“Michel, you know how it is, just as well as I do. The trade in wildlife is very much an under-the-counter business. We don’t know who originally caught the monkeys. People don’t leave their calling cards on a nice plastic tag attached to a collar round the monkeys’ necks. We’re lucky to have as neat a reference as we do about where the green monkeys were found.”
The Professor was thoughtful. “I think it’s odd that you have such precise information on this point. It’s almost too precise.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s almost as though someone wants those monkeys to be found.” He appeared to puzzle over the problem for a moment or two, then he moved on to something else.
“Frankly, Stephanie,” he resumed his seat on the terrace next to her. “I don’t think it can be done. You may find those monkeys. But what will you do when you have found them?”
“I thought we might move them on somewhere; somewhere they couldn’t be found.”
He shook his head. “You can drive them out if you know what to do. But they’ll come back, especially if — as you think — the tribe has been living in the same place for a very long time. And if they come back, then they’ll be exposed to the same threat as before. If the WHO people don’t exterminate them the first time, they’ll try again and again. Until they do. And if they don’t come back, but find some other habitat, they’ll be hunted down elsewhere.”
She pleaded with him. “Surely it’s worth a try, Michel. You of all people must see that. You’ve made your life with animals. You knew my parents and my sister. You must see what it means.”
“Would you like me to help?” He smiled. That wonderful Tutsi smile. “Would you like me to come with you? Get a team together. It’s been some time since my last field trip and I’ve always had a fondness for monkeys.”
She could hardly believe her ears. She had never dreamed that she might be able to persuade Michel Ngenzi to come with her. She had wanted his advice and encouragement. That would have been enough. But to have him on the expedition itself was almost too good to be true. She stood up and kissed him on both cheeks, standing on tiptoe to do so.
“Are you sure you can spare the time?”
“If I can’t spare the time for this kind of thing, what do I have time for?” He raised his glass. “Let’s drink to it? To the green monkeys!”
“To the green monkeys!” Their glasses clinked.
Stephanie came back to Ngenzi’s house around lunch-time the following day. She was fretful with impatience.
“When can we leave, Michel?” she asked. “The WHO team isn’t going to be hanging around. We are probably only a few days ahead of them.”
Ngenzi explained the problem to her:
“I’ve already spoken to my people,” he told her. “I can get the guides and porters we need. They know the area. There’s a lot of movement between Burundi and Eastern Zaire. Frontiers don’t mean so much in this part of Africa. But there’s one man I’m waiting for and he’s upcountry at the moment visiting his village. His name is Kodjo and he’s lived his life in the jungle with monkeys. I may know about them from a professional and scientific viewpoint — I know the difference between the genus and the species. I can tell a marmoset from a macaque. But Kodjo knows them right to the tips of his fingers. If we are going to move those monkeys we are going to have to go about it the right way.”
“Which way is that?”
But Ngenzi would say no more. “Wait till Kodjo joins us.”
Kodjo finally reappeared early on Sunday morning. He seemed to know that his presence was eagerly awaited. He was a young man, about twenty-two years old, with an engaging smile.
“I’m sorry, I’m late, boss. My wife had a baby. We had to have the ‘mwemba’.”
Ngenzi explained to Stephanie that the mwemba was a special ceremony to celebrate the birth of a child.
“It’s basically an excuse to drink. It probably took Kodjo three days to recover.”
When he learned of the task that lay ahead, Kodjo looked doubtful. “I’ll try,” he said.
Later, Stephanie saw him at the bottom of Professor Ngenzi’s garden squatting on all fours, prancing in and out of the hibiscus and uttering weird howls and growls.
“What’s he doing, Michel?” Stephanie asked.
“He’s practising,” Ngenzi replied. He wouldn’t say any more.
They decided to leave that evening as soon as the moon came up.
Stephanie went back to the hotel to pack up her things and check out of her room. She told them to hold most of her luggage.
“Ah, so you’re coming back?” The prospect seemed to please the hotel manager. He liked guests who tipped well. If his staff was happy, he was happy since there was just a chance that they would show up for work in the morning. “How long will you be gone?”
“I’m not sure.”
Stephanie turned to go. As she did so, a tall handsome African who had been standing near the desk, addressed her.
“Vous allez en safari, mademoiselle?”
She immediately recognized the man she had seen water-skiing that first afternoon and at the same time recalled the conversation she had had with Professor Ngenzi on the subject of Victor Mtaza.
“Pas exactement . . .” Stephanie didn’t quite know what to say but knew instinctively that it would be a mistake to say too much.
The big white teeth flashed.
“Oho? Not exactly?” Victor Mtaza’s eyes roved over the pile of baggage which she was taking with her. He saw the cameras and the guncases and the other equipment which she had gathered.
Then he appeared to lose interest. “En tout cas, bon voyage.”
As he stepped out of the lobby, Stephanie saw him exchange some words with one of Professor Ngenzi’s African servants who had been sent over to help her with her things.
In the car she asked the driver casually:
“Who was that man who came out of the hotel ahead of me, Charles?”
“That was Victor Mtaza, Madame. He’s the President’s son.”
“Do you know him, Charles?”
“Oh no! Victor Mtaza is a big fish. He swims in Lake Tanganyika. Charles Obonjo is just a little fish who swims in the puddles of the road when the afternoon rains have gone.”
Stephanie left it at that. There were far too many things she didn’t understand about Africa for her to begin chasing every stray straw in the wind. But she wondered idly why Charles Obonjo didn’t want to admit to an exchange which she knew he had had.
That night the moon rose at around 10 p.m. Half-an-hour later, two cars pulled out of the drive of Professor Michel Ngenzi’s private residence and headed south along the road which bordered the lake. Ten miles further on, they pulled off the road into a clearing.
“This is the place.” Michel Ngenzi got out of the leading car.
“What’s that?” asked Stephanie. She pointed to a large perpendicular stone which stood in the clearing, clearly visible in the moonlight.
“Go and see.”
Stephanie was able to read the inscription. “At this point on the shores of Lake Tanganyika Stanley met Livingstone 25 XI 1871.”
“What a place to begin!” she exclaimed.
“Let’s hope we all return safely,” Professor Ngenzi replied softly. He touched the stone with his hand and then brought his hand to his forehead.
“Come.” He beckoned to his party. “It is time to go.”
The boats were waiting for them by the shore. The porters shuffled forward with the food and equipment for the journey. Ten minutes later, they were off.
“Oars first,” ordered Ngenzi.
Now that they were on their way, the Professor was even more evidently in charge than he had been during the preparations. He had shed his city clothes and wore only the umbana, the characteristic loincloth of the high-caste Tutsis. He sat in the prow of the boat, the moonlight glancing on his bare shoulder. Stephanie could not help being struck by the dignity and i
nner peace of this man whom she had known for so long.
At last, when the lights of the city of Bujumbura were no more than a distant glow, Ngenzi gave permission for the outboard to be started. From the shore only the keenest listener would have detected the sound of the engine above the night wind.
Stephanie Verusio leaned back in the stern of the boat. Ahead of her the mountains of Zaire loomed larger and more ominous with each passing minute. Somewhere among those mountains was a tribe of monkeys. She was going to find those monkeys and save them. That was what her father would have tried to do. That was what her sister would have tried to do. She thought about her parents and her sister.
From the other end of the boat, Ngenzi saw the tears in her eyes, large drops of water glistening in the brightness of the tropical night.
“Don’t cry, Stephanie.” His voice was gentle.
Stephanie put her hand to her face and brushed the tears away. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed.”
10
Bukavu! Had he been asked six months earlier if he expected during the first week of July to fly, via the Zairian capital Kinshasha, to a half-baked town at the southern end of Lake Kivu in the Eastern Congo, Lowell Kaplan would certainly have said that the odds were against it.
His life as a top epidemiologist working for the U.S. Government was a full and interesting one. Even so, he would not normally have anticipated spending his summer vacation in a dilapidated barracks left behind by the Congolese army when they cleaned out the Mulelist rebels back in 1964. Nor would he have anticipated sharing those same barracks with a fat and perspiring Brazilian, namely José Rodriguez the Director-General of the World Health Organization; with Rodriguez’ Russian Deputy, the tall and sinister Ivan Leontiev and with an earnest bespectacled British scientist called John Cartwright.
But Kaplan was determined to make the best of the situation. He decided that his priority task was to lick the WHO team into shape. Each morning before the sun grew too hot, he encouraged his colleagues to exercise on the weed-infested concrete square in front of the barracks.
“One, two, three, four,” Kaplan would shout, setting the pace for the others. Leontiev declined to participate, pleading a gamey leg. But Rodriguez and Cartwright turned out, the former with an offended look as though he found it beneath his dignity, as head of a body concerned with global health, to demonstrate a personal concern with physical fitness.
The Congolese part of the operation was in another hut across the square. Protocol required that the Zairian government should be nominally in charge, with the WHO team in an “advisory” role (in much the same way, Kaplan reflected, as the Americans had had an “advisory” role in Vietnam). So a short thickset Zairian soldier called Colonel Albert Mugambu had been assigned to liaise with them.
Mugambu had taken his task seriously. He had produced a squad of some forty men who were now encamped at the Bukavu base, along with the normal complement of wives, grandmothers, chickens, sheep and goats. It was a scruffy lot but, for the time being, they had nothing much to do but wait.
They had been in Bukavu about three days when the equipment arrived on board a Hercules Transport aircraft belonging to the United States Air Force. Mugambu roused his men and they proceeded to unload. When it was all piled on the tarmac, and Kaplan was able to make a thorough inspection of what Uncle Sam had been able to provide given a day or two’s notice, his heart swelled with a measure of patriotic pride. What other nation, he thought, could produce fifty brand new breathing apparatuses and a similar number of plastic pressure suits between breakfast and tea? What other nation could produce at the drop of a hat a similar number of recoilless rifles capable of firing high-velocity darts tipped with curare on roving targets? What other nation for that matter would have sufficient stocks of curare in the first place?
As they stood there looking the equipment over, Kaplan had explained to Mugambu the tactics to be followed:
“We can’t fire ordinary weapons at the animals. That’s too dangerous. The impact of a bullet on bone and flesh will cause a spatter effect. Even if your men are protected with the pressure suits and the breathing apparatus, the contamination could remain. Since we don’t know how long the virus can survive after the death of the vector, we can’t afford to take that chance. We need a clean kill. That means we’ve got to be able to hit the monkeys without wounding; the animals have to fall where they are hit and we have to be able to pick up the bodies intact.”
Mugambu didn’t completely understand the talk about vectors and viruses.
“Can’t we burn the jungle?” he had asked cheerfully. “My men would enjoy that. Then we wouldn’t even have to use the darts.”
“Are you prepared to control a forest fire?” Kaplan had replied sharply. “Remember, we’re talking about several hundred thousand square miles of jungle out here in the Eastern Congo. Once you get started, you may not be able to stop. Besides, we’re not running some punitive expedition. We’re not operating a scorched-earth policy. As I understand, there are a lot of animals in there besides the green monkeys. They’ve got a right to live.”
Mugambu didn’t seem to be much interested in the question of animals’ rights. He shrugged and turned on his heel. Later that day Kaplan saw him roaring drunk surrounded by half a dozen of his men. “I’d trust that guy to start a fire,” he thought. “But I’d never trust him to put one out.”
But he knew that he would have to live with Mugambu. There was no way they could carry out their assignment without the logistic support of the Zairian army.
The problem of path-finding, which Kaplan had felt might prove to be extremely difficult, was solved for them in a surprisingly simple way.
Hot and tired after a long day’s sorting and organizing the equipment which had just arrived in Bukavu, the WHO team sat huddled in their hut over a large-scale map of the area.
“Frankly,” said Kaplan, “we have a set of map references and I can see the numbers on the map. I can see where we’ve got to go. But I’m not sure I see how to get there. Are there paths through this jungle? I’d ask Mugambu, but we won’t get any sense out of him.”
Rodriguez had looked at Leontiev and Leontiev had looked at Cartwright. None of them knew the answer.
They were still discussing the problem when there was a commotion at the door and Mugambu entered with a lot of banging and clattering, followed by two or three of his men and a frightened-looking native.
“This fellow has been hanging around the camp,” said Mugambu, who reeked of beer. “He says he understands we are interested in monkeys.” The Congolese Colonel spat on the floor of the hut. It was clear that he did not regard a troop of monkeys as a suitable subject of conversation.
“Ask him what he wants to tell us.” Kaplan didn’t have much time for Mugambu’s posturings.
Mugambu spoke to the man in his own language. He turned back to the party.
“He says he knows where the monkeys are. He can take us to them.”
There was a noticeable stir of interest in the hut.
“Is he talking about green monkeys?” Kaplan asked.
The man nodded enthusiastically and rattled off something in a local dialect.
Mugambu translated for them. “Yes, he means green monkeys.”
“Ask him how he knows where the monkeys are.”
Once more Mugambu spoke to the man. When he saw that he had their interest, the native visibly gained confidence. His answers were more rounded and filled with circumstantial detail.
Even Mugambu seemed to be interested in the man’s next answer.
“He’s a trapper,” he relayed the information. “He has a depot near here where he keeps the animals. He waits till he gets a sufficient number and then he ships them out. Sometimes they go via a dealer in Kinshasha. Sometimes via Bujumbura. He caught a green monkey earlier this year and he remembers where. He says there was a whole tribe of them.”
Kaplan had yet another question to ask. “Does he thi
nk the green monkeys are still where he last saw them? Can he really take us there?”
The man nodded enthusiastically and then proceeded to speak for some time without pause.
Eventually Mugambu was able to explain.
“He says that thirty miles south of here the river Uzizi, which is a tributary of the Ruzizi, enters a defile, perhaps fifty yards wide with steep cliffs on either side. The defile lasts for about half a mile. After this, there comes a saucer-shaped crater partially forested. A kind of deep-sided valley. This is where the monkeys live. At the southern end of the valley, the river once more enters a defile, just as impassable as the first. As far as he knows, the monkeys have never left the valley. He first discovered the place fifteen years ago.”
“Fifteen years ago?” Kaplan’s voice quickened with interest. It was fifteen years since the first outbreak of Marburg disease. “How often does he go there?”
“Very rarely apparently. And when he does he is not always successful in catching the monkeys. He says he caught a green monkey when he first went to the valley but that he didn’t catch one again till this year.”
Kaplan exchanged glances with the other members of the team.
“I think we have the confirmation we need, gentlemen, don’t you?”
Michel Ngenzi and his small band had been marching for three days through the jungle. They had landed their boat on the Zairian side of Lake Tanganyika and had hidden it with care by the shore.
“I hope we can find it when we come back,” Stephanie had said. Tough as she was, she didn’t relish the prospect of a forced march round the northern end of the lake.
“We’ll find it all right,” Ngenzi had replied. He cast a practised eye along the shoreline taking in the distinctive landmarks, a broken branch here, a half-submerged tree there. To Stephanie one stretch might seem very like another. To Ngenzi, trained from birth to detect the subtle interplay of light and shadow, no ten yards were quite like the next.
Once the boat had been concealed, they had made camp by the water’s edge. Stephanie had slept fitfully. It was her first night out in the open for quite some time. She had to re-accustom herself to the sound of animals snuffling around the camp and to other sudden noises of the night.
The Virus Page 13
