. You had better ring through and tell them.”

  By then, Paula Schmidtt had climbed back down the platform and was walking along the wall towards the centre of the city. She walked briskly, concentrating on her business.

  When she reached the Kurfürstendamm, West Berlin’s main shopping street, she turned east. Her pace slowed to that of an afternoon shopper. From time to time she looked at the window displays in the big stores. She didn’t wish to appear conspicuous.

  Almost at the end of the Kurfürstendamm are the blackened remains of Berlin’s Memorial Church. The building has never been repaired. It stands as mute testimony to the destructiveness of war. But part of it is still in use today as a place of prayer. There is a roof of sorts over the south transept and the pews are still in position.

  Paula entered the church and went to the seventh pew from the front on the left hand side. For a few minutes she knelt in prayer. Before she left, she pinned a small white envelope containing a full report on Lowell Kaplan’s visit to Marburg to the underside of the ledge in front of her. Later that day, an old woman, also dressed in black, entered the Memorial Church and knelt in prayer precisely where Paula Schmidtt had knelt. The old woman was remembering, no doubt, a husband or a son killed in the war. When she departed, the small white envelope had disappeared.

  7

  José Rodriguez, the fat and swarthy Brazilian who had served as the Director-General of the World Health Organization for the past three years, was in his most expansive mood.

  “Have a cigar, my dear Lowell,” he said, welcoming the American to his light and airy office on the top floor of the WHO’s new gleaming glass-fronted building overlooking Lake Geneva.

  Kaplan declined. “I see you have not yet launched your personal anti-smoking campaign, José,” he joked, “in spite of WHO’s worldwide efforts in that area.”

  Rodriguez laughed. He leaned back in his armchair, clutching the eight-inch Havana in one hand and waving the other as he talked. Smoke wreathed upwards.

  “I never believe in practising what you preach. I can’t see what one thing has to do with the other. Besides, we never got very far with that anti-smoking campaign. We put it on because we thought we might keep you Americans interested in the work of the organization. But then you had the change of administration in Washington and nobody on your side seemed very much interested in the tobacco problem any longer. So we’ve more or less dropped it.” He looked wistful. “The trouble is this organization has been too damned successful on the whole. We had the anti-malaria campaign and got rid of the mosquitos. Then we had the anti-smallpox campaign. ‘WHO licks mankind’s oldest enemy: smallpox!’ That’s what the headlines said in 1977 and the funds poured into our coffers. But now we’re running a bit low on enemies and the organization’s finances are suffering.” He took another puff on the cigar.

  The trend of José Rodriguez’ remarks encouraged Kaplan. He had wondered, as he flew into Geneva that morning from Brussels on the eleven o’clock plane, about the best way to inform Rodriguez about the Marburg virus. Rodriguez’ complaints of the lack of “sex-appeal” in WHO’s routine everyday work provided the opportunity.

  “In my view, José,” he said, “and please don’t take this as a criticism, you spend too much time in this organization thinking about the classic diseases — polio, typhus, tetanus, smallpox, malaria, cholera and so on. The third world majority has been getting at you. The Africans and the Asians and even the Latin Americans are trying to turn the WHO into just another development agency. You won’t keep the organization going that way, José, because you won’t keep your major donors interested. And it’s the major donors who count, and the people in those countries who make up the aid lobby.

  “No,” Kaplan continued, “what you’ve got to give them is drama, excitement, intellectual challenge. Take the Marburg virus, for example. Is there a greater single threat to mankind than Marburg?”

  When Rodriguez looked blank, Kaplan answered his own question.

  “No, there is no greater threat. Yet WHO has done nothing. Absolutely nothing about it. If the Marburg virus passes into general circulation, half the population of the world could be obliterated overnight! When you’ve got a lethal airborne viral agent against which there are no known vaccines, you’re in big trouble indeed. Well?” He looked at the other man challengingly.

  The Brazilian was clearly nervous.

  “What Marburg virus? I know there was an outbreak of infection at Marburg. But that was way back at the end of the ’sixties, soon after I joined WHO. We tried to look into it but we could never get any cooperation from the West German authorities. They just shut up tight. Since we heard nothing more of it, I’ve always assumed that it was a case of misclassification. Perhaps they had a particularly virulent strain of ’flu in Marburg that year. Some of these ’flu viruses can seem pretty exotic.”

  Kaplan stood up and walked over to the window. He looked out over Lake Geneva. The fountain was steadily sending its jet of water two hundred feet into the air. The plumes of spray drifted away on the afternoon wind, occasionally reaching the late eaters who sat over their coffee and liqueurs at the lakeside restaurants.

  He turned to face his host. “José, I’ve come to you today because I need your help and that of WHO. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said a moment ago that the Marburg virus was possibly the greatest single threat to mankind . . .”

  “Lowell,” the Brazilian interrupted him. “Perhaps you had better begin at the beginning.”

  Two hours later, when the late afternoon sun was slanting over the lake, José Rodriguez asked two other members of his staff to join the meeting. The first was WHO’s Deputy Director-General, the Russian Ivan Leontiev — a tall raffish-looking character who from time to time sported a monocle and who had clearly enjoyed his time sampling the fleshpots of the West. The other man was a bearded Englishman called John Cartwright who had thick horn-rimmed glasses and a serious professional manner. Rodriguez introduced him to Kaplan as WHO’s resident ecologist.

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bsp; “What Cartwright doesn’t know about animal vectors isn’t worth knowing.”

  Kaplan greeted the two men warmly. Though he was taken aback by the fact that Rodriguez’ deputy was a Russian, he quickly decided that this was irrelevant. After all, the WHO was an international organization and the Russians had just as much right to occupy high positions there as they did in, say, the U.N. itself. What counted was the calibre of the man, not the nationality.

  Rodriguez, who had recovered from his initial scare (no Director-General of the World Health Organization likes to be told that there’s a lethal disease threatening mankind which he and his people haven’t even heard of), quickly took charge of the meeting. He spoke with emphasis and enthusiasm. Long before Kaplan had concluded his story, the Brazilian had realized that if WHO could add a victory over the Marburg virus to those it had already won in the malaria and smallpox campaigns, his own stock would rise enormously. Since he was up for reelection the following year, that was a factor of considerable importance quite apart from any benefits there might be for mankind as a whole.

  By the time the jet of spray in the fountain on Lake Geneva had been turned off for the evening, José Rodriguez had identified the essential options:

  “As I see it,” he said, “from what Kaplan has told us, it is possible, even probable, that the green monkey is the vector of the Marburg virus. It is also possible, even probable, that one particular tribe of green monkey, namely a tribe which lives in the . . .”

  “Kugumba,” Kaplan prompted him.

  “Kugumba region of Eastern Zaire is the vector in this particular case.”

  He looked at the other three men and saw that they agreed with his summing-up so far.

  “As far as we know,” (José Rodriguez tapped the ash from his long-dead cigar), “there is no other reservoir of the Marburg virus. We cannot, of course, be one hundred per cent sure. But since there have been only two outbreaks of the disease in over fifteen years and both have been linked with green monkeys, I would say that there is a very strong presumption that this is indeed the case. I repeat: as far as we know there are no other vectors and no current cases of infection among human populations. Is this correct, Lowell?”

  Kaplan nodded.

  “As I see it therefore,” Rodriguez continued, “we can do one of two things. The first option is that we can forget about the Marburg virus. We can hope that it stays where it is, well and truly buried in the jungles of Central Africa. Fifteen years or more elapsed between the first outbreak of Marburg and the second. We can sit back and hope that five hundred years or more will elapse between the second outbreak of Marburg and the third. What are the pro’s and the con’s of this first course of action? The pro’s are that by doing nothing, that is to say by not trying to track down the source of the disease, we will not be exposing anyone needlessly with all the risk that this entails. The con’s are that there may be another release of the virus into civilization. This may occur by the same route as the first two outbreaks, that is to say the capture of a wild animal and its transport to some centre of population. Or it may occur in any even simpler manner. The forests of Eastern Zaire are no longer inviolate, any more than — in my country — are the forests of the Amazon. If there is another release, as Kaplan has so well put it this afternoon, we have effectively no defence beyond first-stage isolation and very limited possibilities of serum-immunization.”

  The three other men present nodded, agreeing with Rodriguez’ presentation of the problem.

  “What is the second possible course of action, gentlemen?” Rodriguez continued. “It is that we go in there and ELIMINATE THE VECTOR, that is to say THE GREEN MONKEYS THEMSELVES!”

  He paused dramatically, waiting for the full effect of his words to sink in. It was Ivan Leontiev who spoke first. He removed his monocle and looked around the room. Speaking impeccable English he said:

  “I entirely agree with you, my dear Director-General, I think the second course of action is correct. We must surely eliminate the vector, if by eliminating the vector we can eliminate the disease itself. I believe that this organization should mount an expedition to Zaire to find the green monkeys in the Kugumba region and that you, José, should lead this operation. It will surely turn into one of WHO’s greatest triumphs.”

  José Rodriguez acknowledged the compliments of his deputy with a wide smile which set his fat olive-hued jowls quivering.

  “Does anyone disagree?”

  Instinctively Lowell Kaplan wanted to say that he disagreed with Ivan Leontiev. He thought the Russian had been altogether too glib in his support of Rodriguez. It was almost as though he had prepared the speech in advance. Logically, of course, Kaplan couldn’t fault Leontiev’s argument. If there was only one vector for the disease and no other potential sources of infection, e.g. laboratories where a virus was stored for medical or research purposes, then of course by eliminating the vector, you could eliminate the disease itself. What’s more, the green monkey wasn’t like the ubiquitous mosquito. Only one tribe was involved and thanks to his own detective work they now had a pretty shrewd idea of precisely where it lived.

  Before Kaplan could comment on what Leontiev had said, Cartwright intervened. He pulled at his beard nervously, clearly concerned at the direction the discussion had taken.

  “Director-General,” he coughed apologetically to signal his reservations, “I agree that it will be a major health and public relations triumph if WHO can announce to the world that Marburg disease has been eliminated once and for all. But we also have to think of the practical politics of this operation. Isn’t there going to be an outcry from the conservationists if we move against the green monkeys, destroying them ruthlessly in their natural habitat?” Cartwright’s voice trailed off as he saw Rodriguez looking at him scornfully.

  “My dear Cartwright.” There was a cutting edge to the Brazilian’s voice. “Just how naive can you be? You don’t suppose WHO is going to announce this operation in advance, do you? No Sir! We announce it when it is over; when we have succeeded; when the last green monkey has been eliminated, and when Marburg disease is no longer a threat to mankind. That is the moment we go public; and that is the moment the world will applaud. The lives of a few diseased animals will at that point appear a small price to pay compared to the inestimable benefits our actions will have brought.”

  Whatever further objections he might have felt, Cartwright decided to leave them unvoiced. José Rodriguez had clearly made up his mind. Kaplan too left the meeting convinced that the decision to eliminate the green monkeys was correct. In many ways, he could see the force of the conservationists’ argument, as presented by Cartwright. There was something horrible about the deliberate destruction of a species. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t see the alternative.

  He walked back up the hill from the WHO to the Intercontinental at Petit Saconnex. There was a message waiting for him at the desk. It was from Susan Wainwright in Atlanta, Georgia.

  “HAVE TRACED STEPHANIE VERUSIO,” he read. “ADDRESS 16 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. HONORE PARIS XVIe TELEPHONE 767-1814 STOP STEPHANIE HAS BEEN IN AFRICA LAST SEVERAL MONTHS STOP HAVE ADVISED HER OF SISTERS DEATH STOP STEPHANIE WISHED TO RETURN IMMEDIATELY TO UNITED STATES STOP HAVE ASKED HER TO WAIT TILL YOU MAKE CONTACT BEST SUSAN.”

  Before going upstairs to his room, Kaplan asked the hotel to book him on a plane to Paris the following morning. Whatever other urgent business he might have, the need to visit — and to console — the sister of the dead girl must come first.

  8

  Kaplan didn’t in the end get away from Geneva until after lunch on the following day. Within the World Health Organization, planning for the Zaire expedition went immediately into top gear and Kaplan found himself drawn into the discussions. It was obvious from an early stage that U.S. logistical support would be of paramount importance. Twice that morning Kaplan was on the phone to Tim Boswell in the U.S. Embassy in Brussels and Boswell in turn was in touch with his Nato counterpart.


  One small thing which arose in the course of Kaplan’s second conversation with Tim Boswell puzzled him.

  “By the way, Lowell,” Tim had said. “We made some discreet enquiries with SABENA about that fellow you met. They’ve no record of a Jean Delgrave working at Zaventem. Half a dozen other Delgraves and three Degraefs. Are you sure you got the name right?”

  Kaplan had been indignant. “Of course I’m sure. I used the man’s ID.”

  “Well, we’re still checking,” Boswell had told him. “The airport puts a lot of work out to contract. He could be one of the contract staff.”

  They had left it at that. Kaplan had thrust the matter out of his mind. No doubt some light would be shed on it in due course. For the moment he had other preoccupations. He still had misgivings about the Zaire option. It seemed so brutal, so unsubtle — just to go into the jungle and blast the monkeys to death. Yet he found it hard to fault Rodriguez’ logic, nor that of Leontiev, his deputy. (Christ, what a sinister type that Leontiev was, with his monocle and upper-class English accent!) And there was no doubt that the U.S. Health Authorities were backing the Rodriguez approach to the hilt. The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva had called on Rodriguez in person with a message of support. He would never have delivered that message if the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services (which included the Atlanta Center itself in its responsibilities) had not agreed.