Ken McClure - Wildcard

Steven left his fifth-floor apartment in Docklands and took a taxi to the Home Office. He wore a dark-blue suit, light-blue shirt and Parachute Regiment tie, and cut an imposing figure as he entered the building and showed his ID. No less imposing was John Macmillan, who in many ways could have been an older version of Steven, tall, slim and erect but with swept-back silver hair instead of Steven’s dark mane.

‘Good to see you, Dunbar. Take a seat.’

Steven sat and listened to Macmillan’s apology for bringing him back early from leave. ‘Jamieson and Dewar are both out on assignment right now so I was faced with asking one of the scientific chaps to take this on or recalling you. I decided on you.’

‘I’m flattered,’ said Steven with only the merest suggestion of a smile.

Macmillan looked at him for a moment, searching for signs of sarcasm, but didn’t find any. ‘Anyway, you must be aware of this Ebola thing on the African flight?’

‘I read about it in the papers,’ replied Steven. ‘Nasty.’

‘It could have been much worse but the emergency procedures for just such an eventuality worked well, and the problem was contained with only five dead — not that that’s much comfort to them or their families.’

‘So what concerns us?’ asked Steven.

‘The aircraft had come from Ndanga and the passenger who fell ill and infected the others was a Foreign Office official. He had been in Africa, making arrangements for a visit by the Foreign Secretary. The Foreign Office is worried.’

‘It would be crazy to go ahead with the visit until any outbreak is over,’ said Steven.

‘The Ndangan authorities say there is no outbreak.’

‘So how did our man get the disease?’

‘Precisely.’

‘God, you’re not going to send me to Ndanga, are you?’ exclaimed Steven.

‘Nothing like that.’ Macmillan smiled. ‘The Foreign Office would simply like to be assured that the relevant authorities aren’t lying. I’ve already been on to the WHO in Geneva. They’ve heard nothing about an outbreak, but I thought you might get in touch with some of your friends and acquaintances in the medical charities and see what you can come up with?’

‘Will do,’ said Steven. ‘Are they sure it’s Ebola?’

‘There’s been nothing back from Porton yet, but from all accounts it has to be one of the haemorrhagic fevers.’

‘But it could be something other than Ebola, like Lassa or Marburg disease. Not that it makes much difference: there’s not a damned thing anyone can do about any of them, anyway.’

Macmillan nodded and said, ‘I understand that there’s going to be a briefing for officials tonight at the Foreign Office. Maybe they’ll have some news. I think you should go along.’

Steven agreed.

‘Miss Roberts will give you details.’

Steven spent the remainder of the afternoon telephoning friends and colleagues to find out which medical missions and charities were currently operating in Ndanga. He established that three were, including the large French organisation, Medecins sans Frontieres. He had a friend who worked as a co-ordinator at their Paris office. He called her.

‘Simone? It’s Steven Dunbar in London.’

‘Steven! How nice. It’s been ages. How are you?’

After an exchange of pleasantries Steven asked about haemorrhagic fever in Ndanga.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Simone. ‘Give me a moment…’

Steven looked out of the window of his apartment while he waited. It was sunny but there were black clouds coming in from the west.

Simone came back on the line. ‘No, no reports at all of haemorrhagic fever in Ndanga or the countries surrounding it at the moment.’

Steven liked hearing the word ‘haemorrhagic’ spoken with a French accent. It made him smile. ‘Thanks, Simone,’ he said. ‘I’m obliged.’

‘So when will we see you in Paris?’

‘Soon, I hope. We’ll have dinner.’

Steven arrived for the 7.30 p.m. briefing at the Foreign Office at 7.20 and found more than fifty people already there. Some he knew, many he didn’t. One of those he did was Fred Cummings; a consultant microbiologist attached to the London Public Health Service. Fred tended to stand out in a crowd because of his sparse but bright-red hair and a liking for loud sports jackets.

‘Big turn-out,’ said Steven, coming up at his elbow.

‘Porton wanted to speak to everyone concerned at the same time, rather than have a series of meetings with health chiefs and local authorities,’ said Cummings.

‘So they’ve identified it?’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Cummings. ‘They’ve taken long enough about it. A fiver says it’s Ebola.’

‘Ebola fever in the Old Kent Road — now there’s a thought to conjure with,’ said Steven, ignoring the bet.

‘Tell me about it.’ Cummings smiled. ‘I haven’t needed All Bran since that bloody plane landed.’

A distinguished-looking man, whom Steven took to be a Foreign Office official, appealed for quiet and the hubbub died down. Four people mounted the platform and were introduced jointly as the investigating team from Porton Down. Their leader, Dr Clive Phelps, a tall, gangly man with bushy grey hair and a straggly beard, took the Foreign Office man’s place at the microphone and tapped it twice unnecessarily before speaking. Steven wondered idly how he would get his beard inside a surgical mask.

‘Good evening,’ said Phelps. ‘I understand that everyone here — apart from Foreign Office personnel, who have their own reasons for requiring information — is a health professional so I won’t beat about the bush. It’s a filovirus.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’muttered Cummings. ‘The Daily Mail ’s been telling us that for weeks.’

‘But, contrary to popular reports and rumour, it isn’t Ebola,’ continued Phelps.

‘So it has to be Marburg,’ whispered Cummings. ‘There only are two filoviruses.’

‘And it isn’t Marburg disease either.’

‘Bloody hell,’ breathed Cummings. He felt like the straight man in a comedy double act. ‘Then how can you call it a filovirus?’ he asked out loud, as hubbub again filled the room.

‘Under the electron microscope the virus appears filamentous, forming branched filaments of up to fourteen thousand nanometres in length. In other words, it looks like a filovirus and, of course, it causes a haemorrhagic fever very similar to Ebola, if not identical. The victims suffer high temperature, stomach cramps and nausea, and bleed profusely from just about everywhere.’

‘So why do you say it isn’t Ebola?’

‘The four subtypes of Ebola that we know about and have characterised in the past all have a uniform diameter of eighty nanometres. This virus has a diameter of a hundred and twenty nanometres.’

‘It could be a new subtype,’ suggested Cummings.

‘That’s possible,’ conceded Phelps with an uncomfortable shrug, ‘but we think not. We’ve carried out an investigation of the nucleic acid content of the virus — that’s what’s been taking the time — and there are significant differences. That’s why we think it’s a new virus.’

‘All we need,’ whispered Cummings to Steven. ‘Another bloody African virus.’

‘Any ideas about source?’ asked someone else.

‘None at all,’ replied Phelps. ‘But if the truth be told, we still have no idea about the source of Ebola either, and we’ve known about that disease for over thirty years. Ebola’s natural reservoir is as much a mystery today as it was when the disease was first reported.’

‘Would it be fair to say that this new virus is not as potent as Ebola, in view of the way it was so easily contained? I seem to remember people dropping like flies during the Ebola outbreaks in Zaire a few years back.’