by Ken Follett
Maybe the virus would be released on his plane to Italy, and he would pay the penalty himself. There would be justice.
Peering ahead through the snowstorm, he saw an illuminated sign that read "Motel." Elton turned off the road. There was a light over the door, and eight or nine cars in the car park. The place was open. Kit wondered who would spend Christmas at a motel. Hindus, perhaps, and stranded businessmen, and illicit lovers.
Elton pulled up next to a Vauxhall Astra station wagon. "The idea was to ditch the van here," he said. "It's too easily identifiable. We're supposed to go back to the airstrip in that Astra. But I don't know if we're going to make it."
From the back, Daisy said, "You stupid prick, why didn't you bring a Land Rover?"
"Because the Astra is one of the most popular and least noticeable cars in Britain, and the forecast said no snow, you ugly cow."
"Knock it off, you two," Nigel said calmly. He pulled off his wig and glasses. "Take off your disguises. We don't know how soon those guards will be giving descriptions to the police."
The others followed suit.
Elton said, "We could stay here, take rooms, wait it out."
"Dangerous," Nigel replied. "We're only a few miles from the lab."
"If we can't move, the police can't either. As soon as the weather eases, we take off."
"We have an appointment to meet our customer."
"He's not going to fly his helicopter in this muck."
"True."
Kit's mobile rang. He checked his laptop. It was a regular call, not one diverted from the Kremlin system. He picked it up. "Yeah?"
"It's me." Kit recognized the voice of Hamish McKinnon. "I'm on my mobile, I've got to be quick, while Willie's in the toilet."
"What's happening?"
"She arrived just after you left."
"I saw the car."
"She found the other guards tied up and called the police."
"Can they get there, in this weather?"
"They said they'd try. She just came up to the gatehouse and told us to expect them. When they'll get here--Sorry, gotta go." He hung up.
Kit pocketed his phone. "Toni Gallo has found the guards," he announced. "She's called the police, and they're on their way."
"That settles it," Nigel said. "Let's get in the Astra."
1:45 A.M.
AS Craig slipped his hand under the hem of Sophie's sweater, he heard steps. He broke the clinch and looked around.
His sister was coming down from the hayloft in her nightdress. "I feel a bit strange," she said, and crossed the room to the bathroom.
Thwarted, Craig turned his attention to the film on TV. The old witch, transformed into a beautiful girl, was seducing a handsome knight.
Caroline emerged, saying, "That bathroom smells of puke." She climbed the ladder and went back to bed.
"No privacy here," Sophie said in a low voice.
"Like trying to make love in Glasgow Central Station," Craig said, but he kissed her again. This time, she opened her lips and her tongue met his. He was so pleased that he moaned with delight.
He put his hand all the way up inside her sweater and felt her breast. It was small and warm. She was wearing a thin cotton bra. He squeezed gently, and she gave an involuntary groan of pleasure.
Tom's voice piped: "Will you two stop grunting? I can't sleep!"
They stopped kissing. Craig took his hand out from under her sweater. He was ready to explode with frustration. "I'm sorry about this," he murmured.
Sophie said, "Why don't we go somewhere else?"
"Like, where?"
"How about that attic you showed me earlier?"
Craig was thrilled. They would be completely alone, and no one would disturb them. "Brilliant," he said, and he stood up.
They put on coats and boots, and Sophie pulled on a pink woolly hat with a bobble. It made her look cute and innocent. "A bundle of joy," Craig said.
"What is?"
"You are."
She smiled. Earlier, she would have called him "so boring" for saying something like that. Their relationship had changed. Maybe it was the vodka. But Craig thought the turning point had come in the bathroom, when they had dealt with Tom together. Perhaps Tom, by being a helpless child, had forced them to act like adults. After that, it was hard to revert to being sulky and cool.
Craig would never have guessed that the way to a girl's heart might be cleaning up puke.
He opened the barn door. A cold wind blew a flurry of snow over them like confetti. Craig stepped out quickly, held the door for Sophie, then closed it.
Steepfall looked impossibly romantic. Snow covered the steeply sloping roof, lay in great mounds on the windowsills, and filled the courtyard to the depth of a foot. The lanterns on the surrounding walls had halos of golden light filled with dancing snowflakes. Snow encrusted a wheelbarrow, a stack of firewood, and a garden hose, transforming them into ice sculptures.
Sophie's eyes were wide. "It's a Christmas card," she said.
Craig took her hand. They crossed the courtyard with high steps, like wading birds. They rounded the corner of the house and came to the back door. Craig brushed a layer of snow off the top of a trash can. He stood on it and heaved himself up onto the low roof of the boot lobby.
He looked back. Sophie was hesitating. "Here!" he hissed. He held out his hand.
She grasped it and pulled herself up onto the can. With his other hand, Craig grabbed the edge of the sloping roof, to steady himself, then helped her up beside him. For a moment they lay side by side in the snow, like lovers in bed. Then Craig got to his feet.
He stepped onto the ledge that ran below the loft door, kicked off most of the snow, and opened the big door. Then he returned to Sophie.
She got to her hands and knees but, when she tried to stand, her rubber boots slipped and she fell. She looked scared.
"Hold on to me," Craig said, and pulled her to her feet. What they were doing was not very dangerous, and she was making more of it than she should, but he did not mind, for it gave him a chance to be strong and protective.
Still holding her hand, Craig stood on the ledge. She stepped up beside him and grabbed him around the waist. He would have liked to linger there, with her clinging to him so hard; but he went on, walking sideways along the ledge to the open door, then helped her inside.
He closed the door behind them and turned on the light. This was perfect, Craig thought excitedly. They were alone, in the middle of the night, and nobody would come in to disturb them. They could do anything they liked.
He lay down and looked through the hole in the floor into the kitchen. A single light burned over the door to the boot room. Nellie lay in front of the Aga, head up, ears cocked, listening: she knew he was there. "Go back to sleep," he murmured. Whether she heard him or not, the dog put her head down and closed her eyes.
Sophie was sitting on the old couch, shivering. "My feet are freezing."
"You've got snow in your boots." He knelt in front of her and pulled her Wellingtons off. Her socks were soaked. He took those off, too. Her small white feet felt as if they had been in the fridge. He tried to warm them with his hands. Then, inspired, he unbuttoned his coat, lifted his sweater, and pressed the soles of her feet to his bare chest.
She said, "Oh, my God, that feels so good."
She had often said that to him in his fantasies, he reflected; but not in quite the same circumstances.
2 A.M.
TONI sat in the control room, watching the monitors.
Steve and the guards had related everything that had happened, from when the "repair crew" entered the Great Hall up to the moment that two of them emerged from the BSL4 lab, passed through the little lobby, and vanished--one carrying a slim burgundy leather briefcase. Don had told her, while Steve gave him first aid, how one of the men had tried to stop the violence. The words he had shouted were burned into Toni's brain: If you want to be empty-handed when we meet the client at ten, just carry on the way y
ou are.
Clearly, they had come here to steal something from the laboratory, and they had taken it away in that briefcase. Toni had a dreadful feeling she knew what it was.
She was running the BSL4 footage from 12:55 to 1:15. Although the monitors had not shown these images at the time, the computer had stored them. Now she was watching two men inside the lab, wearing biohazard suits.
She gasped when she saw one of them open the door to the little room that contained the vault. He tapped numbers into the keypad--he knew the code! He opened the fridge door, then the other man began to remove samples.
Toni froze the playback.
The camera was placed above the door, and looked over the man's shoulder into the refrigerator. His hands were full of small white boxes. Toni's fingers played over the keyboard, and the black-and-white picture on the monitor was enlarged. She could see the international biohazard symbol on the boxes. He was stealing virus samples. She zoomed in further and ran the image-enhancement program. Slowly, the words on one of the boxes became clear: "Madoba-2."
It was what she had feared, but the confirmation hit her like the cold wind of death. She sat staring at the screen, frozen with dread, her heart sounding in her chest like a funeral bell. Madoba-2 was the most deadly virus imaginable, an infectious agent so terrible that it had to be guarded by multiple layers of security and touched only by highly trained staff in isolation clothing. And it was now in the hands of a gang of thieves who were carrying it around in a damn briefcase.
Their car might crash; they could panic and throw the briefcase away; the virus might fall into the possession of people who did not know what it was--the risks were horrendous. And even if they did not release it by accident, their "client" would do so deliberately. Someone was planning to use the virus to murder people in hundreds and thousands, perhaps to cause a plague that might mow down entire populations.
And they had obtained the murder weapon from her.
In despair, she restarted the footage, and watched with horror while one of the intruders emptied the contents of the vials into a perfume spray marked "Diablerie." That was obviously the delivery mechanism. The ordinary-looking perfume bottle was now a weapon of mass destruction. She watched him carefully double-bag it and place it in the briefcase, bedded in polystyrene packing chips.
She had seen enough. She knew what needed to be done. The police had to gear up for a massive operation--and fast. If they moved quickly, they could still catch the thieves before the virus was handed over to the buyer.
She returned the monitors to their default position and left the control room.
The security guards were in the Great Hall, sitting on the couches normally reserved for visitors, drinking tea, thinking the crisis was over. Toni decided to take a few seconds to regain control. "We have important work to do," she said briskly. "Stu, go to the control room and resume your duties, please. Steve, get behind the desk. Don, stay where you are." Don had a makeshift dressing over the cut on his forehead.
Susan Mackintosh, who had been blackjacked, was lying on a couch used by waiting visitors. The blood had been washed from her face but she was severely bruised. Toni knelt beside her and kissed her forehead. "Poor you," she said. "How do you feel?"
"Pretty groggy."
"I'm so sorry this happened."
Susan smiled weakly. "It was worth it for the kiss."
Toni patted her shoulder. "You're recovering already."
Her mother was sitting next to Don. "That nice boy Steven made me a cup of tea," she said. The puppy sat on spread-out newspaper at her feet. She fed it a piece of biscuit.
"Thanks, Steve," Toni said.
Mother said, "He'd make a nice boyfriend for you."
"He's married," Toni replied.
"That doesn't seem to make much difference, nowadays."
"It does to me." Toni turned to Steve. "Where's Carl Osborne?"
"Men's room."
Toni nodded and took out her phone. It was time to call the police.
She recalled what Steve Tremlett had told her about the duty staff at Inverburn regional headquarters tonight: an inspector, two sergeants, and six constables, plus a superintendent on call. It was nowhere near enough to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. She knew what she would do, if she were in charge. She would call in twenty or thirty officers. She would commandeer snowplows, set up roadblocks, and ready a squad of armed officers to make the arrest. And she would do it fast.
She felt invigorated. The horror of what had happened began to fade from her mind as she concentrated on what had to be done. Action always bucked her up, and police work was the best sort of action.
She got David Reid again. When she identified herself, he said, "We sent you a car, but they turned back. The weather--"
She was horrified. She had thought a police car was on its way. "Are you serious?" she said, raising her voice.
"Have you looked at the roads? There are abandoned cars everywhere. No point in a patrol getting stuck in the snow."
"Christ! What kind of wimps are the police recruiting nowadays?"
"There's no need for that kind of talk, madam."
Toni got herself under control. "You're right, I'm sorry." She recalled, from her training, that when the police response to a crisis went badly amiss, it was often due to wrong identification of the hazard in the first few minutes, when someone inexperienced like P.C. Reid was dealing with the initial report. Her first task was to make sure he had the key information to pass to his superior. "Here's the situation. One: the thieves stole a significant quantity of a virus called Madoba-2 which is lethal to humans, so this is a biohazard emergency."
"Biohazard," he said, obviously writing it down.
"Two: the perpetrators are three men--two white and one black--and a white woman. They're driving a van marked 'Hibernian Telecom.' "
"Can you give me fuller descriptions?"
"I'll get the guard supervisor to call you with that information in a minute--he saw them, I didn't. Three: we have two injured people here, one who has been coshed and the other kicked in the head."
"How serious would you say the injuries are?"
She thought she had already told him that, but he seemed to be asking questions from a list. "The guard who has been coshed should see a doctor."
"Right."
"Four: the intruders were armed."
"What sort of weapons?"
Toni turned to Steve, who was a gun buff. "Did you get a look at their firearms?"
Steve nodded. "Nine-millimeter Browning automatic pistols, all three of them--the kind that take a thirteen-round magazine. They looked like ex-army stock to me." Toni repeated the description to Reid.
"Armed robbery, then," he said.
"Yes--but the important thing is that they can't be far away, and that van is easy to identify. If we move quickly, we can catch them."
"Nobody can move quickly tonight."
"Obviously you need snowplows."
"The police force doesn't have snowplows."
"There must be several in the area; we have to clear the roads most winters."
"Clearing snow from roads is not a police function; it's a local authority responsibility."
Toni was ready to scream with frustration, but she bit her tongue. "Is Frank Hackett there?"
"Superintendent Hackett is not available."
She knew that Frank was on call--Steve had told her. "If you won't wake him up, I will," she said. She broke the connection and dialed his home number. He was a conscientious officer; he would be sleeping by the phone.
He picked it up. "Hackett."
"Toni. Oxenford Medical has been robbed of a quantity of Madoba-2, the virus that killed Michael Ross."
"How did you let that happen?"
It was the question she was asking herself, but it stung when it came from him. She retorted, "If you're so smart, figure out how to catch the thieves before they get away."
"Didn't we send a car out to y
ou an hour ago?"
"It never got here. Your tough coppers saw the snow and got scared."
"Well, if we're stuck, so are our suspects."
"You're not stuck, Frank. You can get here with a snowplow."
"I don't have a snowplow."
"The local council has several--phone them up."
There was a long pause. "I don't think so," he said at last.
Toni could have killed him. Frank enjoyed using his authority negatively. It made him feel powerful. He especially liked defying her--she had always been too assertive for him. How had she lived with him for so long? She curbed the retort that was on the tip of her tongue and said, "What's your thinking, Frank?"
"I can't send unarmed men chasing after a gang with guns. We'll need to assemble our firearms-trained officers, take them to the armory, and get them kitted out with Kevlar vests, guns, and ammunition. That's going to take a couple of hours."
"Meanwhile the thieves are getting away with a virus that could kill thousands!"
"I'll put out an alert for the van."
"They might switch cars. They could have an off-road Jeep parked somewhere."
"They still won't get far."
"What if they have a helicopter?"
"Toni, curb your imagination. There are no thieves with helicopters in Scotland."
These were not local hooligans running off with jewelry or banknotes--but Frank had never really understood biohazards. "Frank, use your imagination. These people want to start a plague!"
"Don't tell me how to do the job. You're not a cop anymore."
"Frank--" She stopped. He had broken the connection. "Frank, you're a dumb bastard," she said into the dead phone, then she hung up.
Had he always been this bad? It seemed to her that when they were living together he was more reasonable. Perhaps she had been a good influence on him. He had certainly been willing to learn from her. She recalled the case of Dick Buchan, a multiple rapist who had refused to tell Frank where the bodies were despite hours of intimidation, shouting, and threats of violence. Toni talked quietly to him about his mother and broke him in twenty minutes. After that, Frank had asked her advice about every major interrogation. But since they split up, he seemed to have regressed.
She frowned at her phone, racking her brains. How was she going to put a bomb under Frank? She had something over him--the Farmer Johnny Kirk story. If the worse came to the worst, she could use that to blackmail him. But first there was one more call she could try. She scrolled through the memory of her mobile and found the home number of Odette Cressy, her friend at Scotland Yard.