The Virus (17 page)

Mugambu had taken his task seriously. He had produced a squad of some forty men who were now encamped at the Bukavu base, along with the normal complement of wives, grandmothers, chickens, sheep and goats. It was a scruffy lot but, for the time being, they had nothing much to do but wait.

They had been in Bukavu about three days when the equipment arrived on board a Hercules Transport aircraft belonging to the United States Air Force. Mugambu roused his men and they proceeded to unload. When it was all piled on the tarmac, and Kaplan was able to make a thorough inspection of what Uncle Sam had been able to provide given a day or two’s notice, his heart swelled with a measure of patriotic pride. What other nation, he thought, could produce fifty brand new breathing apparatuses and a similar number of plastic pressure suits between breakfast and tea? What other nation could produce at the drop of a hat a similar number of recoilless rifles capable of firing high-velocity darts tipped with curare on roving targets? What other nation for that matter would have sufficient stocks of curare in the first place?

As they stood there looking the equipment over, Kaplan had explained to Mugambu the tactics to be followed:

“We can’t fire ordinary weapons at the animals. That’s too dangerous. The impact of a bullet on bone and flesh will cause a spatter effect. Even if your men are protected with the pressure suits and the breathing apparatus, the contamination could remain. Since we don’t know how long the virus can survive after the death of the vector, we can’t afford to take that chance. We need a clean kill. That means we’ve got to be able to hit the monkeys without wounding; the animals have to fall where they are hit and we have to be able to pick up the bodies intact.”

Mugambu didn’t completely understand the talk about vectors and viruses.

“Can’t we burn the jungle?” he had asked cheerfully. “My men would enjoy that. Then we wouldn’t even have to use the darts.”

“Are you prepared to control a forest fire?” Kaplan had replied sharply. “Remember, we’re talking about several hundred thousand square miles of jungle out here in the Eastern Congo. Once you get started, you may not be able to stop. Besides, we’re not running some punitive expedition. We’re not operating a scorched-earth policy. As I understand, there are a lot of animals in there besides the green monkeys. They’ve got a right to live.”

Mugambu didn’t seem to be much interested in the question of animals’ rights. He shrugged and turned on his heel. Later that day Kaplan saw him roaring drunk surrounded by half a dozen of his men. “I’d trust that guy to start a fire,” he thought. “But I’d never trust him to put one out.”

But he knew that he would have to live with Mugambu. There was no way they could carry out their assignment without the logistic support of the Zairian army.

The problem of path-finding, which Kaplan had felt might prove to be extremely difficult, was solved for them in a surprisingly simple way.

Hot and tired after a long day’s sorting and organizing the equipment which had just arrived in Bukavu, the WHO team sat huddled in their hut over a large-scale map of the area.

“Frankly,” said Kaplan, “we have a set of map references and I can see the numbers on the map. I can see where we’ve got to go. But I’m not sure I see how to get there. Are there paths through this jungle? I’d ask Mugambu, but we won’t get any sense out of him.”

Rodriguez had looked at Leontiev and Leontiev had looked at Cartwright. None of them knew the answer.

They were still discussing the problem when there was a commotion at the door and Mugambu entered with a lot of banging and clattering, followed by two or three of his men and a frightened-looking native.

“This fellow has been hanging around the camp,” said Mugambu, who reeked of beer. “He says he understands we are interested in monkeys.” The Congolese Colonel spat on the floor of the hut. It was clear that he did not regard a troop of monkeys as a suitable subject of conversation.

“Ask him what he wants to tell us.” Kaplan didn’t have much time for Mugambu’s posturings.

Mugambu spoke to the man in his own language. He turned back to the party.

“He says he knows where the monkeys are. He can take us to them.”

There was a noticeable stir of interest in the hut.

“Is he talking about green monkeys?” Kaplan asked.

The man nodded enthusiastically and rattled off something in a local dialect.

Mugambu translated for them. “Yes, he means
green
monkeys.”

“Ask him how he knows where the monkeys are.”

Once more Mugambu spoke to the man. When he saw that he had their interest, the native visibly gained confidence. His answers were more rounded and filled with circumstantial detail.

Even Mugambu seemed to be interested in the man’s next answer.

“He’s a trapper,” he relayed the information. “He has a depot near here where he keeps the animals. He waits till he gets a sufficient number and then he ships them out. Sometimes they go via a dealer in Kinshasha. Sometimes via Bujumbura. He caught a green monkey earlier this year and he remembers where. He says there was a whole tribe of them.”

Kaplan had yet another question to ask. “Does he think the green monkeys are still where he last saw them? Can he really take us there?”

The man nodded enthusiastically and then proceeded to speak for some time without pause.

Eventually Mugambu was able to explain.

“He says that thirty miles south of here the river Uzizi, which is a tributary of the Ruzizi, enters a defile, perhaps fifty yards wide with steep cliffs on either side. The defile lasts for about half a mile. After this, there comes a saucer-shaped crater partially forested. A kind of deep-sided valley. This is where the monkeys live. At the southern end of the valley, the river once more enters a defile, just as impassable as the first. As far as he knows, the monkeys have never left the valley. He first discovered the place fifteen years ago.”

“Fifteen years ago?” Kaplan’s voice quickened with interest. It was fifteen years since the first outbreak of Marburg disease. “How often does he go there?”

“Very rarely apparently. And when he does he is not always successful in catching the monkeys. He says he caught a green monkey when he first went to the valley but that he didn’t catch one again till this year.”

Kaplan exchanged glances with the other members of the team.

“I think we have the confirmation we need, gentlemen, don’t you?”

Michel Ngenzi and his small band had been marching for three days through the jungle. They had landed their boat on the Zairian side of Lake Tanganyika and had hidden it with care by the shore.

“I hope we can find it when we come back,” Stephanie had said. Tough as she was, she didn’t relish the prospect of a forced march round the northern end of the lake.

“We’ll find it all right,” Ngenzi had replied. He cast a practised eye along the shoreline taking in the distinctive landmarks, a broken branch here, a half-submerged tree there. To Stephanie one stretch might seem very like another. To Ngenzi, trained from birth to detect the subtle interplay of light and shadow, no ten yards were quite like the next.

Once the boat had been concealed, they had made camp by the water’s edge. Stephanie had slept fitfully. It was her first night out in the open for quite some time. She had to re-accustom herself to the sound of animals snuffling around the camp and to other sudden noises of the night.

They breakfasted by the lake that first day and took the opportunity to consult the map which Ngenzi had brought with him.

The Professor sounded apologetic. “I’m afraid it’s more an explorer’s chart than a proper map. In fact I rather doubt if it’s been updated since Stanley himself passed this way. But it’s all we’ve got. We’ll have to do the best we can with it.”

Stephanie looked over his shoulder.

“It seems as though the particular place we’re aiming for, going by the map reference I had from Kaplan, is somewhere on this tributary of the Ruzizi.” She peered closer. “It seems to be called the Uzizi.”

Ngenzi examined the map closely. “As far as I can tell from the contours, we ought to be looking for a valley somewhere around the 2000 foot level. The Uzizi appears to pass through a kind of defile on entering the valley. See here” — he pointed with his finger at the map — “the contours are all bunched. The valley itself seems to spread out about half a mile on either side. It’s hard to tell what’s on the floor of the valley but my guess is that we’ll find grass as well as tree cover. On leaving the valley, the Uzizi once more appears to pass through a steep defile before running on down to join the Ruzizi.”

As she listened to him speak, Stephanie did not find it difficult to visualize the abode of the monkeys. In her mind’s eye, she saw a green mountain valley and a sparkling river running through it. A valley as remote as any on the face of the earth. A valley where in some incomprehensible way nature had achieved both the perfection of creation and its nemesis. She remembered her dream.

By the end of the third day Stephanie’s legs were aching, but she was enjoying herself immensely. To walk by day through the primeval rain-forest, where the immense canopy of trees towered overhead almost shutting out the sun; to make camp by night and sit around the fire till it was time to turn in, surrounded by people, like Michel Ngenzi, whom she knew and trusted; to hear these men talk of the forest and of the ways of the forest and of Africa past and present — all this was for her a profoundly moving experience.

That night the conversation turned to the Mulelists.

“Who were they?” Stephanie asked.

“They were followers of Robert Mulele,” Ngenzi told her. “He was a strange charismatic man who was one of the leaders of the rebels back in the ’sixties. His followers would go into battle in a half-drugged state. He tried to convince them that they were invincible, that they had only to point their fingers at the enemy and chant and shout and they would be victorious. Mulele’s influence was particularly strong in this part of the Eastern Congo. Even today the Zairian army from time to time announces the capture and execution of Mulelists whom they will have rounded up in some drive through the jungle.”

“What happened to Mulele himself?”

“He was murdered one night in Elisabethville. They chopped up his body into about a thousand pieces.”

Stephanie shivered. It was a harsh country. Justice was the law of the strongest. Almost as though to make her point, a mountain lion roared nearby. Instinctively they gathered closer to the camp fire.

By the end of the next day’s march, they were about ten miles short of their destination. Ngenzi decided to send out a scouting party. He turned to two of his men and addressed them in their native language.

“You two, Thomas and Edouard, I want you to find the best path to the Uzizi. If you locate the valley, try to discover the way down. Get back here by nightfall tomorrow. We’ll wait for you.”

The two men left that night, slipping quietly off into the forest with no more luggage than loin-cloth and panga.

Stephanie welcomed the break while they waited for the two men to return. She washed her hair in a stream and felt better. While she waited for it to dry she talked, in French, to Kodjo whom she now thought of as the “monkey man”.

“How come you know so much about monkeys and apes, Kodjo?”

Kodjo smiled at her. He had a warm trusting face and he was delighted that the white woman, Stephanie, wanted to converse with him. At home in his village he might have a wife and child, but at heart he was still a boy. His movements, his gestures were lithe like a boy’s.

“I grew up near the ridge, miss. There was a tribe of monkeys there. They were my friends.” He spoke the last words simply, a matter-of-fact statement.

“You mean the Nile-Zaire ridge in Burundi?” Stephanie remembered the great forest-clad crests she had seen from the air the day she flew in to Bujumbura.

“Yes, miss. My village is two hundred miles north of Bujumbura. It lies at the foot of the highest summit of the Nile-Zaire ridge. Our fields have crept part of the way up the side of the mountain. We have burned the trees, cultivated the land. But the monkeys are still there at the top of Lwungi.”

“Lwungi?”

“That is the name of the mountain above my village,” Kodjo explained. “It is one of the sacred places. The kings of Burundi are buried up there on the summit among the trees. Our kings are always buried in the sacred groves. That is why we will never go further up the mountain. To do so would be to violate the spirit, the ‘mwami’ of our royal ancestors.”

Stephanie nodded. She had heard much about the traditions of kingship.

“I hope I have a chance to visit your village one day.”

Kodjo was honoured. “I will take you to my village, miss. We make ‘mwemba’ for you!”

“I thought ‘mwemba’ was for when someone had had a baby.”

“Oh, there are different kinds of ‘mwemba’!”

“I’m not surprised.” She laughed.

Later that afternoon, Stephanie saw that Michel Ngenzi was looking worried. A frown creased the tall gentle face.

“My men should be back by now,” he told her. “I can’t understand what’s kept them.”

At dawn the next day, when the two scouts still hadn’t returned, Ngenzi’s concern had deepened into real anxiety.

“We’re going to go on. But we’re going to move very cautiously. I have a feeling that something’s gone wrong.”

Colonel Albert Mugambu had established his base of operations on the rim of the saucer. From where he sat he could look onto the valley-floor. Two-thirds drunk though he was, he could nevertheless detect that the scene held a certain appeal. The expanses below contained a fair number of trees, but they were by no means totally forested. The long grasses probably concealed lion, or even cheetah. Mugambu hoped that when this monkey-business was over he would be able to have a go at some “real” game. He rather fancied slinging a cheetah skin across his shoulder or, better still, having one made into a forage cap as President Mobutu himself had done.

He was reflecting on the various sartorial possibilities, when a squad of soldiers emerged into his view.