Bad Intentions

by Matt Lynn

  She turned to the rest of the papers, flicking through several she judged irrelevant before she came across a paper Thomas and Gerter had written together. It had been prepared to be delivered at a symposium on Ator held in Vienna, in July 1993, but had never been formally presented; both of them had died some weeks before the symposium. A draft of their paper had nevertheless been forwarded although not published, and the database had located it in its archives. Tara began reading. It started out on conventional enough lines, recapping their earlier work, and summarising the existing literature. It then took a slight detour, discussing the genetic structure of the molecule, concentrating both on its perfection and on its lack of antecedents. Both, thought Tara, were clearly puzzled by the same questions that had long since been mystifying her. Towards the end of the paper Thomas and Gerter started to outline the conclusions they drew from their work. Tara reached for her pen, and neatly underlined the words as she read them.

  After working on the subject in depth it is our feeling that the more closely this subject is investigated the further the answer recedes into the distance. It is possible the scientists working in this field are walking along a blind alley. In the spirit of scientific enquiry we believe it is useful at this point to throw out some new and different hypotheses and test them against the available evidence. All other lines of enquiry have reached a dead end, and if nothing else we may be able to provoke some fresh thinking.

  Tara knew that this was the heart of the matter, the material she needed most, and she turned the pages anxiously. It was reassuring to find other scientists thinking the same thoughts she was.

  We know that Governments in various parts of the world have been working for many years on biological weapons. Most of us here today will know colleagues who have been involved in this kind of work, or may even have been involved in it themselves. Our contention is that if you were to design a viral molecule that could be used in a military situation, it might very well look something like Ator. The molecule certainly has the look of something that has been created in the laboratory rather than a virus that has evolved through spontaneous mutation. It has none of the obvious antecedents that are required for mutation. And it displays none of the obvious imperfections or weaknesses that would normally be associated with a recently mutated virus. It is too perfect to be true. We believe as well that a study of the most vulnerable population groups supports this hypothesis. We refer to the earlier work of David Sunningdale, which established that young males in close proximity are acutely vulnerable. The virus seems uniquely suited to military use. None of this is proof, we readily concede, but it does appear there is a strong circumstantial case to be made.

  We are aware, as most of you are, that military doctrine on the use of biological and chemical weaponry is strongly influenced by the experiences of World War I. For those of you who are not up to speed on military history, we will remind you that poison gas used in that war had a tendency to drift back on to the general's own troops, making it a very counter-productive weapon. Doctrine since then has been to develop some kind of inoculation in tandem with the biological agent, simply so it can be used to attack the other side, whilst your own troops are protected. Our suspicion is that if Ator has been developed as a biological weapon, and has somehow leaked out into the general population, then the developers may also be in possession of some kind of vaccine or inoculation system. If so, we believe they should be urged to come forward. We thank you for your time, and we hope we have provoked some fresh thinking on this subject. If nothing else, if this theory can be proved wrong we will have closed down one line of plausible inquiry.

  Tara sat back in her chair. Worth dying for? she thought. No. It was only a hypothesis, a theory. But worth killing for? Perhaps. If it were true.

  She stood up from her desk and began rummaging through her papers. She picked up the notes she had photocopied from Dr Scott's office, and the earlier work of Josef Zmitt she had taken from the Wellcome Institute library. She laid it out on the table, and put the paper by Gerter and Thomas next to it. She knew now that the picture was starting to come together. She looked again at the papers from Scott and Zmitt, reading them closely, looking at the words and diagrams in a new light. What had previously been so mysterious suddenly became clear.

  Tara sat back down at her desk. She felt slightly numb, overwhelmed by the connections she was making. The information was coming at her too quickly, and her thoughts were spinning out in a hundred different directions. She took a deep breath, a slug of coffee and tried to compose herself. Reaching to the top of the computer screen she tore off the Post-it note, and picked up her pen. Beneath the words 'FOLLOW THE VIRUS' she drew a small arrow and in neat block letters wrote a single word.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing. Tara put down her papers and walked to the front door, a slight trepidation filling her as she approached it. There had been no visitors since she moved in here, and she noticed that the cottage was bare of any personal effects; only the furniture and pictures that came with the property were on view. Suddenly it didn't feel quite so homely.

  She slid back the eyeglass on the door. Jack was standing outside, the collar of his raincoat turned up around his neck. She opened the deadlock on the door and let him in. Jack walked inside, and began undoing the belt on his coat. He said hallo and she responded warmly, but there seemed to be a stiffness between them. As if he were unsure exactly why he was here, thought Tara. And indeed, she reflected, how could he know.

  'Any chance of a drink?' asked Jack.

  Tara shook her head. She hardly drank herself, she explained, and had not bought any alcohol. There was coffee, if he wanted that. Jack accepted. They walked through the narrow, beamed hallway and into the kitchen. It was modem and functional, with pine wood covering the appliances and the cupboards. Tara emptied freshly ground coffee in the percolator, filled it with water, and waited. Jack struck her as strangely silent, as if he was in shock. He was far removed from the self-confident young executive she had first met in the Kizog laboratories only a few weeks earlier; and, she decided, he was a more plausible character for shedding that skin. 'You said yesterday you wanted to talk?'

  'I know,' replied Jack hesitantly.

  Tara wondered if he was having second thoughts. Perhaps she was not someone he wanted to confide in. Perhaps. But if so, why was he here? 'You aren't sure, are you?'

  'Nothing seems clear any more,' Jack replied.

  'I know that feeling,' she replied sympathetically.

  The percolator was almost full now, and Tara pulled it out of the stand, pouring the coffee out into two large mugs. She mixed some milk and sugar into Jack's cup, but left her own black. He took the mug, cradling it between his hands, sipping on it, and remaining silent for the moment. 'You said something the other day that interested me,' Jack said eventually. 'After the meeting with the PR guy. You said your suspicions started here at Kizog. I didn't think much of it at the time. But it has stayed with me.'

  Tara looked at him knowingly, her eyes widening slightly. 'So you were paying attention.'

  'What did you mean?'

  Tara sipped on her coffee. It was late already, and this would not be quick. But she would either tell him now, or· she never would. She cast her eyes over him, wondering once more if she should trust him. The decision had already been made, yet she still wanted this last moment to reassure herself.

  'Come upstairs,' she said at last. 'I'll show you.'

  Jack followed her upstairs. He noticed the single bedroom to one side of the corridor, and the open door to the study next to it. They walked inside. The curtains were open, and the moonlight cast a slight glow over the village below. Jack cast his eyes over the room. He noticed the table, and the PC and the modem, and he registered the handwritten note stuck to the side of the computer. His eyes followed the map of the world spread out on the desk, with the neat marks spread out across it. And he noticed the pile of A4 pages lying next to
the printer. 'Do you know where Ator comes from?' asked Tara.

  Jack shrugged. 'I'd assumed it was a strange Third World disease. Perhaps of relatively recent origin, perhaps ancient. A mutation, or whatever. I am not a virologist.'

  'Listen carefully,' replied Tara.

  Jack did as he was told. He sat back in an armchair, drinking his cup of coffee, whilst Tara started her explanation. She delivered the talk as if it were a lecture, and Jack felt like a backward student. He had to ask her to stop and make clear the more difficult aspects of biochemistry she touched upon. She started by describing the nature of the virus, dwelling on how it was first detected. She filled in some background on how viruses normally spread around the world. And then, as she was the first to admit, she entered the realms of speculation. Conjecture followed on supposition, none of it with much in the way of solid proof to back it up. But it was, Jack had to admit, a compelling theory, made more so by the collection of scientific literature she had spread out on the desk.

  When she had finished, one element of her story struck Jack as both strange and unexplained. 'I work for Kizog,' he said. 'Why would you share all this information with me?'

  Tara paused. 'Another theory,' she replied.

  'Tell me about it.'

  'I think I first began to suspect after our meeting with Geoff Wheeler,' Tara replied. 'He said that you hired me, that you were the person who brought me into the company.'

  'It's down in the files like that.'

  'But you didn't really have anything to do with it, did you,' she replied, pondering the question anew while she spoke. 'Why would they do that?'

  'Lots of strange things happen at Kizog,' Jack replied lightly, hoping to loosen the atmosphere, yet aware that he was likely to be unsuccessful.

  'But seldom without a purpose,' Tara continued.

  True, thought Jack. Very true. 'So what's the reason?' he asked. Tara was sitting on the edge of the table now, her large brown eyes resting upon him, and she leant forward before replying. 'If they are playing games with me, then they obviously want you to be involved somehow. From that I conclude they are playing games with you as well.'

  Jack knew it was true, but was still unsure how much he should tell her. 'I don't get it,' he replied. 'Why don't you just walk? Resign your job. Forget about the company. What does it matter to you?'

  Tara's eyes were cast down now, scanning the floor, as if she was searching for something. 'It is too personal,' she said reluctantly.

  A silence hung between them, heavy and ponderous. Jack reached across to touch the back of her hand, and for a split second felt her muscles tense, as though she were about to pull away, before she relaxed beneath the edge of his fingers. For just an instant he could feel himself drawing closer to her; the sense that she too was facing a crisis aroused a protective instinct within him. 'Tell me about it,' he said softly.

  She stood up, and walked back towards the table and the computer. 'It isn't important right now,' she replied.

  THIRTEEN

  The drive east woke the demons in Jack's mind. With Shane sitting here at his side, the silver-grey Mercedes powering through the docklands, no more than a few miles from the scene of the crime, memories stalked him with new vigour. More than a week had passed since the event, and, inside himself, Jack could already start to feel how time was numbing his senses. Images of the girl still flashed across his mind five, perhaps six, times a day, but their ferocity was now tempered by distance and their bite was no longer so severe. Yet here, their power intensified, drawing strength from proximity, and Jack could feel himself physically recoiling from the man sitting next to him.

  Maintaining a genial air through it all, he decided, was the hardest part. He knew he had to be on his guard. One slip and they would surely kill him, and that knowledge sharpened every moment of the day, keeping him in a constant state of alert.

  Events had moved forward quickly since the Chairman had revealed that the counterfeiting operation was run by Kizog. The day afterwards, Shane had contacted him. Jack explained that he knew all about the links between the company and the counterfeiters, and he was now assigned to work alongside Shane, coordinating between the field and head office. Shane had seemed no more than mildly pleased by his arrival. There was not much choice, he had pointed out, since he would have had to kill him if he refused. Whether he killed Jack or not didn't seem to be a matter of great importance to him, but the tone of his voice indicated that he preferred not to. One less thing to do, Jack supposed in a moment of despair.

  Back in the office, Jack had been assigned the mundane task of looking at ways Kizog's and Ocher's manufacturing plants might be rationalised if the take-over went ahead; an assignment that prompted Layla to speculate he was being limbered up for a move sideways. If only she knew, he thought to himself. A move sideways would be a relief.

  Most of his time was now being spent working on the details of the counterfeiting operation. Shane was teaching him about the organisation, but Jack knew that his real purpose was to discover what was happening higher up the chain, to find out how all the parts of the jigsaw fitted together. Discovering the truth, he and Tara had resolved, was their only chance of escape. But that would have to come later. He could not show too much curiosity too soon. He had to tread carefully, his steps had to be watched. For now he would look, listen and learn.

  The counterfeiting operation had a sophistication and complexity that Jack could only have dreamt of. It was, in all respects, a shadow corporation, a parasitical creature that lived under the skin of the drugs industry. Shane's tours and explanations about how it worked proved that. It started with the manufacturing operations. The business had grown out of the Third World. There were secret factories located in places such as Thailand, Korea, Angola, Pakistan, and Colombia. In the last three years it had expanded dramatically into the West, and there were now factories in Europe, in Portugal, Northern Ireland, Sicily and the Slovak Republic. But manufacturing was simple. Anyone with a pill-making machine could manufacture pharmaceuticals; once you had the formula, the chemicals were easy to obtain, and the technology was not complicated.

  Shane had explained how they used a ring of parallel importers. A series of wholesalers, owned or controlled by the counterfeiters, traded the drugs between different countries; a shipment could pass from Italy, to the US, to Hong Kong, to France, to Portugal. There could be ten or fifteen transactions before it reached the customer, creating a paper trail that was impossible to unravel. It was like laundering money, Jack reflected; it starts out clearly criminal, but by the time it has passed through the chain its origins had vanished. Wiped clean.

  Within a few days, Jack believed he had a relatively good grasp of how the system worked. It was complex, but the essence of the system was simple. It was smuggling. The complexity was artificial, a façade, designed to confuse anyone from the outside who was trying to figure how the operation worked. If you looked at it from the inside, from the centre of the maze, the pattern was relatively simple.

  Until this evening, however, the main cog in the machine had escaped him. The element of complicity by the industry was missing. By the end of the drive, Shane had taken him to the Kizog distribution centre on the Essex coast. It was a new building, constructed about three years ago, which handled warehousing and distribution for the company throughout Europe. Shane had driven right up to the main gate and flashed a card. That, by itself, had surprised Jack. He had not, for a moment, imagined Shane had security clearance for Kizog buildings. 'Easily arranged,' said Shane when Jack raised the point. 'Computers are dumb animals. They will give you anything if you tap in the right numbers. Trusting beasts. No suspicion. Computerisation has been the greatest aid to criminal activity since the invention of the gun.'

  Jack already had clearance. As a special assistant to the Chairman, he had automatic access to all the company's operations. Together they drove through the centre until they reached the main warehouse. They stood outside the warehouse fo
r about fifteen minutes, Shane puffing on a series of Camels, until a lorry pulled up. Shane waved to the driver. 'Good journey?'

  The driver wound down the window. 'Bit of traffic in France,' he replied.

  'This bloke has come from the Slovak Republic,' said Shane. 'We have a plant there, as you know.'

  'So these are fakes,' said Jack carefully.

  'You bet,' replied Shane. 'Now watch this.'

  The gate of the warehouse rose, and the lorry drove inside. Shane and Jack followed. Inside, the lorry drove into a loading bay, and a group of warehousemen began unpacking the boxes, taking the cargo to its allotted slots in the warehouse. There must have been hundreds of boxes. Jack could only catch the markings on some of them; Zovirax, Prozac, Capoten. Some of the biggest-selling pharmaceuticals in the world.

  Shane and the truck driver sat down at the computer in the docking bay. 'Give me the inventory,' Shane grumbled to the trucker. The man handed him the list, and Shane began tapping it into the computer. 'The beauty of this warehouse,' he continued, 'is that Kizog also supplies drugs wholesale to hospitals and pharmacies all round Europe from here. Makes it easier for the hospital if they buy from one supplier. So they buy from the other companies, and we slip counterfeits into the system right here.' He stood up from the computer. 'Here, you try it,' he said.

  Jack sat down at the machine, tapping in details of the shipments, whilst Shane stepped back a couple of yards, telling him which keys to press, and explaining the answers to the computer's questions. 'Easy, isn't it?' said Shane. Jack nodded. 'There are about a quarter of a million pills in that truck,' he added boastfully.

  'The average selling price of a drug in the UK is £15,' mused Jack. He made a quick mental calculation in his head. 'That truck's shipment is worth £3.75 million.'