The Virus (18 page)

“What is it, Staff-sergeant?”

Staff-sergeant Mlanga, who was in charge of the party, did a passable imitation of a salute.

“Prisoners, sir!” The squad parted to reveal two frightened-looking Africans who, by the look of them, had been handled none too gently.

“We were patrolling the rim of the crater when we found these two men,” Staff-sergeant Mlanga explained. “They were looking down into the valley.” And he added: “We think they may be Mulelists. But we haven’t interrogated them. We brought them straight in. We thought you would like to see them.”

Mugambu’s interest was aroused.

“Mulelists, eh?” He turned to Mlanga. “Thank you, Staff-sergeant. I think I’ll interrogate them myself.” He belched evilly, a drunken man scenting pleasure. “Take them out of earshot,” he ordered. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

It was Ngenzi himself who found the bodies of his men. They had been thrown unceremoniously onto the track where it led to the rim of the crater. Already the flies had gathered and the stench of death was noticeable.

“Mon Dieu!” Michel Ngenzi stopped in mid-stride. “Who the hell did that?” He turned to Stephanie. “Don’t look.”

But Stephanie had already seen the broken bodies and the mangled limbs, and the sight appalled her.

Ngenzi knelt down to examine the bodies more closely.

“They were tortured,” he said in a voice choked with emotion. He was a man who flinched from violence, any kind of violence. Besides, the two men had been with him a long time. “But I think there was something else, besides torture.” Ngenzi continued. “Look at the expression on their faces.”

Stephanie saw what he meant. There was a contorted agonized expression on each of the faces. She would not have believed such anguish possible.

The bodies had been lying face up in the long grass. Ngenzi now gently turned them over and, as he did so, he gave a sharp exclamation. “Look, darts! Darts in the back. Poisoned darts. That’s what killed them.”

Gingerly he pulled out a dart from one of the bodies. He examined it carefully. “No blood! No blood at all. The point of the dart is so fine that it can enter the tissue and flesh without breaking them.”

“Don’t touch it,” Stephanie cried. She had a sudden terrifying vision of the Professor collapsing in front of her.

“I’m not going to.”

Ngenzi pointed to the brown stain on the tip of the dart. “It could be curare. The deadliest nerve-poison known to man. The South American Indians have been using it for centuries.”

“Is it used in Africa too?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Ngenzi examined the dart carefully.

“This isn’t a native product, anyway. It’s a manufactured item.”

“What do you think that means?”

“I think it means someone has got there ahead of us,” Ngenzi replied slowly. “If you wanted to kill the green monkeys without creating conditions for further contamination, that’s what you’d use. High-powered darts, tipped with curare.”

“Does that mean we’re too late?”

“Maybe. Maybe they’ve already killed the monkeys.”

“Do you think your men talked?” Stephanie asked. “Do you think we could be walking into an ambush?”

Ngenzi regarded the remains of his scouts. He seemed quite certain of his reply.

“No, I’m sure they didn’t talk.”

Stephanie looked at the large black man whom she had come to love and trust as she had loved and trusted her father.

“I think we should go on.” She spoke softly but there was determination in her voice. “What do the others think?”

Ngenzi turned to his men. “Kodjo? Charles?”

“We want whatever you want, boss. Only take care.”

“We’ll bury the bodies first and then we’ll go on.”

It took them two hours to bury the bodies. When they had finished, Ngenzi fashioned two rough crosses and placed them at the head of the graves.

“Were they Catholic?” Stephanie asked.

“Part Catholic, part animistic. In this part of Africa we have a tendency to mix up the different traditions.”

He knelt in prayer and the others knelt with him.

At last they moved on, still in single file.

“We’ll make camp at the rim of the crater,” Ngenzi said. “Out of sight. We’ll wait. And we’ll watch. No fires. No noise.”

They found a cave used by animals about one hundred feet below the rim of the crater. The entrance was about four feet across and two feet high but the cavity inside was large. Once they were installed within, they pulled grasses and fronds and branches into position to disguise the entrance.

That evening, just before dusk, Ngenzi slipped out with a pair of binoculars.

“I’m going to get down to the floor of the crater. I want to see if the monkeys are there.”

“Be careful,” Stephanie urged him. “Think what happened to the others.”

“I’ll be careful. Come with me, Kodjo.”

Stephanie saw the brown forms of the two men slither into the long grass of the hillside below and, an instant later, disappear from view.

Stephanie waited with increasing anxiety as one hour passed and then another. She used the binoculars but still could see no sign of the two men. Wherever they were, they were completely concealed by the natural cover.

By her watch, two hours and ten minutes had elapsed before the men returned. Both were winded but Ngenzi, after the gloom which had seized him earlier with the murder of his scouts, was now in a visibly elated mood.

“They’re beautiful.” He pulled himself inside the cave. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

Later, when he had rested from the steep climb back up to the rim of the crater, he told them about the monkeys.

“They’re definitely guenons. But the most wonderful guenons I ever saw. Typical guenon markings. Agile. They were leaping from tree to tree as if they were flying colobuses.”

“Colour? What colour?” Stephanie was anxious to pin it down.

“Hard to say. Green or greenish, certainly. I didn’t get close enough. Frankly, I didn’t want to. I’m not protected with antibody-rich serum the way you are, Stephanie.”

“How many?”

“I’d say five hundred altogether. All in one place. In a clump of trees more or less in the middle of the crater.”

“How much time have we got?”

“Not much. We’ve got to move them soon, if we are going to move them at all.”

They spent the night in the cave, huddled together for warmth. They could not run the risk of lighting a fire since they had no idea how close the “enemy” were. (Inevitably they thought of the other side as the enemy; now more than ever after what had happened to Ngenzi’s two native boys.) Stephanie found it hard to sleep. She was not naive by any means; in fact she had probably had a wider experience of life than most American women of her age. But she found it difficult to absorb the events of the afternoon and evening. She shuddered when she thought about poor Thomas and Edouard. Could it be, she wondered, that men like Lowell Kaplan were associated with such bestiality? Could he believe that the end, any end, justified those particular means? She thought back to the time she had spent with Kaplan in Paris. In so many ways, it had been good. But she felt a bitterness now towards the man, an anger which made her almost wish she had never met him.

At last she drifted off to sleep to be awakened when Kodjo slipped out of the cave before dawn.

“Where’s he going, Michel?” Stephanie was instantly alert.

Ngenzi was crouched just outside the mouth of the cave watching the rim of the rising sun break over the lip of the crater.

“He’s going to try to drive the monkeys out of the valley.”

“All by himself?”

“That’s all he needs.”

From below they heard the bark of a chimpanzee. “There he goes,” said Ngenzi. “Kodjo’s on his way.”

When he saw her look of astonishment, he explained: “The chimpanzee is the guenon’s historic enemy. It’s an old trick of the trappers. They imitate the bark of the chimpanzee to drive the monkeys in the way they want them to go. Monkeys will run from a chimpanzee when they won’t move for a lion. Kodjo’s an expert.”

Stephanie nodded. She remembered the story Kodjo had told her about growing up near the monkeys on the summit of Mount Lwungi, on the Nile-Zaire ridge. What a coincidence that he should now be involved with another tribe of monkeys, only a couple of hundred miles west of his home ground!

They heard the bark again, fainter this time. To the east, the sun rose red above the rim of the crater.

Stephanie was about to follow Ngenzi out of the cave when she was brought up short.

“Jesus!” The exclamation had escaped almost involuntarily from Ngenzi’s lips. As the sun rose, he had seen at once what they all, following his gaze, now also perceived. Along the crater’s rim, silhouetted against the rising sun, was a row of soldiers. They stood there motionless in the dawn light, the line of their helmets broken by crude attempts at camouflage.

“They’re all around.” Ngenzi whispered, instinctively lowering his voice. “They’ve got the crater surrounded. Back into the cave everyone!”

As he spoke, they heard a shouted order and the line of men began to move slowly down the hill.

They lay on their stomachs on the earth floor, peering out through the grasses which concealed the entrance to the cave.

“The monkeys are in the trees each side of the river which runs more or less through the middle of the valley.” Ngenzi kept his voice to a whisper. “Kodjo’s only hope is to drive them down river towards the defile at the bottom of the valley and to hope that they can escape that way.”

“And how will Kodjo escape?”

“Kodjo will find a way.” Ngenzi spoke with confidence.

The light grew quickly stronger. For Stephanie that was always one of the most noticeable features of tropical Africa. The day broke as quickly as it faded. They heard some soldiers passing quite close to the entrance of their hiding-place. Ngenzi clutched a long-handled hunting-knife. The rest of the party raised their pangas.

Stephanie felt particularly defenceless. She had a sheath-knife from her Girl-Scout days and this she now grasped in a firm fist. But she wasn’t sure that she was ready to use it.

At a range of less than ten yards, they were able to see the equipment which was being carried by each and every Congolese soldier.

“My God,” Stephanie whispered as she saw the breathing apparatus, the pressure suits, the rifles. “They’re not taking any risks, are they!”

Ngenzi put a finger to his lips. “Sh! There’re more to come.”

Another party was passing the hide-out. They were equipped in the same way that the first party was, but this time there was a difference. The second squad consisted of two men only and both of them were white.

Stephanie Verusio gave a start of anger as she recognized Lowell Kaplan. She hated him at that moment more passionately than she had ever hated anyone in her life. And to think that she had been to bed with the man! She almost spat in disgust. Tunnel-vision wasn’t the word for it. More like myopia. As he passed, she wanted to call out to him, to plead with him to stop the massacre which she knew was about to begin. Ngenzi laid a warning finger on her arm.

“Don’t move. Don’t say anything. It’s too late for that.”

Kaplan was talking into the W/T. He stopped virtually in front of the mouth of their hide-out and she could clearly hear what he was saying.

“Cartwright? Can you hear me? We ought to be directly across the valley from you now. We’ll take the southern hemicycle, and we’ll move in down the slopes of the crater towards the river in the middle. The monkeys are in the trees alongside the river. Take it easy. Descend at the same rate as we do. That means you’ll have to keep your eye on us. But I’ll also come in on the W/T from time to time to give you an altitude reading. We’re spread out along the 1500 foot contour right now. We’re going to drop at the rate of about 500 feet every half hour till we reach the bottom; then we proceed at the pace of a slow walk. Mugambu will give the order to fire when we’re all in position. Is that all clear? Over and out.”

She heard Cartwright’s voice coming in loud and clear from a distance of less than two miles away.

“That’s fine, Kaplan. We have you in view now. Just tell your men not to fire any of those darts by accident. We’re right in your line of fire.”

“The same goes for you, friend. Keep your ammunition for the monkeys.”

Once again Stephanie felt her anger boiling over and once again Ngenzi had to restrain her.

The bark of the chimpanzee came from down below. Urgent. Insistent.

“That’s Kodjo,” Ngenzi told her. “He must be near the monkeys now.”

After that, there was nothing they could do except wait. Wait in the hope that Kodjo would succeed and that both he and the monkeys would escape.

By mid-morning they realized that it was too late. They could see that the line of troops virtually surrounded the trees in the centre of the valley.

“They know what they’re doing all right,” Ngenzi commented despairingly. “The guenons will always stay in the trees rather than run in the grass.”

“And Kodjo?”

“God knows where Kodjo is!” There was a note of despair in Ngenzi’s voice. He had already lost two of his best men. He did not wish to lose a third.

It had been a long time since they last heard the sound of the chimpanzee in the valley below. Looking down, they wondered where Kodjo could be. Was he somewhere inside that ring of death? And if he
was
still inside, how could he ever hope to escape?

Stephanie found that she had begun to pray; to pray for the monkeys, for herself, for Kodjo, for Ngenzi, for the two men who had already died, for an end to the whole horror.

“Oh Lord,” she prayed. “Spare us all.”

Ngenzi overheard her. “The God of Africa has his own ways, Stephanie. He will not always seem to hear you when you pray.”

Involuntarily, she reached for his hand and held it for a long moment.

There was a sudden noise at the entrance of the cave. The grasses and fronds were pushed aside and Kodjo, gasping for breath, pulled himself inside.

Stephanie flung herself on him.

“Kodjo! I’m so glad you made it! Did you find the monkeys?”