The Next Together
Page 10
“I don’t understand,” Kate said, trying another file. It opened fine. It was only the files related to Katherine’s lab work which appeared to be affected.
“I think they were destroyed remotely,” Tom explained. “Someone on the same network made sure no one could open them.”
“Can you fix them?”
“No. I’ve tried, but there isn’t enough information left.”
Kate rubbed the back of her neck, and then turned to face him. “So this entire laptop is useless, basically.”
“There’s other stuff on there,” Matt pointed out. “See what’s in her email account.”
She opened the email inbox and then clicked through the most recent emails looking for anything relevant to her aunt’s work. It was mostly filled with newsletters, except for a few with subject lines like “WHERE ARE YOU?” and “RE: Faculty meeting”. She clicked the latter. Apparently Katherine had tried to set up a staff meeting days before her death, but it had been cancelled a few hours before it was held. None of the emails mentioned anything about their plans to steal from the laboratory or about releasing the bacteria, although that probably wasn’t surprising.
“There’s another account. Try that,” Matt suggested, pointing to a subfolder of the inbox. Kate clicked on it, and it opened up the emails for a private address. There were a dozen unopened emails, all identical.
The following message to
The reason for the problem: 1 error(s): SMTP Server
Final-Recipient: rfc822;home.news@thetimes.co.uk
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0 (permanent failure)
Subject: “Research at Central Science Laboratories”
Date: “21 June 2019 18:28:53 GMT”
Dear Editor of The Times,
This message concerns the implications of the work being undertaken at Central Science Laboratories. We are scientists, and over the past few months we have become increasingly worried about the subject of our work.
We are drawing these concerns to your attention because when we have attempted to discuss them with our superiors, they have repeatedly stopped us. We are becoming anxious about the steps they may take to keep us silent in future. If our fears are founded, then CSL is undertaking work which may affect every one of us.
Attached is a copy of our investigations, in which you will see evidence to indicate that CSL is guiding the work of scientists in our laboratory without their knowledge. CSL is creating what we believe to be a highly dangerous and uncontrollable weapon: a bacteria which will destroy the ecosystem and kill every organism it comes into contact with. Once started, it will spread death across the globe with no way to contain it. The creation of such a weapon violates several international laws as well as obvious moral rules. The fact that it is currently being developed in secret implicates CSL in a scandal which should be stopped at all costs.
We are sending this message now because our concerns are being ignored and because CSL is about to mass-produce the bacteria. To reiterate, once released, the bacteria will not stop at international boundaries and it will be impossible to prevent its spread. We will issue more information as soon as we can. This email has been sent to all British newspapers and international news organizations.
We hope that after you read this message you will work to bring this crime to light as soon as possible, and before it is too late.
Regards,
Drs Matthew Galloway, PhD., and Katherine Galloway, PhD.
Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-169
There was a moment of horrified silence.
“Well,” Kate said, finally. “They definitely weren’t committing treason, then.”
“Whoever stopped them sending this email must also have destroyed all the files on the laptop,” Tom said. “They had a lot of power.”
“Do you think their bosses at CSL could do that?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know.”
“The real question,” she said, “is why they did it. Obviously they wanted to stop the Galloways telling anyone about the bacteria. Yet information about it was released after they’d been killed. It was reported in the press. I’ve read the articles. But why? Why kill Katherine and Matthew to keep them quiet and then tell everyone about it anyway?”
“Because after Katherine and Matthew were discovered stealing the bacteria, the CSL had someone to blame,” Matt said, slowly. “Before that, the focus would have been on why the CSL were making this bacteria, but as soon as Katherine and Matthew were branded terrorists, the lab could blame them for everything. CSL could make out that Katherine and Matthew had adapted the bacteria to become a biological weapon and then tried to steal it. CSL were completely innocent.”
Kate stared at him in shock. “But what were CSL planning to do with the bacteria? Why make it in the first place?”
“They never used it,” Tom pointed out. “If CSL were planning something, they never went through with it.”
“That doesn’t matter. We still have to find out what happened,” Matt said. “Katherine and Matthew were just scapegoats. If we know the truth behind what CSL were planning, then we might discover what happened to your aunt and my uncle. We need to find out what exactly happened.”
They worked their way through the rest of the emails in a determined silence.
Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-168
“So,” Tom said, opening a new document on his computer. Matt and Kate turned to watch the projection on the wall as he began to assemble a timeline of events. “They start to have suspicions. They do some investigating and find out that there is something dodgy going on with some of the experiments. Then they decide to tell everyone they work with about it. They get stopped by their boss, but must not have liked his explanations because they decide to go public.”
Tom went on, “They write a report. Try to email it to a load of newspapers, but it gets blocked. Somewhere around this time they go looking for more information somewhere – probably their lab. Anyway, then their family finds they have disappeared and their house has been ransacked. Then the newspapers report that they are dead and that they were terrorists.”
“But before they disappear they drop some stuff off at my grandparents’, including this laptop,” Kate interrupted to add.
“Yeah, good point. They must have suspected they would get arrested or something and wanted to protect the evidence. I bet they had no idea that their bosses would be able to corrupt the files remotely.” Tom said as he added this to the timeline.
“Then your grandmothers pestered the lab and CSL sent some soldiers to scare them into silence,” Matt said, and Tom wrote up his words.
“So, what we need to know is,” Kate said, mulling it over out loud, “a) what Katherine and Matthew found after they tried to send that email and b) where they found it.”
“We can probably assume that it was at CSL. That’s where Katherine and Matthew were when they were shot,” Matt said.
“Yes, but were they really killed there like the newspapers said or at a later date?” Kate asked.
“Good point,” Matt said, then added, “We also need to know c) what was done with this bacteria afterwards. If CSL, or whoever, were willing to kill to keep it a secret, then I doubt they just gave in and destroyed it when this happened. We also need to work out how the bacteria got released in the lab at CSL, and whether the Galloways did have anything to do with that.”
“Do we really want to get involved in this?” Tom said, a little apologetically. “I mean, Katherine and Matthew are dead. We can’t help them. And it’s not as if CSL are going to release the bacteria now: it’s been years. Why risk getting killed over it ourselves?”
“The fact that CSL haven’t released it yet doesn’t mean that th
ey won’t. The people who did this could still be out there,” Matt pointed out. “If they were planning to use the bacteria before the war, then there is just as much reason to do that now as there was then. Nothing has changed since then. England is constantly on the brink of war with Europe. There’s nothing to stop CSL releasing the bacteria now if they wanted to.”
“And they’ve had years to finish making it. It could destroy the whole world,” Kate added. “And Katherine and Matthew are family. We have to prove that they are innocent!”
Tom sighed. “You’re right. It’s just a lot more serious than my Spartacus stuff. We really could get killed, if whoever is behind this wants to keep it a secret so badly.”
“We have to investigate it,” Matt said, softly.
Tom nodded resolutely.
They both turned to Kate.
“Let’s do it,” she confirmed.
They were all silent for a moment, and then Matt let out a groan. “Where do we even start?”
“I dunno,” Tom said. “Did you find anything else in the loft? Any memory sticks or anything?”
Kate shook her head. “Nothing like that. Here. This is all there was.” She picked up her rucksack and took out all the documents – the diaries and some old school books – that they’d found in the attic.
Tom flicked through the least glittery of Katherine’s diaries, which chronicled her life, starting with her university years. Kate hadn’t had a chance to look through it properly yet.
“So what does the code say?” he asked.
Kate stared at him. “What code?”
“Code?” Matt repeated, and jumped up to look over his brother’s shoulder. “Oh my God. Kate, it’s in code.”
The last fifty pages weren’t written in Katherine’s distinctive scrawl, but in a neatly written jumble of symbols.
“How did we miss that?” she said, gaping at the page.
“It has to mean something,” Matt said. “Maybe it’ll tell us more about what CSL were up to.”
“We need to decode it. As soon as possible,” Kate said.
“Well, luckily, I have a program which can do just that,” Tom said, grinning. “I think we’ve got our next lead.”
CHAPTER 13
Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-149
Varna, Bulgaria, 1854
Katy was admiring the view. Now that she was out of the camp – which was a muddy, stinking area just outside the city – she could see that the landscape was actually quite beautiful. The ground was covered in wildflowers, with flocks of sheep and goats grazing amongst them, and the lake stretching out towards a cluster of hills on the horizon.
She’d slept very well last night and had woken late to find Matthew gone. She had only had a few moments’ panic, though, because he had returned shortly, looking exhausted, saying, “There’s no food to be had anywhere.”
“That’s because you are too nice, you delicate flower,” she had responded fondly, and maybe a hint reproachfully. “Leave it to me.”
She snuggled further into Matthew’s coat, which she had borrowed because there was a bitter wind blowing from across the lake, and definitely not because it smelt like Matthew.
A small group of local villagers were hawking their wares to soldiers on the edge of the army’s encampment. They weren’t selling anything except junk, and her rumbling stomach was desperate for food.
She was about to give up and return to the tent when a young boy arrived, dropping off bales of straw to sell for the horses, before turning back to the village. He didn’t seem interested in her at all, and wandered down the dirt road at a leisurely pace, obviously taking the opportunity for a break. A few soldiers had made their way into the village earlier in search of food, but none of them had had any luck. They had all returned to camp empty-handed.
Following a hunch, Katy trailed the boy to the village, where she watched him disappear behind a shop. She slipped in through the front entrance. It was mostly empty inside: a few dusty cabinets, containing battered boots and bowls, lined the walls. She was turning to leave when she noticed a local woman was talking to the shopkeeper at the back of the shop. Katy recognized the clink of a handful of coins and moved closer to watch.
The shopkeeper took a pipe out of his mouth and then stuck his head behind a stained and tattered curtain that hung in the doorway to a room behind the shop. He called out harshly. The boy Katy had followed came out after a moment, struggling with a large bulging bag. The woman took the bag, and left the shop without speaking, head down. Katy couldn’t help smiling. There was food here – you just had to know how to find it.
The shopkeeper noticed Katy then. In rough English, he barked, “What, boy?”
She stuck out her chin. “I want to buy some food.”
“We don’t have any.” He turned away from her and tapped his pipe, inspecting the end.
“You are lying.”
His thick eyebrows rose in surprise, and then he grinned around the pipe, showing a mouthful of broken, yellow teeth. “Why you say that, boy?”
“You just gave a bag of food to that woman.” She met his gaze defiantly.
“Clothes,” he said shortly.
Katy bent down and picked up a soil-covered root that had fallen from the bag. “You sell dirty clothes?” Katy said, just as abruptly.
The shopkeeper let out a garbled sound deep in his throat, which she hoped was a laugh. “Boy, you are too clever to be English. What do you want?”
Katy clinked a couple of the coins in her pocket, partly for the man to hear, and partly to cover the rumbling of her stomach. “What do you have?”
“Chicken,” he replied instantly, then twisted his lip, thinking. “And … the word, I don’t know, but they make you…” He rubbed a hand beneath his eye.
“Onions,” she guessed after a moment’s confusion.
“Yes,” he said agreeably. “I have bread too, and apples.”
“Give me all of that,” Katy said, dropping several coins into his hand.
He eagerly counted the coins, and then disappeared behind the curtain, returning a few moments later with a bag. He winked at her as she took it from him, and she smiled back, feeling victorious.
When she got back to the camp, Matthew was sitting on the ground outside their tent. There was a tin mug of coffee in his hand and his notebook was perched on his lap.
“Morning,” she said, and stole his coffee. She took a sip, wincing at the sour taste. Then she peered over his shoulder at his notebook, absently brushing flat a curl of his hair that had been standing upright. Then she noticed what she was doing and pulled her hand away, embarrassed. It had been an automatic action, almost like a muscle memory.
Matthew was rewriting his latest article with the suggestions she had offered him. She felt a dart of guilt. Matthew’s article had been perfectly good, but she knew that Lord Somerset wouldn’t have cared for its honesty about the conditions in camp, so she had persuaded Matthew to tone some of it down. “Save them for a later article,” she had said, “when we’ve seen more of this place.”
Matthew tilted his head back and smiled up at her. “Hello. I have a present for you.” The words burst out of him like he’d been dying to tell her and couldn’t wait a moment longer.
“Oh! Thank you,” she said. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been given a proper present.
Looking extremely pleased with himself, he handed her a brown paper package.
Katy ripped it open. Inside was a fountain pen. “Matthew!”
“I wanted to get you your own set of writing equipment,” he said, looking suddenly shifty.
“It’s lovely, thank you.”
“No problem. You are my assistant, after all. It’s practically a requirement that you have your own set.” He sounded like he was persuading himself. “Also, I would rather you didn’t use my pen.”
“What? Why on earth not?”
“Pens adapt to your grip, and with you being left-handed, you might ch
ange the way mine works.”
“What? Are you saying that all this time you’ve been worried I’ll ruin your pen?”
“No! I … thought perhaps you might do, if you used it a lot. I love that pen.”
“Matthew!”
He looked ruefully up at her, eyes full of remorse.
She wanted to be offended but instead burst out laughing at his forlorn expression. “You could have just asked that I don’t use your pen!”
“I wanted you to learn shorthand,” he admitted, still looking upset.
“All this time you’ve been watching me write while worrying about your pen? What a conflict of emotions! Did you have nightmares about it?”
He nodded dolefully and then said, completely seriously, “It was traumatizing.”
“I don’t understand you. If you are so worried about breaking your pen, why don’t you just use a pencil?”
“A pencil. A pencil,” he said, with growing horror, staring into empty space as if at the horrific vision she had laid before him. He shook his head. “Some people just want society to collapse.”
She burst out laughing, and he grinned at her. “Well, whatever your reasons for giving this to me, thank you. Really, I love it.” She hugged him, tucking her head under his chin and smiling into his collarbone. Now he wasn’t stricken with stationery-related guilt, he hugged her back, pulling her tight against him. She sighed. Being held by Matthew felt like coming home. Eventually he pulled away, clearing his throat and brushing down his waistcoat.
“So, did you have any more luck than I did, finding food?” he asked.
She’d almost forgotten. “Oh, not really,” she said casually and passed him the overflowing bag.
His jaw dropped as he pulled out the chicken by its feet, fully feathered, wings flopping to either side. He stared at it in amazement, and then at her. He hooked a hand under her elbow and pulled her towards him, looking down at her with a tender, intimate expression. “Where on earth did you find all this? I don’t… You’re extraordinary.”