Free The Virus by Stanley Johnson

different business. Here, perhaps for the first time, a German and, what is more, a German woman, would be responsible for a major medical breakthrough. Something that could do more to restore Germany’s standing in the eyes of the world than almost anything else you can think of.”
    “You are modest about your country’s achievements.”
    “Perhaps. But let me go on. Professor Matthofer was in full cry. It was in her nature to put maximum pressure upon her people. Inevitably, there was a slip-up. The monkeys were caged in the lab. One of Irma Matthofer’s research assistants, a young chap called Peter Ringelmann, made some elementary error while handling an animal and got himself bitten. Shortly after, he fell ill. We believe that the source of his illness was the monkey bite. Five days later he died, exhibiting the symptoms which you, Lowell, have described and which you know only too well.”
    “What happened after that?”
    “Twenty-two other people died, every single one of them infected by Ringelmann. There was a positive contact in each case.”
    “Good God! How can you be so sure?”
    “Ringelmann had scars on his cheeks, freshly made scars. It was perfectly clear how they had been acquired; he was a member of a duelling fraternity. What only became clear later was that each and every one of the twenty-two other casualties had been present on the occasion of Ringelmann’s initiation. Three of them had actually been his seconds. The rest must have been involved in one way or another. Perhaps they had handled the blood-stained clothes, or had been contaminated by sputum. There might even have been airborne transmission — we don’t know.”
    “Ah!” exclaimed Kaplan. “So you didn’t rule that out?”
    “No, we couldn’t. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that we had a potential scandal of the first magnitude on our hands. It wasn’t just the deaths themselves that mattered, although, God knows, twenty-three out of twenty-three was — and is — pretty horrific . . .”
    “To the best of my knowledge, an unprecedented medical phenomenon,” Kaplan commented.
    “Exactly. But the extraordinary circumstances which surrounded the deaths were in a way more alarming. For, you see,” (he leaned forward in his chair), “on the particular night that Peter Ringelmann fought his duel, the Chancellor of the Republic himself and two members of his cabinet were among the audience. Once a Hessenkraut, as I told you, always a Hessenkraut. If that had come out, think what the student revolutionaries would have made of it. The government would have been brought to its knees overnight. God knows what would have ensued.”
    The Professor leaned back in his chair and was silent for a time. Then he continued: “That was why, when you mentioned the Marburg virus this evening, I pretended not to know. As far as Germany is concerned, we have buried the Marburg story and the Marburg virus. It didn’t happen.”
    “You didn’t wholly succeed. I told you we had Marburg data on our computer file in Atlanta.”
    Schmidtt shrugged the objection aside. “I agree there were one or two references in the medical literature of the time. But these were purely concerned with the pathology of the incident. There was never any mention in the press of duelling or of the fact that the Chancellor was present on the fatal evening. We’ve kept the lid on the story for fifteen years.”
    “Does it really matter if the story comes out now?”
    A frightened look passed across Franz Schmidtt’s face.
    “I’ve already said more than I should. I had better keep quiet. But I beg you, Lowell, now that you know what happened, to keep it to yourself. Of course the story must not come out. In Germany, old politicians never die; they don’t fade away either, they stick around. I said the Chancellor and two of his colleagues were there that night. That’s not strictly true. Half the cabinet, and I mean today’s cabinet, were there.