The Malthus Pandemic
by
Terry Morgan
Copyright 2013 Terry Morgan
First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by TJM Books
ISBN 9781311566669
The right of Terry Morgan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
CHAPTER 1
My name is Daniel Capelli and, before you ask, I am not Italian. My father was but my mother wasn't. I am English born and bred. Born in Portsmouth and brought up around West London - Chiswick to be precise. I'm forty five years old and until recently I'd never found it hard to stay single. But details of my private life are sure to crop up later anyway so let's cut out the personal stuff right now. There's a lot to cover and I hate wasting time.
I'm writing this for a hundred different reasons but, before we start, I need to get something off my chest.
In the USA, UK and what is humorously called the European Union it is supposed to be a democracy. Right? Individuals can express their opinion freely, they can influence decisions that affect them and they are listened to because politicians need their votes. Correct? The many layers of bureaucracy, frustrating though they are, exist to ensure the necessary checks and balances so that we all live together in some sort of big, happy community. Organisations have been put in place that provide us, the hard working tax-payer, with protection and support when we need protection and support. Those that get paid out of our taxes do as we want not what they want.
So if we want to improve things and can show that it can be done at no extra cost to the public purse it stands to reason that we can point this out, expect immediate action and won't need to wait for an election to come around. And if we showed them that half of this happy community might be dead within a year, then what would you expect?
If I am not badly mistaken, you would expect all of our highly paid political leaders and that teeming mass of salaried and pensioned pen pushers that is their back office support to drop everything and deal with it. Right?
Well, let's hope so because as I write this I'm so concerned for the future of this community of billions that I'm beginning to think a short spell of dictatorship might be better for a while. As far as I can tell, nothing has been learned from what we found and yet another man-made, lethal virus with another fancy name could, right now, be sat in a freezer next door to where you live.
Are you comfortable knowing that? If so, would you like to see someone else, perhaps a scientist, taking decisions for all those politicians who have shown they are too afraid to listen let alone take any action?
So why do I start this with a rant? Well, the politicians and bureaucrats had their backs turned or were on their tax payer funded summer holidays at the time. But it only took a handful of us to uncover this ingenious but complicated plot - and we weren't even being paid. The hand wringing and buck-passing started when we tried to explain to them what was going on under their noses and asked them to act. We weren't part of their cosy system you see. We were outside their comfort zone and so they couldn't recognise us, in the official sense of the word. Their system ensures they only deal with each other. That way they keep control and cover each other's backs to keep the cosy system ticking over. But many of us want to see real, dynamic leadership and action. We're fed up with this short-term, pandering just to get re-elected. So is it any wonder that some, tired of waiting, decide to take direct action themselves and bypass the system?
But, you know what really hurts? At one stage they thought we were a bunch of fruitcakes. But I forgive them for that last bit. There are lots of fruitcakes out there.
So, yes, I'm Daniel Capelli and now I've got that first rant off my chest, let me tell you what I do and then introduce you to a few other fruitcakes.
In a nutshell I'm a private investigator. That's not what it says in my passport but it's what I sometimes call myself if asked. A business consultant might go a step further and say that I operate in a niche sector. That would be correct.
I like what I do and I'm good at it. If I wasn't any good I wouldn't survive. After all I run a private enterprise not a publicly funded monopoly. I'm a one man band as it's called but my clients are often very big businesses. Most of the companies willing to pay for my services are not easy to please and demand value for their money so if I hadn't been delivering over the last few years then I wouldn't still be around. But I've slowly built a solid reputation for the specialised services I provide. Let's list a few:
Corporate fraud, industrial espionage, theft of intellectual property. That's a start. Satisfying suspicions about how competitors had made money so much more quickly and easily than they did or how the already wealthy have made their sometimes ill-gotten gains are two more. The work does, occasionally, put you at odds with people, so I have to be careful, but I've always believed that life without risk was rather dull, besides being far less lucrative.
I still keep my small pad in West London but I travel around a lot. Airports are a necessity but no country is off limits and so I live mostly out of a suitcase with a few other passports tucked somewhere. Daniel Capelli, you see, also has a few other names he can use from time to time. It makes life so much easier.
But that's enough about me for now.
Sometimes I need my own back office support just like those politicians. But my civil service is another one man band, or at least it started out as one. Colin Asher is a mate of mine. We've known each other for years but Colin has also built his business, Asher & Asher, from straight forward private investigation into something that resembles a privately owned SIS - MI5 or MI6. He's got nothing like the same numbers of staff and operates from a little office off the Edgeware Road, but Colin's intelligence gathering service is good enough for my purposes. Colin is important. You'll hear more about Colin.
I'd never heard of Doctor Larry Brown until this case started. This is the way these things go. Larry is American and he's already seen what I've written above about democracy and leadership and the power of individuals. I knew he'd like it. Larry was in Nigeria working for the American Embassy when it started and it was Larry who came across tests on the Malthus A virus being carried out on a hundred or so innocent victims up in the north of Nigeria. Larry is black, of West African descent and mixed well in Nigeria once he'd slipped on a pair of old jeans. I like Larry's gritty determination and frustration with the system. He's left the Embassy now as the frustration got the better of him. But we're staying in touch.
Then there's Kevin Parker. Larry and Kevin are poles apart in many ways but it was Kevin's Malthus Society website that helped us find the technical brains behind the creation of this lethal, human virus, and the plot to release it. Kevin lectures on social and economic history and is a passionate speaker on anything to do with Thomas Malthus, Paul Eyrlich and others you may or may not have heard of. Like them, he holds some very strong views himself on the need for a reduction in the world population and he's full of statistics to show it makes a lot of sense. I learned a lot from Kevin and am now a fully signed up member of his Malthus Society with a growing appreciation of what it wants our sleeping politicians to do. As Kevin says in his usual way, "When the fuckers wake up it'll be too fucking late."
When I spoke to Kevin last week he told me he'd only just started sleeping properly again. Kevin, you see, had been having nightmares about being arrested on suspicion of involvement in a bioterrorism plot.
There are several others I could mention as well but you'll come across them later. But I need to make a special mention of Jimmy 'The Ferret' Banda from Nairobi. Jimmy, my friend - you were brilliant.
But let me start with the afternoon a few months
ago when Colin finally tracked me down to the airport in Kuala Lumpur and asked me to fly back to London to meet a new client.
I had never heard of the American medical research company, Virex International, let alone its President, Charles Brady. But within twenty four hours of the phone call I had abandoned my private plan to go up to Bangkok for the weekend and flown back to London for two nights and one day. The day was mostly spent waiting for Brady's delayed flight to arrive from Boston. What was left of the day was spent discussing Brady's problem.
By the time Brady arrived, I already knew that Virex International did complicated research on viruses that caused influenza and other human diseases and that they had apparently lost some research material. But Brady turned out to be strong on long, technical words and weak on commercial facts. In exasperation, and as he was already looking at his watch, I finally asked him to be more explicit by defining the importance of his loss in financial terms. At first, Brady appeared embarrassed by my bluntness but eventually put a value of a few million dollars on it. It still wasn't an exact sum but it was big enough to explain why Brady had flown first class to London to meet me and why I had then flown to Bangkok. Bangkok, Brady had suggested, might produce a few leads.
Now, at that point, I would normally have asked for far more detail but time was already running out for Brady's return flight and there was also a neat co-incidence of sorts. There was this other business in Bangkok that I had been planning to deal with just two days before and then postponed. So, armed with a very poor remit, I wished Brady a safe journey back to Boston, told him I'd be in touch and bought myself a ticket to Bangkok for the following night.
So let us now jump twenty four hours.
I woke in my Bangkok hotel room to the faint drone of the air conditioning unit and the pale light of dawn breaking through the window blind. I was tired, had slept deeply and for a few seconds wondered where I was. For someone who travels time zones as much as I do this is a common enough experience but, with my eyes still firmly shut, I tried to put the past few days and hours back into perspective.
I knew I had this vague job to do and had been busy but it had all been fairly plain sailing and normal up until last night.
I had arrived late afternoon and, after a shower and a change of clothing into something more suited to the Bangkok weather, ventured out into the hot, evening air, fought my way along the Sukhumvit Road through the hordes of evening strollers and ended up at a certain place that had become a bit of a habit of mine on recent visits to Bangkok. Up until then, it had been like the start of any other business trip but it then changed into something far more private.
The job I was there to do for Virex was, as I've said, unusually vague but as I lay there still half asleep, there was no harm in going over everything in my mind. I am, despite how I might sometimes appear, a very organized man. I am a professional in my field and don't normally make rash decisions. It is just that I occasionally take calculated risks or allow myself to be carried on a whim. Whims are a bit like instincts. I know they sound unprofessional but they are much the safest sort of risk. Last night's whim - the one that had taken me to that place - had looked innocent enough at the time. Nevertheless, I had still given it some thought before setting off. After all, any misjudgement could mean, at the very least, a ruined reputation and a nail in the coffin for a self-employed businessman.
But 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' has been a motto of mine for many years. I think I inherited that one from my Italian father. The other motto, 'muddle through' comes, I like to think, from my English mother to ensure that if life throws up the unexpected, as it often does, you can still find a way to deal with it and not be tied down by procedure or other matters that get in the way.
'Impatience is a virtue' is a motto I invented myself and I value it highly - in fact, it partly explains my rant at the beginning. So, anyway, a sudden retreat from the whim to stroll along Sukhumvit Road so as not to end up in that usual place looked like surrender and this is not my style. To accept my fate - whatever it might be - with a shrug had seemed a far more manly response at the time.
But, I admit I still felt a little uncertainty when I reached the door of that place. I had stopped and stared at the door as a vision of myself hit my conscience like that of a drowning man.
I am sure a drowning man can be forgiven for the flashbacks of his past pleasures or regrets. Perhaps, also, a drowning man with no hope of rescue can also cram an entire life into the short space of time it takes to hold his breath until he could stand it no longer and finally inhales that last, fateful lungful.
But that vision of myself had been just as quick. It was like a fast forwarded video, a packaged version of my life to date, a quick snap shot of how other people might judge me if they had followed me over the last twenty years or so. And I freely admit that I did not like what I saw in the closing moments of the vision. I saw a professional loner, a sad example of a forty five years old single man with no place he could call home except a rented flat over a Turkish restaurant in Queensway, West London. I saw a battered case containing a few bare essentials for personal hygiene - a toothbrush, a razor - and a few shirts and socks and a crumpled suit and blue tie in case there was a need to impress.
I also saw an empty notepad that I rarely use but still keep in there because, these days, I use mobile phones an awful lot. I'm buying and throwing them all the time for reasons you will slowly understand. I keep a few essential things on a memory stick hung around my neck until I can find a suitable place to plug the laptop in or visit an internet cafe. Often, too, I leave these technical aids behind in a hotel room or somewhere just in case I find myself in a spot of bother. I have learned a thing or two, you see. I regard a mobile phone as the worst piece of technology for storing private data, which is why I prefer new ones empty of all private data and other information. No-one is ever going to steal Daniel Capelli's intellectual property.
Most things I carry in my head and so mine is a surprisingly light case for a man who lives out of it, uses it as his office and as an occasional pillow and travels around the world with it with a couple of spare passports tucked behind its lining.
Now I don't normally get depressed, but what I saw in that vision was, I admit, a bit dull and depressing. But I had always thought that one day I might find the time to sort myself out. It isn't as though I'm short of money although it has taken a lot longer to accumulate than I ever envisaged. After all, this business of mine is not one that promotes itself via a website or glossy brochures. Using third parties, word of mouth and constantly building a reputation works far better.
My ten o'clock appointment with a guy called Amos Gazit, the Research Director of Virex International was proof of that strategy. And the call in KL that had started it had come from Colin Asher and Colin had got the lead from somewhere else. This is how it works.
Anyway, on my bed I opened my eyes again to check the increasing light from the window to guess the time and then returned to the whim that had taken me to that place last night and that awful vision of myself as a lonely man living out of a battered black case. Finally, I had persuaded myself to push the door open. I left the street with all its heat and noise behind and stepped inside.
Now, seven hours later, I could feel a warm hand resting on my shoulder. It then moved down to my waist and around to my bare stomach. Her name is Anna. I was still a professional businessman with a job to do at ten o'clock but I knew then I was also on a very private slippery slope.