Free The Virus by Stanley Johnson Page A

It was a Gala occasion, the 400th anniversary of the Hessenkraut fraternity. They had all come down from Bonn for the occasion.”
    “How the hell did you limit the outbreak?”
    “We were lucky to be dealing with a controlled situation. We knew the names of everyone who had been in the fraternity house that evening. We took them all into preventive isolation. It stretched our facilities to the utmost, I can tell you.”
    “Even the Chancellor?”
    “Yes, even the Chancellor. We had him under observation for a fortnight. We gave out the story that he was indisposed with ’flu of a particularly severe kind.”
    A thought suddenly occurred to Kaplan. “How do you know all this, Franz?”
    “My dear Lowell, I was there.”
    “You mean you were a spectator at the duel.”
    “No, I wasn’t a spectator. I was a protagonist.” The words seemed to cost him an immense effort. “I was the other man involved. I was the maestro that evening; Ringelmann, the novice. Do you remember when we were at Yale together that I represented the University at the sabre? I . . .”
    Schmidtt seemed to have difficulty in completing his sentence.
    Kaplan got up and went to stand beside the other man’s chair. For the first time, he noted the scars which were three-quarters hidden by the bushy sideburns.
    “I’m so sorry, Franz,” he said quietly. “So very sorry. If our computer hadn’t thrown up the trace, I would never have come here to remind you of all this. And Heidi. It must have been terrible for her.”
    “It was. For years we have lived under a cloud. Of course, in the most practical sense I didn’t suffer, professionally speaking.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean that when Professor Irma Matthofer was dismissed from the University, I received my promotion to be Head of the Toxicology Unit at the Clinic. That was the lucky break — for me, anyway. I felt sorry for Irma. It was yet another injustice coming on top of the first one. She didn’t deserve it. She was just the sacrificial lamb. They cooked up some story about the unreasonable requests she had imposed upon her staff, leading to a breakdown in laboratory discipline.”
    “Didn’t anyone follow up the monkey lead? Wasn’t any attempt made to find out which of the monkeys infected Peter Ringelmann and where it came from?”
    “I told you ‘no’. We had instructions from the highest political authorities that any follow-up of whatever sort would be regarded as treason.”
    “Treason!” Kaplan was incredulous.
    “Not just treason, but high treason!”
    Kaplan lapsed into silence, trying to absorb what he had just heard. That the politicians had played the game with a heavy hand didn’t surprise him, though the efforts at concealment struck him as somewhat exaggerated. He wondered fleetingly if there were some person or persons in high places with a reason, apart from the Hessenkraut affair, for keeping a tight lid on the Marburg incident.
    “And that’s where matters have rested for over fifteen years?” he asked at last.
    “Until you came along, the file has been dead. I beg you, Lowell,” (he leaned forward), “leave it that way. I fear I have been dangerously indiscreet. If you start stirring things up, no good will come of it.”
    Lowell Kaplan’s voice was gentle. “Franz, you know I can’t leave things the way they are. There was one outbreak of Marburg virus back in 1967. You were lucky and got it under control. There was a second outbreak this year in the United States. This time we were lucky; we got it under control. But one thing I promise you, Franz, if there’s another outbreak, we will not be lucky again.”
    “Third time unlucky?”
    “You said it.”
    Schmidtt saw Kaplan to the door. On the step, Kaplan paused for a moment.
    “By the way, what happened to Irma Matthofer after she was dismissed?”
    Schmidtt hesitated for a fraction of a second. “I just don’t know. It was a great mystery. She just disappeared from one