The Secret

TWENTY

Jean Roberts looked surprised when she found Steven sitting in her office at ten minutes to nine on Monday morning. ‘Don’t tell me, you had a fight with Tally and you’ve been here all night?’

‘No. Well not yet, anyway,’ Steven replied. ‘I’d like you to get some information for me as soon as you can. I need to know what the City College authorities have decided about Tom North’s group. Is it still functioning as a research group or has it been broken up? I’m particularly interested in Dr Dan Hausman and a PhD student named Liam Kelly. I need you to do it as discreetly as possible: I don’t want to advertise our interest, particularly not to Hausman.’

Jean looked up from the pad she’d been noting things down on. ‘I’ll make an approach through their administration. I’ll pretend I’m from one of the grant-funding bodies making a routine check.’

‘Perfect,’ said Steven. ‘I also need to make contact with Liam Kelly but I don’t want to turn up at the lab. An address for him would be good.’

‘What year is he?’ asked Jean.

‘First year PhD, just about to start his second.’

‘If I were a first year PhD student who’d just lost my supervisor, I think I would be spending a lot of time in the library boning up on things that might make me attractive to other potential supervisors.’

‘Jean, you’re a genius.’

Jean demurred with a modest little smile. ‘I’ll still get you the information. Coffee?’

Steven got to City College library just before noon. He showed his Sci-Med ID to the librarian and told her he needed to check some things in an early edition of the Journal of General Virology which his usual library didn’t have. The implication of bibliographic superiority seemed to please the woman, who directed him across the room with the end of her pen.

Steven extracted one of the heavy, bound volumes, placed it on a nearby table and opened it, taking care to give the impression he was looking for a specific article before sitting down and taking out a notebook from his briefcase.

When people in the vicinity stopped taking a casual interest in the newcomer Steven started taking an interest in them but found no familiar faces among the students and staff he could see from where he was sitting. Periodically he would get up and return to the sliding bookshelf area where he would remove a volume and pretend to search through the pages while really looking through the gaps on the shelves at other areas of the library. After his second such sortie, he spotted Liam Kelly sitting at a study carrel with his back to him.

Still carrying one of the volumes, Steven walked over and tapped Liam on the shoulder, saying in a low voice, ‘I thought it was you. How are you doing?’

Liam turned and looked up. ‘Oh, hi. I’m okay. What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you, actually,’ Steven confessed. ‘Do you think we could have a word?’

Liam looked vaguely uncertain. ‘Maybe this isn’t the best place for a conversation?’

The look being given to them by a serious-looking young girl in the neighbouring carrel added weight to this assertion. Steven offered up an apologetic smile and said to Liam, ‘C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch.’

Once out into the noise of the traffic, he asked if Liam knew a good pub in the area.

‘The Talisman’s okay.’

‘Lead on.’

It was early; they had no trouble finding a corner table where sunlight played on a painting up on the wall of Nelson’s ship at Trafalgar. Steven sipped a Czech lager and asked, ‘Any word about your future?’

Liam wiped the Guinness froth from his top lip and replied, ‘It’s all a bit of a mess at the moment. I was really into the project I had with Tom so I’m reluctant to stray too far from it but I can see the point of other supervisors who’d want me to work on something they’re interested in. Apart from that, funding’s going to be a problem. I’ve used up a whole year of my three year grant and there’s no way of getting that back if I were to start out on something new.’

Steven nodded. ‘How about the others in the group?’

‘At the moment, we’ve been told to carry on as normal but that's just to give the suits time to decide what they’re going to do about us. Mind you, I heard one of them say to Dan Hausman that his position had been "stabilised" whatever that meant.’

I’ll bet it has, thought Steven. The intelligence services would have seen to that.

‘So what is it you wanted to see me about?’ asked Liam.

Steven paused to let the waitress put down the plates she’d arrived with. She smiled. ‘Can I get any sauces for you?’

Steven shook his head. Liam asked for ketchup.

‘Do you remember telling me where Dan had sent the blood samples I was interested in when he had a… lapse of memory?’

‘Sure.’

‘You remembered the name of the person he’d sent them to, Dr Neville Henson.’

‘That’s right. I saw the label.’

‘Did you see the address?’

Liam smiled and put down his fork. He’d been eating American style with fork only. ‘So that’s what this is about. Sure I did. It was Porton Down.’

‘I take it you know what that place is all about?’

Liam smiled. ‘It’s our defence establishment… keeps us all safe.’

‘Didn’t it strike you as odd?’

‘Lots of things struck me as odd in Tom’s lab. That was just one more.’

This was music to Steven’s ears. ‘Good. I want to hear about all of them, starting with what you thought when you saw the Porton address.’

Liam sighed before saying, ‘I suppose I thought the blood samples must contain something dangerous if they were being referred to a place like Porton.’

‘Did you have any other reason to think that?’

Liam moved his head from side to side to indicate uncertainty. ‘I’ve thought for some time that something strange has been going on in the lab, ever since Dan arrived.’

‘Like what?’

‘Dan didn’t behave like your usual new post-doc — I mean a bit deferential and that. It was as if he was Tom’s equal, if you know what I mean. The pair of them definitely had something going on.’

‘And you’ve no idea what?’

Liam shook his head. ‘No, but I got the impression that Dan had discovered something important and the pair of them were keeping it a secret from the rest of us. Normally, we would have had a group meeting about who was doing what and we’d all have our say but that didn’t happen. Outsiders used to come to the lab, though guys in suits, and talk to Tom and Dan in private. The rest of us used to josh Dan about it but he never said what it was all about.’

‘Dan is CIA,’ said Steven, judging the moment to be right.

Liam paused while taking a mouthful, leaving his fork in mid-air. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he whispered. ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘He came to you via a fake pharmaceutical company used by our American cousins after having worked at Fort Detrick — the American Porton.’

Liam lost interest in his food and sat shaking his head.

The waitress appeared. ‘Is everything all right for you?’ she inquired.

Steven gave her a quick smile. ‘Very nice.’

Liam looked up at Steven. ‘And now the million dollar question: why are you telling me this?’

‘I need your help. I want to know what’s been going on in the North lab and, if you’re right, I want to know what it is that Dan has discovered.’

Liam chose to resume eating while he considered and Steven did likewise.

‘All finished?’ asked the waitress. Both men sat back to let her clear the table. ‘Will you be requiring any sweets or coffees?’

‘Espresso for me,’ said Steven.

Liam opted for the same. He could see that Steven was waiting for a response but he was struggling to put his thoughts into words. ‘If Dan is CIA and Porton Down is involved, then surely our governments know exactly what’s been going on. I mean, it’s their thing. Where exactly do you come in? What’s it got to do with Sci-Med?’

‘I need you to trust me.’

The cloud of suspicion darkened.

‘Our government thinks it knows what’s been going on… but it doesn’t. I think they’re being played for a patsy.’

Liam took a deep breath and sat back as the coffee arrived. ‘And so they need Dr Steven Dunbar of the Sci-Med Inspectorate to put them right?’

‘I also have a personal interest,’ said Steven, putting his final card on the table, hoping it would capture Liam’s interest. ‘Somewhere in this whole mess someone thought it was a good idea to murder my friend Simone Ricard, the aid worker who sent you the blood samples. It’s my intention to show them… it really wasn’t.’

Liam took note of the look on Steven’s face. ‘Well, I’m fucking glad it wasn’t me,’ he murmured before taking a sip of his coffee. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘Count me in.’

Steven relaxed a little and sipped his own coffee. ‘I can’t promise you the PhD placement of your dreams,’ he said, ‘but you won’t have any grant money problems, I promise. Sci-Med will see to that.’

‘Cheers. Sci-Med doesn’t exactly do things by the book, does it?’

‘Let’s say we cherish our independence.’

‘What is it you want me to do?’

‘I’ll need access to your lab out of hours and I need advice about where to look to get information about what Hausman has been up to. I’m assuming Tom North’s stuff will have been cleared out?’

‘The suits did that quite quickly. Why don’t you let me have a sniff around? I’m better placed than anyone else.’

‘Because I don’t want you doing anything that could damage your career… or worse.’

Liam was left to dwell on what ‘worse’ might be for a few moments. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he agreed, ‘but I’ll keep my ears and eyes open. By the way, it may be irrelevant but blood samples weren’t the only thing your friend Simone sent in the package to the lab.’

‘Really?’

‘There was a computer disk and a note saying that she’d explain when she came to the lab — I think she’d arranged to see Tom the week after she died. I heard Tom tell Dan that he’d had a look but couldn’t make head nor tail of it; it was gobbledegook. To be honest neither of them seemed that fussed. I remember it was in an envelope marked Vaccination schedules.

Steven’s pulse rate rose dramatically. ‘Do you know what happened to the disk?’ he asked.

Liam shook his head slowly. ‘I think Dan was the last to take a look at it. Maybe he still has it. If he gave it back to Tom, it will probably have been cleared out with the rest of his stuff. Why? Is it important?’

‘It wasn’t gobbledegook. It was encrypted. She sent a memory card to me. I think it’s probably the key.’

‘Jesus, but why would anyone go to the trouble of encrypting vaccination schedules?’

‘Who knows?’ said Steven.

‘I could have a look around for the disk if you like,’ said Liam. ‘I mean neither Tom nor Dan seemed to think anything of it so it’s probably not under lock and key.’

‘Don’t take any risks, but if it does happen to be lying around… Look, I’ve kept you long enough,’ said Steven, signalling to the waitress for the bill. ‘Give me your mobile number and I’ll be in touch when I’ve come up with a plan. If I suggest a meeting, assume it’s here or just outside if it’s not during opening hours. Here’s my mobile number: let me know if you have any luck with the disk or if there’s anything you think I should be aware of.’