White death sd-7

by Ken McClure

  ‘Give them the slip; drive south on the M1. I’ll meet you in the main restaurant at Watford Gap services at 3 p.m.?’

  ‘All right. Take care.’

  ‘You too. Keep looking in your mirror. Make sure you’re not being followed.’

  ‘And if I am?’

  ‘Find somewhere to stop and call me.’

  Tally put the phone down without saying anything more and Steven knew what she must be thinking. He hated involving her but she was an expert in infectious diseases and that was exactly what he was going to need if he was to make any sense of this latest twist. A wave of frustration washed over him as he recognised that he still couldn’t see motive in any of this. A group of children had been given a supposed vaccine that had infected them with some undetermined microbial agent that was eating away at their flesh and was now being passed on to their families. Who in their right mind would want to cover this up and pretend that nothing had happened? The biotech company who had designed the vaccine? The government officials who had been colluding with them? Or was it conceivable that some other faction was involved? His hand went unconsciously to the holster under his left arm. The odds seemed stacked against him.

  ‘Who designed this place?’ growled Tally as they entered the restaurant. ‘Hieronymus Bosch?’

  ‘His sort of style,’ agreed Steven as they walked towards the serving area, thinking that a motorway service station was not an experience to make the human spirit rejoice. The sound of electronic games machines, the smell of fried food and the clatter of dirty plates being collected did little to provide a reassuring ambience.

  ‘You weren’t followed?’ Steven asked.

  Tally shook her head and said, ‘I felt guilty sneaking away but no, I don’t think I was followed.’

  ‘I need your input. If an infectious agent is involved, as I’m sure it is, why can’t any of the labs grow it?’

  ‘It’s possibly viral. Many viruses are difficult to grow. You often have to rely on serological tests showing antibodies in the patient’s serum to indicate an underlying infection by a specific virus or group of viruses.’

  ‘Serology tests were all negative,’ said Steven.

  ‘Then I’m at a loss,’ said Tally.

  ‘Why would children respond differently in terms of time to an infectious agent?’

  ‘Some might be more immune than others, depending on what they’ve been exposed to in the past, or it could be that the agent grows very slowly and victims succumb at different rates.’

  ‘What sort of agents are we talking about here?’

  ‘If we’re considering everything, we’d have to include prion diseases like new variant CJD, they can take a very long time to develop, and many viruses can remain in latent form for undetermined periods of time. In the case of bacterial infections, TB can take a couple of months to grow in culture.’

  ‘I suppose TB would still be the thing to go for here,’ said Steven. ‘After all that’s what the vaccine was made from and is designed to combat but none of the labs managed to grow it…’

  ‘Because it’s not a live vaccine,’ completed Tally.

  ‘Suppose it was? They could have been mistaken about that too.’

  ‘Possible I suppose but from what you’ve told me the symptoms exhibited by the victims are nothing like TB. Tuberculosis is primarily a disease of the lungs, a chest infection.’

  ‘You’re right,’ sighed Steven.

  They sat in silence for a few moments before Steven offered to get Tally more coffee.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ she said. ‘Have you made any progress with the codes Linda Haldane found?’

  Steven shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He brought out a copy and handed it to Tally.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘Not exactly obvious… By the way, there was one thing I meant to mention to you. On the two occasions you’ve been attacked your assailants picked you up at my place.’

  ‘I was aware of that.’

  ‘On both occasions you had just paid a visit to St Clair Genomics.’

  Steven gave this some thought. ‘The first time I was driving the Porsche. I signed in at Reception and entered my registration number in the visitor book… The second time was on a Saturday morning when St Clair was the only person there. He was expecting me: I’d called the day before. I didn’t sign in but the Honda was the only car in the car park apart from St Clair’s. Someone could have bugged it while I was inside talking to him…’

  ‘Just a thought,’ said Tally.

  ‘And a good one. So why would St Clair Genomics want me dead?’ mused Steven. ‘I only know what they and the government told me.’

  ‘Maybe they thought you might find out what you’ve just told me about the infectious nature of the agent,’ suggested Tally. ‘That they were lying about problems on the production line and that there really is an issue with the vaccine itself. It has the capacity to kill people?’

  ‘And they of course would stand to lose millions from cancelled government contracts,’ completed Steven. ‘That makes sense but why did they think I would find out?’

  Steven slapped his palm against his forehead as the answer came to him. ‘Because of my interest in Scott Haldane,’ he exclaimed. ‘I asked St Clair twice if the name Scott Haldane meant anything to him and he said no. He was lying. Rumours of what Haldane was saying must have got back to the company.’

  ‘St Clair must have thought you were getting too close to finding out what Haldane knew,’ said Tally.

  Steven nodded. ‘That’s why they killed him. A GP, working in an ordinary practice in Edinburgh, figured out there was a major problem with the vaccine the kids had been given and maybe even what it was. He’d been told the kids had been given BCG but somehow he suspected different…’

  ‘I guess it’ll become clear when we crack the code,’ said Tally.

  ‘If Scott Haldane worked out what was wrong with the green sticker children then it’s odds on that Alan Nichol, the designer of the vaccine, must have worked it out too. He must have wanted to blow the whistle but his employer didn’t agree.’

  ‘So they came up with the toxin story to hide the real truth and murdered him when he wouldn’t go along with it.’

  ‘It’s just a question now of how many snouts are in the trough,’ said Steven thoughtfully.

  ‘You can’t think the government people knew about this?’ exclaimed Tally. ‘Now we know that it’s all about money.’

  ‘I’d like to think not,’ agreed Steven. ‘But we know there are individuals who at the very least collaborated in giving an untested vaccine to schoolchildren and finished up giving them an infectious disease which is now spreading to their families. That’s quite a skeleton to have in your cupboard.’

  ‘I’m certainly glad it isn’t in mine,’ said Tally. ‘I don’t know how they’re going to live with themselves.’

  Steven took a moment to reflect and then said, ‘Of course, if they really still believe the toxin story that St Clair came up with and don’t know about the infectious nature of the vaccine, they won’t think they’ve done anything wrong. They’ll believe that their far-sightedness has led to the development of a new vaccine against TB which will shortly be going into production to protect the people. They’ll be expecting knighthoods and rounds of applause from a grateful nation.’

  ‘But the vaccine is infectious and dangerous,’ Tally protested.

  ‘We know that but we can’t prove it,’ said Steven. ‘The vaccine has been tested by umpteen labs and no infectious agent has ever been found in it. We know that Scott Haldane and Alan Nichol were murdered and we know why but we haven’t got the slightest shred of evidence.’

  ‘But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming,’ said Tally.

  ‘People won’t hear what they don’t want to hear.’

  ‘But surely no one in their right mind could let vaccination go ahead when you tell them what you know,’ said Tally.

  ‘St Clair will stic
k to their story of a rogue toxin and those with reputations on the line will want to believe them.’

  ‘But you must stop them,’ exclaimed Tally. ‘Sci-Med must stop them. You have to make them believe what you say is true. John Macmillan will believe you surely?’

  ‘I think he will,’ agreed Steven. ‘But he’ll need conclusive proof too before he can do anything. No one on the government side is going to want to listen even if they think it might be true. They’ll play for time so that they can melt away into the background and become the anonymous faces of yesterday’s government machine, men spending more time with their families or growing grapes in France or writing biographies of past politicians in the autumn sunshine of Umbria. New faces will be left to deal with new emergencies. It’s always the way. One man starts a war, another has to finish it.’

  ‘My God, do you really believe that?’ asked Tally.

  The look on Steven’s face gave her the answer.

  ‘Then you’ll have to crack Scott Haldane’s code and give them proof they can’t ignore.’

  Steven’s response was to hurl himself across the table and topple Tally off her chair to bring both of them crashing to the ground.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tally let out a scream but the sound was drowned out by the windows beside them shattering in a hail of automatic gunfire. Steven’s arm held her pinned to the floor, keeping them both huddled behind the brickwork along the base of the windows which stretched the entire length of the wall. The air was full of flying glass and splintered woodwork as bullets ripped into the serving areas. Trolleys jerked and bounced and overturned, display cases exploded and people cowered everywhere, seeking what cover they could, horror etched in their faces. Some screamed constantly, seeming only to pause for breath, others were struck dumb, their faces white as snow.

  Everyone in the restaurant assumed that the service area was under terrorist attack but Steven knew differently. He had noticed two men enter the restaurant a few minutes before and look around casually as if seeking a missing colleague. The fact that one had examined only the right side of the restaurant while the other covered the left suggested to him that this had been agreed previously and that they just might be professionals looking for a target. The fact that Steven noticed one give the other an almost imperceptible nudge after making momentary eye contact with him confirmed it. He had carried on his conversation with Tally but had watched them leave and walk over to their car some fifty metres away to open the boot. When they both started to head back to the restaurant carrying overcoats over their arms he knew at once what they were concealing and that he and Tally were in big trouble. As soon as the first man dropped his raincoat to the ground to reveal the muzzle of an automatic assault weapon, Steven had dived across the table to bring both himself and Tally into the lee of the brick wall supporting the windows as the glass above them shattered.

  Steven indicated to Tally that she should crawl away from him, keeping close to the shelter of the wall. She started making for the far end of the room, using her elbows to propel herself along while he turned over on to his back, drew his gun and waited. There was a chance that his attackers would make good their escape but there was also a possibility that they would check to see if they had achieved their objective.

  There was an eerie quiet about the place, broken only by the sound of sobbing somewhere in the room and shouting coming from far away. It was the kind of silence that follows the mayhem of a high-speed rail crash when the almost unimaginable momentum and energy bound up in the accident, the force which creates such a screaming hell of tortured metal and splintering wood, is suddenly spent, leaving nothing but an eerie quiet.

  Steven did not blink. He steeled himself to continue waiting — even when he saw the muzzle of one of the guns appear above the wall — but, as soon as the second appeared, he sprang into action, swivelling round on the floor to put both feet firmly against the brickwork and push himself out from the wall. Holding the Glock firmly in both hands he fired two shots in quick succession — one into each of the two figures standing there. He went for body shots, the biggest target: he couldn’t take the chance of missing with a head shot. Both men slumped to the ground but Steven was well aware that the Glock wasn’t the most powerful handgun in the world.

  With the words of a training sergeant from long ago echoing in his head, Never take chances; if they go down, make sure they stay down, Steven scrambled to his feet and holding his gun out in front of him, looked cautiously over the wall. One of the men, although badly wounded, tried one-handedly to bring his weapon round to bear on him. Steven shot him twice more and he lay still. The other man was lying motionless as if already dead but Steven saw that his finger was still curled round the trigger of his weapon. Never take chances. He shot him too without checking further.

  Then he turned and hurried towards Tally who was cowering against the far wall with her knees held under her chin and her expression a mixture of horror and disbelief.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked gently, squatting down beside her.

  Tally looked at him in silence for a moment before saying slowly and deliberately, ‘They really don’t like you, do they?’

  It was such a ridiculous thing to come out with that Steven couldn’t help but smile. Tally couldn’t quite manage one but she put her head against Steven’s chest and patted him with the palm of her hand. ‘You’re something else, mister.’

  The noise level was rising as the whole place started to come to life again. People were running; people were shouting; the sound of emergency service vehicles in the distance grew ever louder.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Steven, realising that the response to the incident was about to become organised. ‘While we have the chance.’

  He grabbed Tally’s hand and together they stepped over the retaining wall and out through the gap where the windows had been into the car park. They got into the Honda, which was nearer than Tally’s car, and drove off down the southbound slip road just as barriers were about to be pulled into place.

  ‘They’ll close the motorway,’ said Steven as he gunned the Honda out on to the main carriageway with the rev counter on the red line in each gear. ‘We’ll try to make it to the first exit.’

  Once again they were just in the nick of time as police were in the process of closing the exit road. One officer was about to raise his hand when he realised how fast the Honda was travelling and changed his mind, stepping smartly out of the way to let it past. Steven braked hard at the top of the exit road and saw in his mirror that it had now been closed off with two police vehicles straddling it.

  ‘What now?’ asked Tally, rubbing her shoulder where the seat belt had bruised her.

  ‘Somewhere quiet and anonymous,’ said Steven. ‘We need time to let the dust settle. I don’t want to risk going back to my flat right now in case it was me they followed and they know where I live.

  ‘Steven, the M1 is closed, a motorway service area has been shot to pieces and there are two dead men lying back there… just how long is it going to take for the dust to settle? I mean, are we both going to live that long?’

  ‘I’ll get Sci-Med to dress it up as a gangland feud.’

  ‘I know I don’t understand too much about any of this,’ said Tally. ‘But I can’t see your… what is it they call it when you need a way of getting out of a bad situation?’

  ‘An exit strategy?’ suggested Steven.

  ‘That’s it, an exit strategy. Do you have one?’

  ‘We have to crack the code,’ said Steven. ‘Once we know the full facts and pass them on there’s no point in killing me.’

  ‘Are you sure the other side know that?’

  ‘Rules of the game.’

  ‘Game?’ exclaimed Tally. ‘You call this a game?’ She looked and sounded angry.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Steven. ‘That was male bravado talking. I’m as scared as you are, believe me.’

  ‘You couldn’t be,’ sighed Tally. ‘
You just couldn’t be. I keep praying I’m going to wake up and find this has all been a nightmare and I never met anyone called Steven Dunbar.’

  Steven gave her a sideways look and she squeezed his knee in apology.

  They lapsed into silence until Steven said, ‘How about here?’ He slowed as they came to a large, blue sign advertising Radleigh House Country Hotel.

  ‘As long as it has hot water and gin,’ said Tally. ‘God, we’ve no luggage,’ she added as an afterthought. Steven brought the car to a halt in the gravel car park fronting the hotel.

  ‘I’ve got a bag in the back. It’s just got odds and ends in it but it’ll get us past the front desk. We’ll get ourselves cleaned up, call room service and have a bit of a breather before deciding where we go from here.’

  ‘Will you call Sci-Med?’ asked Tally.

  Steven nodded.

  Tally was in the bath and Steven had just tipped the room service waiter who had delivered two large gin and tonics and a plate of smoked salmon sandwiches when his phone rang. It was John Macmillan.

  ‘The business at Watford Gap services… Anything I should know?’ asked Macmillan.

  ‘Another attempt on my life,’ said Steven. ‘Dr Simmons was with me at the time.’

  ‘Russians?’

  ‘I didn’t get the chance to ask,’ replied Steven acidly.

  ‘How many and what was the outcome?’

  ‘Two, both dead.’

  ‘Any danger of you being identified?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They opened proceedings with a Kalashnikov overture played on the windows. There was widespread panic, people under seats, that sort of thing. It should be possible to pass it off as a gangland feud.’

  ‘Right. I’ll tell that to the Home Secretary. Where are you?’

  ‘In the country.’

  Macmillan waited, expecting more, but nothing was forthcoming. ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘You must feel you can’t trust anyone.’ He cut short the ensuing silence by saying, ‘But we’ve made progress in establishing the Russians’ interest in all this.’