The Virus

by Stanley Johnson

  “Well? What do we do? It looks as though Woodnutt’s been taken for a ride, doesn’t it? Those monkeys are clean. They sure as hell haven’t got any Marburg virus.”

  Ed Werner rubbed his eyes and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Dammit,” he sounded rueful. “I was quite excited back there when Woodnutt was talking to me in his office. Of course, what he was suggesting was mad; you can’t find a virus, attenuate it and develop a vaccine in the time it takes you to drive from Chicago to San Francisco. But he got me to the point where I was really prepared to have a go.”

  Mason smiled. “I’ll let you break the news to Woodnutt, Ed. That’s one of the privileges of seniority. I don’t know how he’ll take it.”

  Ed Werner shuddered. “Nor do I. But I don’t think it’s going to be a pretty sight. I could tell from the way he spoke that he has a lot riding on this. But what the hell can we do?” He spread his hands. “We can’t make a vaccine, if we don’t have the virus to work with.”

  In the event, Ed Werner misjudged his man. Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, he had confronted the President of Pharmacorp shortly after nine the following morning. When he had finished his report, Woodnutt had for a few moments paced up and down his office deep in thought.

  Then his heavy face had broken into a broad but sinister smile.

  “Ed, I think you and Phil Mason have done a great job. In fact, I’d say our task is now a whole lot easier than it was twenty-four hours ago. It takes the time-pressure off for one thing.”

  Werner was amazed. “What do you mean?”

  Woodnutt sat down at his desk again and patiently explained.

  “Look at the logic of the thing. Originally the BW experts needed an anti-Marburg vaccine because they thought they had the Marburg vector in the form of two captured monkeys. You don’t use or threaten to use a lethal virus against an enemy unless your own population is massively protected. But now it turns out that the two surviving monkeys are clean. In other words we know that the Marburg virus was finally and completely eliminated in the Zaire massacre. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “That means,” Woodnutt continued, “that we don’t need a vaccine because there’s no threat of disease. But Pharmacorp can still play ball. If the CIA thinks it has a virus on its hands and it wants a vaccine, we’ll give ’em one. It can’t do any harm and, who knows, it might even do some good. We all know that immunization programs have spillover effects. People come and see a doctor who normally wouldn’t go near one.

  “So,” Woodnutt concluded, gleefully rubbing his hands, “we can put in any goddamn thing we like into that flu vaccine, short of arsenic and cyanide. And we can tell Washington that Pharmacorp has made a multi-purpose unit as requested. And the whole two hundred million unit program can blast ahead and nobody, repeat nobody, will be any the wiser. Do you follow?”

  It took a moment or two for the full beauty of the scheme to become apparent to Ed Werner. But when understanding finally came to him, he broke into a great guffaw of laughter. He rocked in his chair and had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

  “Oh, boy!” he exclaimed. “That’s a beaut! That’s a real beaut.”

  They spent the next hour working out the details. They had to have a realistic timetable. They couldn’t put the mythical vaccine into production so fast that suspicions would be aroused. On the other hand, they had to produce a schedule proving that Pharmacorp was willing and able to work under pressure.

  As he was preparing to leave, Werner thought of one final thing.

  “Now that we’ve ostensibly isolated the virus and developed the vaccine, we can’t afford to let those monkeys stay around here any longer. You and I know that they’re not dangerous. So does Phil Mason. But nobody else does. The normal thing for a responsible scientist to do with a dangerous vector, once he’s finished with it, is to destroy it. Particularly since in this case we don’t want anyone taking a second look at the monkeys and discovering they are clean after all.”

  Woodnutt nodded sagely, his mind already somewhere else.

  “You have a point there, Ed. You’d better deal with that.”

  Later that day Ed Werner and Phil Mason made a second visit to Pharmacorp’s laboratories outside Pittsburgh.

  The two men stood in front of the cage.

  “Hell, Ed,” said the younger man, “I hate seeing those little animals die.”

  “So do I, Phil. I really do. But we have no choice.”

  He went over to the airtight cage.

  “Goodbye Sam,” he whispered. “Goodbye Griselda. Some fool who didn’t know what he was doing brought you from the jungle. This isn’t the place for you anyway. It’s better like this.”

  Ed Werner pressed the lever and the lethal gas hissed into the airtight cage.

  As they turned to go, Werner gripped Mason’s arm just above the elbow.

  “I’ll tell you something, Phil, I’d prefer to be with those monkeys in there than standing in our shoes if Woodnutt’s scheme misfires. We’re in this thing up to our necks, you know.”

  He drew a hand expressively across his throat.

  14

  After Stephanie had spoken to her, the old woman remained for a few seconds rooted to the spot. She blinked hard twice; and then, clutching her radio batteries in her hand, she scuttled off into the crowd. A few seconds later Stephanie had lost sight of her.

  For at least half an hour she paced through the market trying to find the strange figure once again. But it was a hopeless task. The old woman seemed to have burrowed into some hole like a crab. A little brown crab, moving sidewise to avoid capture.

  In the evening, Stephanie told her hosts about the strange event.

  “I’m sure I’m right. I could absolutely swear to it. When I said the name ‘Frau Matthofer’ she jumped as though she had received an electric shock. I could tell it meant something to her.”

  “Why don’t you ask Kodjo?” Peter Lustig suggested. “He comes from the village, doesn’t he? Maybe he knows something or could find out.”

  Stephanie agreed that that was a good idea. “We already talked a bit about the old woman. Kodjo told me she lives on the summit opposite. But maybe he can be even more helpful.”

  Kodjo was summoned and entered beaming. He was enjoying the prestige which his association with a beautiful white girl and a large fast car had brought him in the village.

  “Yes, I saw the old woman this morning at the market. I saw you talk to her, miss. She caused me a lot of trouble this morning, that old woman did. All the village people, they come up to me and say, ‘Kodjo where is the monkey?’ They know I’m Kodjo the monkey-man. They know I’m the only one who dares go up to the ibigaribo on the summit of Mount Lwungi where the monkeys live. So that’s why they come to me. But I didn’t take any monkey, miss, from the ibigaribo. You know that. I was with you and Ngenzi-bwana over the lake.”

  “Kodjo, you had better explain. What monkeys are you talking about?”

  “The monkeys who live with the old woman up on the mountain. She was furious this morning when she came to the market. She said maybe some bad man had come up to the ibigaribo and had taken a monkey. The man would die, she said. The spirits would get him,” Kodjo explained.

  “The taboo?”

  “Yes, the taboo. But still the old woman told the people in the market she wanted to find the monkey.” Kodjo shrugged his shoulders. “My guess is nobody took the monkey off the mountain. But maybe it came down to the village and then some trapper caught it and passed it on already. I think the old woman came too late.”

  Stephanie had a sudden flash of intuition. At last she was beginning to understand.

  “Helga? Peter?” she addressed her hosts urgently. “You’ve both of you lived here a long time. Tell me: do you remember if there was always an ibigaribo at the top of Mount Lwungi? Think back carefully,” she pleaded. “Was there a sacred grove there before, say, fifteen or twenty years ago? Kodjo, you try to remember too. When
you were a child, was there an ibigaribo there? Was there a taboo?”

  Kodjo, who replied first, seemed sure. “Yes, of course, there was a taboo. My mother would never let me go up to the mountain top.”

  “Why not?”

  Kodjo thought about that. “She said we would become ill,” he replied finally. “Sometimes people who went up to the mountain became ill and died.”

  “But did she speak of an ibigaribo? Was it a place where royal ancestors are buried? Or was it just the sickness which made people avoid the mountain top?”

  Kodjo looked puzzled. “I think it was the sickness,” he replied slowly. “I think the story of the royal ancestors came later. That was another reason not to go up to the mountain top. But it wasn’t the main reason.”

  Stephanie shot a quick look in the direction of the Lustigs.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  Helga Lustig looked faintly bewildered. She felt that she was getting out of her depth. But Peter Lustig had been following closely the thrust of Stephanie Verusio’s questions.

  “Maybe this will help.” He stood up and walked over to a bookcase and, after a bit of searching, took out what he was looking for.

  “I’ve got a book here which describes the royal burial grounds in Burundi. It gives some maps as well. We can check to see whether the peak opposite was mentioned. Of course, if it isn’t mentioned, that won’t prove anything. But at least it will be an indication.”

  “When was the book written?” Stephanie asked. Peter Lustig consulted the volume which he held in his hand.

  “At the end of the 1950s. The author was a Belgian priest. He belonged to a missionary society which was active in Ruanda and Burundi known as ‘Les Pères Blancs’, the White Fathers. His hobby was a study of the royal burial grounds and the rituals associated with the passing of the tambourine from one king to another.”

  He flipped through the volume and pulled out a map.

  Spreading it out on a table in front of them, Lustig continued:

  “Bugamba is certainly in one of the main areas for burial-grounds according to Père Leclerc. Look,” he pointed to the map, “you’ve got a site here at Bugarama and another here at M’teshi.”

  They studied the map for a time.

  “But nothing actually at Bugamba?” Stephanie asked.

  “Not as far as I can see.”

  “What does it say in the text?”

  It took Peter Lustig a few minutes to locate the relevant section of the Belgian priest’s itinerary, since the index was somewhat deficient. Finally, he found what he was looking for. He glanced over the page.

  “This may be what we’re looking for. I’ll read it out.”

  With evident interest, Peter Lustig provided a rough and ready translation from the ornate French in which Père Leclerc had recorded the results of his researches.

  “ ‘One region,’ ” he began, “ ‘in which I found indications of a taboo’ — it’s the same word in French as it is in English —‘was near the village of Bugamba. This village which is itself some twenty-eight kilometres from Bugarama lies at the foot of one of the great summits in the Nile-Zaire ridge, known as Lwungi. I spoke at some length to the villagers, who told me of their dread of approaching this summit. On the whole, they said, very few people indeed had been up there and those that did were supposed to have been visited subsequently with a dangerous sickness so that death was often the result.’ ”

  Peter Lustig looked up from his reading.

  “Now we come to the fascinating part,” he said. “Père Leclerc goes on to say, and I quote ‘Toutefois . . . however, I was not convinced from my enquiries that the existence of this taboo which did indeed appear to be genuine was also associated with an ibigaribo on the summit of Lwungi. From my own researches, brief as they were, I could find no record of royal burials in this particular part of the Nile-Zaire ridge. Nor did I have the time to visit the summit myself. Even if I had had the time, I doubt whether I should have been able to find a willing guide in the village of Bugamba.’ ”

  Peter Lustig closed the book.

  “Well?” He looked round at the others. “What do we make of that?”

  Kodjo, who was still with them, obviously made very little of it. He had fallen asleep in a corner of the room.

  From the others, there was a long silence. A silence which Stephanie at last broke with a determined emphatic statement.

  “I’m going up there. There’s something going on up there and I want to find out what it is.” She spread her hands and ticked off the key points, just as she had the day she and Ngenzi returned to Bujumbura from Zaire.

  “Number One — we have the original Marburg incident apparently caused by a green monkey coming from Zaire.

  “Number Two — we have my sister’s death and a subsequent outbreak of Marburg disease in the United States whose cause seems to be some contact my sister had with a green monkey, coming from the same part of Zaire.

  “Number Three — a WHO team sets off to eliminate the green monkey tribe in Zaire but Ngenzi and I believe that in fact they eliminated a tribe of grey-green monkeys, not green monkeys; and that these grey-green monkeys are not in fact the vector for the Marburg virus.

  “Number Four — we learn that a woman from Marburg whom I believe to be Frau Matthofer, the Professor in charge of the clinic in Marburg at the time of the first outbreak, came to Burundi shortly after that outbreak and has been living as a recluse up there in the mountains surrounded by a tribe of monkeys.

  “Number Five — we believe that the taboo which surrounds the mountain crest where Frau Matthofer and the monkeys live is associated not with the presence of a royal burial ground but with the fact that those who visit the summit are supposed to contract some strange sickness.

  “Number Six — in so far as the taboo is associated with the supposed presence on the summit of an ibigaribo, the indications are that this story might have been put around at a later date and might have been designed deliberately to reinforce the idea in the local people’s minds that Lwungi was a dangerous place. Do you follow me so far? Peter? Helga?”

  “Are you suggesting,” Peter Lustig asked, “that the monkeys on the top of Mount Lwungi might be the ones which carry this so-called Marburg virus?”

  “Yes. That is precisely what I am suggesting,” Stephanie replied. “I’m suggesting that somehow the references we have to a tribe of green monkeys living in Zaire were wrong. I’m suggesting that the real green monkeys may be right here in Burundi, living with Frau Matthofer on the top of Mount Lwungi.”

  Peter Lustig rose to his feet and walked to the window. The outline of the mountains opposite were still dimly visible as night fell.

  He turned back to Stephanie.

  “Wake Kodjo up,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “He’s seen the monkeys on Lwungi, hasn’t he? He must know what colour they are.”

  Roused from his torpor, Kodjo was only too happy to reply to their questions.

  “You say what colour are the monkeys on Lwungi, miss?” He put his head on one side and thought about the problem.

  Finally he said: “The monkeys on Lwungi, Miss Stephanie, are the colour of the grass which springs up around the dry waterhole after the first rain of the season.”

  “Are they green monkeys, Kodjo?”

  “Oh yes, miss,” Kodjo burst out laughing. “That’s the word. Green.”

  “Goodness!” Stephanie was exhilarated. “Why didn’t you say so before.”

  “You never asked me.” Kodjo rolled about with laughter.

  Stephanie made up her mind.

  “I’m going up the mountain. Will you come with me, Kodjo? You’re not afraid of the taboo? Or of the sickness?”

  “No, miss, I’m not afraid. The sickness will not touch Kodjo. I know the monkeys. When do we leave, miss?”

  “Tomorrow morning, Kodjo. Can we do that?”

  “Any time you say. I’m ready. I show you t
he way up the mountain.”

  When Stephanie Verusio went to bed that night, she tossed and turned, thinking about the monkeys and about the old woman. Once she found herself wondering what had happened to Lowell Kaplan. Did the man know that the massacre in Zaire had been pointless? What would he say if he did know? What glib excuse would he come up with? She went to sleep at last, her mind still on Kaplan and her thoughts a strange mixture of anger and longing.

  They left at dawn. The mists still swirled across the opposing peaks and only as they climbed did the enveloping wreaths of cloud thin out. The forest itself was breathtaking in its splendour. This was no secondary growth. It was the pristine jungle, its glorious canopy spread out against the roots of the sky.

  Kodjo was Stephanie’s sole companion. The Lustigs had wished to come with her, but she had dissuaded them.

  “Let me go only with him,” she had said. “I think it’s better. Four of us will inevitably make more noise than two. In any case, if these are the monkeys which harbour the virus, you will need protection to go near them. I am protected by serum and Kodjo has probably developed some natural immunity from living close to the monkeys. But you two should stay behind.”

  Reluctantly the Lustigs had agreed.

  Even two made enough noise, thought Stephanie, as they pressed on upwards. Branches snapped underfoot however warily they trod. Birds started overhead and small animals darted across the path, veering crazily into the bush as soon as they caught sight of the intruders.

  It took them the best part of two hours to cover the first thousand feet. The going was rough and in places the path had almost disappeared. More than once Kodjo had to slash away with his panga at a tangle of creeper and tendril. They pushed on regardless. If the old woman could come down from the mountain to the village, they could go up from the village to the mountain.

  “Her camp is the other side of the summit, on the Ruanda side,” Kodjo told her. “I saw it once before when I came up here.”

  They were moving along the contour of the hill now, about five hundred feet below the summit. Stephanie took out the field-glasses, but the foliage was impenetrable. The danger was that, without forewarning, they would simply stumble on the old woman unawares with unpredictable consequences.