All Fall Down (44 page)

‘Really? Why not?’

‘We need a botanist.’

Before Harley could react, Kate broke into a run towards the meadow, the tiredness in her legs forgotten as she experienced that wonderful sensation that happened so seldom in the lab, always after weeks or months – even years – of creeping towards an answer. She could feel the passageways in her brain opening up, ideas and memories and realisations waving at her, vying for attention, and another part of her mind crying out,
Of course
!

She reached the edge of the field of flowers. Thousands of the small red-and-white star-shaped blooms stretched from here towards the edge of the trees. She had seen them whenever she had looked out upon the grounds, had walked past them on her way back to the house with Simone only this morning. And she had thought she recognised them – somewhere, deep in her tank of memories, was an image of plants exactly like these. Instinctively she had known that she was supposed to be afraid of them, that she should steer clear of them – but she hadn’t even stopped to try to remember why.

Harley caught her up and stood behind her, breathing heavily.

She crouched beside the flowers, examining the whole plant. Beneath the crown of flowers, a thick stem led
down to a bulbous pod. ‘Did you call for a botanist?’

‘No, not yet. Kate, I’m completely lost.’

‘Then follow me.’

She stood up and broke into a jog, back towards the house, heading straight for Mangold’s lab.

‘You’ll need to wear a protective suit as well as that mask. God knows what Mangold had lurking in this lab,’ Kate said. She opened a couple of drawers, then spotted a cabinet in the corner and pulled it open. ‘Ah-ha, here you go.’

Harley suited up while Kate rifled through drawers, scattering paperwork across the benches, hundreds of pages of notes scrawled in Mangold’s spidery handwriting. She was about to give up when she found a manila envelope that looked about twenty years old. In it were several black-and-white A4 prints that had been produced from a microscope.

‘There you are,’ she said. ‘You little bastard.’

‘Kate …?’

She gestured for Harley to look at one of the prints.

‘What am I looking for?’ he asked.

‘You won’t be able to see it,’ she said. ‘But the thing that really puzzled me about Watoto-X2 was how quickly it kills compared to the original.’ She paused, thinking about Paul in the other room. How long did he have?

‘Isn’t it simply a stronger strain of the virus?’

‘That’s what we thought. But it looks identical to the original strain, the one I had when I was a child.’

Harley nodded.

‘So … I think this is the answer. For the last year or
so, when Isaac and I were studying Watoto, we kept
seeing a trace of something on the edges of Watoto’s outer
shell.’

She looked up and saw that Harley was confused. ‘Viruses have an outer shell, a kind of coat, made of protein. In our paper, Isaac and I reported that we kept seeing a “ghost” – a trace of something on the outer edges of the shell that would appear fleetingly then disappear. We could never work out what it was.’

‘Right.’

‘Junko worked it out first. She was talking to me about “the ghost”, which Isaac and I thought must be some kind of contamination, right before Angelica and her cronies turned up at the lab. She never got the chance to tell me more …’ She trailed off for a moment. Junko’s body was out there somewhere. Had they buried her or just dumped her remains with their other victims? Picturing another kind of ghost, wandering the grounds, unable to rest, Kate shivered.

‘Go on,’ Harley urged.

She pointed to the relevant part of the picture. ‘But, as Diaz said to you, what we were actually seeing on the edge of the Watoto virus was a satellite virus.’ She knew Harley wouldn’t understand. ‘Think of Watoto as being like planet Earth. And attached to it, like our moon, is a tiny satellite.’

‘OK …’

‘The satellite exists on both Watoto and Watoto-X2. It’s always been there. The difference is that, with X2, there is something inside the satellite – and that’s what kills victims of Watoto-X2 so quickly.’

Harley squinted at her. ‘What, like another virus? You mean, there are two viruses?’

‘No – not really. I think the satellite actually contains something else. A toxin. A poison. When Watoto-X2 – which is basically the original Watoto with the additional poison attached to it – enters the victim’s body, it releases this poison into the bloodstream. And this poison kills the sufferer before the Watoto virus itself gets a chance. That’s why people die so suddenly and the fatality rate is so high. The antibodies that might have some chance of fighting off Watoto never get a chance to do their job because the poison sneaks in round the back, as it were, and kills the victim first. That’s what caused the seizures. And – oh yes! That’s why Mangold told Simone they were giving her an antidote. Because you need an antidote to fight a poison.’

‘OK – that makes sense. But what is the poison?’

Kate stood upright, her aching back forgotten. ‘You know that when I was a child I lived in Tanzania for a while and caught Watoto?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘And Diaz told you that he and Mangold were working on something they called Project Hadza?’

‘Ye-es.’

She smiled. ‘Well, Hadza is the name of a tribe in Tanzania. They were the people my family were living with. It’s been so long since I heard that word – and I was a child back then – that I didn’t remember immediately. But then it came to me.’ She could picture the people now; she had an image of a young boy with a bow strung across his back. A hunter.

She went on. ‘And that made me make the other connection. Those plants out back, with the pretty flowers – I knew I recognised them. They used to grow all around the village where we stayed. The Hadza had a name for the plant that I can’t remember, but my mum called it a mamba rose.’

So strange, she thought, how life went in circles. So strange to be, in her mind, back in Africa, the hazy memories of heat and light through dappled leaves and the sickness that had claimed her parents: memories she had repressed for a long time because they were so unbearably painful. The first of so many losses: Mum, Dad, then Stephen, Isaac, Junko – and now, unless a miracle occurred, Paul too. She swallowed hard.

‘The Hadza would use the sap from the plants to poison their arrowtips. I remember them warning us that the plants weren’t safe, that we should be careful of them. And Mangold told me that he and Diaz had been to Tanzania. He said they were looking for something. Obviously, from the name they gave their project, it had something to do with the Hadza.’

‘Couldn’t they have been collecting samples of Watoto?’

‘Maybe. But they did something to Watoto to make it even more deadly. And we know from what Diaz said that it must be something to do with the satellite virus. I’m willing to bet that they added the poison from the mamba rose, creating a version of Watoto that carries a satellite genome containing the toxic gene from the plant.’

Harley looked confused again.

‘You don’t need to understand the science. All you need to know is that the thing that makes Watoto-X2 so deadly is the poison it carries around with it, which comes from that plant growing out back.’

She gestured for him to follow her out of the lab, and he stripped off his protective suit, leaving it in a crumpled heap on the floor.

‘So what happens now?’ he asked. ‘How does this actually help us find an antidote?’

‘Well, the first thing we need to find out is whether there is an existing, known antidote to the mamba rose toxin. We should be able to look it up online, unless the internet is down here too.’

Harley thought for a moment. ‘What resources do you need? Ideally? I’ll get them for you.’

‘The first thing I need is to talk to a toxicology expert.’

‘OK.’ Harley reached for his phone.

Kate looked into the room where Paul was still asleep. He was shiny with sweat, his skin as pale as an albino’s.

‘You’re trembling,’ Harley said softly.

‘I’m really scared, Jason. Because even if we find an antidote to the toxin and get it here straight away, that won’t stop the Watoto virus itself. All it will do is buy Paul time by stopping the poison. It will give him an extra couple of days, but Watoto itself still has a mortality rate of around seventy per cent.’

‘So by finding the antidote we would be reducing his chances of dying from ninety-nine per cent with Watoto-X2, to seventy per cent with plain, unadulterated Watoto? That’s still pretty good, Kate.’

She stared at Paul, chewing her thumbnail nervously. ‘Not good enough though.’

While Harley got to work, making one call after another, Kate crouched beside Paul, stroking his brow, murmuring soothing words he couldn’t hear.

Harley came over and held out the phone to Kate. ‘I’ve got Professor Simon Black at the Center of Toxicology in Dallas. There’s one in San Francisco but, not surprisingly, it’s shut.’

Kate took the phone and found herself talking to a man with a gravelly Texan accent. She explained about the mamba rose, what she needed, could hear him tapping away at a computer.

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘This is real interesting.’

‘Tell me,’ Kate urged.

‘The mamba rose is an extremely toxic plant. Hunters in Africa use it to dip their arrow tips in.’

‘Yes, I knew that. But what about an antidote to the poison?’

He paused. ‘Jeez. That sure is interesting.’

This was maddening. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s quite a remarkable plant. The antidote to the
poison, which is in the sap, is actually contained in the same plant – within the stem. Do you have access to this plant now?’

‘Yes. There are thousands of them growing here.’

‘OK. Well, I can talk you through how to prepare and administer the antidote. Though I need to make a phone call first, to check a couple of things. Is that all right?’

Kate felt on the verge of tears. ‘Yes, yes. But please, be as quick as you can.’

She handed the phone back to Harley and walked straight through to see Paul. As she entered the room, he stirred, then opened his eyes.

She knelt beside him. ‘How are you feeling?’

His voice was hoarse and weak. ‘Like death.’ He attempted a smile. ‘It’s definitely not man flu.’

‘I’ve got some good news. We’ve found an antidote … It’s complicated, but I’m just waiting for a call back.’

This time, he managed a proper smile. ‘That’s amazing. I knew you’d do it. You’re brilliant, Kate.’

She tried to smile back. How could she tell him that, while they had identified an antidote to the poison that Watoto-X2 carried, there was still no cure for the virus itself?

‘Listen, Paul,’ she said, ‘when we get through this … You know what you asked me before, back in England, about marrying you? The answer is yes. I want to.’

‘You don’t have to say that, just because I’m sick.’

‘No. I made up my mind while we were apart. I was being stupid before. I want to do it. I want to be with you for ever.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘You’d better get me that antidote then. Hey, don’t cry.’

She couldn’t help it. She held on to him as the tears came, pressing her face against his burning hot shoulder. Paul held her back, not speaking. In the distance, she thought she could hear a phone ringing. But she didn’t want to let Paul go. He had to survive. He had to. She needed him. And the sick irony was, she had only fully realised that when she was on the brink of losing him.

From behind her, she heard Harley say, ‘Er, Kate? It’s Professor Black.’

She extricated herself from Paul – the front of her shirt was damp from his sweat and her tears – and crossed the room to take the phone from Harley, taking it into the entrance hall so Paul wouldn’t overhear.

‘Professor Black.’

‘Doctor Maddox. I made my calls, and I can tell you how to prepare the antidote.’

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘But while I was waiting for my contact to call me back, I did some more digging around to see what else I could find out about the mamba rose. I’ve come across something … well, it’s kinda unconventional. Possibly a load of BS, if you’ll pardon my French.’

She waited for him to continue.

‘I found a research paper online written by an anthropologist, name of James Martens. This paper has recently been added to the online archive of the American Journal of Anthropology. An abstract came up when I googled mamba rose and virus, so I bought the full paper. It appears Martens stayed with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania for a year back in the seventies. It’s a fascinating account.’

Kate felt herself growing impatient again. ‘Yes?’

‘Hmm …’ There was a pause, as if he was scanning through the article as he spoke. ‘Yes, here we are: Martens writes about how there was an outbreak of a disease among the tribesfolk. They had another name for it, but the symptoms sound exactly like Watoto. Identical, in fact. And Martens wrote that the Hadza had a cure for it.’

Kate was suspicious. ‘A cure? If there was some kind of folk cure for Watoto, I would have heard of it.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Black said. ‘This paper was obscure – it was only added to their online archive this year, and it doesn’t actually mention Watoto by name, so you would only have found it if you were searching for the mamba rose – which you wouldn’t have done before, am I right?’

‘Yes … that’s right.’ She felt her excitement growing.

‘Virology isn’t my field, but can plants be used to tackle viruses?’

‘Well, as yet no one has discovered an antivirus that is derived from a plant, but there’s an awful lot of research going on. The US Government has set up an agency called the Natural Products Branch – I assume you’ve heard of it? They’ve been carrying out a huge screening programme, because there are millions of plant chemicals out there – a whole world of undiscovered treatments. No antivirals yet, but plenty of antimicrobials …’ She purposefully moved the conversation on. ‘But what was this cure the Hadza came up with?’