The Enemy

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

A month later I was feeling pretty chipper because Starkie had given me a clean bill of health. 'For three weeks now we've inspected every damned E.coli bug that's come out of you and they're all normal. I don't know why you're still lying around here. What do you think this is, a doss house?'

He hadn't always been as cheerful as that. At the beginning I was placed in a sterile room and untouched by human hand for the next two weeks. Everything that was done to me was done by remote control. Later they told me that a team of thirty doctors and nurses was working on me alone.

Penny did better. For her they apparently mobilized the entire medical resources of the United Kingdom, plus sizeable chunks from the United States and the Continent, with a little bit from Australia. The bug she had was different from the one I'd caught, and it was a real frightener. It got the medical world into a dizzy tizzy and, although they were able to cure her, they wanted to make sure that the bug, whatever it was, was completely eradicated. So I came out of Porton Down a month before her.

Starkie once said soberly, 'If she'd have been left another day with the minimal attention she was getting I don't think we could have done it.' That made me think of Carter and I wondered what was being done about him. I never found out.

When I came out of purdah but before I was discharged I went to see her. I couldn't kiss her, or even touch her, but we could speak separated by a pane of glass, and she seemed cheerful enough. I told her something of what had happened, but not everything. Time enough for that when she was better. Then I said, 'I want you out of here pretty damned quick. I want to get married.'

She smiled brilliantly. 'Oh, yes, Malcolm.'

'I can't fix a day because of that bloody man Starkie,' I complained. 'He's likely to keep you in here forever, investigating the contents of your beautiful bowels.'

She said, 'How would you like a double wedding? I had a letter from Gillian in New York. Peter Michaelis flew over and proposed to her. She was lying in bed with her left arm strapped to her right cheek and swaddled in bandages when he asked her. She thought it was very funny.'

'I'll be damned!'

'It will be a little time yet. We all have to get out of our hospitals. Is four months too long to wait?'

'Yes,' I said promptly. 'But I'll wait.'

I didn't ask anyone how Cregar was doing because I didn't care.

On the day I came out of the sterile room Ogilvie came to see me, bearing the obligatory pound of grapes. I received him with some reserve. He asked after my health and I referred him to Starkie, then he said, 'We got the tape cassette after it had been decontaminated. Cregar won't be able to wriggle out of this one.'

I said, 'Had any success with Ashton's computer programs?'

'Oh, my God, they're fantastic. Everyone has claimed the man was a genius and he's proved it.'

'How?'

Ogilvie scratched his head. 'I don't know if I can explain-I'm no scientist-but it seems that Ashton has done for genetics what Einstein did for physics. He analysed the DNA molecule in a theoretical way and came up with a series of rather complicated equations. By applying these you can predict exactly which genes go where and why, and which genetic configurations are possible or not possible. It's a startling breakthrough; it's put genetics on a firm and mathematical grounding.'

'That should make Lumsden happy,' I said.

Ogilvie ate a grape. 'He doesn't know. It's still confidential. It hasn't been released publicly yet.'

'Why not?'

'The Minister seems to feel… well, there are reasons why it shouldn't be released yet. Or so he says.'

That saddened me. The bloody politicians with their bloody reasons made me sick to the stomach. The Minister was another Cregar. He had found a power lever and wanted to stick to it.

Ogilvie took another grape. 'I asked Starkie when you'd be coming out but he isn't prepared to say. However, when you do I've a new job for you. As you may know, Kerr is retiring in two years. I want to groom you for his job.'

Kerr was Ogilvie's second-in-command. He smiled. 'In seven years, when I go, you could be running the department.'

I said bluntly, 'Get lost.'

He was not a man who showed astonishment easily, but he did then. 'What did you say?'

'You heard me. Get lost. You can take Kerr's job and your job and stuff them wherever you like. The Minister's backside might be a good place.'

'What the devil's got into you?' he demanded.

'I'll tell you,' I said, 'You were going to do a deal with Cregar.'

'Who said that?'

'Cregar.'

'And you believed him? The man lies as naturally as he breathes.'

'Yes, I believed him because at that point he had no reason to lie. He did proposition you, didn't he?'

'Well, we talked-yes.'

I nodded. 'That's why you won't get me back in the department. I'm tired of lies and evasions; I'm tired of self-interest masquerading as patriotism. It came to me when Cregar called me an honest man, not as a compliment but as someone to corrupt. I realized then that he was wrong. How could an honest man do what I did to Ashton?'

'I think you're being over-emotional about this,' Ogilvie said stiffly.

'I'm emotional because I'm a man with feelings and not a bloody robot,' I retorted. 'And now you can take your bloody grapes and get the hell out of here.'

He went away moderately unhappy.