Bite (22 page)

Next morning, after the water was delivered, we heard keys and conversation and many heavy boots. There were several voices, low in subservience. Above them was a slow and emphatic timbre which I imagined came from a well-fed frame. The footsteps approached our door. We could hear deep rasping breath. Anxiety welled up in me as I waited for the door to open, but instead the boots went past and ascended. A shadow fell on us, and we looked up to see an enormous man in fatigues staring down at us from the grille which acted as the roof of our cage. He squatted down, to observe us more closely. The bars groaned. We could not see his face, just a fleshy oval in the half light.

‘Welcome, western friends, to the capital city of the KPLA,' the voice said, enunciating every word carefully. ‘Or at least, this is where we shall build it.'

Nobody spoke. We could smell the greasy sweat of the man above us, but our fear was a stronger aroma.

‘Give me your names and nationalities, who you work for and how long you have been here in our country.'

Sister Margaret began, declaiming her twelve years service to the Catholic Church with quiet pride and a steady voice. I went next, then Amy and finally Jarman. We were much less assured.

‘I want you to consider yourselves guests of the KPLA. I want to treat you nicely, so that you can tell the world how very civilized we are.' He pronounced it slowly: sea-veal-iced. ‘The only problem is that we are a little crowded. My aim is to give you some space and comfort, some better food and a little exercise for your stay.'

There were some murmurs of approval from the cell. Sister Margaret spoke up. ‘Monsieur, we need some medicine for one of us. He has an infection with his foot.'

‘I will see to it. Antibiotic, yes?'

‘Yes, please.' Sister Margaret found it hard to hide her surprise.

‘And the food would not earn a Michelin star, I think?' He roared with laughter and, nervously, we joined in.

‘I shall see what I can do about that, but you must indulge me. It will take a little time. Later I hope to bring a lake tree city.'

We looked at each other mystified.

‘Electricity,' he mused, ‘so we have light to read by, and hot water, air conditioning, refrigeration. What do you think?'

‘Sounds good to me,' said Amy.

‘It will be good,' he said with an emphatic nod, spattering us with droplets of sweat. As soon as he stepped away, I ran my sleeve across my eyes. It had not dared do it before.

‘May we ask your name?' Sister Margaret called.

There was a pause. ‘I think you know who I am, Sister.'

‘Brigadier Crocodile?'

He laughed and walked away.

(Erica's Diary 1992)

Max had no idea whether Grzalawicz would report him to the police, but he would certainly tell Waterson, who would discover the broken attaché case in no time. No doubt about it, that would be the end of bail. Speed was now essential. Going back to Der Ridder might be tough, but he had no choice if he wanted to find out what Joseph Gimbel could discover about Erica.

An hour before the rendezvous Max and Leo staked out the bar from bushes near the top of the highway embankment. Der Ridder sat at a T-junction opposite the slip road which ran steeply down off the highway, and Max could see anyone approaching it from the main road left or right, or from the highway behind.

Henk's birdwatching binoculars gave a good view into the brightly lit bar. The barmaid was talking to a single customer, which Max and Leo agreed looked like the short beefy guy from the trio of thugs two nights ago. Just after 7.30 p.m. he left. There was no-one there until 7.55 p.m. when a stooped figure with a slow gait made his way along from the left. It was Joseph Gimbel.

Once Gimbel was inside they crept down the slope and crossed the road. Leo checked out the parking area behind, and the various outbuildings while Max went into the bar. Joseph was in his usual place, a newspaper open in front of him, a Blue Curaçao in his hand. He looked up as they walked over.

‘Hi, Joseph,' Max said, and sat down. Leo checked the toilets and came back to sit where he could keep an eye on the main door.

‘Hey. Where's de nice old jukebox gone?' Leo pointed to a gap on the wall where the big Wurlitzer had stood two nights ago.

‘It's being repaired,' said the barmaid, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. ‘Nothing in this places works any more.' She drew two big beers and brought them over. ‘This is on the house.'

Max shrugged and thanked her before turning back to Joseph. ‘So. What do you know?'

‘He's got the woman,' he said. ‘Erica Stroud-Jones she's called, right?'

Max gasped. The bar was silent but for the dull rumble of big trucks on the flyover. ‘Where?'

‘That's gonna take me a while longer to find out. But it is Anvil. He's not working alone, there's some other guy.'

‘Is it Henry Waterson?'

‘I don't know his name.'

‘What's he look like?'

‘No idea. They say that Anvil's gone to ground with this guy, that's all. He hasn't been around for a while. Something big's cooking.'

Max grasped him by the shoulders. ‘Joseph. I have to get that name. Okay?'

‘Here's some photographs you might find useful. Take a look while I go for a leak.' Joseph got up and went into the toilet. Max called Leo over and told him the news, then they started to sort through the pictures.

It took a couple of minutes to flick through. They looked like tourist shots of Amsterdam, and there was no-one Max recognised. ‘This is bullshit, Leo. These pictures mean nothing.' Max looked up and saw they were entirely alone.

‘Where'd the barmaid go?'

‘I don't know. But she took her handbag,' Leo said.

There was a painful grinding of truck gears from the highway. Max looked at Leo and they suddenly understood clearly what was going on. ‘It's a set-up,' Max said. ‘I can feel it.'

Leo got out the Walther and looked through the door into the toilets. No sign of Joseph. Max was already heading for the main door before his brain recognised the sound. A roaring engine, revving to the maximum, rattled the windows and made the glasses hum on the tables. ‘Leo, get the fuck out. NOW!'

Max grabbed his companion and they ran. In a last glimpse through the bar window Max could see the looming tanker, driverless, thundering down the sliproad, the oil company logo emblazoned above the huge chrome radiator. They had made a few yards out of the door when it ploughed into the building with a roaring and grinding of metal. Max kept on running through the deafening sound and the rain of brickwork and timber, he kept on running when the flames erupted like an orange sea behind him and he kept on running when his clothes began to burn. He kept on running when he could no longer feel Leo at his side because he didn't know what else he could do.

When there was no more running in him he threw himself on the ground, rolling on the damp grass and smearing mud over his scorched head. He lay on his back and looked up at the sky, panting. Mushrooming above him was a pall of black smoke. He clambered to his knees. Der Ridder was gone, swept away by an ocean of flames that ran along the road in both directions for a hundred yards, engulfing a dozen parked vehicles. One car had veered off the road and was burning brightly. Max uttered a little prayer for whoever was in there, and wondered at the cruel luck that had brought them to this infernal end while he had survived.

Where the bar once stood was a metal truck skeleton, wreathed in flames. Traffic had stopped on the highway and figures were beginning to descend the embankment. There was no sign of Leo, but through the billowing, scorched smoke Max thought he could see a tall man with a dog on a chain standing on the other side of the road. When the smoke next cleared he was gone.

It was a hot, humid evening when Professor Jürgen Friederikson stepped out into his garden on the outskirts of Utrecht. He was unseasonably dressed in a thick sweater over a heavy track suit, a woollen hat, leather gloves and long boots. From the vantage point of a small dyke that separated his house from the canal he watched an orange sun sliding behind a horizon that was as flat as a ruler. In an hour it would be dark. There was not a breath of wind, not a ripple on the water.

The professor took a deep breath. He was stifling in the thick clothes. He had not showered for twenty-four hours and when he lifted his arm, a waft of stale sweat assaulted his nostrils. Perfect.

The professor walked back to the house and returned with a book, a torch and three bulky objects. These he laid under a large apple tree. First was a large sheet of orange plastic which he spread out and carefully brushed. On that he unrolled a thick down-filled sleeping bag and a white mosquito net. He found the brass ring at the centre of the net and tied it to a branch of the tree. Once the hem was pulled out and four stones laid on it, he had created a pyramidal space around the sleeping bag, with a yard wide border of orange plastic beyond. The professor eased himself down to the ground and wriggled under the net. He took off his boots, rolled up his right trouser leg and undid the leather straps from his artificial limb. The dull metal limb he stowed next to him as he climbed into the sleeping bag and zipped it up to waist level. The hat, gloves and pullover he removed. The final touch in this piece of practical science was a pair of earplugs. Without them, the high-pitched whine of the insect siege he was about to provoke would keep him awake.

Somewhere out there was a mosquito species capable of carrying
Plasmodium five
. Friederikson knew it was far easier to lure it to him than to go out looking for it. Mosquitoes home in on a cocktail of human sweat. The more sweat, the brighter the target. The recent heat wave had swelled mosquito numbers enormously, and come darkness, tens of thousands of hungry females would all be gunning for him. The biggest, hottest, sweatiest target in the area. They would hit the net, trying to reach him. Desperate for blood to allow their eggs to hatch, they would try again and again to find a way through.

Then they would die. Two hours ago Friederikson had soaked the net in a rapid-acting insecticide. Harmless to humans, but one touch was fatal to insects. In this experiment there were to be no survivors. What he wanted were the dead bodies. All of them. What was important was to keep the mosquitoes on the net, trying to get through at him until the toxin took effect, so their bodies would fall on the plastic sheet. In the morning he would brush up the mosquito bodies and take them to the lab. Over the next few days he would grind them up and use the ELISA monoclonal antibody test. In one of those bodies, maybe more, he hoped to find malarial parasites.

Friederikson imagined mosquitoes like night-flying helicopter gunships, using thermal imaging to find their targets. His experience in African hospital wards showed patients with malarial fevers got more mosquito bites than others, a more than average chance for the parasite to jump back into a mosquito and complete its life cycle. For years he had wondered: is it just a happy coincidence for the parasite to produce a fever, or an intention?

Now he thought not. Scientists have shown that malaria is not a mere passenger in the mosquito. It is a daredevil pilot, changing mosquito behaviour to its advantage. At first that sounded far fetched, until he considered the rabies virus, a disease which turns a quiet dog into a slavering, biting monster. Each bite increases the chance of passing on the virus in the dog's saliva, increases its chance of survival.

It is the same with the mosquito. Until the malaria parasite is ready to be passed on it inhibits the mosquito from feeding. Once ready it makes its host more aggressive, biting repeatedly, traveling further and faster. How it does it is a mystery. Why is easy. With every fresh bite, it increases the chance of being passed on to a human, to survive and breed.