The Secret

SIXTEEN

Steven was glad that the demands of London traffic stopped him dwelling on what he’d discovered until he reached the sanctuary of the underground car park at Marlborough Court. By this time his anger and frustration had subsided enough to enable him to sit for a couple of minutes with only the contracting metal sounds from the Porsche for company until he had recovered his powers of cold, calm appraisal.

The fact that the blood samples had been sent to Porton would mean a sudden end to that line of inquiry. Porton was a top secret establishment: there would be no point in asking even if he hadn’t already been warned off. But the mere fact they’d been sent there said a lot. Blood samples for diagnostic tests would not be sent to Porton unless there was a very good reason, a reason that implied a connection with high risk pathogens or biological weaponry. Polio was a high risk virus but Simone and her team were used to seeing and dealing with it. There would have been no need for Porton to become involved — but they were.

Dr Neville Henson had been present at the meeting in Prague as had… the name wouldn’t come to him. Steven got out, locked the car and took the lift upstairs. He switched on the kettle and looked through his paperwork for the list of participants at Prague. Dr Mel Reznik from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia was the name he was looking for. Two scientists from labs dedicated to the study of the world’s killer diseases and how they might be developed or altered for military purposes. The CIA’s admission of guilt over using fake aid teams in order to gain intelligence clearly wasn’t the full story.

Steven had the feeling he was opening Pandora’s box. When he thought about it, the confession could even have been a clever ploy to stop further investigation. Médecins Sans Frontières, the World Health Organisation and even the UK and French governments all saw the sense in keeping what had happened under wraps. They thought they were defending the polio eradication initiative from prurient press interest and scandal by keeping quiet about what the CIA had done when, in fact, they were unwittingly helping to cover something up. Something else was going on in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, something that had got Simone Ricard, Aline Lagarde and maybe even Tom North killed.

The murder of Tom North was a difficult one. A terrorist assassination couldn’t be ruled out entirely if, as Ricksen had said, North had been on their at-risk register, although the torture aspect made it more problematical and the manner of his killing was, as the Special Branch man had said, out of character. Explosives rather than knives were usually the choice of Islamic terrorists when it came to achieving their ends. But if North’s death was linked to what Simone had stumbled across, it suggested that North might not have been part of it, whereas his senior post-doc's faulty recollection of when blood samples from Simone had been received and what had happened to them put him very firmly on the naughty step. Steven needed to know a lot more about Daniel Hausman.

He turned on his laptop and found an encrypted message that had come in from Jean Roberts. She had obtained contact details for Bill Andrews, the charity money administrator who had been with Simone in the gallery at the Strahov monastery library. He and the organisation he worked for were based in Kansas City — a long way from Wall Street, thought Steven. Mind you, so was charity. He checked his watch: the time difference suggested he give it another hour or so.

Jean had also included her report on the participants at the Prague meeting. Her conclusions were that everyone was who they said they were but some had ‘more interesting’ backgrounds than others. She had listed those on a separate sheet: Dan Hausman was among them. Hausman had obtained his PhD from UCLA — the University of California at Los Angeles — before being recruited by the military and posted to Fort Detrick, the US equivalent of Porton Down. His PhD thesis had been on virus — cell interactions. As expected, there was no indication of what he had worked on at Fort Detrick. He had then left the military and sponsorship by the US pharmaceutical company Reeman Losch had enabled his secondment as a post-doctoral fellow to Tom North’s lab in London. Jean had added a note saying that Reeman Losch were not big players in pharmaceuticals — they weren’t quoted on the New York stock exchange — and that their special interest was in anti-viral compounds. It wasn’t clear where their income came from as only one of their products — an anti-retroviral agent — had come on the market. Since they were a private company, there was no way of scrutinising their accounts. Try US Intelligence, thought Steven. To his way of thinking it seemed probable that Reeman Losch was a front for them, given Hausman’s time at Fort Detrick and then his sponsored fellowship in the North lab.

The picture was building. Reznik from CDC Atlanta, Henson from Porton Down and Hausman from Fort Detrick all had an interest in the Prague meeting and what was going on in the borders region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bill Andrews also appeared on Jean’s list of ‘interesting’ people. A graduate of Harvard Business School, he had worked briefly for an investment bank in New York before being recruited into the CIA. His career remained a blank until he surfaced again, this time working in financial management for the charity Children First before moving to his current position with the body that oversaw all American charitable contributions to health in the third world.

‘Well, well, well,’ murmured Steven. ‘Enter the CIA.’ He sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. It was odds on that Andrews still worked for the CIA, and his connection with Children First could hardly be coincidence. It was almost certainly he who set up the false aid teams under the umbrella of Children First. Now, as financial controller of all charitable monies collected in the US for health projects in far-away places, he was in a position to direct funds to wherever the CIA wanted them to go. In fact, the CIA could actually fund their own projects under the guise of charitable contributions.

Jean had added a codicil pointing out that another participant at the Prague meeting, Dr Ranjit Khan, had been a classmate of Andrews at Harvard: they had shared an apartment. Khan had returned to his native Pakistan after graduating and was believed to be working for Pakistani intelligence — currently a somewhat fractured body thought to be at odds with the present government. It was possible that he had been responsible for supplying the Pakistani element in the fake aid teams.

Steven stared at this last piece of information with the feeling that he was missing something. He prided himself on not missing much. Paying attention to detail was an important part of his job. Even if it didn’t appear significant at the time, a small detail could later prove to be the missing part in a puzzle — or even save a life. He remembered what it was. When he’d asked Bill Andrews about who had been present in the gallery when Simone had fallen, Andrews had mentioned Khan, saying, ‘The Pakistani doctor who was with us — Dr Khan, I think his name was,’ as if he hadn’t known him.

Steven got up and walked over to the window to look out at the rain. Andrews and Khan both worked for intelligence services, had probably collaborated over the setting up of fake aid teams and had been with Simone at the time of her fall. They then came down from the gallery and put on a Greek tragedy for the benefit of onlookers with much weeping and wailing. They didn’t know it yet but by Christ they were going to pay for it… in spades.

Steven turned his thoughts to Aline Lagarde and who might have killed her. Andrews? Khan? Khan hadn’t been at Simone’s funeral: he’d had to return to Pakistan, according to… Andrews. Was that the truth or could Andrews have been covering for Aline’s killer? Steven had been planning to phone Andrews to quiz him about who had lost a contact lens in the gallery on that fateful day but things had moved on apace. He was now almost sure that Andrews and Khan had cooperated in Simone’s murder. He called Inspector Philippe Le Grice in Paris instead.

After an exchange of pleasantries Steven came directly to the point. ‘I have a favour to ask.’

‘In connection with the death of Aline Lagarde?’

‘Yes. I think it possible she was murdered by a Pakistani intelligence officer named Dr Ranjit Khan. His cover is that of an aid worker in the villages of the Pakistani/Afghan border. The official story is that he attended the conference in Prague where Simone Ricard died and then returned directly to Pakistan. I think he may have come to France. Is there any way you can check immigration records for the relevant dates?’

‘Normally, yes,’ replied Le Grice, sounding unsure. ‘But given the involvement of our intelligence services in the investigation into Dr Lagarde’s death, they might wonder why I want to know.’

‘I take your point,’ said Steven. ‘But there’s a good chance they know nothing about Khan. I don’t think even they know the whole story.’

‘But they came up with the evidence against Dr Lagarde.’

‘I think they were involved in trashing her reputation but I don’t think they knew anything about the killing. They were acting under orders to keep a CIA operation in Afghanistan out of the limelight.’

‘I thought you guys were the Americans’ poodles,’ said Le Grice.

‘I’ve got a sore paw.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Steven felt guilty about asking Le Grice to do something that might rebound badly on the detective if he were wrong and French intelligence did know more than he thought they did. The phone interrupted his train of thought. It was Jean Roberts.

‘Hello, Steven. John was wondering if you had any more thoughts to offer on the ME problem? I think the Home Secretary has been inquiring.’

Steven’s feelings of guilt shifted direction. He hadn’t actually got round to re-examining the file Jean had given him in detail. He should have remembered that although he and John knew that Langley’s death had been an unplanned accident, that was not the official line and the police had probably been encouraged to think differently.

‘I haven’t reached any conclusions as yet,’ he replied. ‘But I’m working on it.’

‘Then that’s what I’ll tell him,’ said Jean, giving Steven the awful feeling that she could read his mind. ‘I’ll let him know you’ll be in touch soon.’

Steven interpreted the word ‘soon’ as 'get a move on'. ‘Thanks, Jean.’

He found it hard to switch his attention from the progress he had been making on an international platform to events at home involving threatening letters, paint daubing and the letting down of tyres, but he opened the file and started reading.