To keep the ball rolling, Larry called the US embassy in Abuja but it took half a day to speak to the ambassador himself Eventually: “Larry! How’s our intrepid discoverer of new diseases?
Found any more recently?”
“No, sir, but I’m uncovering other things which bother me.”
“I’m all ears, Larry. How’s your support team down there?”
Joseph was within throttling distance so Larry said, “Fine.”
“So, what’s biting you, Larry? The mosquitoes?”
Larry was not in the mood for humorous camaraderie. He was seething and not only with a feeling that things needed addressing in the embassy’s commercial section. “The mosquitoes aren’t biting, sir, but a lethal virus might. Neither would it care who it infects or how many.”
“You said something similar last time, Larry. I now keep a clean handkerchief in my pocket and a face mask in the drawer. You sound a trifle angry if I may say so.”
“How does a hundred million US deaths from another new coronavirus sound, sir?”
“You serious?”
“Let me describe a scenario to you. Imagine, if you will, a country that spreads a virus with the deliberate intention of wiping out millions of people in a neighbouring country. Would you call that war using biological weapons, sir?”
“Yes, I would, Larry, although wouldn’t it kill the aggressors as well?
Isn’t that the problem with all biological weapons?”
“And if it was carried out inside their own country against an ethnic minority for instance, would you call that ethnic cleansing or genocide?”
“I guess so, but—”
Larry made further use of the words he’d used on Musa at the WHO.
“If it was a private company deliberately releasing the virus because they already had a treatment or a vaccine ready that would earn them huge profits, what would you call that, sir? Good business practice?”
“I’d call that extremely unethical, Larry.”
“And what would you say if the scientists, the virologists, behind that virus and the vaccine not only had a commercial interest in it but held extreme views about the need to reduce the human population by a few billion?”
“But that’s ridiculous, Larry. They wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it with all the checks and balances in place on that sort of research.”
“But are you sure there are any proper checks and balances, sir?
Because I’m not and I’ve looked. There are no reliable international policing systems in place. Any rogue scientist could team up with a rogue businessman with a history of fraud and corruption and hell-bent on making even more money, and what’s there to stop them?”
“Are you sure, Larry?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve checked. And what’s more, I think we are facing just that scenario out there right now, and no one knows about it. Even if they did I doubt they can do nothing about it. We might even be too late. I believe those deaths up in Kano were part of what we might call in the polite world of ethical medical practice a clinical trial. And a cleverly chosen place it was, if I may say so. You know the area better than me. It’s a place where the people have no trust in the system for dealing with or even reporting problems like this. It’s an area where unsubstantiated rumour spreads fast, and it’s just a small corner of a vast area currently distracted by fighting a war against Islamic insurgency. And the doctor who ran the clinical trial has disappeared.”
In Abuja, the US ambassador leaned back in the big leather chair behind his desk. “OK, Larry, stop right there. I’m struggling. Let’s test this theory of yours. Hold the line.”
He picked up the other phone on his desk, pressed a button, and Larry heard him say, “Julie, when they open the shop, can you find me somebody to talk to in the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington? Then do the same thing with the US Federal Drugs Administration.”
He turned to Larry again. “Larry, my friend, you’ve just made the hair at the back of my neck stand up. I’ll get back to you.”
Larry, wondering how long he’d have to wait, went home. Minutes later, Kevin rang with an explanation about the phone conversation he’d just had with me. “He said he’d call you,” Kevin said.
Ten minutes later I called Larry and repeated much of what I’d said to Kevin. This time I laid off on the soft approach and went in bearing gifts of facts that I thought a medical doctor might appreciate. He
listened, and I could sense, like Kevin, that he thought I might actually be quite useful.
He poured his heart out about his visit to Kano, told me about his talks with the WHO, and that he was waiting on the US ambassador to check a few things.
He said that as far as he could tell, there were no checks or controls on research on viruses. Anyone could modify a virus’s genetical makeup if you knew how to do it. You could even produce your own new smallpox or Ebola strain if you so wished. It was called “gain of function” research, and it was a real turn on for some scientists who spent their lives peering down microscopes and huddled over rows of test tubes. I was learning things I didn’t know.
Then I learned some more. Larry revealed he’d spoken to Josh Ornstein at Biox and had started adding two and two together and deciding it made four. “Is your client Virex?” he asked me.
“Officially, I’m not allowed to say,” I replied. “But by sheer intuition, you’ve just arrived in Boston, Massachusetts.”
He gave a short laugh. “Ha! Charles Brady. He and Josh Ornstein are like two dogs. They bark at each other. One minute, they play together, the next minute they’re trying to tear each other apart. Is the bickering relevant?”
It was a good question, but with people like Larry and one or two others helping out the quicker we might get some answers. I told him about other disappearances I’d heard about. “Sounds like someone’s building a team,” he said.
“But they’d still need money,”
Larry saw the direction I was heading, so I gave him a quick summary of my growing suspicions. “One answer to funding is to find rich private individuals. What does it matter if one or all these individuals acquired their wealth through fraud and embezzlement and were only interested in making more?”
Larry seemed to like the colourful scene I was painting, so I finished it off, framed it, and gave it to him to hang on the wall to look at each morning before he started work.
“What we have here,” I said, “is an organised bunch of crooks and a motley group of laboratory technicians led by a wizard hell-bent on killing off a few billion of us for his own enjoyment.”