by Ken McClure
Next morning, Steven decided that he wanted to know every single thing that had happened when the four Marburg victims had been present in the lab in question. If CCTV had been on in that lab at any or all times, he wanted to see it, if any kind of written report had been made by any of the four, he wanted to see it – as well as any written instructions given to them about the jobs they were sent to do.
‘No more pussy-footing around,’ he told Jean. ‘The Prime Minister told me personally I would have her full support. Time for her to walk the walk.’
‘How many Weetabix did you have this morning?’ Jean responded.
‘We’re missing something, Jean,’ Steven said. ‘I know the people at Porton are bright and they have had access to all this from the outset and they must have examined everything in minute detail, but a fresh look won’t do any harm.’
A female intelligence officer from MI6 called Steven around noon. ‘I understand from Jane Sherman that you wanted to know if the flask sent to Porton from Israel had a slight flaw in the lip?’
‘That’s right,’ said Steven, not expecting anyone other than Jane to call him about this. ‘Is Jane okay?’ he asked.
‘She’s a bit under the weather this morning, I’m afraid,’ came the muted reply. ‘There’s some talk of post-surgical infection.’
‘God, I hope not . . .’
‘Anyway, the answer to your question is yes, the flask has the flaw you asked about.’
‘Thank you,’ said Steven quietly, now preoccupied with thoughts of Jane Sherman.
‘Bad news?’ Jean asked.
‘Good and bad, the flask at Porton has the same flaw so that puts an end to the switch theory. The bad news is that Jane Sherman is now fighting a post-op infection.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Jean, ‘I’m afraid my news is no better, the Royal Free reports that one of the two cleaners who contracted Marburg disease died during the night.’
Steven made a face and shook his head before asking, ‘Did we get any indication of the mortality of Marburg?’
‘Around ninety percent.’
‘My God, any sign of the families falling ill?’
‘Not yet.’
Just after four in the afternoon, Steven’s request to the Prime Minister’s office bore fruit and a car arrived from Porton Down with the material he’d asked for. There had been no CCTV footage of the electrician, Tom Harland, carrying out repairs in the lab, nor of the technician and cleaners working in the lab although the opening of Petrov’s flask had been recorded in full. An envelope containing paperwork accompanied the CCTV recording.
John Macmillan suggested they begin “at the very beginning” and watch the recording together. They looked on in silence as the container was carefully opened and one of the three ghostly figures in safety gear reached in to check the flask was free to move before removing a handful of packing material and putting it to one side while he slowly lifted the flask clear.
‘The container itself has been opened before,’ said Jean, noting that no seals had had to be broken on the lid.
‘Twice,’ said Steven, ‘once by the Israelis and again by Porton people checking the container and packing for any dangers.’
Steven, who was in control of the playback, stopped it momentarily to point something out, ‘You can actually see the flaw on the lip there,’ – he zoomed in for a clear view before letting it run on to the removal of the seal on the flask itself. Knowing that what they were watching was the very careful handling of a small flask of salt water tended to remove suspense from proceedings but Steven, if not the other two, steeled himself to watch every move unflinchingly.
‘See anything?’ asked Macmillan when it was over.
‘No,’ Steven admitted, telling the others he was going off to look through the paperwork, but pausing to arm himself with coffee from the machine in the corner.
Steven began with Tom Harland’s work sheet requesting a repair be made to the intercom system in the high security lab before moving on to the report submitted by him when the job was finished. He had found a “drift in frequency” to be the cause of the problem and had made the necessary adjustments before testing that all was well and signing off the job.
Steven found a third document with Tom Harland’s name on it. It was a minor-accident report as required by all employees to make, however small the incident. The electrician had cut the palm of his left hand when his screwdriver had slipped. It was ‘a nuisance’ but not bad enough to require medical attention; he had stemmed the bleeding and applied a small dressing later when he left the lab.
On the day following Tom Harland’s repair, Steven found a request submitted to cleaners to deal with any mess caused by his hand bleed in the lab. A note was appended stating that a technician should accompany them to ensure that all affected surfaces were clinically clean before signing off the job.
Steven had to remind himself that these perfectly innocuous things were the last things these four people did at Porton before contracting Marburg. Despite the fact that there was nothing remotely scary about any of them, an icicle was climbing up his spine. He found himself thinking of an occasion long ago in the mountains of Scotland. He had been hill-walking with a friend in wet, misty weather when, up on the tops, they had come to a narrow ridge connecting two peaks. He had found himself hesitant, knowing that there must be a degree of danger involved but one he couldn’t see because of the heavy mist. Half way across, the mist cleared and he could see a drop of a thousand metres on either side of him, causing apprehension to become full-blown fear.
At the moment, and without fully knowing why, he was feeling apprehensive . . . waiting for the mist to clear.
‘Find anything?’ Macmillan asked.
‘Not really, Steven replied on auto-pilot, ‘Tom Harland cut his hand while working in the lab, nothing serious. The cleaners and the technician were detailed to make sure everything was cleaned up.’
‘Not much to go on there.’
‘No,’ Steven agreed, but a hollow had appeared in his stomach. He just didn’t want to talk about it. He took the CCTV recording of the flask opening and went off to view it again on his own, something he did three more times, thinking he might be “looking at the tarpaulin” too much. Everyone’s concentration had been on the slow emergence of the flask from the container, he now took on board that the scientist doing this had removed a handful of the packing material before placing it in a dish on the bench beside him.
Steven fast-forwarded to the end of the piece to see the flask put back in its container and the lid replaced before it was removed from the lab. The packing material in the dish was left where it was. He rewound and replayed the scene, this time looking for anything resembling paper towels or tissues anywhere in the lab, but without success. His conclusion was that Tom Harland might have used the packing material left in the dish to stem the blood flow from the cut in his hand. Steven’s breathing pattern changed to short shallow breaths before he saw a big “but” coming up. The packing material was harmless, both the lab in Beer Sheva and the people at Porton had tested it . . . He could not let go. It was time to possibly make an absolute fool of himself.
‘John, I need you to get the PM to sanction a request,’ said Steven. ‘I need Porton to put Petrov’s flask, its container and all the packing material in a sealed container to be kept in biological isolation under the highest possible security.’
Macmillan looked at Steven as if he might be in need of an obvious kindly reminder. ‘But Steven, it’s harmless, you know it is.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Do you have any evidence for this?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘And you seriously want me to have the PM issue this edict?’
‘Yes.’
Macmillan thought for a long moment before saying, ‘All right . . . I suppose we can buy an ice cream van between us to make a living.’
‘Thanks, John.’
Steven didn’t want to sa
y any more and neither John nor Jean pressed him: they had seen him like this before and, with a bit of luck, some kind of breakthrough could be expected soon.
Steven went back into isolation to go through the material from Porton again and again until finally his eyes fixed on something else . . . the words “drift in frequency” – the cause given by Tom Harland for the breakdown in the intercom system. It didn’t sound all that strange when he thought about it. There would be a wireless link-up between the lab and the viewing gallery instead of a cable link. Wireless communication had become very common in recent times, but if either the transmitter or the receiver was to be altered from its allotted frequency, communication would cease.
Although there were lots of reasons for wireless connections to give trouble – he had experienced plenty of them himself – he had never heard of ‘frequency drift’ being one of them. The frequency of a wireless set-up was usually fixed and didn’t vary. Remote controls worked on one set frequency or another, they didn’t drift. He would have to ask Porton about this. He rushed back to the main office to see if John had made the call to the PM’s office.
‘He’s on the phone just now,’ said Jean, nodding to Macmillan’s office.
Steven entered with a perfunctory knock and snatched at the notepad on Macmillan’s desk to jot down the question he wanted Porton to be asked. He slid it under Macmillan’s gaze and was relieved to hear Macmillan say a moment later, ‘Just one more thing, Prime Minister, Steven would like some information about the wireless frequency used for communications in the lab, which their dead electrician, Tom Harland, was called upon to repair . . . Thank you, thank you so much, Prime Minister . . . yes, I’m sure he has excellent reasons for making these requests.’ Macmillan put the phone down, letting his hand rest on it while he shook his head slowly.
‘Thanks again, John,’ said Steven, letting his breath out in a long sigh.
‘Have you thought about possible tunes for the ice cream van?’ asked Macmillan.
Macmillan felt the spectre of the ice cream van coming a step closer when the Home Secretary called him; he was in a foul mood, wanting to know ‘just what the hell’ was going on. Somewhat on the back foot through not knowing himself, Macmillan had to listen to how much Porton had been annoyed by Steven’s requests. Who did he think he was, answering their own question by suggesting Steven was ‘some ex-forces medic who wasn’t even a microbiologist.’ Did he imagine that he knew better than the highly qualified staff at Porton Down? ‘What do you have to say?’ the Home Secretary demanded.
Macmillan, who had listened in silence throughout, said, ‘I shall have Steven apologise . . . ‘
‘I should think so too . . .’
‘the moment Porton tell us all how and why two of their people have died of Marburg disease and another two lie dangerously ill,’ continued Macmillan. ‘As to who Steven thinks he is, he knows full well that he is the chief investigator of the Sci-Med Inspectorate and has my full backing. Perhaps Porton would do well to recognise that there is a difference between being knowledgeable and being bright. I don’t question the knowledge of Porton’s people but knowledge tends to result from book learning while brightness demands imagination, creativity, lateral thinking, ability to improvise and many other skills. Steven is “some ex-army medic” who has all of these qualities in abundance, something the Prime Minister has come to appreciate as illustrated by her giving him her full support or were you unaware that the request to Porton was sanctioned by her?
The Home Secretary paused and swallowed audibly before saying, ‘Porton led me to believe the request had come directly from Sci-Med.’
‘. . it happens., Home Secretary’
‘I’ll clear up any misunderstanding.’
Macmillan looked at the phone and then at Steven as the Home Secretary cut short the call, he looked thoughtful.’
‘I quite like Greensleeves,’ said Steven, which prompted a smile and the opening of Macmillan’s prized sherry cabinet. ‘Jean! Come and join us.’
SEVENTEEN
Steven and John Macmillan decided to wait around to see if anything would come in from Porton, Jean sat with them until half past six when she apologised and said she had to run off to choir practice – Being a member of the Bach Choir was an important part of her life.
Just after seven-thirty, a message arrived saying that the request regarding the isolation of the container and contents from Israel had been complied with. A cursory apology for the ‘misunderstanding’ was also attached. The final part of the message gave a code for accessing a secure computer link, which would give details about the wireless intercom system which was repaired by Tom Harland.
Steven followed the link and found what he was looking for in the first sentence. Wireless links for communication within certain areas within Porton were protected from outside snooping through the use of unusual frequencies instead of the normal, 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. These frequencies were subject to recurrent change, but could suffer from occasional drift, which was the case when Tom Harland was called in.
‘Unusual frequencies,’ said Steven out loud as if it were death sentence. ‘Oh dear.’
‘That all sounds perfectly sensible to me,’ said Macmillan, ‘I’m guessing it means something more to you?’
Steven shook his head, giving himself time to search for words. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said, turning to face Macmillan, ‘this is all beginning to make some dreadful sense, so awful I don’t want to believe it . . . the dead English scientists . . . I know what they were doing, . . . Simon Pashley, the specialist in tiny wireless motor technology . . . Martin Field, the expert in implant technology . . . together with Samuel Petrov, an expert in killer viruses . . . and all funded by Sergei Malenkov and his rich, Russian, London-based pals . . . Christ almighty.’
Macmillan who had been waiting patiently for information said, ‘Are you about to tell me that our ice cream van is being put on hold?’
The apparent spell that Steven was under was broken. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s the plastic packing material – the plastic packing material surrounding Petrov’s flask isn’t packing material at all, these little capsules contain Marburg virus.’
‘But it was tested and found to be completely harmless.’
‘It is on the outside, each pellet appears to be a simple little plastic bubble, but, when a certain wireless frequency is transmitted nearby, the capsules rupture and release, not the pain killers that Martin Field was planning on, but any killer virus Petrov chose to put inside.’
‘Who in God’s name would come up with something like that,’ exclaimed Macmillan, ‘and why?’
‘That’s what we’ll still have to work out,’ said Steven, ‘but first, I have to show I’m right and that isn’t going to be easy. We’ll have to ask our friends at Porton for help.’
‘You think?’
‘Without a doubt,’ said Steven, ‘we’ll need maximum security lab conditions and a scenario where it is safe to expose a few of these packing pellets to a range of wireless frequencies to see what happens. If I’m right, they’ll rupture and release what I’m sure will be the Uganda strain of Marburg virus. At that point we’ll need containment. Boy, will we need containment.’
‘Talk me through what happened to Tom Harland and the others.’
‘Tom cut his hand while he was working in the lab and looked around for something to stem the blood with. He ended up using some of the pellets the scientists had left lying in a dish on the bench. At some point, when he was playing around with wireless frequencies to restore the intercom system, he hit upon the trigger for the pellets. They ruptured and infected him through his cut.’
‘Of all the rotten luck . . .’ said Macmillan. ‘And the others?’
‘They thought they were coming into a safe lab environment to clear up any mess left over from Tom cutting his hand. They weren’t to know that the bloody pellets he’d dropped in a bin were heavily contaminated with Marburg virus. Not only that, the pell
ets still lying in the dish on the bench would have ruptured too and they would also be covered in Marburg. The cleaners and the technician infected themselves by coming into contact with them.’
‘Absolutely tragic,’ said Macmillan. ‘I’ll get in touch with Porton and tell them we need their help and expertise. The only other question now is how many people should be brought into the loop? The Home Secretary? The Prime Minister’s Office, MI6?’
‘The fewer the better,’ said Steven. ‘If I’m wrong, it’ll take me months to get the egg off my face and if I’m right, we don’t want it being leaked before we’ve figured out a whole lot more, I vote we tell no one.’
‘So, we approach Porton directly?’
‘Yes,’ said Steven, ‘tell them “some ex-army medic” would like to speak to them in confidence.’
‘Maybe not,’ smiled Macmillan, ‘but I’ll contact them. Maybe they’ll just assume this time the PM has given her backing.’
Steven decided to visit Jane Sherman in the morning, presuming that it would take time for Macmillan to arrange something with Porton. Unsure of what to take, after deciding that she was probably sick of the sight of flowers, he bought some expensive Belgian chocolates and, as an afterthought, two miniatures of Scotch malt whisky. He wasn’t sure if she drank alcohol, but if she did, she might be pleased, although she’d have to hide them from the staff – well, keeping secrets was what she did.
Jane was clearly pleased to see him and he thanked her for having Six come up with the information about the flaw in the lip of Petrov’s flask. He handed her the chocolates and got an appreciative response, ‘Good, I’m fed up eating roses,’ she said, looking around at the flowers. Steven got the joke. ‘I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about . . . these,’ he said, surreptitiously showing her one of the miniatures.
‘Dunbar, I think I’m falling in love,’ she said, sneaking it under her pillow before Steven brought out the other one. ‘Now, I definitely am.’
‘Good, I’ll know what to bring next time.’