Lost causes

TWENTY-EIGHT

Steven went over to see John Macmillan at four o’clock and found him in excellent spirits. ‘A better day, eh, Steven? Not only have I been given the all-clear to return to work on a part-time basis but the security services finally get their act together and nail the terrorists.’

‘It turns out they had little to do with it, John.’ Steven told him what he’d learned at his lunch-time meeting with Ricksen.

‘Damnation,’ said Macmillan. ‘I’d assumed that Special Branch or one of 5’s insiders had come up with the goods.’

Steven said not. ‘One unknown person, apparently in full possession of all the details of four separate operations, gave the lot away to the police.’

‘But why?’

‘Why indeed. It must have been someone at the top of the chain to have access to that much information.’

‘So it won’t take them long to figure out who it was. But the informer must know that, and yet he hasn’t asked for police protection, I take it?’

‘No.’

‘So what had he to gain? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Nothing has made any sense for weeks,’ said Steven glumly.

‘What else is troubling you?’

‘One of the disks we recovered from Charles French’s house outlined plans for a reintroduction of the Northern Health Scheme in the autumn. There wouldn’t have been time.’

‘Is that really relevant?’ asked Macmillan, still thinking about the terrorist informant.

‘I don’t know,’ Steven confessed. ‘But… I’m beginning to think it might be.’

Now he had Macmillan’s full attention. ‘Go on.’

‘Suppose we were meant to discover the plans for a reintroduction of the old Northern Health Scheme and where it was destined to happen.’

‘But the disks French’s wife handed over were genuine. The details agreed in every way with what we worked out happened in the north all these years ago.’

‘But the plans for a relaunch of the scheme were listed on a separate disk,’ said Steven. ‘Someone could have added that for our benefit.’

‘The end result being that we would see it as a failed operation

…’

‘And take no further interest in it… or them… or whatever else they might be planning on doing.’

‘But they all died,’ said Macmillan.

‘Except the bomber,’ Steven reminded him. ‘The one thing that didn’t make sense. An insider who destroyed the old guard in order to do… what?’

‘Hopefully nothing while we’re in the middle of a terrorist attack.’

‘Which doesn’t make sense either,’ said Steven, a comment that made Macmillan raise his eyebrows.

‘In what way?’

‘Just about every way,’ said Steven. ‘Cholera was an odd choice for a bio-attack.’

‘It’s a horrible disease.’

‘But there are worse, much worse, if you rather than nature are in the position of deciding which microbe to use.’

Macmillan conceded the point with a shrug.

‘Where did eight disaffected Asian youths living in the Midlands get cultures of cholera from?’

‘Presumably it must have been grown in laboratories abroad and brought into the country.’

‘MI6 are adamant that they would have heard something about such an operation, and yet they heard nothing.’

Macmillan made a gesture with his hands indicating ambivalence.

‘The cholera strain they used is sensitive to antibiotics, when it’s the easiest thing in the world for a lab to make bugs resistant and therefore treatment harder. They didn’t bother doing that.’

‘Even we get a bit lucky sometimes,’ said Macmillan with a half-hearted smile. When Steven’s expression didn’t change, he added, ‘Fair enough, it is a bit odd. So why didn’t they?’

‘I’m still thinking about that.’

‘Anything else?’

‘The spread of the epidemic has been surprisingly limited.’

‘I’ve been impressed with the way the authorities have responded,’ said Macmillan. ‘They’ve been on the ball from the word go.’

‘I know they’d like to believe that, and people will take credit wherever they can, but, as you said, cholera is a horrible disease… and spreads like wildfire. Do we really put it all down to good management?’

Macmillan sat with one hand under his chin, his index finger tapping his lower lip as he appeared to think back to his own experience of seeing the full horror in his youth. ‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘But what are you getting at?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Steven. ‘I just need to… share my angst.’

Macmillan smiled.

‘And now, just as the terrorists are about to launch a second strike, someone shops the lot of them. As John Ricksen said, how lucky was that?’

‘So where does that leave us?’

‘All at sea.’

‘And in which direction do you intend rowing?’

‘I need to turn suspicion into fact,’ said Steven. ‘That means asking questions. I need to know if we were set up to believe that we foiled the Schiller Group’s plans. If we were, it would mean they’re still active.’

‘In which case you could be putting yourself in very grave danger,’ said Macmillan. ‘I suggest you call a full code red on this and pay a visit to the armourer.’

Steven nodded reluctantly. He disliked carrying weapons, and only did so when his life could be in real danger, but there was no denying the truth of what Macmillan had said. ‘I’ll go round first thing in the morning… and then have another word with Maxine French.’

The next day, having duly signed for a Glock 23 pistol and a supply of. 40 calibre ammunition and been fitted with a shoulder holster, he went into the Home Office and asked Jean Roberts to call Maxine French. Would it be convenient for him to pop over and see her some time — preferably that morning? He could tell by the expression on Jean’s face that she was getting a positive response, and got up from his chair in anticipation.

‘She’d be delighted to see you,’ said Jean, putting down the phone. ‘She suggests you join her for coffee at eleven.’

Maxine welcomed Steven and left him admiring the view while she made coffee and returned with everything on a silver tray.

‘How can I help you, Dr Dunbar?’

‘Mrs French, the last time I saw you you very kindly handed over some disks that your husband had been keeping safe.’

‘Yes, government property, you said. Is something wrong?’

Steven still wasn’t sure in his own mind how to approach the problem, but now, faced with the smiling Maxine French, he had to make his decision. He took a sip of coffee. ‘Did anyone else have access to the disks you gave me?’

‘Yes,’ said Maxine, matter of factly, making the word music to Steven’s ears. ‘An executive called round from Deltasoft. He seemed to know about the disks, and said that when he was clearing Charles’s office he had come across the latest versions, which Charles obviously hadn’t had time to bring home. We exchanged them. I’m sorry. I should have mentioned it.’

‘No problem,’ said Steven. ‘No problem at all.’ He felt both relieved and apprehensive. The good thing was that he had made progress: he now knew for sure that Sci-Med had been set up to believe that there had been a plan to reintroduce the old Northern Health Scheme and it had ended with the explosion in Paris. There had never been any such plan, but knowing that now raised many more questions.

‘Did you know the man who came to see you?’

‘No, but he showed me ID. It’s quite a large company,’ said Maxine. ‘And I wasn’t involved in it at all. I think it fair to say I took as much interest in Charles’s computer business as he did in my charities. Not-a-lot, as that chap on the telly used to say.’

Steven smiled and wondered about Maxine’s marriage. He felt sure she’d been a loyal, supportive wife — probably the reason French had married her. She’d ticked all the boxes for service as a top-flight political animal’s wife. He hadn’t been looking for any sort of companion and she, coming from the same sort of background, hadn’t expected to be one.

‘Does the term Schiller Group mean anything to you, Mrs French?’ He watched Maxine carefully for a reaction, but none was visible. She shook her head.

‘Not in any meaningful way,’ she said, a reply that Steven found strange: his facial expression said so. Maxine explained. ‘I remember once at a dinner party we gave, one of the guests mentioned something about the Schiller Group and Charles told him to shut up. I thought it very rude of him but he was clearly very angry. I asked him about it later but he said it was something that didn’t concern me — something he said rather a lot, if truth be told. But then, I suppose that was because of his government involvement?’

Steven gave a knowing nod. ‘The price we all have to pay, I’m afraid, not being able to share things with our loved ones. Thank you, Mrs French. You’ve been a great help.’

He returned to the Home Office, feeling well satisfied with his morning’s work. He was particularly pleased that he’d managed to find out what he wanted to know without alerting anyone to the fact, particularly anyone connected with the Schiller Group.

Steven reflected that this was the first morning since the start of the emergency that there had not been a meeting of COBRA. There was one pencilled in for the following morning — more a case of not wanting to tempt fate by calling a complete halt to them, he suspected — but it was a sign that fear was being replaced by optimism. The epidemic could have been so much worse, as he’d noticed the newspapers were starting to point out when he flicked through the copies on his desk. Some of them were already taking to task the consultant microbiologists across the country who’d been predicting something much more serious.

Steven noticed that they were largely the same experts who’d been asked to pronounce on the swine flu ‘epidemic’, and was reminded of some questions of his own he wanted to ask. He needed to speak to someone about the course of the cholera epidemic and considered calling an old friend at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, but then he changed his mind. He needed something more than a strictly academic view. He called Lukas Neubauer at the Lundborg labs instead.

‘Steven, you have some work for me?’

‘Not right now, Lukas. I need to talk.’

‘Talk doesn’t put food in my children’s mouths. We could do with a big, juicy government contract down here. We’re bored stiff doing DNA analyses for paternity suit lawyers and bacteriology reports for councils closing down Chinese restaurants.’

‘Well, it keeps the Merc on the road,’ Steven joked, alluding to the Mercedes Lukas drove.

‘When would you like to come over, my friend?’

‘This afternoon?’

Dr Lukas Neubauer, a tall, Slavic-looking man, welcomed Steven with a smile and a firm handshake. ‘Maybe we can talk in the lab? I’ve got a couple of things on the go.’ Steven perched on a lab stool and rested an elbow on the bench while he waited for Neubauer to transfer a rack of tubes from one water bath to another and start a stop clock. ‘Now, what would you like to talk about?’

‘When you found that the cholera strain was sensitive to antibiotics, what was your first thought?’

Neubauer pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and put his head to one side. ‘I was surprised,’ he said. ‘But relieved too because it suggested the Vibrio had not been genetically altered.’

Neubauer’s reply had been simple and to the point, so he didn’t understand why Steven suddenly appeared spellbound. ‘Steven? Are you all right?’

‘Christ, that’s it.’

‘What’s what?’

‘That’s what we were meant to think. Did Colindale do any further analysis of the bug’s genetic make-up?’

‘I don’t think they did — everyone was so pleased that it was still sensitive to antibiotics. And, of course, it was quickly apparent that the enterotoxin had not been enhanced because people were recovering as long as they were kept hydrated.’

‘Can you get your hands on the bug? I can go through the usual channels but it might be quicker if we bypass them.’

‘I can ask my friend at Colindale. We have a licence to handle dangerous pathogens here so I can’t see any great problem.’

‘I need you to carry out a full analysis of it. Tell me everything you can as quickly as you can. Make it your number one priority.’

‘What are we looking for?’

‘I don’t know.’