After his 2 am conversation with Tunji, Kevin couldn’t sleep.
He was lying fully dressed on the sofa in the flat but kept hearing the deep voice of Mohamed El Badry.
“I’ve been following your work, Kevin. May I call you Kevin? Your enthusiasm has become well known to me. Tell me, Kevin, how many members do you now have?” Then, “We have a solution, Kevin.
We’re ready to move. We have the means to cause a pandemic. But we also have a treatment. If you work with us, the treatment will be available to you.”
And Kevin could still remember his own flippant response, “Will it be free? My university salary only goes so far.”
But this was no longer a joking matter. A hundred deaths? The WHO
on the case? An American doctor involved? According to Tunji, there was a place somewhere in the north of Nigeria called Dala.
He had always advocated direct action, but what he had always meant was some form of action to force governments to listen, to take the problem seriously, and then to act. Threatening to do something was one thing. Taking direct action to kill people off was another.
To Kevin at 3 am, this sounded more like an act of terrorism. At 4 am he could stand it no longer and called Tunji. If he was asleep, so be it.
He wasn’t asleep.
“Hey, Kev, where are you, man? If you’re in and around St. Albans right now, I’m at a party. Come and join us.”
“Tunji, you asshole. I’m a hundred miles away. Aren’t you working tomorrow?”
“That’s six hours away, Kev. Cool it.”
“What’s that noise, Tunji?”
“Noise, Kev? That’s not noise. It’s Bob Marley and the Wailers. “
“Can you hear me, Tunji?”
“Sure, man. Just speak up.
“I’ve been thinking. I want to speak to that American doctor - the one your friend Joseph works for. Got any details?”
“Sure thing. Hang on. I’ll go outside and text it. Speak to Joseph -
commercial section, healthcare. His boss is a guy called Larry. Larry what, I don’t know.”
“Thanks, Tunji. I really don’t know how I’d manage without you.”
***
The office was empty when Larry arrived at 7:30 a.m., but as his flight to Kano wasn’t until 11:00 a.m., he sat with a coffee and a newspaper. He’d hardly got past the front-page when the office phone rang. “I’d like to speak to Dr Larry or Joseph,” the man said.The accent was English, but the voice sounded rough, as if was drunk or hadn’t slept. “Sure,” Larry said. “Who’s calling?”
“Kevin Parker. I understand Dr Larry was the person who reported all those Nigerian deaths to the World Health Organisation.”
“I believe so,” said Larry.
“I’d like to discuss it with him, please.”
“OK. Well, as it happens, you’re speaking to Dr Larry right now.
Larry Brown to be precise. How can I help?”
Kevin hadn’t expected things to happen this quickly. “Does Joseph work for you?” he asked.
“He does when he feels like it,” Larry replied.
“Has he spoken to you about these deaths?”
“No. Should he have?”
Kevin sniffed, took a deep breath and felt some confidence returning.
“Ask him what he knows. I heard he took a request from someone wanting to conduct a survey on a new medicine. I then heard the tests were done up in the north near a place called Kano.”
Suddenly, Larry was interested. Firstly, he had a bone to pick with Joseph about communication skills. Secondly...but Kevin was still talking. “Joseph told him that a place called Dala Hill might be suitable. Joseph thinks that Dala Hill was the centre of the outbreak and where the deaths occurred.”
Larry had been sitting, but now stood up. “Has Joseph discussed this with you?” asked Kevin.
“No, goddam it. He hasn’t. Listen, Mr Parker…”
“Kev.”
“Listen, Kev, Kevin. How do you know this? Who the hell are you?
What more do you know? What’s going on here?”
“I think you should speak to Joseph, Dr Larry. Ask him the name of the man he spoke to about the customer survey. If he says it was Mohamed El Badry, then there’s something serious going on.”
El Badry was a new name for Larry. “Mohamed El Badry, you say?
You know this guy, Kevin?”
“I met him once. I’m worried about his motives.”
“And how did you meet him?”
“He invited me to his apartment in London,” Kevin said, feeling a short explanation of his Malthus Society was now necessary. “It’s a website to spread the message that politicians all over the world need to wake up to the consequences of overpopulation and the burden that it places on the environment and . . .”
Kevin’s planned short explanation became a much longer one as he scattered it with familiar words and phrases taken from past lectures.
Larry finally interrupted. “Hey, hold on, Kevin. I agree. I wish I’d known about the Malthus Club or whatever you call it before. I might have signed up. But what about this guy, El Badry? Who is he?”
“Search me. But you want to know what his last words to me were?
I’d told him that discussing overpopulation was too late. The world was already grossly overpopulated. What we needed was a solution.
He then said the solution was to cause another worldwide pandemic. I agreed that pandemics had helped in the past with things like plague, but now we needed something new. Then he told me they were ready to spread another one - bigger and better - and they also had treatments for selected people. I would be one of them.”
“Is this guy, El Badry serious, Kevin?”
“Would I call you from England, Larry, if I wasn’t concerned?
Someone somewhere needs to get to the bottom of this guy. Who is he? Where has he come from? What exactly is he doing?”