‘My bet would be the sound wave generator necessary for rupturing our... trackers,’ said Tally. ‘If he hadn’t woken us, he would just have triggered them and gone away. In a couple of days or so, we two volunteers would have gone down with Ebola. I’ll hang on to this, it’s evidence.’
‘But he did wake you,’ said Helga, ‘and he didn’t know Monique was here. God, we were so lucky.’
The three of them engaged in a long group-hug.
At six a.m., the sound of rotor blades brought smiles to their faces. They watched as a military helicopter landed no more than fifty metres from where they stood. A crewman appeared at the open door to beckon them and they ran over without looking back to be helped on board one at a time, Monique was first, then Helga and finally, Tally.
‘Thank you so much,’ Tally said as she grappled for hand holds.
‘Not at all,’ said the crewman, removing his helmet and microphone. ‘Nice to see you.’
‘Steven!’ exclaimed Tally, taking a few moments to get over her disbelief before hugging him tightly. ‘What are you doing here? I mean, how... I mean, how is it possible.’
‘I just love helicopters.’
‘Seriously?’ said Tally.
‘I told you I could ask for anything after briefing the PM and all the others as to what the Russian business was all about yesterday. She ordered the RAF to do what was required and with a bit of help from our allies, they did. I think I may have left my stomach on one of their aircraft on the flight down and, please God, they don’t send me the bill.’
‘I take it you know this man?’ said Helga.
‘Yes,’ Tally replied with a smile, ‘I know him.’
As time passed and the sound of the helicopter engines largely put a stop to conversation, they were all left alone with their thoughts. Steven noticed that Tally looked particularly troubled and drew her close to ask what she was thinking about. She gave a small dismissive shake of the head but he persisted until she turned to face him with a distant look in her eyes.
‘I was thinking... God help us all, Steven, God help us all.’
Author’s Note
Although MIASMA is a work of fiction, several facts have been employed in its writing.
In May of 2018, The Democratic Republic of Congo announced an outbreak of Ebola virus in Equateur Province — the ninth to occur since 1976. Unlike the West African outbreak, which claimed over 11,000 lives between 2014 and 2016, this new epidemic was unexpectedly declared over in mid-July of 2018.
Almost unbelievably, a new epidemic was announced at the beginning of August 2018 in another area of the country — Kivu Province, a wild. lawless area some five hundred miles to the east, plagued by violence and banditry — it had to be classified as a new outbreak rather than possible late spread of the old one because genetic analysis showed the cause to be a new strain of Ebola virus, the so-called Zaire strain.
The official explanation for continual outbreaks of Ebola in DRC blames the diet of the population, which includes fruit bats, the suspected natural host of the virus and animals subject to bites from these creatures — collectively known as ‘bushmeat’. As yet, there is limited scientific evidence to support this theory.
2018 has seen several news stories appear about rogue members of world aid agencies exploiting vulnerable people in the course of their duties. Naturally, it is hoped that these people are few and far between, but this does require vigorous investigation. It is not difficult to imagine that access to hundreds of thousands of displaced, vulnerable people could be an attractive ‘resource’ to organised crime.
At the other end of the scale from displaced vulnerable people we have an increasing number of wealthy people wishing to set up home in the UK — particularly in London and often Russian — with effects on property prices and constant suspicions of money laundering. At the time of writing, having assets of ten million pounds or more is sufficient to obtain an ‘investment visa’, leading to permanent residence after only two years.