In Kano, Larry Brown called the Kano State Government office to ask about the closed Kofi Clinic.
“Our police don’t have time to look for missing doctors,” he was told by the most senior but nameless person he could find. “What is more important is to deal with the troubles up north, sah.” The man had
then seen an opportunity for a joke. “You need to watch out, Dr Brown. They don’t like black Americans.”
Larry pursued it. “But I heard there were over one hundred deaths at that clinic.”
“We had a hundred die in a bomb blast a month ago.”
Larry persevered and it soon became clear that the police knew something. “We found no patient record except a notebook with the first names of over one hundred patients,” said an officer who, until then, had been listening in. “There were no family names and no addresses, but each had a number. Local people said they had seen patients arriving at the back of a pickup truck, sah. All the patients were coughing.”
“Was there evidence that patients died?” Larry asked.
“Oh yes, sah. One person said they were wrapped in green cloth and taken away in the same truck.”
“And no one has seen Dr Mustafa since?”
“No, sah. We have no Dr Mustafa registered in Kano, sah.”
***
Larry flew back to Lagos and was trying to get the hang of his gas cooker in his new flat when his phone rang.In Nairobi, two hours ahead of Lagos, Philippe Fournier couldn’t sleep, was feeling lonely, and needed someone to talk to. He knew Larry would still be up. “How are you finding the local women then, Larry?” Philippe asked. “Better than white women back home, eh?
They’re too emancipated, man. That’s what I think.”
“No time, Philippe. I’m still settling in,” Larry replied with his head half inside the oven.
“I’ve found a nice Italian,” Philippe went on. “She’s quiet but nice titty and nice legs. Didn’t see much more.”
Larry sat on the kitchen floor. “Something you said, Philippe?”
“I took her to Kijabe.”
“You’re a true romantic, Philippe.”
“I know, but I ended up with an extra passenger in the Jeep.”
Larry then heard about the train driver and moved from the kitchen floor to his new sofa. “So, we took him to the KNH in Nairobi. Mon dieu, he was sick. He was coughing like a child with whooping cough and sweating. When I called the hospital this evening, they said he’d died.”
Larry wanted to know more, but Philippe had already moved on.
“Women are too expensive. Do you have any job vacancies that might pay more? I think I should have stayed in France.”
Philippe was on a different tack now. This, Larry realised was the real reason for his call. “I don’t run an employment agency, Philippe. If I did, the American Embassy would sure find out. You that desperate?”
“Even the student nurses earn more than me.”
“Sorry, I can’t help, Philippe.” Larry laughed with as much sympathy as he could muster. “Why not talk to the French Embassy?”
The next morning, with the Kofi Clinic still on his mind, Larry phoned the World Health Organisation - the WHO - in Geneva to ask if they were aware of the unexplained Nigerian deaths. They weren’t.
He mentioned Philippe’s case and then related a story about a doctor friend on a backpacking holiday in Northern Thailand who’d read about a cluster of deaths in Bangkok due to influenza-like illness.
Yes, the official said, the WHO knew about the Thai cases, but they hadn’t been registered as insignificant.
***
Kevin missed the last train home so checked in to a cheap hotel off Gloucester Road for the night but then he lay awake, his mind in turmoil over his earlier meeting with Mr El Badry.An hour earlier, he’d been offered something by a black youth standing outside the underground station on Gloucester Road and had
been tempted, but Kevin felt high enough already. Mixed with a sense of having found someone with similar views to his own, a ready-made solution and the resources to do something about it, Kevin still felt uneasy.
By six o’clock the next morning and with a hint of damp grey London dawn seeping through the faded curtains, Kevin sat on the edge of the creaking bed in his boxer shorts, now wishing he’d bought something that might have sent him to sleep and into a few hours of blissful oblivion. There was a No Smoking sign on the door, but he ignored it, lit a cigarette and lay back on the crumpled mess that had been his bed.
He’d found the red brick apartment block on Chelsea Embankment, pressed a brass button on the entrance, and the door had clicked open with no words coming through the grid. He’d taken the lift to the second floor, rung the bell on a polished oak door, and found himself facing a big woman in a long black Arab dress with a cream-coloured head scarf. “I have come to see Mr El Badry for a meeting of the Malthus Society.”
He followed her along the passageway with white walls decorated with Arabic prints in ornate gilt frames. The woman opened a door with a hand adorned with scarlet fingernails and large gold rings with blue stones. She’d beckoned Kevin to enter and then closed the door quietly behind him. Kevin had looked around.
It was clearly an office of sorts with a white phone, a computer, and a scattering of paper on shiny oak desk lit by a green desk lamp. But the sofa and separate chairs, coffee table and ornate Persian carpet (or whatever make it was) that dominated the centre of the floor gave it more of a living room feel. Through the plate glass window behind the desk, Kevin could see the river Thames and what he assumed was Battersea Park.
Still clutching the brown folder that contained the notes for his talk, Kevin stood and waited, wondering if other members of the Malthus Society might soon turn up. It already seemed unlikely. For a moment, he felt utterly disappointed. Surely, as chairman of the society, he should, at the very least, have been given more advanced
information of this meeting. He shook off the looming depression by reminding himself that most of the Malthus groups on his database operated in a somewhat cloak-and-dagger manner.
He was wondering whether to go and sit in one of the white leather chairs or, perhaps, the white leather sofa when the door behind him opened.
Mr El Badry was not a big man and certainly not as tall as Kevin. But he was more heavily built and neatly dressed in a dark navy-blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie. His grey hair looked gelled and was neatly parted, but the heavy moustache appeared to have retained its original black colour. As he walked across the carpet towards Kevin, he held out his hand. Kevin, in his open-necked green shirt and red Liverpool sweater, held out his own. “Mr Parker. Mr Kevin Parker. I am Mohamed El Badry. Welcome.”
Kevin got a strong whiff of aftershave or some other male cosmetic.
Never having considered using such expensive luxuries, he knew he was in the company and in the home of a rich man, so waited to be told what was expected of him.
“Please be seated,” El Badry said, and Kevin perched on the edge of the white leather sofa. El Badry relaxed into one of the white chairs and crossed his legs to expose red socks and black patent leather shoes. “I have been following your work, Kevin. May I call you Kevin?” The voice was deep; the accent Egyptian.
“Please do,” said Kevin, still clutching his folder.
“Your enthusiasm for the Malthus Society has become well known to me. Tell me, Kevin, how many members do you now have?”
Kevin took a deep breath. “In the UK, we have around fifty,” he said,
“but I have an international network of similar groups. It adds up to around two thousand people. “
“That is, indeed impressive. You keep things on a deliberately low profile, I believe.”
“Yes,” Kevin said, warming to the praise. “I had some bad personal experiences after some of my own views were published. In fact, I
now advise most of my network to deliberately avoid publicity, as it seems to anger politicians and others.”
Kevin paused to remember Tunji’s warnings about those whose job was to keep tabs on others who showed even the slightest disrespect for so-called human rights. Tunji, though, was paranoid. “Fertility clinics, the IVF lot, and the gay and lesbian parenting lobby took a very dim view of my opinions,” he said.
El Badry seemed to like that. A big smile erupted beneath the moustache. “Yes,” he said, “there is a shortage of people brave enough to share the view that we need more urgent and radical solutions, Kevin. There is an even smaller number willing to actually do something.”
Kevin relaxed by edging further back on the white sofa.
“Tell me your personal views on human overpopulation, Kevin. Do you have one favourite solution to solve the problem?”
Kevin thought about it for a moment. This was a dangerous ground.
He scratched his chin with the edge of his folder and thought about it.
To announce his opinion to someone he had only just met was risky.
On the other hand, El Badry didn’t seem like someone from a police authority or intelligence body. He glanced around, wondering whether he was being secretly filmed or recorded. He had no idea about such technology but decided he was becoming as paranoid as Tunji.
Nevertheless, he decided on a cautious approach. “I have my views, Mr El Badry, but I am not willing to disclose them until I know who I’m talking to. Where do you stand on this subject? I came here expecting to give a talk about Thomas Malthus, together with some views on potential solutions, but only if appropriate to the meeting.”
Kevin felt pleased with himself when El Badry smiled again and eased himself out of the leather chair. He went to his desk, put on a pair of glasses and sat in the white leather chair behind it. Then he swivelled around and looked across the river Thames to Battersea Park. Then he swivelled back. “As I said, I have been following your work. You are right in what you say. We cannot wait for talking shops like the WHO or United Nations to act or even to arrive at a
consensus. What would you say if you knew that many more thousands of people in influential positions shared your views about overpopulation and wanted a solution now?” He hit the desk with a fist and then added, “Right now.”
Kevin, slightly disturbed by the fist replied, “I’d say I already know that, Mr El Badry.”
“And what would you say if there is a solution being developed that could bypass political debate that we all know has not even begun and make things actually happen?”
“I agree there is no political debate, Mr El Badry. Nothing has happened since Thomas Malthus raised the matter back in 1798. I and members of my groups have been wanting the debate for a very long time. Then we want a solution.”
“We have a solution, Kevin.”
Kevin raised an eyebrow. “Who is we, Mr El Badry?”
“My company, my associates, my researchers, my agents and my distributors. We are ready to move.”
Kevin’s brain was working overtime. It was like music to his ears, but he had no wish to get carried away, especially as he still had no idea who El Badry was. Nevertheless, he tried to adopt a business-like tone with a big shot businessman based somewhere in the Middle East.
“I’m interested,” he said.
El Badry removed his glasses and stroked his black moustache. “You have a friend, a Nigerian, who runs a similar group?” he said.
That shocked Kevin.
“He speaks highly of you,” El Badry went on.
So, he should, thought Kevin. Tunji had learned most of his facts and figures by listening to him.
“We have recently been working with Mr Fayinka to test some ideas.”
That really was news to Kevin.
El Badry slowly pulled a tissue from s box on the desk, removed his glasses and wiped them. “Tunji has a lot to learn. He needs to learn to
live with local politics and ongoing problems with crazy Islamic militants. We will, of course, help him overcome all this, but as a result, we want to find others like Tunji to test our plans in other countries. This is where you come in.”
Kevin put his folder on the sofa beside him because it was already clear he was not required to give his lecture. El Badr, meanwhile, did a full circle in his chair before returning to face him. “Let us not beat about the bush, Kevin. Let’s get straight to the point. What, in your view, would be the most effective way to forcibly reduce the human population?”
For Kevin, the slippery ground had returned, but he decided to mention one of his most radical ideas to check El Badry’s reaction. It was not a new one. Even Ehrlich had mentioned it, but he deliberately smiled so as to suggest he was not entirely serious. If there was, indeed, a camera recording him, they might perhaps watch the playback and think he was talking with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. “Add anti-fertility drugs to public water supplies,” he said.
“Any other ideas?”
“Introduce super resistant bugs to cause essential crop failures.”
“Anything else?”
“Start a pandemic with a new virus or bacteria with no known cure.”
El Badry smiled, paused, and then opened a drawer in his desk.
“Whisky, Kevin? Gin and tonic? Vodka? Arak?”
“Whisky, please.”
“Soda? Tonic? Ice? Water?”
“Neat, please.”
El Badry stood, produced two glasses, walked over, and placed them on the fancy white lace cloth that covered most of the coffee table. He poured two big neat whiskies, offered one to Kevin, and returned to his leather chair, carrying the other. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass to his lips. Kevin took his glass and sipped a drop.
“We have just that,” El Badry said triumphantly. “We have the means to cause a worldwide pandemic. What we also have is a treatment. If you work with us, Kevin, the treatment will be made available to you.”
Kevin took another sip and tried some humour. “Will it be free? My university salary only goes so far.”