The Gulf Conspiracy

FIFTEEN

At eight in the evening the car park at the Service area on the M1 was relatively quiet, as Donald Crowe had hoped it might be. He had no trouble in parking his Mercedes estate car well away from other vehicles and tested the doors to make sure they were locked after using the remote. Satisfied, he walked over to the Travel Lodge and told the receptionist that he had booked small conference facilities for 8.15pm.

‘Yes sir, you’re in the Salisbury Room, through there and to the left.’

Crowe followed her directions and found the Salisbury Room where a lectern placed outside frosted glass doors held a peg-board sign announcing the room as being reserved for Mercury Graphics, the name Crowe had booked under. He entered and put his briefcase down on the table before walking slowly around the room. It was designed to seat twelve around a central table and had a slide projector at one end along with several computer points. ‘Courtesy’ notepads had been placed at each position along with complimentary pens carrying the logo of the hotel. It was ideal, thought Crowe. There were only going to be six of them, just another bunch of anonymous reps discussing sales and marketing.

Crowe moved over to the window and opened the vertical blinds slightly. He was in time to see a Toyota Land Cruiser pull up beside his car and Cecil Mowbray get out. He was accompanied by four other men. They all wore dark suits and carried briefcases as requested. Crowe checked his watch. They were right on time.

‘So this is what it feels like to be a pedlar on the road,’ said Cecil Mowbray as he entered ahead of the others.

‘As long as that’s what it looks like,’ said Crowe.

‘You worry too much,’ said Mowbray. He introduced the four others to Crowe as, Mr Brown, Mr Black, Mr Grey and Mr Green. ‘All ex-Special Forces and veterans of the Dark Continent.’

Crowe took this to mean mercenaries. He nodded to the men and opened his briefcase to take out four envelopes and hand one to each. ‘Half your fee, as agreed, gentlemen,’ he said. Next he brought out a map and spread it on the table while the men checked the contents of the envelopes. When they’d finished, Crowe said, ‘Next Tuesday you are going to take part in a military exercise. You will play the part of terrorists; you’ll be up against soldiers of the Territorial Army who will do their best to stop you achieving your objective.’

‘A toughie then,’ said one of the men to the amusement of the others. Mowbray permitted himself a small smile too. Crowe remained impassive. ‘This is the area of operations,’ he continued. ‘Your target is here, deep in this forest. It’s an aqueduct. The soldiers will be aware that three dangerous terrorists are at large in the area and will be charged with hunting you down while others guard the aqueduct.’

‘The three terrorists will allow themselves to be captured at times throughout the day which I will specify.

The men looked at each other in puzzlement.

‘Normal security at the site has been suspended for the duration of the exercise,’ said Crowe. ‘When you leave here I will give you four containers. The terrorists will carry with them on the day of the exercise — the ones with the blue marking. There will however, be one other container with red markings.’

‘What do we do with that?’ asked Mr Green.

‘I’m coming to that,’ said Crowe.

When he’d finished, one of the men said, ‘Clever.’

‘What happens to us after we get captured?’

‘The exercise will end when the third man is captured. You will then be released.’

‘And no one will ever know,’ said Mr Brown.

‘Nothing ever happened,’ said another. ‘A triumph for the Territorials.’

‘Quite,’ said Crowe. ‘He turned back to the map and said, ‘I suggest you leave your vehicle here and proceed on foot. The rest I leave up to you. I’m told you are the best.’ He picked up an internal phone and said, ‘I think we’ll have our coffee now if you please.’

Fifteen minutes later all six men left the room and meandered out past Reception talking loudly about key accounts and computer graphics. They walked slowly over the car park to the cars where an insulated plastic container of the sort used for keeping beer cool on fishing trips was transferred from Crowe’s car to the back of the Land Cruiser. Crowe and Mowbray said goodbye to the men before driving off together in Crowe’s car.

‘Well, that all went very smoothly,’ said Mowbray as they exited the car park to join the motorway. ‘I take it you used Everley’s money to pay them?’

Crowe agreed that he had.

‘Everley called me today,’ said Mowbray. ‘He’s getting suspicious.’

‘What about?’

‘He was complaining that the local Tories are not taking him seriously enough when he tells them that there’s going to be a radical change in public opinion coming soon. He thinks they’re not doing enough to benefit from it.’

‘Well spotted, Rupert,’ said Crowe under his breath.

‘What are the arrangements for pay day?’ asked Mowbray.

‘Half the money will be paid into our Zurich accounts when the papers start carrying stories of a strange illness, the other half when it reaches epidemic proportions and general disaffection breaks out.’

‘What happens when Rupert finds out he can’t capitalise on it?’

‘He’ll have to come to terms with it,’ said Mowbray. ‘He’s no stranger to failure and he can hardly go and complain to the authorities.’

‘Suppose not,’ agreed Crowe.

Mowbray’s mobile phone rang and he answered it. Crowe heard immediately that something was wrong from the stream of anxious questions that Mowbray started asking. ‘What’s up?’ he asked as Mowbray ended the call.

‘Pull the car over,’ said Mowbray.

‘We’re on a motorway.’

‘Just stop the car.’

Crowe pulled off on to the hard shoulder and turned off the engine. ‘What is it, for God’s sake?’

‘Two of my agents are being held by the Leicester Police. I sent them to deal with Sebring’s wife. I didn’t want her shooting her mouth off to the papers. Apparently Dunbar was with her when they arrived. He outwitted them and called the police.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Crowe. ‘What the hell do we do now?’

‘Keep our nerve,’ said Mowbray. ‘I think we can still brass this out but we must keep our nerve. ‘Is there anything left in your lab to link you with the agent?’

‘No, I went to great pains to clear everything out.’

‘So they can’t prove anything,’ said Mowbray. ‘Work on the agent still stopped back in ’91. The accident with the vaccine had to be kept a secret for the sake of the government and national security. If we stick to that line they can’t touch us. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said Crowe.

‘But be warned… they’re going to try.’

Crowe glanced in his rear-view mirror and said, ‘Shit! It’s the police.’

The traffic patrol car pulled off the carriageway and stopped in front of Crowe’s car at an angle. Two officers got out and Crowe wound down his window.

‘Problems, gentlemen? asked the police driver.’

‘Not really, Officer,’ replied Crowe as pleasantly as his nerves would permit. ‘I took a spot of cramp in my right leg. I thought it safest to stop and stretch for a couple of minutes. I was just about to drive off again when you chaps appeared.’

‘Then we won’t detain you any longer, sir,’ said the officer with a smile.

Steven stayed the night with Jane in the Kensington flat that Rose Roberts had arranged as safe accommodation. Neither of them slept much — Jane because she was struggling to come to terms with all that had happened and Steven because he wasn’t at all sure who he could trust any more. Every sound in the night had his eyes moving to the gun that hung in its holster on the end of the bed. Never had the dawn of a new day been more welcome.

Breakfast was a silent affair punctuated with smiles of encouragement, with both of them opting for just juice and coffee although the cupboards in the kitchen and the fridge had been well stocked with just about anything they might have fancied.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ said Steven as he prepared to leave for the Home Office, holding Jane close and hugging her.

‘Take as long as you like,’ said Jane with a brave attempt at a smile. ‘Just sort this mess out.’

‘Don’t ans-’

Jane held up her hands and said, ‘I think I’ve got the picture. Believe me, I have got the picture.’

Macmillan grimaced as Steven pushed the two IDs across his desk. ‘God, this is hard to believe,’ he said.

Steven followed up with the two automatic pistols he’d taken from the men at Jane’s house. He’d put them in plastic bags. ‘I’d put money on one of them having been used on Michael D’Arcy,’ he said.

‘I’m going to have to take this right to the top,’ said Macmillan. ‘I can’t believe any of this had government sanction. These two must have been pursuing their own agenda.’

‘The one I spoke to behaved as though he were doing his job,’ said Steven. ‘He had the confidence that comes with the ID.’

‘Which could mean that the problem might be further up the chain,’ said Macmillan. ‘Not a happy thought.’

‘It’s all beginning to sound a bit like the situation at Porton,’ said Steven. ‘Everyone’s assuming that everything has official backing.’

‘I’ve been making some progress there,’ said Macmillan. ‘My source has come up with a name behind the Beta Team budget. He’s Sir James Gardiner.’

Steven shook his head and said, ‘Doesn’t mean much I’m afraid.’

‘Right-wing Tory, had his day in the Eighties, very influential. It turns out it was he who resurrected the budget for the experimental team at Porton Down and also instituted the accounting measures necessary to keep it out of the way of prying eyes.’

‘And recruited for it?’ asked Steven.

‘My man didn’t know that but presumably Gardiner had some purpose in mind when he set about putting the funds in place. Whether he had official sanction for it or not is a bit more problematical. It seems that Gardiner was involved in setting up a right-wing think-tank at the time — something he did with a man named Warner, Colonel Peter Warner, and a few others we don’t know too much about although rumour had it that Rupert Everley, the property magnate, was supplying the financial wherewithal for the group.’

‘Then they weren’t short of a bob or two,’ said Steven. ‘What did they get up to exactly?’

‘Apart from feeding rumour and innuendo about Labour politicians to the media and generally underpinning right-wing causes, we don’t know too much about them,’ said Macmillan. ‘There were suggestions about links with the National Front but then there always are about groups like that. There was nothing ever concrete. It could even have been the other side’s rumour machine having a go at them.’

‘If Donald Crowe was the leader of the Beta team at Porton maybe he was one of them?’ said Steven.

‘You may well be right,’ said Macmillan.

‘George Sebring and Michael D’Arcy were definitely under the impression that they were working for the government during their time there,’ said Steven. ‘Maybe these two…’ Steven reached over for the two ID cards to examine the names. ‘Are under a similar sort of delusion?’

Macmillan thought for a moment before saying, ‘I’m going to the Home Secretary with this. We can’t risk aiming any lower.’

‘Let’s hope he’s not a pal of Gardiner’s too,’ said Steven.

‘Wrong party,’ said Macmillan.

‘Bit hard to tell them apart these days,’ said Steven.

‘But as a priority, I’m going to have him ask the Leicester Police to hold on to these two until we at least know where their instructions came from?’

‘Good,’ said Steven.

Macmillan clicked on the intercom and asked Rose Roberts to set up an urgent call to the Home Secretary ‘What will you do in the meantime?’ he asked Steven.

‘Did Rose have any success coming up with a molecular biologist?’

‘Macmillan opened his desk drawer and took out a small card, which he slid across to Steven, saying, ‘Professor William Rees of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge is expecting your call. He’ll actually be in London today and tomorrow at the MRC’s head office in Park Crescent. He said that it would be all right if you wanted to speak to him there.’

‘That might save some time,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll call him and see if I can fix something up for this afternoon.’

‘Why don’t we meet back here later and exchange notes?’ asked Macmillan.

Steven agreed. They settled on 6pm.

Steven set up a meeting with Rees for 2pm that afternoon and then went back to the safe house to check on Jane, using a bus and two taxis in a roundabout route just in case he was being followed. He didn’t think he would be but where Jane’s safety was concerned he didn’t intend taking any chances. He told her about Macmillan going to the Home Secretary.

‘I still can’t believe this is happening,’ said Jane. ‘It’s as if everything I’ve ever believed in has been swept away and I’m floating around in a sea of suspicion.’

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Steven, gathering her in his arms. ‘I know what you’re going through.’

‘Do you?’ challenged Jane. ‘Do you really?’

‘Yes,’ said Steven. ‘I felt exactly the same way the first time I crossed swords with the establishment and realised what they were capable of. The world suddenly stopped being black and white. The clear distinctions I’d imagined existed between right and wrong, good and evil became blurred and everything was etched in shades of grey.’

‘So how do you cope?’

‘I support the lighter shades,’ smiled Steven. ‘I try to do what I believe to be right — that’s a much more difficult thing to do than you might imagine. The right thing to do is not always the wise thing, the safe thing or even the legal thing. It can be a hard road to travel.’

‘If you say so,’ said Jane. ‘What happens now?’

‘I’m going to talk to a scientist this afternoon about how we can identify the agent your husband and Michael D’Arcy were working on and then I’m seeing Macmillan again at the Home Office to find out what’s happening.’

‘In the meantime I will thrill to the magic of daytime television,’ said Jane.

‘It won’t be for long,’ said Steven.

‘Better not be,’ said Jane. ‘If it comes to a choice between a bullet in the head and watching Countdown, it’s going to be a pretty close-run thing.’

Steven smiled and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’d best be off.’

Steven was shown into one of the committee rooms at the headquarters of the Medical Research Council and offered coffee while he waited. He declined and took a seat at the long, polished wooden table, surrounded by portraits of past secretaries of the council looking down at him from the walls. Not the happiest looking bunch of people, he concluded in the silence before turning his attention to an assortment of periodicals lined up on a shelf next to the period fireplace. Predictably, they were either scientific or medical. He flicked through the pages of Nature and Molecular Microbiology before the door opened and a short, stocky man with wiry dark hair and wearing a tweed jacket entered. His first utterance betrayed the fact he was Welsh.

‘I’m Rees, sorry I’m late.’

‘Not at all, I’m grateful to you for seeing me at such short notice,’ said Steven.

‘I never put off till tomorrow what I can do today,’ said Rees. ‘Unlike some of them round here who make a career out of “asking for clarification” and “deferring decisions” in the hope that the question will go away if they sit on the bloody fence for long enough.’

‘Sounds like you’ve been asking for funds,’ said Steven with a smile.

‘For a new unit,’ said Rees.

‘A lot then,’ said Steven.

‘The Americans will be conducting field trials by the time we lay the foundation stone,’ said Rees. ‘Some things never change.’ He shook his head and looked down at the floor for a moment before appearing to remember why he was there and breaking into a smile, saying, ‘I’m sorry; excuse my rudeness. What can I do for you?’

Steven explained the problem.

‘Well, we certainly don’t need to sequence the entire genomes of these things,’ said Rees.

‘That’s a relief,’ said Steven.

‘The fact that you suspect that the foreign genes might come from the HIV virus means that we can construct probes and check for any homology in the host DNA.’

‘Is that a big job?’ asked Steven.

‘It’s no walk in the park,’ replied Rees, ‘but nothing like sequencing the entire chromosome would be: that’s a non-starter. You say you have three dozen of these cultures?’

‘All normal body commensals according to the man who isolated them,’ said Steven. ‘No pathogens.’

‘This man’s a doctor?’ asked Rees.

‘A medical technician,’ said Steven.

‘Maybe I could have a look at the list?’ said Rees. ‘It would be nice to narrow the field down if at all possible.’

‘I thought you might want to see it,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve brought it with me on disk.’

‘Excellent,’ said Rees. ‘I have my laptop here. Let’s have a look, shall we?’

Rees set up his computer and Steven handed him the disk that Gus Maclean had given him.

Rees brought out a pair of half-moon spectacles from his jacket pocket and perched them on the end of his nose but still had to tilt his head back slightly to be able read down the list of bacteria that Maclean had isolated from himself.

‘Certainly no pathogens,’ he murmured. ‘But…’

‘You’ve found something?’ asked Steven, feeling excited at the prospect.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Rees. ‘It’s certainly a bit unusual… to find three different isolates in any one individual…’

‘Sorry, I’m not with you,’ said Steven, looking over Rees’s shoulder.

‘These Mycoplasmas,’ said Rees, pointing to the list with his finger. ‘Funny buggers… They inhabit the no-man’s land between bacteria and viruses. They don’t have a proper bacterial cell wall so they’re fragile little beasties — hard to grow in the lab — but you can still treat them with antibiotics if need be, unlike viruses.’

‘Then they can cause disease?’ asked Steven.

‘Lots of strains cause problems in animals but only one variant causes disease in man, Mycoplasma pneumoniae. It can give you a pretty nasty pneumonia but it’s not one of the ones listed here,’ said Rees. ‘There’s been a suggestion around for some time that they contribute in some way to rheumatoid arthritis but that’s controversial: the jury’s still out on that. For the main part, they’re regarded as pretty harmless — just bugs you find you find in the upper respiratory track of normal healthy human beings. The thing that caught my eye though is that we’ve got three different strains here in the one patient. That’s something I wouldn’t have expected.’

‘A starting point?’ suggested Steven.

‘Could well be,’ said Rees. ‘If you can get these cultures to me I think we’ll take a closer look at these three beasties before we do anything else. We’ll do some standard tests and then extract DNA from them and check them out with a series of HIV probes.’

‘I’ll get on to that right away,’ said Steven.

‘I’ll be back in Cambridge the day after tomorrow,’ said Rees.

The first thing Steven did when he left the offices of the MRC was walk up to nearby Regents Park and phone Gus Maclean. After initial enquiries about his health when he learned that Maclean was back at work, he said, ‘Glad to hear it. I need your culture collection.’

‘Needles in haystacks time?’ said Maclean.

‘Might not be as bad as we thought,’ said Steven. ‘MRC Cambridge are going to take a look at things.’

‘Well they don’t come any more high-powered than that,’ said Maclean. How should we do this?’

‘I’ll have a courier pick up the collection at the hospital if that’s okay with you?’ said Steven.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ said Maclean. ‘You will let me know if they find anything, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ said Steven, realising almost immediately as he put the phone back in his pocket that he had replied too glibly. Telling Maclean might not be an option if Rees should come up trumps. In fact, it was difficult to see how much of the truth could ever be allowed to come out and how much would be covered up “in the public interest” as the much-abused phrase went. Even he — a confirmed advocate of openness in Government — could see that telling the nation that their soldiers in the Gulf War had been given a vaccine contaminated with a biological weapon might not be the brightest thing to do on the eve of sending them off again. Apart from the effect on morale that this kind of revelation would have, lawyers all over the country would be bound to go into a feeding frenzy, intent on bankrupting the public purse — pro bono publico — and doing themselves no harm at all while they were at it.

The other side of the coin was that he did not want to see the people who had genuinely suffered because of the mistake — men like Gus Maclean — continue to be ignored in their rightful claims for a fair deal. As he continued to walk in the park, wondering just how the many who had suffered could be compensated in any realistic way, Steven remembered what Michael D’Arcy had said about the agent he and the others had been commissioned to design. It had to be non-lethal but debilitating, undetectable and… curable. This third and last criterion was something he hadn’t given much thought to but now it was interesting.

If Rees were to succeed in finding the agent in Gus Maclean’s collection then Gus’s recurrent health problems bore testament to D’Arcy’s first condition having been met. He hadn’t been killed, he had been debilitated. The fact that the bug hadn’t shown up in any conventional microbiological screen satisfied the second criterion of being undetectable, but what about the third? He wondered. Curable? This intriguing thought stayed with him as he checked his watch and set out for the Home Office. Was it possible that so-called Gulf War Syndrome was curable?’