I don’t think I’ll ever know why I didn’t go to see Anna after Amos Gazit left.
Fear? Uncertainty? I still don’t know. I suppose it was that old familiar fear of making a domestic commitment I’d find hard to sustain. I’d miss my independence. My life would change, and with someone like Anna in control, I’d become an unrecognisable replica, a counterfeit of my former self. Colin would mock me. Jinx Dobson would be replaced by Henpecked Dobson. But…
In the end I called her to say I was tied up in a meeting and couldn’t make it. She’d think it was a pathetic excuse and she’d be right of course. I also knew she’d start working on her next rant. The answer was to call it quits, but I couldn’t do that either.
Instead, I stayed in the same riverside hotel where Gazit was staying and had an early night. When I woke the next morning, I felt even worse about Anna, but what was done, or not done, was past. I tried to forget it and headed to the convention hall for the conference.
It was Colin’s idea to register in the name of Dr Mike Stevens. “Jinx Dobson doesn’t sound professional,” he’d joked. I was given a badge and a pack of information on the agenda and a list of speakers and exhibitors and, in order to get a feel for things, I headed to the lecture theatre.
Finding a seat at the back, I scanned the audience of a hundred or more and picked out the back of Gazit’s head near the front.
According to my notes, the speaker was a local doctor Dr S. Vichai, a small man in a white shirt and dark suit made large on a vast TV
screen. He was the head of a virus research laboratory in Bangkok, and his subject was “New Variant Coronavirus?” It was a question rather than a statement, and he was already winding up his talk.
“We have only been able to take samples from two patients before they died, but tests suggest the virus is a new variant that we have called TRS-CoV. We do not know how it is transmitted, and we do not know whether others may have already recovered spontaneously.
The notified cases have centred on an area around Ayutthaya to the north of Bangkok.
“All cases except one were males, aged between twenty-two and fifty.
All were apparently healthy individuals with no pre-existing health problems. The one female case was a young woman from the Bangkok area.”
Sitting next to me, a young man stuck his pen into his mouth and stood up. “Excuse me,” he said in an English accent and brushed past towards the exit. Others near the front close to Gazit did the same and I sensed the press contingent was picking up a story.
But Dr Vichai was still talking. “The WHO are also checking on reports of a cluster of cases in Nigeria and one in Kenya.”
I followed the English reporter outside and stood within listening distance of his phone conversation. “Yeh. It’s a good story, a nice bit of scare mongering, and it could be spreading. He was talking about Kenya and Nigeria as well as Thailand. I’ll email something right now. Sorry to call you at this hour. Were you still in bed?”
***
As I made my way towards the trade exhibition in Nairobi, Philippe Fournier was leaning back as far as was safe to do so in his broken chair and staring at the mess of paper on his battered wooden desk.Despite his PhD in microbiology, he was, at the request of someone higher up, supposed to be designing a leaflet for a sexually
transmitted diseases poster, but his computer was, as usual, running far too slowly. Now it had stopped altogether with a blue screen of death.
“Merde! he said aloud, then “Fils de salope.” Then, deciding it sounded better in English, “Fucking, crap machine.”
He stood, swept all the paperwork onto the floor, gave the chair a hard kick, and because there was nowhere else to go and he felt like crying, wandered along the long corridor that smelled of disinfectant and body fluids.
Leaning on the ledge of an open window looking out towards the rest of the Kenyatta National Hospital site, he looked at the ground below and felt a mouthful of saliva building up in his mouth, as if he was going to be sick. He wasn’t, but instead, he let a large glob of it fall from his mouth. He watched its slimy progress all the way until it nestled in the weeds below. Then his mobile phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and checked to see if it was Mara’s mobile, but no.
He didn’t recognise the number.
“Jambo,” he muttered. He knew full well that it would suggest to anyone who was calling that he was just a foreigner or tourist practising their Swahili, but Philippe was past caring.
“Monsieur Fournier?”
“Oui” he said, reverting to French because of the title he’d just been given.
“We are recruiting scientists for a new laboratory,” the voice said.
Philippe’s eyes lit up. “Yes?” he said.
“We need someone to lead a group doing research in virology. Your name was mentioned.”
Philippe’s angry face of seconds before changed to a faint smile. “I have a PhD from an English university and also studied in Paris,” he said before adding, “Sir.”
“Yes, we know,” the voice said.
“Oh, how do you know?” Philippe asked naively.
The caller ignored the question. “It would mean an immediate start for the right person. We would at least double your current salary. Are you interested in meeting to discuss the position?”
“Uh, perhaps,” Philippe said, smiling down to where his spit had landed.
“The Oakwood Hotel, 7:00 p.m.,” said the voice.
“Oh, very soon. How will I know you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”
***
Anna was on my mind as I headed to the trade exhibition.I was like a teenage boy with a girl who said she’d wait for him after school beneath the street light - a dreadful state for a grown man.
I took a deep breath, adopted a manly walk and strolled up and down the aisles between exhibitors. On the corner of the third aisle, I found what I was looking for - Biox Research International, the company that had lost its research director and an ex-employee. I stopped to pick up one of their sales leaflets and immediately heard an American accent. “Can I help you sir? I’m John Wardley.” I looked up, and he peered at my new badge. “Dr Stevens. Where you from, sir?”
I’d already prepared my potted history. “University in Kuala Lumpur.
Molecular genetics with a passing interest in viral biochemistry.” It sounded plausible, but I didn’t want too many questions on either of the subjects.
“English?” Wardley said, obviously detecting my accent. “Any clinical involvement, Dr Stevens?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Was he asking if I was a medical doctor?
I wasn’t even a scientist, but as I was holding one of his leaflets. I pretended to be so engrossed in it I hadn’t heard and ignored him.
Instead, “I know one of your research scientists,” I said. “Fellow by the name of Solomon. We met at Cambridge but lost touch. He went west, I went east so to speak.”
“Yeh, Dave Solomon,” Wardley said immediately. “He left us last year. You knew him?”
“Cambridge,” I repeated. “I was there for a year before coming out here. Where did he go?”
Wardley shrugged. “Went AWOL. Walked out of his apartment, left his girlfriend without even a note, and disappeared in the middle of the night. He was privy to a lot of company information. It worried us for a time.”
“Hmm,” I muttered. “I remember Dave. A very political animal.”
“Yeh? I didn’t know him so well.”
I wasn’t going to give up that quickly. “Globalization and multinationals were his pet dislike,” I said.
Wardley shrugged again. “Jack knew him.” He pointed to an older colleague. “Can I get you a coffee, Dr Stevens? There’s a system round the back for guests but it’s mainly to stop us falling asleep over the next three days.”
I accepted the offer of coffee and then met Jack Daniels. Jack was really Walt Daniels, he told me but he’d once drunk a whole bottle of the whisky and become famous. He was a big, overweight man in his late fifties and looked as if a walk in the Bangkok sun might cause problems. When John Wardley wandered away, Walt and I talked about Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur as I tried desperately to avoid the science and technology but I soon got things back to David Solomon.
“Weird, that’s what I call it,” Walt said. “I worked under him in the Virology Department. We were working on second-generation blood tests for virus infections.” He waved a hand towards a pile of sales
brochures. “Dave was more interested in viral genetics. He’d worked on HIV some years back. Highly respected young man was Dave.”
I asked him how long he’d been with Biox.
“Fifteen years,” he said and then laughed. “I’ve helped make a lot of money for Josh Ornstein, the president, though not much has come this way.”
Walt wanted to know about Malaysia, so I bullshitted for a while with nonspecific observations about Malaysia, Australia, and Singapore, but by, then I’d used up most of my invented CV. Bullshitting about business is a lot easier than bullshitting about viruses and genetics. If you don’t believe me, try it. I needed another diversion and found one. “Tell me. Didn’t Guy Williams also work for Biox? Guy was also from Cambridge if I remember.”
“Yeh. He was another one who abandoned the ship without warning,”
I made a funny face and raised an eyebrow as if there was something wrong with Biox that meant you never stuck around too long. “When are you planning to disappear, Walt?” I asked. It was a flippant remark but I was digging.
He smirked. “My wife would find me wherever I went.”
Then I made another mistake. My digging turned out to be a hole I’d later fall into, but it happens to the best of us. It especially happens when you’re in the early stages of a case and you’re bullshitting like crazy. I’m usually very good, but now and again, you have to think ahead and bite your tongue. In this case, I didn’t bite it at all. “Did you know Guy?” I asked. That was an OK question.
“Yeh,” he said. “We met. He was around the place.”
Then came my stupid mistake. “He and I shared a girlfriend once in Cambridge. Every Friday night, she used to decide who she preferred, and we would have to accept her decision. Very civilized English behaviour.”
There was nothing I could do right then. I’d said it. Flippancy should have no place in an international criminal investigator’s skills set. But my own real-life girlfriend was standing there at the back of my brain, you see. I just couldn’t get her to move away. Every five minutes, I’d see her standing there with the bed sheet wrapped around her bare torso and hear her locking the bathroom door.
Walt smiled politely but his look bothered me. But what was said was said. “Oh, yeh?” he said, looking at me like I was a fraud. “Yeh, Guy Williams. He worked for Dave Solomon for about a year before disappearing. Perhaps you should go back now and find that girlfriend. You could have her every Friday night.”
Something told me I’d overstayed my welcome so I stood up and started to move away. “I must be going, Thanks for the coffee.”
“No problem. How about joining us this evening? We have a company drinks reception for some delegates at eight. Afterwards, I’m told the Bangkok nightlife gets interesting, and we haven’t had a chance to look around yet.”
“Good idea,” I replied. “I’d be pleased to join you.”
That might have been true twenty-four hours ago, but Anna was now there and still wrapped in the bed sheet.