Free The Virus by Stanley Johnson Page B

day to another.”
    “And the cholera vaccine programme?”
    “We dropped it like a hot potato. From the moment that monkey bit Ringelmann, the vaccine programme was doomed. We leave cholera to the World Health Organization.”
    Kaplan walked back to his hotel through the sleepy streets. The floodlights on the Schloss had been turned out. The roistering students had gone home. The river Lahn ran quietly beneath the bridges of the old town. It all seemed so peaceful. And yet how much had gone on beneath the surface.
    Tomorrow, he would begin digging.
    He arrived at the Clinic early the next morning. Thinking about the problem overnight, Kaplan had decided that it was worth, even after such a lapse of time, trying to discover more about the source of Ringelmann’s infection. Had a monkey really been responsible? If so, where did it come from? Was there any surviving documentation on shipments of monkeys brought to Marburg from Africa in the late ’sixties? Another reason for heading in the direction of the University was the fact that the Schmidtts’ strange but attractive daughter, Paula, was now Head of Medical Records at the Clinic. It seemed too good an opportunity to be missed.
    Paula Schmidtt, when he finally located her office, seemed surprised to see him.
    “I wasn’t expecting to see you up bright and early this morning. I hear you and father had rather a late night.”
    “Yes. It was late. We were talking.”
    “And drinking!” She smiled. “I saw the glasses when I came down this morning.”
    As they sat together in the cramped but well-ordered room, Kaplan looked at his old friend’s daughter appraisingly. As he had already had cause to observe, young Paula had grown up into a handsome woman. Her dark hair, like her mother’s, was pulled back from her forehead and tied neatly behind. Her brown eyes looked at him steadily. Her expression was composed; almost, Kaplan thought, too controlled. It was as though she had learned to discipline herself to the exclusion of all frivolity. He could sense that she was a woman of strong convictions, though he was not so sure that they were convictions of a kind he would wish to share.
    “Tell me,” she said. “How can I help? My father told me at breakfast today that he tried to dissuade you from looking into the question of the Marburg virus, but that you are not inclined to be discouraged.” She looked at him frankly. “My father is frightened, Lowell. He truly believes it is better to let sleeping dogs lie.”
    “And do you believe that?”
    She was silent for a while. The expression on her face indicated that she was pondering a particularly difficult question.
    “No,” she finally replied. “The past is the past, and the present is the present. After fifteen years, you are trying to track down the source of the original Marburg outbreak. You think it may help to understand what happened in this recent outbreak. I’m prepared to help you, Lowell, because I believe in the truth.”
    Lowell Kaplan did not doubt the conviction with which the young woman spoke. He wondered, nevertheless, whether Paula Schmidtt, a product of West Germany’s radical ’sixties, would ever truly take sides with someone like himself, whose bags and baggage were so clearly marked with the stamp of U.S. Government. Brushing these reflections aside, he expressed his gratitude for her cooperation and came straight to the point:
    “Franz told me that the student Ringelmann was bitten by one of the laboratory animals — a monkey — during an experiment. Apparently there was a lapse in the handling precautions. From what Franz told me the presumption has always been that the monkey was the original vector of the Marburg virus. My question is: were any tests done on the animal and do you have records of those tests?”
    She shook her head. “I’ve talked to my father about this in the past. Yes, we think a monkey was responsible. Ringelmann, before he lapsed into insanity, said he