The lounge was closer than my room and mercifully empty. I ignored the curling magazines and made straight for the radio. I flicked it on, stretched out on one of the sofas, closed my eyes. Kate Bush wailed, appropriately about wild windy moors. The gusts attacked the windows with increased ferocity, hurling rain and sticks against the glass like handfuls of pebbles, despite the triple glazing. I shuffled and pulled the hip flask out of my pocket, the sofa pulling me in deeper. Wasn’t long before I was imagining it was ghosts banging at the window.
Chapter Ten
‘You’ve been drinking?’
With great effort I hauled up one eyelid to see a silhouette filling the open doorway, a bulky mass with a gas mask propped on its head. Her hair was longer, no makeup, a few years older, but undoubtedly the same woman from the picture I’d studied in the dossier.
‘I’m off duty, Alice.’
‘It’s not even lunchtime, John. You wanted to talk?’ She rustled into the room, squeezing herself into a chair.
‘Sun’s over the yardarm somewhere.’ I swung my feet off the sofa and rubbed my eyes. ‘Besides, I would have thought alcohol’s pretty much a requirement in this shithole.’ I picked up my flask from the floor, took a swig.
Revulsion creased her face. ‘How long have you been hiding in here?’
There was a scuffle outside the door. I held a finger to my lips, motioned for her to stay where she was, crept to the door, grabbed the handle. Alice tensed. I pulled it open. Clay nearly fell into the room. He stumbled, regaining his footing.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ he screamed.
‘Do you usually hang around outside doors?’
‘That’s not the— ah, there it is!’ He skulked across the room, snatching up a pen from the sideboard. ‘And why aren’t you completing the grid sampling, Alice?’ Frowning at her, he switched off the radio and stormed from the room.
I raised my eyebrows at Alice.
‘He’s all bark.’
‘Where can we go where we won’t be disturbed?’
‘Nowhere at the moment,’ she snapped. ‘I’m late and I don’t want to raise suspicions.’
I poked my head out of the door. Clay walked through the tunnel towards the first bedroom hut, glancing behind him every few steps.
‘Don’t go too far,’ I said.
Alice nodded, placing a gloved hand on my shoulder as she squeezed past me, heading back outside.
I bent to retrieve my hip flask despite the protests from my knees, and went the other way, to my room. The dishevelled bed, whose last occupant was lying on the beach not far away, beckoned. I climbed in without even peeling off my clothes.
Chapter Eleven
My eyes snapped open but the room was dark. Another thud. I lay still, ears stretched, muscles tensed, heart pounding. Crazed half-sleep thoughts, the hangover of a nightmare flashing through my mind as I clicked into defence mode, instantly I was back in that burning 4x4, eyes stinging, ears ringing.
Something in the room fell over, accompanied by a bout of muttered cursing I didn’t understand. Still, swearing sounds like swearing in any language, my heart slowed, panic subsiding as I remembered where I was. The room wasn’t completely dark – the blinds were closed, but my eyes had adjusted.
‘Who are you?’ A thick accent, which my sleep-fogged brain took a second to identify.
It was Russian – this was my roommate, Demeter. The blinds flicked open, revealing a mess of grey hair receding from an enormous forehead so wrinkled it seemed to be melting from his skull. His bed creaked as he sat back down, stroking a heavy moustache, which may have been Stalinesque at one time but had since evolved to cover his mouth. How the hell does he get a decent seal on his gas mask with all that hair sticking out everywhere?
I slid my feet onto the floor and stuck my hand out. ‘I’m John.’
He eyed it suspiciously, I realised it was still trembling. I clenched a fist, pushing it into the mattress, taking a deep breath.
‘I thought you were ghost,’ he said from somewhere beneath the moustache. ‘This is Andrei’s bed.’
‘And I thought you were a scientist.’
He laughed but there was no cheer in it. ‘This island… There are things out there, in the mist. Andrei knew. They watched him, they took him. Now I feel their eyes on me.’
‘I think you’re pretty safe in here.’
‘A locked door is no protection from the Reaper.’ This all seemed utterly bizarre coming from supposedly one of the foremost researchers here, I wondered if my earlier thoughts about going stir-crazy in here were true. He looked down at his feet for a while, inhaling deeply, then looked up, eyes shining. ‘I am old, superstitions grow the closer we get to death. John Tyler, you are Andrei’s replacement, yes?’
I nodded, realising what else was strange about him; he was wearing a bright red NBC suit. ‘Did you not decontaminate?’
‘I changed, I go back outside soon. I wear all the time or we will never be finished by next week. I work, I work. I work enough for all of these duraks.’
‘What time is it?’ I yawned, grabbed my watch from the bedside table. Don’t bring anything of value, they’d said, but my scuffed Bremont Supermarine goes everywhere with me. Only midday – I felt jet-lagged, the darkness had been entirely a product of the weather and the blinds.
Demeter was watching me. ‘When I was your age I didn’t need watch. My office in Moscow was so close to Spassky Tower, I could tell time by chimes.’ He smiled at the memory, I know from working with Russians this was akin to having a corner penthouse. ‘That was before I moved to Biopreparat at Sverdlovsk, and ha!’ He threw his hands in the air.
‘You worked at Sverdlovsk? You’re not to blame for the accident, I presume?’
‘Pah. More duraks.’
I’d read about the incident, a biological Chernobyl, they’d called it. The city has been renamed back to its original title of Yekaterinburg, but during the Soviet era it was named for the country’s party leader, Yakov Sverdlovsk. An industrial city north of the border with Kazakhstan, the fourth-largest city in Russia, and one of the country’s first industrial centres. Infamous for a few reasons.
It’s where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were transferred to in 1918 by the revolutionary government, held prisoner in the Ipatiev House. Three months later they were taken into the cellar and shot by a hastily assembled execution squad, and when that failed, the children were stabbed with bayonets.
During the Second World War, owing to the city’s location and relative difficulty to attack, major industrial complexes and technical institutions had moved to the city wholesale. Made sense Demeter had worked there.
In May 1960 a CIA U-2 spy plane had departed its base in Peshawar, Pakistan, to photograph the military installations. Interestingly, the first U-2 flights over Russia had been flown by British RAF pilots, to give Eisenhower deniability in the event that a plane was shot down – thus avoiding potential nuclear war. The Soviet Union had been aware of the encroaching flights since the mid-Fifties, but the U-2 had flown too high for the missiles of the time, and Eisenhower had felt safe enough to switch to American pilots.
On this occasion a Russian MiG-19 scrambled to intercept the plane, but couldn’t reach the required altitude, so a newly manufactured – and therefore unarmed – SU-9 was ordered to ram the spy plane in mid-air. It missed, thanks to the huge difference in speed. As the U-2 was over Sverdlovsk it was hit by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile. (Interesting postscript: eight anti-aircraft missiles were launched that day – and one of them hit the intercepting MiG-19, whose unfortunate pilot was killed.)
The American pilot, Gary Powers, was unable to activate the plane’s self-destruct system prior to ejecting, and the aircraft was captured almost intact near the city. The ensuing political scandal had set ongoing talks between Khrushchev and Eisenhower back considerably.
So it was to this infamous city and those military factories that Demeter had been sent to w
ork for the motherland, and it was a story linked to his work I’d come across on the internet the previous night.
Shortly after the Second World War, the Soviet Union set up a biological research facility in Sverdlovsk under the mysterious moniker ‘Military Compound 19’, using information captured from the Japanese germ warfare programme in Manchuria. By the Seventies, Compound 19 was churning out enormous amounts of ‘Anthrax 836’, the most virulent strain of anthrax in the Soviet arsenal, destined to grace the warheads of ICBMs pointed at Western cities. Key to the warheads’ lethality is the form the anthrax takes; it’s deadly however it arrives, but in order to be delivered most effectively to a population it’s best used in aerosol form, dried to a fine powder.
One Friday afternoon in March 1979 a technician performing maintenance removed a filter. It’d been covering an exhaust vent over the driers. He dutifully left a note for his supervisor, but the supervisor must have had a case of Friday-afternoon syndrome, as he made no entry in the logbook. When he went off shift the next supervisor didn’t notice anything untoward, so turned the machines back on.
No one knows how many people were infected, how many died in the following days. The authorities blamed tainted meat, but no one was fooled. It was a few hours before the filter was found and replaced; a few hours of pumping the most virulent strain of anthrax the Soviets had, straight into the atmosphere.
It’s just a damn good job the wind had been blowing away from the city that day.
There’ve been a ton of incidents like this, it was far from the last. And when the wind’s blowing the wrong way, like Chernobyl, we all suffer the consequences – even here in remotest Scotland.
Not that I think lives over here are worth any more than Russian lives; far from it. People are people, I don’t go in for the political stuff. But that just makes it worse when those who do cause issues for the rest of us.
‘Do you miss it? Russia, I mean.’
‘Sometimes… I miss weather. I miss cold, real cold. I miss fishing on Iset with Gregori. My son is older than you now, he works for mining company in Verkhnyaya Pyshma. I used to take him to visit Ipatiev House, do you know of it? Yes, you know it. You are taught about butchery of Romanovs at hands of Bolsheviks. You learn nothing of butchery of Gapon’s workers, or demonstrators of 1905. Nicholas the Bloody. Bah, it matters not, house was demolished long ago. If I return, I will still never see it again. They even changed name of city.’
He gazed out of the window. The drizzle had upgraded to heavy rain, obscuring the glass.
‘But yes, I long to see Gregori.’ He grabbed a carton of cigs from his drawer and stood with a squeak of gratitude from the bed. ‘It is nice to meet you, John Tyler. You be careful outside, yes?’
It sounded like friendly advice, but the way everyone was acting it could have been taken as a threat. I mumbled the same in return as he pulled his gas mask on, tightened the straps, and left the room without a backward glance.
Rather than get my head back down I decided to sort my gear. Pulling the cardboard box of disposable suits from under the bed, I tipped them onto the floor, kicking them back under. I put the empty box next to the bedside table, opened the drawer, and began packing Andy Kyle’s possessions into it. A couple of paperbacks, Alistair MacLean and something by Dickson Carr. Some chuddy, a box of matches. Three packs of cigarettes, which I almost kept but thought better of it and tossed them, together with two crushed-up empties, into the box. I praised the gods when I found a chipped enamelled camping mug and a small tin of Yorkshire Tea, and left those in the drawer. Last was a dog-eared old map of the area that I figured could come in handy, so dropped that back in the drawer too.
His wardrobe held nothing interesting, mostly sports attire with a few RNDS polos like mine thrown in. I folded and packed his clothes on top of the cardboard box, sliding it across to the door. Andy Kyle’s worldly possessions – those on the island, at least – took up a small box in the corner of a small room.
If I died here my possessions would take up even less space, I wasn’t planning on a long stay. After dropping my clothes in the bottom of the wardrobe I extracted a few other things from my rucksack. A pair of optimistic aviators, vintage Ray-Bans which had survived jobs from Iran to Sierra Leone but were now bent, possibly thanks to careless packing but more likely Greenbow’s search. They were fairly pointless here anyway, but you never know. A washbag that even included a bottle of Acqua di Parma – again, fairly pointless here, but again, you never know. A Lenser torch, the little one with the warning sticker that says it can blind you – probably the second most useful thing I’d brought. Finally out came two bottles of blended Scotch, supermarket own-brand vintage, to be stood on the floor by the bed.
Time for a brew, kick-start the grey cells before I go find Alice. The mug looked clean enough so I tipped some tea into it, replaced the tin in the drawer, and headed for the kitchen. I had a thought and stopped outside my door, placing the mug on the floor. In my wallet was a crumpled petrol receipt from my fill-up at Tebay services. I smoothed it, folded it in two, slipped it under the door. Giving the paper a couple of seconds to unfold, I opened the door, peering round. The paper had been pushed across the floor by the door. I repeated the process then picked up the mug. Less cliché than the old hair-across-the-door trick, but just as effective. Demeter wouldn’t be back for a while; if anyone went in my room, I’d know about it.
Spices and the crash of utensils enveloped me as soon as I stepped into the kitchen, far more welcoming than Dash’s heart attack on a plate. Marie turned from the hob, pulled her baggy T-shirt down and leaned against the counter.
‘You weren’t out long,’ I said.
‘And you’re just in time for lunch,’ she said, pointing to a pan. ‘You like thiéboudiènne?’
‘I’m only after a brew. A cuppa. Don’t look at me like that.’ I held up my mug. ‘Tea!’
‘Ah!’ She glided across to click the kettle on then cocked her head. ‘What are those?’ She was pointing at my arm, at the series of small tattoos that ran from my left wrist to disappear under the sleeve of my T-shirt, tiny black squiggled outlines.
‘You seen Saving Private Ryan?’
She nodded.
‘Remember that guy who collects jars of sand, scoops one up from every beach he lands on?’
She tilted her head and looked again. ‘That’s France.’ She beckoned me over, took my arm, placed a finger just under my elbow. ‘Here’s Biarritz.’
Her eyes sparkled. ‘Oh! They’re all countries.’
I pulled my arm away and shook my head. ‘They’re jobs.’
Her mouth creased up. ‘Looks like you’ve worked in a lot of places. Good memories, eh?’
‘Not always. Speaking of which, can I ask you summat?’
She took a pack of tomatoes from the fridge. ‘If it’s about Captain Greenbow, yes, I believe he does iron his underwear.’ Her eyes shone again. ‘Don’t let him get to you.’
‘I suppose he was like this with Kyle?’
She smiled and nodded. ‘You’re not special, he’s the same with everyone, as if it’s our fault the project is overrunning. The only person here with a rank, and doesn’t he love to use it.’
A woman after my own heart. ‘I had a question about procedures, actually.’ I slid the mug across the counter and opened a cupboard, scanning for biscuits or chocolate; I needed the sugar. ‘After what you were telling me about anthrax I’m worried about decontamination. How can I be sure I’m clean?’
‘I thought RNDS were the decontamination experts?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m just a technician, machines are machines.’
She put the tomatoes aside and popped up to sit on the counter. ‘Well, you can either kill the spores or physically remove them. The best way is like we do in the HADU, a mixture of formaldehyde and bleach, which does both.’
‘What if I don’t have any to hand?’ In the second cupboard I spied the cans, and wondered whether I could be bothered
to cook. ‘Any more pans?’ I asked.
‘In here.’ She tapped a heel on the cupboard next to her. ‘It’s the spores that are dangerous. You can just wash them off with soap and water – but the problem is making sure you’re properly clean. Under your nails, in your hair, they’re microscopic, so a shower doesn’t cut it.’ She saw the can in my hand and turned up her nose. ‘Mushy peas are disgusting at best, and those are probably out of date.’
‘This is Yorkshire caviar! And all of your five-a-day.’ I put them down and continued scanning the cupboards, pulling open a pack of custard creams and tipping a few onto the counter.
‘Ingrid’s going to kill you.’
I looked at the packet in my hand. ‘Not if you tell her Clay ate them. Anyway, anthrax; what about sterilising. Boiling, or fire?’
Gambetta smoking outside and those packs of fags in Kyle’s drawer had started me down a path; inhalation was a great way to introduce anthrax into the system. A little of the right dried-up dirt sprinkled into a cig – that had to be plausible? I crammed a custard cream into my mouth.
‘Anthrax is extremely resistant to heat. It’s the reason it was developed as a weapon – explosives don’t kill it, they just spread it around. Works well in bombs. It can be destroyed but only with very high, prolonged heat, like in our incinerator – the kind of heat that would kill you long before the anthrax.’
My mind automatically put that information in a folder somewhere – doctored cigarettes were a possibility.
The door bounced off its stops, we both jumped. A ruffled Greenbow filled the doorway, shiny-faced and gasping for breath.
‘Tyler, where the hell have you been?’
I frowned, swallowing the last bits of biscuit. ‘Bed.’
‘You were given a job to do.’
‘Thanks to you lot I haven’t slept,’ I replied. ‘I did the job, then got my head down.’
In the corner of my eye Marie slid off the counter and turned away.
‘The job was to deliver the body to the boat.’
Anthrax Island Page 5