The Virus (32 page)

Thirty seconds later Kaplan found himself speaking to the President of the United States himself. The genial friendly voice was unmistakable, even at a range of five thousand miles.

“Lowell Kaplan? I’ve heard a lot about you. What do you have to tell us?”

Kaplan spoke for five minutes. His recommendations were clear and precise. He represented the operation as a “last chance” affair.

“If the serum is still there in bottles,” he told the President, “we may be able to get hold of it. Or we may be able to come out with some ‘clean’ as opposed to infected monkeys and get serum that way. We have to try.”

The President agreed. “You’re right, Kaplan. We’ll get this one moving. Be careful all of you, won’t you? We don’t want a repetition of that Iran fiasco.”

The President was referring to the time when the American team sent in to rescue the hostages had met with disaster in the Iranian desert.

“We’ll be careful,” Kaplan replied.

Before the President hung up, he had a personal message for Kaplan. “By the way,” the warmth in the President’s voice was noticeable. “I’m truly grateful to you for your warning about the Pharmacorp vaccine. But I went up there anyway. They pumped me full of serum — the last of the supply, I’m told. So I guess I’ll survive. It would have caused a panic if I had pulled out at the last minute. That’s why the vaccination programme is going ahead as planned. We can’t cancel it now without creating all kinds of problems. What the hell” — amazingly the President was still able to find the situation funny — “they’re all going to get flu protection anyway. They may die of the Marburg virus, but they won’t die of flu!”

Ever since the hostage affair, the United States had kept a crack commando squad on permanent standby in Europe. They had learned the lesson the hard way. If you couldn’t intervene within the first few hours, it was better not to intervene at all. Even so, the departure of the Hercules from the U.S. Air Force base at Wiesbaden in Germany less than eight hours after Kaplan’s telephone conversation with the President had been a miracle of organization and logistics.

The plane droned on through the night. Yugoslavia, Greece, the Mediterranean. Kaplan could visualize the route in his mind’s eye. When they were somewhere over the Sudan and still heading south, Colonel McSharry, the tough crew-cut commander of the Special Squad of Green Berets detailed for the mission (they were called McSharry’s Raiders), asked him:

“What about the girl? Stephanie Verusio? Is she going to be on the ground?”

Kaplan shook his head. “Negative. I told her she had done a great job and to get the hell out of there. We have the coordinates now. We don’t need her to pathfind.”

“I hope she does what she’s told.”

It wasn’t until they were over the Congo basin with the sun just beginning to poke over the starboard wingtip that they finally received clearance to land at Bujumbura airport.

The pilot came back to tell them the news.

“We had difficulty raising anyone down there. And when we did finally get hold of someone to ask, they didn’t want to know. Jesus! We pump untold millions of dollars’ worth of aid into these tinpot countries, good US dollars. But just try asking them one tiny favour like permission to set down a C-52 transport in an emergency situation and suddenly they’re all looking the other way.” He swore and went back to his cockpit.

“Why ask permission?” Kaplan asked McSharry. “Why not just land anyway?”

McSharry smiled. “It’s more complex than you think, Kaplan. The other side probably knows we’ve got a C-52 in the air loaded with men and material. You can’t keep a thing like that quiet. Someone will have seen it take off from Wiesbaden and they will have been following it all the way down. We ask for permission to land at Bujumbura and they automatically suppose, since we have made no intermediary stops, that the C-52 transport will arrive with the same load it had on leaving Germany. If there is a reception party planned for us, it will be at Bujumbura airport. At least, that’s my guess.”

Kaplan was puzzled. “But aren’t we going to land there?”

“Oh, the aircraft is going to land there all right,” McSharry replied airily. “But we are not. We’re going to jump out right on top of the mountain. Right on top of those goddamn monkeys.”

“Me too?” Kaplan was more than anxious. He was positively alarmed.

“You too. I can’t tell a male monkey from a female one. Let alone a ‘clean’ one from a ‘dirty’ one. As of now, you’re part of McSharry’s Raiders. Just don’t get caught in the branches when you land. Some of those jungle trees are mighty high off the ground.”

Kaplan thought he saw a flaw in the plan.

“How do we get out of the jungle with the serum and the monkeys?”

“We’re going to rendez-vous with new transport about thirty miles down the road to Kigali, just over the Rwanda frontier.”

Kaplan was incredulous. “Is there an airstrip there?”

“No. No airstrip. Just a nice straight stretch of over-engineered road cutting through the jungle. I’ve looked at the specs, Kaplan. That road can take a plane large enough to get us all out.”

With that, McSharry fell fast asleep.

During his time as an army doctor, Kaplan had undergone parachute training. So the experience of swinging in the darkness of the night beneath a billowing canopy while the ground came up to meet his feet was not entirely new to him. What was new was the fact that in this case the ground was mountainous and clad with some of the densest growths of primeval jungle that existed anywhere in the world.

In all, forty of them made the drop and forty of them arrived. They landed, most of them, on cleared ground about half-way up the mountain. Over the years the fields had pushed further and further up the slope and the tree-line had receded towards the crest. Slash-and-burn cultivation had made deep inroads into the rich stands of forest. Under other circumstances, Kaplan might have regretted the waste of resource which this represented — and the erosion which resulted, over a brief season or two, in the earth being scoured wholesale from the denuded hillside. As it was, he was grateful to find his feet firmly planted on a scruffy patch of maize, when he landed, rather than on the topmost branches of the towering canopy.

It was twenty minutes before the whole party had assembled. The dawn, which they had seen in the east at twenty thousand feet, was now beginning to break down below.

McSharry studied the terrain and consulted briefly with Kaplan.

“It’s time to move out,” he said. “You can carry your face masks for the time being. When I give the word, put them on and connect up the air supply. That means we’re in business.”

As they set off up the hill towards the summit, Kaplan wondered whether they had already been observed. Even though they had landed under cover of night, forty men dropping through the sky couldn’t easily escape notice if anyone happened to be looking in their direction. The question was: was anyone looking?

The jungle as they began to penetrate it, heading for the summit, seemed preternaturally quiet. Almost sinister. Kaplan was waiting for the dawn chorus as black turned to grey. But there was silence. Nothing seemed to stir in the forest. Kaplan shivered. He felt the first twinge of fear.

When Stephanie Verusio put down the telephone after her conversation with Lowell Kaplan, the manager at the Source du Nil Hotel in Bujumbura, who had been listening in, immediately informed Victor Mtaza of the substance of what had been said. Ever since her arrival in Burundi (first noted and reported to Mtaza by the apparently sleepy immigration officer at Bujumbura airport) Victor Mtaza had, by one means or another, been keeping track of Stephanie’s movements. Ngenzi’s driver, Charles, had throughout been an invaluable source of information. So had the hotel staff in Bujumbura. Victor Mtaza had soon realized that Stephanie’s concerns and his own were closely related.

When the boy arrived, panting, with the message about Stephanie’s talk with Kaplan, Victor Mtaza knew that his opportunity had come. For some time now, he had been looking for the spark that would ignite the dry tinder of revolution. That the Hutus were seething with suppressed anger after years of domination by the Tutsis was evident to anyone who had an ear to the talk of the beer-hut and market place. That this anger might one day explode into violence was, Victor Mtaza knew, highly probable if not certain. The problem was: how to control the anger, how to channel the violence so that it best served his ends. Mtaza believed that the affair of the green monkeys at last gave him the handle he was looking for.

It had not been too difficult for him to work out what was going on. For the last couple of years he had been Louis Vincennes’ principal partner in the illegal export of Burundi wildlife. The fact that a member of the President’s own family could participate in such activities was nothing new. What
was
new was the political aspect of the operation and its link with the big-power confrontation.

For the last several months Mtaza had realized that he was swimming in very murky water indeed. Together he and Vincennes had shipped out at least a hundred green monkeys from their sanctuary at the top of Mount Lwungi. The immediate destination had been Brussels but the ultimate destination was Moscow. Louis Vincennes had told him as much. In any case he was capable of putting two and two together. He knew that the monkeys on Lwungi carried a strange virus — anyone who lived in the area had heard legends to this effect, muddled up — of course — with stories about the
ibigaribo
and royal tombs. And he knew that one big power, namely the Soviet Union, was interested in obtaining this virus for its own ends.

He also knew that the old woman — kagomba, the wild cat, as they called her — had been tapping the monkeys for serum. He and Louis Vincennes had been shipping out quantities of serum as well, although some of it still remained behind.

Victor Mtaza also knew that the Americans themselves were desperately searching for the source of the virus. They had gone off on the wrong track in Zaire. Now, it seemed, they had finally zeroed in on the target. Sooner or later, and Victor Mtaza suspected it would be sooner, the Americans would act. That would be his moment.

The Soviet Ambassador to Burundi, Leonid Kuznetsov, proud holder of the Star of Lenin, had been helpfulness itself. He had for some time now been a close observer of Victor Mtaza’s activities. He had marked him down as the leader of the revolution, whenever it came. He had watched the mounting unrest among the Hutus and he had already made preparations to turn this unrest to the advantage of the Soviet Union. For months now a supply of Russian-made arms had been filtering into the country. All that was needed was the signal for the uprising to begin.

“Cher ami,” Leonid Kuznetsov had smiled unctuously. “Of course, we will help you. That is what we are here for. We exist to encourage true revolutionary movements wherever they occur. That is our mission in life. You may count on us.”

Kuznetsov did not tell Mtaza that, through his own sources, he had learned the Americans were preparing to intervene. Count Philippe Vincennes had of course (notwithstanding his promise to the contrary) immediately reported on Kaplan’s latest visit. Nor had the preparations at the USAF base at Wiesbaden gone undetected. This vigilance did not surprise Kuznetsov who had himself done a stint a few years earlier in Bonn. Some fifty thousand communist agents were, he knew, present in West Germany. Not all of them could have their eyes shut.

It took two long planning sessions before Mtaza and Kuznetsov were satisfied with their scheme. When they had finally finished, Kuznetsov rubbed his hands: “The Americans will walk right into the trap we have laid. And they will regret it.” He refrained from adding that what pleased him specially was that not a drop of Russian blood would be spilled in the process. Ostensibly, there would be no Soviet involvement at all. It would be purely a case of native outrage at an insult offered to a sacred shrine or
ibigaribo.
The fact that Russian arms would be used in the subsequent uprising did not bother him in the least. Nowadays arms, particularly those of the smaller lighter variety, circulated everywhere. The presence of Russian-made arms was no proof of Soviet intervention.

Before they parted Mtaza asked the Soviet Ambassador a question which interested him greatly.

“There is a store of serum still in the camp. Do you plan to remove it before the Americans get here?”

Kuznetsov shook his head. “No. There is no time for that now. Our transport links via Brussels are closed for the present and we have not made alternative plans. We don’t need the serum ourselves, Victor. That is just a reserve supply which we have not yet evacuated.”

“But you don’t want the Americans to have it either?”

“No, of course not.” Kuznetsov patted the other man reassuringly on the shoulder. “The serum is the bait to lure them in, but there’s no danger of it falling into the wrong hands. The Americans will find no solutions here. Six weeks from now, the Marburg virus will have brought that country to its knees. And our own plans in Africa and elsewhere will have come to fruition.”

Mtaza had one last question: “And what about the old woman?”

Kuznetsov shook his head slowly and said with what appeared to be infinite sorrow: “She has played her part, I am afraid.”

Mtaza nodded. He understood.

They had been climbing for the best part of an hour. McSharry held out his hand and the squad halted behind him. He pointed. About five hundred yards away and slightly below them they could see the clearing in the forest and the old woman’s camp. Kaplan observed the position of the tree huts. It was all just as Stephanie had described.

As he watched, he saw the door of the right-hand hut open and the old woman came out. Then, to his amazement, a second figure emerged into the clearing, a figure whom he instantly recognized.

It was Stephanie! What the hell was she doing here? Why hadn’t she gone back home as he had requested? Kaplan was flabbergasted. He could not understand what was going on.

Before he could take any action, McSharry had beckoned the squad forward once more.