It was during the last of these discussions that Tally had managed to give voice to something that had been puzzling her. She said, ‘I know that more Ebola outbreaks begin here in DRC than anywhere else... why do you think that is?’
‘More bushmeat is eaten here,’ said Hans Weber.
‘Even after being warned that it could give them Ebola?’
‘It’s hard to change people’s habits,’ said Hans.
‘True,’ Tally agreed, but modified her puzzled agreement with a slight shrug before adding, ‘Another thing I wonder about is vaccination.’
‘What about it?’
‘I know it wasn’t available at the outset of the 2014 epidemic, but it did become available — albeit late on in 2016 in experimental form with limited stocks. You’d think that quite a number of contacts up here would have been given it and be immune.’
‘Uh huh,’ agreed several of the volunteers, waiting for more.
‘Well, what I’m trying to say is that when you add to them the people up here who contracted Ebola and survived, you’d have a population, many of whom would be immune to the disease, making the north-west the last place you’d expect a new outbreak to occur.’
‘Good point,’ said Hans, ‘although I’m not sure we could ever come up with reliable numbers to do the maths. The only facts we know for sure are that DRC has had nine outbreaks since 1976, four of them in Equateur Province — 1976, 1977, 2014, and now 2018.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Tally with a smile, ‘My problem is that I can never accept anything without scientific evidence to back it up. I know it’s very probable that fruit bats might be the natural reservoir of haemorrhagic viruses like Ebola, but until someone comes up with clear and incontrovertible evidence, I’m going to keep an open mind.’
‘Good for you,’ said Mary Kelly, the Irish nurse. ‘It’s never easy to swim against the tide.’
‘Much easier to go with the flow,’ said Hans.
The meeting ended but Hans Weber and Mary Kelly stayed behind, knowing that they would no longer be baby-sitting Tally from the following day and checking that she was comfortable with everything.
‘Absolutely,’ said Tally, ‘and many thanks for your help. What have you guys got lined up for tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘Refrigeration,’ exclaimed Hans with an exasperated sigh. ‘The vaccine has to be kept at a temperature below minus 60 degrees Centigrade and you know what the power supply is like in this country.’
‘I do,’ Tally agreed.
‘And I’m meeting with the Red Cross volunteers who have recently arrived,’ said Mary. ‘I’m going to listen to their initial thoughts.’
‘It must be difficult dealing with so many different aid organisations,’ said Tally.
‘Think of a minefield,’ said Hans, ‘only with egos instead of mines. Tread carefully.’
Eight
Steven wasn’t alone in pounding the pavements on a pleasant evening, although he felt decidedly scruffy in faded T-shirt and track suit bottoms when compared to his fellow keep-fit enthusiasts, many of whom would not have seemed out of place on a cat-walk in Milan. It seemed that wealth had to advertise itself on every conceivable occasion.
He had chosen a route which would allow him to pass by the Islington town-house owned by Dimitry Petrov when fate and a change of the Russian establishment had led to his becoming a Londoner. The house was a dark stone affair lacking any outward sign of ostentation in keeping with its neighbours. Seven figure price-tags spoke for themselves. Bells and whistles were not required.
Steven had no good reason for choosing the route he had other than feeling he needed something more than names on pieces of paper to work with. Seeing where one of them lived would be interesting and take his mind off the fact that his own flat was empty and Tally would not be coming back any time soon.
On the second lap of his chosen circuit, Steven became aware of a dark stretch limousine turning into the street he was about to enter on the other side. It moved slowly and drew up outside the Petrov residence. Steven’s immediate thought was that this might be interesting. He paused and pretended to deal with a loose shoe lace while a well-built man wearing sunglasses — despite the absence of sun at that time in the evening — got out of the front passenger door and appeared to look around for signs of threat before opening the pavement-side rear door and permitting a late middle-aged man with a mop of swept-back, white hair to emerge. The cut of the man’s suit as he straightened suggested that he belonged in the world of stretch limos and expensive property. He said something to sunglasses who kept up surveillance of everything around him while he listened and then nodded.
Fearing that he might be taking too long to tie up his lace and was about to attract more than the cursory glance from the heavy, Steven undid the shoe and removed it completely before going through the motions of shaking out an imaginary stone that had been annoying him. With the performance over, he stood upright to push his foot back into the shoe before bending down again to do up his lace, but, just as he finished, he surreptitiously slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out his mobile phone.
When Steven saw the sunglasses swivel away to the right, he seized the chance to take a couple of shots of the well-dressed man, but then it went wrong. Almost simultaneous with the click of the shutter, the bodyguard shouted something at him and it didn’t sound like ‘Good Evening’. Steven realised that he had made the elementary mistake of thinking the man had been looking elsewhere when, in fact, it had been his sunglasses that had been looking elsewhere. Behind their reflective lenses, his eyes had been fixed on him: that’s why bodyguards wore the damned things.
The shout made the well-dressed man turn around as he reached the door of the Petrov residence and Steven, despite the sudden rise in his pulse rate, took a couple more camera shots before taking to his heels as the heavy made to cross the road towards him, pausing only to secure an earpiece in his left ear.
Steven didn’t imagine for a moment that the heavy would chase him, thinking he just wanted to shoo him away... but when he glanced round, he saw the man was still in hot pursuit and appeared purposeful. Why? he wondered, Why in God’s name?... He was just a scruffy jogger who had taken a phone camera shot of someone getting out of a posh limo. This was an everyday occurrence in London where pop and film stars got in and out of ostentatious vehicles all day long — often actually hoping to be photographed. It was well-known that newspapers paid big bucks for exclusive images of those currently in fashion. He could hardly be seen as a threat to his employer... Why didn’t the heavy see that? Didn’t he realise he had left his boss exposed and alone? No, he hadn’t, he reminded himself, the man would be safely inside the Petrov house.
When Steven risked another glance, he saw that the heavy wasn’t gaining on him but wasn’t falling back either. What was more worrying was that his right hand was reaching inside his jacket for something and, in the current situation, he suspected it wasn’t a handkerchief. This was becoming ridiculous. He really couldn’t be intending to use a gun on a jogger in a London street... could he?
Steven’s failure to convince himself resulted in his upping his pace and it was hurting. He desperately needed an alternative strategy. The man intent on catching him was obviously as fit as he was and the fact that he was associated with Russian oligarchs suggested he wouldn’t have been recruited from the ranks of local nightclub bouncers. He would be a pro — a thought that awoke in Steven a real longing for the 9mm Glock he had picked up from the armourer yesterday — the one he’d put securely in the safe at home... and left it there. When fate threw a curve ball...