The Gulf Conspiracy

ONE

The moon emerged from behind the clouds to light up the drive of Channing House as a dark Rover saloon swung in through the gates to crunch up the drive and come to a halt. The driver got out and hurried round to open the back door, adopting a concerned expression as the man in the back made an ungainly exit due to the bulk of his overcoat and the fact he was holding a heavy briefcase. He straightened up and told the driver to wait before making his way to the steps leading up to the front door, his gait a little unsteady after the forty-mile drive down from London.

The door was answered by a man-servant who apologised and requested proof of identity despite seemingly recognising the visitor and addressing him as, Sir James.

‘Yes, yes,’ mumbled the man, feeling in his inside pocket for some ID. ‘Let’s not carry this nonsense too far, shall we?’

‘Colonel Warner’s orders, sir,’ said the servant, closing the door and taking the man’s coat before leading the way upstairs where he opened a set of double doors and announced, ‘Sir James Gardiner.’

‘Come in, James,’ said a man, whose clipped moustache and erect bearing would have marked him out as a military man in any company. ‘Good of you to come at such short notice.’

‘The tone of your message didn’t leave me much choice, Warner,’ said Gardiner.

There were three other men in the room. Gardiner nodded to them and took his place at the table.

‘I’m afraid I had no alternative,’ said Warner.

‘Your note said it was serious. Bloody well better be. I was due to dine with HRH and the defence minister this evening.’

‘I’m afraid Crowe has some bad news for us,’ said Warner. He had lowered his voice and spoke softly like an undertaker dealing with the recently bereaved. ‘There’s been a bit of an accident, a serious one. It could have potentially disastrous consequences.’

Gardiner looked at Crowe and said, ‘If it involves Crowe it must involve Porton Down? We’re not all going to get plague or smallpox are we?’

‘Nothing like that,’ said Crowe. ‘It concerns the vaccine being given to our troops before being deployed in the Gulf.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with us?’

Crowe, a painfully thin man in his forties with craggy features and a yellowish complexion that suggested old parchment, looked down at the table through tinted spectacles as if gathering his thoughts. He looked up. ‘The vaccination schedule is a composite one, comprising a number of component parts — six in all — designed to give protection against a range of diseases — those endemic in the region and those likely to be used as biological weapons.’

‘I still don’t see what this has to do with us?’

‘It’s been contaminated,’ said Crowe.

‘Contaminated,’ repeated Gardiner, then when he saw that no more was forthcoming, ‘With what?’

Crowe told Gardiner and the others what had happened.

Gardiner’s jaw dropped. For a full thirty seconds he did a passable impression of a dead fish. ‘You cannot be serious,’ he said.

‘I wish I wasn’t.’

‘But how in God’s name?’

‘One of my team, Dr George Sebring, made a simple mistake. It led to an unfortunate chain of events. As you well know, the nature of our work has required that the Beta Team remain a secret within a secret at Porton. Our real project is known only to a handful of people but we have a cover story inside the establishment itself to satisfy the questions of colleagues. Officially, we have been working on the design of a new vaccine. Ironically, and because of this, a request was made to us for a supply of gene envelopes to assist in the production of the military vaccine. Apparently the manufacturers were running low on a component called cytokines — which boost immune response and make vaccines more effective. They approached us for an alternative. Unfortunately and for whatever reason, Sebring handed over the wrong thing.’

‘Not live virus?’

‘No, Sir James, not that simple.’

‘Bloody hell,’ murmured Gardiner, shaking his head as he looked directly at Crowe. ‘This beggars belief.’

‘It’s something we all deeply regret,’ said Crowe.

‘Surely to God someone on the vaccine production team must have checked out what they were given?’

‘I’m afraid the establishment’s own security worked against us,’ said Crowe. ‘Four elements of the vaccine programme have been classified under the Official Secrets Act. The manufacturers were not at liberty to question anything to do with these components or indeed to analyse them in any way.’

‘Can’t we recall the damned stuff?’

‘Too late I’m afraid; it’s already been used.’

‘Ye gods,’ sighed Gardiner. ‘What numbers are we talking about here?’ he asked, looking as if he feared the reply.

Crowe looked down at his notes before replying. ‘We estimate about fifteen percent of allied forces will have been given the rogue vaccine: this excludes the French who decided against vaccinating their forces.’

‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Gardiner. ‘We are talking about thousands of people.’

Crowe’s silence confirmed Gardiner’s estimate.

A film of sweat had broken out on Gardiner’s forehead. He brought out a large white handkerchief and dabbed it away as he asked, ‘So what do you damned scientists propose we do about this?’

There was no response.

Gardiner asked, ‘What will happen to people who’ve been given it?’

All eyes turned to Crowe whose stony expression had not varied throughout. ‘First of all let me say how sorry I and the team are that this has happened,’ he said. ‘It’s something that Dr Sebring is having particular difficulty in coming to terms with.’

‘Please just answer the question,’ said Gardiner coldly. He felt irked at Crowe’s second attempt at diverting blame from himself. Crowe was the team leader: he should carry the can.

‘The nature of our work is such that any reference to precedent is out of the question,’ said Crowe.

Gardiner frowned and said, ‘Does that mean that you don’t actually know what this thing will do to our troops?’ he asked.

‘Not in so many words, although we can…’

‘Guess?’ said Gardiner, filling in the blank and making it sound like a dirty word.

‘Well… informed guess I think it would be fair to say,’ said Crowe with an attempt at a smile that just made his face seem more cadaverous than ever.

Gardiner looked at Crowe with a blank expression that might have been concealing contempt. ‘Let’s just take this one step at a time,’ he said quietly. ‘Will it kill them?’

‘We are pretty sure it won’t do that,’ said Crowe.

‘Incapacitate them?’

‘Probably not, although it’s very difficult to say in the light of our not having evaluated it to any great degree…’ Crowe’s voice trailed off into embarrassed silence.

Gardiner gave him the same blank look then diverted his gaze while he appeared to think for a few moments. He finally looked at everyone around the table before saying, ‘So if they are not going to drop down dead and they are not all going to collapse to the floor coughing and vomiting, what’s left?’

Crowe shrugged and said, ‘Again, it’s really difficult to say. There may well be a range of symptoms occurring over a prolonged period of time…’

‘But there’s no one symptom that would suggest a common agent as being the cause?’

‘I don’t think so. The nature of the team’s brief was to…’

‘Thank you, I think we are all familiar with the team’s brief,’ interrupted Gardiner. ‘Now let’s be quite clear about this, you seem to be saying that it would be difficult to identify the presence of any extraneous agent as being the cause of any illness?’

‘I think it would be fair to say that,’ agreed Crowe. ‘That, of course, was also part of the… brief… which, naturally, you already know.’

‘Well, thank God for small mercies,’ sighed Gardiner. ‘That at least gives us some leeway. Who knows about this at Porton?’ he asked.

‘No one,’ said Crowe. ‘I told the team to say nothing: I would sort it out.’

‘Good,’ said Gardiner. ‘At least that gives us a chance of containing this incident.’

All eyes turned to him, something he interpreted as accusation on the part of the others. ‘Well, if no one is going to die and there are no specific symptoms to point people in the direction of the Beta Team and indeed to us, it opens up an alternative course of action, don’t you think?’ he snorted.

‘You seem to be suggesting that we deal with this situation by saying and doing nothing, Sir James,’ said one of the others who until this point had been silent. He was Rupert Everley, millionaire property developer and would-be politician who had so far, failed three times as a Tory candidate at elections. A good-looking man in his early forties with boyish features and a mop of swept-back fair hair, Everley seemed, by general agreement, to take more care with his appearance than with what came out of his mouth. Not regarded as an intellectual giant by the others, they were familiar with a range of facial expressions he was prone to adopt, suggesting among themselves that he had practised them in front of a mirror. At the moment he was doing ‘earnest concern’.

‘I take it you have a better idea, Everley?’ said Gardiner. ‘Perhaps you would care to make a public announcement telling everyone that our troops have been inoculated with a contaminated vaccine? Tell them that we haven’t a clue what it’s going to do to them? Then perhaps you can go on to tell them just what it was contaminated with and where it came from and let’s see what the press make of that?’

There was silence in the room. Everley looked crestfallen.

Gardiner stayed on the offensive. ‘Have you even considered the effects of telling thousands of our troops that they have been poisoned on the very eve of their going to war? Christ almighty, man, we might just as well send a congratulations telegram to Baghdad and call the whole bloody thing off.’

‘You’re right, James,’ said Warner. ‘We need cool heads at a time like this.’

‘I suppose when you put it that way,’ conceded Everley.

‘There’s no other way to put it,’ said Gardiner. ‘We must keep this accident a secret.’ Gardiner made a point of establishing eye contact with each man in turn. 'And we are all going to sit here and decide just how we’re going to achieve that.’

‘Shit, I’m not sure I want to fight alongside anyone who risks that much on a pair of twos, ‘ said Air Force Corporal Neil Anderson, slapping down three of a kind and reaching across the table with both hands to bring in his winnings. ‘Shows a distinct lack of judgement, if you ask me.’

‘Don’t kid yourself, pal, I saw you waver there for a moment,’ retorted fellow corporal, Colin Childs. ‘I bloody near had you, sunshine, and just remember: who dares wins.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ laughed Anderson.

‘Cut the crap and deal.’

Anderson chuckled as he boxed the cards and started dealing. ‘I can feel the force,’ he joked. ‘Lady Luck is not just with me, she’s positively taking her knickers down for me.’

Childs was about to say something in reply when the sudden wail of sirens filled the air and both men rushed from the table to their action stations.

‘Scud coming in!’ yelled Anderson, pointing at the distant night sky as they ran across the dark compound.

‘Where the fuck are the Patriots?’ complained Childs, trying to look around him and run at the same time.

As if in response, the whoosh of an American Patriot interceptor missile, being launched from the perimeter battery, brought a cheer to their lips.

‘Go get that fucker, baby,’ yelled Anderson.

‘Send it right back up Saddam’s arse,’ added Childs.

There were more cheers and from all over the base when the Patriot made contact with the incoming scud, causing it to spiral out of the sky about four hundred metres from the perimeter fence. In the ensuing silence before ground impact, Anderson and Childs threw themselves flat and covered their ears against the anticipated explosion but none came. Instead, the eerie silence continued until the two men became fidgety. Suddenly, bedlam broke out as the NAIADS (chemical and biological weapon detectors) started wailing all over the base like demented banshees.

‘It didn’t explode because it’s a fucking CB attack!’ yelled Anderson as he scrambled to his feet and led the way as both men sprinted over to the clothing store to pull on their protective suits.

‘Jesus fuck, this is really it,’ murmured Anderson, hopping on one leg as he struggled into his suit.

‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ murmured Childs over and over again as he too struggled with the cumbersome fastenings, his fingers all thumbs as fear knotted his stomach and sent adrenalin coursing through his veins. Both men had done this a hundred times before in training but this was for real and Christ, it felt completely different.

For twenty minutes, both men sat quietly with their thoughts. Bravado and banter were things of the past, not that it was ever possible while wearing respirators. They wondered about their position. There was no way of knowing what was in the air and maybe just on the other side of their visors. Nerve gas? A virus? The plague bacillus? All three perhaps?

Anderson remembered training lectures where the Russian tactic of formulating a ‘mixed load’ for CB weapons had been highlighted as a possible way of countering protective measures against such weapons. He distinctly remembered the instructor pointing out at one stage that Russia and Saddam were big pals. Subconsciously he rubbed the area on his upper arm where he had been vaccinated.

He could see that Childs had his eyes closed. He hadn’t known the man to pray before but conceded that now was as good a time as any to start. His thoughts turned to thinking about his wife Jenny and their two children. Claire, the youngest, had been born by Caesarean section a month premature just the week before he’d left for the Gulf. She had seemed so small and vulnerable, a bit like the way he felt at the moment.

The all-clear sounded and broke the eerie silence. Both men felt weak as adrenalin dissipated and feelings of relief took its place. They got to their feet slowly and started stripping off their protective suits.

‘Must have been a false alarm,’ said Anderson.

‘Tell my bowels that,’ said Childs. ‘Christ, I hate the idea of not being able to see what I’m fighting.’

As they set out to return their protective gear to the storage pods they caught sight of a figure, still wearing his, running across the compound towards them. He was shouting something and waving his arms but his visor was muffling the sound. As he drew nearer, Anderson recognised the man as Gus Maclean, a sergeant and one of the five-man team who operated and maintained the chemical and biological detectors.

‘Put them back on!’ yelled Maclean. ‘It’s not over. There’s gas all over the fucking place. I’m going to find the stupid fucker who sounded the all-clear and remove his balls.’

Panic returned in an instant and Anderson and Childs struggled back into their suits. A few minutes later the NAIADS sounded again. The base remained in NBC Condition Black (under chemical and biological attack) for the next eight hours.

It was two days before the men saw Gus Maclean again. He was in the canteen, sitting on his own, toying with a meal that he was obviously finding less than appetising.

‘So what gives?’ asked Anderson, sitting down beside him.

Maclean shrugged and glanced from side to side before saying, ‘The official line is that there was no confirmed chemical attack on the base.’ He stressed the word ‘confirmed’.

‘I though you guys confirmed it,’ said Childs.

‘Every detector on the fucking base was screaming gas attack but the brass are pretending it never happened. What’s the point of having the team here if they’re not going to believe us? Who else can “confirm” it if we can’t for Christ's sake?’

‘Fuck me,’ said Childs. ‘You couldn’t make it up, could you?’

‘My granddad used to tell me about the fuck-ups the army made in his war,’ said Anderson. ‘Lions led by donkeys and all that. Some things never change.’

‘And what about the all-clear sounding?’ asked Childs.

‘That’s something else again,’ said Maclean. ‘Nobody’s putting up their hands for that one. Hundreds of our guys were exposed to nerve gas unnecessarily and no one’s to blame. It just never happened.’

‘Bad enough fighting the Iraqis without our own mob having a go at us as well,’ said Childs.

Surgeon Commander James Morton watched as the helicopter touched down and sent sand flying up in all directions. As its side door slid open, three field medics ran forward in a crouching run to assist in evacuating the patient from the aircraft. The injured man was a vehicle technician who had been working on an armoured personnel carrier and whose arm had been caught in the half-track when a fellow technician, unaware of his presence, had started up the vehicle and attempted to move off. The man’s right arm had been all but severed. Plans to fly him to a proper hospital had had to be abandoned when blood loss became critical. Wadi Al Batin was the nearest place with the sort of medical facilities that might be able to cope with the situation.

Morton looked at the face of the unconscious man and listened as one of the field medics reeled off a series of statistics as the patient was transferred from stretcher to table. He couldn’t be much more than twenty years old. He should have had all of his life before him. ‘Blood?’ he asked.

‘On its way,’ replied one of the masked nurses.

‘Let’s have a look,’ murmured Morton as he gingerly peeled away the wad of dressings from the patient’s arm. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Jackson, sir. Private Robert Jackson.’

‘Well, Private Jackson,’ said Morton. ‘I’m afraid your soldiering days are over, old son, and I hope to God you’re left-handed because this is going to have to come off. Make ready for amputation everyone, will you? How’s he doing?’

The question was directed at the anaesthetist, a young RAMC lieutenant who had taken up station at the head of the patient and was taking readings from the monitors he’d been attaching to Jackson.

‘Not good. He’s very weak.’

‘As I see it, we don’t have much of an option,’ said Morton.

‘You don’t think it’s worthwhile just trying to stabilise him and then transferring him to somewhere with a proper ICU?’ asked the lieutenant.

Morton shook his head slowly. ‘Much as I’d like to, I don’t think I could get him stable with that mess still attached to his shoulder. Apart from that, the chance of infection in this hell-hole increases with every minute that passes. His only hope is a quick amputation, so let’s get on with it. Where the hell’s that blood?’

‘It’s here,’ replied one of the masked figures as a vehicle pulled up outside the field hospital.

Twenty minutes later Morton paused and stood back to allow the severed limb to be wrapped in gauze and removed from the table. Once again he asked for an update on the patient’s condition as he drew together the two flaps of skin he’d deliberately left attached in order to form a neat stump and started suturing them.

‘Still iffy,’ replied the anaesthetist.

‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Morton’s hand jumped as the air raid warnings went off and he cursed as the needle made an inch long scratch on the patient’s skin.

‘That’s all we need,’ said the anaesthetist. ‘An air raid.’

‘Scud attack,’ said someone else. ‘Listen.’

In the ensuing pause they listened to the sound of the incoming missile.

‘I think it’s going over,’ said an optimist only a fraction before there was a loud popping sound, which made people look questioningly at each other over their masks.

‘Oh Christ, no explosion means it’s an airburst,’ said the reformed optimist.

Morton continued sewing his neat line of stitches, as around him, people shuffled to their feet and looked at each other uneasily over their masks. Then the NAIADS went off and loudspeakers started proclaiming: ‘NBC Condition Black. This is not a drill!’ It kept repeating, ‘This is not a drill.’

‘Okay folks, you know what to do,’ said Morton, still concentrating on his work and not looking up. ‘Everyone into their suits please.’

No one argued but the anaesthetist said, ‘I can’t just walk away. He’ll die.’

‘You might die if you don’t,’ said Morton.

‘I’ll go when you do.’

Morton smiled under his mask. ‘Fair enough.’ The procedure was all over in seven minutes but it seemed more like seven hours to the two men. ‘Right, you go first and get into your suit,’ said Morton, stripping off his gloves. ‘Bring up a respirator for him as well, and then you can take over while I get into mine. We’ll keep him on the gas for the time being.’

The anaesthetist needed no second bidding.

Three hours later and despite the best efforts of Morton and the team, Vehicle Technician Robert Jackson died without ever coming round. Some two hours after that Morton and the anaesthetist started to feel ill. Both men suffered blinding headaches, stomach cramps and prolonged episodes of vomiting throughout the following night.

‘Do they know what it was yet?’ gasped Morton as he found respite for a few minutes after yet another round of vomiting. He asked the question of one of his colleagues who had just wiped the sweat from his face as the sun came up over the base.

‘Unidentified chemical attack is all I could get out of the commandant’s office,’ replied the young doctor.

‘How about the monitoring team?’

‘The technicians are saying it was Sarin but that hasn’t been confirmed.’

‘What does the manual say about that?’

‘The only information I could come up with comes from studies they did on volunteers a while back. According to that, you seem to be exhibiting the effects of low level exposure to the gas.’

‘Christ, I wouldn’t like to find out what high level exposure feels like,’ said Morton. ‘Do we know what the long term effects are?’ he asked.

‘There’s nothing at all in the manual. The official view seems to be that it’s best not to breathe it in the first place.’

‘Who would have thought?’ said Morton before another bout of stomach cramps made him curl up and cry out in pain. When the pain subsided he lay back on the pillow and took a moment or two to steady himself before asking, ‘Surely they must have done follow-up studies on the volunteers?’

‘I think they did.’

‘Well?’

‘You’re not going to believe this; the results are classified.’

‘Oh, I believe it,’ exclaimed Morton. ‘The words piss-up and brewery spring to mind.’

Both Morton and his colleague had recovered sufficiently by the following day to attend an official briefing on the scud incident. Chemical attack had not been confirmed, the assembly was informed. Contrary to rumour, the cloud in the sky witnessed by many after the missile had disintegrated had been aviation fuel catching fire. Personnel should pay no heed to rumour. There was absolutely no cause for alarm.

Morton looked at the anaesthetist and the colleague who had looked after him as somewhere behind them a Scottish technician murmured sourly, ‘Aye, right.’