Besnilo (in English: Rabies), published in 1983, is a thriller-horror novel by the Serbian author Borislav Pekić. The author has, within the framework or those genres, set up many of the ideas he had been working on in his previous published opus. The 1983 novel's plot revolves around the outbreak of an extremely virulent form of rabies, introduced to the London Heathrow Airport by a puppy smuggled from Israel on an Alitalia jet headed for New York City. Due to the mutated nature of the virus, its incubation period has been reduced to hours instead of weeks or months, and its method of transmission now follows more closely that of the flu. Through multiple plot-lines, the story follows subjects as diverse as détente, espionage, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and many others.
Plot summary
Set in the early 1980s, during the height of Cold War, the novel follows a series of parallel storylines. The situation at Heathrow Airport is tense, due to the arrival of the Soviet delegation, led by the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Artamonov. Heathrow VIP lounge is where they and British Foreign Minister Sir Geoffrey Drummond, are to conclude the signing of a new Anglo-Soviet treaty.
Whilst tight security is being deployed by the head of the Aviation Security, Major Lawford, along with his colleagues: Colonels Donovan of the MI6 and Rasimov of the KGB, the Heathrow Medical Centre, headed by Dr. Luke Komarovsky, becomes informed that a nun from a convent near Lagos Nigeria, who was travelling on the Alitalia Boeing 747 en route to New York City via Heathrow, has become ill. Her symptoms are first diagnosed as those of hysteria caused by fear of flying, then to an epileptic seizure. The plane is given a priority landing.
Dr. Komarowsky, who in the past has been a scientist, was working, along with three other doctors, each of whom will make an appearance later in the book: Dr. John Hamilton, Dr. Matthew Laverick, and Dr. Coro Deveroux, in a team headed by the world-renowned microbiologist Dr. Frederick Lieberman. Their work in a laboratory at Wolfenden House is veiled in mystery, but their goal (four of them were called either the nucleus or evangelists of Messiah Lieberman) was the 'holy grail' of microbiology - creation, through genetic reorganisation, of general immunity to bacterial, viral and oncological diseases. Based on genetic modification of human DNA this is intended to become hereditary. However, the most recent batch of experiments, with a vaccine based on recombined Rabies virus, were performed on humans who were exposed to the rabies virus during quarantine in Britain. The human trial ended horribly, accelerating, instead of providing post-exposure immunity of the vaccination, and even though the patients were well outside of the window when any rabies vaccine available on the market would be able to save them from developing symptoms. This event leads to Luke Komarowsky abandoning the field of virology and science altogether, and puts him in his present position of the head of the Heathrow Airport medical unit.