Miasma

Fifteen

The phone rang and Steven opened his eyes to see 2.57 a.m. on his bedside clock. The phone screen told him it was John Macmillan.

‘Big trouble, Steven, you’re not going to believe this, but we’ve got a case of Marburg disease on our hands.’

Steven was suddenly very awake.

‘A man has been admitted to the Royal Free Hospital with all the signs of Marburg; he works at Porton Down.’

‘My God, was he working with the virus?’

‘He’s not a scientist,’ Macmillan replied, ‘he’s an electrician on the maintenance staff; the last job he worked on was in the lab where they opened Petrov’s flask.’

‘But there can’t be a connection,’ Steven protested, ‘the contents were harmless.’

‘That’s what Porton say too.’

‘What was he doing there?’

‘There was a problem with the radio link between the lab and the viewing gallery.’

‘That’s right, it didn’t work.’

‘He was sent to find the fault. He did and repaired it, but next day, he reported feeling unwell when he was working on something else. Luckily, he wasn’t sent home. Porton has a set procedure for any member of staff falling ill: they automatically assume possible contact with something nasty and keep the patient isolated on the premises until a proper diagnosis is made. Usually it’s just colds and flu and stomach upsets like everywhere else, but occasionally it can be the real deal and, considering what they work on at Porton, this always triggers a full-scale alert and establishing exactly what happened becomes an immediate top priority, as in this case.’

‘Have they done that yet?’ Steven asked.

‘No, not yet.’

‘Not good,’ said Steven. ‘Surely they must know every job the man has been working on in the past week or so and where he might have been exposed to the virus?’

‘He’s been on holiday,’ said Macmillan. ‘Carrying out the repair to the intercom was the first job he’d been assigned to since coming back.’

‘Crazy, crazy, crazy,’ murmured Steven. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that he was on holiday in central Africa?’

‘Costa del Sol in Spain, like thousands of other Brits.’

‘His wife and family?’

‘Thankfully all well, he was at work when he started to feel ill.’

‘A blessing.’

Steven tried a recap of events. ‘We gather in a high security lab, with the scientists taking every conceivable precaution against possible exposure to any deadly microorganism in Petrov’s flask or any vapour arising from a concentrated hallucinogen and they find it contains nothing more dangerous than salt water. The next day an electrician goes into the lab to fix the intercom and comes down with one of the most hellish diseases on earth, Marburg disease. How?’

‘Is the question everyone is asking.’

‘Are they asking if the scientists who opened the flask could have missed something?’ Steven asked.

‘I think we both know that Porton scientists don’t make that kind of mistake,’ said Macmillan, ‘although it was the elephant in the room for a very short time until they themselves insisted that the contents of the flask be examined again by fellow scientists who agreed, of course, that it was salt water and nothing else.’

‘Good,’ said Steven. ‘I suppose they have stocks of Marburg virus at Porton?’

‘That would be a question they wouldn’t answer if past experience is anything to go by. It’s a very secretive place — as our first line of defence against biological attack, it has to be. What’s on your mind?’

‘If they carry out nucleic acid sequencing of the virus the electrician has gone down with and find out what strain it is, there’s a good chance they should be able to tell us where it came from,’ said Steven, ‘whether it’s one of Porton’s own strains... or a Russian one... or one from CDC Atlanta... or a new one altogether.’

‘I suspect they may already be doing that,’ said Macmillan acidly.

‘Of course, they are,’ said Steven, feeling embarrassed. ‘Sorry, this has put me a bit on edge. Do you know anything about the condition of the electrician — Damn, I hate calling him that, do you know his name?’

‘Tom, Tom Harland, age 37, married to Chloe, two daughters, nine and seven. He’s very ill, but probably in the best hospital in the UK to treat him.’

‘Good luck, Tom,’ murmured Steven.

‘I’ll let you know when I hear more.’

Steven let his head fall back on the pillow although going back to sleep was out of the question. Instead, he looked up at shadows on the ceiling while running through every expletive he could think of to describe the situation.

The situation was to get worse.

At ten o’clock next morning, Chloe Harland watched her husband die in the Royal Free Hospital. He was in a transparent isolation tent with two nurses wearing full bio-safety gear doing their best to keep him as comfortable as possible on a journey they were praying would end soon. Chloe had never felt so helpless or lonely. She had been obliged to put on full safety gear too, but her plea that she be allowed to hold her husband’s hand and at least say good bye to him had been declined. She was standing about three metres away from him but it could have been a million miles.

Chloe had lost track of time. She had rushed to the hospital as soon as she’d got the phone call suggesting she should come in, leaving her mother, who had come to stay for the duration of the crisis to look after the children. Everything had been done in such a hurry: there had been no time for the multitude of questions going around in her head. She had been helped into safety gear and a visor by nurses whose total attention was given over to making sure that everything fitted properly and all gaps were sealed before ushering her into the isolation suite where she could watch proceedings, separated from an inner tent by plastic. It was transparent but such a tangible barrier.

The change that had come over her family circumstances in the past few days had been so dramatic that she had difficulty in accepting any of it as being remotely possible. The awful writhing figure she could see through the transparent screen could not really be her Tom, the man who a few short days ago had been laughing and splashing about in the Mediterranean in the Spanish sunshine with their daughters while she took pictures on her phone to send to Granny and Grandad. Her Tom was fit and well, joking, smiling, his body showing the tan that two weeks in Spain had given him as he swept Janey, their youngest up into his arms and then took Ella, her sister, by the hand to walk up the beach towards her. She could see them, she could see them, she could see them... The... thing in the bed wasn’t Tom, it was something from a horror movie... Oh God, how could she think that? Oh God, make it stop, make it all stop...’

Chloe realised that something had changed when the nurses in the treatment tent suddenly stopped being busy. A sense of calm had come over the room and she became acutely aware of the sound of fans and filters. The restive figure in the bed had stopped moving and one of the nurses turned to look at her. Chloe couldn’t see her face behind the reflections on her visor any more than the nurse could see hers, but the gesture of dropping her head slowly and making the palms of her gloved hands face outwards as she let her arms go limp said everything.

A male figure, judging by his size, in biohazard gear, came into the room and Chloe guessed rightly at it being a doctor required to confirm the death of her husband. Rules were rules, times had to be recorded, forms had to be filled in and then it would be over... but not for Chloe, definitely not for Chloe.

Steven and John Macmillan were struggling to come up with an explanation for Tom Harland contracting Marburg disease when news of his death came in.

‘God damn,’ said Steven.

‘Poor man,’ said Macmillan, shaking his head in exasperation. ‘They have to find the cause, it’s imperative they identify the source.’

‘No question,’ said Steven.

The two men were talking in Macmillan’s office where Macmillan had put a stop on phone calls so that they could think and talk undisturbed. They were in the middle of considering the possibility that secret establishments like Porton might be tempted to use generally accepted secrecy to cover-up events that were not necessarily connected to national security... like accidents... or mistakes... when Jean knocked and came in.

‘Sorry, Sir John, the Home Secretary would like to speak to you, I think it’s important.’

Steven left the room with Jean who closed the door and put the call through before saying, ‘The Home Secretary sounded like a man under some stress.’

Steven made a face and said, ‘I could say it’s shaping up to be one of these days, but for the past week or so they’ve all been that.’

Macmillan emerged looking pale. ‘Three more,’ he said, causing Steven and Jean to look at each other.

‘Three more cases of Marburg.’

‘Where?’ Steven asked, almost dreading the answer: he had been assuming that luck had been on their side when Tom Harland had shown no signs of infection before falling ill at work where he could be quickly isolated. Now, he feared he was about to be told that Chloe and the girls had fallen victim.

‘Porton,’ said Macmillan, ‘Three more people on the staff, one technician and two cleaners.’

Steven’s relief was quickly wiped out by the new worry. ‘Where are they?’

‘Royal Free Hospital.’

‘Dare I ask where they showed signs of being ill?’

Macmillan paused before saying, ‘At home, I’m afraid.’

‘Weren’t they vaccinated after Tom Harland fell ill?’

‘Apparently there aren’t any regular vaccines against Marburg, although there may be a secret one.’

‘A secret one,’ said Steven. ‘Have Porton any idea what happened?’

‘Not yet.’

Steven struggled to contain his frustration. He wanted to point out that Porton Down was full of first-rate microbiologists and ask, why in God’s name could they not find a source of infection that must be right under their noses, but he didn’t. There must be a reason and shouting the odds wasn’t going to help. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the wall behind Jean’s desk and concentrated on searching for useful facts in a messy situation.

‘There cannot be two separate sources of the virus lying around, that would be stretching coincidence too far.’

‘Agreed,’ said Macmillan.

‘That means these four people got it from the same source. We know that the three latest cases had no direct contact with Tom Harland, so they didn’t get it from him; they got it from the same source as him.’

‘Agreed.’

‘The only job Tom worked on at Porton since coming back from holiday was in the lab where Petrov’s flask was opened. For whatever reason, that lab has to be the number one suspect.’

‘Porton have ruled that out,’ said Jean. ‘No one has been working with Marburg in recent months and, certainly not in that lab. Even if they had, it would have been thoroughly decontaminated afterwards.’

‘And I think we can assume that no one does that better,’ said Macmillan.

‘Stay with me, hear me out,’ said Steven. ‘The latest three all seem to have fallen ill at the same time; that tells us they all came into contact with the source at approximately the same time. What we have to ask is, did they have any reason to be in that lab together in the days after Tom Harland fixed the intercom and what were they doing there?’

‘That’s certainly worth finding out,’ said Macmillan, ‘but we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that this really ceased to be our investigation the moment they found nothing but salt water in Petrov’s flask. Before you say anything, I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should ignore something as awful as an outbreak of Marburg, but I am saying that we mustn’t lose sight of our own investigation.’

‘I take your point,’ said Steven, ‘but until the source of the Marburg outbreak has been identified we won’t know for sure that it has nothing to do with our thing.’

Macmillan looked doubtful. ‘Really?’ he said.

Steven didn’t back down. ‘Yes, really, none of us think that Petrov was really sending a flask of salt water to Geneva, agreed?’

Jean and Macmillan nodded.

‘The intelligence services think the original flask was removed and substituted, which I agree seems the most likely explanation, but suppose the original flask leaked — perhaps during the theft — and contaminated the container before the flask of saline was substituted.’

‘The whole container would have been destroyed. That was the only safe thing to do.’

‘But we are talking about a thief here,’ countered Steven. ‘He or she had what they wanted: they didn’t care about contamination of the container; they would have been under a great deal of stress, doing things in a rush, or maybe even working in the dark.’

‘True,’ Macmillan conceded.

‘If that were the case, we now know the original flask contained Marburg,’ said Jean.

‘I’m sure the people at Porton would have tested the container for contamination,’ said Macmillan.

‘You’re almost certainly right,’ said Steven, ‘and I know I’m clutching at straws here, but I think I’d like to talk to the Israelis again.’

‘Intelligence?’ asked Macmillan.

‘No, the people at Beer Sheva University. They were under the impression that Petrov was working with highly dangerous viruses. That was illustrated by the precautions they took when entering Petrov’s lab after his death — done with full bio-safety ritual. They opened the container they found there — the one addressed to Lagarde in Geneva, and found the flask, but decided against opening it — again showing extreme caution. I suspect they may have shown the same caution beforehand with the container and packaging itself. They may well have examined everything for nasty surprises.’

‘That’s certainly worth checking out.’

Steven called Eli Zimmerman at Beer Sheva University and exchanged pleasantries.

‘How can I help this time,’ asked Zimmerman, ‘still worried about new drugs sweeping your streets?’

‘Not this time,’ said Steven. ‘I have a question about the opening of the container found in what was Petrov’s lab. At the time, you and your people had every reason to believe that Petrov had been working with dangerous viruses and because of this, you took every precaution.’

‘Of course.’

‘I know you decided not to open the flask, but did you test the container and packaging for contamination before you made that decision?’

‘I’ll say we did,’ Zimmerman replied.

Steven was surprised at Zimmerman’s strong reaction. He waited for him to say more.

‘One of my people noticed that the flask had a tiny chip out of the glass round the lip; there were no signs of leakage, but it was enough to ring alarm bells in a situation like that so we tested everything surrounding it: there were no viruses, no fancy drugs. I mentioned the defect to WHO when I called them to ask what they wanted us to do and they said not to worry.’

‘Good,’ said Steven, feeling as if he had just struck gold by mistake. ‘Did you mention the flaw to the Intelligence people when they took charge of the container?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Zimmerman after a moment’s thought. ‘We knew there had been no leakage and I was so fed up with the whole business I just wanted to see the back of the damned thing and put an end to the whole Petrov business.’

‘Understandable,’ said Steven, ‘thanks once again for your help.’

‘Do you know what was in the flask?’

‘Saline.’

Steven told Macmillan and Jean that the Israelis had tested the container and its packaging and found nothing, almost dismissing this information by adding what he’d been told about the slight flaw in the lip of the flask.

‘Does that help?’ asked Jean.

‘Yes, if the flask they have at Porton has the same flaw, it’s the same flask. Porton showed the contents of the flask to be harmless and the Israelis have told us the container and packaging surrounding the chipped flask was harmless. It means that there was no switch of flask, and secondly that neither the container nor the flask has anything to do with people going down with Marburg.’

‘A bit of a Pyrrhic victory,’ said Macmillan, ‘but well done anyway, closing off blind alleys is always better than going down them.’

Not for the first time in his life Steven had the strange mixed feeling of triumph and disappointment. He had worked something out — which was certainly progress — but only to see that he had proved himself wrong. Macmillan had been right, he had stopped himself going up the blind alley he himself had created. He needed a break from thinking about it; he bought some flowers and went to see Jane Sherman in hospital.

‘Looks like flowers are the last thing you need,’ he said on entering what appeared to be a miniature version of the Chelsea Flower Show.

‘People are very kind,’ said Jane.

‘How are you?’ Steven asked, not smiling and looking her straight in the eye.

‘Very tired of being brave,’ Jane replied.

‘I think it was Shakespeare who said, reality has a habit of kicking you up the arse when you least expect it.’

Jane broke into a smile and said, ‘You always did have a sense of the ridiculous.’

‘It’s what keeps me insane.’

‘Stop it. What’s been happening?’

‘I take it you know about Petrov’s flask containing nothing but salt water and about the outbreak of Marburg disease among the staff at Porton?’

Jane nodded then Steven told her what she didn’t know — that the intelligence services could be wrong about the flask having been switched. It all depended on the flask at Porton having the little flaw in its lip.

‘Would you like me to ask?’ said Jane.

‘If you feel up to it, it would save me tip-toeing around peoples’ egos and going through the Home Secretary every time I want to know something people consider to be their secret and nobody else’s.’

‘Rumour had it you had some special arrangement with the PM as her blue-eyed boy.’

‘It didn’t quite work out and in any case, it made me feel uncomfortable. I much prefer cooperation.’

‘Like we have?’

‘Like we have.’

‘Good, I’m looking forward to being useful again.’

‘I’ll keep you in the loop.’

As Steven got up to leave, he noticed Jane staring into the middle distance. ‘Something wrong?’ he asked.

She snapped out of it and said, ‘If you’re right and there was no switching of flasks, why on Earth was Petrov sending saline to Geneva? And why were our rich Russian friends so keen to stop us investigating a little jug of water?’

‘Very good thoughts.’

‘Just doing my job,’ said Jane with a genuine smile that made Steven feel a whole lot better.

‘We’re a team.’