The Lazarus Strain (23 page)

Steven smiled. It was something his mother used to say to him as a child when he came back from a day in the hills in his native Cumbria. ‘I’ve been for a walk on the beach,’ he explained.

‘Lucky you,’ said the girl. ‘I’ve been stuck here all day,’

Starting to note down the various steps he’d taken during the investigation made him think about what Giles had said the night before about writing up reports. He found himself trying to order events in a logical way rather than in the sequence they’d actually happened. Giles was right; official reports were no place for recording gut instinct – the real reason he’d gone to Nick Cleary’s house after feeling that the man was holding something back after he’d first interviewed him. Reports were written after the event, when hindsight was on tap.

He could see now that some of the tests he had asked for were redundant almost before the results had come back from the lab. The DNA profiles he’d asked for at the Crick to eliminate the possibility of a member of staff having touched the key on the secret safe had failed to reveal a match because there really had been a third man involved in the attack on the institute – the Ali character who seemed to have cropped up so often without being identified. DIS had found his DNA in the flat where the three dead men had been found, adding more fuel to the suspicion that he had killed two of them. They couldn’t identify him from any data file but they had confirmed that his DNA was a match for the profile that had been found on the safe key in the Crick.

‘He certainly gets around,’ murmured Steven. It was a thought that made him wonder why? If al-Qaeda was engaged in a big operation, why should one man crop up so often? True, Ali was probably the leader but it tended to imply that the team he led was small. There again, a small team would be more secure than a large one where the risk of capture or failure increased with the appointing of every additional member, but there were certain things that a small team could not achieve and cultivating a lethal virus and using it to carry out a major biological attack on several cities simultaneously across the UK was one of them.

Ali seemed to have been involved in everything from hunt sabotage to recruiting animal rights activists for the raid on the Crick. Ali had organised the raid. Ali had tortured the information he needed out of Professor Devon. Ali had murdered Devon and facilitated the theft of the infected monkey. Ali had been at the flat where the dead men were discovered – he had almost certainly murdered two of them . . . so how much manpower was Ali left with?

Had Ali been at the mill house too? Steven wondered. Maybe the forensics people had the answer to that and perhaps to how many other people had been present at the mill. He phoned Frank Giles.

‘God, I hope you’re not going to suggest going out for a beer,’ said Giles when he heard Steven’s voice. ‘I’ve had a head full of broken glass all day.’

Steven told him what he wanted to know.

‘Just the four,’ said Giles. ‘The three dead men and the one unidentified male who was also at the flat in town.’

‘Thanks,’ said Steven and put the phone down. He was feeling nervous. There was something not quite right about all this and the questions were coming thick and fast. Why had the operation at the mill been so small when the amount of virus required for a Cambodia 5 virus attack would be much greater? Four people involved and three were dead. The working hypothesis had been that they had other facilities somewhere in the UK - maybe even up and running as Leila had proposed – but they would need skilled technicians and a supply of fertile hens’ eggs – lots of them. The security people who had been monitoring the egg suppliers had reported no unusual orders being placed so where were they getting them from? Steven phoned Colonel Rose at DIS.

After an exchange of pleasantries, Steven told him what was on his mind. ‘There is no alternative to fertile hens’ eggs,’ he said, ‘and they need thousands of them. Can you check again with the suppliers and make absolutely sure that none were left off the list?’

‘Will do,’ said Rose. ‘But I’m pretty sure none has.’

Steven noted the slight rebuke but this was no time to tip-toe around other people’s sensibilities. He added, ‘And maybe they could examine orders from all their usual customers to see if there has been any abnormal increase being ordered. It’s absolutely vital. The eggs are their Achilles heel. We know their intent and we know their targets but they can’t hit them if they don’t have enough virus and for that they need lots of eggs.’

‘I suppose ordering them through an accepted source like a large research institute would be the thing to do if they could manage it,’ said Rose.

‘Cutting out the lab supplier altogether would be even better if they were to come to an arrangement with one of the large poultry concerns,’ said Steven.

‘We’ll check that too,’ said Rose. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.’

Steven didn’t like it when things didn’t make sense and he had just started thinking about another puzzle from the mill – the way the monkey had been opened up. There had been little or no surgical expertise involved and that was probably why the three men had contracted the disease. They had known nothing about aseptic technique or what safety measures to adopt when dealing with dangerous biological material. Someone had instructed them to remove the lungs and windpipe from the animal – and then what? Unskilled workers would be incapable of extracting virus and setting up egg cultures so who had done this? Ali? The ubiquitous Ali? Something wasn’t quite making sense. Al-Qaeda needed a large team but he kept seeing a small one.

Steven was wrestling with this when Leila called.

‘I’m back,’ she said. ‘God, I’m so relieved.’

‘Well done,’ said Steven. ‘Did everything go all right?’

‘Like clockwork. The technicians were standing by and the initial egg cultures had all been prepared: I was most impressed. They have wonderful facilities.’

‘The very best,’ agreed Steven.

‘I went there to impress upon them the need for great care - any bacterial contamination of the virus cultures and there won’t be time to start over again. But there was no need; they are already taking every conceivable precaution.’

‘Good,’ said Steven. ‘I think they’re hypersensitive to bacterial contamination problems. So now you are a free woman?’

‘I suppose I am,’ agreed Leila.

‘Dinner?’

‘That would be lovely.’

The Bella Napoli Italian restaurant in Norwich was quiet on a Sunday evening – there was only one other couple there and they seemed to have fallen out with each other as they sat in silence, examining their place mats. Steven was glad when one of the staff put on some music in an attempt to create atmosphere, although Dean Martin singing
Volare
failed to conjure up images of warm Italian nights when Norfolk rain was battering noisily on all the windows.

‘Sorry,’ said Steven.

Leila reached across the table and put her hand on his. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m just so relieved that I got the strain to the company on time that tonight nothing else matters.’

‘You did incredibly well,’ said Steven.

‘And now I am going to sleep for a week,’ said Leila. ‘How about you? Is Sci-Med still involved in the investigation?’

Steven shook his head. ‘Our interest is officially over. The security services have taken over.’

‘But?’ prompted Leila, noting some reservation in his voice.

‘I just have a bad feeling about the whole thing . . .’

‘You think al-Qaeda will make their attack before the vaccine’s ready?’

Steven shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that . . . It’s hard to explain. There’s something not quite right about the whole thing . . .’

‘Tell me,’ said Leila. ‘Get it off your chest as you English say.’

‘The operation at the mill house where we found an incubator room and egg boxes . . . I can’t help feeling there was something wrong with that,’ said Steven. ‘It smacked of a very small operation when they would need a much bigger one for what they’re planning.’

‘But isn’t that the way terrorists work,’ said Leila.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know too much about such things but I do seem to remember reading that they like to operate in small independent cells rather than large units. I think it’s a security thing. If one member gets caught the damage will be limited to one cell rather than the whole organisation. Each cell operates on . . . oh, I can’t remember what they called it . . .’

‘A need to know basis,’ said Steven.

‘That’s it,’ agreed Leila.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Steven. ‘I suppose the operation at the mill house could have been just one small stage in the process. It was their job to raid the institute and obtain the virus. They would then pass it on to the next cell who would grow it up. They in turn would pass it on to another cell who would distribute it to yet more cells who would make the attacks. Yes, that makes a lot of sense.’

‘But obviously doesn’t provide much comfort!’ said Leila with a smile, noting Steven’s lack of enthusiasm for the idea.

‘True,’ agreed Steven. ‘I hate it when things don’t make sense.’

‘I suppose you’ll be going back to London soon,’ said Leila.

‘It’s not that far,’ smiled Steven. ‘And I’d like to see a lot more of you.’

‘I’d like that too,’ said Leila. ‘But . . .’

‘But what?’

‘I think it only fair to warn you that I am thinking about going back to the States.’

‘Ah,’ sighed Steven. ‘Your career . . .’

‘It’s important to me and with Professor Devon dead the reason for my being here has gone.’

Steven took her hands and said, ‘Then I think my mission in life over the next few weeks will be to persuade you otherwise.’

Leila smiled and raised her glass. ‘Here’s to an interesting few weeks.’

‘How’s your spaghetti?’

‘Terrible.’

‘Mine too. Let’s go home.’

It rained all night and all through the next day. Steven had returned to his hotel and was making yet another attempt at writing up his report when Colonel Rose rang.

‘No joy, I’m afraid. No abnormally large orders have been placed with egg suppliers from their regular customers and no consignments have gone out to private individuals. We’ve checked all the large poultry firms and none of them has been approached directly to make supplies available.’

‘Shit,’ said Steven. ‘What the hell are they using?’

‘You don’t think they could have brought them in from abroad?’ asked Rose.

‘The logistics would be all wrong.’

‘Then I don’t know what to suggest.’

‘The only other alternative is that they managed to get the virus out of the country and are growing it up abroad.’

‘We’ve already alerted all our allies,’ said Rose, ‘as well as being extra vigilant at ports and airports.’

‘Have you had any luck with the people you arrested?’

‘We’ve come up with various links to small people involved in the red herring alert over an attack on Canary Wharf but no one we’ve picked up knows anything at all about a virus operation. There are a few more we’d like to pick up and hold but we’ve been told to cool it. The judiciary are on their high horse over the use of prevention of terrorism legislation.’

‘I saw that coming,’ said Steven. ‘How about the relatives of the three dead men, in Leicester?’

‘Usual story in all three cases. Disaffected Muslim youths feeling the world’s against them get sucked in to fundamentalism in their late teens and begin to see freedom fighting as a better alternative to the dole office as they get older. A couple of weeks at training camp under the guise of a holiday in the ‘old country’ – which they’d never actually seen in their lives before – and they’re ready to do whatever they’re told. Their families were kept in the dark or maybe it just suited them to maintain that.’

‘I suppose.’

‘I hear the vaccine has entered production?’

‘At least something’s going right,’ said Steven. ‘Let’s just hope it’ll be ready in time.’

‘Amen to that.’

Steven put down the phone and felt thoroughly depressed. It was just so easy to imagine large modern lab facilities somewhere abroad swinging into full Cambodia 5 production and being ready before the vaccine thanks to the head start they’d had. His mind however, kept straying back to the mill house. Why bother to set up a small operation up if the intention had always been to set up full scale production abroad? He was staring out of the window at the rain when Leila phoned. ‘What time will you be round tonight?’ she asked.

‘Any time you like.’

‘I’ll be at the lab until six thirty but I should still be home by seven. You can come and talk to me while I make dinner.’

Steven smiled as he switched off the phone. Leila’s plan to sleep for a week had been short-lived. She had taken only one day off before going back to work at the Crick. He was looking forward to seeing her but had to admit - as he saw the rain turn to sleet - that the prospect of an evening in a house heated by only a one bar electric fire was less than appealing let alone romantic. He resolved to do something about it. He would take along the makings of a fire. He would pick up logs and firelighters at one of the local filling stations where he’d seen them stacked by the door the last time he’d been in for petrol. Add a few rolled-up newspapers and some matches and they could have an evening in front of a roaring fire.

The sleet had stopped by the time Steven left to drive over to Leila’s place but the temperature had dropped sharply in the last hour and the roads had started to ice up. The attendant at the filling station told him that the authorities had been warned earlier about the likelihood of this but had been reluctant to send out grit spreaders, fearing that the rain would wash it all away and road grit cost money. Steven’s MGF might be a joy to drive on smooth, dry tarmac but could turn into a nightmare in adverse weather conditions. The fact that it sat so low on the road meant that the screen constantly had to be cleared of muck flung up by other vehicles and its quick response to brake and accelerator meant constant sideways twitching on slippery surfaces.