Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  MVCJV HWMZU

  HFWGT JSWLY

  RTCGU CHSKG

  BQTFR NSKGP

  ERIDG GFRDY

  SQEXZ LSJVR

  KEYTK QXPFG

  The lines were a form of code, but Nicholson hadn’t used any kind of transposition cipher, or indeed any enciphering method at all, though he’d deliberately arranged the letters to look as if he had. He was fairly certain that his diary, which he kept with him at all times, was safe enough, but he hadn’t wanted a clear written record linking him to any of the people involved in the current operation. But as a methodical man, he had wanted to record their names for his own benefit, hence the code.

  If any security organization did get possession of the book, he imagined that they would spend tens of hours trying to make some kind of sense of what he’d written, because his ‘code’ was logically uncrackable by conventional cryptanalysis for one very simple reason: he had picked all the letters entirely at random, with the exception of the first and third letters of the groups in the left-hand column. With that knowledge, the decode was childishly simple; the ‘code’ was simply a list of seven names – McCready, Hawkins, Richards, Butcher, Elias, Stein and Krywald.

  Nicholson opened the diary at the note page and laid it flat on the desk in front of him. He took a black Mont Blanc fountain pen from his pocket and a ruler from the desk drawer and drew a single line through the first two letter groups. McCready was dead, and so the entry was no longer required.

  ‘One down, six to go,’ Nicholson muttered, with a slight smile of satisfaction. He closed the diary, then opened it again and added a further, eighth, group:

  MQRDF HDGTN

  He would, he promised himself, deal with Murphy personally once the steel case had been retrieved and delivered to Langley. Nicholson nodded, slipped the diary back in his pocket and left the room.

  HMS Invincible, Sea of Crete

  Paul Richter leaned against the aft guardrail on the Quarter Deck in the darkness of late evening and looked back at the wake stretching out behind the ship as Invincible ploughed through the Sea of Crete.

  Astern and a mile or so to port he could see the lights of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker, and behind that one of the frigates, both ships keeping station on the carrier. And a long way out to starboard, Richter could just make out a line of brightness, which marked the location of, he guessed, the town of Chaniá on the north coast of Crete.

  Beyond the wake, above that faint trail of phosphorescence that stretched arrow-straight into the darkness, the sky was alive with stars. Without the constant glare of the lights of London to dim their glory, they appeared brighter and more numerous to Richter, beyond counting or comprehension. He craned his neck to look up at them, turning left and right as he picked out the constellations and individual stars. Orion, with Sirius blazing down to the apparent south-west. The Great Bear. Leo. Dracos. Some he knew, most he didn’t, but all were glorious to behold.

  He looked down again at the endless wake and thought back to the conversation over dinner, the light-hearted bantering that overlaid the total professionalism of the Air Group. Was he looking forward to getting back to London, back to the covert life that he’d been coerced into living? No – no way. But even as that thought crossed his mind, he realized again that his time here on the Invincible had been what amounted to a holiday, a brief return to a former life, and he also remembered why he’d left the Navy in the first place.

  A cruise like this was the cream. Flying a state of the art jet fighter in wonderful weather, playing war games, relaxing in the Wardroom – just the cream. He thought back to the twenty or so years he’d spent as a squadron pilot, first on Wessex and Sea King helicopters and then flying Sea Harriers, some of it on 800 Naval Air Squadron under an older, less congenial management, and he remembered the other times, the other duties, that were less pleasant. The secondary duties, the divisional work, implementing change for the sake of change, and those pointless little jobs that senior officers always seemed to think were essential and urgent, but which were usually little more than a comprehensive waste of time and effort.

  And then there was Richter’s big problem, of course. When he’d first been appointed to 800 Naval Air Squadron the CO had disliked him on sight. Richter could have handled that – nobody said you had to like the people you worked with – but he had never been able to tolerate fools, and the 800 Commanding Officer had definitely been a fool, one of a small number of naval officers somehow promoted by the system into a position well above their abilities.

  Richter’s mistake had been to point out to him, in unequivocally clear language, that he was an illiterate idiot. The mistake was not what Richter had actually said – that was neither more nor less than the undeniable truth – but that he had said it with a large and attentive audience of senior officers present. An audience that neither forgot nor forgave his blatant insubordination, and which had ensured Richter’s naval career was stymied from that moment on.

  Richter shrugged at the memory. It was water – even a flood – under the bridge now, he thought, clutching at a convenient cliché. Look on the bright side. He was still in employment, which a lot of ex-service fixed-wing aviators weren’t, there being very few openings for former Harrier pilots in the world of civil aviation, and he was getting paid reasonably well, too.

  And, despite the fact that he didn’t like his superior, Richard Simpson, and had frequent disagreements with him, he did actually enjoy what he did. The fact that he occasionally got shot at when he wasn’t submerging amid terminal boredom in a sea of paperwork and files, did lend a certain frisson of excitement to his work. In fact, Richter realized that, despite his earlier denial, he was actually looking forward to getting back to his small and rather grubby office in Hammersmith. And, even, back to his piles of files.

  He shivered slightly as a cool breeze lanced off the sea and across the Quarter Deck. Red Sea Rig – open-necked shirt with his lieutenant commander rank badges on the epaulettes, black trousers and a borrowed squadron cummerbund – was comfortable enough, but once the temperature dropped the wearer certainly knew about it.

  Richter glanced out into the darkness again, casting an eye over the stars and the steadily unrolling wake, then looked down at the luminous dial of his watch. Just time for one final coffee in the Wardroom, and then bed.

  ‘Good night,’ he called out to the anonymous figure standing at the aft port side of the Quarter Deck.

  ‘Good night, sir,’ the Lifebuoy Sentry murmured, and watched as Richter walked forward to the starboard-side door, leading through to the Wardroom on Five Deck. As soon as the door had closed behind him, the Sentry reached into his trouser pocket, extracted a packet of cigarettes and lit one. He was gasping for it – he’d thought that WAFU two and a half would never bloody well leave the Quarter Deck.

  Chapter 9

  Wednesday

  Outside Kandíra, south-west Crete

  They spotted the helicopter long before they heard it. A dark grey speck against the blue sky over the two and a half thousand metre peak of Lefká Óri, it grew rapidly in size as it descended the southern slope of the great mountain. Within seconds, it seemed, it was right above them, rotors clattering, jet engines roaring. The pilot swung the Merlin around in a tight left-hand turn, to point the aircraft’s nose into wind, then settled the big helicopter on the ground.

  Dust rose all around it, then began to settle again as the pilot dropped the collective and throttled back the engines. The door on the right-hand side of the aircraft slid open and the aircrewman kicked down a set of folding steps. A slim middle-aged man descended them uncertainly. He was carrying two small bags, and looked around before walking over to the group of watching men. Behind him, two aircrewmen began manoeuvring the first of two large cases out of the rear compartment of the aircraft.

  Three minutes later the dust rose again, as the Merlin lifted into the air and wheeled around to the north-east on a direct track over Lefká Óri
back to the Invincible.

  Kandíra, south-west Crete

  The accommodation wasn’t ideal by any means, but it was better than nothing.

  Three large tents had been erected within the cordon late the previous afternoon. One held a bottled-gas-powered cooking range and sufficient provisions for about a week, though everyone hoped they’d be out of there long before that. The second had a dozen camp beds and the third a couple of chemical toilets, four sinks and two showers. Hot water was supplied by an on-demand gas heater fed by three one-thousand-litre plastic water tanks.

  Well away from these three tents was a single, much smaller, one. It held only the two large chest freezers that had been requested in the CDC response to the Cretan Ministry of Health. These were powered by a Honda petrol generator sitting outside the tent in a sandbagged enclosure, the noise of which provided a constant throbbing background hum.

  Inspector Lavat, after consulting the doctor, had insisted that everyone who had been in recent contact with Spiros Aristides or his house should take a shower as soon as the system was working. All their clothes were then placed in the same cordoned-off pile in the street, which already held Dr Gravas’s and his assistants’ white coveralls, as well as Lavat’s discarded uniform. Only when the last person had emerged from the shower tent, wearing fresh clothing brought in from outside the village, did Gravas begin to relax.

  They heard the helicopter arrive, like everyone else in Kandíra, so Lavat and Gravas were waiting as the sandy-haired civilian walked up and stopped by the cordon. Behind him, four police officers struggled under the weight of the cases.

  ‘I’m Tyler Hardin, from the Centers for Disease Control. Does anybody here speak English?’

  ‘Welcome, Mr Hardin.’ Lavat extended a hand and gestured for the police officer to let the American through. ‘I’m Inspector Lavat of the Crete police force and this is Dr Gravas. We both speak English. Are you by yourself?’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Hardin said, shaking hands with both. ‘Yes, I’m just the advance guard. The rest of my team will be arriving soon with more equipment. Dr Gravas, you’re the person who alerted us, I think?’

  ‘That’s correct. I’ve been hoping ever since that I didn’t over-react, but I’ve never seen anyone die like this man Aristides. And,’ Gravas added, ‘there has been a second death, superficially identical.’

  ‘Another one?’ Hardin asked. ‘What do you mean “superficially identical”?’

  ‘I mean it looks as if this second man, called Nico Aristides – he was a nephew of the first victim and had been drinking with him in the local bar the previous evening – was killed by the same pathogen. But all we did was to enter his apartment and view his body from a distance. I made no examination of the corpse, and we have also had the apartment sealed ever since, just like the other property.’

  Hardin nodded in satisfaction, and the three began walking towards the tents erected at the periphery of the village.

  ‘OK, I see you’ve got a cordon in place but what restrictions have you imposed?’

  ‘Everyone who was already here in the village when I examined the first body has been kept inside the cordon, including the police officers and my assistants. Except for yourself, nobody has been allowed into or out of the village since.

  ‘All those who had any recent physical contact with either of the properties where the bodies were found have been identified and we’ve tried to decontaminate them with showers and changes of clothing. And, as I said, the properties themselves have been sealed.’

  ‘Good. That’s very good,’ Hardin said. ‘With the limited facilities you’ve got available here I can’t think how you could have done better.’

  Gravas smiled and led the way into the first tent. ‘We can offer you some coffee? Or perhaps you’d like something to eat?’

  ‘Coffee, please,’ Hardin replied, ‘but no food, thank you. I seem to have eaten my way non-stop across the Atlantic.’

  Lavat asked the woman serving behind the counter – one of several villagers offering to help the investigation – for three cups of coffee, then the men sat down together at a table.

  ‘Right,’ Hardin said. ‘We received your initial report at the CDC, but I’d appreciate it if you could just run the sequence of events by me again, in case there’s anything I missed or you overlooked. Your English, by the way, is excellent.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gravas said. ‘I had the benefit of two years at Oxford. Now, what happened here was simple enough. Yesterday morning a village woman heard a moan of pain coming from Spiros Aristides’s house. She gathered up a friend, and a few minutes later they entered the house and made their way upstairs. Looking into the bedroom, they saw Aristides lying fully clothed on his bed but completely covered in blood. Assuming he had been hacked to death, they ran out of the house and called the police.’

  Lavat took up the story.

  ‘I was then summoned from Chaniá and arrived here about an hour and a half after the alarm was raised. I set up a cordon around the house, then went inside myself. I looked into the bedroom and saw exactly what the women had reported. I touched nothing in the room, just closed the door and waited for the forensic specialists to arrive.’

  ‘A question,’ Hardin interrupted. ‘You said that one of the women heard a moan of pain, but when they entered the house the man was already dead. What was the interval in between?’

  Gravas looked at Lavat.

  ‘No more than ten minutes,’ he said. ‘She headed from Aristides’s house to the square, found the other woman almost immediately, and they went straight back.’

  ‘What, exactly, did she hear? Was it just moaning, or did she hear any words?’

  Lavat consulted his notebook. ‘She said it was a moan, but she’s here, close by, so I can go and ask her again, if you think it’s important.’

  Hardin nodded. ‘It could be vital, Inspector,’ he said.

  As Lavat walked out of the tent, Gravas looked questioningly at the American. ‘Why is what the dying Greek said important?’

  ‘What he actually said is of no importance at all. All I really want to know is whether he was still capable of speech. That could be a vital indicator.’

  Gravas was still looking puzzled when Lavat walked back into the tent. ‘She’s not absolutely certain,’ he began. ‘She thinks he called out “Help me” in Greek, but Aristides’s voice was very distorted, so she might just have interpreted some sounds as speech. She can’t be certain he actually said anything, but she definitely heard him making noises – he was in distress.’

  Hardin nodded. ‘OK, so the victim was able to emit sounds, speech or otherwise, up until about ten minutes before he finally died. That’s interesting. What happened next?’

  ‘I arrived some time after the police,’ Gravas intervened, ‘because I was over in Irakleío when I was alerted. The Inspector here explained what had happened. I usually enter the scene of a crime first by myself to make an initial survey and to confirm that the victim is actually dead – being a medical doctor as well as a forensic scientist – before bringing in any of my team members. In this case, I entered the bedroom and saw the body exactly as Inspector Lavat has described. From my initial inspection I was certain that he had been butchered, probably with a knife or an axe. His corpse appeared almost drained of blood. Once I confirmed that he was dead, I called in my team to begin checking the rest of the house.

  ‘I remained in the bedroom to carry out a physical examination of the corpse, and that was when I discovered no evidence whatsoever of any kind of physical injury. I had expected at the very least to find one or more puncture wounds in the chest to account for the amount of blood on the body itself, but there was nothing.

  ‘Normally, we would then remove the corpse to our mortuary without further examination, but this absence of wounds troubled me, so I broke the rules. I cut off the man’s clothing and carried out a detailed examination of his body. I found no fresh wounds of any kind, but I did fi
nd indications of severe internal trauma. He appeared to have haemorrhaged blood through every orifice, something I have never encountered before.

  ‘I was about to finally order his body taken out of the house when I suddenly recalled an article I had read years ago about the disease Ebola. I remembered it describing how the bodies of victims almost liquefied, with blood erupting everywhere, and that seemed to me to be the only explanation that made sense. I ordered my team out of the house, closed the bedroom door and, to use your American expression, called in the cavalry.’

  Hardin smiled briefly and looked down at the notes he had been making. ‘As I said before, Dr Gravas, you seem to have done everything exactly as it should be done. I hear what you say about Ebola, and from your description of the dead man here there are certainly some disturbing similarities. But actually I don’t think it’s Ebola we’re dealing with, mainly because of the timescale involved.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Two reasons. First, Ebola takes a lot longer than that to kill its victims. Typically the time between the onset of the infection and the death of the victim is a minimum of four or five days, sometimes a week or even more. You told me that this guy Spiros Aristides was drinking in the bar here in Kandíra on Monday evening, but on Tuesday morning he was dead. That’s one reason.

  ‘The second reason is what the woman heard. Ten minutes or so before his death, the victim moaned or perhaps cried out. In fact, and contrary to anything you may have read, Ebola actually attacks only the circulatory system, causing uncontrollable bleeding within the body and affecting every organ. That includes the brain as the skull fills with blood. Victims may suffer what appear to be epileptic seizures, strokes or convulsions, but they invariably go into a deep coma in the last stages of the infection, as brain functions cease. If Aristides had been suffering an attack by Ebola, he couldn’t possibly have cried out.

  ‘Instead, I think what we’re dealing with here,’ Hardin looked from Lavat to Gravas, ‘is a brand-new hot agent that could make Ebola look like a mild case of influenza.’