Steven thought about what John Macmillan had said about not knowing if what Malenkov was doing was illegal. It seemed an odd thing to say, considering the number of bodies and shed loads of cash swilling around, but it did open up a new avenue of thought.
Assuming that money was at the very heart of it — an easy assumption to make in a world where it was at the heart of practically everything — it was still possible for something legal to be so startlingly good and life-changing that it generated fear and antipathy in others to a degree that they would wish to destroy it. He was thinking of stories of engines being invented that ran on water and cost nothing to run — wonderful, except to those who had billions of dollars tied up in the oil and automotive industry. It was reasonable to assume that, one way or another, the water-fuelled engine would not see the light of day.
It wasn’t difficult, but certainly uncomfortable to think of similar situations. Should someone come up with a simple, universal cure for cancer, it would undoubtedly be a threat to the many millions of dollars tied up in cancer research. Thousands of people across the world depended on the presence of cancer for careers, salaries, car loans, mortgages, school fees etc. It might pose an awful moral dilemma, but it would be hard to jump for joy in the street after seeing your job and your house disappear.
Could Malenkov have come up with something so novel or so brilliant that it was worth so much on the one hand but threatened others so much on the other that it might lead to violence and murder? It seemed unlikely, but continuing along these lines, Malenkov had needed the contributions of the murdered people, Field, the expert in remote drug delivery, Pashley, the expert in micro-control systems, Petrov, the vaccine designer and Lagarde, the WHO strategist in eliminating disease. Malenkov, who wasn’t a medic or a scientist, but a brilliant businessman, had seen an opportunity not obvious to others but requiring the skills of these people.
Steven could sense that he was about to start going around in circles again and put a stop to it. He didn’t want to think any more about Malenkov and what he was up to; he needed to take his mind off it all for what remained of the evening. To that end, he’d seek the assistance of Miles Davis and a couple of drinks. It was as he was pouring the first of these and Miles was launching into, Kind of Blue, that he remembered he had intended to find out a bit more about the Democratic Republic of Congo and its troubles. Wikipedia would give him a start.
Tally had no trouble in getting a good night’s sleep after learning that she would soon be returning home to the life she had put on hold — much sooner than she had ever imagined. She had no regrets about volunteering and believed that she had done the right thing in responding to the request for help in setting up a new crisis management scheme, but on the other hand, she felt she had done her bit and had no wish to repeat the experience. The system was up and running and had proved itself. It would undoubtedly be used again, but please God, not for a while: the people of DRC, and Equateur Province in particular, deserved a break. She would return to doing her very best for sick children in her own country.
She lay for a while thinking about what she personally could take from the experience and concluded not much. Most of what she had seen and heard had been as expected. The volunteers she’d met along the way were thoroughly decent people responding, as she herself had done, to that desire to help others in times of need, a human trait to be much admired but seldom satisfactorily explained, especially when it was pursued against all the odds. She personally had been working with figures and calculations, moving pieces around on a map but she remembered all too well seeing nurses emerging from long shifts on Ebola wards, the tired smiles on their faces as they removed their protective goggles and visors to breathe in fresh air and wipe the sweat off their faces. That was truly something else.
She had not made contact with many of the local population, but, when she had, it had reinforced her view that people are people all over the world. Language could be a barrier, and nowhere more so than in DRC, but so much could be conveyed through looks and smiles. People sensed who meant well and who didn’t. There had been fear and suspicion to overcome, but the patience of the volunteers had triumphed in the end, although... Tally remembered the teacher she had met shortly after arriving, Monique, the charming, educated girl who spoke English well. Tally smiled when she remembered her joking that she had to as she was teaching it to the local children. But then, there had been a strange moment when she had brought up the subject of reluctance among some locals to accept vaccination against Ebola. Rather than agree with her in decrying the influence of superstition and nonsense from witch doctors, Monique appeared to share the people’s concerns and had put an abrupt end to the conversation. It still seemed strange in retrospect. Tally thought she might go seek out Monique again before she left, hoping that she might learn more.
Tally went through the morning reports from the groups in her area, humming to herself when she saw the recovery trend continue.
‘Well, girl,’ she murmured to herself, ‘If you were allowed to pick an Ebola outbreak to volunteer for... you couldn’t possibly have done better.’
Although there had been a five-month delay before an official declaration had been made by the Health Authorities in May 2018, it was beginning to look like it was all going to be over before the end of July. The death toll looked like it would come in at under fifty as opposed to the thousands who had perished back in 2016.
It occurred to Tally that she might suggest a little celebration for the volunteers in her area but wasn’t sure how to go about this. She thought she might contact Marcus Altman, the WHO regional controller who had come to visit her at the outset and ask for his advice.
‘Great idea,’ said Altman, ‘they deserve a bit of relaxation, but maybe you should wait until the official announcement is made...’ He answered Tally’s questioning pause by adding, ‘otherwise certain gentlemen of the press — who seldom venture outside their hotels — will jump on you. You know the sort of thing, Aid workers party while sick people suffer.’
Tally did not recognise that sort of thing — quite the reverse in her own experience at Great Ormond Street where the press had always been so supportive — but she understood the reasoning. It sounded as if Altman had had quite a different experience. She asked a few questions about how she could go about obtaining food and drink for her little get-together — she had been psyched out of calling it a party — and Altman assured her he could take care of that when the time came. He would be in touch when the official announcement was made. Tally thanked him but felt deflated. Why on earth would the press want to paint a bad picture of people who had put their lives on the line to help others?
With decisions made for the routine of the day — only one request to issue for a follow-up to a family recorded as being missing when the team had last visited the village — Tally felt that they would soon be entering the more or less automatic wind-down phase of the area operation and took advantage of the current lull in demand to go through the WHO report on the 2014-16 outbreak.