Pandemic (26 page)

After having found exactly nothing in the intervening streets that looked as if it shouldn’t be there, the other three men also arrived outside Spiros Aristides’s
house.

‘Is this it?’ Hardin asked.

Lavat nodded and gestured to the police officer standing near by.

‘I’ve had a guard outside ever since we found the body.’

‘OK,’ Hardin said, ‘as I explained before, there’s nothing much I can do until my own people get here, but I will go in now and at least take a look at him. Dr Gravas,
could you give me a hand?’

Hardin walked over to the red fibreglass box positioned close to the wall opposite the house. Biohazard symbols – similar to the familiar radiation warning markers but with their own
distinctive spiky appearance – adorned the lid and sides. He removed his jacket and hung it on a rusty nail protruding from the wall at a convenient height, then snapped open the catches on
the box and flipped up the lid.

It contained all the basic equipment needed to carry out a field investigation: masks, gloves, caps, syringes and needles, microscope slides and covers, glass and plastic sample tubes, sealable
plastic bags in a variety of sizes for organ storage, reagents for specimen testing, scalpels, forceps, saws and other dissection instruments, packs of scalpel blades and stainless steel pins for
holding apart sections of an organ during a post-mortem examination. The box also contained a host of other, non-medical, equipment such as torches, batteries, paper, pens, pencils, erasers, Magic
Markers, adhesive tape of various types, two portable recorders with spare cassettes and batteries, and even a bottle of bleach.

On top of all this was, neatly folded, a lightweight orange Racal biological space suit, which Gravas eyed with interest. Hardin noted his keen attention.

‘It’s made of an airtight fabric called Tyvek,’ he explained, pulling the suit out of the box. ‘It’s not like the ones we use back in Atlanta in the Level Four
lab,’ he added. ‘We call those “blue suits”. They’re made by a company called Chemturion and are connected to a central compressed air system to provide positive
pressure within the suit and also supplies the air we breathe. They’re noisy to work in because of the air constantly rushing in, so trying to talk to other people or use a telephone is
difficult, verging on the impossible, unless you’re prepared to switch off your air supply for a few seconds.

‘This suit isn’t pressurized because there’s just no practical way to do that out in the field. It’s just a neutral-pressure whole-body suit, but the hood –
it’s called a Racal hood – is pressurized to protect the lungs and the eyes, which contain two of the membranes most vulnerable to virus attack.’

As he was speaking, Hardin had unfolded the suit and stepped carefully into it, pulling the orange Tyvek up his legs and then thrusting his arms into the sleeves. He slipped off his shoes and
pulled on rubber boots, then spent several minutes taping the legs of the suit over the boots, to make sure there were no gaps and that the joins were completely air-tight.

‘Doctor, if you please.’ Hardin handed Gravas a small paper sachet.

‘Talcum powder?’ Gravas hazarded, and Hardin nodded.

Gravas opened the sachet and sprinkled the white powder over Hardin’s hands, then handed the American a pair of thin rubber surgical gloves to pull on. Following further directions, Gravas
taped the wrists of the biohazard suit over the gloves, ensuring an air-tight join there too. Then Hardin pulled another sachet of powder out of the box and a second pair of surgical gloves and
repeated the procedure, but this time Gravas taped the gloves
over
the sleeves of the Racal suit.

‘Now the hood and blower,’ Hardin said. He secured a thick webbing belt around his waist and clipped on a heavy square battery box, a large purple filter and a blower.

‘That’s a special filter?’ Gravas asked.

Hardin nodded. ‘Yes, a HEPA – High Efficiency Particle Arrestor. It’s designed to trap biological particles present in the air so that what I breathe in won’t kill me. At
least, that’s what the manufacturer claims.’

Gravas smiled at the weak joke, then helped Hardin settle the Racal hood over his head. The hood comprised a soft and fairly flexible breathing helmet, like a transparent plastic bubble
connected to the blower and filter assembly at his waist. Hardin switched on the blower as Gravas checked the pipe connections for leaks. Satisfied, Gravas positioned the double flaps that hung
down from the hood over Hardin’s chest and shoulders, then zipped up the biohazard suit over these flaps and sealed it at the neck.

‘How long does the battery last?’ Gravas asked.

Hardin’s reply was somewhat muffled by the hood, but clear enough.

‘Eight hours, but I’ll be out long before then. Now, if you could just apply tape over the main zip and anywhere else that you think it needs it.’

‘That’s it.’ Gravas stepped back, satisfied, a couple of minutes later.

‘Thanks,’ Hardin said. ‘Just walk all round me and check if there are any tears or splits anywhere in this suit, please.’

Three minutes later, Hardin picked up his small bag of instruments and approached the street door of the house that belonged to the late Spiros Aristides.

Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Westwood accessed the FAA database again, and grunted in satisfaction. He hadn’t bothered looking before, but this time he checked carefully. The registered owner of
the Learjet 23, registration number N17677, was the American Government. The State Department, in fact.

That single fact meant there was a very good chance that the FAA aircraft registry and the CIA’s central database were both right, despite their apparently contradictory information.

Westwood guessed that the Learjet had been a Company plane, but a ringer – one of two identical aircraft wearing the same tail numbers, thus allowing a measure of deniability if one were
spotted somewhere that it shouldn’t be.

What he wasn’t sure about was where he went from here, but he knew he was going to carry on digging. Thirty years ago, the Company had probably been involved in some form of covert
operation in the Eastern Mediterranean, but that was hardly surprising news. Back in the 1970s the CIA had been involved in covert operations almost everywhere on the surface of the globe. And all
he had here was a Learjet that had crashed off-route, somewhere near Crete: it was hardly another Watergate.

Westwood checked the database again, looking for any clues to indicate what the Company might have been up to in 1972, but he found nothing to suggest that anything of any interest to either
America or the CIA had been happening around Crete in that year.

But still he sat and worried, about two things in particular. Why had both the CAIP and Learjet files been sealed since July 1972, a full two weeks
before
the search for the missing
Learjet had been abandoned? And, even more fundamental, just what the hell was CAIP?

Kandíra, south-west Crete

Tyler Hardin’s gaze took in the flaking white-wash on the walls and the faded light green paint of the door and windows. He wasn’t looking for anything in
particular, but he was keenly aware that he was entering a potential hot zone, where something too small to be seen except through the magnified gaze of a scanning electron microscope was lurking
in wait to kill him. He wouldn’t be able to see it, feel it, smell it or taste it, but that didn’t alter the fact that it was there, and all that stood between him and this unknown
pathogen was a thin layer of Tyvek, a plastic helmet, two pairs of rubber gloves, a battery-driven blower and a HEPA filter.

Inside his suit, Hardin shook his head slightly in self-admonishment, then lifted the latch, pushed open the solid old wooden door and stepped from the sunlight into the sudden cool darkness of
the house.

HMS
Invincible
, Sea of Crete

The communications rating stopped outside the open door to the Wardroom and peered inside hopefully, clutching a buff envelope and a clipboard with a single sheet of paper
on it. He’d already tried Richter’s cabin on Two Deck and found that empty, and the Wardroom was his second, and last, option before requesting a tannoy broadcast.

‘Who is it you want?’ Malcolm Mortensen asked, approaching the rating from the starboard passageway.

‘Oh, Lieutenant Commander Richter, sir,’ the rating replied, turning to the young lieutenant.

Mortensen walked into the Wardroom and peered round. ‘Right, he’s over in the far corner. Give that to me and I’ll take it to him.’

To Mortensen’s surprise, the rating shook his head firmly. ‘Sorry, sir. I have to hand it to him personally and he has to sign for it.’

Mortensen raised his eyebrows slightly, then nodded. ‘OK, wait here.’ He walked across the Wardroom to where Richter sat, an inevitable cup of coffee in front of him, leafing through
a three-month-old copy of
Country Life
.

‘Spook, your presence is required.’

Richter looked up, an expression of mild surprise on his face. ‘By whom, pray?’

‘There’s a lad at the door with a clipboard and a brown envelope. You’re to sign one and he’ll give you the other. I’ll leave it to you to work out which is
which.’

‘Thanks, Malcolm,’ Richter said. He got up and shambled over towards the door. Mortensen watched him cross the Wardroom. Richter really was a scruff, he thought. He was amazed
he’d actually got his half-stripe, but Mortensen supposed, correctly, that Richter’s undoubted flying ability had counted for more in the eyes of the Promotions Board than whether or
not his shirts were properly pressed or his hair combed.

‘You’ve got something for me?’ Richter asked the communications rating, at the entrance to the Wardroom.

‘Yes, sir. Message classified Secret, precedence Immediate and for your eyes only,’ he added, with a hint of a smirk.

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘No, sir, it really is. Just sign here.’

Richter scrawled an approximation of his signature in the space indicated by the rating’s slightly grubby finger, added the date and time, and handed back the clipboard. He took the
envelope and tore it open as the rating walked off along the passageway leading back towards the Communications Centre on Five Deck.

Richter glanced at the red ‘SECRET’ stamps at the top and bottom of the single sheet of paper. He quickly read the message printed in capital letters – all military
communications printers generate their output in capital letters – and then he read it again, carefully.

‘Bugger,’ he said, and walked off towards the starboard-side staircase, heading for Flyco, because that’s where he expected to find Commander (Air).

Kandíra, south-west Crete

The house was exactly as Lavat and Gravas had described it, so Hardin knew precisely where he was going. But he didn’t immediately head for the stairs. First he
looked carefully around the tiny hall, checking to see if he could spot anything out of place, anything that looked as if it shouldn’t be there. Nothing was evident.

Then Hardin walked through to the kitchen. He looked in the stone sink, above which a handful of flies buzzed in erratic circles. The sink contained a single plate bearing a small piece of
cheese, a bowl holding half a dozen black olives and a number of olive pits, and a slightly grubby cup half-f of what looked like strong, almost black, coffee. He carefully pulled open the
single drawer, which held assorted bits of mismatched cutlery, and inspected the two cupboards, which contained plates of different sizes and other pieces of crockery, and about half a dozen pans.
The cooker yielded nothing, but Hardin spent a couple of minutes looking through the contents of the toolbox he found beside the kitchen door.

Another door, at the rear of the kitchen, led to a tiny bathroom, obviously a later addition to the property, which contained a toilet, a small sink and a narrow shower stall, down the inside of
which a constant stream of rusty-brown water trickled from the shower head. It didn’t look as if Spiros Aristides had used this shower very often. On the other hand, Hardin reflected with a
wry smile, if he went diving in the Mediterranean most days he probably wouldn’t need to.

There was a single small cupboard with a mirrored door attached to the wall above the sink. It contained pretty much what one would expect: a bar of soap, a small bottle of shampoo, a twin-blade
razor with half a dozen spare blades, and two cans of shaving foam. There was nothing else of interest.

Back in the main room, Hardin switched on the centre light, glanced around and then walked across to the scarred wooden table. There was an empty Scotch bottle more or less in the middle, and
next to it an empty beer bottle. This, Hardin deduced, probably meant that Spiros had been drinking Scotch while his nephew had drunk the beer, or perhaps vice versa. Assuming, of course, that Nico
had returned here with his uncle after their meeting at Jakob’s, which seemed likely.

All that appeared normal. What struck Hardin as he looked more closely at the table was that the other things on it were not quite what one would expect to find on a piece of furniture used for
eating meals. There were a couple of screwdrivers, a pair of pliers and a hacksaw with a damaged blade, all of which properly belonged in the toolbox.

Hardin bent down and peered very closely at one corner of the table. Small but perfectly clear: definite scratch marks. Fresh scratch marks, as if some work involving the tools scattered across
the table had been done there recently. Hardin stood up and looked around the room, wondering if he was just chasing shadows, if he was inferring something complex from what might have been some
simple domestic chore. Maybe the Greek had trouble opening a jar of olives or something, and had simply used these tools to wrench off the top.

He glanced around again, and was heading for the door into the hall when his subconscious stopped him. He’d seen something out of the corner of his eye, something that didn’t fit. He
turned back and looked down behind the table, at the dusty flag-stoned floor. Something small and red was lying there against the wall, something he hadn’t spotted when he’d first
looked round the room.