by Mark A Biggs
Operation Underpants
Box Set
Mark A. Biggs
mbkbooks
MBK CONSULTING
Other Books by Mark A. Biggs
Above and Beyond
Copyright
Copyright © Mark A. Biggs 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the copyright owner.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia.
First Published in Australia 2020.
By
mbkbooks
MBK Consulting
5 Elizabeth Close
Drouin Victoria 3818
Australia.
www.mbkconsulting.com.au
Book Cover
Cover Design by Craig Braithwaite – Aussiepics: www.aussiepics.com.au
Table of Contents
Title Page
Other Books by Mark A. Biggs
Copyright Page
Operation Underpants
Title Page
A note from the author
Dedication
Prologue: The outbreak of death
1. Home
2. European Odyssey
3. Sentenced
4. Duval
5. The Grey Escape
6. Kate and Edward
7. Jaguar
8. Post Office Box
9. Lostwithiel
10. The Grave
11. Windermere
12. The Extortion
13. Showdown
Claudia
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
1. The Escape
2. Olivia
3. Ferrari
4. Submarine
5. Eiffel Tower
6. Russia
7. Rome
8. Dubrovnik
9. Venice
10. Kupari
11. Cyber Attack
12. The Party
13. Corfu
14. Lelantos
Epilogue
Disclaimer
Operation OBE
Title Page
Dedication
1. All roads lead to the Lelantos
2. Monya Mogilevick
3. Jayde Akihiko
4. The Professor
5. The Queen
6. Astakos
7. Boris and Ivan
8. The Great Escape
9. Deadly Slumber
10. Jack and Charlee
11. Dubrovnik
12. London
13. Triumph
14. Rosie
15. The Bible
16. Budapest
17. Jana
18. Melk
19. Orange Flags
20. Novichok
Disclaimer
About the Author
Operation Underpants
Mark A. Biggs
mbkbooks
MBK CONSULTING
A note from the author
A true story
Operation Underpants almost caused a major security scare in the United Kingdom
My good friend Russell Smith, while holidaying in the UK with his wife Merrill Smith, had been taking some photographs for the cover of this book. Seeing a UK military base surrounded by barbed wire he decides ‘This will make a great shot’, only to discover that army security didn’t take kindly to their bases being photographed. Things only got worse. ‘What’s your name,’ said the burly military security officer. ‘Smith’ said Russell. ‘Oh yes and my name is Jones’ – what’s the name of this make-believe book of yours?’ ‘Operation Underpants,’ continued Russell.’ To which the officer said. ‘I don’t think you appreciate the seriousness of this, Sir.’ I am pleased to say however that Russell was eventually released, minus the particularly good photos, but at least he got to keep his camera. ‘Watch out for the tanks’, yelled the security officer, as Russell wandered in a daze across the road after his brush with British terrorism laws. Looking up he saw two large military tanks baring down on him. And in Russell’s words – ‘They missed me by “that” much.’
Please don’t tell – let’s keep it our little secret. But if Russell was a true friend – he would have been arrested and his story reported in the national press. Great publicity for Operation Underpants, but instead 37 friends on Facebook had a good laugh. Only Russell!
Dedication
To my beloved Lacy
PROLOGUE
The outbreak of death
This latest outbreak of the Ebola virus was the most significant since the disease first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks—one in Nzara, Sudan and the other in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name. Although devastating, the pattern was familiar; the outbreaks occurred in countries with weak health systems and a lack of infrastructure resources—places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria. The outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency in 2010. With the frequency of international travel and business, even the poorer parts of Africa were no longer self-quarantined due to poverty. Following the initial two hundred deaths, and with the risk of the virus spreading to other parts of the world increasing daily, the world woke from its slumber to first contain and then to eradicate the disease.
The World Health Organisation, aka WHO, was working in Africa not long after the first confirmed reports of Ebola in 2009. Its initial responsibility was to trace the disease back to its source and identify the species of Ebola. WHO would produce modelling to map and predict the spread of the disease, liaise with the affected countries on containment and treatment and with the world community to assist the affected countries.
From the very beginning, this outbreak seemed different. Casualty rates for Ebola are generally high, ranging from twenty-five to ninety percent, with the average sitting at fifty percent. Even when advanced Western medical hospitals had been established, the casualty rate remained alarming at ninety percent plus. It was, until this point, believed that if people survived the illness they developed a natural immunity to the disease, which would protect them from a future attack. Of the Western medical staff that had become infected and survived, ninety percent had a relapse of Ebola a few months later and died. Unlike their Western counterparts, the African patients who had become infected and survived developed immunity to the disease. Another factor that made this outbreak different was that WHO investigations can normally trace the outbreak back to a single source, even identifying the individuals who had transmitted or brought the disease into another country. On this occasion, however, there appeared to be three simultaneous outbreaks. A final difference was that, although the virus was definitely Ebola, it was not one of the five known strains.
By the time the outbreak was contained in early 2010, twenty-five thousand people on the African continent had died as had twenty-five Western medical staff. The Public Health Emergency was in its monitoring phase when the first reports of an Ebola outbreak in London were confirmed. As there was a significant gap in time since the death of the last returning health worker from Africa and the outbreak in Britain, it was felt unlikely that the two incidences were linked. With the death toll now at eight, British authorities and WHO worked around the clock tracing the origins of the disease and any possible connections between the infected people.
The first people known to be infected were David Carlisle and Trevor Ingram. David
was from New Quay in Wales and Trevor from Margate East in Kent. David, a teacher at Aberaeron Primary School, about fourteen kilometres from his home, had felt unwell that morning. Another cold he told himself as a sore throat took hold—no point going to the GP. The National Health Service (NHS) had, over the preceding five years, been pushing to reduce the use of antibiotics dramatically. GPs had been quite successful in educating their patients that, if they had a cold or flu, antibiotics were of no use and the best thing they could do was to go home and rest. The results had been a significant reduction in people—other than those needing medical certificates for time off work—attending their GP with cold or flu-like symptoms.
By the second day, David felt very unwell, his body had begun to ache, and he had headaches. He had decided he would have to visit the GP if only for a medical certificate. By the time he arrived at his doctor’s he was running a fever. The doctor later told the authorities that he had asked screening questions, such as had David recently travelled overseas, but the responses gave him no cause for additional concern. David was prescribed Panadol to bring down the fever and asked to come back in a couple of days if things had not improved. It was fifteen hours later, at about one in the morning, when he started to vomit blood. His wife, in a distressed state, called for an ambulance. A triage doctor asked the same screening questions. Presenting with a high fever, flu-like symptoms, stomach pains, and vomiting blood, David was diagnosed with a suspected undefined infectious disease and barrier nursing protocols were implemented. His wife however went home and continued her social interactions, now somewhat restricted due to her need to be with her husband.
A health alert for GPs and the general public did not occur until David Carlisle’s death and when the test results confirmed Ebola. It would be unfair to say Britain went into panic for it did not. However, with the first symptoms of the disease—fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat—almost undistinguishable from common illnesses, the primary health care system was placed under considerable pressure.
It was shortly after Trevor Ingram’s death, and with three new infections linking back to him, that Britain declared a Public Health Emergency. The circumstances, for all intents and purposes, met the four decision criteria:
1. Is the public health impact of this event potentially serious?
2. Is the event unusual or unexpected?
3. Is there the potential for international spread?
4. Is there the potential for travel and trade restrictions?
For health authorities the race was on to find the source of the outbreak. The incubation period for the Ebola virus is between two and twenty-one days but, even after extending their target range to eight weeks, it seemed unlikely that David and Trevor had met either directly or through a third party. Of the other deaths and infections, each could be traced back to them. This made two simultaneous independent common sources of the outbreak, however improbable that seemed. Although investigators were confident David and Trevor were the source, no one could determine how they contracted the virus. Neither man had recently been overseas or had contact with animals, other than each having a domestic cat. At best the WHO investigators determined that both men could be described as unremarkable; middle-class men going to work each day to pay off a mortgage and in apparently stable relationships. They had questioned the respective wives intensively, to the point of causing unwarranted and unwanted distress, over any possible extra-marital sexual activity and drug use. Nothing.
What was of interest to the investigators were the common features of both men. They were both in their early thirties, married but with no children, were teachers, and male. Frighteningly, all those thus far infected with the virus had been Caucasian males between twenty-five to thirty-five years of age.
The first reported case – that of David Carlisle, occurred in mid-September 2010; ten days later he was dead. The fifteenth and final death occurred in mid-November 2010 and with it the disease vanished as abruptly as it had started. One hundred percent of those infected had died. Only one healthcare worker, a female doctor who treated Trevor in the emergency unit, had become infected, which gave confidence that the pandemic protocols worked well. In January 2011, some forty-two days after the final reported infections, the UK was declared Ebola free.
The virus, like the African outbreak in 2009, was not one of the five known species. It was, however, a likely variant of the African strain and biologically at least it was likely that the two outbreaks, in Africa and the UK, were in some way linked. The UK outbreak belonged to what became known after the Africa outbreak, as the Zaire—AAA species. While the UK Ebola was Zaire—AAA it behaved differently in the way in which it attached itself to particular antibodies. However it was too early to say anything with any certainty. As with the African outbreak, initial testing showed traces of plant DNA.
With the outbreak over, the statisticians started to work, poring over infection rates and disease modelling. To the fore in everybody’s minds was how unexpected it was that an Ebola outbreak in the UK should be independent of an African link. The review and modelling highlighted two significant conundrums.
First, with the number of people infected, one would have expected the infection rates to be much higher before the outbreak was contained. The infection patterns were not as traditional modelling suggested. Investigators expect either a steep increase in the number of people infected, followed by a gradual decline, or multiple peaks in the number of people infected. The pattern would depend upon the infection and the way the infection was transmitted. Ebola is a highly contagious person-to-person transmission; cases are expected to present over more than one incubation period and, until effective controls are put in place, one expects to see multiple peaks before a gradual decline. Health authorities knew, in truth, an outbreak of a highly infectious disease, like Ebola or Bird Flu, in the UK would be very difficult to contain quickly, but in this outbreak the pattern peaked in infections (fifteen deaths over a couple of weeks) and then nothing. The transmission stopped.
Secondly, the infection data confirmed the anecdotal picture that emerged during the outbreak; the virus targeted predominately younger Caucasian adult males. The statistical confidence rates suggested an infection pattern of mainly males was unlikely to be caused by chance. But, then again, viruses, particularly new strains, tend to have a mind of their own. The only known female casualty was the emergency triage doctor who saw Trevor when he was first admitted to hospital.
After the UK was declared Ebola free, the next virus scare came just one month later, this time in the United States, from a town called Jacksonville in Georgia. Georgia is the ninth most populous state in the United States, with approximately ten million people. Within the demographics of Georgia, nine percent of the population is Hispanic and Latino. Despite this low representation in the population, and an even lower representation in Jacksonville, within a period of three weeks, seven male Hispanics were seriously ill with H5N2, also known as Bird Flu. What had scientists baffled was the H5N2 virus had not, until then, been known to make the jump from bird-to-human, and from human-to-human transmission. Like the UK Ebola virus, H5N2 was highly unlikely to have originated from the United States, yet none of the victims could be linked to Asian travel and there were no reported cases of human H5N2 Bird Flu elsewhere in the world.
Epidemic and pandemic planning swung into effect almost immediately after the second case of H5N2 had been verified. All people leaving and entering countries around the world were subjected to body temperature checks. Such a rapid escalation of response was driven by health, security, and intelligence experts who believed there was a probable link between the UK and USA virus outbreaks, although this was not shared with the public. In both cases the specific virus was not common to the country and both predominantly targeted specific genders, ages, and ethnicities. When the emergency was over, other similarities were also confirmed. The H5N2 had not transmitted beyond the initial victims and it vanished a
s quickly as it began. The most telling link, however, was the presence of plant DNA in both the UK Ebola and USA H5N2.
Authorities were convinced that this was more than a health emergency and, in all likelihood, was a matter of national security. Although generally believed impossible, authorities wondered if a biological weapon had been used on the United Kingdom and the United States. If true, it was a biological weapon that could target specific genders, races, and ages. Was the fact that the transmissions stopped after the initial infections a weakness in the weapon or a demonstration of the control? With no one claiming responsibility for the attacks, the answer perhaps lay in the African Ebola outbreak. It had the presence of plant DNA but its infection behaviour was different. If a definite link was established between Africa, UK and the USA, authorities could be fairly confident that terrorists had control over the transmission. The consequence of a terrorist or organised crime group having such a weapon was too catastrophic to contemplate.
In a nondescript office of DSTL (Defence Science and Technological Laboratory) hidden deep underground in the dark recesses of Porton Down, Wiltshire, England – algorithms worked their mathematical magic, crunching and churning its daily feed. ‘Data Match’ suddenly flashed up on the screen.—Key words found: DUVAL-CLAUDE-CLIFF.
CHAPTER ONE
Home
Max
Life is a relentless march of time. In its wake everything is changed but still seems to remain the same. It feels like only yesterday—but also a lifetime ago—that I stood on the deck of a battleship in times of war, on the convoys to Russia, was married and raised a family. Each morning I would rise full of anticipation, in search of adventure and excitement, but complain bitterly of having no time. As years came and went life changed. I became a grandparent and then found retirement, or did retirement find me? Yet free time was still elusive. Finally when the chaos slowed, old age and frailty had become my companion and time a burden.