Anthrax Island

by D. L. Marshall

  ‘He must have been hiding down there all along,’ said Dash.

  ‘Every hut has those crawl spaces?’ I asked.

  ‘Yup,’ Dash replied.

  ‘Then we need to check the rest of the base.’ I handed Greenbow his Browning and looked around the others. ‘Do we have any other weapons?’

  ‘This is a scientific base, only El Capitan has a popgun,’ said Hurley.

  ‘It’ll have to do. We need to check every room, top to bottom – including these underfloor spaces. And from now on, no one goes anywhere on their own.’

  Greenbow scowled, put out by my initiative and assumption of authority, but didn’t challenge it – I presume through lack of his own plan or a sense of self-doubt, so maybe he wasn’t that stupid after all. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Dash, Hurley, with me. We’ll check the labs and common rooms. Alice, Marie, check the bedrooms with Tyler.’

  Childhood memories of Saturday mornings flashed into my head, my brother and I cross-legged on the floor watching Scooby Doo, and while I wouldn’t have normally minded going off with Daphne and Velma, I didn’t fancy our chances if we encountered Demeter. Still, the captain wasn’t the only one who was armed. The other three marched to the other end of the base, the labs, to work backwards.

  Four huts across this section of the base, and in one of these was the radio room that we’d already checked. To converge on the others we made our way to the other end of the corridor, starting in the first bedroom hut – mine. As we entered I saw Alice turn her nose up at the dregs in the Scotch bottle, the full one next to the bed. She started going through Demeter’s things.

  ‘Marie, chuck me that pen, will you?’ I asked, pointing at the bedside table. I caught it, turning my attention to the floor. The trapdoor was in the same place, but this time beneath the drawers.

  ‘Are the rooms set out identically?’ I asked.

  ‘Oui,’ said Marie.

  Alice shrugged. ‘Mine’s the same.’

  ‘Then I doubt he’s hiding in one of them.’ I pointed to the drawers. ‘Unless he somehow managed to pull the furniture back after – but we’d best check.’

  Even in this clean environment, grime had accumulated along the edges. No need for caution here, clearly the drawers hadn’t been moved. I dragged them across the floor then jabbed the pen in, levered the hatch up, shone my torch around, verifying that it contained nothing but pipes and dust.

  As I pulled my head up there was a gasp behind me. I closed the hatch and turned to see the two women perched on the Russian’s bed.

  ‘Have a look at this,’ Alice whispered, handing me a crumpled piece of paper.

  I sat on my own bed to study it. A scrappy note, torn across, no sign of the other half.

  Viktor

  Rendezvous East Coast Gruinard – February—

  Your son cannot escape justic—

  on the island. The west wil—

  held accountable—

  at Yekaterinburg—

  Call—

  Even with three quarters missing it was impossible not to get the gist of a blackmail note. I held it up to the light, turning it over. Huge childish block letters in blue ballpoint. The paper looked to be torn from a sheet of plain A4. Scribbled in haste. Doubtless an expert could have subjected it to numerous tests to prise more clues from the page, but those are skills I don’t possess, and this was an island in the middle of a storm.

  ‘Where was this?’ I asked.

  ‘Hidden in this book,’ Alice replied, holding up the battered copy of Master and Margarita. ‘Like a bookmark.’

  I frowned, thinking back to my arrival. Hadn’t I thumbed through it? The note was crumpled but the paper looked fresh. And ‘note’ was ringing a little bell in my mind. I massaged my knuckles into my eyes until colours exploded across the inside of my eyelids. The note in my shoe, it was still there. I couldn’t read it now, in front of anyone.

  ‘His son lives in Russia. You think he’s been taken?’ Alice asked.

  ‘More likely they’re just threatening,’ I said, more interested in who would have crammed a note into my shoe.

  ‘With his expertise, the Russians would jump at the chance to get him back.’

  I lay back on my bed, took a sip from my hip flask, closed my eyes. ‘So Demeter is blackmailed to return to Russia. For whatever reason, they’re prepared to go to any length. And you said it yourself earlier, Demeter is tired. He’s nostalgic for his homeland, and to see his son again.

  ‘Here he sees an opportunity to go through with it, away from Porton Down, from the ever watchful eyes of MI5 and GCHQ.’

  ‘But why murder Andy?’ asked Marie.

  ‘Maybe he found the note? He was his roommate after all, probably suspected something. Confronted Demeter, threatened to go to Greenbow. Andy had to be disposed of, but in a way that looked accidental, to buy Demeter time. A vial of anthrax emptied into his tea.’

  ‘His tea?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Or whatever.’ I shrugged. ‘He was poisoned.’

  ‘Sounds plausible,’ said Alice.

  ‘Motive, means, opportunity. All stacks up.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He has a rendezvous with a sub this evening, under cover of darkness. But the divers have been spotted – so the witnesses have to die, along with the radios, to stop us alerting the Navy to their presence. Covering his escape. First poor Ingrid, then he comes here to destroy this radio too.’

  ‘And to kill Gambetta.’

  ‘It might have been his motivation all along. Remember we saw them together on the cliffs? I bet Gambetta suspected something, maybe confronted Demeter about it. We’ll never know, but whatever the reason, Demeter shoots him.’

  ‘Then disappears,’ said Marie.

  ‘He tries to escape out the window but it’s shut, so he gets under the floor instead.’

  ‘Could he do that? I mean, quickly enough?’

  ‘He’s quicker than he looks. It fits – we saw them arguing, remember? Maybe they’d argued on the cliffs, they saw the divers, Gambetta put two and two together and knew Demeter was defecting, that he’d need to destroy the radio, so he didn’t want to let him in the room. Demeter knocks him over the head, smashes the radio before Gambetta can raise the alarm. He’s not to know the window’s screwed shut. He’s struggling with it when Gambetta recovers. They fight, and – BANG – that’s that. Demeter assumed the window was just jammed, that if he hid under the floor we’d think he’d got away. Down the hatch just in time for us to walk into an empty room.’

  ‘Almost empty. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.’ Alice shuddered.

  ‘So what happened next? The captain, Hurley and I went off to Vollum to find Ingrid dead. What did the rest of you do?’

  ‘We hid.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You’d gone off with the only weapon and there was a madman loose on the island!’

  Marie picked up the story. ‘Not to mention Russian frogmen. We stacked the furniture against the door and turned all the lights off. We thought we’d be safer, if there was someone out there.’

  ‘You hid in there for nearly an hour?’

  ‘Yes, until you got back,’ said Alice.

  ‘No, I got back after the other two, remember. Did you hear them come in?’

  ‘They knocked on the door.’

  I thought about this for a second. ‘Okay, so Demeter waits for the base to go quiet, then emerges from his hiding place and creeps down the corridor, slips away into the night. You didn’t hear him because you were all cowering behind a barricade in the common room.’

  Alice looked at her feet. ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘Now? Those divers will have brought a spare dry suit and rebreather. A ten-minute swim and he’s sipping vodka on board a super-quiet Borei-class en-route to Severomorsk, and with no radio we can do fuck-all about it.’

  They sat in silence, mulling it over. I could tell they believed the series of events as I’d just told it.
Everything tessellated perfectly.

  Which is why I was uneasy.

  In my experience, if you throw the jigsaw pieces in the air, they rarely fall together that snugly on the first go. How had Demeter got a window key? Had Gambetta given it him? There were no others missing. Where was it now? Who’d taken it from the comms room, and who’d moved the body? Why had a vial of soil been hidden under the floor?

  And lastly for now, the fact that two bullets were fired up at Camp Vollum was really niggling at me.

  All I knew for sure was that I didn’t believe a word of what I’d just told Marie and Alice.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Despite my doubts about Demeter sticking around, we checked the other rooms anyway. The bedroom next door to mine belonged to Ingrid and Marie. Actually, Marie had just been upgraded to single occupancy due to the recent unpleasantness. So had I, come to think of it. Silver linings, and all that.

  I’d had to wait outside while she ran around the room collecting underwear, tidying God knows what, despite assurances that I’d seen such sights before. She was crying when I finally entered, and one look at Ingrid’s still rumpled bed on the other side of the room reminded me why – and made me more determined to get to the bottom of this mess.

  Alice comforted her while I checked the floor for a hatch only to find there wasn’t one. Lack of quality sleep must have stripped the teeth from the constantly whirring gears in my brain, as it took me a while to realise that the dividing wall between the rooms extended above the floor only – the hatch in my room next door actually provided access to the crawl space under the whole hut. With nothing more to check, we proceeded to the next hut.

  The next bedroom was also single occupancy – Alice’s, for the sake of modesty, being the only other woman in the base. Again I had to wait outside while she tidied, and then we were in. The hatch was in the same place as the other hut, covered by the drawers, and again the dust told me it’d be fruitless. After a quick check, which also confirmed the space ran under both bedrooms, we moved on.

  Considering Gambetta had sauntered around in a permanent state of dishevelment, the room he’d shared with Dash was the model of order. The lamp was still on, watching me carefully, threatening to reveal my trespassing in here earlier. While Alice checked Dash’s things, I opened Gambetta’s bedside drawer. Nothing of interest – just the obligatory packs of fags. No hints of a personality, no private items and I was beginning to think the man was a robot until, hidden under a pile of clothes in a bottom drawer, I found something of great interest to make up for it.

  A lightweight Galco shoulder holster, tailored perfectly for a suppressed Walther PPK, the French-produced gun made famous by fictional secret service agents. It lent further weight to my suspicions about Eric Gambetta being DGSE.

  There was nothing terribly ominous about that. This was a joint operation after all, a combined study into decontamination procedures. MI5, MI6, GCHQ, DI, NATO, CIA, DGSE – nosy acronyms were in endless supply, soaking into all aspects of government. Every department, every single project being undertaken in one place, was represented on an office wall somewhere else in the world.

  Gambetta being DGSE wasn’t ominous. The missing pistol, like the missing key, was. Had he been murdered with his own gun during a struggle? If so, how had Demeter shot Ingrid beforehand?

  I stuffed the holster back into the drawer.

  We didn’t encounter anything else of interest in the room – like a bedroom in a show home, it was a sterile environment that was, other than the faint odour of cigarette smoke, devoid of atmosphere.

  We continued into the next hut. Door one was Greenbow’s bedroom.

  ‘Nice of him to reserve a room for himself,’ I said.

  ‘Clay wasn’t best pleased,’ said Alice. ‘He’s sharing with Hurley next to the comms room.’

  ‘Shows who’s really in charge here. Greenbow has a bedroom and an office.’

  Marie sniggered.

  A glance was enough to tell me nothing could be gleaned from the room. Marie attacked the drawers whilst I set about the wardrobe. Like the previous room, it was fastidiously tidy, but unlike it, this screamed information about Captain Greenbow. Two pairs of black brogued Oxfords, polished to a mirror shine. Five identical green jumpers (Jersey, Heavy Wool) folded in the drawers. Two full uniforms hung up; no.2 Service Dress and no.10 Mess Dress. Why Greenbow had brought his parade uniform and formal evening dress was beyond me.

  ‘Not much in here,’ said Marie as she rooted through the drawers. ‘Boot polish. Spare laces. Tissues. Band of the Irish Guards?’

  I turned to see her holding up a couple of CDs. I was mildly amused to see Alice next to her inspecting a well-thumbed copy of The Man Who Would Be King.

  Yet again the trapdoor revealed nothing.

  We bypassed door two, Greenbow’s office (locked, plus we’d already checked beneath it from his bedroom). Thank God there was only one more hut to check, the one we’d all started in – housing the radio room but also a dorm shared by Clay and Hurley. We’d already checked under it, where I’d found Demeter’s suit, but needed to check the bedroom. We’d left it to last to avoid disturbing that foul drunken creature.

  Marie knocked on the door. ‘Dr Clay?’

  No answer.

  ‘He’s pissed as a fart, just go in,’ I said.

  After a moment’s uncertainty Marie opened the door. It was pitch black inside, blinds drawn. I stepped into the room as Marie fumbled for the light switch.

  It stank, the air heavy. I started to tell Marie to wait, grabbed her arm. Too late; the strip lights buzzed on.

  She screamed, pulling away, stumbling backwards into Alice’s arms. She buried her face, shuddering.

  Dr Donald Clay was dead.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Clay lay in bed, tongue hanging from a distended jaw, neck bent horribly backwards as if he’d been electrocuted. Bony fingers clutched at his chest, one leg jutting out from the blankets.

  He’d clearly suffered, but other than the stretched limbs and wild eyes there were no outward signs of violence; no blood or gunshot wounds to be seen here. I threw the covers back, wafting the stench around the room. Stains had spread across his clothes and the mattress beneath him. He’d lost control of everything, violently. Dried vomit crusted on his chest.

  The signs pointed to organ failure, probably a heart attack. Possibly a seizure of some kind; we established I’m not a doctor.

  I pushed his leg into bed with my shoe – rigor mortis takes a while to set in – but was careful not to touch him. Although I doubted it was anthrax, until I knew what the cause of death was I wasn’t taking risks.

  ‘He’s dead!’ Alice exclaimed. She’d left Marie in the corridor.

  ‘Was he a big drinker?’

  ‘He liked a Scotch but I wouldn’t call him an…’ She shot an uncomfortable look at the flask in my hand.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘Alcoholic?’

  ‘Yes. Not that I know of, oh God, I’ve known him for years!’

  ‘Mon Dieu, I didn’t like him but…’ Marie had snuck up behind me, and was peering over my shoulder. ‘I can’t believe he’s dead.’

  ‘So not shot, then,’ Alice stated.

  ‘Could be natural causes,’ I said, though I didn’t believe it.

  ‘At fifty-five?’ Marie wrinkled her face.

  ‘Give over! He was never fifty-five.’

  ‘He did say he felt ill when we put him to bed,’ said Marie.

  ‘And we thought it was the drink,’ I said. ‘Our numbers seem to be dwindling.’

  I picked up his pillow off the floor. It was a wanky down-filled one. Obviously the standard-issue synthetic pillows were for the plebs.

  I told Alice and Marie to wait outside as I pulled the blankets over his head.

  I opened the bedside table, just tissues, a tin of toffees, a washbag, a book on gardening, which seemed about the most pointless thing anyone could bring to
this barren rock. I took a toffee and looked in Hurley’s cabinet, which was entirely empty so I turned my attention to the wardrobe where, thanks to the lack of hangers, all the clothes seemed to be folded at the bottom. I had a quick feel when something caught my eye. A small hole in what I presumed were Clay’s trousers, unless Hurley was partial to M&S cords, but strangely it passed through the other side too. I picked them up, held them up to the light. Four holes, all the way down the leg; something had happened to them while they were folded. I dropped them, crouched by the wardrobe, pulling out more clothes until I reached the bottom and a similar-sized hole through the solid wood base. I stuck my little finger through but it just wiggled in the void beneath. The wardrobe was bolted to the floor so I’d exhausted that line of enquiry.

  I stood, unwrapped the toffee, added the hole to the growing pile of questions in my head.

  Chapter Forty

  Greenbow had of course demanded to see the body, but predictably spent all of ten seconds in the room, forming no opinion of his own, adding nothing of value. The other group had checked the labs without incident then gone on to check the kitchen, dining room and common room. Each time the same result; nothing in the under-floor areas and nowhere else to hide. After that we’d convened in the common room for a stiff drink. I cradled my flask, turning things over in my mind, occasionally lifting my head to listen in on the debate.

  I didn’t tell them about the gun missing from Gambetta’s room or the hole, there was already enough for them to discuss. The note Alice found, it was generally agreed, backed up the sub theory – proof positive that Demeter was indeed headed back east, taking his knowledge of Porton Down with him in a mirror of events years before, when he’d arrived in Britain carrying the secrets of Sverdlovsk. A redefection. This in turn was further proof that he’d killed Gambetta (we already knew that, but it was nice to have supporting evidence), Ingrid, and Andy Kyle. Alice recounted the theory we’d discussed, careful to present it as mine in case of rebuttal – but she needn’t have worried; it was swallowed down as easily as Andy’s poisoned tea.