by Ken McClure
‘A bizarre way,’ said Neubauer. ‘A cassette has been inserted in its genome. Basically it’s a self-destruct mechanism.’
Steven struggled for words. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m sure that’s what it is,’ said Neubauer. ‘In the early days of molecular biology, people were worried about altered organisms escaping from labs, so scientists came up with ways of disabling such bugs if they ever did. This is a very sophisticated version of that. The bug has a requirement for an amino acid which is being supplied by a gene on the cassette, but the cassette has a limited life span. When it stops supplying the amino acid, the bug will die.’
‘You mean the cholera was meant to die from the outset?’
‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘Well, that explains why the epidemic isn’t spreading like a forest fire,’ said Steven. ‘It was never meant to. What kind of a terrorist attack uses a microbe that’s weakened instead of strengthened?’
‘Happily,’ said Neubauer, ‘that’s your problem.’
THIRTY
Steven had breakfast early at Fraoch House and walked up to Princes Street in sunshine. He felt he’d been cheated by the weather the night before and wanted to see Edinburgh do itself justice. Last night’s rain had freshened the air and he found a spring in his step as he caught his first sight of the castle, high on its rock beneath a clear blue sky. If ever a building could be said to have seen everything, it was that one, he thought… and now a bio-terrorist attack.
He tried to put that thought out of his mind for the moment. Princes Street Gardens stretched out beneath him, empty at present but sure to fill up with tourists once they’d had their… The thought came to a juddering halt. There were no tourists to speak of. Tourist flights to the UK had all but disappeared because of the emergency. He passed some more time by having coffee at the one street stall that he found open — obviously to catch office workers on their way to work — and then started looking for a bus going to Corstorphine.
Thirty minutes later, Steven showed his ID to the woman who opened the door. ‘Mrs McKay, I’m Dr Steven Dunbar from the Sci-Med Inspectorate. We specialise in finding missing persons. I wonder if I might have a word?’
The woman looked at him over her glasses and then said, ‘Oh, you mean Mr Malik. Yes, of course, please do come in.’
Steven found himself in a time warp. He was sitting in the front room of a bungalow with furniture and decor that belonged to another age. The three piece suite in uncut moquette complete with crocheted chair-backs, the tiled fireplace, the standard lamp in the corner, the green Wilton carpet, all belonged in the aunt’s house he had visited thirty-five years ago. It wasn’t that anything was old or dilapidated; far from it. Everything was clean and polished and lovingly cared for but probably never used. Like the one in his aunt’s house, this room had only ever been sat in on ‘special occasions’. It smelt of furniture polish. Mrs McKay smelt of lavender.
‘I take it Mr Malik hasn’t come back?’
‘No he hasn’t, and if you ask me I don’t think the police are looking very hard.’
Steven shook a sympathetic head and asked, ‘Do you happen to know his first name, Mrs McKay?’
‘As a matter of fact I do. It’s Waheed. I don’t know how you spell it but I heard his nephew call him that. I always addressed him as Mr Malik, of course.’
‘Of course,’ echoed Steven, thinking he’d like to give the woman a hug. Waheed Malik. He’d got the first name of those higher up the chain than the eight in custody.
‘Would you care for some tea, Dr Dunbar?’
‘That would be most kind, Mrs McKay.’
The genteel ritual continued, Mrs McKay returning with tea and fruit scones she’d baked herself. Steven was moved to remember a line from somewhere now long forgotten: and the rain fell gently on the hats of the ladies of Edinburgh. He was sitting opposite one of them.
‘Can you describe Mr Malik for me, Mrs McKay?’
‘Yes, of course. He was about the same height as my Angus. Oh, silly me, you never knew my Angus. Actually, it might be better if I showed you a photograph.’
Mrs McKay excused herself and left the room again, leaving Steven wondering if he could believe his ears. She had a photograph of Malik? He moved on from wanting to hug the woman to going through with the full marriage ceremony.
‘Here we are. They’re not very good, I’m afraid, but my grandson’s only twelve. He took some pictures on his phone when he and his sisters were playing in the garden a few weeks ago. His father printed up a few and gave them to me. Mr Malik’s in one of them. I think he’d come to the window to see what the noise was all about.’
Steven found the photograph. An Asian man was framed in a window behind two girls giggling on the lawn, one making faces at her brother.
‘Do you think I could hang on to this for a little while, Mrs McKay? I’d like to make some copies,’ he said. ‘I think it could help enormously in the search for Mr Malik.’
‘Then of course you must.’
Steven waved down the first taxi he saw on Corstorphine Road and asked to be taken to the airport. He was back in London and heading for the Home Office by two o’clock. On the way, he phoned John Ricksen and suggested they meet as soon as possible.
‘What are you after this time, Dunbar?’
‘I have a present for you… if you adopt a more respectful tone.’
‘What is it?’
‘Anwar Khan’s controller for the Edinburgh attack.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Fair enough. Maybe I should pass him over to Special Branch?’
‘Wait. If you’re serious, dinner’s on me.’
‘Is the right answer.’
Steven arranged to meet Ricksen later and went on to the Home Office, where he was relieved to find John Macmillan at his desk. ‘Looks like you’re back full time.’
‘My wife’s been trying to persuade me to think about taking a cruise to recuperate, as she puts it. I’m out of reach when I’m here.’
‘Maybe she’s right,’ suggested Steven. ‘You’ve been through a rough time.’
‘It’s mental stimulation I need, Steven, not cerebral atrophy.’
‘Right, you’re about to get some. The antibiotic sensitivity of the cholera strain was a ploy to make us think it hadn’t been genetically modified. It has. Lukas found something inserted in its genome, something he called a cassette.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘In this case, he tells me it’s a self-destruct mechanism. The cholera bug is programmed to die out on its own.’
‘God save us,’ murmured Macmillan. ‘So we’re dealing with a group of Islamic fundamentalist extremists whom no one has ever heard of, who appear out of nowhere and attack us with a bio-weapon that is destined to die rather than kill…’
Steven pushed the photograph Mrs McKay had given him across the desk. ‘The man at the window is Waheed Malik, the missing neighbour with the nephew who worked for the water board.’
‘What a bit of luck. What do you plan to do?’
‘I’ll scan some copies and try running him against our own files but I don’t think that’ll get us very far. I’m going to hand him over to John Ricksen, as we discussed. I’m seeing him this evening.’
‘Good show. There must be a good chance Malik knows more than the cannon fodder in Belmarsh.’
‘At the moment, he’s our only hope of finding out what the hell’s going on,’ said Steven.
He went home and took a long shower before wrapping his bathrobe round him and lying flat on his back on his bed to look up at the featureless white ceiling in search of inspiration. Try as he might, he could not figure out a reason for such an operation. The fundamentalists had carried out a near perfect attack using a horrible disease. They had created terror across the entire nation and had then shopped their own when they’d been in a position to deliver a killer blow. Now it seemed they had even planned the failure
of their first attack by disabling the organism. It was bizarre, and he phoned Tally to say so.
‘That’s crazy,’ was Tally’s verdict, and not one Steven was going to argue with.
‘Now I think I know how Alice in Wonderland felt,’ he said. He told Tally about the lead he had brought back from Edinburgh.
‘You’ve been to Edinburgh?’
‘A flying visit. Sorry, I didn’t have time to tell you.’
‘It’s like having a relationship with Lord Lucan.’
‘C’mon, I’m much easier to find.’
‘Marginally. Where am I going to find you next? I have a day off tomorrow. I tell you what, give me a clue and we’ll call it an orienteering exercise.’
‘How about your bed in the early hours of the morning?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Never more so. I’ve got a date tonight and then-’
‘You’ve got what?’
‘With MI5,’ Steven explained. ‘I’m passing over the Edinburgh lead to them. I’m meeting one of their officers and then I could be on my way north to the arms of the woman I love.’
‘Only if I get breakfast in bed tomorrow morning.’
‘’Tis a hard woman ye are, Tally Simmons,’ said Steven in a cod-Irish accent.
‘Take it or leave it, big boy,’ replied Tally, doing Mae West no justice at all.
‘Okay, you get breakfast.’
‘Then we have a deal.’
Steven met John Ricksen in a riverside pub which had recently undergone a facelift and was now styling itself a gastro-pub. He hoped no double entendre was intended. Ricksen appeared to know the owner, and they were given a table with views of the river and dry sherry on the house.
‘My only drink this evening,’ said Steven. ‘I have to drive later.’
Ricksen looked for a moment as if he were about to enquire where, but he didn’t. Instead he asked, ‘So, what have you got for me?’
Steven gave him the photograph.
Ricksen seemed less than impressed. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘The face in the window is one Waheed Malik.’ Steven told Ricksen about the Corstorphine bungalow and the ‘nephew’ in the water board van on the day of the Edinburgh attack.
‘How in hell’s name did you come up with this?’ exclaimed Ricksen.
‘I have my methods, Watson. You know that.’
‘Tell me about them, Sherlock.’
Steven told him about the missing person report.
‘Jammy bugger,’ said Ricksen.
‘Not me, my boss.’
‘Macmillan’s back?’
‘Yup. So tell me, what have 5 come up with?’
Ricksen made a face. ‘Like I said before, we’re not going to get anything out of the eight in Belmarsh. They don’t know anything. They look like terrorists, they have names we expect terrorists to have, but their accents say they’re English, from Leicester and Birmingham. They were looking for a cause because it was probably easier than getting a job, and some character stepped in and showed them the path to righteousness and martyrdom. They were recruited and groomed for a specific attack and then let loose without knowing up from down.’
‘Let’s hope Malik has form.’
‘I’ll drink to that. Pity you can’t.’
As they finished their meal, Steven said, ‘We’ve known each other quite a while.’
Ricksen looked at him, suspicion showing. ‘What’s coming next?’
‘Have you ever heard of an organisation calling themselves the Schiller Group?’
Ricksen stayed quiet for what Steven thought was an unreasonably long time before he said, ‘The answer is yes, I’ve heard of them, but that’s about it.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘Right-wing political movement, obsessively secret, patriotic in a way that longs for the past, warm beer, the sound of willow on leather, a sense of order and decency as they see it, and woe betide anyone who gets on the wrong side of them — or so I’m led to believe.’
‘Who led you to believe?’
Ricksen looked as if he’d rather not say any more but Steven’s unwavering gaze persuaded him.
‘A few years ago, one of our blokes succeeded in penetrating a National Front cell that seemed to be getting very ambitious in its plans to persuade Asians to consider leaving. He reported that it wasn’t self-contained. An outside faction was behind it.’
‘The Schiller Group?’
Ricksen nodded. ‘We fished his body out of the Thames a few weeks later. No charges were ever brought, even though it was one of our own. Why are you asking?’
‘A cold case I was working on before the terrorist attack.’
‘I’d leave it cold.’
THIRTY-ONE
It was after one thirty in the morning when Steven opened the door to Tally’s flat as quietly as he could and let himself in. He smiled when he saw the gin bottle and one crystal glass sitting on the table with a note that said, Tonic in the fridge, sandwiches wrapped in cling-film. It was just what he needed to help him wind down after the meeting with Ricksen and the long drive north. Ricksen hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know about the Schiller Group, but the fact that even MI5 might back-pedal when it came to taking them on was more than a bit unsettling.
Thirty minutes later, Steven tiptoed through to the bedroom and pushed open the door, which wasn’t closed.
‘Who’s there?’ Tally asked sleepily.
‘The Milk Tray man,’ whispered Steven.
‘Just leave them on the dressing table, will you? I’m expecting my boyfriend at any minute.’
Steven manoeuvred himself under the covers and snuggled up to Tally’s back.
‘I told you, my boyfriend is on his way.’
‘We Milk Tray men like living dangerously.’
‘Oh well then,’ murmured Tally, turning to face him. ‘I suppose if you’re quick… so be it.’
‘Breakfast is served, madam,’ Steven announced, coming into the bedroom with a tray supporting boiled eggs, toast, orange juice and coffee. He laid it on the bed beside Tally and smoothed her hair back from her forehead as she sat up, smiling.
‘God, I love you,’ she said. ‘It’s so nice to see you again.’
‘Snap.’
They didn’t do anything specific, just spent the day together, strolling by the river and holding hands and laughing a lot, eating lunch and enjoying the wine they had with it before returning to the flat and going back to bed.
‘Do you have to go back tonight?’ They were lying in dappled sunlight coming through the curtains with the sound of grass being cut somewhere.
‘I’m afraid so. John covered the last COBRA meeting but I don’t want to impose on him too much. His wife’s not happy about him coming back to work so soon. She wants him to go on a cruise.’
‘What does he think about that?’
‘He’d rather have root-canal treatment.’
Tally laughed. ‘Is he fit to take the reins again?’
‘I think so, but I’m not absolutely sure. Sci-Med is his life. He won’t give it up easily, and nor should he while he’s as sharp as he ever was. It was he who saw the significance of the missing person report up in Edinburgh.’
‘But he might give it up if he knew you were going to take over,’ said Tally.
‘That really just came up because he thought he was going to die. That’s no longer true.’
‘Have you though about what you’re going to do?’
‘I’m going to keep on the Milk Tray job,’ said Steven. ‘The perks are fantastic.’
He warded off the rain of blows that descended on him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said when Tally ran out of energy. ‘I was avoiding the issue.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Tally. ‘I haven’t changed my mind. You can’t go back to kissing corporate arse. That just isn’t you.’
‘We’ll talk again when things get back to normal.’
Steven was preparing to leave for t
he drive back to London when his phone rang. It was John Ricksen.
‘What the hell are you playing at, Dunbar? If you think that was some kind of joke, I’m not laughing,’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Waheed Malik: Anwar Khan’s controller, you said. Jesus, you’ve made me look a right prat.’
‘I gave you all the information I had. What’s the problem?’
‘His name’s not Waheed Malik; it’s Assad Zaman. He’s one of ours.’
Steven stammered his disbelief. ‘How can he be? What the hell was he doing in Edinburgh with Khan and a water board van?’
‘We don’t know that he was,’ said Ricksen through gritted teeth. ‘Khan was picked up in Glasgow with another guy called Patel. We’ve just been assuming the same two carried out the Edinburgh attack. Neither of them has admitted it or given any information about it.’
‘All right, what was your man doing in Edinburgh with two unknown Asians and a water board van on the day of the attack?’
‘If that’s where the picture was taken,’ said Ricksen sullenly.
Steven was angry now. ‘Look, that picture was taken in Edinburgh. I know because I’ve been there. I stood on the spot where it was taken.’
‘All right,’ said Ricksen. ‘I apologise. But what the hell’s going on?’
‘Why don’t you ask Malik or Zaman or whatever his bloody name is, if he’s one of yours?’
‘We can’t find him at the moment.’
‘He’s one of yours and you can’t find him?’
‘He’s not a staffer. Turns out we’ve used him in the past. I’m told he was one of our insiders in the fundamentalist scene in Leicester a year or so ago.’
‘So maybe he’s been turned.’
‘The fundos don’t turn agents they catch; they cut them into little pieces.’
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘In view of what you’ve said, I’ll put out a major alert for him.’
‘I’ll call you in the morning.’
Steven attended what was announced to be the last COBRA meeting for the time being. He couldn’t help but feel he was the only one there who wasn’t basking in a glow of self-satisfaction over being ‘on top of things’ as the deputy PM put it. No new cases of cholera had been reported in the past twenty-four hours, security at all reservoirs and water installations was tight, and vaccination of the infant population had already begun at surgeries across the country. Norman Travis took over to say that vaccination of top-risk people would begin in three days, and Merryman were on course to provide new supplies in three weeks’ time for the remaining population.