Whiteout

by Ken Follett

  "What, on your own?" Odette was amazed.

  "Never mind that. The important man is the customer, the one who's trying to buy this stuff and use it to kill people. We need to find him."

  "I wish we could."

  "I think we can, if we act fast. Could you send a helicopter to me?"

  "Where are you?"

  "At Stanley Oxenford's house, Steepfall. It's right on the cliff exactly fifteen miles north of Inverburn. There are four buildings in a square, and the pilot will see two crashed cars in the garden."

  "My God, you have been busy."

  "I need the chopper to bring me a bug, a miniature radio beacon, the kind you plant on someone you need to follow. It has to be small enough to fit into a bottle cap."

  "How long does the transmitter need to operate?"

  "Forty-eight hours."

  "No problem. They should have that at police headquarters in Inverburn."

  "One more thing. I need a bottle of perfume--Diablerie."

  "They won't have that at police headquarters. They'll have to break into Boots in the High Street."

  "We don't have much time--Wait." Olga was saying something. Toni looked at her and said, "What is it?"

  "I can give you a bottle of Diablerie, just like the one that was on the table. It's the perfume I use."

  "Thanks." Toni spoke into the phone. "Forget the perfume, I've got a bottle. How soon can you get the chopper here?"

  "Ten minutes."

  Toni looked at her watch. "That might not be fast enough."

  "Where's the helicopter going after it picks you up?"

  "I'll get back to you on that," Toni said, and she ended the call.

  She knelt on the floor beside Kit. He was pale. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep: his breathing was shallow and he trembled intermittently. "Kit," she said. He did not respond. "Kit, I need to ask you a question. It's very important."

  He opened his eyes.

  "You were going to meet the customer at ten o'clock, weren't you?"

  A tense hush fell on the room as the others turned and listened.

  Kit looked at Toni but said nothing.

  She said, "I need to know where you were going to meet them."

  He looked away.

  "Kit, please."

  His lips parted. Toni leaned closer. He whispered, "No."

  "Think about it," she urged. "You might earn forgiveness, in time."

  "Never."

  "On the contrary. Little harm has been done, though much was intended. The virus has been recovered."

  His eyes moved from side to side as he looked from one family member to the next.

  Reading his mind, Toni said, "You've done a great wrong to them, but they don't yet seem ready to abandon you. They're all around you."

  He closed his eyes.

  Toni leaned closer. "You could begin to redeem yourself right now."

  Stanley opened his mouth to speak, but Miranda stopped him with a raised hand. She spoke instead. "Kit, please," she said. "Do one good thing, after all this rottenness. Do it for yourself, so that you'll know you're not all bad. Tell her what she needs to know."

  Kit closed his eyelids tight, and tears appeared. At last he said, "Inverburn Flying School."

  "Thank you," Toni whispered.

  10 A.M.

  TONI sat in the control tower at the flying school. With her in the little room were Frank Hackett, Kit Oxenford, and a local police detective. In the hangar, parked out of sight, was the military helicopter that had brought them here. It had been close, but they had made it with a minute to spare.

  Kit clutched the burgundy briefcase. He was pale, his face expressionless. He obeyed instructions like an automaton.

  They all watched through the big windows. The clouds were breaking up, and the sun shone over the snow-covered airstrip. There was no sign of a helicopter.

  Toni held Nigel Buchanan's mobile phone, waiting for it to ring. The batteries had run out at some point during the night, but it was the same kind as Hugo's, so she had borrowed his charger, which was now plugged into the wall.

  "The pilot should have called by now," she said anxiously.

  Frank said, "He may be a few minutes late."

  She pressed buttons and discovered the last number Nigel had dialed. It looked like a mobile number, and it was timed at 11:45 p.m. yesterday. "Kit," she said. "Did Nigel call the customer just before midnight?"

  "His pilot."

  She turned to Frank. "This will be the number. I think we should call it."

  "Okay."

  She pressed "Send," and handed the mobile to the local police detective. He put it to his ear. After a few moments, he said, "Yeah, this is me, where are you?" He spoke with a London accent similar to Nigel's, which was why Frank had brought him along. "That close?" he said, looking through the window up at the sky. "We can't see you--"

  As he spoke, a helicopter came down through the clouds.

  Toni tensed.

  The police officer hung up. Toni took out her own mobile and called Odette, who was now in the operations room at Scotland Yard. "Customer in sight."

  Odette could not repress the excitement in her voice. "Give me the tail number."

  "Just a minute . . ." Toni peered at the helicopter until she could make out the registration mark, then read the letters and numbers to Odette. Odette read them back then hung up.

  The helicopter descended. Its rotors blew the snow on the ground into a storm. It landed a hundred yards from the control tower.

  Frank looked at Kit and nodded. "Off you go."

  Kit hesitated.

  Toni said, "Just do everything as planned. Say, 'We had some problems with the weather, but everything worked out okay in the end.' You'll be fine."

  Kit went down the stairs, carrying the briefcase.

  Toni had no idea whether he would perform as instructed. He had been up for more than twenty-four hours, he had been in a car crash, and he was emotionally wrecked. He might do anything.

  There were two men in the front seats of the helicopter. One of them, presumably the copilot, opened a door and got out, carrying a large suitcase. He was a stocky man of medium height, wearing sunglasses. Ducking his head, he moved away from the aircraft.

  A moment later, Kit appeared outside the tower and walked across the snow toward the helicopter.

  "Stay calm, Kit," Toni said aloud. Frank grunted.

  The two men met halfway. There was some conversation. Was the copilot asking where Nigel was? Kit pointed to the control tower. What was he saying? Nigel sent me to make the delivery, perhaps. But it could just as easily be The police are up there in the control tower. There were more questions, and Kit shrugged.

  Toni's mobile rang. It was Odette. "The helicopter is registered to Adam Hallan, a London banker," she said. "But he's not on board."

  "Shame."

  "Don't worry, I wasn't expecting him. The pilot and copilot are employees of his. They filed a flight plan to Battersea Heliport--just across the river from Mr. Hallan's house in Cheyne Walk."

  "He's Mister Big, then?"

  "Trust me. We've been after him for a long time."

  The copilot pointed at the burgundy briefcase. Kit opened it and showed him a Diablerie bottle in a nest of polystyrene packing chips. The copilot put his suitcase on the ground and opened it to reveal stacks of banded fifty-pound notes, closely packed together; at least a million pounds, Toni thought, perhaps two million. As he had been instructed, Kit took out one of the stacks and riffled it.

  Toni told Odette, "They've made the exchange. Kit's checking the money."

  The two men on the airfield looked at each other, nodded, and shook hands. Kit handed over the burgundy briefcase, then picked up the suitcase. It seemed heavy. The copilot walked back to the helicopter, and Kit returned to the control tower.

  As soon as the copilot got back into the aircraft, it took off.

  Toni was still on the line to Odette. "Are you picking up the signa
l from the transmitter in the bottle?"

  "Loud and clear," Odette said. "We've got the bastards."

  BOXING DAY

  7 p.M.

  LONDON was cold. No snow had fallen here, but a freezing wind whipped the ancient buildings and the curled streets, and people hunched their shoulders and tightened the scarves around their necks as they hurried to the warmth of pubs and restaurants, hotels and cinemas.

  Toni Gallo sat in the back of a plain gray Audi beside Odette Cressy. Odette was a blond woman Toni's age, wearing a dark business suit over a scarlet shirt. Two detectives sat in the front, one driving, one studying a direction-finding radio receiver and telling the driver where to go.

  The police had been tracking the perfume bottle for thirty-three hours. The helicopter had landed, as expected, in southwest London. The pilot had got into a waiting car and driven across Battersea Bridge to the riverside home of Adam Hallan. All last night the radio transmitter had remained stationary, beeping steadily from somewhere in the elegant eighteenth-century house. Odette did not want to arrest Hallan yet. She wanted to catch the maximum number of terrorists in her net.

  Toni had spent most of that time asleep. When she lay down in her flat just before noon on Christmas Day, she felt too tense to sleep. Her thoughts were with the helicopter as it flew the length of Britain, and she worried that the tiny radio beacon would fail. Despite her anxieties, she had dropped off in seconds.

  In the evening, she had driven to Steepfall to see Stanley. They had held hands and talked for an hour in his study, then she flew to London. She slept heavily all night at Odette's flat in Camden Town.

  As well as following the radio signal, the Metropolitan Police had Adam Hallan and his pilot and copilot under surveillance. In the morning Toni and Odette joined the team watching Adam Hallan's house.

  Toni had achieved her main objective. The deadly virus samples were back in the BSL4 laboratory at the Kremlin. But she also hoped to catch the people responsible for the nightmare she had lived through. She wanted justice.

  Today Hallan had given a lunch party, and fifty people of assorted nationalities and ages, all wearing expensive casual clothes, had visited the house. One of the guests had left with the perfume bottle. Toni and Odette and the team tracked the radio beacon to Bayswater and kept watch over a student rooming house all afternoon.

  At seven o'clock in the evening, the signal moved again.

  A young woman came out of the house. In the light of the street lamps, Toni could see that she had beautiful dark hair, heavy and lustrous. She carried a shoulder bag. She turned up the collar of her coat and walked along the pavement. A detective in jeans and an anorak got out of a tan Rover and followed her.

  "I think this is it," Toni said. "She's going to release the spray."

  "I want to see it," Odette said. "For the prosecution, I need witnesses to the attempted murder."

  Toni and Odette lost sight of the young woman as she turned into a Tube station. The radio signal weakened worryingly as the woman went underground. It remained steady for a while, then the beacon moved, presumably because the woman was on a train. They followed the feeble signal, fearing it would fade out and she would shake off the detective in the anorak. But she emerged at Piccadilly Circus, the detective still tailing her. They lost visual contact for a minute when she turned into a one-way street, then the detective called Odette on his mobile phone and reported that the woman had entered a theater.

  Toni said, "That's where she'll release the spray."

  The unmarked police cars drew up outside the theater. Odette and Toni went in, followed by two men from the second car. The show, a ghost story with songs, was popular with visiting Americans. The girl with beautiful hair was standing in the queue for collection of prepaid tickets.

  While she waited, she took from her shoulder bag a perfume bottle. With a quick gesture that looked entirely natural, she sprayed her head and shoulders. The theatergoers around her paid no attention. Doubtless she wanted to be fragrant for the man she was meeting, they would imagine, if they thought about it at all. Such beautiful hair ought to smell good. The spray was curiously odorless, but no one seemed to notice.

  "That's good," said Odette. "But we'll let her do it again."

  The bottle contained plain water, but all the same Toni shivered with dread as she breathed in. Had she not made the switch, the spray would have contained live Madoba-2, and that breath would have killed her.

  The woman collected her ticket and went inside. Odette spoke to the usher and showed him her police card, then the detectives followed the woman. She went to the bar, where she sprayed herself again. She did the same in the ladies' room. At last she took her seat in the front orchestra and sprayed herself yet again. Her plan, Toni guessed, was to use the spray several times more in the interval, and finally in the crowded passages while the audience was leaving the building. By the end of the evening, almost everyone in the theater would have breathed the droplets from her bottle.

  Watching from the back of the auditorium, Toni listened to the accents around her: a woman from the American South who had bought the most beautiful cashmere scarf; someone from Boston talking about where he pahked his cah; a New Yorker who had paid five dollars for a cup of cawfee. If the perfume bottle had contained the virus as planned, these people would by now be infected with Madoba-2. They would have flown home to embrace their families and greet their neighbors and go back to work, telling everyone about their holiday in Europe.

  Ten or twelve days later, they would have fallen ill. "I picked up a lousy cold in London," they would have said. Sneezing, they would have infected their relations and friends and colleagues. The symptoms would have gotten worse, and their doctors would have diagnosed flu. When they started to die, the doctors would have realized that this was something much worse than flu. As the deadly infection spread rapidly from street to street and city to city, the medical profession would have begun to understand what they were dealing with, but by then it would be too late.

  Now none of that would happen--but Toni shuddered as she thought how close it had been.

  A nervous man in a tuxedo approached them. "I'm the theater manager," he said. "What's happening?"

  "We're about to make an arrest," Odette told him. "You may want to delay the curtain for a minute."

  "I hope there won't be a fracas."

  "Believe me, so do I." The audience was seated. "All right," Odette said to the other detectives. "We've seen enough. Pick her up, and gently does it."

  The two men from the second car walked down the aisles and stood at either end of the woman's row. She looked at one, then the other. "Come with me, please, miss," said the nearer of the two detectives. The theater went quiet as the waiting audience watched. Was this part of the show? they wondered.

  The woman remained seated, but took out her perfume bottle and sprayed herself again. The detective, a young man in a short Crombie coat, pushed his way along the row to where she sat. "Please come immediately," he said. She stood up, raised the bottle, and sprayed it into the air. "Don't bother," he said. "It's only water." Then he took her by the arm and led her along the row and up the aisle to the back of the theater.

  Toni stared at the prisoner. She was young and attractive. She had been ready to commit suicide. Toni wondered why.

  Odette took the perfume bottle from her and dropped it into an evidence bag. "Diablerie," she said. "French word. Do you know what it means?"

  The woman shook her head.

  "The work of the devil." Odette turned to the detective. "Put her in handcuffs and take her away."

  CHRISTMAS DAY, A YEAR LATER

  5:50 P.M.

  TONI came out of the bathroom naked and walked across the hotel room to answer the phone.

  From the bed, Stanley said, "My God, you look good."

  She grinned at her husband. He was wearing a blue toweling bathrobe that was too small for him, and it showed his long, muscular legs. "You're not so bad yours
elf," she said, and she picked up the phone. It was her mother. "Happy Christmas," Toni said.

  "Your old boyfriend is on the television," Mother said.

  "What's he doing, singing carols in the police choir?"

  "He's being interviewed by that Carl Osborne. He's telling how he caught those terrorists last Christmas."

  "He caught them?" Toni was momentarily indignant, then she thought, What the hell. "Well, he needs the publicity--he's after a promotion. How's my sister?"

  "She's just getting the supper ready."

  Toni looked at her watch. On this Caribbean island it was a few minutes before six o'clock in the evening. For Mother, in England, it was coming up to ten o'clock at night. But meals were always late at Bella's. "What did she give you for Christmas?"

  "We're going to get something in the January sales, it's cheaper."

  "Did you like my present?" Toni had given Mother a cashmere cardigan in salmon pink.

  "Lovely, thank you, dear."

  "Is Osborne okay?" Mother had taken the puppy to live with her, and he was now full-grown, a big shaggy black-and-white dog with hair that covered his eyes.

  "He's behaving very well and hasn't had any accidents since yesterday."

  "And the grandchildren?"

  "Running around breaking their presents. I must go now, the Queen's on the telly."

  "Bye, Mother. Thank you for calling."

  Stanley said, "I don't suppose there's time for a bit of, you know, before dinner."

  She pretended to be shocked. "We just had a bit of you know!"

  "That was hours ago! But if you're tired . . . I realize that when a woman gets to a certain age--"

  "A certain age?" She leaped onto the bed and knelt astride him. "A certain age?" She picked up the pillow and beat him with it.

  He laughed helplessly and begged for mercy, and she relented and kissed him.

  She had expected Stanley to be fairly good in bed, but it had come as a surprise to her that he was such a pistol. She would never forget their first holiday together. In a suite at the Ritz in Paris, he had blindfolded her and tied her hands to the headboard. As she lay there, naked and helpless, he had stroked her lips with a feather, then with a silver teaspoon, then with a strawberry. She had never before concentrated so intensely on her bodily sensations. He caressed her breasts with a silk handkerchief, with a cashmere scarf, and with leather gloves. She had felt as if she were floating in the sea, rocked gently by waves of pleasure. He kissed the backs of her knees, the insides of her thighs, the soft undersides of her upper arms, and her throat. He did everything slowly and lingeringly, until she was bursting with desire. He touched her nipples with ice cubes, and put warm oil inside her. He carried on until she begged him to enter her, then he made her wait a little longer. Afterward, she had said, "I didn't know this, but all my life I've wanted a man to do that."