Lethal Profit

by Alex Blackmore

  ‘Well then,’ he said, almost laughing now, ‘seeing as you have such a low opinion of me, that will certainly make this moment so much sweeter.’

  Eva stared at him, the satisfaction she had felt in insulting him seconds before disappearing as a deep sense of foreboding settled over her. ‘What do you mean?’

  Daniel walked over to her, ripped off the right arm of her jumper and pointed at her bare skin. Eva craned her head and bent her right elbow out at a right angle so she could see what he was pointing at. Two angry red welts sat side by side on the flesh of her upper arm. She had felt her arm aching but assumed it was just the injected sedative.

  ‘What’s the second one?’

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  Eva blanched.

  ‘Is that how you killed Jackson too?’

  ‘Oh stop going on about him, Eva,’ said Daniel, angry again.

  Eva looked again at her arm. ‘If this is the same substance as in the syringes in Paris, why am I not dead?’

  ‘It’s slower acting, less potent. I need you infected but I need to time it with an engagement I have tomorrow morning at 5.’

  Eva stared at him, lost for words.

  ‘You just don’t get it do you?,’ he said, laughing at her. Then, seeming to lose interest, he walked away from her and towards a large bench that contained three stacked monitors and several layers of computer equipment. He began tapping into the keyboard and then moving some of the equipment around. Finally, he produced a small hand-held camera on a tripod and positioned it in front of her.

  Eva looked at the camera; she began to feel very nervous. She glanced over at Leon but he was still out cold.

  Daniel left the equipment and walked back towards her.

  ‘Don’t worry, this is all for later.’

  ‘Later… ?’

  He started to walk away again and then stopped as if something important had occurred to him. ‘Would you like to know why all this is happening?’ Eva said nothing.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I own a company called Bioavancement S.a.r.l. – heard of it?’ He laughed. ‘My company has signed a deal for supply and delivery of pools full of algae – lovely harmless algae – genetically engineered in our factory in the Sudan to produce a ground-breaking health supplement. With me so far?’

  Eva remained quiet. He was going over old ground and he knew it.

  ‘Of course, what your little adventures have uncovered is that this supplement is part of a money-making scheme of mine that has involved collaborating with several rather well-known pharmaceutical giants to make a little extra profit and to exercise a little power. As you may or may not have seen, this supply and delivery has already taken place – rather earlier than agreed – and the UK’s waterways are now well populated with our algae.’

  ‘Presumably you didn’t tell them about how quickly the algae would spread – these pharmaceutical companies. I can’t imagine they would have signed up for the PR disaster you’ve created for them.’

  ‘No,’ said Daniel, ‘we didn’t tell them that. Neither did we tell them how it is resistant to every algaecide on the planet,’ he continued helpfully, ‘except of course the one we have here,’ he said, indicating the room around him.

  ‘But surely anyone can manufacture an algaecide?’

  ‘Well, that’s where this little plant is so clever because it is designed to hide its own genetic structure. Without knowing the genetic code, you’d never be able to make a guess at how to kill it, even a very well-educated one.’

  Eva suddenly remembered the document she’d read on the memory stick that confirmed what he was saying.

  ‘The other very clever thing about the algae is that it has been programmed to be a carrier.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A virus, Eva.’ He nodded at her arm. ‘A virus we have developed, the virus that my Sudanese friends used on several victims in Paris and the virus that will eventually kill you. Now this, I don’t believe was in the documents you have seen.’

  ‘You can’t put a virus into a plant.’

  ‘No, that’s quite right. But this algae is genetically engineered, Eva, and we have engineered it to hold the virus. At least until it dies.’

  ‘But the algae is everywhere. You’re going to infect hundreds of thousands of people.’

  ‘Millions, I should think.’

  ‘Why have you been injecting it into people – why try and inject it into me in Paris?’

  ‘It seemed logical to use it as a weapon. A gunshot or a knife would attract so much attention but the virus, well that would take much longer for anyone to figure out the cause of death and attribute it to murder – if they ever did. Besides, when it comes to the crunch, the more people already dead or dying from the virus, the more desperate the need for the vaccine, and the more leverage I have.’

  ‘Leverage?’

  ‘Leverage.’ He smiled at her and Eva felt convinced she saw a flicker of insanity dance across his eyes.

  ‘I suppose you’ll use the vaccine for the virus and the algaecide as a bartering chip.’

  ‘Right. Although that’s not the only leverage I’m looking for.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There are… other interests involved in this. I can’t take all the credit unfortunately.’

  ‘Other interests.’

  ‘Yes. I need the leverage that I have in mind with them to secure my future career.’

  ‘You can’t possibly have a future career after this. If what you’re saying about the virus is true you’ve done much worse than profiteering.’

  ‘It will blow over. Until it does I’ll simply disappear – for a while. Change my identity. It would be easy to get lost in one of the three countries bordering this lawless region and there are some excellent plastic surgeons here who specialise in giving people like me a new lease of life.’ His eyes flashed. ‘All you need is money these days, Eva, and you can do anything.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  ALONE IN THE HOLDING CELL WITH an unconscious Leon, Eva thought about what Daniel had said. People were so fragile and so complicated. How had someone she had known with grazed knees and a conker collection turned into such a monster. Eva pulled her ripped jumper further around her as she stood leaning against the wall. Daniel had locked them into a windowless cell with only a metal cot and a toilet furnishing the bare, concrete room.

  In the corner, Leon began to stir on the metal bed. Eva glanced over at his huge form as the sedative began to wear off. He murmured quietly in his state of drugged semi-consciousness and Eva noticed his fists were clenched. Suddenly he sat up, swung his legs over the bed and took two enormous steps across the room. He paused for a second and then lunged at Eva; picking her up by her neck, he flung her against the wall.

  ‘Leon!’

  He stared blankly at her and continued to tighten his grip on her neck.

  ‘Leon!’ Eva clawed at the fist clamped around her throat with her left hand but he continued to squeeze his fingers around her airway, his eyes unseeing. Suddenly, Eva realised he wasn’t even awake. She raised her free hand and slapped him hard around the face, with as much force as she could muster.

  Immediately, his eyes focused. He looked confused. Then he released Eva’s neck and she shoved him away from her.

  He looked at her, uncertain.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Jesus, you nearly strangled me,’ she said rubbing her throat.

  ‘Eva, I’m really sorry.’ He took a step towards her.

  She held up the palm of her hand, indicating that he should keep his distance.

  Leon retreated back several steps and sat down on the edge of the metal cot he had been lying on minutes before. He rubbed his face with his hands and then looked up at Eva.

  ‘Why don’t I know how we got in here?’

  ‘Daniel shot you with something – another tranquilliser, I imagine.’

  Leon frowned. ‘What else have I missed?’
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br />   Eva sighed, walked over to Leon and sat down on the metal bed next to him. She rubbed her neck and glared at him.

  ‘Eva, I’m s… ’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Eva didn’t enjoy the fact that, as a woman, she was genetically programmed to be physically weaker than Leon. She didn’t want to be reminded of it.

  ‘I still can’t really figure out why Daniel is involved in this,’ she said after several minutes of silence.

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘He was a friend of Jackson’s from school. I… well, I met up with him when I first arrived in Paris, when I was looking for information. He wasn’t very helpful.’

  She willed him not to ask her anything else about that encounter.

  ‘What happened to your arm?’

  Eva followed his gaze to where Daniel had torn off her sleeve. ‘Daniel also developed the algae to carry a virus,’ she said quietly, still looking at her arm. ‘It was the same thing that I injected into the man in the park in Paris – that they tried to inject into us. That was what killed him in that awful way.’

  Leon continued to stare at her and she watched his face as the realisation dawned on him. Eva looked at the floor. She didn’t want sympathy. ‘Check your arm,’ she said, suddenly looking up. He put one hand up the sleeve of his jumper and felt the area at the top of his arm. He gazed back at her. ‘Only one mark.’

  Eva dropped her gaze to the floor again. Why only her?

  Slowly, she raised her eyes and looked at Leon. He was flexing his arms, trying to bring full sensation back to his muscular body after the effects of the sedative.

  ‘Leon, who are you?’

  He looked at her surprised.

  ‘I mean really, who are you?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Every time I ask you a personal question you dodge it and I still don’t know what you do or how you came into my life,’ she continued. ‘I want to know why you have been helping me – what’s in it for you?’

  Silence filled the inhospitable room.

  ‘I don’t think you have anything to lose now,’ Eva said, indicating the mark left on her arm where the virus had been injected.

  Leon gazed at her for a second then shook his head and sighed. He rubbed at his wrists where the plastic bonds had been.

  ‘I’m a mercenary,’ he said finally.

  ‘A… what?’

  ‘A gun for hire, a contract killer, a thug.’

  Eva wasn’t surprised that he didn’t work as a bank clerk or a gardener. But neither had she been expecting that.

  ‘I don’t understand – what does that actually mean?’

  He looked at her, as if to try and understand if she was joking. When he realised she wasn’t he continued. ‘People hire me to do things for them – things which aren’t necessarily within the law – kidnapping, warnings, tailing, occasionally termination if the money’s good enough.’

  ‘Did you kill Jackson?’

  ‘No.’ He seemed affronted. ‘We were kindred spirits, I would never have done that.’

  Eva got up and walked over to the other side of the room, running her fingers through her long hair.

  ‘How long have you done this for?’

  ‘Ten years. I used to have an intelligence job but I have… episodes. They have made it difficult to hold down a career like that.’

  ‘Episodes.’

  ‘Times when I need to lose myself. That’s how I met your brother – in rehab. We both seemed to suffer from the same need to escape.’

  ‘Into drugs and drink.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her defiantly. She stared back. Once she might have judged Leon for this obvious weakness, but not any more. It was frightening that someone would just allow that to be their life on an ongoing basis – normal life with periods of self annihilation – but who hadn’t done it to some degree or other?

  ‘Look, I’m sorry… ’ she began.

  ‘It’s the life I’ve chosen,’ he interrupted, ‘I’m good at what I do and I earn a lot of money. Don’t be sorry.’

  They looked steadily at each other for several seconds. It was time to talk about something else.

  ‘OK, Valerie,’ said Eva suddenly. ‘I overhead the conversation you had with her at her flat that day. You knew her.’

  Leon shook his head and sighed and then dropped his head into his hands again. He clearly didn’t enjoy being put on the spot. ‘We worked together,’ he said meeting her gaze once again.

  ‘You mean she was the same as you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked up. His eyes were huge and dark, his pupils massively dilated from the chemicals in his system.

  ‘I mean, obviously I recognised her immediately when Jackson introduced me to her. We had worked together and she got several of our team killed by changing the agreed plan on one of the jobs to protect her own interests. In fact, I never really found out if she wasn’t working for two parties at the same time. Her behaviour then triggered the episode after which I met Jackson.’

  ‘So you knew what she was?’

  ‘Look, Eva, I had a vague idea but people change you know. Jackson seemed so happy with her and at first I couldn’t figure out whether she was still that person. She even told me that she had left all that behind her – all the deceit. Of course, she hadn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About three months after Jackson introduced me to her, I think she became scared that I would tell Jackson what I knew about her. She asked me to meet her in a hotel one night to talk about the old times, to set it all behind us. She offered me a “pick me up”, we drank, I should have seen it coming.’

  Leon looked genuinely pained at this point. ‘She got me so high I was out of my mind and then we slept together. The next day I got a message telling me she had recorded the whole thing and, if I ever mentioned it, she would tell Jackson I tried to seduce her. She sent me this edited version of what she had and it really did look like that was what I had tried to do!’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Clever bitch. After that there was nothing I could do other than watch. Those photos I showed you – I took those during one of my ‘surveillance’ missions. I couldn’t talk to Jackson about it but as soon as she made that tape I knew there was something wrong with the situation so I started keeping tabs on her. I don’t know if she knew I was on her case but she didn’t step out of line, not even once – it was confusing, I couldn’t decide one way or the other. But when Jackson disappeared… I knew she had to be right at the heart of it.’

  ‘Do you think she killed him?’

  ‘I still don’t know. I thought she might have, until she was attacked by the men who took you. Why do that?’

  ‘A cover? They were working for Daniel.’

  ‘And for Joseph Smith also. Valerie’s the only loose end… ’

  ‘I should have done more you know,’ said Leon, interrupting her. ‘I could have done more.’ His head was in his hands again.

  ‘I don’t know, Leon.’

  He looked up suddenly. ‘I could,’ he said aggressively.

  ‘So why didn’t you.’

  ‘Jackson changed a lot, Eva. In the last few months before he disappeared he was like a different person. I thought he was using again.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Leon dropped his gaze from hers and stared at the floor. ‘The signs were all there as far as I was concerned. He was going on about all these crazy theories – he said he couldn’t tell me the details as it was confidential, but that there was danger, so much danger – and some kind of murder plot. He told the same stories as when I met him in rehab – different details but the same kind of tales of being pursued by killers and being almost like a spy. I just felt like he was fantasising about his being in danger because he was using drugs again – it seemed to feed a really dark side of his imagination.’

  Eva remembered what Irene Hunt had told her about Jackson’s recruitment. Leon was much closer to the truth than he realise
d.

  ‘What did you do?’

  Another pause. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But don’t you think he needed your help?’

  ‘Eva, you have to understand, I was so angry with him. We had made a pact to stay clean – other than Valerie’s interference I had been free of it all since rehab – and it was a promise to each other I thought we’d never break. I needed him not to break it. When it seemed that he’d done just that I… I just couldn’t bear to be around him any more.’

  Eva tried to be sympathetic but such sentimental weakness from a man like Leon….it was hard to believe there wasn’t more involved. And she found it interesting that he took no responsibility for that night with Valerie, that whatever he had taken was not his fault.

  ‘So did you find out if he was using?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘No. But by the time I knew it was too late.’

  Eva looked wearily at Leon. Could he have saved Jackson?

  ‘I had my own demons, Eva. I had to stay away from him. I didn’t want to get sucked back in.’

  Eva nodded slowly. What was the point of going over it now anyway, it was all just far too late.

  But Leon didn’t stop talking. It was almost as if he felt the need to confess. ‘The night before he disappeared he called me and he left a message saying he had to see me, a matter of life or death. He sounded distraught, frantic.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I met him like he asked and that’s when he started talking about protecting Valerie and Sophie. He left me this list of instructions and contacts for Sophie – at the time I didn’t even know who she was so it seemed crazy. He was nervous, sweating, too hyper.’

  ‘And that convinced you that he was using again.’

  Leon nodded. ‘It seemed so ridiculous – I mean, the things he was saying sounded ridiculous. Even though I knew what I knew about Valerie, the details of what he was claiming – which we now know are true – were so fantastical and the details he gave me were so disjointed. At the time, it didn’t seem possible that the threat I thought he was imagining could be real.’ Eva said nothing.