‘She’s just a troublemaker,’ said Hans who had joined them and whose speech was becoming slurred.
‘Who’s a troublemaker?’ asked Marcus Altman who had also joined them.
‘Monique,’ said Hans, without bothering to add a surname.
‘Nonsense,’ said Altman, ‘she’s just an educated woman who likes to question everything — a woman of her time.’
Everyone laughed and Hans slunk off to get a refill.
‘You sound cheerful,’ said Steven.
‘I’ve been giving a party,’ said Tally.
‘Ah,’ said Steven, ‘then it’s true what they’ve been saying about aid workers.’
‘And what’s that?’ Tally asked.
‘The press have been running stories about aid workers exploiting vulnerable people in crisis areas across the world.’
‘I must have missed that,’ said Tally, ‘I certainly haven’t come across anything like that here,’ she added, but thinking it would explain Altman’s hostility when the subject of the press came up.
‘When are you coming home?’
‘Soon, I promise. Just a few things to clear up.’
Eleven
Steven rubbed his eyes and yawned as he shut down the article on DRC. It seemed an all too familiar tale of poverty and malnutrition among the people while the apparent vast mineral wealth of the country was exploited by others. The country had constantly been beset by wars and the corruption of its politicians who had been generally shunned in recent times after 88 million pounds of tax revenue from mining went missing. It took until 2013 for the rest of the world to accept that feasible measures had been put in place to counter corruption and encourage the flow of foreign capital back into the extraction of copper, cobalt and diamonds.
Diamond smuggling was still a problem, with a significant number leaving the country unrecorded and small unofficial mines operating in remote areas. There was ongoing conflict in North Kivu province on the eastern side of the country, a wild and lawless area plagued by violence where dozens of armed groups operated. Over a thousand people in the area around Beni, a city of over three hundred thousand people, had died through violence since 2014 and thousands more had been displaced from their homes.
Steven took some comfort from the fact that Tally was in Equateur Province, several hundred miles away to the west, but his biggest comfort was the thought that she was coming home soon.
Next morning Tally got into her Land Rover, an elderly vehicle that had been round the block more than a few times, and drove out to the village where she had first met Monique. She found her surrounded by children as she had been the last time and smiled as she witnessed the same enthusiasm. Hands shot up every time a question was asked and a chorus of small voices pleaded their case to be heard. One of the children waved to Tally and she waved back, causing Monique to turn and see her.
Tally wasn’t quite sure that Monique was pleased to see her, but she came over and managed a smile and a formal hello.
‘I thought I would come and say goodbye,’ Tally explained.
‘You’re leaving?’
‘The outbreak has been declared over, I’m going back to my hospital... to my children,’ Tally said with a fond look towards the children sitting on the ground, ‘they obviously adore you.’
‘They are keen to learn,’ said Monique, ‘that makes my job easy.’
‘You must be pleased that the outbreak is over so quickly this time?’
‘Of course.’
‘It made such a difference having more vaccine available.’
Monique looked down at the ground but didn’t comment. This was the situation Tally was looking for if only she could get Monique to open up.
‘You still have doubts about the vaccine?’
Monique shrugged.
‘I really don’t understand,’ said Tally gently, ‘the vaccine saved hundreds — maybe thousands of people and you still have doubts?’
‘The vaccine killed ten people... my family... my friends.’
Tally felt stunned. ‘When was this?’
‘In the last outbreak.’
‘Maybe they were given the vaccine too late,’ said Tally. ‘It doesn’t work with people who already have the disease.’
‘They didn’t have the disease,’ said Monique bitterly. ‘They were perfectly healthy and were told the vaccine would protect them, but it didn’t. They caught Ebola and died. All of them.’
Tally felt confused. The official report on the 2014-16 outbreak said that no one who had been given the vaccine had caught the disease. She said so to Monique.
‘They are lying.’
‘Who gave them the vaccine, Monique?’
‘The aid workers.’
‘Why were they given it, Monique, were they contacts?’
Monique shook her head. ‘There was no Ebola in the village.’
‘But vaccine supplies back then were very limited. Why did they give it to your people?’
‘They said it was a new vaccine — experimental, they called it — it hadn’t been fully tested but they were sure it worked. They said there might be a few side effects, but nothing serious.’
‘It sounds like the same one they’ve been using this time,’ said Tally, ‘it’s still classed as experimental... but it worked really well.’
‘Then we have to disagree,’ said Monique, ‘I really must get back to the children. I wish you a safe flight home.’
‘I’ll try to look into this before I go, Tally said, ‘and see what the explanation is. If I find out anything, I’ll come back and tell you.’
A shrug.
As Monique turned to go back to her class, Tally had one more question.
‘Monique, you said the vaccine killed ten people, was that the total number?’
‘Thirty-seven died.’
As Tally drove back on the bumpy trail, constantly tugging at the wheel to correct her course, she regretted having returned the official WHO report to Marcus Altman. She wanted to check on what she hoped she had remembered correctly, that no one who had been given the experimental vaccine in the 2014-16 outbreak had subsequently contracted Ebola. Something was wrong and it could be her memory. For that reason, she didn’t want to ask Altman for another look at the report. She felt she’d already made herself look silly by not considering river travel in her calculations. Maybe she would ask Steven to check for her.
‘We’ve finally heard something back from Beer Sheva University,’ said Jean when Steven arrived at the office. The tone of her voice suggested that it was not going to set the world on fire.
‘He was working on the design of vaccines that would give protection against diseases caused by killer haemorrhagic viruses.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Apart from the fact that he had a grant from the World Health Organisation to do it.’
‘We knew that,’ Steven complained. ‘Nothing about how successful he was being or what particular diseases he was working on?’
‘No, it beats me why it took the Israelis so long to tell us that,’ said Jean.
Jean had a habit of highlighting details that needed highlighting. ‘I wonder if MI6 knows any more than we do,’ said Steven.
‘Want me to tell them you’re on the way over?’
Steven nodded. ‘Ask if Jane Sherman will talk to me.’
An hour later, Steven walked over to Albert Embankment, showed his ID, jumped through the required hoops and waited until someone came down to escort him up to Jane Sherman’s office.
Sci-Med and the intelligence services were not exactly bosom buddies, but they were civil to each other and, when push came to shove, recognised that they were on the same side and behaved sensibly. This was better than the frostiness which existed between the police and the intelligence people — MI5 in particular — although rumours were that this had greatly improved lately thanks to the terrorist threat at home.