by Matt Lynn
Dr Scott's laboratory was located at the furthest end of one of the corridors leading through the complex. She glanced briefly through the thin porthole. It was, as she would have expected, empty; it was late, and Scott did most of his work shuffling papers in his office. Nobody saw him in there very often.
She glanced down at the door. Like all the important labs and offices within Kizog it was protected by a numerical lock; every authorised employee had a key number they had to punch into the doorpad to gain access to their part of the building. Tara had never tried to break into anything before, and she could feel her pulse quicken as she contemplated the next few moments. Be strong, she told herself. And be careful.
She had already run the technique through her mind; indeed, in moments of quiet, it had been one of her main preoccupations. A friend at the National Institutes had explained how he had done this for a bet once, so she knew the theory. But the tension in her muscles told her the reality could be very different.
Taking a vial of sodium from her lab coat, she uncorked the glass container, and, checking the corridor once again, gently sprinkled a dusting of the fine yellow powder over the lock. Much of it inevitably fell on the floor, and she ground it in with her shoe. Kneeling, she put her eyes as close as possible to the lock, squinting so that she could see exactly the shapes formed by the thin film of powder. Gradually a pattern began to emerge. From the traces of the fingerprints marked out by the sodium, she could see the four digits that had been pressed into the lock: two, three, seven and nine. Now at least she knew which four numbers made up the code.
Each lock, she knew, was programmed to accept two tries. Employees might make a mistake the first time, but if they failed to get the number right on the second attempt, the door would lock solidly for the next thirty minutes, and an alarm would trigger security that a break-in was being attempted. Just punching those four numbers at random would not be good enough. She needed more information.
Recalling what she had learnt from her friend, Tara took a pair of standard lab magnifying spectacles from her pocket and began to study the fingerprints more closely. The chances were that Scott, like most people, pressed hardest on the first and third numbers. Studying the prints closely, Tara decided two and nine were heavy prints, three and seven were light prints. Making a quick mental calculation, that gave her four possible numbers:
2397, 9723, 9327, or 2793.
It had to be one of those four numbers, and with two chances, she now had a fifty per cent probability of gaining access without being detected. She also had a fifty per cent probability of being caught. Too risky, she decided.
One more clue, Tara told herself. Reason dictated that a normal person would press most heavily on the first digit, and then use a slightly lighter touch as they ran through the numbers. Squinting once again at the two heavier prints, she looked to see which had the deeper imprint. The marks were all very faint and she suspected nobody had used this lock for several days. Even so, glancing from the two to the nine, she decided the nine had the stronger print. OK, she decided. Two possible numbers: 9723 or 9327.
Drawing a deep breath, Tara allowed the oxygen to flow into her lungs, calming her and setting her mind momentarily at rest. Punching 9327 into the keypad, she looked nervously at the liquid crystal display above the box. 'Incorrect number. Access denied,' ran the message across the miniature screen. Without hesitating, Tara punched 9723 into the machine and readied herself to walk away briskly if the door did not open. In front of her, a small red light flashed up on the display. Reaching down for the handle, she turned, felt the lock give way, and the door opened before her. Exhaling, she stepped inside the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.
Scott's lab was smarter than the rest. Larger. Better equipped. There were more computers, and comfier chairs. Tara could see no sign of any experiments in progress. The workbench was clean and empty, the vials were all tucked away, and the computers were shut down. In the recess at the back of the laboratory there was a library. Tara scanned her eyes along the shelf. There were plenty of standard pharmacology and virology reference works. Tara was familiar with them all and these were not even the latest editions; looking at them, Tara was doubtful whether Scott was familiar with the current work in the field.
Lower down, stacked upon a row of metal shelves, she found a pile of ring folders and binders. More interesting, she thought to herself.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Tara took out the binders and began leafing through them. The pages, old now and slightly yellowed, felt musty to her touch. It was impossible to say how old they were. There were no dates on them. No clues as to when they might have been written. Just page after page of scrawled laboratory notes, written in a script that was almost indecipherable. The words were hard to make out. Tara's eyes were straining, but the jottings meant little anyway. The formulae, however, meant more. They were written in capital letters, and their meaning was immediately apparent to her. They related to leprosy and the nervous system. One formula struck her in particular. It was close to the leprosy enzyme; the structure of the molecule that carried the virus from one carrier to another. Clearly a transmission mechanism, she thought. Close to leprosy. Close, but not quite there.
The leprosy viruses, and most of the transmission mechanisms, were intimately familiar to her; she had spent most of the past few years working on them and been commended for her work. Indeed, been recruited here to teach the company about them. Shouldn't it be the other way around, she wondered? Shouldn't there be something I can tell them?
Next to the formula, in small, tightly written capital letters, were the words: 'CHECK WITH DR ZMITT'. Standard lab jottings; junior researchers would often make a note to themselves to discuss an interesting finding with a superior. But Scott was a superior. He was the head of research. There was nobody with whom he could check his work. There were no dates on the papers, and no clue to when they might have been written. Nor was there any other mention of Zmitt, or who he was, or what position he might hold within the laboratory.
Clutching the sheaf of papers, Tara left the door ajar, and walked back along the corridor to the photocopier. Still wearing her mask, the veins around her temples pulsing, she leant over the machine. Clean, fresh photocopies spat out of the machine.
'Good evening, Miss Ling.'
Tara spun round. It was a security guard. She said nothing. And as she pulled the mask down tighter over her face, she watched him walk away.
The guard checked his watch. It was close to ten. He made a mental note to himself that after he finished his round he should, as instructed, file a brief report. It would state merely that he had seen Miss Ling in the laboratory late on Monday evening.
Jack sat alone, holding a whisky and soda in one hand, peering into the gloom of a half-illuminated flat. Outside, the street was quiet, and he had switched off the TV and hi-fi. With Fuller gone, he needed a moment of silence. Complete silence.
He needed, he reflected, someone to talk to; someone who was nothing to do with the company, someone he could confide in and take advice from. Someone he could trust. There was, he realised with a shudder of regret, nobody. His time abroad had put a gulf between him and his university friends, a gulf that he now found hard to bridge. And his schooling outside of Britain meant there were no old friends he could turn to. He was alone.
Riffling through the hundreds of CDs stacked in one corner of the room, he pulled out an old Marvin Gaye album and placed it into the machine; 'What's Going On', something soulful and probing to reflect his mood. Too much time abroad, he decided, as the first magnificent beats thundered through the speakers. And too much trouble with girls.
He still had difficulty understanding what had happened to both of them. Emily, the great love of his university days, had abandoned him after he moved to Thailand. And yet, in truth, he had abandoned her. He had known when he took the posting that she would not be able to join him; she was still studying for the bar, and had to remain in
London. He had not realised it at the time, but he understood now it had been part of the attraction of the move; he wanted to take a break from the relationship and yet lacked the courage to tell her. And so he took himself to the other side of the world, hoping he could return to her when he came back; somewhere within him he suspected that he would never meet another woman who combined such sharp wit and intelligence with such sensitivity, and who, most of all, loved him. And after a brief break, he hoped they would get back together and marry. But, of course, she had met someone else. And so had he.
Jasmine had been different. A middle-class Thai girl, she was a world away from the bar girls most of the other Caucasian men he knew in Bangkok had hung around with. She was, like many Thai women, drop-dead beautiful, but she was also educated and cultured, contemptuous of the hordes of beer-swilling, pool-crazy girls who swanned around the city. Perhaps that was why he had loved as well as desired her. Their affair had lasted just over a year, mostly consummated in secret; it was still not considered respectable for Thai girls to be involved with white men, and she preferred to keep him hidden away. For Jack, the element of furtiveness only heightened the romance. There was an electric charge to each of their meetings; they would eat together in distant parts of town, they would take weekends away in remote beach resorts and the sense of illicit moments snatched from time made each encounter precious. Thinking back now, Jack realised she had perhaps just been waiting; hoping that he would ask her to marry him, so that they would not have to meet furtively any more. When Kizog asked him to come back to England, he had accepted immediately, and had allowed their relationship to crumble.
Well, he thought to himself, taking another sip of his drink, time perhaps, to stop running. Next time, work harder. Try to make it last. Show some commitment. And then perhaps you won't feel quite so alone.
The phone rang twice before Jack answered it, and as he walked across the room he found himself briefly hoping it might be Emily or Jasmine. Picking up the receiver,.he was careful to click the switch on the tape machine Fuller had placed next to the phone. Record your calls, she had instructed. We need the evidence. 'I may be able to help you,' said a voice on the line, the words ground out in a rough East End accent. 'If you need money, that is. But I would need something from you.'
'I can give you a formula,' said Jack evenly, trying to remember the lines he had been taught. 'In exchange for payment.'
The tone of the voice on the line sounded suspicious. 'We are talking about the same thing?'
'Counterfeiting,' replied Jack. 'We are talking about counterfeiting pharmaceuticals.'
'Tomorrow night then,' said the man. 'At the Flying Scotsman. Bottom of the Caledonian Road. At eight.'
The line went dead, and Jack replaced the receiver carefully, switching off the tape machine as he did so. He walked back across the room, pouring himself another drink, and sliding a Van Morrison CD into the hi-fi. Running his eyes over the empty room, he picked up yesterday's paper, flicking casually through the pages, stopping when he reached the panel on Tara. He had read it already, but this time he stopped to read it again, slowly. The first few paragraphs, about her work in the labs, hardly interested him, but lower down was a short description of her life.
Ling was born in Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, in 1964. She confesses that she knows little about her parents; her father was an American serviceman, one of many who fought in the war, who was killed soon afterwards. Her mother, unable to support her, placed her in an orphanage, and records of who she was were lost after the war ended. In 1971 she moved to the US, under a programme to bring the children of American military personnel back to the country. She was adopted by an elderly couple in Ohio, whose only son had been killed in the war, and to whom she was a surrogate grandchild. 'They were very good to me,' recalls Ling. An excellent student, Ling won a scholarship to Harvard, where she took a first degree in medicine, followed by a postgraduate degree in biochemistry. From there she worked at the National Institutes of Health, where she specialised in virology, before being hired by Kizog to work on a vaccine for Ator.
The soft beats of the music pulsed through the room. 'And when I come to her that's where I belong/Yet I'm running to her like a river's song/She give me love, love, love, love, crazy love,' hummed the record. Jack cast the paper down, pausing only to glance at the picture of the laboratory where she worked. There was no picture of her; Tara had refused to have her photograph taken for reasons he well understood. A strange life, he reflected. And a strange way to wind up in the laboratories at Kizog. She must, he decided, be very alone.
EIGHT
Jack checked the locks on his BMW. It was a bad area. And he rated the chances of his car surviving the evening at no more than fifty-fifty.
The Flying Scotsman was a few yards from King's Cross station. The street outside was littered with human debris: tramps and crack dealers, plus a few whores, so beaten, scarred and doped it was hard to imagine anyone wanting them for nothing. Money was out of the question.
The fear was lifting from Jack now. There was a roll in his step. His adrenalin was running, coursing through his veins, pumping his emotions. It was a strangely intoxicating sensation; a sense of walking on the other side of the line. Fine, he reflected, so long as you were just visiting. A tourist. And so long as you were not planning a long stay.
He checked his pockets and glanced anxiously around the streets as he walked. According to Fuller, he would be followed. His movements would be traced, and his words recorded. He could see nobody. Just as well, he told himself. If he could see them, then so could they.
Trust us, Fuller had told him. I hope so, thought Jack. I certainly hope so.
He ordered a beer and stood by the bar. To the back of the pub, a stripper was cavorting on a makeshift black stage, raised about a foot or so above the ground. Tina Turner's 'What's Love Got To Do With It' was playing in the background, dimly, through a badly tuned speaker system. An unoriginal choice of music, thought Jack. She was seventeen or so. Blonde, long hair, clean skin, with firm breasts, and a tattoo of a snake with a sword running through it on the inside of her right thigh.
'The thing that people don't usually realise about criminal activity is that it is best carried out right under the noses of the police.'
Jack turned to his left. He had failed to notice the man standing next to him. He was over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and wavy blond hair. He was wearing neat, black, pleated trousers, and tasselled shoes, a black polo sweater, and a black jacket. His face was rugged and tanned, and his nose was hooked; broken thought Jack. 'You are the man I am meant to be meeting,' he said. 'We spoke on the phone.'
'The very one,' the man said harshly, holding out his hand. 'Angus Shane.'
Jack shook; the grip was firm, too firm, but the squeeze was not severe. 'Take this place,' Shane continued. 'Constant police surveillance. There'll be a couple of nares in here. I could point them out to you if you like. Outside they got video cameras tucked away in the walls, the whole works.'
'And that makes it a good place to meet?' asked Jack warily.
'You have a lot to learn Mr Borrodin. Amateurs see, they always suggest you meet someplace quiet, someplace you won't be noticed. A sleepy country pub. Or a motorway caff. Very fond of that service station just past Watford. I've noticed that. They've seen that on TY. Very dangerous. You see, you can't afford to deal with amateurs in this line. Not worth the trouble.'
Shane looked about forty to Jack. Give or take five years either way. Ex-army, perhaps. He had that look about him. Jack had noticed it with the security guards at Kizog. The soldiers were a better cut of man than the other yobs hired by the security contractors. More bearing. A greater sense of self-confidence. And a toughness that was evident in their muscles and in their eyes.
'You said on the phone that we could do some business,' said Jack.
'Perhaps we can, young man. Then again, perhaps we can't. It all depends.'
'How
did you find me?'
'Contacts. We ask around. Keep our noses to the ground. It always pays. There is always someone who needs some money.'
'Money for what?' asked Jack.
'Interesting question.' Shane pulled out a packet of cigarettes – Camels – from his pocket, lighting one. He dragged on it, hard, the smoke curling up around his eyebrows. 'Forgery. Like those blokes you see selling perfume in Oxford Street. The packaging is all there. Nice bottle. Might smell like dog's vomit, but the girls can't tell the difference anyway. I've done a bit of that myself. Long time ago, mind. I've moved on. It's a nice little trade, but small time. And the coppers bother you now and again.'
'And now you forge pharmaceuticals,' said Jack.
'Much better than forging perfume,' answered Shane. 'Higher prices, for starters. The highest priced retail product there is, if you work it out on a pound per milligram basis. Cheap as well. Cheaper than scent, anyway. Cheaper than Rolexes, too. You don't have to bother with fancy packaging, bottles, none of that. Just a cheap little pill, and a small box with a brand name on it. Easy. But the best part of it is the punters never know. With perfume, the punters know it's fake. They'll buy it, but they ain't going to pay full whack. Pharmaceuticals is different. I mean you come home with your Zantac or your Zovirax, you don't know what it looks like, what it tastes like.'
'You have the formulae for these products?' asked Jack.
'Of course we do.'
'The exact formulae?' Jack persisted, aware that he was meant to be collecting evidence.
'Chemical entity, manufacturing process, the works. I'll be
honest, and say that our stuff ain't quite as good as the real thing. The factories aren't up to scratch. Can't get the staff, you know. And there may be some modifications that we aren't aware of. But pretty close.'