The Lazarus Strain

FOURTEEN

‘God has turned over a new leaf,’ said Giles on the phone to Steven. ‘He’s been kind to us. The attendant at the filling station remembers three Asian men in a Land Rover. Apparently they’d been in before and she got the impression that they were living or working locally. We’ve investigated and they weren’t employed anywhere within a ten mile radius of the garage but with the aid of the lab and an analysis of the muck that was in the tyres we think we know where they’ve been hanging out.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Steven. ‘Where?’

‘It’s an old mill property between Docking and Heacham called, Jessop’s Mill. We’ve checked with the agents and it’s under a six months lease agreement to a Mr Zahid.’

‘Who was one of the three men in the flat,’ said Steven. ‘Great work. I take it, you haven’t approached the place?’

‘Fat chance,’ said Giles. ‘DIS, MI5, Special Branch and the SAS are all tooling up to go in mob handed as we speak.’

‘Let’s hope they don’t get in each other’s way,’ said Steven.

‘They’ve graciously agreed that the police can come along for the ride,’ said Giles. ‘As long as we don’t interfere with the professionals…’

‘I’d like to join you.’

‘Be here in fifteen for the briefing.’

Steven was the last to arrive and was introduced to the others in the squad briefing room. There were about twenty men, all in civilian clothes apart from the SAS soldiers whose leader came over to Steven and offered his hand. ‘I understand you were regiment?’

‘Some years ago.’

‘You’re still well thought of at Hereford.’

‘Good to know,’ said Steven. ‘I take it you’re carrying out the initial assault on the mill?’

‘That’s our brief… with particular emphasis on the fact that no one and nothing must escape from the building.’

‘And if it should turn out to be heavily defended?’

‘We torch the lot with incendiaries until it and everything in it is a pile of ash.’

Nice clear mandate, thought Steven as the officer walked to the front of the room. There never had been much room for Rupert Brooke in the SAS.

The officer briefed the room on what would be the unfolding chain of events. The SAS already had a recce team in position near the mill: they had been watching the building from before dawn. So far, they had reported no comings or goings. The SAS would carry out the initial assault on the building and make it secure. The biohazard team would then enter and report back. Anyone captured inside the building would be handed over immediately to the security services to be taken away for interrogation. When the situation inside the building was considered safe and stable, Steven and the police teams would be free to carry out inspection and forensic examination of the mill and its contents.

‘Any questions?’

There were none.

Shortly after 11a.m., with everyone in position, the SAS troop went into action. Steven watched as camouflaged figures flitted across and around the building, crouching and running, pressing themselves to the walls as they came close to windows. It was like watching a silent film, as he saw the soldiers communicate by hand signal alone. He had expected them to use stun grenades before breaking in through the front door but he could see from his position in the undergrowth that there had been an impromptu change of plan: they must have concluded that the ground floor was unoccupied. Their leader obviously felt that the element of surprise was still with them and should be exploited. A window at the side of the mill was forced open and two gas-masked soldiers disappeared inside.

Steven held his breath, steeling himself for the sound of an explosion or a burst of automatic fire coming from the upstairs rooms but the silence continued until the minutes started to pass like hours. It seemed such an anticlimax when the front door was opened by the two soldiers who had climbed inside. They were stripping off their masks and loosening their protective gear.

The biohazard team went inside after a brief discussion with the soldiers’ leader and Steven walked over to have a word with him.

‘Nobody home,’ said the soldier. ‘Is that good or bad?’

‘Could be either,’ said Steven. ‘Did it look like an orderly withdrawal or a drop-everything-and-run job?’

‘I’d guess at the former,’ said the soldier. ‘Nothing Mary Celeste about it, no personal possessions lying about, in fact, not much of anything lying around.’

‘Any room that looked like it was used as a lab?

‘There’s a tiled room downstairs in the basement with a large fridge in it and a few bits of glassware. There’s a little room off it which I thought was a sauna at first but maybe not. It was certainly warm but not that warm if you know what I mean and there were some empty boxes in it.’

‘What kind of empty boxes?’ asked Steven.

‘The sort you get eggs in. You know, papier mache trays.’

‘Their incubator room,’ said Steven.

The soldier gave Steven a blank look.

‘Where they were growing the virus. It’s grown in fertile hens’ eggs kept at body temperature.’

The biohazard team didn’t take long to declare the building free from any overt biological or chemical danger and Steven and Giles took a look at the ‘lab’ for themselves when the forensic team had finished their work.

‘The whole place was probably cleared out when the three of them fell sick,’ said Giles, running his fingers along a smooth, plastic-topped table. ‘So it’s back to square one.’

Steven took a look inside the incubator room where the egg boxes had been found. He counted the number of tray spaces and did a rough calculation in his head. ‘Not a big operation,’ he said. ‘They’ll need to culture a lot more virus if they’re going for a big hit.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said one of the forensic team who’d been going through the upstairs rooms and had just appeared in the doorway. ‘We found this in one of the drawers.’

Giles took what looked like a folded map from the man and opened it out on the table. Steven thought it was going to be a road map of the surrounding area but it turned out to be something quite different. It was a map of the UK. On it, six major cities including London and Edinburgh had been circled in red.

‘Even my cat, Tiddles, could work this one out,’ murmured Giles.

‘They are going for the big one,’ said Steven, feeling a sense of desolation come over him. Although the spectre of nuclear and biological weapons had been around for long enough, many people including himself had been clinging to the hope that they wouldn’t be used in their lifetime and hopefully never — in the way that tomorrow always seems very near but never actually comes. Now the red circles on the map were painting pictures of people falling down in the streets of major cities, struggling for breath as bloody mucous choked their airways and fever sent them into delirium. Schools and offices would close, transport would grind to a halt, electricity and water supplies would fail, food would run out and the law of the jungle would rule the streets.

‘You okay?’ asked Giles as they climbed the stairs.

‘Fine,’ said Steven.

As they reached the front door, Steven stopped and said, ‘I wonder if they took their rubbish with them…’

‘We can check,’ said Giles. ‘If they were any good, they would have…’

They walked round the sides and back of the building looking for rubbish bins and found three plastic wheelie bins lined up beside the old mill wheel enclosure. One contained mouldy grass clippings, probably left over from the summer and probably by a previous tenant thought Steven as the sour smell of partially fermented grass assaulted his nostrils: the other two bins were empty.

‘Guess they were smart enough to take it with them,’ said Giles.

‘Guess God stopped being kind,’ said Steven.

‘What were you looking for anyway?’

‘I don’t know…’ said Steven, giving an uneasy shrug. ‘Eggshells… syringes… dead chick embryos… general lab detritus…’ He spread his hands and looked about him. ‘A dead monkey even…’

‘You know, getting rid of a large monkey would be almost as difficult as getting rid of a human body,’ said Giles after a moment’s thought. ‘Not easy at the best of times but I can’t honestly see them carting it round the country with them. Maybe I should put some of the guys on to searching the grounds for shallow graves?’

‘Or the site of a recent bonfire,’ said Steven. ‘They may have burned it but the bones should still be around.’

When Giles returned from setting up the search he found Steven taking another look at the wheelie bins.

‘Dry,’ he said. ‘They didn’t use these bins at all.’

‘Maybe they put the waste in plastic bags?’ said Giles.

‘Maybe,’ agreed Steven. ‘But they didn’t store the bags in the bins either. The dirt on the bottom hasn’t been disturbed for many months. You could write your name in it.’

‘Strikes me this Ali is a real pro,’ said Giles. ‘He leaves nothing to chance.’

Steven nodded thoughtfully. Any reply was cut short by a shout from one of the policemen searching the grounds. Steven and Giles headed off in that direction.

‘Ground’s been disturbed here,’ said the Constable, pointing to an area of bare earth that seemed loosely packed compared to the surrounding area.

‘Well done,’ said Giles. He turned to Steven and asked, ‘What do you think: forensics or biohazard?’

‘Definitely biohazard,’ said Steven. ‘We can’t take chances. The virus will die quickly when it doesn’t have living cells to grow inside but we don’t know how long the monkey’s been dead — if it’s the monkey. The virus will certainly survive for a few days after death. Maybe longer if the temperature and the conditions are right.’

Steven joined the biohazard team for the disinterment. A plastic tent was erected over the site and a body bag was laid out nearby. Disinfectant spray operators stood by upwind of the site. Inside the tent, Steven watched as two men, using trowels, started to remove the loose earth gingerly and pile it up on one side. They had excavated the site to a depth of some eighteen inches when one of them held up his hand and pointed to something in the trench. Steven took a closer look and saw that it was a hairy hand. Chloe, the missing monkey.

The body of the animal had been buried face down in the grave. It seemed complete and fairly well preserved, thought Steven. The cold temperatures had delayed decomposition but this also meant that there was a danger that the virus might still be alive in its tissues. Steven asked the team to turn the animal over slowly, causing a general recoiling among the team when it became apparent that the animal’s torso had been sliced open from neck to crotch.

Steven knelt down by the grave to take a closer look. He could see that the trachea and lungs had been removed from the animal and not by someone boasting any great medical skills. The surgery looked as if it had been carried out using a Swiss Army knife. He got to his feet and signalled that the body could be bagged.

Outside the tent, Steven was first in line to be decontaminated by the men operating the disinfectant sprays. Finally he removed his visor and went over to join Giles.

‘The right monkey this time?’ asked Giles.

‘The right monkey,’ confirmed Steven. ‘They cut the lungs and trachea from it. That’s where they would get the initial virus to start off the egg cultures with.’

‘At least the bloody thing’s not running round the country,’ said Giles.

Steven reported back to Macmillan and was told in turn that a meeting had been arranged for him with Auroragen next day at 2p.m. ‘Do your best to smooth things over with them. From what you’ve said, it’s beginning to look more and more that vaccine is going to be our only chance,’ said Macmillan.

‘The trouble is,’ said Steven, ‘I can’t tell Auroragen just why the new vaccine has become so important. I have to stick to the WHO story that a mutated avian strain of flu is likely to appear in the near future.’

‘You’re right,’ said Macmillan. ‘It lacks impact but any suggestion of an imminent al-Qaeda strike using Cambodia 5 leaking out into the public domain and we’ll have mass panic on our hands. Do your best.’

Steven drove up to Liverpool through rain and wind. The weather matched his dark mood as did the Gregorian chant he had playing on the car’s CD player. He sought escapism in a sound that had come down through the centuries in celebration of a belief which, although he did not share, represented some kind of calming continuum in an ever changing landscape of doubt. He found it hard to analyse what he was feeling. There was fear and tension and frustration but there was something else as well and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it and that was adding annoyance to the mix.

He clicked off the CD as he came to the gates of the Auroragen building and wound down the window to show his ID to the white-haired security man who came towards him. The man limped as though he had an arthritic hip and resented being obliged to move it.

‘Visitors car park on the left,’ he snapped. ‘Stay between the white lines. If you want to stay longer than two hours, you’ll need a pass.’

Steven parked the MG between the white lines and walked towards the building pausing briefly at the base of a large abstract sculpture to read the plaque below. He felt sure that it would have a pretentious title and was proved right when he read, ‘The Quality of Mercy’.

‘Shit,’ he murmured. ‘And here was me thinking it was a pile of scrap metal… Sorry, Eduardo.’

He entered the building through smoked glass doors which led to a modern reception area with tiled floors and mosaics of virus particles along the walls. Three young women in corporate navy blue uniform were seated behind the desk, apparently mesmerised by computer screens. He showed his ID to the one who finally looked up and affected an air stewardess smile; he told her that he was expected.

The woman — Melissa from her lapel badge — lifted a blue phone and said into it after a moment’s wait, ‘Dr Dunbar is here.’

‘If you’d like to come with me,’ smiled Melissa, coming out from behind the desk and leading the way to a bank of three lifts. She pressed the button and spoke about the weather while they waited. She concluded with, ‘Still, we’re into February now; it’ll soon be spring.’

Steven smiled and hoped it didn’t look as contrived as it felt. Being ‘into February’ meant that they were now counting down the days to the deadline for Leila’s vaccine strain to be ready.

Steven was shown into a boardroom where he was introduced in turn to five senior executives of the company. The man doing the introductions was a well-preserved man in his sixties who said curtly that he was, ‘John Lamont, in charge of UK operations’.

‘Well, Dr Dunbar, how can we help?’

Steven found it difficult to gauge the mood of those present because of the smiling corporate face being presented. He thought due deference might be the way ahead. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it would be ridiculous of me to lecture you on the seriousness of our position should we have to face an outbreak of the type of flu that WHO has issued a warning about recently: so I won’t. I am simply here to try and allay some of the fears you have expressed about the new seed strain being prepared and advocated for inclusion in this year’s vaccine schedule. I understand that you are having second thoughts about it and have asked for certain safety conditions to be complied with?’

‘Dr Dunbar,’ said Lamont, pausing to turn a chunky gold pen end over end a few times on the table, ‘when we agreed to government requests that certain procedures be… streamlined, for want of a better word, we did not know that the institute providing the new seed strain would be the Crick. In view of recent events and publicity surrounding that particular establishment, it has to be said that we at Auroragen have become, understandably I think you will agree, nervous. In these circumstances it would be difficult for us to agree to anything other than the full letter of the law being applied to the inclusion of any seed strain for the vaccine.’

‘You mean, you’ll insist on all normal inspections and tests being carried out?’

‘I do.’

‘But the time factor involved in carrying out these tests would automatically preclude the Crick strain from being used.’

‘I fear it would,’ agreed Lamont. ‘Frankly, we are of a mind to use the three strains currently recommended by WHO.’

‘And ignore the threat of an avian strain outbreak?’

‘We are a commercial organisation, Doctor. We are not in the business of taking risks we do not have to take, however laudable the cause. We lost a great deal of money last year through failing to meet inspection and regulation conditions set down by government bodies, we are not about to do the same thing again through failing to implement such standards ourselves.’

Ah, thought Steven, this is what it’s all about, money, and the company was clearly in the driving seat. ‘Frankly, I find that quite understandable,’ he said pleasantly. ‘You really can’t afford to compromise… But supposing government were to perceive the risk of an epidemic as being great enough for them to offer you certain assurances should you agree to the inclusion of the new seed strain…’

‘Then that might be a different matter,’ said Lamont.

‘We would of course, have to know exactly what these assurances were,’ added the woman who had been introduced earlier as Lilian Morrison, the company’s financial controller.

‘Of course,’ said Steven.

‘And I think that these assurances might well have to extend to… guarantees,’ added Lamont.

Well, here we are, thought Steven. That wasn’t too difficult. Auroragen wanted government to shoulder all responsibility for including an untested seed strain in their vaccine and to guarantee that they wouldn’t lose money over it. ‘And if you were to receive such assurances and guarantees…?’

‘We would be happy to comply with government wishes.’

‘Then I feel optimistic,’ said Steven.

The meeting broke up with Steven being asked if he would like to see round the production facilities, an invitation which he readily accepted. The man detailed to do the honours was one of those who had been at the meeting, David Nettles, head of quality control. They had coffee first in his office.

‘Last year must have been a bit of a nightmare for you,’ said Steven.

‘I’ll say,’ said Nettles.

‘What exactly happened?’

‘We’re still not sure to be honest. It seemed to start off as a simple case of bacterial contamination — which happens from time to time in all virus labs — and we responded accordingly and expected that to be an end to the matter and then it broke out again. We carried out a second massive clean-up operation, which we felt sure would see an end to the problem, although we didn’t manage to identify the source of the contamination and blow me, if it didn’t break out again. The regulations of course prevent us treating vaccine to get rid of any contaminating bacteria — even harmless ones — so our license was withdrawn and we had to destroy the lot. Forty-eight million doses down the tubes and no flu vaccine for half the USA.’

‘Did you ever identify the source of the contamination?’

Nettles shook his head.

‘Was it caused by the same organism throughout?’

‘It was. A harmless everyday strain of Serratia, which you find all over the place but which kept getting into our virus cultures whatever we did to stop it. It ended up costing us millions.’

‘Strange,’ said Steven. ‘No sign of it since?’

‘No, touch wood,’ replied Nettles. ‘We stripped out and refitted the entire culture suite. Everything that could be changed was changed — including the staff. We replaced all the lab equipment and implemented strict new aseptic measures whereby staff wear coverall suits and visors all the time — and there’s been no sign of a problem since.’

Steven was shown round the facilities and was greatly impressed by what he saw. He was left with no doubt in his mind that Auroragen was a thoroughly professional organisation being run by an excellent management team. He drove back to Norfolk and phoned in his report to Macmillan.

‘HMG won’t like this,’ said Macmillan, ‘but I don’t see that they have any option. They’ll just have to agree to the conditions.’

‘I don’t think they can expect the company to carry the risk,’ said Steven.

‘It was the bad publicity surrounding the Crick that started the FDA and MHPRA getting cold feet too,’ confided Macmillan. Nigel Lees tells me that government is going to have to give them some assurances too if they want them to continue playing ball. No one wants to carry the can.’

‘Everyone needs someone to blame,’ murmured Steven, thinking of falling rocks.

‘Be that as it may,’ said Macmillan, ‘I think you can tell Dr Martin — or is it, Leila? — that she will not be experiencing any more obstruction from either government or commercial sources.’

‘I’ll relay the message,’ said Steven, noting again that there wasn’t much that Macmillan missed.

‘Leila, it’s Steven. How are things?’

‘I’ve just seen the result of the latest titration. By my calculations we’re going to make the deadline with a day to spare.’

‘Great. Have you told the Department of Health?’

‘I spoke with Mr Lees this morning. He told me that he’s sorted out the problems with the regulatory bodies. He’s now going to make transport arrangements to move the virus from the institute to the companies for production. He’ll make sure they’re ready to receive it and get it growing up as quickly as possible. He wants them to have teams of technicians standing by to do the egg inoculations. Round the clock if necessary. Dubois in Paris have already been in touch to say they’re all ready to go but I haven’t heard anything from Auroragen.’

‘That problem has been resolved too,’ said Steven. ‘They’re going to drop the conditions you were worried about. There will be no more demands for tests and inspections and form filling. I spoke to them yesterday: the government will reach agreement with them today.’

‘Thank you so much, Steven, you’ve been such a help.’

‘Things are finally starting to look good.’

‘I am so looking forward to this being all over,’ sighed Leila. ‘I feel absolutely exhausted.’

‘You must be,’ sympathised Steven. ‘You’ve done so well.’

‘Have the police made any progress?’

‘They found the place the three men were using as a lab,’ said Steven. ‘It was an old mill house.’

‘So they were growing the virus?’ exclaimed Leila.

‘Yes, but the place had been cleared out by the time we got there.’

‘So it might still be too late for the vaccine to be of any use?’ said Leila, sounding alarmed.

‘Maybe not. It looked like a pretty small scale operation at the mill and presumably the three men dying must have set their plans back. I’m hoping it will take time for al-Qaeda to set up a new lab.’

‘Maybe they already had,’ said Leila.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘If it was only a small scale operation at the mill, they must have already been planning a bigger one somewhere else?’

Steven found that he couldn’t argue with Leila’s logic… but he seriously wished he could.