Bite (23 page)

So if malaria controls a mosquito could it control a human victim? Not all parasitic infections cause fever. The fact malaria does could be deliberate. A provocation of the human immune system, to raise body temperature and put out the landing lights for marauding mosquitoes. But Friederikson knew that any theory based on severity of fever alone had flaws. The peak of malarial fever comes too early for the parasite to pass back to a mosquito. It isn't ready to complete its life cycle. And in Africa, where most malarial infections take place, thousands of people are partially immune. They don't get significant fever, but they do act as a breeding reservoir for the parasite.

As the dark blue sky became black, Friederikson turned over and took out his earplugs. The high-pitched hum and whine had begun in earnest. When he shone his torch up at the net a few inches above his face he saw a dozen insects on the mesh, trying to find him, antennae twitching with excitement, wings trembling.

Friederikson looked up at his enemies. To know them was to defeat them. But after a hundred years of scientific fight against malaria, there was still so much to discover.

Something very strange happened today. We were awoken at seven and taken from our cell by a smiling guard. He had one eye sewn shut, and it was only when we emerged into the chill of the clearing that I realised it was Rambo-Rambo, the first time we had seen him without sunglasses. We stood blinking and stretching, bathing in the sound of birds. The forest was sweating cool mist into a clear cobalt sky and the rising sun picked out dazzling yellows and greens in the high foliage.

Gaptooth was there with one of the Twins. They were smiling and looked like they were going to the seaside. Each had a brightly coloured shirt, stained and ripped shorts, backpack and jerry can. Gaptooth had a bunch of thick canes in his other hand. We couldn't see any guns, but canes were suspicious enough.

From behind us we heard running and panting. Dakka appeared, with a plastic football which he kicked up in the air with bare feet and then kept there by heading it or bouncing off his knees and chest.

‘Gary Lineker!' shrieked Rambo-Rambo. ‘Michael Owen, Bobby Charlton.'

‘Who are they?' asked Sister Margaret. Amy looked confused too.

‘English soccer players, past and present,' I replied. Sister Margaret laughed.

‘I hope they are not expecting us to join in,' Amy said.

‘What's the harm?' I asked. ‘We need some exercise and it makes them happy. I'll do almost anything that gives us a half per cent better chance of getting through this alive.'

She absorbed me with a flat gaze that said: I bet you would.

They took us down a hill towards a broad pewter river where the land was flat and the grass short and springy. On the far side was an iron-tinted crowd of cape buffalo, horns like yokes weighing their heads to the ground as they drank and grazed.

Gaptooth planted two canes in the soft ground about ten feet apart, and then walked fifty yards and planted two others to make a second goal mouth. Dakka was running around, dribbling the ball around the gangly Twin. Dakka and Gaptooth picked teams. Dakka chose Jarman and the Twin. Gaptooth had Rambo-Rambo, Sister Margaret and me. I was appointed goalkeeper.

‘He wants me to be sweeper,' Sister Margaret said, hitching her long grubby dress to mid-thigh and knotting it. ‘What does that mean?'

‘Don't worry about it. If the ball comes to you just kick it away, in the direction of that goal.'

The game was exhausting and confused, but a delicious comradely equality after our captivity. Dakka was too nimble to be caught, Rambo-Rambo commentated excitedly to himself in French the moment he got the ball. Sister Margaret laughed and wheezed. She scored accidental goals for each side, once with her bottom and once with her head. Even Jarman smiled, using one leg nimbly and dragging the other.

Dakka was in his element. Time and again he broke through and sped towards me, the ball at his feet and his face glazed with the joy of power. Sometimes he would bring the ball near to me, a provocation to challenge him. I stood aside, relieved that Dakka's vengeance had such a harmless outlet, and happy enough to fetch the ball however far he kicked it through the goalposts.

Finally the heat and exertion overcame us. Jarman and I joined Sister Margaret who had long ago bowed out red-faced. Dakka and Rambo-Rambo played on. While we absorbed the sunshine and the breeze Gaptooth ordered Amy to fill the jerry cans from the river.The biggest surprise was yet to come. From the backpacks Gaptooth brought out three pineapples, a pomegranate and a packet of dates.

‘Presents from Brigadier Crocodile,' he said. He cut the fruit and laid it out on the grass. It was delicious and the sweetness and aroma remained long after we had devoured it. Finally, he produced a dozen hard-boiled eggs, which we peeled and washed down with cool, tasty water. I was so relaxed that my captivity barely existed. Only Amy seemed unhappy, muttering that the water should have been boiled before we drank it.

It was early in the afternoon when we got back to the huts. It was quiet except for the flapping of vultures in the trees. Too quiet. Something felt terribly wrong.

(Erica's Diary 1992)

Max was singed and blackened but unhurt. The flames had left only a severe sunburn on his neck, ears and ankles. He crawled behind a derelict shed and watched the whole emergency scene unfold: ambulances and fire engines, cop cars and finally cranes and trucks with arc lights. Crowds gathered as the fire burned low, and the evening darkened into night. Most activity was around the gutted car, where three stretchers were laid awaiting the skill of those who understood burned flesh and melted plastic, knowing where the one began and the other finished.

It was quite dark by the time that Max began to shiver. As he stood up he realised that the scorched pieces of cloth flapping from him were his clothes. No jacket pocket, no wallet. No wallet: no money, no credit cards. He was cold, deep in shock, desperate for a blanket and a mug of soup but he could not go into that crowd. Somewhere out there, among the gawkers and rubberneckers, was someone who must not know Max Carver survived. Someone who would stop at nothing to see him dead, someone for whom human life had no value.

There was another chance. The shed he had hidden behind was near the back yards of the derelict houses which abutted the flyover. He crept down and tried the boarded backdoors until he found one which had been opened.

A cloying stink of hot tar permeated everything here, near the road, with a sickly glare from the sodium street lights. The place had long ago been ransacked for everything from fireplace to floorboards. The big rooms, high ceiling and outline of the chimney breast showed it had once been a desirable home, before the highway came and squatted noisily at its shoulder. More recent occupiers were more down-market. There were beer cans and used condoms, the tang of overdone cooking.

Max climbed the stairs and looked around. In a cracked bathroom mirror he examined his scarecrow appearance. The basin below had been ripped off the wall, but quivered on the end of the pipes from which water still trickled. He washed all over, lathering with an old soap sliver and ripped down the curtains for a towel. He hunted through a stack of boxes in a bedroom closet until he found what he wanted. Shorts, sweatpants with ripped knees, and a thick but faded sweatshirt. They were old and damp but they would do.

He dipped his head into the final bedroom and jumped back in alarm. Curled up on a mattress was an old man's body, raw glossy pink and black in equal measure from horrific burns.

Max moved around until he could see the face, then kneeled down in shock. It was not who he expected at all. It was Leo, not Joseph. Eyebrows and hair were gone, the ears little more than crusted tags on his shiny, oozing head. But it was the eyes that transfixed Max. Held wide in surprise, lids burned away, they drew all Leo's humanity from a vacated carcass.

The first tremble of wrecked lips made Max flinch. Then came a wordless sound as soft as a sigh.

Max put his hand out as if to touch Leo's shoulder. He stopped just short, realising even the slightest touch would be agony. ‘Leo. It's Max.'

‘Wanted…to find her for you.'

‘I know you did, Leo.'

‘Sorry. Tell her I'm so sorry.'

‘You have no reason to be sorry. I dragged you into this.' Max fetched some water in cupped hands from the bathroom, and tried to pour it into Leo's static mouth. He couldn't swallow. The liquid ran off onto the floor. Two yards slower out of the bar, Max realised, and this would have been him.

‘So much pain.'

Max nodded.

‘De gun, Max. Do it.'

The Walther was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where is it Leo? Where did you leave it?'

‘Wesband.'

Max blew a big sigh There was little left of Leo's clothing, just buttons melted like a line of rivets into his chest, and a few blackened scraps of underwear through which a hip bone protruded. The gun was a little lower, visible through a translucent blister as big as a gum bubble where the metal handle had cooked itself into the flesh. Even though the barrel was clear, there was a good chance it would jam.

‘Leo. I can't get the gun. It would be agony.'

‘Den I will.' Something that was probably an arm separated slightly from Leo's torso, and pink fluid started to ooze through the skin as it inched down to his hip.

‘Okay, Leo, okay. Stop. For Christ's sake, you win.'

Max took a deep breath, grabbed the greasy barrel and pulled. Leo's screams began immediately, but Max's fingers kept slipping. It took three attempts to tear the weapon out of Leo's charred flesh. Max shot him through the head immediately. Then he stumbled into the bathroom and threw up, his head pounding in time to the relentless thunder of trucks.

The mystery mosquito which had been posted to Erskine wasn't anywhere in the reference books, and it took Professor Friederikson took two days to find out what it was.
Anopheles minori
was about as obscure as a mosquito could be. First described in 1995, it was mentioned in passing in an article which said it was confined to a small part of north-eastern Zaire and seemed to feed on monkeys.

Friederikson knew that would make it a poor candidate for the insect on KLM 648 which had provided the first wave of
Plasmodium five
infections. That insect seemed to relish the chance to bite humans.

So Friederikson took the long route. He sent a group of undergraduate volunteers to various parts of the country to sleep out in the open under impregnated nets. They were under instruction to collect the mosquito bodies and post them to him in matchboxes. In Utrecht he commandeered two laboratories and installed graduate students who would identify, label and grind up the mosquito bodies, then test them for
Plasmodium five
.

After a week it was clear this was going to be a slow process. About a third of the insects sent in were not mosquitoes at all. Some were already squashed. The grinding was fiddly and slow, and Friederikson discovered some students failing to keep proper notes. In those first seven days, only twenty mosquito specimens were tested for
Plasmodium five
. Not one was positive.

The breakthrough came earlier, from an unexpected quarter. When Friederikson got a phone call from KLM he almost jumped for joy. He left a brief message on Professor van Diemen's voice mail, put on his jacket and left the laboratory.

An hour later Professor van Diemen looked up as Friederikson burst into his room wearing overalls and gloves. He had a large plastic refuse sack in his hand, and a wide grin on his face.

‘What have you got there, Jürgen?' Van Diemen asked warily.

‘Come with me, and I'll show you.'

‘I'm not sure I should trust you after that escapade at the meeting the other day. Dijkstra is still pretty furious about it, you know.'

‘This is a breakthrough. I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss it.' Friederikson led Van Diemen into an empty meeting room, and closed the door. A large dust sheet had been laid across the four central tables, marked into a grid with wax crayon. Each six inch square was numbered. ‘I need six or seven students immediately,' he said, dumping the sack on the table. ‘We can take ten squares each and go through methodically. It should only take a few hours.'

‘I think you are monopolising most of my students already. Are you going to tell me what is going on?' Van Diemen asked.

‘I have just been to a workshop at Schiphol airport where they repair airport cleaning contractors equipment,' he beamed, handing Van Diemen a dust mask and a pair of tweezers.

‘So?'

‘Awaiting repair was a vacuum cleaner. It had broken down on the morning KLM 648 arrived. It has probably been used on several jets, but 648 was among them. The dust bag hasn't been changed since then.'

Friederikson emptied the sack gently onto the sheet, and spread out the contents so it lay evenly across the squares. A fine cloud of dust descended on everything. Van Diemen surveyed the filth spread out before him. There were tissues and plastic cups, boarding card stubs, sticking plasters and hairs, and lumps of mould which might once have been food.

‘Amongst this lot are some of the bodies of the mosquitoes from the flight, which were killed when cabin staff sprayed just before landing,' Friederikson said. ‘All we have to do is find them. Once we know which species of mosquito infected the passengers on KLM 648, we should be able to work out where
Plasmodium five
came from.'

We arrived back at the hut to find it deserted. All the other prisoners were gone. Gaptooth allocated us each a separate cell, despite our protestations that we wanted to stay together. Amy and Sister Margaret were taken to one end, and Jarman and I to adjacent cells at the other. The cell I was given was scrubbed and clean. There was a proper toilet drain with a brush and a bottle of water for flushing. Along one side was rolled up a thin mattress, a sheet and at the centre a bulky mosquito net, heavily darned but serviceable. I chuckled with delight, and shouted my good news to Jarman.

He was slow to reply. Trying hard to keep resentment from his voice he said his cell was identical to our old one. No bed, no water, and a foul-smelling toilet hole.

I shouted to Amy and Sister Margaret. Amy had been returned to our old, uncleansed cell. Sister Margaret's only improvement was a dog-eared and incomplete child's bible. She said she was thrilled to have it, and with typical generosity was delighted at my relative luxury.

Sitting on the mattress I began to wonder what had happened to the other prisoners. Could they have been moved somewhere else? We had not seen any trucks, but we knew many of them would not be able to walk. I wondered about Moses and his pregnant wife.

‘They have all been killed, you know.' Jarman's voice was low and ragged.

‘We don't know that, maybe they marched them somewhere else.'

‘No. Crocodile doesn't want to waste soldiers guarding dozens of locals that no-one gives a shit about. He has westerners as bargaining chips now. He knows the government will have to take notice. The soccer game was just to get us away from here. He doesn't want us to be able to talk about his massacres once we are released.'

‘God, I hope you're wrong, Jarman.'

‘So do I. But I'm not.' He paused. ‘Erica. I think you should be prepared for something.'

‘I think I know what you're going to say.'

‘Right. That mattress is not free, he'll want something for it. I just hope it is something that won't hurt you to give him.'

(Erica's Diary 1992)